celestial

The Will of God is able to cope with the ceaseless flux and escape of body stuff by ceaselessly reintroducing the known forms in new substances, thus ensuring perpetuity not to the particular item but to the unity of idea: now, seeing that objects of this realm possess no more than duration of form, why should CELESTIAL objects, and the CELESTIAL system itself, be distinguished by duration of the particular entity? Let us suppose this persistence to be the result of the all-inclusiveness of the CELESTIAL and universal – with its consequence, the absence of any outlying matter into which change could take place or which could break in and destroy. Enneads: II I

With this, we would have no longer the distinction of one order, the heavenly system, stable for ever, and another, the earthly, in process of decay: all would be alike except in the point of time; the CELESTIAL would merely be longer lasting. If, then, we accepted this duration of type alone as a true account of the All equally with its partial members, our difficulties would be eased – or indeed we should have no further problem – once the Will of God were shown to be capable, under these conditions and by such communication, of sustaining the Universe. Enneads: II I

But if we are obliged to allow individual persistence to any definite entity within the Kosmos then, firstly, we must show that the Divine Will is adequate to make it so; secondly, we have to face the question, What accounts for some things having individual persistence and others only the persistence of type? and, thirdly, we ask how the partial entities of the CELESTIAL system hold a real duration which would thus appear possible to all partial things. Enneads: II I

Supposing we accept this view and hold that, while things below the moon’s orb have merely type-persistence, the CELESTIAL realm and all its several members possess individual eternity; it remains to show how this strict permanence of the individual identity – the actual item eternally unchangeable – can belong to what is certainly corporeal, seeing that bodily substance is characteristically a thing of flux. Enneads: II I

Every living thing is a combination of soul and body-kind: the CELESTIAL sphere, therefore, if it is to be everlasting as an individual entity must be so in virtue either of both these constituents or of one of them, by the combination of soul and body or by soul only or by body only. Enneads: II I

Suppose such loss, suppose fire extinguished there, then a new fire must be kindled; so also if such loss by flux could occur in some of the superiors from which the CELESTIAL fire depends, that too must be replaced: but with such transmutations, while there might be something continuously similar, there would be, no longer, a Living All abidingly self-identical. Enneads: II I

But matters are involved here which demand specific investigation and cannot be treated as incidental merely to our present problem. We are faced with several questions: Is the heavenly system exposed to any such flux as would occasion the need of some restoration corresponding to nourishment; or do its members, once set in their due places, suffer no loss of substance, permanent by Kind? Does it consist of fire only, or is it mainly of fire with the other elements, as well, taken up and carried in the circuit by the dominant Principle? Our doctrine of the immortality of the heavenly system rests on the firmest foundation once we have cited the sovereign agent, the soul, and considered, besides, the peculiar excellence of the bodily substance constituting the stars, a material so pure, so entirely the noblest, and chosen by the soul as, in all living beings, the determining principle appropriates to itself the choicest among their characteristic parts. No doubt Aristotle is right in speaking of flame as a turmoil, fire insolently rioting; but the CELESTIAL fire is equable, placid, docile to the purposes of the stars. Enneads: II I

But how explain the permanence There, while the content of this sphere – its elements and its living things alike – are passing? The reason is given by Plato: the CELESTIAL order is from God, the living things of earth from the gods sprung from God; and it is law that the offspring of God endures. Enneads: II I

In other words, the CELESTIAL soul – and our souls with it – springs directly next from the Creator, while the animal life of this earth is produced by an image which goes forth from that CELESTIAL soul and may be said to flow downwards from it. Enneads: II I

We may now consider the question whether fire is the sole element existing in that CELESTIAL realm and whether there is any outgoing thence with the consequent need of renewal. Enneads: II I

But, in sum, do we abandon the teaching that all the elements enter into the composition of every living thing? For this sphere, no; but to lift clay into the heavens is against nature, contrary to the laws of her ordaining: it is difficult, too, to think of that swiftest of circuits bearing along earthly bodies in its course nor could such material conduce to the splendour and white glint of the CELESTIAL fire. Enneads: II I

