Then, everything, in the intellectual is in actualization and so all There is Actuality? Why not? If that Nature is rightly said to be “Sleepless,” and to be Life and the noblest mode of Life, the noblest ACTIVITIES must be there; all then is actualization there, everything is an Actuality, for everything is a Life, and all Place there is the Place of Life, in the true sense the ground and spring of Soul and of the Intellectual Principle. Enneads II,5,3
What, then, distinguishes Quality in the Intellectual Realm from that here, if both are Acts? The difference is that these (“Quality-ACTIVITIES”) in the Supreme do not indicate the very nature of the Reality (as do the corresponding ACTIVITIES here) nor do they indicate variations of substance or of (essential) character; they merely indicate what we think of as Quality but in the Intellectual Realm must still be Activity. Enneads II,6,3
But the Archetypes of all such qualities, the foundation in which they exist primarily, these are ACTIVITIES of the Intellectual Beings. Enneads II,6,3
But, they will tell us, the ACTIVITIES in question do proceed from a unity, from the Intellectual-Principle, a simplex. Enneads V,3,12
By that they admit the existence of a simplex prior to the ACTIVITIES; and they make the ACTIVITIES perdurable and class them as substantial existences (hypostases); but as Hypostases they will be distinct from their source, which will remain simplex; while its product will in its own nature be manifold and dependent upon it. Enneads V,3,12
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,6,6
The “mere predicates” fall under the category of Relation: such are cause and element. The accidents included in the composite substances ire found to be either Quality or Quantity; those which are inclusive are of the nature of Space and Time. ACTIVITIES and experiences comprise Motions; consequents Space and Time, which are consequents respectively of the Composites and of Motion. Enneads VI,3,3
For Intellectual-Principle is not a simplex, nor is the soul that proceeds from it: on the contrary things include variety in the degree of their simplicity, that is to say in so far as they are not compounds but Principles and ACTIVITIES; – the activity of the lowest is simple in the sense of being a fading-out, that of the First as the total of all activity. Intellectual-Principle is moved in a movement unfailingly true to one course, but its unity and identity are not those of the partial; they are those of its universality; and indeed the partial itself is not a unity but divides to infinity. Enneads VI,7,13
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,8,13