MacKenna-Plotinus: the First

As long as there is any such involuntary action, the nature is twofold, God and Demi-God, or rather God in association with a nature of a lower power: when all the involuntary is suppressed, there is God unmingled, a Divine Being of those that follow upon THE FIRST. Enneads   I,2,6

And Beauty, this Beauty which is also The Good, must be posed as THE FIRST: directly deriving from this First is the Intellectual-Principle which is pre-eminently the manifestation of Beauty; through the Intellectual-Principle Soul is beautiful. The beauty in things of a lower order-actions and pursuits for instance comes by operation of the shaping Soul which is also the author of the beauty found in the world of sense. For the Soul, a divine thing, a fragment as it were of the Primal Beauty, makes beautiful to the fulness of their capacity all things whatsoever that it grasps and moulds. Enneads I,6,6

This is the only eye that sees the mighty Beauty. If the eye that adventures the vision be dimmed by vice, impure, or weak, and unable in its cowardly blenching to see the uttermost brightness, then it sees nothing even though another point to what lies plain to sight before it. To any vision must be brought an eye adapted to what is to be seen, and having some likeness to it. Never did eye see the sun unless it had first become sunlike, and never can the soul have vision of THE FIRST Beauty unless itself be beautiful. Enneads I,6,9

And THE FIRST Act is the Act of The Good stationary within Itself, and THE FIRST Existence is the self-contained Existence of The Good; but there is also an Act upon It, that of the Intellectual-Principle which, as it were, lives about It. Enneads I,8,2

As necessarily as there is Something after THE FIRST, so necessarily there is a Last: this Last is Matter, the thing which has no residue of good in it: here is the necessity of Evil. Enneads I,8,7

8. Soul, then, in the same way, is intent upon a task of its own; alike in its direct course and in its divagation it is the cause of all by its possession of the Thought of THE FIRST Principle: thus a Law of Justice goes with all that exists in the Universe which, otherwise, would be dissolved, and is perdurable because the entire fabric is guided as much by the orderliness as by the power of the controlling force. And in this order the stars, as being no minor members of the heavenly system, are co-operators contributing at once to its stately beauty and to its symbolic quality. Their symbolic power extends to the entire realm of sense, their efficacy only to what they patently do. Enneads II,3,8

Rightly, therefore, is this Kosmos described as an image continuously being imaged, THE FIRST and the Second Principles immobile, the Third, too, immobile essentially, but, accidentally and in Matter, having motion. Enneads II,3,18

Both are engendered, in the sense that they have had a beginning, but unengendered in that this beginning is not in Time: they have a derived being but by an eternal derivation: they are not, like the Kosmos, always in process but, in the character of the Supernal, have their Being permanently. For that differentiation within the Intelligible which produces Matter has always existed and it is this cleavage which produces the Matter there: it is THE FIRST movement; and movement and differentiation are convertible terms since the two things arose as one: this motion, this cleavage, away from THE FIRST is indetermination [= Matter], needing THE FIRST to its determination which it achieves by its Return, remaining, until then, an Alienism, still lacking good; unlit by the Supernal. It is from the Divine that all light comes, and, until this be absorbed, no light in any recipient of light can be authentic; any light from elsewhere is of another order than the true. Enneads II,4,5

Even in calling it “THE FIRST” we mean no more than to express that it is the most absolutely simplex: it is the Self-Sufficing only in the sense that it is not of that compound nature which would make it dependent upon any constituent; it is “the Self-Contained” because everything contained in something alien must also exist by that alien. Enneads II,9,1

Those who hold to fewer Principles must hold the identity of either Intellectual-Principle and Soul or of Intellectual-Principle and THE FIRST; but we have abundantly shown that these are distinct. Enneads II,9,1

The more perfect the man, the more compliant he is, even towards his fellows; we must temper our importance, not thrusting insolently beyond what our nature warrants; we must allow other beings, also, their place in the presence of the Godhead; we may not set ourselves alone next after THE FIRST in a dream-flight which deprives us of our power of attaining identity with the Godhead in the measure possible to the human Soul, that is to say, to the point of likeness to which the Intellectual-Principle leads us; to exalt ourselves above the Intellectual-Principle is to fall from it. Enneads II,9,9

13. Those, then, that censure the constitution of the Kosmos do not understand what they are doing or where this audacity leads them. They do not understand that there is a successive order of Primals, Secondaries, Tertiaries and so on continuously to the Ultimates; that nothing is to be blamed for being inferior to THE FIRST; that we can but accept, meekly, the constitution of the total, and make our best way towards the Primals, withdrawing from the tragic spectacle, as they see it, of the Kosmic spheres which in reality are all suave graciousness. Enneads II,9,13

The Intellectual Realm was not of a nature to be the ultimate of existents. It was THE FIRST and it held great power, all there is of power; this means that it is productive without seeking to produce; for if effort and search were incumbent upon it, the Act would not be its own, would not spring from its essential nature; it would be, like a craftsman, producing by a power not inherent but acquired, mastered by dint of study. Enneads III,2,2

