MacKenna-Plotinus: the One

2. The born lover, to whose degree the musician also may attain and then either come to a stand or pass beyond has a certain memory of beauty but, severed from it now, he no longer comprehends it: spellbound by visible loveliness he clings amazed about that. His lesson must be to fall down no longer in bewildered delight before some, one embodied form; he must be led, under a system of mental discipline, to beauty everywhere and made to discern THE ONE Principle underlying all, a Principle apart from the material forms, springing from another source, and elsewhere more truly present. The beauty, for example, in a noble course of life and in an admirably organized social system may be pointed out to him a first training this in the loveliness of the immaterial he must learn to recognise the beauty in the arts, sciences, virtues; then these severed and particular forms must be brought under THE ONE principle by the explanation of their origin. From the virtues he is to be led to the Intellectual-Principle, to the Authentic-Existent; thence onward, he treads the upward way. Enneads   I,3,2

The Matter even of the Intellectual Realm is the Indefinite, [the undelimited]; it must be a thing generated by the undefined nature, the illimitable nature, of the Eternal Being, THE ONE illimitableness, however, not possessing native existence There but engendered by THE ONE. Enneads II,4,15

Now the same Nature belongs to the Principle we know as THE ONE. just as the goodness of The Good is essential and not the outgrowth of some prior substance so the Unity of THE ONE is its essential. Enneads II,9,1

Therefore: When we speak of THE ONE and when we speak of The Good we must recognize an Identical Nature; we must affirm that they are the same not, it is true, as venturing any predication with regard to that [unknowable] Hypostasis but simply as indicating it to ourselves in the best terms we find. Enneads II,9,1

We need not, then, go seeking any other Principles; this THE ONE and the Good is our First; next to it follows the Intellectual Principle, the Primal Thinker; and upon this follows Soul. Such is the order in nature. The Intellectual Realm allows no more than these and no fewer. Enneads II,9,1

So from this, THE ONE Intellectual Principle, and the Reason-Form emanating from it, our Universe rises and develops part, and inevitably are formed groups concordant and helpful in contrast with groups discordant and combative; sometimes of choice and sometimes incidentally, the parts maltreat each other; engendering proceeds by destruction. Enneads III,2,2

6. Now the Principle this stated, all good and beauty, and everlasting, is centred in THE ONE, sprung from It, and pointed towards It, never straying from It, but ever holding about It and in It and living by Its law; and it is in this reference, as I judge, that Plato finely, and by no means inadvertently but with profound intention wrote those words of his, “Eternity stable in Unity”; he wishes to convey that Eternity is not merely something circling on its traces into a final unity but has [instantaneous] Being about THE ONE as the unchanging Life of the Authentic Existent. This is certainly what we have been seeking: this Principle, at rest within rest with THE ONE, is Eternity; possessing this stable quality, being itself at once the absolute self-identical and none the less the active manifestation of an unchanging Life set towards the Divine and dwelling within It, untrue, therefore, neither on the side of Being nor on the side of Life this will be Eternity [the Real-Being we have sought]. Enneads III,7,6

The duality, thus, is a unity; but how is this unity also a plurality? The explanation is that in a unity there can be no seeing [a pure unity has no room for vision and an object]; and in its Contemplation THE ONE is not acting as a Unity; if it were, the Intellectual-Principle cannot exist. The Highest began as a unity but did not remain as it began; all unknown to itself, it became manifold; it grew, as it were, pregnant: desiring universal possession, it flung itself outward, though it were better had it never known the desire by which a Secondary came into being: it is like a Circle [in the Idea] which in projection becomes a figure, a surface, a circumference, a centre, a system of radii, of upper and lower segments. The Whence is the better; the Whither is less good: the Whence is not the same as the Whence-followed-by-a-Whither; the Whence all alone is greater than with the Whither added to it. Enneads III,8,8

Thus we are always brought back to THE ONE. Enneads III,8,10

Now when we reach a One the stationary Principle in the tree, in the animal, in Soul, in the All we have in every case the most powerful, the precious element: when we come to THE ONE in the Authentically Existent Beings their Principle and source and potentiality shall we lose confidence and suspect it of being-nothing? Certainly this Absolute is none of the things of which it is the source its nature is that nothing can be affirmed of it not existence, not essence, not life since it is That which transcends all these. But possess yourself of it by the very elimination of Being and you hold a marvel. Thrusting forward to This, attaining, and resting in its content, seek to grasp it more and more understanding it by that intuitive thrust alone, but knowing its greatness by the Beings that follow upon it and exist by its power. Enneads III,8,10

