But it has been observed that the Couplement, too – especially before our emancipation – is a member of this total We, and in fact what the body experiences we say We experience. This then covers two distinct notions; sometimes it includes the brute-part, sometimes it transcends the brute. The body is brute touched to life; the true man is the other, going pure of the body, natively endowed with the VIRTUES which belong to the Intellectual-Activity, VIRTUES whose seat is the Separate Soul, the Soul which even in its dwelling here may be kept apart. (This Soul constitutes the human being) for when it has wholly withdrawn, that other Soul which is a radiation (or emanation) from it withdraws also, drawn after it. Enneads I,1,10
Those VIRTUES, on the other hand, which spring not from contemplative wisdom but from custom or practical discipline belong to the Couplement: to the Couplement, too, belong the vices; they are its repugnances, desires, sympathies. Enneads I,1,10
But does not Likeness by way of Virtue imply Likeness to some being that has Virtue? To what Divine Being, then, would our Likeness be? To the Being – must we not think? – in Which, above all, such excellence seems to inhere, that is to the Soul of the Kosmos and to the Principle ruling within it, the Principle endowed with a wisdom most wonderful. What could be more fitting than that we, living in this world, should become Like to its ruler? But, at the beginning, we are met by the doubt whether even in this Divine-Being all the VIRTUES find place – Moral-Balance (Sophrosyne), for example; or Fortitude where there can be no danger since nothing is alien; where there can be nothing alluring whose lack could induce the desire of possession. Enneads I,2,1
If, indeed, that aspiration towards the Intelligible which is in our nature exists also in this Ruling-Power, then need not look elsewhere for the source of order and of the VIRTUES in ourselves. Enneads I,2,1
But does this Power possess the Virtues? We cannot expect to find There what are called the Civic Virtues, the Prudence which belongs to the reasoning faculty; the Fortitude which conducts the emotional and passionate nature; the Sophrosyne which consists in a certain pact, in a concord between the passionate faculty and the reason; or Rectitude which is the due application of all the other VIRTUES as each in turn should command or obey. Enneads I,2,1
Is Likeness, then, attained, perhaps, not by these VIRTUES of the social order but by those greater qualities known by the same general name? And if so do the Civic Virtues give us no help at all? It is against reason, utterly to deny Likeness by these while admitting it by the greater: tradition at least recognizes certain men of the civic excellence as divine, and we must believe that these too had in some sort attained Likeness: on both levels there is virtue for us, though not the same virtue. Enneads I,2,1
Now, if it be admitted that Likeness is possible, though by a varying use of different VIRTUES and though the civic VIRTUES do not suffice, there is no reason why we should not, by VIRTUES peculiar to our state, attain Likeness to a model in which virtue has no place. Enneads I,2,1
So with us: it is from the Supreme that we derive order and distribution and harmony, which are VIRTUES in this sphere: the Existences There, having no need of harmony, order or distribution, have nothing to do with virtue; and, none the less, it is by our possession of virtue that we become like to Them. Enneads I,2,1
We come now to that other mode of Likeness which, we read, is the fruit of the loftier VIRTUES: discussing this we shall penetrate more deeply into the essence of the Civic Virtue and be able to define the nature of the higher kind whose existence we shall establish beyond doubt. Enneads I,2,3
To Plato, unmistakably, there are two distinct orders of virtue, and the civic does not suffice for Likeness: “Likeness to God,” he says, “is a flight from this world’s ways and things”: in dealing with the qualities of good citizenship he does not use the simple term Virtue but adds the distinguishing word civic: and elsewhere he declares all the VIRTUES without exception to be purifications. Enneads I,2,3
But in what sense can we call the VIRTUES purifications, and how does purification issue in Likeness? As the Soul is evil by being interfused with the body, and by coming to share the body’s states and to think the body’s thoughts, so it would be good, it would be possessed of virtue, if it threw off the body’s moods and devoted itself to its own Act – the state of Intellection and Wisdom – never allowed the passions of the body to affect it – the virtue of Sophrosyne – knew no fear at the parting from the body – the virtue of Fortitude – and if reason and the Intellectual-Principle ruled – in which state is Righteousness. Such a disposition in the Soul, become thus intellective and immune to passion, it would not be wrong to call Likeness to God; for the Divine, too, is pure and the Divine-Act is such that Likeness to it is Wisdom. Enneads I,2,3
The VIRTUES in the Soul run in a sequence correspondent to that existing in the over-world, that is among their exemplars in the Intellectual-Principle. Enneads I,2,7
In the Soul, the direction of vision towards the Intellectual-Principle is Wisdom and Prudence, soul-VIRTUES not appropriate to the Supreme where Thinker and Thought are identical. All the other VIRTUES have similar correspondences. Enneads I,2,7
