Act

ACTs

ACT, with the capital, usually translates the difficult word energeia and stands for the Expression of the Identity of any being or for its characteristic function, an expression and function which may, often, be entirely within, the very reverse of any operation upon the outer.

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But if Soul (in man) and Essential Soul are one and the same, then the Soul will be an Ideal-Form unreceptive of all those activities which it imparts to another Kind but possessing within itself that native ACT of its own which Reason manifests. Enneads I,1,. 2

In this last case it will be the double task of philosophy to direct this lower Soul towards the higher, the agent, and except in so far as the conjunction is absolutely necessary, to sever the agent from the instrument, the body, so that it need not forever have its ACT upon or through this inferior. Enneads I,1,. 3

There is no reason why the entire compound entity should not be described as the Animate or Living-Being – mingled in a lower phase, but above that point the beginning of the veritable man, distinct from all that is kin to the lion, all that is of the order of the multiple brute. And since The Man, so understood, is essentially the associate of the reasoning Soul, in our reasoning it is this “We” that reasons, in that the use and act of reason is a characteristic ACT of the Soul. Enneads I,1,. 7

Thus we have marked off what belongs to the Couplement from what stands by itself: the one group has the character of body and never exists apart from body, while all that has no need of body for its manifestation belongs peculiarly to Soul: and the Understanding, as passing judgement upon Sense-Impressions, is at the point of the vision of Ideal-Forms, seeing them as it were with an answering sensation (i.e, with consciousness) this last is at any rate true of the Understanding in the Veritable Soul. For Understanding, the true, is the ACT of the Intellections: in many of its manifestations it is the assimilation and reconciliation of the outer to the inner. Enneads I,1,. 9

Thus the Life is one thing, the ACT is another and the Expiator yet another. The retreat and sundering, then, must be not from this body only, but from every alien accruement. Such accruement takes place at birth; or rather birth is the coming-into-being of that other (lower) phase of the Soul. For the meaning of birth has been indicated elsewhere; it is brought about by a descent of the Soul, something being given off by the Soul other than that actually coming down in the declension. Enneads I,1,. 12

But how “by the Soul”? Does this mean that the Soul reasons by possession (by contact with the matters of enquiry)? No; by the fact of being Soul. Its ACT subsists without movement; or any movement that can be ascribed to it must be utterly distinct from all corporal movement and be simply the Soul’s own life. Enneads I,1,. 13

And Intellection in us is twofold: since the Soul is intellective, and Intellection is the highest phase of life, we have Intellection both by the characteristic ACT of our Soul and by the ACT of the Intellectual-Principle upon us – for this Intellectual-Principle is part of us no less than the Soul, and towards it we are ever rising. Enneads I,1,. 13

But in what sense can we call the virtues purifications, and how does purification issue in Likeness? As the Soul is evil by being interfused with the body, and by coming to share the body’s states and to think the body’s thoughts, so it would be good, it would be possessed of virtue, if it threw off the body’s moods and devoted itself to its own ACT – the state of Intellection and Wisdom – never allowed the passions of the body to affect it – the virtue of Sophrosyne – knew no fear at the parting from the body – the virtue of Fortitude – and if reason and the Intellectual-Principle ruled – in which state is Righteousness. Such a disposition in the Soul, become thus intellective and immune to passion, it would not be wrong to call Likeness to God; for the Divine, too, is pure and the Divine-ACT is such that Likeness to it is Wisdom. Enneads I,1,I. 3

But would not this make virtue a state of the Divine also? No: the Divine has no states; the state is in the Soul. The ACT of Intellection in the Soul is not the same as in the Divine: of things in the Supreme, Soul grasps some after a mode of its own, some not at all. Enneads I,1,I. 3

In the Supreme, then, what is it? Its proper ACT and Its Essence. Enneads I,1,I. 6

That ACT and Essence of the Supreme, manifested in a new form, constitute the virtue of this sphere. For the Supreme is not self-existent justice, or the Absolute of any defined virtue: it is, so to speak, an exemplar, the source of what in the soul becomes virtue: for virtue is dependent, seated in something not itself; the Supreme is self-standing, independent. Enneads I,1,I. 6

But taking Rectitude to be the due ordering of faculty, does it not always imply the existence of diverse parts? No: There is a Rectitude of Diversity appropriate to what has parts, but there is another, not less Rectitude than the former though it resides in a Unity. And the authentic Absolute-Rectitude is the ACT of a Unity upon itself, of a Unity in which there is no this and that and the other. Enneads I,1,I. 6

On this principle, the supreme Rectitude of the Soul is that it direct its ACT towards the Intellectual-Principle: its Restraint (Sophrosyne) is its inward bending towards the Intellectual-Principle; its Fortitude is its being impassive in the likeness of That towards which its gaze is set, Whose nature comports an impassivity which the Soul acquires by virtue and must acquire if it is not to be at the mercy of every state arising in its less noble companion. Enneads I,1,I. 6

In the Supreme, Intellection constitutes Knowledge and Wisdom; self-concentration is Sophrosyne; Its proper ACT is Its Dutifulness; Its Immateriality, by which It remains inviolate within Itself is the equivalent of Fortitude. Enneads I,1,I. 7

Thus we have indicated the dominant note in the life of the Sage; but whether his possession of the minor virtues be actual as well as potential, whether even the greater are in ACT in him or yield to qualities higher still, must be decided afresh in each several case. Enneads I,1,I. 7

All this accomplished, it gives up its touring of the realm of sense and settles down in the Intellectual Kosmos and there plies its own peculiar ACT: it has abandoned all the realm of deceit and falsity, and pastures the Soul in the “Meadows of Truth”: it employs the Platonic division to the discernment of the Ideal-Forms, of the Authentic-Existence and of the First-Kinds (or Categories of Being): it establishes, in the light of Intellection, the unity there is in all that issues from these Firsts, until it has traversed the entire Intellectual Realm: then, resolving the unity into the particulars once more, it returns to the point from which it starts. Enneads I,1,II. 4

Now, this argument might have weight if prudence, wisdom, were something fetched in from outside: but this is not so: wisdom is, in its essential nature, an Authentic-Existence, or rather is The Authentic-Existent – and this Existent does not perish in one asleep or, to take the particular case presented to us, in the man out of his mind: the ACT of this Existent is continuous within him; and is a sleepless activity: the Sage, therefore, even unconscious, is still the Sage in ACT. Enneads I,1,V. 9

This activity is screened not from the man entire but merely from one part of him: we have here a parallel to what happens in the activity of the physical or vegetative life in us which is not made known by the sensitive faculty to the rest of the man: if our physical life really constituted the “We,” its ACT would be our ACT: but, in the fact, this physical life is not the “We”; the “We” is the activity of the Intellectual-Principle so that when the Intellective is in ACT we are in ACT. Enneads I,1,V. 9

Perhaps the reason this continuous activity remains unperceived is that it has no touch whatever with things of sense. No doubt action upon material things, or action dictated by them, must proceed through the sensitive faculty which exists for that use: but why should there not be an immediate activity of the Intellectual-Principle and of the soul that attends it, the soul that antedates sensation or any perception? For, if Intellection and Authentic-Existence are identical, this “Earlier-than-perception” must be a thing having ACT. Enneads I,1,V. 10

It would be absurd to think that happiness begins and ends with the living-body: happiness is the possession of the good of life: it is centred therefore in Soul, is an ACT of the Soul – and not of all the Soul at that: for it certainly is not characteristic of the vegetative soul, the soul of growth; that would at once connect it with the body. Enneads I,1,V. 14

Still the one life has known pleasure longer than the other? But pleasure cannot be fairly reckoned in with Happiness – unless indeed by pleasure is meant the unhindered ACT (of the true man), in which case this pleasure is simply our “Happiness.” And even pleasure, though it exist continuously, has never anything but the present; its past is over and done with. Enneads: I. V. 4

What else is Sophrosyne, rightly so-called, but to take no part in the pleasures of the body, to break away from them as unclean and unworthy of the clean? So too, Courage is but being fearless of the death which is but the parting of the Soul from the body, an event which no one can dread whose delight is to be his unmingled self. And Magnanimity is but disregard for the lure of things here. And Wisdom is but the ACT of the Intellectual-Principle withdrawn from the lower places and leading the Soul to the Above. Enneads: I. VI. 6

We can scarcely conceive that for any entity the Good can be other than the natural ACT expressing its life-force, or in the case of an entity made up of parts the ACT, appropriate, natural and complete, expressive of that in it which is best. Enneads: I. VII. 1

For the Soul, then, the Good is its own natural ACT. Enneads: I. VII. 1

Now, given an Existent which – as being itself the best of existences and even transcending the existences – directs its ACT towards no other, but is the object to which the ACT of all else is directed, it is clear that this must be at once the Good and the means through which all else may participate in Good. Enneads: I. VII. 1

This Absolute Good other entities may possess in two ways – by becoming like to It and by directing the ACT of their being towards It. Enneads: I. VII. 1