For with the Intellectual or Supreme considered as distinct from THE ONE there is already the power of harbouring that Principle of Multiplicity, the source of things not previously existent in its superior. Enneads IV,4,1

Thus by what we call the Number and the Dyad of that higher realm, we mean Reason Principles and the Intellectual-Principle: but while the Dyad is, as regards that sphere, undetermined representing, as it were, the underly [or Matter] of THE ONE the later Number [or Quantity] that which rises from the Dyad [Intellectual-Principle] and THE ONE is not Matter to the later existents but is their forming-Idea, for all of them take shape, so to speak, from the ideas rising within this. The determination of the Dyad is brought about partly from its object THE ONE and partly from itself, as is the case with all vision in the act of sight: intellection [the Act of the Dyad] is vision occupied upon THE ONE. Enneads V,1,5

6. But how and what does the Intellectual-Principle see and, especially, how has it sprung from that which is to become the object of its vision? The mind demands the existence of these Beings, but it is still in trouble over the problem endlessly debated by the most ancient philosophers: from such a unity as we have declared THE ONE to be, how does anything at all come into substantial existence, any multiplicity, dyad, or number? Why has the Primal not remained self-gathered so that there be none of this profusion of the manifold which we observe in existence and yet are compelled to trace to that absolute unity? In venturing an answer, we first invoke God Himself, not in loud word but in that way of prayer which is always within our power, leaning in soul towards Him by aspiration, alone towards the alone. But if we seek the vision of that great Being within the Inner Sanctuary self-gathered, tranquilly remote above all else we begin by considering the images stationed at the outer precincts, or, more exactly to the moment, the first image that appears. How the Divine Mind comes into being must be explained: Everything moving has necessarily an object towards which it advances; but since the Supreme can have no such object, we may not ascribe motion to it: anything that comes into being after it can be produced only as a consequence of its unfailing self-intention; and, of course, we dare not talk of generation in time, dealing as we are with eternal Beings: where we speak of origin in such reference, it is in the sense, merely, of cause and subordination: origin from the Supreme must not be taken to imply any movement in it: that would make the Being resulting from the movement not a second principle but a third: the Movement would be the second hypostasis. Enneads V,1,6

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

7. We must be more explicit: The Intellectual-Principle stands as the image of THE ONE, firstly because there is a certain necessity that the first should have its offspring, carrying onward much of its quality, in other words that there be something in its likeness as the sun’s rays tell of the sun. Yet THE ONE is not an Intellectual-Principle; how then does it engender an Intellectual-Principle? Simply by the fact that in its self-quest it has vision: this very seeing is the Intellectual-Principle. Any perception of the external indicates either sensation or intellection, sensation symbolized by a line, intellection by a circle... [corrupt passage]. Enneads V,1,7

Heraclitus  , with his sense of bodily forms as things of ceaseless process and passage, knows THE ONE as eternal and intellectual. Enneads V,1,9

In Empedocles  , similarly, we have a dividing principle, “Strife,” set against “Friendship” which is THE ONE and is to him bodiless, while the elements represent Matter. Enneads V,1,9

10. We have shown the inevitability of certain convictions as to the scheme of things: There exists a Principle which transcends Being; this is THE ONE, whose nature we have sought to establish in so far as such matters lend themselves to proof. Upon THE ONE follows immediately the Principle which is at once Being and the Intellectual-Principle. Third comes the Principle, Soul. Enneads V,1,10

1. THE ONE is all things and no one of them; the source of all things is not all things; all things are its possession running back, so to speak, to it or, more correctly, not yet so, they will be. Enneads V,2,1

But a universe from an unbroken unity, in which there appears no diversity, not even duality? It is precisely because that is nothing within THE ONE that all things are from it: in order that Being may be brought about, the source must be no Being but Being’s generator, in what is to be thought of as the primal act of generation. Seeking nothing, possessing nothing, lacking nothing, THE ONE is perfect and, in our metaphor, has overflowed, and its exuberance has produced the new: this product has turned again to its begetter and been filled and has become its contemplator and so an Intellectual-Principle. Enneads V,2,1

That station towards THE ONE [the fact that something exists in presence of THE ONE] establishes Being; that vision directed upon THE ONE establishes the Intellectual-Principle; standing towards THE ONE to the end of vision, it is simultaneously Intellectual-Principle and Being; and, attaining resemblance in virtue of this vision, it repeats the act of THE ONE in pouring forth a vast power. Enneads V,2,1