10. But: if the evil in men is involuntary, if their own will has not made them what they are, how can we either blame wrong-doers or even reproach their victims with suffering through their own fault? If there is a Necessity, bringing about human wickedness either by force of the celestial movement or by a rigorous sequence set up by THE FIRST Cause, is not the evil a thin rooted in Nature? And if thus the Reason-Principle of the universe is the creator of evil, surely all is injustice? No: Men are no doubt involuntary sinners in the sense that they do not actually desire to sin; but this does not alter the fact that wrongdoers, of their own choice, are, themselves, the agents; it is because they themselves act that the sin is in their own; if they were not agents they could not sin. Enneads III,2,10

What, then, makes them thoughts? The fact that they are Reason-Principles. Every life is some form of thought, but of a dwindling clearness like the degrees of life itself. THE FIRST and clearest Life and THE FIRST Intelligence are one Being. THE FIRST Life, then, is an Intellection and the next form of Life is the next Intellection and the last form of Life is the last form of Intellection. Thus every Life, of the order strictly so called, is an Intellection. Enneads III,8,8

If, then, neither the Intellectual-Principle nor the Intelligible Object can be THE FIRST Existent, what is? Our answer can only be: The source of both. Enneads III,8,9

This Principle on the thither side of Life is the cause of Life for that Manifestation of Life which is the Universe of things is not THE FIRST Activity; it is itself poured forth, so to speak, like water from a spring. Enneads III,8,10

(F)... But THE FIRST is not to be envisaged as made up from Gods of a transcendent order: no; the Authentic Existents constitute the Intellectual-Principle with Which motion and rest begin. The Primal touches nothing, but is the centre round which those other Beings lie in repose and in movement. For Movement is aiming, and the Primal aims at nothing; what could the Summit aspire to? Has It, even, no Intellection of Itself? It possesses Itself and therefore is said in general terms to know itself... But intellection does not mean self-ownership; it means turning the gaze towards the Primal: now the act of intellection is itself the Primal Act, and there is therefore no place for any earlier one. The Being projecting this Act transcends the Act so that Intellection is secondary to the Being in which it resides. Intellection is not the transcendently venerable thing neither Intellection in general nor even the Intellection of The Good. Apart from and over any Intellection stands The Good itself. Enneads III,9,3

But would not all this mean that THE FIRST does not even live? THE FIRST cannot be said to live since it is the source of Life. Enneads III,9,3

The leading principle of the universe is a unity and one that is sovereign without break, not sometimes dominant and sometimes dominated. What source is there for any such multiplicity of leading principles as might result in contest and hesitation? And this governing unity must always desire the one thing: what could bring it to wish now for this and now for that, to its own greater perplexing? But observe: no perplexity need follow upon any development of this soul essentially a unity. The All stands a multiple thing no doubt, having parts, and parts dashing with parts, but that does not imply that it need be in doubt as to its conduct: that soul does not take its essence from its ultimates or from its parts, but from the Primals; it has its source in THE FIRST and thence, along an unhindered path, it flows into a total of things, conferring grace, and, because it remains one same thing occupied in one task, dominating. To suppose it pursuing one new object after another is to raise the question whence that novelty comes into being; the soul, besides, would be in doubt as to its action; its very work, the kosmos, would be the less well done by reason of the hesitancy which such calculations would entail. Enneads IV,4,10

Again, all that is fully achieved engenders: therefore the eternally achieved engenders eternally an eternal being. At the same time, the offspring is always minor: what then are we to think of the All-Perfect but that it can produce nothing less than the very greatest that is later than itself. The greatest, later than the divine unity, must be the Divine Mind, and it must be the second of all existence, for it is that which sees The One on which alone it leans while THE FIRST has no need whatever of it. The offspring of the prior to Divine Mind can be no other than that Mind itself and thus is the loftiest being in the universe, all else following upon it the soul, for example, being an utterance and act of the Intellectual-Principle as that is an utterance and act of The One. But in soul the utterance is obscured, for soul is an image and must look to its own original: that Principle, on the contrary, looks to THE FIRST without mediation thus becoming what it is and has that vision not as from a distance but as the immediate next with nothing intervening, close to the One as Soul to it. Enneads V,1,6

It has besides a consciousness, as it were, within itself of this same potentiality; it knows that it can of itself beget an hypostasis and can determine its own Being by the virtue emanating from its prior; it knows that its nature is in some sense a definite part of the content of that First; that it thence derives its essence, that its strength lies there and that its Being takes perfection as a derivative and a recipient from THE FIRST. It sees that, as a member of the realm of division and part, it receives life and intellection and all else it has and is, from the undivided and partless, since that First is no member of existence, but can be the source of all on condition only of being held down by no one distinctive shape but remaining the undeflected unity. Enneads V,1,7

And so THE FIRST is not a thing among the things contained by the Intellectual-Principle though the source of all. In virtue of this source, things of the later order are essential beings; for from that fact there is determination; each has its form: what has being cannot be envisaged as outside of limit; the nature must be held fast by boundary and fixity; though to the Intellectual Beings this fixity is no more than determination and form, the foundations of their substantial existence. Enneads V,1,7

Later there is Aristotle  ; he begins by making THE FIRST transcendent and intellective but cancels that primacy by supposing it to have self-intellection. Further he affirms a multitude of other intellective beings as many indeed as there are orbs in the heavens; one such principle as in over to every orb and thus his account of the Intellectual Realm differs from Plato’s and, failing reason, he brings in necessity; though whatever reasons he had alleged there would always have been the objection that it would be more reasonable that all the spheres, as contributory to one system, should look to a unity, to THE FIRST. Enneads V,1,9