Now, if all aspiration and ACT whatsoever are directed towards the Good, it follows that the Essential-Good neither need nor can look outside itself or aspire to anything other than itself: it can but remain unmoved, as being, in the constitution of things, the wellspring and firstcause of all ACT: whatsoever in other entities is of the nature of Good cannot be due to any ACT of the Essential-Good upon them; it is for them on the contrary to act towards their source and cause. The Good must, then, be the Good not by any ACT, not even by virtue of its Intellection, but by its very rest within Itself. Enneads: I. VII. 1

If, on the contrary, after death life and soul continue, then death will be no evil but a good; Soul, disembodied, is the freer to ply its own ACT. Enneads: I. VII. 3

And the First ACT is the ACT of The Good stationary within Itself, and the First Existence is the self-contained Existence of The Good; but there is also an ACT upon It, that of the Intellectual-Principle which, as it were, lives about It. Enneads: I. VIII. 2

The bodily Kind, in that it partakes of Matter is an evil thing. What form is in bodies is an untrue-form: they are without life: by their own natural disorderly movement they make away with each other; they are hindrances to the soul in its proper ACT; in their ceaseless flux they are always slipping away from Being. Enneads: I. VIII. 4

Further, why should any distress of theirs work harm to us? No: we cannot think of them as grieving at all or as being cheerful upon occasions: they must be continuously serene, happy in the good they enjoy and the Vision before them. Each lives its own free life; each finds its Good in its own ACT; and this ACT is not directed towards us. Enneads II,3, 3

Further, a compound in the Intellectual order is not to be confounded with a compound in the realm of Matter; the Divine Reasons are compounds and their ACT is to produce a compound, namely that (lower) Nature which works towards Idea. And there is not only a difference of function; there is a still more notable difference of source. Then, too, the Matter of the realm of process ceaselessly changes its form: in the eternal, Matter is immutably one and the same, so that the two are diametrically opposites. The Matter of this realm is all things in turn, a new entity in every separate case, so that nothing is permanent and one thing ceaselessly pushes another out of being: Matter has no identity here. In the Intellectual it is all things at once: and therefore has nothing to change into: it already and ever contains all. This means that not even in its own Sphere is the Matter there at any moment shapeless: no doubt that is true of the Matter here as well; but shape is held by a very different right in the two orders of Matter. Enneads II,4, 3

But how can I form the conception of the sizelessness of Matter? How do you form the concept of any absence of quality? What is the ACT of the Intellect, what is the mental approach, in such a case? The secret is Indetermination. Enneads II,4, 10

All knowledge comes by Reason and the Intellectual ACT; in this case Reason conveys information in any account it gives, but the act which aims at being intellectual is, here, not intellection but rather its failure: therefore the representation of Matter must be spurious, unreal, something sprung of the Alien, of the unreal, and bound up with the alien reason. Enneads II,4, 10

Can we distinguish between ACTuality (an absolute, abstract Principle) and the state of being-in-act? And if there is such an ACTuality, is this itself in ACT, or are the two quite distinct so that this actually existent thing need not be, itself, an ACT? It is indubitable that Potentiality exists in the Realm of Sense: but does the Intellectual Realm similarly include the potential or only the actual? and if the potential exists there, does it remain merely potential for ever? And, if so, is this resistance to actualization due to its being precluded (as a member of the Divine or Intellectual world) from time-processes? First we must make clear what potentiality is. Enneads: II V. 1

We come now to the purpose of all this discussion; to make clear in what sense or to what degree ACTualization is predicable in the Intellectual Realm and whether all is in ACTualization there, each and every member of that realm being an ACT, or whether Potentiality also has place there. Enneads: II V. 3

There is in the Intellectual Principle no progression from some power capable of intellection to the ACTuality of intellection: such a progression would send us in search of a Prior Principle not progressing from Power to ACT; there all stands ever realized. Potentiality requires an intervention from outside itself to bring it to the actualization which otherwise cannot be; but what possesses, of itself, identity unchangeable for ever is an actualization: all the Firsts then are actualizations, simply because eternally and of themselves they possess all that is necessary to their completion. Enneads: II V. 3

Then how do we assert the rising in the Supreme of what we have called Reality from what is not Reality (i.e., from the pure Being which is above Reality)? The Reality there – possessing Authentic Being in the strictest sense, with the least admixture – is Reality by existing among the differentiations of the Authentic Being; or, better, Reality is affirmed in the sense that with the existence of the Supreme is included its ACT so that Reality seems to be a perfectionment of the Authentic Being, though in the truth it is a diminution; the produced thing is deficient by the very addition, by being less simplex, by standing one step away from the Authentic. Enneads: II VI. 1

We might define the burning as an ACT springing from the Reason-Principle: then the warming and lighting and other effects of fire will be its ACTs and we still have found no foothold for its quality. Enneads: II VI. 2

By this analogy, warmth, as a concomitant of the specific nature of fire, may very well be no quality in fire but an Idea-Form belonging to it, one of its activities, while being merely a Quality in other things than fire: as it is manifested in any warm object, it is not a mode of Reality but merely a trace, a shadow, an image, something that has gone forth from its own Reality – where it was an ACT – and in the warm object is a quality. Enneads: II VI. 3

All, then, that is accident and not ACT; all but what is Idea-form of the Reality; all that merely confers pattern; all this is Quality: qualities are characteristics and modes other than those constituting the substratum of a thing. Enneads: II VI. 3

They will scarcely urge upon us the doubling of the Principle in ACT by a Principle in Potentiality. It is absurd to seek such a plurality by distinguishing between potentiality and actuality in the case of immaterial beings whose existence is in ACT – even in lower forms no such division can be made and we cannot conceive a duality in the Intellectual-Principle, one phase in some vague calm, another all astir. Under what form can we think of repose in the Intellectual Principle as contrasted with its movement or utterance? What would the quiescence of the one phase be as against the energy of the others? No: the Intellectual-Principle is continuously itself, unchangeably constituted in stable ACT. With movement – towards it or within it – we are in the realm of the Soul’s operation: such act is a Reason-Principle emanating from it and entering into Soul, thus made an Intellectual Soul, but in no sense creating an intermediate Principle to stand between the two. Enneads: II IX. 1

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 IX. 1

No: The Divine Mind in its mentation thinks itself; the object of the thought is nothing external: Thinker and Thought are one; therefore in its thinking and knowing it possesses itself, observes itself and sees itself not as something unconscious but as knowing: in this Primal Knowing it must include, as one and the same ACT, the knowledge of the knowing; and even the logical distinction mentioned above cannot be made in the case of the Divine; the very eternity of its self-thinking precludes any such separation between that intellective act and the consciousness of the act. Enneads: II IX. 1

Such a reproduction there must necessarily be – though not by deliberation and contrivance – for the Intellectual could not be the last of things, but must have a double ACT, one within itself and one outgoing; there must, then, be something later than the Divine; for only the thing with which all power ends fails to pass downwards something of itself. In the Supreme there flourishes a marvellous vigour, and therefore it produces. Enneads: II IX. 8

And in all cases the ACT may be referred to the Essence (as its cause), for their Essence consists, precisely, in giving forth an appropriate ACT. Enneads: III I. 1

As for Things of Process – or for Eternal Existents whose ACT is not eternally invariable – we must hold that these are due to Cause; Causelessness is quite inadmissible; we can make no place here for unwarranted “slantings,” for sudden movement of bodies apart from any initiating power, for precipitate spurts in a soul with nothing to drive it into the new course of action. Such causelessness would bind the Soul under an even sterner compulsion, no longer master of itself, but at the mercy of movements apart from will and cause. Something willed – within itself or without – something desired, must lead it to action; without motive it can have no motion. Enneads: III I. 1

The Intellectual Realm was not of a nature to be the ultimate of existents. It was the First and it held great power, all there is of power; this means that it is productive without seeking to produce; for if effort and search were incumbent upon it, the ACT would not be its own, would not spring from its essential nature; it would be, like a craftsman, producing by a power not inherent but acquired, mastered by dint of study. Enneads: III II. 2

In all the changing, there is no change by chance: there is no taking of new forms but to desirable ends and in ways worthy of Divine Powers. All that is Divine executes the ACT of its quality; its quality is the expression of its essential Being: and this essential Being in the Divine is the Being whose activities produce as one thing the desirable and the just – for if the good and the just are not produced there, where, then, have they their being? Enneads: III II. 13

The nature of the Reason-Principle is adequately expressed in its ACT and, therefore, the wider its extension the nearer will its productions approach to full contrariety: hence the world of sense is less a unity than is its Reason-Principle; it contains a wider multiplicity and contrariety: its partial members will, therefore, be urged by a closer intention towards fullness of life, a warmer desire for unification. Enneads: III II. 17

For the Soul is many things, is all, is the Above and the Beneath to the totality of life: and each of us is an Intellectual Kosmos, linked to this world by what is lowest in us, but, by what is the highest, to the Divine Intellect: by all that is intellective we are permanently in that higher realm, but at the fringe of the Intellectual we are fettered to the lower; it is as if we gave forth from it some emanation towards that lower, or, rather some ACT, which however leaves our diviner part not in itself diminished. Enneads: III IV. 3

What, then, is the achieved Sage? One whose ACT is determined by the higher phase of the Soul. Enneads: III IV. 6