This second outflow is a Form or Idea representing the Divine Intellect as the Divine Intellect represented its own prior, THE ONE. Enneads V,2,1

We allow this to be true for the Intellectual-Principle to which we have allotted [the multiplicity of] self-knowing; but for the first principle of all, never. Before the manifold, there must be THE ONE, that from which the manifold rises: in all numerical series, the unit is the first. Enneads V,3,12

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

THE ONE, as transcending Intellect, transcends knowing: above all need, it is above the need of the knowing which pertains solely to the Secondary Nature. Knowing is a unitary thing, but defined: the first is One, but undefined: a defined One would not be the One-absolute: the absolute is prior to the definite. Enneads V,3,12

13. Thus THE ONE is in truth beyond all statement: any affirmation is of a thing; but the all-transcending, resting above even the most august divine Mind, possesses alone of all true being, and is not a thing among things; we can give it no name because that would imply predication: we can but try to indicate, in our own feeble way, something concerning it: when in our perplexity we object, “Then it is without self-perception, without self-consciousness, ignorant of itself”; we must remember that we have been considering it only in its opposites. Enneads V,3,13

The explanation is that what comes from the Supreme cannot be identical with it and assuredly cannot be better than it what could be better than THE ONE or the utterly transcendent? The emanation, then, must be less good, that is to say, less self-sufficing: now what must that be which is less self-sufficing than THE ONE? Obviously the Not-One, that is to say, multiplicity, but a multiplicity striving towards unity; that is to say, a One-that-is-many. Enneads V,3,15

All that is not One is conserved by virtue of THE ONE, and from THE ONE derives its characteristic nature: if it had not attained such unity as is consistent with being made up of multiplicity we could not affirm its existence: if we are able to affirm the nature of single things, this is in virtue of the unity, the identity even, which each of them possesses. But the all-transcendent, utterly void of multiplicity, has no mere unity of participation but is unity’s self, independent of all else, as being that from which, by whatever means, all the rest take their degree of unity in their standing, near or far, towards it. Enneads V,3,15

Only the Transcendent can be that; it is the great beginning, and the beginning must be a really existent One, wholly and truly One, while its sequent, poured down in some way from THE ONE, is all, a total which has participation in unity and whose every member is similarly all and one. Enneads V,3,15

How then does it produce what it does not contain? Certainly not at haphazard and certainly not by selection. How then? We have observed that anything that may spring from THE ONE must be different from it. Differing, it is not One, since then it would be the Source. If unity has given place to duality, from that moment there is multiplicity; for here is variety side by side with identity, and this imports quality and all the rest. Enneads V,3,15

We must go higher if it were only for the reason that the maker of all must have a self-sufficing existence outside of all things since all the rest is patently indigent and that everything has participated in THE ONE and, as drawing on unity, is itself not unity. Enneads V,3,17

What then is this in which each particular entity participates, the author of being to the universe and to each item of the total? Since it is the author of all that exists, and since the multiplicity in each thing is converted into a self-sufficing existence by this presence of THE ONE, so that even the particular itself becomes self-sufficing, then clearly this principle, author at once of Being and of self-sufficingness, is not itself a Being but is above Being and above even self-sufficing. Enneads V,3,17

But why is the Intellectual-Principle not the generating source? Because [it is not a self-sufficing simplex]: the Act of the Intellectual-Principle is intellection, which means that, seeing the intellectual object towards which it has turned, it is consummated, so to speak, by that object, being in itself indeterminate like sight [a vague readiness for any and every vision] and determined by the intellectual object. This is why it has been said that “out of the indeterminate dyad and THE ONE arise the Ideas and the numbers”: for the dyad is the Intellectual-Principle. Enneads V,4,2

4. We have said that all must be brought back to a unity: this must be an authentic unity, not belonging to the order in which multiplicity is unified by participation in what is truly a One; we need a unity independent of participation, not a combination in which multiplicity holds an equal place: we have exhibited, also, the Intellectual Realm and the Intellectual-Principle as more closely a unity than the rest of things, so that there is nothing closer to THE ONE. Yet even this is not The purely One. Enneads V,5,4