And if the term of purification is the production of a pure being, then the purification of the Soul must produce all the VIRTUES; if any are lacking, then not one of them is perfect. Enneads I,2,7
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,2,7
Take, for example, Contemplative-Wisdom. If other guides of conduct must be called in to meet a given need, can this virtue hold its ground even in mere potentiality? And what happens when the VIRTUES in their very nature differ in scope and province? Where, for example, Sophrosyne would allow certain acts or emotions under due restraint and another virtue would cut them off altogether? And is it not clear that all may have to yield, once Contemplative-Wisdom comes into action? The solution is in understanding the VIRTUES and what each has to give: thus the man will learn to work with this or that as every several need demands. And as he reaches to loftier principles and other standards these in turn will define his conduct: for example, Restraint in its earlier form will no longer satisfy him; he will work for the final Disengagement; he will live, no longer, the human life of the good man – such as Civic Virtue commends – but, leaving this beneath him, will take up instead another life, that of the Gods. Enneads I,2,7
The born lover, to whose degree the musician also may attain – and then either come to a stand or pass beyond – has a certain memory of beauty but, severed from it now, he no longer comprehends it: spellbound by visible loveliness he clings amazed about that. His lesson must be to fall down no longer in bewildered delight before some, one embodied form; he must be led, under a system of mental discipline, to beauty everywhere and made to discern the One<One Principle underlying all, a Principle apart from the material forms, springing from another source, and elsewhere more truly present. The beauty, for example, in a noble course of life and in an admirably organized social system may be pointed out to him – a first training this in the loveliness of the immaterial – he must learn to recognise the beauty in the arts, sciences, VIRTUES; then these severed and particular forms must be brought under the one<one principle by the explanation of their origin. From the VIRTUES he is to be led to the Intellectual-Principle, to the Authentic-Existent; thence onward, he treads the upward way. Enneads I,3,2
And while the other VIRTUES bring the reason to bear upon particular experiences and acts, the virtue of Wisdom (i.e., the virtue peculiarly induced by Dialectic) is a certain super-reasoning much closer to the Universal; for it deals with correspondence and sequence, the choice of time for action and inaction, the adoption of this course, the rejection of that other: Wisdom and Dialectic have the task of presenting all things as Universals and stripped of matter for treatment by the Understanding. Enneads I,3,6
And is it possible to be a Sage, Master in Dialectic, without these lower VIRTUES? It would not happen: the lower will spring either before or together with the higher. And it is likely that everyone normally possesses the natural VIRTUES from which, when Wisdom steps in, the perfected virtue develops. After the natural VIRTUES, then, Wisdom and, so the perfecting of the moral nature. Once the natural VIRTUES exist, both orders, the natural and the higher, ripen side by side to their final excellence: or as the one advances it carries forward the other towards perfection. Enneads I,3,6
Beauty addresses itself chiefly to sight; but there is a beauty for the hearing too, as in certain combinations of words and in all kinds of music, for melodies and cadences are beautiful; and minds that lift themselves above the realm of sense to a higher order are aware of beauty in the conduct of life, in actions, in character, in the pursuits of the intellect; and there is the beauty of the VIRTUES. What loftier beauty there may be, yet, our argument will bring to light. Enneads I,6,1
Then again, all the VIRTUES are a beauty of the soul, a beauty authentic beyond any of these others; but how does symmetry enter here? The soul, it is true, is not a simple unity, but still its virtue cannot have the symmetry of size or of number: what standard of measurement could preside over the compromise or the coalescence of the soul’s faculties or purposes? Finally, how by this theory would there be beauty in the Intellectual-Principle, essentially the solitary? Enneads I,6,1
But what is it that awakens all this passion? No shape, no colour, no grandeur of mass: all is for a Soul, something whose beauty rests upon no colour, for the moral wisdom the Soul enshrines and all the other hueless splendour of the VIRTUES. It is that you find in yourself, or admire in another, loftiness of spirit; righteousness of life; disciplined purity; courage of the majestic face; gravity; modesty that goes fearless and tranquil and passionless; and, shining down upon all, the light of god-like Intellection. Enneads I,6,5
All these noble qualities are to be reverenced and loved, no doubt, but what entitles them to be called beautiful? They exist: they manifest themselves to us: anyone that sees them must admit that they have reality of Being; and is not Real-Being, really beautiful? But we have not yet shown by what property in them they have wrought the Soul to loveliness: what is this grace, this splendour as of Light, resting upon all the VIRTUES? Let us take the contrary, the ugliness of the Soul, and set that against its beauty: to understand, at once, what this ugliness is and how it comes to appear in the Soul will certainly open our way before us. Enneads I,6,5