But following upon Kronos – or, if you will, upon Heaven, the father of Kronos – the Soul directs its ACT towards him and holds closely to him and in that love brings forth the Eros through whom it continues to look towards him. This ACT of the Soul has produced an Hypostasis, a Real-Being; and the mother and this Hypostasis – her offspring, noble Love gaze together upon Divine Mind. Love, thus, is ever intent upon that other loveliness, and exists to be the medium between desire and that object of desire. It is the eye of the desirer; by its power what loves is enabled to see the loved thing. But it is first; before it becomes the vehicle of vision, it is itself filled with the sight; it is first, therefore, and not even in the same order – for desire attains to vision only through the efficacy of Love, while Love, in its own ACT, harvests the spectacle of beauty playing immediately above it. Enneads: III V. 2

For the parent-Soul was a Real-Being sprung directly from the ACT of the Hypostasis that ranks before it: it had life; it was a constituent in the Real-Being of all that authentically is – in the Real-Being which looks, rapt, towards the very Highest. That was the first object of its vision; it looked towards it as towards its good, and it rejoiced in the looking; and the quality of what it saw was such that the contemplation could not be void of effect; in virtue of that rapture, of its position in regard to its object, of the intensity of its gaze, the Soul conceived and brought forth an offspring worthy of itself and of the vision. Thus; there is a strenuous activity of contemplation in the Soul; there is an emanation towards it from the object contemplated; and Eros is born, the Love which is an eye filled with its vision, a seeing that bears its image with it; Eros taking its name, probably, from the fact that its essential being is due to this horasis, this seeing. Of course Love, as an emotion, will take its name from Love, the Person, since a Real-Being cannot but be prior to what lacks this reality. The mental state will be designated as Love, like the Hypostasis, though it is no more than a particular act directed towards a particular object; but it must not be confused with the Absolute Love, the Divine Being. The Eros that belongs to the supernal Soul must be of one temper with it; it must itself look aloft as being of the household of that Soul, dependent upon that Soul, its very offspring; and therefore caring for nothing but the contemplation of the Gods. Enneads: III V. 3

In each particular human being we must admit the existence of the authentic Intellective ACT and of the authentically knowable object – though not as wholly merged into our being, since we are not these in the absolute and not exclusively these – and hence our longing for absolute things: it is the expression of our intellective activities: if we sometimes care for the partial, that affection is not direct but accidental, like our knowledge that a given triangular figure is made up of two right angles because the absolute triangle is so. Enneads: III V. 7

It is said then to spring from Poverty and Possession in the sense that Lack and Aspiration and the Memory of the Ideal Principles, all present together in the Soul, produce that ACT towards The Good which is Love. Its Mother is Poverty, since striving is for the needy; and this Poverty is Matter, for Matter is the wholly poor: the very ambition towards the good is a sign of existing indetermination; there is a lack of shape and of Reason in that which must aspire towards the Good, and the greater degree of effort implies the lower depth of materiality. A thing aspiring towards the Good is an Ideal-principle only when the striving (with attainment) will leave it still unchanged in Kind: when it must take in something other than itself, its aspiration is the presentment of Matter to the incoming power. Enneads: III V. 10

Very good: but is it not different before and after acquiring the memory? Be it so; but it has suffered no change – unless we are to think of the mere progress from latency to actuality as change – nothing has been introduced into the mind; it has simply achieved the ACT dictated by its nature. Enneads: III VI. 2

It is universally true that the characteristic ACT of immaterial entities is performed without any change in them – otherwise they would at last be worn away – theirs is the ACT of the unmoving; where act means suffering change, there is Matter: an immaterial Being would have no ground of permanence if its very ACT changed it. Enneads: III VI. 2

The (Universal) Soul – containing the Ideal Principles of Real-Beings, and itself an Ideal Principle – includes all in concentration within itself, just as the Ideal Principle of each particular entity is complete and self-contained: it, therefore, sees these principles of sensible things because they are turned, as it were, towards it and advancing to it: but it cannot harbour them in their plurality, for it cannot depart from its Kind; it sees them, therefore, stripped of Mass. Matter, on the contrary, destitute of resisting power since it has no ACT of its own and is a mere shadow, can but accept all that an active power may choose to send. In what is thus sent, from the Reason-Principle in the Intellectual Realm, there is already contained a degree of the partial object that is to be formed: in the image-making impulse within the Reason-Principle there is already a step (towards the lower manifestation) or we may put it that the downward movement from the Reason-Principle is a first form of the partial: utter absence of partition would mean no movement but (sterile) repose. Matter cannot be the home of all things in concentration as the Soul is: if it were so, it would belong to the Intellective Sphere. It must be all-recipient but not in that partless mode. It is to be the Place of all things, and it must therefore extend universally, offer itself to all things, serve to all interval: thus it will be a thing unconfined to any moment (of space or time) but laid out in submission to all that is to be. Enneads: III VI. 18

We are brought thus to the conception of a Natural-Principle – Time – a certain expanse (a quantitative phase) of the Life of the Soul, a principle moving forward by smooth and uniform changes following silently upon each other – a Principle, then, whose ACT is sequent. Enneads: III VII. 12

But let us conceive this power of the Soul to turn back and withdraw from the life-course which it now maintains, from the continuous and unending activity of an ever-existent soul not self-contained or self-intent but concerned about doing and engendering: imagine it no longer accomplishing any ACT, setting a pause to this work it has inaugurated; let this outgoing phase of the Soul become once more, equally with the rest, turned to the Supreme, to Eternal Being, to the tranquilly stable. Enneads: III VII. 12

But: – we treat the Kosmic Movement as overarched by that of the Soul and bring it under Time; yet we do not set under Time that Soul-Movement itself with all its endless progression: what is our explanation of this paradox? Simply, that the Soul-Movement has for its Prior Eternity which knows neither its progression nor its extension. The descent towards Time begins with this Soul-Movement; it made Time and harbours Time as a concomitant to its ACT. Enneads: III VII. 13

And Nature, asked why it brings forth its works, might answer if it cared to listen and to speak: “It would have been more becoming to put no question but to learn in silence just as I myself am silent and make no habit of talking. And what is your lesson? This; that whatsoever comes into being is my is my vision, seen in my silence, the vision that belongs to my character who, sprung from vision, am vision-loving and create vision by the vision-seeing faculty within me. The mathematicians from their vision draw their figures: but I draw nothing: I gaze and the figures of the material world take being as if they fell from my contemplation. As with my Mother (the All-Soul) and the Beings that begot me so it is with me: they are born of a Contemplation and my birth is from them, not by their ACT but by their Being; they are the loftier Reason-Principles, they contemplate themselves and I am born.” Enneads: III VIII. 4

It cannot be, itself, The Good, since then it would not need to see or to perform any other ACT; for The Good is the centre of all else, and it is by means of The Good that every thing has ACT, while the Good is in need of nothing and therefore possesses nothing beyond itself. Enneads: III VIII. 10

The Intelligible Object is the Intellectual-Principle itself in its repose, unity, immobility: the Intellectual-Principle, contemplator of that object – of the Intellectual-Principle thus in repose is an active manifestation of the same Being, an ACT which contemplates its unmoved phase and, as thus contemplating, stands as Intellectual-Principle to that of which it has the intellection: it is Intellectual-Principle in virtue of having that intellection, and at the same time is Intellectual Object, by assimilation. Enneads: III IX. 1

This is what is conveyed where we are told that the separation is the work of the third Principle and begins within the Third: for to this Third belongs the discursive reasoning which is no function of the Intellectual-Principle but characteristic of its secondary, of Soul, to which precisely, divided by its own Kind, belongs the ACT of division. Enneads: III IX. 1

We know, and it is ourselves that we know; therefore we know the reality of a knowing nature: therefore, before that intellection in ACT, there is another intellection, one at rest, so to speak. Enneads: III IX. 3

(F)… But the First is not to be envisaged as made up from Gods of a transcendent order: no; the Authentic Existents constitute the Intellectual-Principle with Which motion and rest begin. The Primal touches nothing, but is the centre round which those other Beings lie in repose and in movement. For Movement is aiming, and the Primal aims at nothing; what could the Summit aspire to? Has It, even, no Intellection of Itself? It possesses Itself and therefore is said in general terms to know itself… But intellection does not mean self-ownership; it means turning the gaze towards the Primal: now the act of intellection is itself the Primal ACT, and there is therefore no place for any earlier one. The Being projecting this ACT transcends the ACT so that Intellection is secondary to the Being in which it resides. Intellection is not the transcendently venerable thing – neither Intellection in general nor even the Intellection of The Good. Apart from and over any Intellection stands The Good itself. Enneads: III IX. 3

For the same reason memory, in the current sense, cannot be attributed to the soul in connection with the ideas inherent in its essence: these it holds not as a memory but as a possession, though, by its very entrance into this sphere, they are no longer the mainstay of its ACT. Enneads: IV III. 25

What, then, will be the Soul’s discourse, what its memories in the Intellectual Realm, when at last it has won its way to that Essence? Obviously from what we have been saying, it will be in contemplation of that order, and have its ACT upon the things among which it now is; failing such Contemplation and ACT, its being is not there. Of things of earth it will know nothing; it will not, for example, remember an act of philosophic virtue, or even that in its earthly career it had contemplation of the Supreme. Enneads: IV IV. 1

