“Selon Plotin, l’Intellect ne s’est pas constitué en une fois. Il n’émane pas du Principe comme une hypostase achevée d’emblée: ce qui procède initialement de l’Un est une entité illimitée, et indéterminée, ‘une vie universelle, multiple et infinie’, une ‘puissance universelle’ (dynamis pasa) qui est en elle même tous les êtres à la fois. Étant foncièrement éphesis, désir de contemplation, elle se tourne vers l’Un et reçoit, par cette conversion, limite, détermination. et forme, ce qui la constitue en tant que Noûs: ‘La vie qui a reçu une limite est intelligence’. Suite à la contemplation de l’Un, la vie indéterminée devient intellect; sa potentialité est actualisée, ce qui fait apparaître en son sein les Formes des êtres” (DE SMET, Daniel, Un élément pseudo-empédocléen chez Mullâ Sadrâ. In: Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosófica medievale (Firenze, 1999), p. 482). (ULLMANN, RAUP)
V. 9. 6 and beginning of 8
(Armstrong Selection and Translation from the Enneads AP)
(The unity of the Forms (the real beings) in Noûs described by analogy with unities-in-diversity on the lower planes of Soul and Nature.)
Let Noûs then be the real beings, and let all of them be in it, not as if it held them in place, but as holding itself and being one with them. They are all together There, and none the less are distinct. We can understand this by considering that the soul too contains in itself many different items of knowledge, but they are not at all confused and each when required performs its own function, and does not bring the others along with it; each thought acts clear of all the others which remain latent in the mind. In this way, but to a much greater degree, Noûs is all things together, and yet not all together, in the sense that each is a particular power. Noûs as a whole includes all things as a genus does the species or a whole the parts. The powers of seeds provide a likeness of what we are talking about: for all the parts are present undistinguished in the whole, and the logoi1 are there as if in a single centre. One is the logos of an eye, another of the hands; they are known to be different by reason of the perceptible things which are brought into being by them.
If the intellection of Noûs is of something internal to it, then this something internal is the internal Form, and this is the Idea. What then precisely is this? Noûs and intelligent substance; each individual idea is not something other than Noûs, but is Noûs. Noûs as a whole is all the Forms and each individual Form is an individual Noûs as a whole science is all its theorems and each theorem is a part of the whole science, not spatially separated from the whole but with its particular efficacy in the whole. This Noûs is, in itself and possessing itself, an everlasting fullness.