Tratado 27 (IV, 3) - Psychological Questions. (Guthrie)

A. ARE NOT ALL SOULS PARTS OR EMANATIONS OF A SINGLE SOUL ?

• psychology obeys the precept “know thyself,” and shows how we are temples of the divinity.

• are individual souls emanations of the universal soul?

• conformity to the universal soul implies that they are not parts of her.

• limitations to the use of the term “parts,” in physical things.

• when applied to incorporeal things, “parts” have different senses.

• such mathematical senses cannot be applied to the soul.

• actual division into parts would be tantamount to a denial of the whole.

• nor is the soul a part in the sense that one proposition is a part of a science.

• the difference of functions of the world-soul and individual souls makes entire division between them impossible.

• are individual souls part of the world-soul as is the local consciousness of some part of the body to the whole consciousness?

• study of the question by observation of the human organism.

• intellectual difficulty of the soul being one and yet in all beings.

• the healthy soul can work, the sick soul is devoted to her body.

• souls retain both their unity and differences on different levels.

• souls develop manifoldness just as intelligence does.

• why should creation be predicated of the universal soul and not of the human?

• the world-soul alone creates because she remains nearest the intelligible world.

• difference between individual and universal souls.

• sympathy between individual and universal soul comes from common source.

• difference between souls.

• like the divinity, the soul is always one.

• soul powers remain the same throughout all changes of body.

B. WHY AND HOW DO SOULS DESCEND INTO BODIES?

• two kinds of transmigration.

• study of first incarnation.

• how the universe is animated by the world soul.

• the world-soul progressively informs all things.

• the universal soul as model of reason, as intermediary and interpreter.

• souls are not cut off from intelligence during their descent and ascent.

• why souls take on different kinds of bodies.

• how souls come to descend.

• by a pun on “world” and “adornment,” plotinos shows men add to the beauty of the world.

• by a pun on “prometheus” and “providence,” plotinos employs the myth of pandora.

• why many souls succumb to the law of the order of the universe.

• the significance of misfortunes and punishments.

• from the intelligible world, souls first go into heaven.

• the descending graduations of existence.

C. DOES THE SOUL EMPLOY DISCURSIVE REASON WHILE DISCARNATE?

• the soul does not use discursive reason except while hindered by the obstacles of the body.

• the soul can reason intuitionally without ratiocination.

D. HOW CAN THE SOUL SIMULTANEOUSLY BE DIVISIBLE AND INDIVISIBLE?

• a decision will depend on the meaning of the terms.

• the body needs the soul for life.

• sense, growth and emotion tend towards divisibility.

• the soul as a whole of two distinct divisible and indivisible parts.

E. RELATIONS BETWEEN SOUL AND BODY.

• if functions are not localized the soul will not seem entirely within us.

• space is corporeal; the body is within the soul.

• nor is the body a vase, for proximate transmission of the soul.

• many metaphysical objections to the conception of soul as localized.

• nor is the soul in the body as a quality in a substrate.

• nor is the soul in the body as a part in the whole.

• nor is the soul in the body as a whole in a part.

• nor will the soul be in the body as form in matter.

• the soul is said to be in the body because the body alone is visible.

• this leaves the question of the manner of the soul's presence.

• the soul in a body as a pilot in a ship.

• the soul present in the body as light in air.

• while the soul-power is everywhere, the principle of action is localized in the special organ.

• reason is in the head, but not in the brain, which is the seat of the intermediary, the power of sensation.

• growth is localized in the liver, anger in the heart.

F. WHERE GOES THE SOUL AFTER DEATH?

• the soul after death goes to the place suited to it by retribution.

• pure incorporeal souls dwell within intelligence in divinity.

G. WHAT ARE THE CONDITIONS OF THE OPERATION OF MEMORY AND IMAGINATION?

• cosmic questions about memory depend on exact definition of what memory is.

• memory inapplicable except to beings subject to limitations of time.

• there is a timeless memory consisting of self-consciousness.

• definition of memory depends on whether it belongs to the soul or organism.

• the psychology of sensation.

• in any case memory is peculiar to the soul and body

• memory belongs to the soul alone.

• memory belongs both to the divine soul, and to that derived from the world-soul.

• what the rational soul, if separated, would remember of life.

• memory does not belong to appetite, because it may be reduced to sensation.

• what appetite keeps is an affection, but not a memory.

• memory does not belong to the faculty of sensation.

• memory does not belong exclusively to the power of perception.

• memory is not identical with feeling or reasoning.

• memory belongs to imagination.

• intellectual conceptions are not entirely preserved by imagination.

• the two kinds of memory imply two kinds of imagination.

• of the two imaginations one always predominates or overshadows the other.

• partition of the fund of memory between the two souls.