All until The Good is reached is beautiful; The Good is beyond-beautiful, beyond the Highest, holding kingly state in the Intellectual-Kosmos, that sphere constituted by a Principle wholly unlike what is known as Intelligence in us. Our INTELLIGENCE is nourished on the propositions of logic, is skilled in following discussions, works by reasonings, examines links of demonstration, and comes to know the world of Being also by the steps of logical process, having no prior grasp of Reality but remaining empty, all Intelligence though it be, until it has put itself to school. Enneads I,8,2
Such a notion could be entertained only where there is neither INTELLIGENCE nor even ordinary perception; and reason enough has been urged against it, though none is really necessary. Enneads III,2,1
In sum: Man has come into existence, a living being but not a member of the noblest order; he occupies by choice an intermediate rank; still, in that place in which he exists, Providence does not allow him to be reduced to nothing; on the contrary he is ever being led upwards by all those varied devices which the Divine employs in its labour to increase the dominance of moral value. The human race, therefore, is not deprived by Providence of its rational being; it retains its share, though necessarily limited, in wisdom, INTELLIGENCE, executive power and right doing, the right doing, at least, of individuals to each other – and even in wronging others people think they are doing right and only paying what is due. Enneads III,2,9
Now, no one of any INTELLIGENCE complains of these others, man’s inferiors, which serve to the adornment of the world; it would be feeble indeed to complain of animals biting man, as if we were to pass our days asleep. No: the animal, too, exists of necessity, and is serviceable in many ways, some obvious and many progressively discovered – so that not one lives without profit to itself and even to humanity. It is ridiculous, also, to complain that many of them are dangerous – there are dangerous men abroad as well – and if they distrust us, and in their distrust attack, is that anything to wonder at? Enneads III,2,9
Yet: our knowledge of everything else comes by way of our INTELLIGENCE; our power is that of knowing the intelligible by means of the INTELLIGENCE: but this Entity transcends all of the intellectual nature; by what direct intuition, then, can it be brought within our grasp? To this question the answer is that we can know it only in the degree of human faculty: we indicate it by virtue of what in ourselves is like it. Enneads III,8,9
In the case of things not endowed with INTELLIGENCE, the “leading-principle” is their mere unity – a lower reproduction of the soul’s efficiency. Enneads IV,2,2
Reasoning is for this sphere; it is the act of the soul fallen into perplexity, distracted with cares, diminished in strength: the need of deliberation goes with the less self-sufficing INTELLIGENCE; craftsmen faced by a difficulty stop to consider; where there is no problem their art works on by its own forthright power. Enneads IV,3,18
All bodies are in ceaseless process of dissolution; how can the kosmos be made over to any one of them without being turned into a senseless haphazard drift? This pneuma – orderless except under soul – how can it contain order, reason, INTELLIGENCE? But: given soul, all these material things become its collaborators towards the coherence of the kosmos and of every living being, all the qualities of all the separate objects converging to the purposes of the universe: failing soul in the things of the universe, they could not even exist, much less play their ordered parts. Enneads IV,7,3
The soul therefore (to attain self-knowledge) has only to set this image (that is to say, its highest phase) alongside the veritable Intellectual-Principle which we have found to be identical with the truths constituting the objects of intellection, the world of Primals and Reality: for this Intellectual-Principle, by very definition, cannot be outside of itself, the Intellectual Reality: self-gathered and unalloyed, it is Intellectual-Principle through all the range of its being – for unintelligent INTELLIGENCE is not possible – and thus it possesses of necessity self-knowing, as a being immanent to itself and one having for function and essence to be purely and solely Intellectual-Principle. This is no doer; the doer, not self-intent but looking outward, will have knowledge, in some kind, of the external, but, if wholly of this practical order, need have no self-knowledge; where, on the contrary, there is no action – and of course the pure Intellectual-Principle cannot be straining after any absent good – the intention can be only towards the self; at once self-knowing becomes not merely plausible but inevitable; what else could living signify in a being immune from action and existing in Intellect? Enneads V,3,6
The Intellectual-Principle, the veritably and essentially intellective, can this be conceived as ever falling into error, ever failing to think reality? Assuredly no: it would no longer be intelligent and therefore no longer Intellectual-Principle: it must know unceasingly – and never forget; and its knowledge can be no guesswork, no hesitating assent, no acceptance of an alien report. Nor can it call on demonstration or, we are told it may at times act by this or, I method, at least there must be something patent to it in virtue of its own nature. In actual fact reason tells us that all its knowledge is thus inherent to it, for there is no means by which to distinguish between the spontaneous knowledge and the other. But, in any case, some knowledge, it is conceded, is inherent to it. Whence are we to understand the certainty of this knowledge to come to it or how do its objects carry the conviction of their reality? Consider sense-knowledge: its objects seem most patently certified, yet the doubt returns whether the apparent reality may not lie in the states of the percipient rather than in the material before him; the decision demands INTELLIGENCE or reasoning. Besides, even granting that what the senses grasp is really contained in the objects, none the less what is thus known by the senses is an image: sense can never grasp the thing itself; this remains for ever outside. Enneads V,5,1
If on the contrary the objects of Intellectual-Principle are without INTELLIGENCE and life, what are they? They cannot be premises, axioms or predicates: as predicates they would not have real existence; they would be affirmations linking separate entities, as when we affirm that justice is good though justice and good are distinct realities. Enneads V,5,1