Only by a leap can we reach to this One which is to be pure of all else, halting sharp in fear of slipping ever so little aside and impinging on the dual: for if we fail of the centre, we are in a duality which does not even include The authentic One but belongs on both sides, to the later order. THE ONE does not bear to be numbered in with anything else, with a one or a two or any such quantity; it refuses to take number because it is measure and not the measured; it is no peer of other entities to be found among them; for thus, it and they alike would be included in some container and this would be its prior, the prior it cannot have. Not even essential [ideal or abstract] number can belong to THE ONE and certainly not the still later number applying to quantities; for essential number first appears as providing duration to the divine Intellection, while quantitative number is that [still later and lower] which furnishes the Quantity found in conjunction with other things or which provides for Quantity independent of things, if this is to be thought of as number at all. The Principle which in objects having quantitative number looks to the unity from which they spring is a copy [or lower phase] of the Principle which in the earlier order of number [in essential or ideal number] looks to the veritable One; and it attains its existence without in the least degree dissipating or shattering that prior unity: the dyad has come into being, but the precedent monad still stands; and this monad is quite distinct within the dyad from either of the two constituent unities, since there is nothing to make it one rather than the other: being neither, but simply that thing apart, it is present without being inherent. Enneads V,5,4

In the case of numbers, the unit remains intact while something else produces, and thus number arises in dependence on the unit: much more then does the unit, THE ONE, remain intact in the principle which is before all beings; especially since the entities produced in its likeness, while it thus remains intact, owe their existence to no other, but to its own all-sufficient power. 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

What we know as Being, the first sequent upon THE ONE, advanced a little outward, so to speak, then chose to go no further, turned inward again and comes to rest and is now the reality and hearth [ousia and hestia] of the universe. Pressing [with the rough breathing] on the word for Being [on] we have the word “hen” [one], an indication that in our very form of speech we tell, as far as may be, that Being [the weaker] is that which proceeds from [the stronger] THE ONE. Thus both the thing that comes to be and Being itself are carriers of a copy, since they are outflows from the power of The primal One: this power sees and in its emotion tries to represent what it sees and breaks into speech “On”; “einai”; “ousia,” “hestia” [Existent: Existence: Essence: Hestia or Hearth], sounds which labour to express the essential nature of the universe produced by the travail of the utterer and so to represent, as far as sounds may, the origin of reality. Enneads V,5,5

Its definition, in fact, could be only “the indefinable”: what is not a thing is not some definite thing. We are in agony for a true expression; we are talking of the untellable; we name, only to indicate for our own use as best we may. And this name, THE ONE, contains really no more than the negation of plurality: under the same pressure the Pythagoreans found their indication in the symbol “Apollo” [a= not; pollon= of many] with its repudiation of the multiple. If we are led to think positively of THE ONE, name and thing, there would be more truth in silence: the designation, a mere aid to enquiry, was never intended for more than a preliminary affirmation of absolute simplicity to be followed by the rejection of even that statement: it was the best that offered, but remains inadequate to express the Nature indicated. For this is a principle not to be conveyed by any sound; it cannot be known on any hearing but, if at all, by vision; and to hope in that vision to see a form is to fail of even that. Enneads V,5,6

The source of the error is that while both The Good and The Beautiful participate in the common source, THE ONE precedes both; and that, in the Supreme also, The Good has no need of The Beautiful, while the Beautiful does need The Good. Enneads V,5,12

That, however, which stands outside all this category can be neither an individual unity nor an aggregate of all the duals or in any way a duality. How the duals rose from THE ONE is treated elsewhere. Enneads V,6,6

We inevitably conclude that Mass or Extension cannot be ranked as the first of things; Non-Extension and Unity must be prior. We must begin with THE ONE and conclude with the Many, proceed to magnitude from that which is free from magnitude: a One is necessary to the existence of a Many, Non-Magnitude to that of Magnitude. Magnitude is a unity not by being Unity-Absolute, but by participation and in an accidental mode: there must be a primary and absolute preceding the accidental, or the accidental relation is left unexplained. Enneads VI,1,26

If all the genera could be species of Being, all individuals without exception being immediately subordinate to these species, then such a unification becomes feasible. But that supposition bespeaks annihilation for the genera: the species will no longer be species; plurality will no longer be subordinated to unity; everything must be the unity, unless there exist some thing or things outside the unity. THE ONE never becomes many as the existence of species demands unless there is something distinct from it: it cannot of itself assume plurality, unless we are to think of it as being broken into pieces like some extended body: but even so, the force which breaks it up must be distinct from it: if it is itself to effect the breaking up or whatever form the division may take then it is itself previously divided. Enneads VI,2,2

