Plotino - Tratado 28,11 (IV, 4, 11) — Zeus enquanto alma do mundo (2)

11. En cuanto a la dirección de un ser animado, puede procederse ya desde fuera y a través de sus partes, ya también desde su mismo principio interior. El médico, por ejemplo, comienza desde fuera y sigue parte por parte, tanteando y deliberando con mucha frecuencia; pero la naturaleza, que comienza por el principio, no tiene necesidad de deliberar. Conviene, verdaderamente que el principio que dirige el universo cumpla su cometido, no a la manera de un médico, sino como lo hace la naturaleza. Este principio, sin embargo, es mucho más simple que la naturaleza, aunque abarque a todos los seres, como partes que son de un ser animado único. Porque es claro que una sola naturaleza domina a todas las demás, las cuales la siguen en virtud de la dependencia y subordinación que con ella mantienen, al modo como lo hacen naturalmente las ramas que pertenecen a un árbol. ¿Qué es el razonamiento, o la acción calculadora, o la memoria, cuando una sabiduría, que está siempre presente y es, además, activa, domina y gobierna en todo tiempo del mismo modo? Puesto que engendra cosas variadas y diferentes, no hay que pensar que la causa activa la acompañe paso a paso. Cuanta más variedad tienen las cosas, con mayor razón permanece invariable la causa que las produce. En cada uno de los seres animados se producen naturalmente muchas cosas y no de manera simultánea; así, en una época le nacen los cuernos o la barba, y luego le sobrevienen la madurez de los senos, la flor de la edad y la capacidad misma de engendrar otros seres. Hay así una sucesión de razones seminales, que no implica nunca la destrucción de las anteriores. Y es prueba de ello el hecho de que la razón seminal del padre reaparece por entero en ese ser que él engendra. Con lo cual resulta lógico que admitamos una sabiduría única, que es en absoluto la sabiduría permanente del universo. Pero esta sabiduría es tan múltiple y variada como simple; es la sabiduría del más grande de los seres vivos y de un mundo que no cambia con la multiplicidad. No es otra cosa que una razón única, que comprende a la vez todos los seres. Porque si no fuese todas las cosas, no sería ya la sabiduría del universo, sino la de sus partes últimas.

XI. Le monde est administré comme un animal (23) ; mais, dans cet animal, il y a des choses qui proviennent de l’extérieur et des parties, d’autres, de l’intérieur et du principe. L’art du médecin va de l’extérieur à l’intérieur, s’attache à un organe et n’opère qu’avec hésitation et avec des tâtonnements. La Nature, partant du principe, n’a pas besoin de délibérer. La puissance qui administre l’univers procède, non comme le médecin, mais comme la Nature. Elle conserve d’autant mieux sa simplicité qu’elle renferme toutes choses en son sein, que toutes choses sont les parties de l’animal qui est un. En effet, la Nature, qui est une, domine toutes les natures particulières : celles-ci en procèdent, mais y restent attachées, rameaux d’un arbre immense qui est l’univers (24). Qu’ont à faire le raisonnement, le calcul, la mémoire, dans un principe qui possède une sagesse toujours présente et active, qui par elle domine le monde et l’administre d’une manière immuable? Si ses œuvres sont variées et changeantes, il n’en résulte pas que ce principe doive lui-même participer à leur mutabilité. En produisant des choses diverses, il reste immuable (25). Ne voit-on pas dans chaque animal plusieurs choses se produire successivement, comme les qualités propres à chaque âge? Ne voit-on pas certaines parties naître et croître à des époques déterminées, telles que les cornes, la barbe, les mamelles? Ne voit-on pas enfin chaque être en engendrer d’autres? Ainsi, sans que les premières raisons [séminales] périssent, d’autres se développent à leur tour. Ce qui le prouve, c’est que dans l’animal engendré la raison [séminale] subsiste identique et entière.