This, however, does not alter the fact that distinction exists in that realm – downwards from the Supreme to the Ideas, upward from the Ideas to the Universal and to the Supreme. Admitting that the Highest, as a self-contained unity, has no outgoing effect, that does not prevent the soul which has attained to the Supreme from exerting its own characteristic ACT: it certainly may have the intuition, not by stages and parts, of that Being which is without stage and part. Enneads: IV IV. 1

But is not this impossible when the object to be thus divided and treated as a thing of grades, is a pure unity? No: there has already been discrimination within the Intellectual-Principle; the ACT of the soul is little more than a reading of this. Enneads: IV IV. 1

Perhaps; and (from this untenable consequence) we may gather that the light never was an appanage of anything, but is the expressive ACT proceeding from a base (the sun) but not seeking to enter into a base, though having some operation upon any base that may be present. Enneads: IV V. 6

Life is also an ACT, the ACT of the soul, and it remains so when anything – the human body, for instance – comes in its path to be affected by it; and it is equally an ACT though there be nothing for it to modify: surely this may be true of light, one of the ACTs of whatever luminary source there be (i.e., light, affecting things, may be quite independent of them and require no medium, air or other). Certainly light is not brought into being by the dark thing, air, which on the contrary tends to gloom it over with some touch of earth so that it is no longer the brilliant reality: as reasonable to talk of some substance being sweet because it is mixed with something bitter. Enneads: IV V. 6

If it be a thing requiring to be caught and kept, domiciled within a recipient, we might think of it finally passing out of existence: if it be an ACT not flowing out and away – but in circuit, with more of it within than is in outward progress from the luminary of which it is the ACT – then it will not cease to exist as long as that centre is in being. And as the luminary moves, the light will reach new points – not in virtue of any change of course in or out or around, but simply because the act of the luminary exists and where there is no impediment is effective. Even if the distance of the sun from us were far greater than it is, the light would be continuous all that further way, as long as nothing checked or blocked it in the interval. Enneads: IV V. 7

We distinguish two forms of activity; one is gathered within the luminary and is comparable to the life of the shining body; this is the vaster and is, as it were, the foundation or wellspring of all the act; the other lies next to the surface, the outer image of the inner content, a secondary activity though inseparable from the former. For every existent has an ACT which is in its likeness: as long as the one exists, so does the other; yet while the original is stationary the activity reaches forth, in some things over a wide range, in others less far. There are weak and faint activities, and there are some, even, that do not appear; but there are also things whose activities are great and far-going; in the case of these the activity must be thought of as being lodged, both in the active and powerful source and in the point at which it settles. This may be observed in the case of an animal’s eyes where the pupils gleam: they have a light which shows outside the orbs. Again there are living things which have an inner fire that in darkness shines out when they expand themselves and ceases to ray outward when they contract: the fire has not perished; it is a mere matter of it being rayed out or not. Enneads: IV V. 7

The knowing of the things belonging to the Intellectual is not in any such degree attended by impact or impression: they come forward, on the contrary, as from within, unlike the sense-objects known as from without: they have more emphatically the character of acts; they are acts in the stricter sense, for their origin is in the soul, and every concept of this Intellectual order is the soul about its ACT. Enneads: IV VI. 2

The object of the Intellectual ACT comes within our ken only when it reaches downward to the level of sensation: for not all that occurs at any part of the soul is immediately known to us; a thing must, for that knowledge, be present to the total soul; thus desire locked up within the desiring faculty remains unknown except when we make it fully ours by the central faculty of perception, or by the individual choice or by both at once. Once more, every soul has something of the lower on the body side and something of the higher on the side of the Intellectual-Principle. Enneads: IV VIII. 8

Thus its substantial existence comes from the Intellectual-Principle; and the Reason within it becomes ACT in virtue of its contemplation of that prior; for its thought and act are its own intimate possession when it looks to the Supreme Intelligence; those only are soul-acts which are of this intellective nature and are determined by its own character; all that is less noble is foreign (traceable to Matter) and is accidental to the soul in the course of its peculiar task. Enneads: V I. 3

Thus by what we call the Number and the Dyad of that higher realm, we mean Reason Principles and the Intellectual-Principle: but while the Dyad is, as regards that sphere, undetermined – representing, as it were, the underly (or Matter) of The One – the later Number (or Quantity) – that which rises from the Dyad (Intellectual-Principle) and The One – is not Matter to the later existents but is their forming-Idea, for all of them take shape, so to speak, from the ideas rising within this. The determination of the Dyad is brought about partly from its object – The One – and partly from itself, as is the case with all vision in the act of sight: intellection (the ACT of the Dyad) is vision occupied upon The One. Enneads: V I. 5

Thus our soul, too, is a divine thing, belonging to another order than sense; such is all that holds the rank of soul, but (above the life-principle) there is the soul perfected as containing Intellectual-Principle with its double phase, reasoning and giving the power to reason. The reasoning phase of the soul, needing no bodily organ for its thinking but maintaining, in purity, its distinctive ACT that its thought may be uncontaminated – this we cannot err in placing, separate and not mingled into body, within the first Intellectual. We may not seek any point of space in which to seat it; it must be set outside of all space: its distinct quality, its separateness, its immateriality, demand that it be a thing alone, untouched by all of the bodily order. This is why we read of the universe that the Demiurge cast the soul around it from without – understand that phase of soul which is permanently seated in the Intellectual – and of ourselves that the charioteer’s head reaches upwards towards the heights. Enneads: V I. 10

Thus the self-knower is a double person: there is the one that takes cognisance of the principle in virtue of which understanding occurs in the soul or mind; and there is the higher, knowing himself by the Intellectual-Principle with which he becomes identical: this latter knows the self as no longer man but as a being that has become something other through and through: he has thrown himself as one thing over into the superior order, taking with him only that better part of the soul which alone is winged for the Intellectual ACT and gives the man, once established There, the power to appropriate what he has seen. Enneads: V III. 4

The difference is that, while the soul knows itself as within something else, the Intellectual-Principle knows itself as self-depending, knows all its nature and character, and knows by right of its own being and by simple introversion. When it looks upon the authentic existences it is looking upon itself; its vision as its effective existence, and this efficacy is itself since the Intellectual-Principle and the Intellectual ACT are one: this is an integral seeing itself by its entire being, not a part seeing by a part. Enneads: V III. 6

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 III. 7

In the Intellectual-Principle, the Being is an ACT and in the absence of any other object it must be self-directed; by this self-intellection it holds its ACT within itself and upon itself; all that can emanate from it is produced by this self-centering and self-intention; first – self-gathered, it then gives itself or gives something in its likeness; fire must first be self-centred and be fire, true to fire’s natural ACT; then it may reproduce itself elsewhere. Enneads: V III. 7

The life in the Divine Intellect is also an ACT: it is the primal light outlamping to itself primarily, its own torch; light-giver and lit at once; the authentic intellectual object, knowing at once and known, seen to itself and needing no other than itself to see by, self-sufficing to the vision, since what it sees it is; known to us by that very same light, our knowledge of it attained through itself, for from nowhere else could we find the means of telling of it. By its nature, its self-vision is the clearer but, using it as our medium, we too may come to see by it. Enneads: V III. 8

It is now Intellectual-Principle since it actually holds its object, and holds it by the act of intellection: before, it was no more than a tendance, an eye blank of impression: it was in motion towards the transcendental; now that it has attained, it has become Intellectual-Principle henceforth absorbed; in virtue of this intellection it holds the character of Intellectual-Principle, of Essential Existence and of Intellectual ACT where, previously, not possessing the Intellectual Object, it was not Intellectual Perception, and, not yet having exercised the Intellectual ACT, it was not Intellectual-Principle. Enneads: V III. 11

But why, after all, should it not be such a manifold as long as it remains one substantial existence, having the multiplicity not of a compound being but of a unity with a variety of activities? Now, no doubt, if these various activities are not themselves substantial existences – but merely manifestations of latent potentiality – there is no compound; but, on the other hand, it remains incomplete until its substantial existence be expressed in act. If its substantial existence consists in its ACT, and this ACT constitutes multiplicity, then its substantial existence will be strictly proportioned to the extent of the multiplicity. Enneads: V III. 12

But why is the Intellectual-Principle not the generating source? Because (it is not a self-sufficing simplex): the ACT of the Intellectual-Principle is intellection, which means that, seeing the intellectual object towards which it has turned, it is consummated, so to speak, by that object, being in itself indeterminate like sight (a vague readiness for any and every vision) and determined by the intellectual object. This is why it has been said that “out of the indeterminate dyad and The One arise the Ideas and the numbers”: for the dyad is the Intellectual-Principle. Enneads: V IV. 2

But if something comes to being within an entity which in no way looks outside itself – and especially within a being which is the sum of being – that entity must be the source of the new thing: stable in its own identity, it produces; but the product is that of an unchanged being: the producer is unchangeably the intellectual object, the product is produced as the Intellectual ACT, an ACT taking intellection of its source – the only object that exists for it – and so becoming Intellectual-Principle, that is to say, becoming another intellectual being, resembling its source, a reproduction and image of that. Enneads: V IV. 2