Is, then, this unity external to the genera thus produced, this unity which is their source though it cannot be predicated of them in respect of their essence? it is indeed external; THE ONE is beyond; it cannot, therefore, be included among the genera: it is the [transcendent] source, while they stand side by side as genera. Yet surely THE ONE must somehow be included [among the genera]? No: it is the Existents we are investigating, not that which is beyond Existence. Enneads VI,2,3

Perhaps, however, it must be utterly denied that unity is even the cause of other things; they should be considered rather as its parts or elements if the terms may be allowed, their totality constituting a single entity which our thinking divides. All unity though it be, it goes by a wonderful power out into everything; it appears as many and becomes many when there is a motion; the fecundity of its nature causes THE ONE to be no longer one, and we, displaying what we call its parts, consider them each as a unity and make them into “genera,” unaware of our failure to see the whole at once. We display it, then, in parts, though, unable to restrain their natural tendency to coalesce, we bring these parts together again, resign them to the whole and allow them to become a unity, or rather to be a unity. Enneads VI,2,3

It is true that we do not hesitate to speak of the goodness inherent in Being” when we are thinking of that Act by which Being tends, of its nature, towards THE ONE: thus, we affirm goodness of it in the sense that it is thereby moulded into the likeness of The Good. But if this “goodness inherent in Being” is an Act directed toward The Good, it is the life of Being: but this life is Motion, and Motion is already one of the genera. Enneads VI,2,17

Thus, we either cancel all that we have affirmed and the principles laid down, and deny the existence of any such Nature, or, that being impossible, we return to our first position: THE ONE, numerically identical, undistributed, an unbroken entire, yet stands remote from nothing that exists by its side; but it does not, for that, need to pour itself forth: there is no necessity either that certain portions of it enter into things or again that, while it remains self-abiding, something produced and projected from it enter at various points into that other order. Either would imply something of it remaining there while the emanant is elsewhere: thus separated from what has gone forth, it would experience local division. And would those emanants be, each in itself, whole or part? If part, THE ONE has lost its nature, that of an entire, as we have already indicated; if whole, then either the whole is broken up to coincide point for point with that in which it is become present or we are admitting that an unbroken identity can be omnipresent. Enneads VI,5,3

Similarly wisdom is entire to all; it is one thing; it is not distributed parcelwise; it cannot be fixed to place; it is not spread about like a colouring, for it is not corporeal; in any true participation in wisdom there must be one thing acting as unit upon unit. So must it be in our participation in THE ONE; we shall not take our several portions of it, nor you some separate entire and I another. Think of what happens in Assemblies and all kinds of meetings; the road to sense is the road to unity; singly the members are far from wise; as they begin to grow together, each, in that true growth, generates wisdom while he recognizes it. There is nothing to prevent our intelligences meeting at one centre from their several positions; all one, they seem apart to us as when without looking we touch one object or sound one string with different fingers and think we feel several. Or take our souls in their possession of good; it is not one good for me and another for you; it is the same for both and not in the sense merely of distinct products of an identical source, the good somewhere above with something streaming from it into us; in any real receiving of good, giver is in contact with taker and gives not as to a recipient outside but to one in intimate contact. Enneads VI,5,10

All this was very well; there the enquiry was not as to the Primal Good but as to ours; the good dealt with in that passage pertains to very different beings and therefore is a different good; it is a good falling short of that higher; it is a mingled thing; we are to understand that good does not hold place in THE ONE and Alone whose being is too great and different for that. Enneads VI,7,25

Such a power, author of Intellectual-Principle, author of being how does it lend itself to chance, to hazard, to any “So it happened”? What is present in Intellectual-Principle is present, though in a far transcendent mode, in THE ONE: so in a light diffused afar from one light shining within itself, the diffused is vestige, the source is the true light; but Intellectual-Principle, the diffused and image light, is not different in kind from its prior; and it is not a thing of chance but at every point is reason and cause. Enneads VI,8,18

Think of THE ONE as Mind or as God, you think too meanly; use all the resources of understanding to conceive this Unity and, again, it is more authentically one than God, even though you reach for God’s unity beyond the unity the most perfect you can conceive. For This is utterly a self-existent, with no concomitant whatever. This self-sufficing is the essence of its unity. Something there must be supremely adequate, autonomous, all-transcending, most utterly without need. Enneads VI,9,6