Again: if the Soul is a body, how can we account for its VIRTUES – moral excellence (Sophrosyne), justice, courage and so forth? All these could be only some kind of rarefied body (pneuma), or blood in some form; or we might see courage as a certain resisting power in that pneuma; moral quality would be its happy blending; beauty would lie wholly in the agreeable form of impressions received, such comeliness as leads us to describe people as attractive and beautiful from their bodily appearance. No doubt strength and grace of form go well enough with the idea of rarefied body; but what can this rarefied body want with moral excellence? On the contrary its interest would lie in being comfortable in its environments and contacts, in being warmed or pleasantly cool, in bringing everything smooth and caressing and soft around it: what could it care about a just distribution? Then consider the objects of the soul’s contemplation, virtue and the other Intellectual forms with which it is occupied; are these eternal or are we to think that virtue rises here or there, helps, then perishes? These things must have an author and a source and there, again, we are confronted by something perdurable: the soul’s contemplation, then, must be of the eternal and unchanging, like the concepts of geometry: if eternal and unchanging, these objects are not bodies: and that which is to receive them must be of equivalent nature: it cannot therefore be body, since all body-nature lacks permanence, is a thing of flux. Enneads IV,7,8
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
But the beauty in the germ, in the particular Reason-Principle – is this the same as the manifested beauty, or do they coincide only in name? Are we to assign this beauty – and the same question applies to deformity in the soul – to the Intellectual order, or to the Sensible? That beauty is different in the two spheres is by now clear. If it be embraced in Sensible Quality, then virtue must also be classed among the qualities of the lower. But merely some VIRTUES will take rank as Sensible, others as Intellectual qualities. Enneads VI,3,16
There is also every reason for consigning to this category the practical VIRTUES whose function is directed to a social end: these do not isolate Soul by inclining it towards the higher; their manifestation makes for beauty in this world, a beauty regarded not as necessary but as desirable. Enneads VI,3,16
Again: Man exists in the Intellectual and with him all other living things, both by possession of Real-Being and because that is the Life-Form Complete. Even the man of this sphere is a member of the Intellectual since that is the Life-Form Complete; every living thing by virtue of having life, is There, There in the Life-form, and man is There also, in the Intellectual, in so far as he is intellect, for all intelligences are severally members of That. Now all this means Number There. Yet even in Intellect Number is not present primally; its presence There is the reckoning of the Acts of Intellectual-Principle; it tallies with the justice in Intellectual-Principle, its moral wisdom, its VIRTUES, its knowledge, all whose possession makes That Principle what it is. Enneads VI,6,15
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,6,15
Knowledge of The Good or contact with it, is the all-important: this – we read – is the grand learning, the learning we are to understand, not of looking towards it but attaining, first, some knowledge of it. We come to this learning by analogies, by abstractions, by our understanding of its subsequents, of all that is derived from The Good, by the upward steps towards it. Purification has The Good for goal; so the VIRTUES, all right ordering, ascent within the Intellectual, settlement therein, banqueting upon the divine – by these methods one becomes, to self and to all else, at once seen and seer; identical with Being and Intellectual-Principle and the entire living all, we no longer see the Supreme as an external; we are near now, the next is That and it is close at hand, radiant above the Intellectual. Enneads VI,7,36
This is the purport of that rule of our Mysteries: Nothing Divulged to the Uninitiate: the Supreme is not to be made a common story, the holy things may not be uncovered to the stranger, to any that has not himself attained to see. There were not two; beholder was one with beheld; it was not a vision compassed but a unity apprehended. The man formed by this mingling with the Supreme must – if he only remember – carry its image impressed upon him: he is become the Unity, nothing within him or without inducing any diversity; no movement now, no passion, no outlooking desire, once this ascent is achieved; reasoning is in abeyance and all Intellection and even, to dare the word, the very self; caught away, filled with God, he has in perfect stillness attained isolation; all the being calmed, he turns neither to this side nor to that, not even inwards to himself; utterly resting he has become very rest. He belongs no longer to the order of the beautiful; he has risen beyond beauty; he has overpassed even the choir of the VIRTUES; he is like one who, having penetrated the inner sanctuary, leaves the temple images behind him – though these become once more first objects of regard when he leaves the holies; for There his converse was not with image, not with trace, but with the very Truth in the view of which all the rest is but of secondary concern. Enneads VI,9,11