But how from amid perfect rest can an ACT arise? There is in everything the ACT of the Essence and the ACT going out from the Essence: the first ACT is the thing itself in its realized identity, the second ACT is an inevitably following outgo from the first, an emanation distinct from the thing itself. Enneads: V IV. 2

Thus even in fire there is the warmth comported by its essential nature and there is the warmth going instantaneously outward from that characterizing heat by the fact that the fire, remaining unchangeably fire, utters the ACT native to its essential reality. Enneads: V IV. 2

So it is in the divine also: or rather we have there the earlier form of the double act: the divine remains in its own unchanging being, but from its perfection and from the ACT included in its nature there emanates the secondary or issuing ACT which – as the output of a mighty power, the mightiest there is – attains to Real Being as second to that which stands above all Being. That transcendent was the potentiality of the All; this secondary is the All made actual. Enneads: V IV. 2

You who make the venture will throw forward all your being but you will never tell it entire – for that, you must yourself be the divine Intellect in ACT – and at your utmost success it will still pass from you or, rather, you from it. In ordinary vision you may think to see the object entire: in this intellective act, all, less or more, that you can take to mind you may set down as The Good. Enneads: V V. 10

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 VI. 5

If this reasoning is valid, The Good has no scope whatever for intellection which demands something attractive from outside. The Good, then, is without ACT. What ACT indeed, could be vested in ACTivity’s self? No activity has yet again an activity; and whatever we may add to such ACTivities as depend from something else, at least we must leave the first ACTivity of them all, that from which all depend, as an uncontaminated identity, one to which no such addition can be made. Enneads: V VI. 6

There is no need to baulk at this limitlessness in the Intellectual; it is an infinitude having nothing to do with number or part; what we may think of it as its outgoing is no other than its characteristic ACT. Enneads: V VII. 1

What then is its characteristic ACT and what the intellection which makes knower and known here identical? Clearly, as authentic Intellection, it has authentic intellection of the authentically existent, and establishes their existence. Therefore it is the Authentic Beings. Enneads: V IX. 5

Knowledge in the reasoning soul is on the one side concerned with objects of sense, though indeed this can scarcely be called knowledge and is better indicated as opinion or surface-knowing; it is of later origin than the objects since it is a reflection from them: but on the other hand there is the knowledge handling the intellectual objects and this is the authentic knowledge; it enters the reasoning soul from the Intellectual-Principle and has no dealing with anything in sense. Being true knowledge it actually is everything of which it takes cognisance; it carries as its own content the intellectual act and the intellectual object since it carries the Intellectual-Principle which actually is the primals and is always self-present and is in its nature an ACT, never by any want forced to seek, never acquiring or traversing the remote – for all such experience belongs to soul – but always self-gathered, the very Being of the collective total, not an extern creating things by the act of knowing them. Enneads: V IX. 7

If the Intellectual-Principle were envisaged as preceding Being, it would at once become a principle whose expression, its intellectual ACT, achieves and engenders the Beings: but, since we are compelled to think of existence as preceding that which knows it, we can but think that the Beings are the actual content of the knowing principle and that the very act, the intellection, is inherent to the Beings, as fire stands equipped from the beginning with fire-act; in this conception, the Beings contain the Intellectual-Principle as one and the same with themselves, as their own activity. Thus, Being is itself an activity: there is one activity, then, in both or, rather, both are one thing. Enneads: V IX. 8

Being, therefore, and the Intellectual-Principle are one Nature: the Beings, and the ACT of that which is, and the Intellectual-Principle thus constituted, all are one: and the resultant Intellections are the Idea of Being and its shape and its act. Enneads: V IX. 8

It follows that in the cases specified above – agent, knowledge and the rest – the relation must be considered as in actual operation, and the ACT and the Reason-Principle in the ACT must be assumed to be real: in all other cases there will be simply participation in an Ideal-Form, in a Reason-Principle. Enneads: VI I. 9

Habit is an ACT directed upon something had (some experience produced by habit) and binding it as it were with the subject having (experiencing), as the ACT of production binds producer and product. Enneads: VI I. 9

Measurement is an ACT of the measurer upon the measured object: it too is therefore a kind of Reason-Principle. Enneads: VI I. 9

But then, how do we account for the powers? We may doubtless remark that even the natural boxer is so by being constituted in a particular way; similarly, with the man unable to box: to generalize, the quality is a characteristic non-essential. Whatever is seen to apply alike to Being and to non-Being, as do heat and whiteness and colours generally, is either different from Being – is, for example, an ACT of Being – or else is some secondary of Being, derived from it, contained in it, its image and likeness. Enneads: VI I. 10

Does then the action constitute the genus, or the activity from which the action springs, in the same way as Quality is the genus from which the quale is derived? Perhaps activity, action and agent should all be embraced under a single head? But, on the one hand, the action – unlike activity – tends to comport the agent; and on the other, it signifies being in some activity and therefore Being-in-ACT (actual as distinct from potential Being). Consequently the category will be one of ACT rather than of ACTion. Enneads: VI I. 15

ACT moreover incontestably manifests itself in Substance, as was found to be the case with Quality: it is connected with Substance as being a form of motion. But Motion is a distinct genus: for, seeing that Quality is a distinct attribute of Substance, and Quality a distinct attribute, and Relative takes its being from the relation of one substance to another, there can be no reason why Motion, also an attribute of Substance, should not also constitute a distinct genus. Enneads: VI I. 15

If it be urged that Motion is but imperfect ACT, there would be no objection to giving priority to ACT and subordinating to it Motion with its imperfection as a species: ACT would thus be predicated of Motion, but with the qualification “imperfect.” Enneads: VI I. 16

Motion is thought of as imperfect, not because it is not an ACT, but because, entirely an ACT, it yet entails repetition (lacks finality). It repeats, not in order that it may achieve actuality – it is already actual – but that it may attain a goal distinct from itself and posterior: it is not the motion itself that is then consummated but the result at which it aims. Walking is walking from the outset; when one should traverse a racecourse but has not yet done so, the deficiency lies not in the walking – not in the motion – but in the amount of walking accomplished; no matter what the amount, it is walking and motion already: a moving man has motion and a cutter cuts before there is any question of Quantity. And just as we can speak of ACT without implying time, so we can of Motion, except in the sense of motion over a defined area; ACT is timeless, and so is Motion pure and simple. Enneads: VI I. 16

Such then is the result of separating ACT from Motion: ACT, we aver, is timeless; yet we are forced to maintain not only that time is necessary to quantitative motion, but, unreservedly, that Motion is quantitative in its very nature; though indeed, if it were a case of motion occupying a day or some other quantity of time, the exponents of this view would be the first to admit that Quantity is present to Motion only by way of accident. Enneads: VI I. 16

In sum, just as ACT is timeless, so there is no reason why Motion also should not primarily be timeless, time attaching to it only in so far as it happens to have such and such an extension. Enneads: VI I. 16

We may be told that neither ACT nor Motion requires a genus for itself, but that both revert to Relation, ACT belonging to the potentially active, Motion to the potentially motive. Our reply is that Relation produces relatives as such, and not the mere reference to an external standard; given the existence of a thing, whether attributive or relative, it holds its essential character prior to any relationship: so then must ACT and Motion, and even such an attribute as habit; they are not prevented from being prior to any relationship they may occupy, or from being conceivable in themselves. Otherwise, everything will be relative; for anything you think of – even Soul – bears some relationship to something else. Enneads: VI I. 17

But, to return to activity proper and the action, is there any reason why these should be referred to Relation? They must in every instance be either Motion or ACT. Enneads: VI I. 17

There are other questions calling for consideration: First: Are both ACTs and motions to be included in the category of ACTion, with the distinction that ACTs are momentary while Motions, such as cutting, are in time? Or will both be regarded as motions or as involving Motion? Secondly: Will all activities be related to passivity, or will some – for example, walking and speaking – be considered as independent of it? Thirdly: Will all those related to passivity be classed as motions and the independent as ACTs, or will the two classes overlap? Walking, for instance, which is an independent, would, one supposes, be a motion; thinking, which also does not essentially involve “passivity,” an ACT: otherwise we must hold that thinking and walking are not even actions. But if they are not in the category of ACTion, where then in our classification must they fall? It may perhaps be urged that the act of thinking, together with the faculty of thought, should be regarded as relative to the thought object; for is not the faculty of sensation treated as relative to the sensible object? If then, we may ask, in the analogue the faculty of sensation is treated as relative to the sensible object, why not the sensory act as well? The fact is that even sensation, though related to an external object, has something besides that relation: it has, namely, its own status of being either an ACT or a Passion. Now the Passion is separable from the condition of being attached to some object and caused by some object: so, then, is the ACT a distinct entity. Walking is similarly attached and caused, and yet has besides the status of being a motion. It follows that thought, in addition to its relationship, will have the status of being either a motion or an ACT. Enneads: VI I. 18

Perhaps however the cutting issuing from the cutter and that which takes place in the cut object are in fact not one, but “to cut” implies that from a particular ACT and motion there results a different motion in the object cut. Or perhaps the difference (between ACTion and Passion) lies not in the fact of being cut, but in the distinct emotion supervening, pain for example: passivity has this connotation also. Enneads: VI I. 19