Thus: In the universe as a whole there must necessarily be such a degree of solidity, that is to say, of resistance, as will ensure that the earth, set in the centre, be a sure footing and support to the living beings moving over it, and inevitably communicate something of its own density to them: the earth will possess coherence by its own unaided quality, but visibility by the presence of fire: it will contain water against the dryness which would prevent the cohesion of its particles; it will hold air to lighten its bulky matters; it will be in contact with the CELESTIAL fire – not as being a member of the sidereal system but by the simple fact that the fire there and our earth both belong to the ordered universe so that something of the earth is taken up by the fire as something of the fire by the earth and something of everything by everything else. Enneads: II I

In sum, then, no outside body is necessary to the heavens to ensure their permanence – or to produce their circular movement, for it has never been shown that their natural path would be the straight line; on the contrary the heavens, by their nature, will either be motionless or move by circle; all other movement indicates outside compulsion. We cannot think, therefore, that the heavenly bodies stand in need of replenishment; we must not argue from earthly frames to those of the CELESTIAL system whose sustaining soul is not the same, whose space is not the same, whose conditions are not those which make restoration necessary in this realm of composite bodies always in flux: we must recognise that the changes that take place in bodies here represent a slipping-away from the being (a phenomenon not incident to the CELESTIAL sphere) and take place at the dictate of a Principle not dwelling in the higher regions, one not powerful enough to ensure the permanence of the existences in which it is exhibited, one which in its coming into being and in its generative act is but an imitation of an antecedent Kind, and, as we have shown, cannot at every point possess the unchangeable identity of the Intellectual Realm. Enneads: II I

We must recognize that other men have attained the heights of goodness; we must admit the goodness of the CELESTIAL spirits, and above all of the gods – those whose presence is here but their contemplation in the Supreme, and loftiest of them, the lord of this All, the most blessed Soul. Rising still higher, we hymn the divinities of the Intellectual Sphere, and, above all these, the mighty King of that dominion, whose majesty is made patent in the very multitude of the gods. Enneads: II VIII.

Another difficulty: These people come upon earth not as Soul-Images but as veritable Souls; yet, by great stress and strain, one or two of them are able to stir beyond the limits of the world, and when they do attain Reminiscence barely carry with them some slight recollection of the Sphere they once knew: on the other hand, this Image, a new-comer into being, is able, they tell us – as also is its Mother – to form at least some dim representation of the CELESTIAL world. It is an Image, stamped in Matter, yet it not merely has the conception of the Supreme and adopts from that world the plan of this, but knows what elements serve the purpose. How, for instance, did it come to make fire before anything else? What made it judge fire a better first than some other object? Again, if it created the fire of the Universe by thinking of fire, why did it not make the Universe at a stroke by thinking of the Universe? It must have conceived the product complete from the first; the constituent elements would be embraced in that general conception. Enneads: II VIII.

And yet to conceive the vast span of the Heavens – to be great in that degree – to devise the obliquity of the Zodiac and the circling path of all the CELESTIAL bodies beneath it, and this earth of ours – and all in such a way that reason can be given for the plan – this could never be the work of an Image; it tells of that Power (the All-Soul) next to the very Highest Beings. Enneads: II VIII.

This school may lay claim to vision as a dignity reserved to themselves, but they are not any the nearer to vision by the claim – or by the boast that while the CELESTIAL powers, bound for ever to the ordering of the Heavens, can never stand outside the material universe, they themselves have their freedom in their death. This is a failure to grasp the very notion of “standing outside,” a failure to appreciate the mode in which the All-Soul cares for the unensouled. Enneads: II VIII.

But: if the evil in men is involuntary, if their own will has not made them what they are, how can we either blame wrong-doers or even reproach their victims with suffering through their own fault? If there is a Necessity, bringing about human wickedness either by force of the CELESTIAL movement or by a rigorous sequence set up by the First Cause, is not the evil a thin rooted in Nature? And if thus the Reason-Principle of the universe is the creator of evil, surely all is injustice? No: Men are no doubt involuntary sinners in the sense that they do not actually desire to sin; but this does not alter the fact that wrongdoers, of their own choice, are, themselves, the agents; it is because they themselves act that the sin is in their own; if they were not agents they could not sin. Enneads III,2,

Nor is the force of the CELESTIAL Movement such as to leave us powerless: if the universe were something outside and apart from us it would stand as its makers willed so that, once the gods had done their part, no man, however impious, could introduce anything contrary to their intention. But, as things are, efficient act does come from men: given the starting Principle, the secondary line, no doubt, is inevitably completed; but each and every principle contributes towards the sequence. Now Men are Principles, or, at least, they are moved by their characteristic nature towards all that is good, and that nature is a Principle, a freely acting cause. Enneads III,2,

