Well, perhaps even the less good has its contributory value in the All. Perhaps there is no need that everything be good. Contraries may co-operate; and without opposites there could be no ordered Universe: all living beings of the partial realm include contraries. The better elements are compelled into existence and moulded to their function by the Reason-Principle directly; the less good are potentially present in the Reason-Principles, actually present in the phenomena themselves; the Soul’s power had reached its limit, and failed to bring the Reason-Principles into complete actuality since, amid the clash of these antecedent Principles, Matter had already from its own stock produced the less good. Enneads II,3,16
Still, must not the nature of this Undetermined be annulled by the entry of Determination, especially where this is no mere attribute? No doubt to introduce quantitative determination into an undetermined object would annul the original state; but in the particular case, the introduction of determination only confirms the original state, bringing it into actuality, into full effect, as sowing brings out the natural quality of land or as a female organism impregnated by the male is not defeminized but becomes more decidedly of its sex; the thing becomes more emphatically itself. Enneads II,4,16
Fifth tractate – On potentiality and actuality. Enneads II,5,16
Sometimes after it has turned its potentiality into actuality it will remain what it was; sometimes it will sink itself to the fullest extent in the new form and itself disappear: these two different modes are exemplified in (1) bronze as potentially a statue and (2) water [= primal-liquid] as potentially bronze or, again, air as potentially fire. Enneads II,5,1
Then the question rises whether Matter – potentially what it becomes by receiving shape – is actually something else or whether it has no actuality at all. In general terms: When a potentiality has taken a definite form, does it retain its being? Is the potentiality, itself, in actualization? The alternative is that, when we speak of the “Actual Statue” and of the “Potential Statue,” the Actuality is not predicated of the same subject as the “Potentiality.” If we have really two different subjects, then the potential does not really become the actual: all that happens is that an actual entity takes the place of a potential. Enneads II,5,2
If, then, the Potentiality is the Substratum while the thing in actualization – the Statue for example a combination, how are we to describe the form that has entered the bronze? There will be nothing unsound in describing this shape, this Form which has brought the entity from potentiality to actuality, as the actualization; but of course as the actualization of the definite particular entity, not as Actuality the abstract: we must not confuse it with the other actualization, strictly so called, that which is contrasted with the power producing actualization. The potential is led out into realization by something other than itself; power accomplishes, of itself, what is within its scope, but by virtue of Actuality [the abstract]: the relation is that existing between a temperament and its expression in act, between courage and courageous conduct. So far so good: Enneads II,5,2
Now: if there is no Matter there to harbour potentiality: if nothing there has any future apart from its actual mode: if nothing there generates, whether by changes or in the permanence of its identity; if nothing goes outside of itself to give being to what is other than itself; then, potentiality has no place there: the Beings there possess actuality as belonging to eternity, not to time. Enneads II,5,3
Its actuality is that of being a phantasm, the actuality of being a falsity; and the false in actualization is the veritably false, which again is Authentic Non-Existence. Enneads II,5,5
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,9,1
Very good: but is it not different before and after acquiring the memory? Be it so; but it has suffered no change – unless we are to think of the mere progress from latency to actuality as change – nothing has been introduced into the mind; it has simply achieved the Act dictated by its nature. Enneads III,6,2
(E) In the case of everything which has developed from possibility to actuality the actual is that which remains self-identical for its entire duration – and this it is which makes perfection possible even in things of the corporeal order, as for instance in fire but the actual of this kind cannot be everlasting since [by the fact of their having once existed only in potentiality] Matter has its place in them. In anything, on the contrary, not composite [= never touched by Matter or potentiality] and possessing actuality, that actual existence is eternal… There is, however, the case, also in which a thing, itself existing in actuality, stands as potentiality to some other form of Being. Enneads III,9,3
If they treat God as they do the Intellectual-Principle – as later, engendered and deriving intellection from without – soul and intellect and God may prove to have no existence: this would follow if a potentiality could not come to existence, or does not become actual, unless the corresponding actuality exists. And what could lead it onward if there were no separate being in previous actuality? Even on the absurd supposition that the potentially existent brings itself to actuality, it must be looking to some Term, and that must be no potentiality but actual. Enneads IV,7,8
Thus the higher is the earlier, and it has a nature other than body, and it exists always in actuality: Intellectual-Principle and Soul precede Nature: thus, Soul does not stand at the level of pneuma or of body. Enneads IV,7,8