But when there is no pain, what occurs? Nothing, surely, but the ACT of the agent upon the patient object: this is all that is meant in such cases by ACTion. ACTion, thus, becomes twofold: there is that which occurs in the external, and that which does not. The duality of ACTion and Passion, suggested by the notion that ACTion (always) takes place in an external, is abandoned. Enneads: VI I. 19

Even writing, though taking place upon an external object, does not call for passivity, since no effect is produced, upon the tablet beyond the ACT of the writer, nothing like pain; we may be told that the tablet has been inscribed, but this does not suffice for passivity. Enneads: VI I. 19

Suppose this Passion to be treated as of itself producing pain: have we not still the duality of agent and patient, two results from the one ACT? The ACT may no longer include the will to cause pain; but it produces something distinct from itself, a pain-causing medium which enters into the object about to experience pain: this medium, while retaining its individuality, produces something yet different, the feeling of pain. Enneads: VI I. 19

Suppose however Passion to be a different motion from ACTion: how then does its modification of the patient object change that patient’s character without the agent being affected by the patient? For obviously an agent cannot be passive to the operation it performs upon another. Can it be that the fact of motion existing elsewhere creates the Passion, which was not Passion in the agent? If the whiteness of the swan, produced by its Reason-Principle, is given at its birth, are we to affirm Passion of the swan on its passing into being? If, on the contrary, the swan grows white after birth, and if there is a cause of that growth and the corresponding result, are we to say that the growth is a Passion? Or must we confine Passion to purely qualitative change? One thing confers beauty and another takes it: is that which takes beauty to be regarded as patient? If then the source of beauty – tin, suppose – should deteriorate or actually disappear, while the recipient – copper – improves, are we to think of the copper as passive and the tin active? Take the learner: how can he be regarded as passive, seeing that the ACT of the agent passes into him (and becomes his ACT)? How can the ACT, necessarily a simple entity, be both ACT and Passion? No doubt the ACT is not in itself a Passion; nonetheless, the learner coming to possess it will be a patient by the fact of his appropriation of an experience from outside: he will not, of course, be a patient in the sense of having himself performed no ACT; learning – like seeing – is not analogous to being struck, since it involves the acts of apprehension and recognition. Enneads: VI I. 20

How, then, are we to recognise Passivity, since clearly it is not to be found in the ACT from outside which the recipient in turn makes his own? Surely we must look for it in cases where the patient remains without ACT, the passivity pure. Enneads: VI I. 21

Imagine a case where an agent improves, though its ACT tends towards deterioration. Or, say, a a man’s activity is guided by evil and is allowed to dominate another’s without restraint. In these cases the ACT is clearly wrong, the Passion blameless. Enneads: VI I. 21

We are reminded to enquire whether thought in the form of providence constitutes ACTion; to be subject to providence is apparently Passion, for such thought is directed to an external, the object of the providential arrangement. But it may well be that neither is the exercise of providence an action, even though the thought is concerned with an external, nor subjection to it a Passion. Thought itself need not be an action, for it does not go outward towards its object but remains self-gathered. It is not always an activity; all ACTs need not be definable as activities, for they need not produce an effect; activity belongs to ACT only accidentally. Enneads: VI I. 22

Does it follow that if a man as he walks produces footprints, he cannot be considered to have performed an action? Certainly as a result of his existing something distinct from himself has come into being. Yet perhaps we should regard both action and ACT as merely accidental, because he did not aim at this result: it would be as we speak of ACTion even in things inanimate – “fire heats,” “the drug worked.” Enneads: VI I. 22

In short, Situation signifies “being in a place”; there are two things involved, the position and the place: why then must two categories be combined into one? Moreover, if sitting signifies an ACT, it must be classed among ACTs; if a Passion, it goes under the category to which belong Passions complete and incomplete. Enneads: VI I. 24

We then ask whether the plurality here consists of the Reason-Principles of the things of process. Or is this unity not something different from the mere sum of these Principles? Certainly Soul itself is one Reason-Principle, the chief of the Reason-Principles, and these are its ACT as it functions in accordance with its essential being; this essential being, on the other hand, is the potentiality of the Reason-Principles. This is the mode in which this unity is a plurality, its plurality being revealed by the effect it has upon the external. Enneads: VI II. 5

Soul, then, is one and many – as many as are manifested in that oneness – one in its nature, many in those other things. A single Existent, it makes itself many by what we may call its motion: it is one entire, but by its striving, so to speak, to contemplate itself, it is a plurality; for we may imagine that it cannot bear to be a single Existent, when it has the power to be all that it in fact is. The cause of its appearing as many is this contemplation, and its purpose is the ACT of the Intellect; if it were manifested as a bare unity, it could have no intellection, since in that simplicity it would already be identical with the object of its thought. Enneads: VI II. 6

Being, then, containing many species, has but one genus. Motion, however, is to be classed as neither a subordinate nor a supplement of Being but as its concomitant; for we have not found Being serving as substrate to Motion. Motion is being ACT; neither is separated from the other except in thought; the two natures are one; for Being is inevitably actual, not potential. Enneads: VI II. 7

Stability, then, may also be taken as a single genus. Obviously distinct from Motion and perhaps even its contrary, that it is also distinct from Being may be shown by many considerations. We may especially observe that if Stability were identical with Being, so also would Motion be, with equal right. Why identity in the case of Stability and not in that of Motion, when Motion is virtually the very life and ACT both of Substance and of Absolute Being? However, on the very same principle on which we separated Motion from Being with the understanding that it is the same and not the same – that they are two and yet one – we also separate Stability from Being, holding it, yet, inseparable; it is only a logical separation entailing the inclusion among the Existents of this other genus. To identify Stability with Being, with no difference between them, and to identify Being with Motion, would be to identify Stability with Motion through the mediation of Being, and so to make Motion and Stability one and the same thing. Enneads: VI II. 7

Now in the ACT of Intellect there are energy and motion; in its self-intellection Substance and Being. In virtue of its Being it thinks, and it thinks of itself as Being, and of that as Being, upon which it is, so to speak, pivoted. Not that its ACT self-directed ranks as Substance, but Being stands as the goal and origin of that ACT, the object of its contemplation though not the contemplation itself: and yet this ACT too involves Being, which is its motive and its term. By the fact that its Being is actual and not merely potential, Intellect bridges the dualism (of agent and patient) and abjures separation: it identifies itself with Being and Being with itself. Enneads: VI II. 8

If Motion is the ACT of Substance, and Being and the Primaries in general are its ACT, then Motion is not an accidental attribute: as the ACT of what is necessarily actual (what necessarily involves ACT), it is no longer to be considered as the complement of Substance but as Substance itself. For this reason, then, it has not been assigned to a posterior class, or referred to Quality, but has been made contemporary with Being. Enneads: VI II. 15

It is true that we do not hesitate to speak of the goodness inherent in Being” when we are thinking of that ACT by which Being tends, of its nature, towards the One: thus, we affirm goodness of it in the sense that it is thereby moulded into the likeness of The Good. But if this “goodness inherent in Being” is an ACT directed toward The Good, it is the life of Being: but this life is Motion, and Motion is already one of the genera. Enneads: VI II. 17

If, again, we mean beauty in relation to ourselves as spectators in whom it produces a certain experience, this ACT (of production) is Motion – and none the less Motion by being directed towards Absolute Beauty. Enneads: VI II. 18

Knowledge again, is Motion originating in the self; it is the observation of Being – an ACT, not a State: hence it too falls under Motion, or perhaps more suitably under Stability, or even under both; if under both, knowledge must be thought of as a complex, and if a complex, is posterior. Enneads: VI II. 18

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 II. 20

The great Intellect, we maintain, exists in itself and the particular intellects in themselves; yet the particulars are embraced in the whole, and the whole in the particulars. The particular intellects exist by themselves and in another, the universal by itself and in those. All the particulars exist potentially in that self-existent universal, which actually is the totality, potentially each isolated member: on the other hand, each particular is actually what it is (its individual self), potentially the totality. In so far as what is predicated of them is their essence, they are actually what is predicated of them; but where the predicate is a genus, they are that only potentially. On the other hand, the universal in so far as it is a genus is the potentiality of all its subordinate species, though none of them in actuality; all are latent in it, but because its essential nature exists in actuality before the existence of the species, it does not submit to be itself particularized. If then the particulars are to exist in actuality – to exist, for example, as species – the cause must lie in the ACT radiating from the universal. Enneads: VI II. 20

As we survey this Magnitude with the beauty of Being within it and the glory and light around it, all contained in Intellect, we see, simultaneously, Quality already in bloom, and along with the continuity of its ACT we catch a glimpse of Magnitude at Rest. Then, with one, two and three in Intellect, Magnitude appears as of three dimensions, with Quantity entire. Quantity thus given and Quality, both merging into one and, we may almost say, becoming one, there is at once shape. Difference slips in to divide both Quantity and Quality, and so we have variations in shape and differences of Quality. Identity, coming in with Difference, creates equality, Difference meanwhile introducing into Quantity inequality, whether in number or in magnitude: thus are produced circles and squares, and irregular figures, with number like and unlike, odd and even. Enneads: VI II. 21