Are we, then, to conclude that particular things are determined by Necessities rooted in Nature and by the sequence of causes, and that everything is as good as anything can be? No: the Reason-Principle is the sovereign, making all: it wills things as they are and, in its reasonable act, it produces even what we know as evil: it cannot desire all to be good: an artist would not make an animal all eyes; and in the same way, the Reason-Principle would not make all divine; it makes Gods but also CELESTIAL spirits, the intermediate order, then men, then the animals; all is graded succession, and this in no spirit of grudging but in the expression of a Reason teeming with intellectual variety. Enneads III,2,

Once that Soul which is the primal source of light to the heavens is recognized as an Hypostasis standing distinct and aloof it must be admitted that Love too is distinct and aloof though not, perhaps, so loftily CELESTIAL a being as the Soul. Our own best we conceive as inside ourselves and yet something apart; so, we must think of this Love – as essentially resident where the unmingling Soul inhabits. Enneads III,5,

This Love, then, leader of particular Souls to The Good, is twofold: the Love in the loftier Soul would be a god ever linking the Soul to the divine; the Love in the mingling Soul will be a CELESTIAL spirit. Enneads III,5,

Memory, by this account, commences after the soul has left the higher spheres; it is first known in the CELESTIAL period. Enneads IV,4,

A soul that has descended from the Intellectual region to the CELESTIAL and there comes to rest, may very well be understood to recognize many other souls known in its former state supposing that, as we have said, it retains recollection of much that it knew here. This recognition would be natural if the bodies with which those souls are vested in the CELESTIAL must reproduce the former appearance; supposing the spherical form (of the stars inhabited by souls in the mid-realm) means a change of appearance, recognition would go by character, by the distinctive quality of personality: this is not fantastic; conditions changing need not mean a change of character. If the souls have mutual conversation, this too would mean recognition. Enneads IV,4,

But those whose descent from the Intellectual is complete, how is it with them? They will recall their memories, of the same things, but with less force than those still in the CELESTIAL, since they have had other experiences to remember, and the lapse of time will have utterly obliterated much of what was formerly present to them. Enneads IV,4,

Well but can they not tell themselves that yesterday, or last year, they moved round the earth, that they lived yesterday or at any given moment in their lives? Their living is eternal, and eternity is an unchanging unity. To identify a yesterday or a last year in their movement would be like isolating the movement of one of the feet, and finding a this or a that and an entire series in what is a single act. The movement of the CELESTIAL beings is one movement: it is our measuring that presents us with many movements, and with distinct days determined by intervening nights: There all is one day; series has no place; no yesterday, no last year. Enneads IV,4,

We have learned, further, something of our human standing; we know that we too accomplish within the All a work not confined to the activity and receptivity of body in relation to body; we know that we bring to it that higher nature of ours, linked as we are by affinities within us towards the answering affinities outside us; becoming by our soul and the conditions of our kind thus linked – or, better, being linked by Nature – with our next highest in the CELESTIAL or demonic realm, and thence onwards with those above the Celestials, we cannot fail to manifest our quality. Still, we are not all able to offer the same gifts or to accept identically: if we do not possess good, we cannot bestow it; nor can we ever purvey any good thing to one that has no power of receiving good. Anyone that adds his evil to the total of things is known for what he is and, in accordance with his kind, is pressed down into the evil which he has made his own, and hence, upon death, goes to whatever region fits his quality – and all this happens under the pull of natural forces. Enneads IV,4,

Each is a principle of motion, each is self-living, each touches the same sphere by the same tentacles, each has intellection of the CELESTIAL order and of the super-CELESTIAL, each is seeking to win to what has essential being, each is moving upwards to the primal source. Enneads IV,7,

But there is yet another way to this knowledge: Admiring the world of sense as we look out upon its vastness and beauty and the order of its eternal march, thinking of the gods within it, seen and hidden, and the CELESTIAL spirits and all the life of animal and plant, let us mount to its archetype, to the yet more authentic sphere: there we are to contemplate all things as members of the Intellectual – eternal in their own right, vested with a self-springing consciousness and life – and, presiding over all these, the unsoiled Intelligence and the unapproachable wisdom. Enneads: V I