If from one, then clearly the Intellectual system will be analogous to that of the universe of sense-sphere encircling sphere, with one, the outermost, dominating all THE FIRST [in the Intellectual] will envelop the entire scheme and will be an Intellectual [or Archetypal] Kosmos; and as in our universe the spheres are not empty but THE FIRST sphere is thick with stars and none without them, so, in the Intellectual Kosmos, those principles of Movement will envelop a multitude of Beings, and that world will be the realm of the greater reality. Enneads V,1,9

Now if these activities arise from some unexplained first activity in that principle, then it too contains the manifold: if, on the contrary, they are the very earliest activities and the source and cause of any multiple product and the means by which that Principle is able, before any activity occurs, to remain self-centred, then they are allocated to the product of which they are the cause; for this principle is one thing, the activities going forth from it are another, since it is not, itself, in act. If this be not so, THE FIRST act cannot be the Intellectual-Principle: the One does not provide for the existence of an Intellectual-Principle which thereupon appears; that provision would be something [an Hypostasis] intervening between the One and the Intellectual-Principle, its offspring. There could, in fact, be no such providing in The One, for it was never incomplete; and such provision could name nothing that ought to be provided. It cannot be thought to possess only some part of its content, and not the whole; nor did anything exist to which it could turn in desire. Clearly anything that comes into being after it, arises without shaking to its permanence in its own habit. It is essential to the existence of any new entity that THE FIRST remain in self-gathered repose throughout: otherwise, it moved before there was motion and had intellectual act before any intellection unless, indeed, that first act [as motionless and without intelligence] was incomplete, nothing more than a tendency. And what can we imagine it lights upon to become the object of such a tendency? The only reasonable explanation of act flowing from it lies in the analogy of light from a sun. The entire intellectual order may be figured as a kind of light with the One in repose at its summit as its King: but this manifestation is not cast out from it: we may think, rather, of the One as a light before the light, an eternal irradiation resting upon the Intellectual Realm; this, not identical with its source, is yet not severed from it nor of so remote a nature as to be less than Real-Being; it is no blind thing, but is seeing and knowing, the primal knower. Enneads V,3,12

But how? As having, perhaps, contained them previously? We have indicated that, thus, THE FIRST would be a manifold. Enneads V,3,15

May we think, perhaps, that THE FIRST contained the universe as an indistinct total whose items are elaborated to distinct existence within the Second by the Reason-Principle there? That Second is certainly an Activity; the Transcendent would contain only the potentiality of the universe to come. Enneads V,3,15

We may take it as proved that the emanation of the Transcendent must be a Not-One something other than pure unity, but that it is a multiplicity, and especially that it is such a multiplicity as is exhibited in the sequent universe, this is a statement worthy of deliberation: some further enquiry must be made, also, as to the necessity of any sequel to THE FIRST. Enneads V,3,15

16. We have, of course, already seen that a secondary must follow upon THE FIRST, and that this is a power immeasurably fruitful; and we indicated that this truth is confirmed by the entire order of things since there is nothing, not even in the lowest ranks, void of the power of generating. We have now to add that, since things engendered tend downwards and not upwards and, especially, move towards multiplicity, THE FIRST principle of all must be less a manifold than any. Enneads V,3,16

If this [secondary principle] were The Good [The Absolute], nothing could transcend these things, life and intellect: but, given the existence of something higher, this Intellectual-Principle must possess a life directed towards that Transcendent, dependent upon it, deriving its being from it, living towards it as towards its source. THE FIRST, then, must transcend this principle of life and intellect which directs thither both the life in itself, a copy of the Reality of THE FIRST, and the intellect in itself which is again a copy, though of what original there we cannot know. Enneads V,3,16

1. Anything existing after THE FIRST must necessarily arise from that First, whether immediately or as tracing back to it through intervenients; there must be an order of secondaries and tertiaries, in which any second is to be referred to THE FIRST, any third to the second. Enneads V,4,1

Our One-First is not a body: a body is not simplex and, as a thing of process cannot be a First, the Source cannot be a thing of generation: only a principle outside of body, and utterly untouched by multiplicity, could be THE FIRST. Enneads V,4,1

Any unity, then, later than THE FIRST must be no longer simplex; it can be no more than a unity in diversity. Enneads V,4,1

Whence must such a sequent arise? It must be an offspring of THE FIRST; for suppose it the product of chance, that First ceases to be the Principle of All. Enneads V,4,1

But how does it arise from THE FIRST? If THE FIRST is perfect, utterly perfect above all, and is the beginning of all power, it must be the most powerful of all that is, and all other powers must act in some partial imitation of it. Now other beings, coming to perfection, are observed to generate; they are unable to remain self-closed; they produce: and this is true not merely of beings endowed with will, but of growing things where there is no will; even lifeless objects impart something of themselves, as far as they may; fire warms, snow chills, drugs have their own outgoing efficacy; all things to the utmost of their power imitate the Source in some operation tending to eternity and to service. Enneads V,4,1

How then could the most perfect remain self-set THE FIRST Good, the Power towards all, how could it grudge or be powerless to give of itself, and how at that would it still be the Source? If things other than itself are to exist, things dependent upon it for their reality, it must produce since there is no other source. And further this engendering principle must be the very highest in worth; and its immediate offspring, its secondary, must be the best of all that follows. Enneads V,4,1

