intellect

The objection would be valid if what the soul takes in were one and the same with the source, but in fact virtue is one thing, the source of virtue quite another. The material house is not identical with the house conceived in the INTELLECT, and yet stands in its likeness: the material house has distribution and order while the pure idea is not constituted by any such elements; distribution, order, symmetry are not parts of an idea. Enneads I,2,

Beauty addresses itself chiefly to sight; but there is a beauty for the hearing too, as in certain combinations of words and in all kinds of music, for melodies and cadences are beautiful; and minds that lift themselves above the realm of sense to a higher order are aware of beauty in the conduct of life, in actions, in character, in the pursuits of the INTELLECT; and there is the beauty of the virtues. What loftier beauty there may be, yet, our argument will bring to light. Enneads I,6,

The relationship may be presented thus: The authentic and primal Kosmos is the Being of the Intellectual Principle and of the Veritable Existent. This contains within itself no spatial distinction, and has none of the feebleness of division, and even its parts bring no incompleteness to it since here the individual is not severed from the entire. In this Nature inheres all life and all INTELLECT, a life living and having INTELLECTion as one act within a unity: every part that it gives forth is a whole; all its content is its very own, for there is here no separation of thing from thing, no part standing in isolated existence estranged from the rest, and therefore nowhere is there any wronging of any other, any opposition. Everywhere one and complete, it is at rest throughout and shows difference at no point; it does not make over any of its content into any new form; there can be no reason for changing what is everywhere perfect. Enneads III,2,

Yet: The Intellectual-Principle; beautiful; the most beautiful of all; lying lapped in pure light and in clear radiance; circumscribing the Nature of the Authentic Existents; the original of which this beautiful world is a shadow and an image; tranquil in the fullness of glory since in it there is nothing devoid of INTELLECT, nothing dark or out of rule; a living thing in a life of blessedness: this, too, must overwhelm with awe any that has seen it, and penetrated it, to become a unit of its Being. Enneads III,8,

Now, every sensitive power – by the fact of being sensitive throughout – tends to become a thing of parts: present at every distinct point of sensitiveness, it may be thought of as divided. In the sense, however, that it is present as a whole at every such point, it cannot be said to be wholly divided; it “becomes divisible in body.” We may be told that no such partition is implied in any sensations but those of touch; but this is not so; where the participant is body (of itself insensitive and non-transmitting) that divisibility in the sensitive agent will be a condition of all other sensations, though in less degree than in the case of touch. Similarly the vegetative function in the soul, with that of growth, indicates divisibility; and, admitting such locations as that of desire at the liver and emotional activity at the heart, we have the same result. It is to be noted, however, as regards these (the less corporeal) sensations, that the body may possibly not experience them as a fact of the conjoint thing but in another mode, as rising within some one of the elements of which it has been participant (as inherent, purely, in some phase of the associated soul): reasoning and the act of the INTELLECT, for instance, are not vested in the body; their task is not accomplished by means of the body which in fact is detrimental to any thinking on which it is allowed to intrude. Enneads IV,3,

But, to begin with, these imprints are not magnitudes (are not of corporeal nature at all); there is no resemblance to seal impressions, no stamping of a resistant matter, for there is neither the down-thrust (as of the seal) nor (the acceptance) as in the wax: the process is entirely of the INTELLECT, though exercised upon things of sense; and what kind of resistance (or other physical action) can be affirmed in matters of the INTELLECTual order, or what need can there be of body or bodily quality as a means? Further there is one order of which the memory must obviously belong to the soul; it alone can remember its own movements, for example its desires and those frustrations of desire in which the coveted thing never came to the body: the body can have nothing to tell about things which never approached it, and the soul cannot use the body as a means to the remembrance of what the body by its nature cannot know. Enneads IV,3,