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 II. 22

But, in the first place, Matter does not possess or acquire Form as its life or its ACT; Form enters it from without, and remains foreign to its nature. Secondly, Form in the Intellectual is an ACT and a motion; in the Sensible Motion is different from Form and accidental to it: Form in relation to Matter approximates rather to Stability than to Motion; for by determining Matter’s indetermination it confers upon it a sort of repose. Enneads: VI III. 2

First, then, we take Being as first in order; then Intellectual-Principle; then the Living-Form considered as containing all things: Intellectual-Principle, as the ACT of Real Being, is a second. Enneads: VI VI. 8

It must be urged as a general truth that anything affirmed of a subject not itself either found its way in from outside or is the characteristic ACT of that subject; and supposing the predicated attribute to show no variation of presence and absence but to be always present, then, if the subject is a Real Being so also is the accidental in an equal degree; or, failing Real Being, it at least belongs to the existents, it exists. In the case when the subject can be thought of as remaining without its ACT, yet that ACT is inbound with it even though to our minds it appears as a later; when on the contrary the subject cannot be conceived without the attribute-man, for example, without unity – then the attribute is either not later but concomitant or, being essential to the existence, is precedent. In our view, Unity and Number are precedent. Enneads: VI VI. 10

As Substance and Real Being, despite the participation of the sensible, are still of the Intellectual and not the sensible order, so too the unity observed present in things of sense by participation remains still an Intellectual and to be grasped by an Intellectual ACT. The mind, from a thing present to it, comes to knowledge of something else, a thing not presented; that is, it has a prior knowledge. By this prior knowledge it recognises Being in a particular being; similarly when a thing is one it can affirm unity as it can affirm also duality and multiplicity. Enneads: VI VI. 13

But how do you come to have a number to place? The Number inherent apart from any enumeration has its own manner of being, but the other, that resulting upon the appearance of an external to be appraised by the Number within yourself, is either an ACT of these inherent numbers or an ACT in accordance with them; in counting we produce number and so bring quantity into being just as in walking we bring a certain movement into being. Enneads: VI VI. 16

No doubt there is the passage “Whatever Intellect sees in the entire Life-Form”; thus seeing, must not the Intellectual-Principle be the later? No; the seeing may imply merely that the reality comes into being by the fact of that seeing; the Intellectual-Principle is not external to the Life-Form; all is one; the ACT of the Intellectual-Principle possesses itself of bare sphere, while the Life-Form holds the sphere as sphere of a living total. Enneads: VI VI. 17

But surely this is foreseeing, deliberating: are we not back at what was said at the beginning, that God did to this end give both the senses and the powers, however perplexing that giving be? No: all turns on the necessary completeness of ACT; we cannot think anything belonging to God to be other than a whole and all and therefore in anything of God’s that all must be contained; God therefore must take in the future, present beforehand. Certainly there is no later in the divine; what is There as present is future for elsewhere. If then the future is present, it must be present as having been foreconceived for later coming to be; at that divine stage therefore it lacks nothing and therefore can never lack; all existed, eternally and in such a way that at the later stage any particular thing may be said to exist for this or that purpose; the All, in its extension and so to speak unfolding, is able to present succession while yet it is simultaneous; this is because it contains the cause of all as inherent to itself. Enneads: VI VII. 1

But how could that Principle have such perception, be aware of things of sense? Surely it is untenable on the one hand that sense-perception should exist There, from eternity, and on the other that only upon the debasement of the soul should there be sense-perception here and the accomplishment in this realm of the ACT of what was always a power in that? Enneads: VI VII. 3

It holds and covers the universe which it has made the space, so to speak, of its movement, itself being also that universe which is space to it. And this Meadow of Truth is varied so that movement through it may be possible; suppose it not always and everywhere varied, the failing of diversity is a failure of movement; failure in movement would mean a failing of the Intellectual ACT; halting, it has ceased to exercise its Intellectual ACT; this ceasing, it ceases to be. Enneads: VI VII. 13

The Intellectual-Principle is the Intellectual ACT; its movement is complete, filling Being complete; And the entire of Being is the Intellectual ACT entire, comprehending all life and the unfailing succession of things. Because this Principle contains Identity and Difference its division is ceaselessly bringing the different things to light. Its entire movement is through life and among living things. To a traveller over land, all is earth but earth abounding in difference: so in this journey the life through which Intellectual-Principle passes is one life but, in its ceaseless changing, a varied life. Enneads: VI VII. 13

That Life, the various, the all-including, the primal and one, who can consider it without longing to be of it, disdaining all the other? All other life is darkness, petty and dim and poor; it is unclean and polluting the clean for if you do but look upon it you no longer see nor live this life which includes all living, in which there is nothing that does not live and live in a life of purity void of all that is ill. For evil is here where life is in copy and Intellect in copy; There is the archetype, that which is good in the very Idea – we read – as holding The Good in the pure Idea. That Archetype is good; Intellectual-Principle is good as holding its life by contemplation of the archetype; and it sees also as good the objects of its contemplation because it holds them in its act of contemplating the Principle of Good. But these objects come to it not as they are There but in accord with its own condition, for it is their source; they spring thence to be here, and Intellectual-Principle it is that has produced them by its vision There. In the very law, never, looking to That, could it fail of Intellectual ACT; never, on the other hand, could it produce what is There; of itself it could not produce; Thence it must draw its power to bring forth, to teem with offspring of itself; from the Good it takes what itself did not possess. From that Unity came multiplicity to Intellectual-Principle; it could not sustain the power poured upon it and therefore broke it up; it turned that one power into variety so as to carry it piecemeal. Enneads: VI VII. 15

But what is the Nature of this Transcendent in view of which and by way of which the Ideas are good? The best way of putting the question is to ask whether, when Intellectual-Principle looked towards The Good, it had Intellection of that unity as a multiplicity and, itself a unity, plied its ACT by breaking into parts what it was too feeble to know as a whole. Enneads: VI VII. 16

No: that would not be Intellection looking upon the Good; it would be a looking void of Intellection. We must think of it not as looking but as living; dependent upon That, it kept itself turned Thither; all the tendance taking place There and upon That must be a movement teeming with life and must so fill the looking Principle; there is no longer bare ACT, there is a filling to saturation. Forthwith Intellectual-Principle becomes all things, knows that fact in virtue of its self-knowing and at once becomes Intellectual-Principle, filled so as to hold within itself that object of its vision, seeing all by the light from the Giver and bearing that Giver with it. Enneads: VI VII. 16

But what is the common element in them? Derivation from the First is not enough to procure identical quality; there must be some element held in common by the things derived: one source may produce many differing things as also one outgoing thing may take difference in various recipients: what enters into the First ACT is different from what that ACT transmits and there is difference, again, in the effect here. Nonetheless every item may be good in a degree of its own. To what, then, is the highest degree due? But first we must ask whether Life is a good, bare Life, or only the Life streaming Thence, very different from the Life known here? Once more, then, what constitutes the goodness of Life? The Life of The Good, or rather not its Life but that given forth from it. Enneads: VI VII. 18

But is its vision parcelwise, thing here and thing there? No: reason unravelling gives process; Intellectual-Principle has unbroken knowledge and has, moreover, an ACT unattended by knowing, a vision by another approach. In this seeing of the Supreme it becomes pregnant and at once knows what has come to be within it; its knowledge of its content is what is designated by its Intellection; its knowing of the Supreme is the virtue of that power within it by which, in a later (lower) stage it is to become “Intellective.” Enneads: VI VII. 35

Here, we put aside all the learning; disciplined to this pitch, established in beauty, the quester holds knowledge still of the ground he rests on but, suddenly, swept beyond it all by the very crest of the wave of Intellect surging beneath, he is lifted and sees, never knowing how; the vision floods the eyes with light, but it is not a light showing some other object, the light is itself the vision. No longer is there thing seen and light to show it, no longer Intellect and object of Intellection; this is the very radiance that brought both Intellect and Intellectual object into being for the later use and allowed them to occupy the quester’s mind. With This he himself becomes identical, with that radiance whose ACT is to engender Intellectual-Principle, not losing in that engendering but for ever unchanged, the engendered coming to be simply because that Supreme exists. If there were no such principle above change, no derivative could rise. Enneads: VI VII. 36

But we ask in what must his grandeur lie, in his Intellection or in himself. If in the Intellection, he has no worth or the less worth; if in himself, he is perfect before the Intellection, not perfected by it. We may be told that he must have Intellection because he is an ACT, not a potentiality. Now if this means that he is an essence eternally intellective, he is represented as a duality – essence and Intellective ACT – he ceases to be a simplex; an external has been added: it is just as the eyes are not the same as their sight, though the two are inseparable. If on the other hand by this actualization it is meant that he is ACT and Intellection, then as being Intellection he does not exercise it, just as movement is not itself in motion. Enneads: VI VII. 37