This Intellectual-Principle, if the term is to convey the truth, must be understood to be not a principle merely potential and not one maturing from unINTELLIGENCE to INTELLIGENCE – that would simply send us seeking, once more, a necessary prior – but a principle which is INTELLIGENCE in actuality and in eternity. Enneads V,9,5
Why are not beauty, goodness and the virtues, together with knowledge and INTELLIGENCE, included among the primary genera? If by goodness we mean The First – what we call the Principle of Goodness, the Principle of which we can predicate nothing, giving it this name only because we have no other means of indicating it – then goodness, clearly, can be the genus of nothing: this principle is not affirmed of other things; if it were, each of these would be Goodness itself. The truth is that it is prior to Substance, not contained in it. If, on the contrary, we mean goodness as a quality, no quality can be ranked among the primaries. Enneads VI,2,17
These problems at any rate all serve to show that, while in general it is necessary to look for differences by which to separate things from each other, to hunt for differences of the differences themselves is both futile and irrational. We cannot have substances of substances, quantities of quantities, qualities of qualities, differences of differences; differences must, where possible, be found outside the genus, in creative powers and the like: but where no such criteria are present, as in distinguishing dark-green from pale-green, both being regarded as derived from white and black, what expedient may be suggested? Sense-perception and INTELLIGENCE may be trusted to indicate diversity but not to explain it: explanation is outside the province of sense-perception, whose function is merely to produce a variety of information; while, as for INTELLIGENCE, it works exclusively with intuitions and never resorts to explanations to justify them; there is in the movements of INTELLIGENCE a diversity which separates one object from another, making further differentiation unnecessary. Enneads VI,3,18
How can we so dispart Being? We cannot break Life into parts; if the total was Life, the fragment is not. But we do not thus sunder Intelligence, one INTELLIGENCE in this man, another in that? No; such a fragment would not be Intelligence. But the Being of the individual? Once more, if the total thing is Being, then a fragment could not be. Are we told that in a body, a total of parts, every member is also a body? But here we are dividing not body but a particular quantity of body, each of those divisions being described as body in virtue of possessing the Form or Idea that constitutes body; and this Idea has no magnitude, is incapable of magnitude. Enneads VI,4,3
But, admitting this one soul at every point, how is there a particular soul of the individual and how the good soul and the bad? The one<one soul reaches to the individual but nonetheless contains all souls and all INTELLIGENCEs; this, because it is at once a unity and an infinity; it holds all its content as one yet with each item distinct, though not to the point of separation. Except by thus holding all its content as one-life entire, soul entire, all INTELLIGENCE – it could not be infinite; since the individualities are not fenced off from each other, it remains still one thing. It was to hold life not single but infinite and yet one life, one in the sense not of an aggregate built up but of the retention of the unity in which all rose. Strictly, of course, it is a matter not of the rising of the individuals but of their being eternally what they are; in that order, as there is no beginning, so there is no apportioning except as an interpretation by the recipient. What is of that realm is the ancient and primal; the relation to it of the thing of process must be that of approach and apparent merging with always dependence. Enneads VI,4,14
But (it will be objected) if this were a matter of mere thinking we might well admit that the intellectual concept, remaining concept, should take in the unintellectual, but where concept is identical with thing how can the one be an Intellection and the other without INTELLIGENCE? Would not this be Intellect making itself unintelligent? No: the thing is not unintelligent; it is Intelligence in a particular mode, corresponding to a particular aspect of Life; and just as life in whatever form it may appear remains always life, so Intellect is not annulled by appearing in a certain mode. Intellectual-Principle adapted to some particular living being does not cease to be the Intellectual-Principle of all, including man: take it where you will, every manifestation is the whole, though in some special mode; the particular is produced but the possibility is of all. In the particular we see the Intellectual-Principle in realization; the realized is its latest phase; in one case the last aspect is “horse”; at “horse” ended the progressive outgoing towards the lesser forms of life, as in another case it will end at something lower still. The unfolding of the powers of this Principle is always attended by some abandonment in regard to the highest; the outgoing is by loss, and by this loss the powers become one thing or another according to the deficiency of the life-form produced by the failing principle; it is then that they find the means of adding various requisites; the safeguards of the life becoming inadequate there appear nail, talon, fang, horn. Thus the Intellectual-Principle by its very descent is directed towards the perfect sufficiency of the natural constitution, finding there within itself the remedy of the failure. Enneads VI,7,9
An Intelligence not exercising Intellection would be unintelligent; where the nature demands knowing, not to know is to fail of INTELLIGENCE; but where there is no function, why import one and declare a defect because it is not performed? We might as well complain because the Supreme does not act as a physician. He has no task, we hold, because nothing can present itself to him to be done; he is sufficient; he need seek nothing beyond himself, he who is over all; to himself and to all he suffices by simply being what he is. Enneads VI,7,37
It does not see itself: seeing aims at acquisition: all this it abandons to the subsequent: in fact nothing found elsewhere can be There; even Being cannot be There. Nor therefore has it intellection which is a thing of the lower sphere where the first intellection, the only true, is identical with Being. Reason, perception, INTELLIGENCE, none of these can have place in that Principle in which no presence can be affirmed. Enneads VI,7,41
Again, Collective Being contains life and INTELLIGENCE – it is no dead thing – and so, once more, is a manifold. Enneads VI,9,2