potential

Suppose, next, the Soul to be present like axe-form on iron: here, no doubt, the form is all important but it is still the axe, the complement of iron and form, that effects whatever is effected by the iron thus modified: on this analogy, therefore, we are even more strictly compelled to assign all the experiences of the combination to the body: their natural seat is the material member, the instrument, the POTENTIAL recipient of life. Enneads I,1,

Thus we have indicated the dominant note in the life of the Sage; but whether his possession of the minor virtues be actual as well as POTENTIAL, whether even the greater are in Act in him or yield to qualities higher still, must be decided afresh in each several case. Enneads I,2,

Now, to begin with: extension is not an imperative condition of being a recipient; it is necessary only where it happens to be a property inherent to the recipient’s peculiar mode of being. The Soul, for example, contains all things but holds them all in an unextended unity; if magnitude were one of its attributes it would contain things in extension. Matter does actually contain in spatial extension what it takes in; but this is because itself is a POTENTIAL recipient of spatial extension: animals and plants, in the same way, as they increase in size, take quality in parallel development with quantity, and they lose in the one as the other lessens. Enneads II,4,

Can we distinguish between Actuality (an absolute, abstract Principle) and the state of being-in-act? And if there is such an Actuality, is this itself in Act, or are the two quite distinct so that this actually existent thing need not be, itself, an Act? It is indubitable that Potentiality exists in the Realm of Sense: but does the Intellectual Realm similarly include the POTENTIAL or only the actual? and if the POTENTIAL exists there, does it remain merely POTENTIAL for ever? And, if so, is this resistance to actualization due to its being precluded (as a member of the Divine or Intellectual world) from time-processes? First we must make clear what POTENTIALity is. Enneads: II V.

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 V.

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 V.

Those, however, who assert Matter in the Intellectual Realm will be asked whether the existence of that Matter does not imply the POTENTIAL there too; for even if Matter there exists in another mode than here, every Being there will have its Matter, its form and the union of the two (and therefore the POTENTIAL, separable from the actual). What answer is to be made? Simply, that even the Matter there is Idea, just as the Soul, an Idea, is Matter to another (a higher) Being. Enneads: II V.

And light is incorporeal even when it is the light of a body; there is therefore no question, strictly speaking, of its withdrawal or of its being present – these terms do not apply to its modes – and its essential existence is to be an activity. As an example: the image upon a mirror may be described as an activity exercised by the reflected object upon the POTENTIAL recipient: there is no outgoing from the object (or ingoing into the reflecting body); it is simply that, as long as the object stands there, the image also is visible, in the form of colour shaped to a certain pattern, and when the object is not there, the reflecting surface no longer holds what it held when the conditions were favourable. Enneads IV,5,

Two bodies (i.e., by hypothesis, the soul and the human body) are blended, each entire through the entirety of the other; where the one is, the other is also; each occupies an equal extension and each the whole extension; no increase of size has been caused by the juncture: the one body thus inblended can have left in the other nothing undivided. This is no case of mixing in the sense of considerable portions alternating; that would be described as collocation; no; the incoming entity goes through the other to the very minutest point – an impossibility, of course; the less becoming equal to the greater; still, all is traversed throughout and divided throughout. Now if, thus, the inblending is to occur point by point, leaving no undivided material anywhere, the division of the body concerned must have been a division into (geometrical) points: an impossibility. The division is an infinite series – any material particle may be cut in two – and the infinities are not merely POTENTIAL, they are actual. Enneads IV,7,

Every dissoluble entity, that has come to be by way of groupment, must in the nature of things be broken apart by that very mode which brought it together: but the soul is one and simplex, living not in the sense of POTENTIAL reception of life but by its own energy; and this can be no cause of dissolution. Enneads IV,7,

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,

But even in the science, while the constituent selected for handling to meet a particular need is present actually and takes the lead, still all the other constituents accompany it in a POTENTIAL presence, so that the whole is in every part: only in this sense (of particular attention) is the whole science distinguished from the part: all, we may say, is here simultaneously effected: each part is at your disposal as you choose to take it; the part invites the immediate interest, but its value consists in its approach to the whole. Enneads IV,8,

And what else is there to attribute to it? Repose, no doubt; but, to an Intellectual-Principle, Repose is not an abdication from intellect; its Repose is an Act, the act of abstention from the alien: in all forms of existence repose from the alien leaves the characteristic activity intact, especially where the Being is not merely POTENTIAL but fully realized. Enneads V,3,

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,8,

We may be told that Reason-Principles suffice (to the subsistence of the All): but then these, clearly, must be eternal; and if eternal, if immune, then they must exist in an Intellectual-Principle such as we have indicated, a principle earlier than condition, than nature, than soul, than anything whose existence is POTENTIAL for contingent). Enneads V,8,

Does then the action constitute the genus, or the activity from which the action springs, in the same way as Quality is the genus from which the quale is derived? Perhaps activity, action and agent should all be embraced under a single head? But, on the one hand, the action – unlike activity – tends to comport the agent; and on the other, it signifies being in some activity and therefore Being-in-Act (actual as distinct from POTENTIAL Being). Consequently the category will be one of Act rather than of Action. Enneads: VI I

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 I

But does this assertion of certain genera which are at the same time first-principles imply that by combining the genera, each with its subordinates, we find the whole of Being in the resultant combination? But then, taken separately, their existence will not be actual but only POTENTIAL, and they will not be found in isolation. Enneads VI,2,

Being, then, containing many species, has but one genus. Motion, however, is to be classed as neither a subordinate nor a supplement of Being but as its concomitant; for we have not found Being serving as substrate to Motion. Motion is being Act; neither is separated from the other except in thought; the two natures are one; for Being is inevitably actual, not POTENTIAL. Enneads VI,2,

Now in the Act of Intellect there are energy and motion; in its self-intellection Substance and Being. In virtue of its Being it thinks, and it thinks of itself as Being, and of that as Being, upon which it is, so to speak, pivoted. Not that its Act self-directed ranks as Substance, but Being stands as the goal and origin of that Act, the object of its contemplation though not the contemplation itself: and yet this Act too involves Being, which is its motive and its term. By the fact that its Being is actual and not merely POTENTIAL, Intellect bridges the dualism (of agent and patient) and abjures separation: it identifies itself with Being and Being with itself. Enneads VI,2,

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,

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,

Now if this principle is to be a true unity – where the unity is of the essence – it must in some way be able to manifest itself as including the contrary nature, that of POTENTIAL multiplicity, while by the fact that this multiplicity belongs to it not as from without but as from and by itself, it remains authentically one, possessing boundlessness and multiplicity within that unity; its nature must be such that it can appear as a whole at every point; this, as encircled by a single self-embracing Reason-Principle, which holds fast about that unity, never breaking with itself but over all the universe remaining what it must be. Enneads VI,5,

But knowledge – must not this imply presence to the alien? No; knowledge, known and knower are an identity; so with all the rest; every member of Intellectual-Principle is therefore present to it primally; justice, for example, is not accidental to it as to soul in its character as soul, where these virtues are mainly POTENTIAL becoming actual by the intention towards Intellectual-Principle and association with it. Enneads VI,6,