Now; if the soul has been so injected as to be assimilated into the body as the design of a statue is worked into the bronze, it will follow that, upon any dividing of the body, the soul is divided with it, and if any part of the body is cut away a fragment of soul must go with it. Since an Entelechy must be inseparable from the being of which it is the accomplished actuality, the withdrawal of the soul in sleep cannot occur; in fact sleep itself cannot occur. Moreover if the soul is an Entelechy, there is an end to the resistance offered by reason to the desires; the total [of body and Entelechy-Soul] must have one-uniform experience throughout, and be aware of no internal contradiction. Sense-perception might occur; but intellection would be impossible. The very upholders of the Entelechy are thus compelled to introduce another soul, the Intellect, to which they ascribe immortality. The reasoning soul, then, must be an Entelechy – if the word is to be used at all – in some other mode. Enneads IV,7,8
Thus, in sum, the soul, a divine being and a dweller in the loftier realms, has entered body; it is a god, a later phase of the divine: but, under stress of its powers and of its tendency to bring order to its next lower, it penetrates to this sphere in a voluntary plunge: if it turns back quickly, all is well; it will have taken no hurt by acquiring the knowledge of evil and coming to understand what sin is, by bringing its forces into manifest play, by exhibiting those activities and productions which, remaining merely potential in the unembodied, might as well never have been even there, if destined never to come into actuality, so that the soul itself would never have known that suppressed and inhibited total. Enneads IV,8,5
That archetypal world is the true Golden Age, age of Kronos, who is the Intellectual-Principle as being the offspring or exuberance of God. For here is contained all that is immortal: nothing here but is Divine Mind; all is God; this is the place of every soul. Here is rest unbroken: for how can that seek change, in which all is well; what need that reach to, which holds all within itself; what increase can that desire, which stands utterly achieved? All its content, thus, is perfect, that itself may be perfect throughout, as holding nothing that is less than the divine, nothing that is less than intellective. Its knowing is not by search but by possession, its blessedness inherent, not acquired; for all belongs to it eternally and it holds the authentic Eternity imitated by Time which, circling round the Soul, makes towards the new thing and passes by the old. Soul deals with thing after thing – now Socrates; now a horse: always some one entity from among beings – but the Intellectual-Principle is all and therefore its entire content is simultaneously present in that identity: this is pure being in eternal actuality; nowhere is there any future, for every then is a now; nor is there any past, for nothing there has ever ceased to be; everything has taken its stand for ever, an identity well pleased, we might say, to be as it is; and everything, in that entire content, is Intellectual-Principle and Authentic Existence; and the total of all is Intellectual-Principle entire and Being entire. Intellectual-Principle by its intellective act establishes Being, which in turn, as the object of intellection, becomes the cause of intellection and of existence to the Intellectual-Principle – though, of course, there is another cause of intellection which is also a cause to Being, both rising in a source distinct from either. Enneads V,1,4
But, soul reached, why need we look higher; why not make this The First? A main reason is that the Intellectual-Principle is at once something other and something more powerful than Soul and that the more powerful is in the nature of things the prior. For it is certainly not true, as people imagine, that the soul, brought to perfection, produces Intellect. How could that potentiality come to actuality unless there be, first, an effective principle to induce the actualization which, left to chance, might never occur? The Firsts must be supposed to exist in actuality, looking to nothing else, self-complete. Anything incomplete must be sequent upon these, and take its completion from the principles engendering it which, like fathers, labour in the improvement of an offspring born imperfect: the produced is a Matter to the producing principle and is worked over by it into a shapely perfection. Enneads V,9,4
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
In that Intellectual Kosmos, where all is one total, every entity that can be singled out is an intellective essence and a participant in life: thus, identity and difference, movement and rest with the object resting or moving, essence and quality, all have essential existence. For every real being must be in actuality not merely in potentiality and therefore the nature of each essence is inherent in it. Enneads V,9,10
Above all, has Relation – for example, that of right and left, double and half – any actuality? Has it, perhaps, actuality in some cases only, as for instance in what is termed “posterior” but not in what is termed “prior”? Or is its actuality in no case conceivable? What meaning, then, are we to attach to double and half and all other cases of less and more; to habit and disposition, reclining, sitting, standing; to father, son, master, slave; to like, unlike, equal, unequal; to active and passive, measure and measured; or again to knowledge and sensation, as related respectively to the knowable and the sensible? Knowledge, indeed, may be supposed to entail in relation to the known object some actual entity corresponding to that object’s Ideal Form, and similarly with sensation as related to the sense-object. The active will perform some constant function in relation to the passive, as will the measure in relation to the measured. Enneads VI,1,6
Our task, thus, is to give full value to this elusive character of Relation, and, then to enquire what there is that is constant in all these particular cases and whether this constant is generic or accidental; and having found this constant, we must discover what sort of actuality it possesses. Enneads VI,1,7
