And if it is a Reason-Principle, one whose incoming constitutes the body, then clearly this Principle contains embraced within itself all the qualities. If this Reason-Principle is to be no mere principle of definition exhibiting the nature of a thing but a veritable Reason constituting the thing, then it cannot itself contain Matter but must encircle Matter, and by being present to Matter elaborate the body: thus the body will be Matter associated with an indwelling Reason-Principle which will be in itself immaterial, pure Idea, even though irremoveably attached to the body. It is not to be confounded with that other Principle in man – treated elsewhere – which dwells in the Intellectual World by right of being itself an Intellectual Principle. Enneads: II VII.
Nor are we warranted in affirming a plurality of Intellectual Principles on the ground that there is one that knows and thinks and another knowing that it knows and thinks. For whatever distinction be possible in the Divine between its Intellectual Act and its Consciousness of that Act, still all must be one projection not unaware of its own operation: it would be absurd to imagine any such unconsciousness in the Authentic Intelligence; the knowing principle must be one and the selfsame with that which knows of the knowing. Enneads: II VIII.
As a mighty Intellect and Soul, he must be a principle of Cause; he must be the highest for several reasons but especially because to be King and Leader is to be the chief cause: Zeus then is the Intellectual Principle. Aphrodite, his daughter, issue of him, dwelling with him, will be Soul, her very name Aphrodite (= the habra, delicate) indicating the beauty and gleam and innocence and delicate grace of the Soul. Enneads III,5,
The items of this potentiality the divine intellection brings out, so to speak, from the unity and knows them in detail, as it must if it is to be an INTELLECTUAL PRINCIPLE. Enneads: V I
Still; we perceive by means of the perceptive faculty and are, ourselves, the percipients: may we not say the same of the intellective act? No: our reasoning is our own; we ourselves think the thoughts that occupy the understanding – for this is actually the We – but the operation of the Intellectual-Principle enters from above us as that of the sensitive faculty from below; the We is the soul at its highest, the mid-point between two powers, between the sensitive principle, inferior to us, and the INTELLECTUAL PRINCIPLE superior. We think of the perceptive act as integral to ourselves because our sense-perception is uninterrupted; we hesitate as to the Intellectual-Principle both because we are not always occupied with it and because it exists apart, not a principle inclining to us but one to which we incline when we choose to look upwards. Enneads V,3,
But it is not inevitable that every intellectual object should both possess the intellective principle in itself and exercise intellection: at that, it would be not merely object but subject as well and, besides, being thus dual, could not be primal: further, the INTELLECTUAL PRINCIPLE that is to possess the intellectual object could not cohere unless there existed an essence purely intellectual, something which, while standing as intellectual object to the INTELLECTUAL PRINCIPLE, is in its own essence neither an agent nor an object of intellection. The intellectual object points to something beyond itself (to a percipient); and the intellectual agent has its intellection in vain unless by seizing and holding an object – since, failing that, it can have no intellection but is consummated only when it possesses itself of its natural term. Enneads V,6,
The intellective act is a movement towards the unmoved Good: thus the self-intellection in all save the Absolute Good is the working of the imaged Good within them: the INTELLECTUAL PRINCIPLE recognises the likeness, sees itself as a good to itself, an object of attraction: it grasps at that manifestation of The Good and, in holding that, holds self-vision: if the state of goodness is constant, it remains constantly self-attractive and self-intellective. The self-intellection is not deliberate: it sees itself as an incident in its contemplation of The Good; for it sees itself in virtue of its Act; and, in all that exists, the Act is towards The Good. Enneads V,6,