5. We return to our statement that THE FIRST remains intact even when other entities spring from it. Enneads V,5,5

And just as there is, primarily or secondarily, some form or idea from the monad in each of the successive numbers the later still participating, though unequally, in the unit so the series of Beings following upon THE FIRST bear, each, some form or idea derived from that source. In Number the participation establishes Quantity; in the realm of Being, the trace of The One establishes reality: existence is a trace of The One our word for entity may probably be connected with that for unity. Enneads V,5,5

6. All this, however, we may leave to individual judgement: to proceed: This produced reality is an Ideal form for certainly nothing springing from the Supreme can be less and it is not a particular form but the form of all, beside which there is no other; it follows that THE FIRST must be without form, and, if without form, then it is no Being; Being must have some definition and therefore be limited; but THE FIRST cannot be thought of as having definition and limit, for thus it would be not the Source but the particular item indicated by the definition assigned to it. If all things belong to the produced, which of them can be thought of as the Supreme? Not included among them, this can be described only as transcending them: but they are Being and the Beings; it therefore transcends Being. Enneads V,5,6

This vision sees, by another light, the objects illuminated by THE FIRST Principle: setting itself among them, it sees veritably; declining towards the lower Nature, that upon which the light from above rests, it has less of that vision. Passing over the visible and looking to the medium by which it sees, then it holds the Light and the source of Light. Enneads V,5,7

No doubt it is wonderful that THE FIRST should thus be present without any coming, and that, while it is nowhere, nowhere is it not; but wonderful though this be in itself, the contrary would be more wonderful to those who know. Of course neither this contrary nor the wonder at it can be entertained. But we must explain: Enneads V,5,8

That Source, having no prior, cannot be contained: uncontained by any of those other forms of being, each held within the series of priors, it is orbed round all, but so as not to be pointed off to hold them part for part; it possesses but is not possessed. Holding all though itself nowhere held it is omnipresent, for where its presence failed something would elude its hold. At the same time, in the sense that it is nowhere held, it is not present: thus it is both present and not present; not present as not being circumscribed by anything; yet, as being utterly unattached, not inhibited from presence at any point. That inhibition would mean that THE FIRST was determined by some other being; the later series, then, would be without part in the Supreme; God has His limit and is no longer self-governed but mastered by inferiors. Enneads V,5,9

Consider our universe. There is none before it and therefore it is not, itself, in a universe or in any place what place was there before the universe came to be? its linked members form and occupy the whole. But Soul is not in the universe, on the contrary the universe is in the Soul; bodily substance is not a place to the Soul; Soul is contained in Intellectual-Principle and is the container of body. The Intellectual-Principle in turn is contained in something else; but that prior principle has nothing in which to be: THE FIRST is therefore in nothing, and, therefore, nowhere. But all the rest must be somewhere; and where but in THE FIRST? This can mean only that THE FIRST is neither remote from things nor directly within them; there is nothing containing it; it contains all. It is The Good to the universe if only in this way, that towards it all things have their being, all dependent upon it, each in its mode, so that thing rises above thing in goodness according to its fuller possession of authentic being. Enneads V,5,9

Then, too, it is thought enough to appear loveable whether one is so or not: but no one wants his Good in semblance only. All are seeking THE FIRST as something ranking before aught else, but they struggle venomously for beauty as something secondary like themselves: thus some minor personage may perhaps challenge equal honour with the King’s right-hand man on pretext of similar dependence, forgetting that, while both owe their standing to the monarch, the other holds the higher rank. Enneads V,5,12

It may be added that, supposing THE FIRST to be intellective, it thereby possesses something [some object, some attribute]: at once it ceases to be a first; it is a secondary, and not even a unity; it is a many; it is all of which it takes intellectual possession; even though its intellection fell solely upon its own content, it must still be a manifold. Enneads V,6,2

Once there is any manifold, there must be a precedent unity: since any intellection implies multiplicity in the intellective subject, the non-multiple must be without intellection; that non-multiple will be THE FIRST: intellection and the Intellectual-Principle must be characteristic of beings coming later. Enneads V,6,3

That primal Activity, then, is not an intellection, for there is nothing upon which it could Exercise intellection since it is THE FIRST; besides, intellection itself does not exercise the intellective act; this belongs to some principle in which intellection is vested. There is, we repeat, duality in any thinking being; and THE FIRST is wholly above the dual. Enneads V,6,6

2. What is this other place and how it is accessible? It is to be reached by those who, born with the nature of the lover, are also authentically philosophic by inherent temper; in pain of love towards beauty but not held by material loveliness, taking refuge from that in things whose beauty is of the soul such things as virtue, knowledge, institutions, law and custom and thence, rising still a step, reach to the source of this loveliness of the Soul, thence to whatever be above that again, until the uttermost is reached. THE FIRST, the Principle whose beauty is self-springing: this attained, there is an end to the pain inassuageable before. Enneads V,9,2

