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 VIII.
If we are answered that the distinction is merely a process of our thought, then, at once, the theory of a plurality in the Divine Hypostasis is abandoned: further, the question is opened whether our thought can entertain a KNOWING PRINCIPLE so narrowed to its knowing as not to know that it knows – a limitation which would be charged as imbecility even in ourselves, who if but of very ordinary moral force are always master of our emotions and mental processes. Enneads: II VIII.
(D) The Primal is a potentiality of Movement and of Repose – and so is above and beyond both – its next subsequent has rest and movement about the Primal. Now this subsequent is the Intellectual-Principle – so characterized by having intellection of something not identical with itself whereas the Primal is without intellection. A KNOWING PRINCIPLE has duality (that entailed by being the knower of something) and, moreover, it knows itself as deficient since its virtue consists in this knowing and not in its own bare Being. Enneads III,8,
We begin with the soul, asking whether it is to be allowed self-knowledge and what the KNOWING PRINCIPLE in it would be and how operating. Enneads V,3,
In sum, then, a KNOWING PRINCIPLE must handle distinct items: its object must, at the moment of cognition, contain diversity; otherwise the thing remains unknown; there is mere conjunction, such a contact, without affirmation or comprehension, as would precede knowledge, the intellect not yet in being, the impinging agent not percipient. Enneads V,3,
Similarly the KNOWING PRINCIPLE itself cannot remain simplex, especially in the act of self-knowing: all silent though its self-perception be, it is dual to itself. Of course it has no need of minute self-handling since it has nothing to learn by its intellective act; before it is (effectively) Intellect, it holds knowledge of its own content. Knowledge implies desire, for it is, so to speak, discovery crowning a search; the utterly undifferentiated remains self-centred and makes no enquiry about that self: anything capable of analysing its content, must be a manifold. Enneads V,3,
But how can the Intellectual-Principle be a product of the Intellectual Object? In this way: the intellectual object is self-gathered (self-compact) and is not deficient as the seeing and KNOWING PRINCIPLE must be – deficient, mean, as needing an object – it is therefore no unconscious thing: all its content and accompaniment are its possession; it is self-distinguishing throughout; it is the seat of life as of all things; it is, itself, that self-intellection which takes place in eternal repose, that is to say, in a mode other than that of the Intellectual-Principle. Enneads V,4,
If the Intellectual-Principle were envisaged as preceding Being, it would at once become a principle whose expression, its intellectual Act, achieves and engenders the Beings: but, since we are compelled to think of existence as preceding that which knows it, we can but think that the Beings are the actual content of the KNOWING PRINCIPLE and that the very act, the intellection, is inherent to the Beings, as fire stands equipped from the beginning with fire-act; in this conception, the Beings contain the Intellectual-Principle as one and the same with themselves, as their own activity. Thus, Being is itself an activity: there is one activity, then, in both or, rather, both are one thing. Enneads V,8,
If the KNOWING PRINCIPLE – and specially primal Intellectual-Principle – is valuable and beautiful, what must be present to those of power to see the Author and Father of Intellect? Anyone thinking slightingly of this principle of Life and Being brings evidence against himself and all his state: of course, distaste for the life that is mingled with death does not touch that Life Authentic. Enneads VI,7,