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,5,
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,
And if it is a Reason-Principle, one whose incoming constitutes the body, then clearly this Principle contains embraced within itself all the qualities. If this Reason-Principle is to be no mere principle of definition exhibiting the nature of a thing but a veritable Reason constituting the thing, then it cannot itself contain Matter but must encircle Matter, and by being present to Matter elaborate the body: thus the body will be Matter associated with an indwelling Reason-Principle which will be in itself immaterial, pure Idea, even though irremoveably attached to the body. It is not to be confounded with that other Principle in man – treated elsewhere – which dwells in the Intellectual World by right of being itself an INTELLECTUAL PRINCIPLE. Enneads II,7,
We need not, then, go seeking any other Principles; this – the One and the Good – is our First; next to it follows the INTELLECTUAL PRINCIPLE, the Primal Thinker; and upon this follows Soul. Such is the order in nature. The Intellectual Realm allows no more than these and no fewer. Enneads II,9,
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,9,
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,9,
The relationship may be presented thus: The authentic and primal Kosmos is the Being of the INTELLECTUAL PRINCIPLE and of the Veritable Existent. This contains within itself no spatial distinction, and has none of the feebleness of division, and even its parts bring no incompleteness to it since here the individual is not severed from the entire. In this Nature inheres all life and all intellect, a life living and having intellection as one act within a unity: every part that it gives forth is a whole; all its content is its very own, for there is here no separation of thing from thing, no part standing in isolated existence estranged from the rest, and therefore nowhere is there any wronging of any other, any opposition. Everywhere one and complete, it is at rest throughout and shows difference at no point; it does not make over any of its content into any new form; there can be no reason for changing what is everywhere perfect. Enneads III,2,
The INTELLECTUAL PRINCIPLE, then, in its unperturbed serenity has brought the universe into being, by communicating from its own store to Matter: and this gift is the Reason-Form flowing from it. For the Emanation of the INTELLECTUAL PRINCIPLE is Reason, an emanation unfailing as long as the INTELLECTUAL PRINCIPLE continues to have place among beings. Enneads III,2,
So from this, the One INTELLECTUAL PRINCIPLE, and the Reason-Form emanating from it, our Universe rises and develops part, and inevitably are formed groups concordant and helpful in contrast with groups discordant and combative; sometimes of choice and sometimes incidentally, the parts maltreat each other; engendering proceeds by destruction. Enneads III,2,
Yet: Amid all that they effect and accept, the divine Realm imposes the one harmonious act; each utters its own voice, but all is brought into accord, into an ordered system, for the universal purpose, by the ruling Reason-Principle. This Universe is not Intelligence and Reason, like the Supernal, but participant in Intelligence and Reason: it stands in need of the harmonizing because it is the meeting ground of Necessity and divine Reason-Necessity pulling towards the lower, towards the unreason which is its own characteristic, while yet the INTELLECTUAL PRINCIPLE remains sovereign over it. Enneads III,2,
Holding, therefore, as we do, despite all, that the Universe lies under an INTELLECTUAL PRINCIPLE whose power has touched every existent, we cannot be absolved from the attempt to show in what way the detail of this sphere is just. Enneads III,2,
Suppose this Universe were the direct creation of the Reason-Principle applying itself, quite unchanged, to Matter, retaining, that is, the hostility to partition which it derives from its Prior, the INTELLECTUAL PRINCIPLE – then, this its product, so produced, would be of supreme and unparalleled excellence. But the Reason-Principle could not be a thing of entire identity or even of closely compact diversity; and the mode in which it is here manifested is no matter of censure since its function is to be all things, each single thing in some distinctive way. Enneads III,2,
The ordinance of the Kosmos, then, is in keeping with the INTELLECTUAL PRINCIPLE. True, no reasoning went to its creation, but it so stands that the keenest reasoning must wonder – since no reasoning could be able to make it otherwise – at the spectacle before it, a product which, even in the Kinds of the partial and particular Sphere, displays the Divine Intelligence to a degree in which no arranging by reason could express it. Every one of the ceaselessly recurrent types of being manifests a creating Reason-Principle above all censure. No fault is to be found unless on the assumption that everything ought to come into being with all the perfection of those that have never known such a coming, the Eternals. In that case, things of the Intellectual realm and things of the realm of sense must remain one unbroken identity for ever. Enneads III,2,
This Reason-Principle, then – let us dare the definition in the hope of conveying the truth – this Logos is not the INTELLECTUAL PRINCIPLE unmingled, not the Absolute Divine Intellect; nor does it descend from the pure Soul alone; it is a dependent of that Soul while, in a sense, it is a radiation from both those divine Hypostases; the INTELLECTUAL PRINCIPLE and the Soul – the Soul as conditioned by the INTELLECTUAL PRINCIPLE engender this Logos which is a Life holding restfully a certain measure of Reason. Enneads III,2,