4. But, soul reached, why need we look higher; why not make this THE FIRST? A main reason is that the Intellectual-Principle is at once something other and something more powerful than Soul and that the more powerful is in the nature of things the prior. For it is certainly not true, as people imagine, that the soul, brought to perfection, produces Intellect. How could that potentiality come to actuality unless there be, first, an effective principle to induce the actualization which, left to chance, might never occur? The Firsts must be supposed to exist in actuality, looking to nothing else, self-complete. Anything incomplete must be sequent upon these, and take its completion from the principles engendering it which, like fathers, labour in the improvement of an offspring born imperfect: the produced is a Matter to the producing principle and is worked over by it into a shapely perfection. Enneads V,9,4

But on the question as to whether the repulsive and the products of putridity have also their Idea whether there is an Idea of filth and mud it is to be observed that all that the Intellectual-Principle derived from THE FIRST is of the noblest; in those Ideas the base is not included: these repulsive things point not to the Intellectual-Principle but to the Soul which, drawing upon the Intellectual-Principle, takes from Matter certain other things, and among them these. Enneads V,9,14

There is further the distinction drawn between what are known as First and Second Substances. But what is their common basis, seeing that THE FIRST are the source from which the Second derive their right to be called substances? But, in sum, it is impossible to define Substance: determine its property, and still you have not attained to its essence. Even the definition, “That which, numerically one and the same, is receptive of contraries,” will hardly be applicable to all substances alike. Enneads VI,1,2

17. Why are not beauty, goodness and the virtues, together with knowledge and intelligence, included among the primary genera? If by goodness we mean THE FIRST what we call the Principle of Goodness, the Principle of which we can predicate nothing, giving it this name only because we have no other means of indicating it then goodness, clearly, can be the genus of nothing: this principle is not affirmed of other things; if it were, each of these would be Goodness itself. The truth is that it is prior to Substance, not contained in it. If, on the contrary, we mean goodness as a quality, no quality can be ranked among the primaries. Enneads VI,2,17

Does this imply that the nature of Being is not good? Not good, to begin with, in the sense in which THE FIRST is good, but in another sense of the word: moreover, Being does not possess its goodness as a quality but as a constituent. Enneads VI,2,17

9. If in such a partition of the unity, that which entered into each participant were an entire always identical with THE FIRST then, in the progressive severance, the firsts would become numerous, each particular becoming a first: and then what prevents these many firsts from reconstituting the collective unity? Certainly not the bodies they have entered, for those firsts cannot be present in the material masses as their Forms if they are to remain identical with THE FIRST from which they come. On the other hand, taking the part conceived as present in the multiple to be simply a power [emanating from THE FIRST], at once such a part ceases to be the unity; we have then to ask how these powers come to be cut off, to have abandoned their origin; they certainly have not moved away with no purpose in their movement. Enneads VI,4,9

Again, are those powers, entering the universe of sense, still within THE FIRST or not? If they are not, we have the absurdity that THE FIRST has been lessened, disempowered, stripped of power originally possessed. Besides, how could powers thus cut off subsist apart from the foundations of their being? Suppose these powers to be at once within THE FIRST and elsewhere; then the universe of sense contains either the entire powers or parts of them; if parts of powers, the other parts are There; if entires, then either the powers There are present here also undivided and this brings us back to an identity omnipresent in integral identity or they are each an entire which has taken division into a multiplicity of similars so that attached to every essence there is one power only that particularly appropriated to it the other powers remaining powers unattached: yet power apart from Being is as impossible as Being apart from power; for There power is Being or something greater than Being. Enneads VI,4,9

If we are told that these powers fade out similarly, we are left with only one imperishable: the souls, the Intellectual-Principle, become perishable; then since Being [identical with the Intellectual-Principle] becomes transitory, so also must the Beings, its productions. Yet the sun, so long as it holds its station in the universe, will pour the same light upon the same places; to think its light may be lessened is to hold its mass perishable. But it has been abundantly stated that the emanants of THE FIRST are not perishable, that the souls, and the Intellectual-Principle with all its content, cannot perish. Enneads VI,4,10

Now, admitting any sequent to the absolute unity, that sequent must be bound up with the absolute; any third will be about that second and move towards it, linked to it as its offspring. In this way all participants in the Later will have share in THE FIRST. The Beings of the Intellectual are thus a plurality of firsts and seconds and thirds attached like one sphere to one centre, not separated by interval but mutually present; where, therefore, the Intellectual tertiaries are present, the secondaries and firsts are present too. Enneads VI,5,4

Now the higher power is present integrally but, in the weakness of the recipient material, is not discerned as every point; it is present as an identity everywhere not in the mode of the material triangle identical though, in many representations, numerically multiple, but in the mode of the immaterial, ideal triangle which is the source of the material figures. If we are asked why the omnipresence of the immaterial triangle does not entail that of the material figure, we answer that not all Matter enters into the participation necessary; Matter accepts various forms and not all Matter is apt for all form; THE FIRST Matter, for example, does not lend itself to all but is for THE FIRST Kinds first and for the others in due order, though these, too, are omnipresent. Enneads VI,5,11

If by division the one identical mass can become a duality without loss of quantity, clearly the unity it possessed and by this destructive division lost was something distinct. What may be alternatively present and absent to the same subject must be classed among Real-Beings, regardless of position; an accidental elsewhere, it must have reality in itself whether it be manifested in things of sense or in the Intellectual an accidental in the Laters but self-existent in the higher, especially in THE FIRST in its aspect of Unity developing into Being. We may be told that Unity may lose that character without change in itself, becoming duality by association with something else; but this is not true; unity does not become two things; neither the added nor what takes the addition becomes two; each remains the one thing it was; the duality is predicable of the group only, the unity remaining unchanged in each of those unchanged constituents. Enneads VI,6,14