It need hardly be said that we are not to affirm Relation where one thing is simply an attribute of another, as a habit is an attribute of a soul or of a body; it is not Relation when a soul belongs to this individual or dwells in that body. Relation enters only when the actuality of the relationships is derived from no other source than Relation itself; the actuality must be, not that which is characteristic of the substances in question, but that which is specifically called relative. Thus double with its correlative, half gives actuality neither to two yards’ length or the number two, nor to one yard’s length or the number one; what happens is that, when these quantities are viewed in their relation, they are found to be not merely two and one respectively, but to produce the assertion and to exhibit the fact of standing one to the other in the condition of double and half. Out of the objects in a certain conjunction this condition of being double and half has issued as something distinct from either; double and half have emerged as correlatives, and their being is precisely this of mutual dependence; the double exists by its superiority over the half, and the half by its inferiority; there is no priority to distinguish double from half; they arise simultaneously. Enneads VI,1,7
How then shall we distinguish relations? We may observe that some things have an inactive or dormant relation, with which their actuality is entirely simultaneous; others, combining power and function with their relation, have the relation in some mode always even though the mode be merely that of potentiality, but attain to actual being only in contact with their correlatives. Or perhaps all distinctions may be reduced to that between producer and product, where the product merely gives a name to the producer of its actuality: an example of this is the relation of father to son, though here both producer and product have a sort of actuality, which we call life. Enneads VI,1,8
Motion is thought of as imperfect, not because it is not an Act, but because, entirely an Act, it yet entails repetition [lacks finality]. It repeats, not in order that it may achieve actuality – it is already actual – but that it may attain a goal distinct from itself and posterior: it is not the motion itself that is then consummated but the result at which it aims. Walking is walking from the outset; when one should traverse a racecourse but has not yet done so, the deficiency lies not in the walking – not in the motion – but in the amount of walking accomplished; no matter what the amount, it is walking and motion already: a moving man has motion and a cutter cuts before there is any question of Quantity. And just as we can speak of Act without implying time, so we can of Motion, except in the sense of motion over a defined area; Act is timeless, and so is Motion pure and simple. Enneads VI,1,16
But the error in this theory is fundamental. To set Matter the potential above everything, instead of recognising the primacy of actuality, is in the highest degree perverse. If the potential holds the primacy among the Existents, its actualization becomes impossible; it certainly cannot bring itself into actuality: either the actual exists previously, and so the potential is not the first-principle, or, if the two are to be regarded as existing simultaneously, the first-principles must be attributed to hazard. Besides, if they are simultaneous, why is not actuality given the primacy? Why is the potential more truly real than the actual? Supposing however that the actual does come later than the potential, how must the theory proceed? Obviously Matter does not produce Form: the unqualified does not produce Quality, nor does actuality take its origin in the potential; for that would mean that the actual was inherent in the potential, which at once becomes a dual thing. Enneads VI,1,26
As for the Relative State, if the theory does not include it in the same genus as the other States, another question arises: we must enquire whether any actuality is attributed to this particular type of relation, for to many types actuality is denied. Enneads VI,1,30
The great Intellect, we maintain, exists in itself and the particular intellects in themselves; yet the particulars are embraced in the whole, and the whole in the particulars. The particular intellects exist by themselves and in another, the universal by itself and in those. All the particulars exist potentially in that self-existent universal, which actually is the totality, potentially each isolated member: on the other hand, each particular is actually what it is [its individual self], potentially the totality. In so far as what is predicated of them is their essence, they are actually what is predicated of them; but where the predicate is a genus, they are that only potentially. On the other hand, the universal in so far as it is a genus is the potentiality of all its subordinate species, though none of them in actuality; all are latent in it, but because its essential nature exists in actuality before the existence of the species, it does not submit to be itself particularized. If then the particulars are to exist in actuality – to exist, for example, as species – the cause must lie in the Act radiating from the universal. Enneads VI,2,20
Now Soul has Intellect for its prior, is therefore circumscribed by number down to its ultimate extremity; at that point infinity is reached. The particular intellect, though all-embracing, is a partial thing, and the collective Intellect and its various manifestations [all the particular intellects] are in actuality parts of that part. Soul too is a part of a part, though in the sense of being an Act [actuality] derived from it. When the Act of Intellect is directed upon itself, the result is the manifold [particular] intellects; when it looks outwards, Soul is produced. Enneads VI,2,22
If we are agreed that Quality and Quantity, though attributive, are real entities, and on the basis of this reality distinguishable as Quality and Quantity respectively: then, on the same principle, since Motion, though an attribute has a reality prior to its attribution, it is incumbent upon us to discover the intrinsic nature of this reality. We must never be content to regard as a relative something which exists prior to its attribution, but only that which is engendered by Relation and has no existence apart from the relation to which it owes its name: the double, strictly so called, takes birth and actuality in juxtaposition with a yard’s length, and by this very process of being juxtaposed with a correlative acquires the name and exhibits the fact of being double. Enneads VI,3,21