But Zeus – ordering all, governor, guardian and disposer, possessor for ever of the kingly soul and the kingly INTELLECT, bringing all into being by his providence, and presiding over all things as they come, administering all under plan and system, unfolding the periods of the kosmos, many of which stand already accomplished – would it not seem inevitable that, in this multiplicity of concern, Zeus should have memory of all the periods, their number and their differing qualities? Contriving the future, co-ordinating, calculating for what is to be, must he not surely be the chief of all in remembering, as he is chief in producing? Even this matter of Zeus’ memory of the kosmic periods is difficult; it is a question of their being numbered, and of his knowledge of their number. A determined number would mean that the All had a beginning in time (which is not so); if the periods are unlimited, Zeus cannot know the number of his works. Enneads IV,4,

If they treat God as they do the Intellectual-Principle – as later, engendered and deriving INTELLECTion from without – soul and INTELLECT and God may prove to have no existence: this would follow if a potentiality could not come to existence, or does not become actual, unless the corresponding actuality exists. And what could lead it onward if there were no separate being in previous actuality? Even on the absurd supposition that the potentially existent brings itself to actuality, it must be looking to some Term, and that must be no potentiality but actual. Enneads IV,7,

In all these explanations, he finds guilt in the arrival of the soul at body, But treating, in the Timaeus, of our universe he exalts the kosmos and entitles it a blessed god, and holds that the soul was given by the goodness of the creator to the end that the total of things might be possessed of INTELLECT, for thus INTELLECTual it was planned to be, and thus it cannot be except through soul. There is a reason, then, why the soul of this All should be sent into it from God: in the same way the soul of each single one of us is sent, that the universe may be complete; it was necessary that all beings of the Intellectual should be tallied by just so many forms of living creatures here in the realm of sense. Enneads IV,8,

In two ways, then, the Intellectual-Principle enhances the divine quality of the soul, as father and as immanent presence; nothing separates them but the fact that they are not one and the same, that there is succession, that over against a recipient there stands the ideal-form received; but this recipient, Matter to the Supreme Intelligence, is also noble as being at once informed by divine INTELLECT and uncompounded. Enneads: V I

But has our discussion issued in an Intellectual-Principle having a persuasive activity (furnishing us with probability)? No: it brings compulsion not persuasion; compulsion belongs to the Intellectual-Principle, persuasion to the soul or mind, and we seem to desire to be persuaded rather than to see the truth in the pure INTELLECT. Enneads V,3,

And what else is there to attribute to it? Repose, no doubt; but, to an Intellectual-Principle, Repose is not an abdication from INTELLECT; its Repose is an Act, the act of abstention from the alien: in all forms of existence repose from the alien leaves the characteristic activity intact, especially where the Being is not merely potential but fully realized. Enneads V,3,

In sum, then, a knowing principle must handle distinct items: its object must, at the moment of cognition, contain diversity; otherwise the thing remains unknown; there is mere conjunction, such a contact, without affirmation or comprehension, as would precede knowledge, the INTELLECT not yet in being, the impinging agent not percipient. Enneads V,3,

All life belongs to it, life brilliant and perfect; thus all in it is at once life-principle and Intellectual-Principle, nothing in it aloof from either life or INTELLECT: it is therefore self-sufficing and seeks nothing: and if it seeks nothing this is because it has in itself what, lacking, it must seek. It has, therefore, its Good within itself, either by being of that order – in what we have called its life and INTELLECT – or in some other quality or character going to produce these. Enneads V,3,

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,

But what can it be which is loftier than that existence – a life compact of wisdom, untouched by struggle and error, or than this Intellect which holds the Universe with all there is of life and INTELLECT? If we answer “The Making Principle,” there comes the question, “making by what virtue?” and unless we can indicate something higher there than in the made, our reasoning has made no advance: we rest where we were. Enneads V,3,

Again; either the objects of the Intellectual-Principle are senseless and devoid of life and INTELLECT or they are in possession of Intellect. Enneads V,5,

As one wishing to contemplate the Intellectual Nature will lay aside all the representations of sense and so may see what transcends the sense-realm, in the same way one wishing to contemplate what transcends the Intellectual attains by putting away all that is of the INTELLECT, taught by the INTELLECT, no doubt, that the Transcendent exists but never seeking to define it. Enneads V,5,

