This is certainly the case when a quite different thing results from the actualization-statue, for example, the combination, is distinctly different from the bronze, the base; where the resultant is something quite new, the Potentiality has clearly not, itself, become what is now actualized. But take the case where a person with a capacity for education becomes in fact educated: is not potentiality, here, identical with actualization? Is not the potentially wise Socrates the same man as the Socrates actually wise? But is an ignorant man a being of knowledge because he is so potentially? Is he, in virtue of his non-essential ignorance, potentially an instructed being? It is not because of his accidental ignorance that he is a being of Knowledge: it is because, ignorant though he be by accident, his mind, apt to knowledge, is the potentiality through which he may become so. Thus, in the case of the potentially instructed who have become so in fact, the potentiality is taken up into the actual; or, if we prefer to put it so, there is on the one side the potentiality while, on the other, there is the power in actual possession of the form. Enneads: II V.
Murders, death in all its guises, the reduction and sacking of cities, all must be to us just such a spectacle as the changing scenes of a play; all is but the varied incident of a plot, costume on and off, acted grief and lament. For on earth, in all the succession of life, it is not the Soul within but the Shadow outside of the authentic man, that grieves and complains and acts out the plot on this world stage which men have dotted with stages of their own constructing. All this is the doing of man knowing no more than to live the lower and outer life, and never perceiving that, in his weeping and in his graver doings alike, he is but at play; to handle austere matters austerely is reserved for the thoughtful: the other kind of man is himself a futility. Those incapable of thinking gravely read gravity into frivolities which correspond to their own frivolous Nature. Anyone that joins in their trifling and so comes to look on life with their eyes must understand that by lending himself to such idleness he has laid aside his own character. If Socrates himself takes part in the trifling, he trifles in the outer Socrates. Enneads III,2,
But what place is left for the particular souls, yours and mine and another’s? May we suppose the Soul to be appropriated on the lower ranges to some individual, but to belong on the higher to that other sphere? At this there would be a Socrates as long as Socrates’ soul remained in body; but Socrates ceases to exist, precisely on attainment of the highest. Enneads IV,3,
Enough on that point: we come now to the question of memory of the personality? There will not even be memory of the personality; no thought that the contemplator is the self – Socrates, for example – or that it is Intellect or Soul. In this connection it should be borne in mind that, in contemplative vision, especially when it is vivid, we are not at the time aware of our own personality; we are in possession of ourselves but the activity is towards the object of vision with which the thinker becomes identified; he has made himself over as matter to be shaped; he takes ideal form under the action of the vision while remaining, potentially, himself. This means that he is actively himself when he has intellection of nothing. Enneads IV,4,
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 I
If Socrates, Socrates’ soul, is external then the Authentic Socrates – to adapt the term – must be There; that is to say, the individual soul has an existence in the Supreme as well as in this world. If there is no such permanent endurance and what was Socrates may with change of time become another soul and be Pythagoras or someone else – then the individual Socrates has not that existence in the Divine. Enneads V,7,
But if [in virtue of this periodic return] each archetype may be reproduced by numerous existents, what need is there that there be distinct Reason-Principles and archetypes for each existent in any one period? Might not one [archetypal] man suffice for all, and similarly a limited number of souls produce a limitless number of men? No: one Reason-Principle cannot account for distinct and differing individuals: one human being does not suffice as the exemplar for many distinct each from the other not merely in material constituents but by innumerable variations of ideal type: this is no question of various pictures or images reproducing an original Socrates; the beings produced differ so greatly as to demand distinct Reason-Principles. The entire soul-period conveys with it all the requisite Reason-Principles, and so too the same existents appear once more under their action. Enneads V,7,
It must be observed that the Ideas will be of universals; not of Socrates but of Man: though as to man we may enquire whether the individual may not also have place There. Under the heading of individuality there is to be considered the repetition of the same feature from man to man, the simian type, for example, and the aquiline: the aquiline and the simian must be taken to be differences in the Idea of Man as there are different types of the animal: but Matter also has its effect in bringing about the degree of aquilinity. Similarly with difference of complexion, determined partly by the Reason-Principle, partly by Matter and by diversity of place. Enneads V,8,