But do not we ourselves assert that the Beings There are essence and ACT? The Beings, yes, but they are to us manifold and differentiated: the First we make a simplex; to us Intellection begins with the emanant in its seeking of its essence, of itself, of its author; bent inward for this vision and having a present thing to know, there is every reason why it should be a principle of Intellection; but that which, never coming into being, has no prior but is ever what it is, how could that have motive to Intellection? As Plato rightly says, it is above Intellect. Enneads: VI VII. 37

To us intellection is a boon since the soul needs it; to the Intellectual-Principle it is appropriate as being one thing with the very essence of the principle constituted by the intellectual ACT so that principle and act coincide in a continuous self-consciousness carrying the assurance of identity, of the unity of the two. But pure unity must be independent, in need of no such assurance. Enneads: VI VII. 41

Can there be question as to whether the gods have voluntary action? Or are we to take it that, while we may well enquire in the case of men with their combination of powerlessness and hesitating power, the gods must be declared omnipotent, not merely some things but all lying at their nod? Or is power entire, freedom of action in all things, to be reserved to one alone, of the rest some being powerful, others powerless, others again a blend of power and impotence? All this must come to the test: we must dare it even of the Firsts and of the All-Transcendent and, if we find omnipotence possible, work out how far freedom extends. The very notion of power must be scrutinized lest in this ascription we be really making power identical with Essential ACT, and even with ACT not yet achieved. Enneads: VI VIII. 1

In a principle, act and essence must be free. No doubt Intellectual-Principle itself is to be referred to a yet higher; but this higher is not extern to it; Intellectual-Principle is within the Good; possessing its own good in virtue of that indwelling, much more will it possess freedom and self-disposal which are sought only for the sake of the good. ACTing towards the good, it must all the more possess self-disposal for by that ACT it is directed towards the Principle from which it proceeds, and this its act is self-centred and must entail its very greatest good. Enneads: VI VIII. 4

Are we, however, to make freedom and self-disposal exclusive to Intellectual-Principle as engaged in its characteristic ACT, Intellectual-Principle unassociated, or do they belong also to soul acting under that guidance and performing act of virtue? If freedom is to be allowed to soul in its ACT, it certainly cannot be allowed in regard to issue, for we are not master of events: if in regard to fine conduct and all inspired by Intellectual-Principle, that may very well be freedom; but is the freedom ours? Because there is war, we perform some brave feat; how is that our free act since had there been no war it could not have been performed? So in all cases of fine conduct; there is always some impinging event leading out our quality to show itself in this or that act. And suppose virtue itself given the choice whether to find occasion for its exercise – war evoking courage; wrong, so that it may establish justice and good order; poverty that it may show independence – or to remain inactive, everything going well, it would choose the peace of inaction, nothing calling for its intervention, just as a physician like Hippocrates would prefer no one to stand in need of his skill. Enneads: VI VIII. 5

Where – since we must use such words – the essential act is identical with the being – and this identity must obtain in The Good since it holds even in Intellectual-Principle – there the act is no more determined by the Being than the Being by the ACT. Thus “acting according to its nature” does not apply; the ACT, the Life, so to speak, cannot be held to issue from the Being; the Being accompanies the ACT in an eternal association: from the two (Being and ACT) it forms itself into The Good, self-springing and unspringing. Enneads: VI VIII. 7

But perhaps, never having come to be but being as He is, He is still not master of his own essence: not master of his essence but being as He is, not self-originating but acting out of his nature as He finds it, must He not be of necessity what He is, inhibited from being otherwise? No: What He is, He is not because He could not be otherwise but because so is best. Not everything has power to move towards the better though nothing is prevented by any external from moving towards the worse. But that the Supreme has not so moved is its own doing: there has been no inhibition; it has not moved simply because it is That which does not move; in this stability the inability to degenerate is not powerlessness; here permanence is very ACT, a self-determination. This absence of declination comports the fulness of power; it is not the yielding of a being held and controlled but the ACT of one who is necessity, law, to all. Enneads: VI VIII. 10

Even if there be ACT in the Supreme – an ACT with which it is to be identified – this is not enough to set up a duality within it and prevent it being entirely master of that self from which the ACT springs; for the ACT is not distinct from that self. If we utterly deny ACT in it – holding that ACT begins with others moving about it – we are all the less able to allow either self-mastery or subjection in it: even self-mastery is absent here, not that anything else is master over it but that self-mastery begins with Being while the Supreme is to be set in a higher order. Enneads: VI VIII. 12

But what can there be higher than that which is its own master? Where we speak of self-mastery there is a certain duality, ACT against essence; from the exercise of the ACT arises the conception of the mastering principle – though one identical with the essence – hence arises the separate idea of mastery, and the being concerned is said to possess self-mastery. Where there is no such duality joining to unity but solely a unity pure – either because the ACT is the whole being or because there is no ACT at all – then we cannot strictly say that the being has this mastery of self. Enneads: VI VIII. 12

If, then, we are to allow ACTivities in the Supreme and make them depend upon will – and certainly ACT cannot There be will-less and these ACTivities are to be the very essence, then will and essence in the Supreme must be identical. This admitted, as He willed to be so He is; it is no more true to say that He wills and acts as His nature determines than that His essence is as He wills and acts. Thus He is wholly master of Himself and holds His very being at His will. Enneads: VI VIII. 13

If God is nowhere, then not anywhere has He “happened to be”; as also everywhere, He is everywhere in entirety: at once, He is that everywhere and everywise: He is not in the everywhere but is the everywhere as well as the giver to the rest of things of their being in that everywhere. Holding the supreme place – or rather no holder but Himself the Supreme – all lies subject to Him; they have not brought Him to be but happen, all, to Him – or rather they stand there before Him looking upon Him, not He upon them. He is borne, so to speak, to the inmost of Himself in love of that pure radiance which He is, He Himself being that which He. loves. That is to say, as self-dwelling ACT and Intellectual-Principle, the most to be loved, He has given Himself existence. Intellectual-Principle is the issue of ACT: God therefore is issue of ACT, but, since no other has generated Him, He is what He made Himself: He is not, therefore, “as He happened to be” but as He acted Himself into being. Enneads: VI VIII. 16

That his being is constituted by this self-originating self-tendence – at once ACT and repose – becomes clear if we imagine the contrary; inclining towards something outside of Himself, He would destroy the identity of his being. This self-directed ACT is, therefore, his peculiar being, one with Himself. If, then, his act never came to be but is eternal – a waking without an awakener, an eternal wakening and a supra-Intellection – He is as He waked Himself to be. This awakening is before being, before Intellectual-Principle, before rational life, though He is these; He is thus an ACT before Intellectual-Principle and consciousness and life; these come from Him and no other; his being, then, is a self-presence, issuing from Himself. Thus not “as He happened to be” is He but as He willed to be. Enneads: VI VIII. 16

The answer is that we utterly must not speak of Him as made but sheerly as maker; the making must be taken as absolved from all else; no new existence is established; the ACT here is not directed to an achievement but is God Himself unalloyed: here is no duality but pure unity. Let no one suspect us of asserting that the first ACTivity is without Essence; on the contrary the ACTivity is the very reality. To suppose a reality without activity would be to make the Principle of all principles deficient; the supremely complete becomes incomplete. To make the ACTivity something superadded to the essence is to shatter the unity. If then ACTivity is a more perfect thing than essence and the First is all perfect, then the ACTivity is the First. Enneads: VI VIII. 20

Now assuredly an ACTivity not subjected essence is utterly free; God’s selfhood, then, is of his own ACT. If his being has to be ensured by something else, He is no longer the self-existent First: if it be true to say that He is his own container, then He inducts Himself; for all that He contains is his own production from the beginning since from the beginning He caused the being of all that by nature He contains. Enneads: VI VIII. 20

This is the source also of his self-disposal – strictly applicable if there were a duality, but conveying, in the case of a unity, a disposing without a disposed, an abstract disposing. But how a disposer with nothing to dispose? In that there is here a disposer looking to a prior when there is none: since there is no prior, This is the First – but a First not in order but in sovereignty, in power purely self-controlled. Purely; then nothing can be There that is under any external disposition; all in God is self-willing. What then is there of his content that is not Himself, what that is not in ACT, what not his work? Imagine in Him anything not of his ACT and at once His existence ceases to be pure; He is not self-disposing, not all-powerful: in that at least of whose doing He is not master He would be impotent. Enneads: VI VIII. 20

Other considerations also go to show that the Intellectual-Principle cannot be the First. Intellect must be above the Intellectual ACT: at least in its higher phase, that not concerned with the outer universe, it must be intent upon its Prior; its introversion is a conversion upon the Principle. Enneads: VI IX. 2

Our being is the fuller for our turning Thither; this is our prosperity; to hold aloof is loneliness and lessening. Here is the soul’s peace, outside of evil, refuge taken in the place clean of wrong; here it has its ACT, its true knowing; here it is immune. Here is living, the true; that of to-day, all living apart from Him, is but a shadow, a mimicry. Life in the Supreme is the native activity of Intellect; in virtue of that converse it brings forth gods, brings forth beauty, brings forth righteousness, brings forth all moral good; for of all these the soul is pregnant when it has been filled with God. This state is its first and its final, because from God it comes, its good lies There, and, once turned to God again, it is what it was. Life here, with the things of earth, is a sinking, a defeat, a failing of the wing. Enneads: VI IX. 9