Next we come to Being, fully realized, and this is the seat of Number; by Number, Being brings forth the Beings; its movement is planned to Number; it establishes the numbers of its offspring before bringing them to be, in the same way as it establishes its own unity by linking pure Being to THE FIRST: the numbers do not link the lower to THE FIRST; it suffices that Being is so linked; for Being, in taking form as Number, binds its members to itself. As a unity, it suffers no division, remaining self-constant; as a thing of division, containing its chosen total of members, it knows that total and so brings forth Number, a phase therefore of its content: its development of part is ruled by the powers of Number, and the Beings it produces sum to that Number. Thus Number, the primal and true, is Principle and source of actuality to the Beings. Enneads VI,6,15

13. For Intellectual-Principle is not a simplex, nor is the soul that proceeds from it: on the contrary things include variety in the degree of their simplicity, that is to say in so far as they are not compounds but Principles and Activities; the activity of the lowest is simple in the sense of being a fading-out, that of THE FIRST as the total of all activity. Intellectual-Principle is moved in a movement unfailingly true to one course, but its unity and identity are not those of the partial; they are those of its universality; and indeed the partial itself is not a unity but divides to infinity. Enneads VI,7,13

17. But in what mode are these secondaries, and Intellectual-Principle itself, within THE FIRST? They are not in the Filling Principle; they are not in the filled since before that moment it did not contain them. Enneads VI,7,17

Thus the Life in the Supreme was the collectivity of power; the vision taking place There was the potentiality of all; Intellectual-Principle, thus arising, is manifested as this universe of Being. It stands over the Beings not as itself requiring base but that it may serve as base to the Form of the Firsts, the Formless Form. And it takes position towards the soul, becoming a light to the soul as itself finds its light in THE FIRST; whenever Intellectual-Principle becomes the determinant of soul it shapes it into Reasoning Soul, by communicating a trace of what itself has come to possess. Enneads VI,7,17

Thus Intellectual-Principle is a vestige of the Supreme; but since the vestige is a Form going out into extension, into plurality, that Prior, as the source of Form, must be itself without shape and Form: if the Prior were a Form, the Intellectual-Principle itself could be only a Reason-Principle. It was necessary that THE FIRST be utterly without multiplicity, for otherwise it must be again referred to a prior. Enneads VI,7,17

But what is the common element in them? Derivation from THE FIRST is not enough to procure identical quality; there must be some element held in common by the things derived: one source may produce many differing things as also one outgoing thing may take difference in various recipients: what enters into THE FIRST Act is different from what that Act transmits and there is difference, again, in the effect here. Nonetheless every item may be good in a degree of its own. To what, then, is the highest degree due? But first we must ask whether Life is a good, bare Life, or only the Life streaming Thence, very different from the Life known here? Once more, then, what constitutes the goodness of Life? The Life of The Good, or rather not its Life but that given forth from it. Enneads VI,7,18

But The Good is without parts? No doubt The Good is a unity; but here it has become particularized. THE FIRST Activity is good and anything determined in accord with it is good as also is any resultant. There is the good that is good by origin in THE FIRST, the good that is in an ordered system derived from that earlier, and the good that is in the actualization [in the thing participant]. Derived, then, not identical like the speech and walk and other characteristics of one man, each playing its due part. Enneads VI,7,18

25. It is in view, probably, of this difficulty that Plato, in the Philebus  , makes pleasure an element in the Term; the good is not defined as a simplex or set in Intellectual-Principle alone; while he rightly refrains from identifying the good with the pleasant, yet he does not allow Intellectual-Principle, foreign to pleasure, to be The Good, since he sees no attractive power in it. He may also have had in mind that the good, to answer to its name, must be a thing of delight and that an object of pursuit must at least hold some pleasure for those that acquire and possess it, so that where there is no joy the good too is absent, further that pleasure, implying pursuit, cannot pertain to THE FIRST and that therefore good cannot. Enneads VI,7,25

The solution, it would seem, lies in priority: To the lowest of things the good is its immediate higher; each step represents the good to what stands lower so long as the movement does not tend awry but advances continuously towards the superior: thus there is a halt at the Ultimate, beyond which no ascent is possible: that is THE FIRST Good, the authentic, the supremely sovereign, the source of good to the rest of things. Enneads VI,7,25

It would seem possible, however, to perceive and yet be unmoved by the possession; this is quite likely in the case of the wiser and least dependent and indeed it is so with THE FIRST, immune not merely because simplex, but because pleasure by acquisition implies lack. Enneads VI,7,29