Then the Reason-Principle has measured things out with the set purpose of inequality? Certainly not: the inequality is inevitable by the nature of things: the Reason-Principle of this Universe follows upon a phase of the Soul; the Soul itself follows upon an INTELLECTUAL PRINCIPLE, and this INTELLECTUAL PRINCIPLE is not one among the things of the Universe but is all things; in all things, there is implied variety of things; where there is variety and not identity there must be primals, secondaries, tertiaries and every grade downward. Forms of life, then, there must be that are not pure Soul but the dwindling of Souls enfeebled stage by stage of the process. There is, of course, a Soul in the Reason-Principle constituting a living being, but it is another Soul (a lesser phase), not that (the Supreme Soul) from which the Reason-Principle itself derives; and this combined vehicle of life weakens as it proceeds towards matter, and what it engenders is still more deficient. Consider how far the engendered stands from its origin and yet, what a marvel! Enneads III,3,
There is, then a Providence, which permeates the Kosmos from first to last, not everywhere equal, as in a numerical distribution, but proportioned, differing, according to the grades of place – just as in some one animal, linked from first to last, each member has its own function, the nobler organ the higher activity while others successively concern the lower degrees of the life, each part acting of itself, and experiencing what belongs to its own nature and what comes from its relation with every other. Strike, and what is designed for utterance gives forth the appropriate volume of sound while other parts take the blow in silence but react in their own especial movement; the total of all the utterance and action and receptivity constitutes what we may call the personal voice, life and history of the living form. The parts, distinct in Kind, have distinct functions: the feet have their work and the eyes theirs; the understanding serves to one end, the INTELLECTUAL PRINCIPLE to another. Enneads III,3,
But this exalts the Sage above the INTELLECTUAL PRINCIPLE as possessing for presiding spirit the Prior to the INTELLECTUAL PRINCIPLE: how then does it come about that he was not, from the very beginning, all that he now is? The failure is due to the disturbance caused by birth – though, before all reasoning, there exists the instinctive movement reaching out towards its own. Enneads III,4,
The Heavenly Aphrodite, daughter of Kronos who is no other than the INTELLECTUAL PRINCIPLE – must be the Soul at its divinest: unmingled as the immediate emanation of the unmingled; remaining ever Above, as neither desirous nor capable of descending to this sphere, never having developed the downward tendency, a divine Hypostasis essentially aloof, so unreservedly an Authentic Being as to have no part with Matter – and therefore mythically “the unmothered” justly called not Celestial Spirit but God, as knowing no admixture, gathered cleanly within itself. Enneads III,5,
Any Nature springing directly from the INTELLECTUAL PRINCIPLE must be itself also a clean thing: it will derive a resistance of its own from its nearness to the Highest, for all its tendency, no less than its fixity, centres upon its author whose power is certainly sufficient to maintain it Above. Enneads III,5,
As a mighty Intellect and Soul, he must be a principle of Cause; he must be the highest for several reasons but especially because to be King and Leader is to be the chief cause: Zeus then is the INTELLECTUAL PRINCIPLE. Aphrodite, his daughter, issue of him, dwelling with him, will be Soul, her very name Aphrodite (= the habra, delicate) indicating the beauty and gleam and innocence and delicate grace of the Soul. Enneads III,5,
And if we take the male gods to represent the Intellectual Powers and the female gods to be their souls – to every INTELLECTUAL PRINCIPLE its companion Soul – we are forced, thus also, to make Aphrodite the Soul of Zeus; and the identification is confirmed by Priests and Theologians who consider Aphrodite and Hera one and the same and call Aphrodite’s star the star of Hera. Enneads III,5,
The INTELLECTUAL PRINCIPLE possesses Itself to satiety, but there is no “drunken” abandonment in this possession which brings nothing alien to it. But the Reason-Principle – as its offspring, a later hypostasis – is already a separate Being and established in another Realm, and so is said to lie in the garden of this Zeus who is divine Mind; and this lying in the garden takes place at the moment when, in our way of speaking, Aphrodite enters the realm of Being. Enneads III,5,
Yes: but this very harmony constituting the virtue of the Soul must depend upon a previous virtue, that of each several faculty within itself; and before there can be the vice of discord there must be the vice of the single parts, and these can be bad only by the actual presence of vice as they can be good only by the presence of virtue. It is true that no presence is affirmed when vice is identified with ignorance in the reasoning faculty of the Soul; ignorance is not a positive thing; but in the presence of false judgements – the main cause of vice – must it not be admitted that something positive has entered into the Soul, something perverting the reasoning faculty? So, the initiative faculty; is it not, itself, altered as one varies between timidity and boldness? And the desiring faculty, similarly, as it runs wild or accepts control? Our teaching is that when the particular faculty is sound it performs the reasonable act of its essential nature, obeying the reasoning faculty in it which derives from the INTELLECTUAL PRINCIPLE and communicates to the rest. And this following of reason is not the acceptance of an imposed shape; it is like using the eyes; the Soul sees by its act, that of looking towards reason. The faculty of sight in the performance of its act is essentially what it was when it lay latent; its act is not a change in it, but simply its entering into the relation that belongs to its essential character; it knows – that is, sees – without suffering any change: so, precisely, the reasoning phase of the Soul stands towards the INTELLECTUAL PRINCIPLE; this it sees by its very essence; this vision is its knowing faculty; it takes in no stamp, no impression; all that enters it is the object of vision – possessed, once more, without possession; it possesses by the fact of knowing but “without possession” in the sense that there is no incorporation of anything left behind by the object of vision, like the impression of the seal on sealing-wax. Enneads III,6,
