Categoria: Enéada IV

SOULS ARE NOT CUT OFF FROM INTELLIGENCE DURING THEIR DESCENT AND ASCENT. 12. Human souls rush down here below because they have gazed at their images (in matter) as in the mirror of Bacchus. Nevertheless, they are not separated from their principle, Intelligence. Their intelligence does not descend along with them, so that even if…

HOW SOULS COME TO DESCEND. 13. What is called inevitable necessity and divine justice consists in the sway of nature which causes each soul to proceed in an orderly manner into the bodily image which has become the object of her affection, and of her predominating disposition. Consequently the soul, by her form, entirely approaches…

BY A PUN ON “WORLD” AND “ADORNMENT,” PLOTINOS SHOWS MEN ADD TO THE BEAUTY OF THE WORLD. 14. That is how this world, which already contains many lights, and which is illuminated by souls, finds itself still further adorned by the various beauties derived from different beings. It receives beauties from the intelligible divinities and…

WHY MANY SOULS SUCCUMB TO THE LAW OF THE ORDER OF THE UNIVERSE. 15. On descending from the intelligible world, souls first come into heaven, and they there take a body by means of which they pass even into terrestrial bodies, according as they more or less advance (outside of the intelligible world). There are…

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF MISFORTUNES AND PUNISHMENTS. 16. The punishments which justly overtake the evil must therefore be derived from that Order which rules all things with propriety. The unjust evils, accidents, misery and diseases which seem to overwhelm the good, may all be said to be consequences of anterior faults. These evils are intimately related…

FROM THE INTELLIGIBLE WORLD, SOULS FIRST GO INTO HEAVEN. 17. From the intelligible world souls first descend into the heaven. For if the heaven is the best part of the sense-world, it must be nearest to the limits of the intelligible world. The celestial bodies are therefore the first that receive the souls, being most…

IF FUNCTIONS ARE NOT LOCALIZED THE SOUL WILL NOT SEEM ENTIRELY WITHIN US. 20. Are the above-mentioned and other parts of the soul localized in the body, or are some localized, and others not? This must be considered, because if none of the parts of the soul are localized, and if we assert that they…

THIS LEAVES THE QUESTION OF THE MANNER OF THE SOUL’S PRESENCE. 21. How would we answer a person who, without himself making any statements in regard to the matter, should ask us how the soul is present to the body; whether the whole soul is present to the body in the same manner, or whether…

THE SOUL PRESENT IN THE BODY AS LIGHT IN AIR. 22. This is the better illustration: the soul is present in the body as light is present in air. Light is indeed present in air without being present to it; that is, light is present to the whole air without mingling with it, and light…

WHILE THE SOUL-POWER IS EVERYWHERE, THE PRINCIPLE OF ACTION IS LOCALIZED IN THE SPECIAL ORGAN. 23. Since, for the body, being animated amounts to being penetrated by the light shed by the soul, every part of the body participates therein in some particular manner. Each organ, according to its fitness, receives the power suitable to…

COSMIC QUESTIONS ABOUT MEMORY DEPEND ON EXACT DEFINITION OF WHAT MEMORY IS. 25. Memory raises the following questions. Does memory generally remain with the bodies that have issued from here below? Does it subsist only in some of them? In this case is memory general or special, durable or transitory? These questions cannot be answered…

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SENSATION. 26. If the two elements which compose the animal share in the act of sensation, the sensation is common to the soul and the body, such as the acts of piercing or weaving. Thus, in sensation, the soul plays the part of the workman, and the body that of his tool;…

MEMORY BELONGS BOTH TO THE DIVINE SOUL, AND TO THAT DERIVED FROM THE WORLD-SOUL. 27. To which soul, however, does memory belong? To the soul whose nature is more divine, and which constitutes us more essentially, or to the soul that we receive from the universal Soul (the rational and irrational souls)? Memory belongs to…

MEMORY DOES NOT BELONG TO APPETITE, BECAUSE IT MAY BE REDUCED TO SENSATION. 28. Does memory belong to the powers by which we feel and know? Is it by appetite that we remember the things that excite our desires, and by anger that we remember the things that irritate us ? Some will think so.…

MEMORY DOES NOT BELONG TO THE FACULTY OF SENSATION. 29. Can memory be referred to sensibility? Is the I faculty that feels also the one that remembers? But if the image of the soul (the irrational soul) possess the memory, as we said above, there would be in us two faculties that will feel. Further,…

INTELLECTUAL CONCEPTIONS ARE NOT ENTIRELY PRESERVED BY IMAGINATION. 30. What about intellectual conceptions? Are they also preserved by imagination? If imagination accompany every thought, and if later it, as it were, preserves its image, we should thus have the memory of the known object; otherwise some other solution will have to be sought. Perhaps reason,…

THE TWO KINDS OF MEMORY IMPLY TWO KINDS OF IMAGINATION. 31. If theory belong to imagination, and if both the rational and irrational souls possess memory, we will have two kinds of imagination (intellectual and sensual); and if both souls are separate, each of them will possess one kind of imagination. The theory of two…