It is The Good since, being a power (being effective outwardly), it is the cause of the intelligent and INTELLECTive life as of life and INTELLECT: for these grow from it as from the source of essence and of existence, the Source as being One, simplex and first because before it was nothing. All derives from this: it is the origin of the primal movement which it does not possess and of the repose which is but its absence of need; for neither rest nor movement can belong to that which has no place in which either could occur; centre, object, ground, all are alike unknown to it, for it is before all. Yet its Being is not limited; what is there to set bounds to it? Nor, on the other hand, is it infinite in the sense of magnitude; what place can there be to which it must extend, or why should there be movement where there is no lacking? All its infinitude resides in its power: it does not change and will not fail; and in it all that is unfailing finds duration. Enneads V,5,

Thus we rob it of its very being as The Absolute Good if we ascribe anything to it, existence or INTELLECT or goodness. The only way is to make every denial and no assertion, to feign no quality or content there but to permit only the “It is” in which we pretend to no affirmation of non-existent attribute: there is an ignorant praise which, missing the true description, drags in qualities beneath the real worth and so abases; philosophy must guard against attaching to the Supreme what is later and lower: moving above all that order, it is the cause and source of all these, and is none of them. Enneads V,5,

If this principle were not beautiful, what other could be? Its prior does not deign to be beautiful; that which is the first to manifest itself – Form and object of vision to the INTELLECT – cannot but be lovely to see. It is to indicate this that Plato, drawing on something well within our observation, represents the Creator as approving the work he has achieved: the intention is to make us feel the lovable beauty of the autotype and of the Divine Idea; for to admire a representation is to admire the original upon which it was made. Enneads V,8,

It is our separating habit that sets the one order before the other: for there is a separating INTELLECT, of another order than the true, distinct from the INTELLECT, inseparable and unseparating, which is Being and the universe of things. Enneads V,8,

It should however be added that if the Idea of man exists in the Supreme, there must exist the Idea of reasoning man and of man with his arts and crafts; such arts as are the offspring of INTELLECT Must be There. Enneads V,8,

How then do we explain desire and other forms of aspiration? Aspiration must be a motion having its origin in the object aspired to, though some might disallow “origin” and be content with saying that the motion aroused is subsequent to the object; in what respect, then, does aspiring differ from taking a blow or being borne down by a thrust? Perhaps, however, we should divide aspirations into two classes, those which follow INTELLECT being described as Actions, the merely impulsive being Passions. Passivity now will not turn on origin, without or within – within there can only be deficiency; but whenever a thing, without itself assisting in the process, undergoes an alteration not directed to the creation of Being but changing the thing for the worse or not for the better, such an alteration will be regarded as a Passion and as entailing passivity. Enneads: VI I

But since we identified the amalgam of the Existents (or primary genera) with the particular INTELLECT, Intellect as such being found identical with Being or Substance, and therefore prior to all the Existents, which may be regarded as its species or members, we may infer that the INTELLECT, considered as completely unfolded, is a subsequent. Enneads VI,2,

We may thus distinguish two phases of Intellect, in one of which it may be taken as having no contact whatever with particulars and no Act upon anything; thus it is kept apart from being a particular INTELLECT. In the same way science is prior to any of its constituent species, and the specific science is prior to any of its component parts: being none of its particulars, it is the potentiality of all; each particular, on the other hand, is actually itself, but potentially the sum of all the particulars: and as with the specific science, so with science as a whole. The specific sciences lie in potentiality in science the total; even in their specific character they are potentially the whole; they have the whole predicated of them and not merely a part of the whole. At the same time, science must exist as a thing in itself, unharmed by its divisions. Enneads VI,2,

We may here adduce the pregnant words of Plato: “Inasmuch as Intellect perceives the variety and plurality of the Forms present in the complete Living Being….” The words apply equally to Soul; Soul is subsequent to Intellect, yet by its very nature it involves Intellect in itself and perceives more clearly in that prior. There is Intellect in our INTELLECT also, which again perceives more clearly in its prior, for while of itself it merely perceives, in the prior it also perceives its own perception. Enneads VI,2,