Hence its eternity, its identity, its utter irreceptivity and impermeability. If it took in anything, it must be taking in something outside itself, that is to say, Existence would at last include non-existence. But it must be Authentic Existence all through; it must, therefore, present itself equipped from its own stores with all that makes up Existence so that all stands together and all is one thing. The Existent (Real Being) must have thus much of determination: if it had not, then it could not be the source of the INTELLECTUAL PRINCIPLE and of Life which would be importations into it originating in the sphere of non-Being; and Real Being would be lifeless and mindless; but mindlessness and lifelessness are the characteristics of non-being and must belong to the lower order, to the outer borders of the existent; for Intellect and Life rise from the Beyond-Existence (the Indefinable Supreme) – though Itself has no need of them – and are conveyed from It into the Authentic Existent. Enneads III,6,
Matter is no Soul; it is not Intellect, is not Life, is no Ideal-Principle, no Reason-Principle; it is no limit or bound, for it is mere indetermination; it is not a power, for what does it produce? It lives on the farther side of all these categories and so has no tide to the name of Being. It will be more plausibly called a non-being, and this in the sense not of movement (away from Being) or station (in Not-Being) but of veritable Not-Being, so that it is no more than the image and phantasm of Mass, a bare aspiration towards substantial existence; it is stationary but not in the sense of having position, it is in itself invisible, eluding all effort to observe it, present where no one can look, unseen for all our gazing, ceaselessly presenting contraries in the things based upon it; it is large and small, more and less, deficient and excessive; a phantasm unabiding and yet unable to withdraw – not even strong enough to withdraw, so utterly has it failed to accept strength from the INTELLECTUAL PRINCIPLE, so absolute its lack of all Being. Enneads III,6,
Magnitude is not, like Matter, a receptacle; it is an Ideal-Principle: it is a thing standing apart to itself, not some definite Mass. The fact is that the self-gathered content of the INTELLECTUAL PRINCIPLE or of the All-Soul, desires expansion (and thereby engenders secondaries): in its images – aspiring and moving towards it and eagerly imitating its act – is vested a similar power of reproducing their states in their own derivatives. The Magnitude latent in the expansive tendency of the Image-making phase (of Intellect or All-Soul) runs forth into the Absolute Magnitude of the Universe; this in turn enlists into the process the spurious magnitude of Matter: the content of the Supreme, thus, in virtue of its own prior extension enables Matter – which never possesses a content – to exhibit the appearance of Magnitude. It must be understood that spurious Magnitude consists in the fact that a thing (Matter) not possessing actual Magnitude strains towards it and has the extension of that straining. All that is Real Being gives forth a reflection of itself upon all else; every Reality, therefore, has Magnitude which by this process is communicated to the Universe. Enneads III,6,
Eternity, therefore – while not the Substratum (not the essential foundation of the Divine or INTELLECTUAL PRINCIPLE) – may be considered as the radiation of this Substratum: it exists as the announcement of the Identity in the Divine, of that state – of being thus and not otherwise – which characterizes what has no futurity but eternally is. Enneads III,7,
The Soul, once domiciled within that Idea and brought to likeness with it, becomes productive, active; what it always held by its primary nature it now grasps with knowledge and applies in deed, so becoming, as it were, a new thing and, informed as it now is by the purely intellectual, it sees (in its outgoing act) as a stranger looking upon a strange world. It was, no doubt, essentially a Reason-Principle, even an INTELLECTUAL PRINCIPLE; but its function is to see a (lower) realm which these do not see. Enneads III,8,
These Beings (the Reason-Principles of this sphere) are divine in virtue of cleaving to the Supreme, because, by the medium of the Soul thought of as descending they remain linked with the Primal Soul, and through it are veritably what they are called and possess the vision of the INTELLECTUAL PRINCIPLE, the single object of contemplation to that soul in which they have their being. Enneads IV,3,
The souls of men, seeing their images in the mirror of Dionysus as it were, have entered into that realm in a leap downward from the Supreme: yet even they are not cut off from their origin, from the divine Intellect; it is not that they have come bringing the INTELLECTUAL PRINCIPLE down in their fall; it is that though they have descended even to earth, yet their higher part holds for ever above the heavens. Enneads IV,3,
So it is with the act of vision in the INTELLECTUAL PRINCIPLE. Enneads V,5,
Now the reasoning faculty which undertakes this problem is not a unity but a thing of parts; it brings the bodily nature into the enquiry, borrowing its principles from the corporeal: thus it thinks of the Essential Existence as corporeal and as a thing of parts; it baulks at the unity because it does not start from the appropriate principles. We, however, must be careful to bring the appropriately convincing principles to the discussion of the Unity, of perfect Being: we must hold to the Intellectual principles which alone apply to the Intellectual Order and to Real Being. Enneads VI,5,