The Intellectual-Principle is the less for seeing things as distinct even in its act of grasping in unity the multiple content of its Intellectual realm; in its knowing of the particular it possesses itself of one Intellectual shape; but, even thus, in this dealing with variety as unity, it leaves us still with the question how we are to envisage that which stands beyond this all-lovely, beyond this principle at once multiple and above multiplicity, the Supreme for which the soul hungers though unable to tell why such a being should stir its longing-reason, however, urging that This at last is the Authentic Term because the Nature best and most to be loved may be found there only where there is no least touch of Form. Bring something under Form and present it so before the mind; immediately we ask what Beyond imposed that shape; reason answers that while there exists the giver having shape to give a giver that is shape, idea, an entirely measured thing yet this is not alone, is not adequate in itself, is not beautiful in its own right but is a mingled thing. Shape and idea and measure will always be beautiful, but the Authentic Beauty and the Beyond-Beauty cannot be under measure and therefore cannot have admitted shape or be Idea: the primal existent, THE FIRST, must be without Form; the beauty in it must be, simply, the Nature of the Intellectual Good. Enneads VI,7,33

Shape is an impress from the unshaped; it is the unshaped that produces shape, not shape the unshaped; and Matter is needed for the producing; Matter, in the nature of things, is the furthest away, since of itself it has not even the lowest degree of shape. Thus lovableness does not belong to Matter but to that which draws upon Form: the Form upon Matter comes by way of soul; soul is more nearly Form and therefore more lovable; Intellectual-Principle, nearer still, is even more to be loved: by these steps we are led to know that THE FIRST Principle, principle of Beauty, must be formless. Enneads VI,7,33

37. Those ascribing Intellection to THE FIRST have not supposed him to know the lesser, the emanant though, indeed, some have thought it impossible that he should not know everything. But those denying his knowing of the lesser have still attributed self-knowing to him, because they find nothing nobler; we are to suppose that so he is the more august, as if Intellection were something nobler than his own manner of being not something whose value derives from him. Enneads VI,7,37

But do not we ourselves assert that the Beings There are essence and Act? The Beings, yes, but they are to us manifold and differentiated: THE FIRST we make a simplex; to us Intellection begins with the emanant in its seeking of its essence, of itself, of its author; bent inward for this vision and having a present thing to know, there is every reason why it should be a principle of Intellection; but that which, never coming into being, has no prior but is ever what it is, how could that have motive to Intellection? As Plato rightly says, it is above Intellect. Enneads VI,7,37

But how admit a Principle void of self-knowledge, self-awareness; surely THE FIRST must be able to say “I possess Being?” Enneads VI,7,38

40. That there can be no intellection in THE FIRST will be patent to those that have had such contact; but some further confirmation is desirable, if indeed words can carry the matter; we need overwhelming persuasion. Enneads VI,7,40

This is a first activity and the substance it produces is Essential Being; it is an image, but of an original so great that the very copy stands a reality. If instead of moving outward it remained with THE FIRST, it would be no more than some appurtenance of that First, not a self-standing existent. Enneads VI,7,40

41. Intellection seems to have been given as an aid to the diviner but weaker beings, an eye to the blind. But the eye itself need not see Being since it is itself the light; what must take the light through the eye needs the light because of its darkness. If, then, intellection is the light and light does not need the light, surely that brilliance (THE FIRST) which does not need light can have no need of intellection, will not add this to its nature. Enneads VI,7,41

What could it do with intellection? What could even intellection need and add to itself for the purpose of its act? It has no self-awareness; there is no need. It is no duality but, rather, a manifold, consisting of itself, its intellective act, distinct from itself, and the inevitable third, the object of intellection. No doubt since knower, knowing, and known, are identical, all merges into a unity: but the distinction has existed and, once more, such a unity cannot be THE FIRST; we must put away all otherness from the Supreme which can need no such support; anything we add is so much lessening of what lacks nothing. Enneads VI,7,41

“Know yourself” is a precept for those who, being manifold, have the task of appraising themselves so as to become aware of the number and nature of their constituents, some or all of which they ignore as they ignore their very principle and their manner of being. THE FIRST on the contrary if it have content must exist in a way too great to have any knowledge, intellection, perception of it. To itself it is nothing; accepting nothing, self-sufficing, it is not even a good to itself: to others it is good for they have need of it; but it could not lack itself: it would be absurd to suppose The Good standing in need of goodness. Enneads VI,7,41

42. Faced by the difficulty of placing these powers, you must in reason allocate to the secondaries what you count august: secondaries must not be foisted upon THE FIRST, or tertiaries upon the secondaries. Secondaries are to be ranged under THE FIRST, tertiaries under the secondaries: this is giving everything its place, the later dependent on their priors, those priors free. Enneads VI,7,42

To say that The Good exists by chance must be false; chance belongs to the later, to the multiple; since THE FIRST has never come to be, we cannot speak of it either as coming by chance into being or as not master of its being. Absurd also the objection that it acts in accordance with its being if this is to suggest that freedom demands act or other expression against the nature. Neither does its nature as the unique annul its freedom when this is the result of no compulsion but means only that The Good is no other than itself, is self-complete and has no higher. Enneads VI,8,7

8. But it is not, in our view, as an attribute that this freedom is present in THE FIRST. In the light of free acts, from which we eliminate the contraries, we recognise There self-determination, self-directed and, failing more suitable terms, we apply to it the lesser terms brought over from lesser things and so tell it as best we may: no words could ever be adequate or even applicable to that from which all else the noble, the august is derived. For This is principle of all, or, more strictly, unrelated to all and, in this consideration, cannot be made to possess such laters as even freedom and self-disposal, which in fact indicate manifestation upon the extern unhindered but implying the existence of other beings whose opposition proves ineffective. Enneads VI,8,8