But suppose that we identify alteration with Motion on the ground that Motion itself results in difference: how then do we proceed to define Motion? It may roughly be characterized as the passage from the potentiality to its realization. That is potential which can either pass into a Form – for example, the potential statue – or else pass into actuality – such as the ability to walk: whenever progress is made towards the statue, this progress is Motion; and when the ability to walk is actualized in walking, this walking is itself Motion: dancing is, similarly, the motion produced by the potential dancer taking his steps. Enneads VI,3,22
In short, the common basis of all Motion is the existence of a progression and an urge from potentiality and the potential to actuality and the actual: everything which has any kind of motion whatsoever derives this motion from a pre-existent potentiality within itself of activity or passivity. Enneads VI,3,22
Where, then, does Motion reside, when there is one thing that moves and another that passes from an inherent potentiality to actuality? In the mover? How then will the moved, the patient, participate in the motion? In the moved? Then why does not Motion remain in it, once having come? It would seem that Motion must neither be separated from the active principle nor allowed to reside in it; it must proceed from agent to patient without so inhering in the latter as to be severed from the former, passing from one to the other like a breath of wind. Enneads VI,3,23
Now in answer to this series of objections our first remark is that there does exist an actuality implicit in each one of the relations cited; though this is not the same for all or the same for correlatives or the same for every reference to unity. Enneads VI,6,12
Next we come to Being, fully realized, and this is the seat of Number; by Number, Being brings forth the Beings; its movement is planned to Number; it establishes the numbers of its offspring before bringing them to be, in the same way as it establishes its own unity by linking pure Being to the First: the numbers do not link the lower to the First; it suffices that Being is so linked; for Being, in taking form as Number, binds its members to itself. As a unity, it suffers no division, remaining self-constant; as a thing of division, containing its chosen total of members, it knows that total and so brings forth Number, a phase therefore of its content: its development of part is ruled by the powers of Number, and the Beings it produces sum to that Number. Thus Number, the primal and true, is Principle and source of actuality to the Beings. Enneads VI,6,15
Throughout this endless variation it maintains the one course because it is not, itself, subject to change but on the contrary is present as identical and unvarying Being to the rest of things. For if there be no such principle of unchanging identity to things, all is dead, activity and actuality exist nowhere. These “other things” through which it passes are also Intellectual-Principle itself; otherwise it is not the all-comprehending principle: if it is to be itself, it must be all-embracing; failing that, it is not itself. If it is complete in itself, complete because all-embracing, and there is nothing which does not find place in this total, then there can be nothing belonging to it which is not different; only by difference can there be such co-operation towards a total. If it knew no otherness but was pure identity its essential Being would be the less for that failure to fulfil the specific nature which its completion requires. Enneads VI,7,13
Giving need not comport possessing; in this order we are to think of a giver as a greater and of a gift as a lower; this is the meaning of origin among real Beings. First there must be an actualized thing; its laters must be potentially their own priors; a first must transcend its derivatives; the giver transcends the given, as a superior. If therefore there is a prior to actuality, that prior transcends Activity and so transcends Life. Our sphere containing life, there is a Giver of Life, a principle of greater good, of greater worth than Life; this possessed Life and had no need to look for it to any giver in possession of Life’s variety. Enneads VI,7,17
And when we say that neither does He absorb anything nor anything absorb Him, thus again we are setting Him outside of all happening – not only because we declare Him unique and untouched by all but in another way also. Suppose we found such a nature in ourselves; we are untouched by all that has gathered round us subjecting us to happening and chance; all that accruement was of the servile and lay exposed to chance: by this new state alone we acquire self-disposal and free act, the freedom of that light which belongs to the order of the good and is good in actuality, greater than anything Intellectual-Principle has to give, an actuality whose advantage over Intellection is no adventitious superiority. When we attain to this state and become This alone, what can we say but that we are more than free, more than self-disposing? And who then could link us to chance, hazard, happening, when thus we are become veritable Life, entered into That which contains no alloy but is purely itself? Isolate anything else and the being is inadequate; the Supreme in isolation is still what it was. The First cannot be in the soulless or in an unreasoning life; such a life is too feeble in being; it is reason dissipated, it is indetermination; only in the measure of approach towards reason is there liberation from happening; the rational is above chance. Ascending we come upon the Supreme, not as reason but as reason’s better: thus God is far removed from all happening: the root of reason is self-springing. Enneads VI,8,15