FOURTH ENNEAD, BOOK THREE. Psychological Questions.

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.