We cannot think of THE FIRST as moving towards any other; He holds his own manner of being before any other was; even Being we withhold and therefore all relation to beings. Enneads VI,8,8

Does this mean that THE FIRST is to be described as happening to be? No; that would be just as false; nothing “happens” to THE FIRST; it stands in no such relationship; happening belongs only to the multiple where, first, existence is given and then something is added. And how could the Source “happen to be”? There has been no coming so that you can put it to the question “How does this come to be? What chance brought it here, gave it being?” Chance did not yet exist; there was no “automatic action”: these imply something before themselves and occur in the realm of process. Enneads VI,8,8

Since there is nothing before Him who is THE FIRST, we must call a halt; there is nothing to say; we may enquire into the origin of his sequents but not of Himself who has no origin. Enneads VI,8,10

Of things carrying their causes within, none arises at hazard or without purpose; this “So it happened to be” is applicable to none. All that they have comes from The Good; the Supreme itself, then, as author of reason, of causation, and of causing essence all certainly lying far outside of chance must be the Principle and as it were the examplar of things, thus independent of hazard: it is, THE FIRST, the Authentic, immune from chance, from blind effect and happening: God is cause of Himself; for Himself and of Himself He is what He is, THE FIRST self, transcendently The Self. Enneads VI,8,14

And when we say that neither does He absorb anything nor anything absorb Him, thus again we are setting Him outside of all happening not only because we declare Him unique and untouched by all but in another way also. Suppose we found such a nature in ourselves; we are untouched by all that has gathered round us subjecting us to happening and chance; all that accruement was of the servile and lay exposed to chance: by this new state alone we acquire self-disposal and free act, the freedom of that light which belongs to the order of the good and is good in actuality, greater than anything Intellectual-Principle has to give, an actuality whose advantage over Intellection is no adventitious superiority. When we attain to this state and become This alone, what can we say but that we are more than free, more than self-disposing? And who then could link us to chance, hazard, happening, when thus we are become veritable Life, entered into That which contains no alloy but is purely itself? Isolate anything else and the being is inadequate; the Supreme in isolation is still what it was. THE FIRST cannot be in the soulless or in an unreasoning life; such a life is too feeble in being; it is reason dissipated, it is indetermination; only in the measure of approach towards reason is there liberation from happening; the rational is above chance. Ascending we come upon the Supreme, not as reason but as reason’s better: thus God is far removed from all happening: the root of reason is self-springing. Enneads VI,8,15

The answer is that we utterly must not speak of Him as made but sheerly as maker; the making must be taken as absolved from all else; no new existence is established; the Act here is not directed to an achievement but is God Himself unalloyed: here is no duality but pure unity. Let no one suspect us of asserting that THE FIRST Activity is without Essence; on the contrary the Activity is the very reality. To suppose a reality without activity would be to make the Principle of all principles deficient; the supremely complete becomes incomplete. To make the Activity something superadded to the essence is to shatter the unity. If then Activity is a more perfect thing than essence and THE FIRST is all perfect, then the Activity is THE FIRST. Enneads VI,8,20

This is the source also of his self-disposal strictly applicable if there were a duality, but conveying, in the case of a unity, a disposing without a disposed, an abstract disposing. But how a disposer with nothing to dispose? In that there is here a disposer looking to a prior when there is none: since there is no prior, This is THE FIRST but a First not in order but in sovereignty, in power purely self-controlled. Purely; then nothing can be There that is under any external disposition; all in God is self-willing. What then is there of his content that is not Himself, what that is not in Act, what not his work? Imagine in Him anything not of his Act and at once His existence ceases to be pure; He is not self-disposing, not all-powerful: in that at least of whose doing He is not master He would be impotent. Enneads VI,8,20

Above all, unity is THE FIRST: but Intellectual-Principle, Ideas and Being, cannot be so; for any member of the realm of Forms is an aggregation, a compound, and therefore since components must precede their compound is a later. Enneads VI,9,2

Other considerations also go to show that the Intellectual-Principle cannot be THE FIRST. Intellect must be above the Intellectual Act: at least in its higher phase, that not concerned with the outer universe, it must be intent upon its Prior; its introversion is a conversion upon the Principle. Enneads VI,9,2

Now a plurality thus concentrated like the Intellectual Kosmos is close upon THE FIRST and reason certifies its existence as surely as that of soul yet, though of higher sovereignty than soul, it is not THE FIRST since it is not a unity, not simplex as unity, principle over all multiplicity, must be. Enneads VI,9,5

The sovranly self-sufficing principle will be Unity-Absolute, for only in this Unity is there a nature above all need, whether within itself or in regard to the rest of things. Unity seeks nothing towards its being or its well-being or its safehold upon existence; cause to all, how can it acquire its character outside of itself or know any good outside? The good of its being can be no borrowing: This is The Good. Nor has it station; it needs no standing ground as if inadequate to its own sustaining; what calls for such underpropping is the soulless, some material mass that must be based or fall. This is base to all, cause of universal existence and of ordered station. All that demands place is in need; a First cannot go in need of its sequents: all need is effort towards a first principle; THE FIRST, principle to all, must be utterly without need. If the Unity be seeking, it must inevitably be seeking to be something other than itself; it is seeking its own destroyer. Whatever may be said to be in need of a good is needing a preserver; nothing can be a good to The Unity, therefore. Enneads VI,9,6