But suppose that Date is defined not as time but as that which is in time; if by that which is in time is meant the subject – Socrates in the proposition “Socrates existed last year” – that subject is external to the notion of time, and we have again a duality. Enneads: VI I
What is that which, often taken for Being [for the Existent], is in our view Becoming and never really Being? Note however that these concepts are not to be taken as distinguished from each other in the sense of belonging to a genus, Something, divided into Being and Becoming; and we must not suppose that Plato took this view. It would be absurd to assign Being to the same genus as non-Being: this would be to make one genus of Socrates and his portrait. The division here [between what has Being and what is in Becoming] means a definite marking-off, a setting asunder, leading to the assertion that what takes the appearance of Being is not Being and implying that the nature of True Being has been quite misapprehended. Being, we are taught, must have the attribute of eternity, must be so constituted as never to belie its own nature. Enneads VI,2,
But perhaps we may think Substance validly defined as that which is not predicated of anything else. White and black are predicated of an object having one or other of these qualities; double presupposes something distinct from itself – we refer not to the half, but to the length of wood of which doubleness is affirmed. father qua father is a predicate; knowledge is predicated of the subject in whom the knowledge exists; space is the limit of something, time the measure of something. Fire, on the other hand, is predicated of nothing; wood as such is predicated of nothing; and so with man, Socrates, and the composite substance in general. Enneads VI,3,
It follows that the fact of “not being present in a subject [or substrate] is not universally true of Substance, unless presence in a subject be stipulated as not including the case of the part present in the whole or of one thing combining with another to form a distinct unity; a thing will not be present as in a subject in that with which it co-operates in the information of a composite substance. Form, therefore, is not present in Matter as in a subject, nor is Man so present in Socrates, since Man is part of Socrates. Enneads VI,3,
Substance, then, is that which is not present in a subject. But if we adopt the definition “neither present in a subject nor predicated of a subject,” we must add to the second “subject” the qualification “distinct,” in order that we may not exclude the case of Man predicated of a particular man. When I predicate Man of Socrates, it is as though I affirmed, not that a piece of wood is white, but that whiteness is white; for in asserting that Socrates is a man, I predicate Man [the universal] of a particular man, I affirm Man of the manhood in Socrates; I am really saying only that Socrates is Socrates, or that this particular rational animal is an animal. Enneads VI,3,
The case is not equivalent to predicating white of Socrates and Socrates of white: for Socrates remains the same, though white would appear to have a different meaning in the two propositions, since in predicating Socrates of white we include Socrates in the [whole] sphere of whiteness, whereas in the proposition “Socrates is white” whiteness is plainly an attribute of Socrates. Enneads VI,3,
But, our critic may pursue, Matter gives existence to the things implanted in it, just as Socrates gives existence to the whiteness implanted in himself? We reply that the higher being gives existence to the lower, the lower to the higher never. Enneads VI,3,
Turn to the case of Socrates: it is not Socrates who bestows manhood upon what previously was not Man, but Man upon Socrates; the individual man exists by participation in the universal. Enneads VI,3,
Besides, Socrates is merely a particular instance of Man; this particularity can have no effect whatever in adding to his essential manhood. Enneads VI,3,
We may be told that Man [the universal] is Form alone, Socrates Form in Matter. But on this very ground Socrates will be less fully Man than the universal; for the Reason-Principle will be less effectual in Matter. If, on the contrary, Man is not determined by Form alone, but presupposes Matter, what deficiency has Man in comparison with the material manifestation of Man, or the Reason-Principle in isolation as compared with its embodiment in a unit of Matter? Besides, the more general is by nature prior; hence, the Form-Idea is prior to the individual: but what is prior by nature is prior unconditionally. How then can the Form take a lower rank? The individual, it is true, is prior in the sense of being more readily accessible to our cognisance; this fact, however, entails no objective difference. Enneads VI,3,
Consider: the visible Socrates is a man, yet we give the name of Socrates to that likeness of him in a portrait, which consists of mere colours, mere pigments: similarly, it is a Reason-Principle which constitutes Socrates, but we apply the name Socrates to the Socrates we see: in truth, however, the colours and shapes which make up the visible Socrates are but reproductions of those in the Reason-Principle, while this Reason-Principle itself bears a corresponding relation to the truest Reason-Principle of Man. But we need not elaborate this point. Enneads VI,3,