III. 2. 2
(Armstrong Selection and Translation from the Enneads)
(From the unity of Noûs proceeds the conflicting diversity of the visible universe, in which the principle of unity manifests itself by bringing about a harmony of contending opposites.)
It is like the logos in a seed, in which all the parts are together in identity; no one part fights another or differs from it or gets in its way; then it acquires mass and different parts come to be in different places, and they get in each other’s way, and one consumes another: in the same way this universe has arisen and developed in separation of parts from one Noûs and the Logos which proceeds from it; and of necessity some parts develop friendly and kind, others hostile and inimical; willingly or unwillingly they injure each other, and they bring about each other’s birth by their own destruction: yet all the same parts like this, in their action on and experience of each other, bring into being a single concord, as each utters its own notes; and the Logos over them makes a concord, a single order for the whole.