Ne craignons donc pas de l’affirmer : l’Âme universelle possède toujours la même sagesse ; cette sagesse est universelle; elle est la sagesse permanente du monde ; elle est multiple et variée, et en même temps elle est une, parce qu’elle est la sagesse de l’animal qui est un et qui est le plus grand de tous. Invariable, malgré la multiplicité de ses œuvres, elle constitue la raison qui est une, et elle est toutes choses à la fois. Si elle n’était pas toutes choses, au lieu d’être la sagesse de l’univers, elle ne serait que la sagesse de choses postérieures et particulières.

RATIOCINATION HAS NO PLACE IN THE WORLD-SOUL.

11. The world is administered like a living being, namely, partly from the outside, and from the resulting members, and partly from within, and from the principle. The art of the physician works from outside in, deciding which organ is at fault, operating only with hesitation and after groping around experimentally. Nature, however, starting within from the principle, has no need to deliberate. The power which administers the universe proceeds not like the physician, but like nature. It preserves its simplicity so much the better as it comprises everything in its breast, inasmuch as all things are parts of the living being which is one. Indeed, nature, which is unitary, dominates all individual natures; these proceed from it, but remain attached thereto, like branches of an immense tree, which is the universe. What would be the utility of reasoning, calculation, and memory in a principle that possesses an ever present and active wisdom, and which, by this wisdom, dominates the world and administers it in an immutable manner? That its works are varied and changeful, does not imply that this principle must itself participate in their mutability. It remains immutable even while producing different things. Are not several stages produced successively in each animal, according to its various ages? Are not certain parts born and increased at determinate periods, such as the horns, the beard, and the breasts? Does one not see each being begetting others ? Thus, without the degeneration of the earlier ("seminal) reasons," others develop in their turn. This is proved by the ("seminal) reason" subsisting identical and entire within the same living being.

THIS UNIVERSAL WISDOM IS PERMANENT BECAUSE TIMELESS.

We are therefore justified in asserting the rule of one and the same wisdom. This wisdom is universal; it is the permanent wisdom of the world; it is multiple and varied, and at the same time it is one, because it is the wisdom of the living Being which is one, and is the greatest of all. It is invariable, in spite of the multiplicity of its works; it constitutes the Reason which is one, and still is all things simultaneously. If it were not all things, it would, instead of being the wisdom of the universe, be the wisdom of only the latter and individual things.

11. The administration of the kosmos is to be thought of as that of a living unit: there is the action determined by what is external, and has to do with the parts, and there is that determined by the internal and by the principle: thus a doctor basing his treatment on externals and on the parts directly affected will often be baffled and obliged to all sorts of calculation, while Nature will act on the basis of principle and need no deliberation. And in so far as the kosmos is a conducted thing, its administration and its administrator will follow not the way of the doctor but the way of Nature.

And in the case of the universe, the administration is all the less complicated from the fact that the soul actually circumscribes, as parts of a living unity, all the members which it conducts. For all the Kinds included in the universe are dominated by one Kind, upon which they follow, fitted into it, developing from it, growing out of it, just as the Kind manifested in the bough is related to the Kind in the tree as a whole.

What place, then, is there for reasoning, for calculation, what place for memory, where wisdom and knowledge are eternal, unfailingly present, effective, dominant, administering in an identical process?

The fact that the product contains diversity and difference does not warrant the notion that the producer must be subject to corresponding variations. On the contrary, the more varied the product, the more certain the unchanging identity of the producer: even in the single animal the events produced by Nature are many and not simultaneous; there are the periods, the developments at fixed epochs - horns, beard, maturing breasts, the acme of life, procreation - but the principles which initially determined the nature of the being are not thereby annulled; there is process of growth, but no diversity in the initial principle. The identity underlying all the multiplicity is confirmed by the fact that the principle constituting the parent is exhibited unchanged, undiminished, in the offspring. We have reason, then, for thinking that one and the same wisdom envelops both, and that this is the unalterable wisdom of the kosmos taken as a whole; it is manifold, diverse and yet simplex, presiding over the most comprehensive of living beings, and in no wise altered within itself by this multiplicity, but stably one Reason-Principle, the concentrated totality of things: if it were not thus all things, it would be a wisdom of the later and partial, not the wisdom of the Supreme.