This INTELLECT, then, to which we ascribe perception, though not divorced from the prior in which it originates, evolves plurality out of unity and has bound up with it the principle of Difference: it therefore takes the form of a plurality-in-unity. A plurality-in-unity, it produces the many INTELLECTs by the dictate of its very nature. Enneads VI,2,

Now Soul has Intellect for its prior, is therefore circumscribed by number down to its ultimate extremity; at that point infinity is reached. The particular INTELLECT, though all-embracing, is a partial thing, and the collective Intellect and its various manifestations (all the particular INTELLECTs) are in actuality parts of that part. Soul too is a part of a part, though in the sense of being an Act (actuality) derived from it. When the Act of Intellect is directed upon itself, the result is the manifold (particular) INTELLECTs; when it looks outwards, Soul is produced. Enneads VI,2,

But how explain beings by the side of Being, and the variety of intelligences and of souls, when Being has the unity of omnipresent identity and not merely that of a species, and when INTELLECT and soul are likewise numerically one? We certainly distinguish between the soul of the All and the particular souls. Enneads VI,4,

At the outset we must lay aside all sense-perception; by Intellectual-Principle we know Intellectual-Principle. We reflect within ourselves there is life, there is INTELLECT, not in extension but as power without magnitude, issue of Authentic Being which is power self-existing, no vacuity but a thing most living and INTELLECTive – nothing more living, more intelligent, more real – and producing its effect by contact and in the ratio of the contact, closely to the close, more remotely to the remote. If Being is to be sought, then most be sought is Being at its intensest; so too the intensest of Intellect if the Intellectual act has worth; and so, too, of Life. Enneads VI,6,

Again: Man exists in the Intellectual and with him all other living things, both by possession of Real-Being and because that is the Life-Form Complete. Even the man of this sphere is a member of the Intellectual since that is the Life-Form Complete; every living thing by virtue of having life, is There, There in the Life-form, and man is There also, in the Intellectual, in so far as he is INTELLECT, for all intelligences are severally members of That. Now all this means Number There. Yet even in Intellect Number is not present primally; its presence There is the reckoning of the Acts of Intellectual-Principle; it tallies with the justice in Intellectual-Principle, its moral wisdom, its virtues, its knowledge, all whose possession makes That Principle what it is. Enneads VI,6,

How then can we deny to it either Being or anything at all that may exist effectively, anything that may derive from it? As long as it exists it produces: but it exists for ever; so, therefore, do its products. And so great is it in power and beauty that it remains the allurer, all things of the universe depending from it and rejoicing to hold their trace of it and through that to seek their good. To us, existence is before the good; all this world desires life and wisdom in order to Being; every soul and every INTELLECT seeks to be its Being, but Being is sufficient to itself. Enneads VI,6,

Now what is the foundation of reasoned plan? Precedent planning, it may be; but still we are forced back to some thing or things determining it. What would these be here? Either sense-perception or INTELLECT. But sense-perception it cannot in this case be: INTELLECT is left; yet, starting from INTELLECT, the conclusion will be knowledge, not therefore the handling of the sensible; what begins with the INTELLECTual and proceeds to the INTELLECTual can certainly not end in dealings with the sensible. Providence, then, whether over living beings or over any part of the universe was never the outcome of plan. Enneads VI,7,

But, at this, sense-perception – even in its particular modes – is involved in the Idea by eternal necessity, in virtue of the completeness of the Idea; Intellectual-Principle, as all-inclusive, contains in itself all by which we are brought, later, to recognise this perfection in its nature; the cause, There, was one total, all-inclusive; thus Man in the Intellectual was not purely INTELLECT, sense-perception being an addition made upon his entry into birth: all this would seem to imply a tendance in that great Principle towards the lower, towards this sphere. Enneads VI,7,

Generative of all, The Unity is none of all; neither thing nor quantity nor quality nor INTELLECT nor soul; not in motion, not at rest, not in place, not in time: it is the self-defined, unique in form or, better, formless, existing before Form was, or Movement or Rest, all of which are attachments of Being and make Being the manifold it is. Enneads VI,8,