Soul in its Relation to Nous (II)

IV. I
(Armstrong Selections from the Enneads)

[Souls exist in the world of Noûs, in the state of unity proper to that world: but they have the capacity to descend into the material world, where they are divided and separated spatially into different bodies: but even in this lower world they do not entirely lose their higher unity, but keep contact with the world of Noûs.]

In the intelligible world is true being: Nous is the best of it. But there are souls There too; for it is from There that they come here. That world contains souls without bodies; this one, the souls which have come to be in bodies and are divided by their bodies. There all and every Nous is together, not separated or divided, and all souls are together in the one world, without spatial division. Nous then is always without separation and undivided. Soul There is not separated or divided; but it has a natural capacity for division. Its division is departure from the intelligible world and embodiment. So it is reasonably said to be ‘divisible as regards body’, because it is in this way that it departs and is divided. How then is it also ‘undivided’? It does not all depart; there is something of it which does not come to this world, which is not divided. To say, then, that it consists of ‘the undivided and that which is divided in bodies’ is the same as saying that it consists of that which is above and that which depends Thence, and reaches as far as the things of this world, like a radius from a centre. When it has come here it sees with the part of itself in which it preserves the nature of the whole. Even here below it is not only divided, but undivided as well: for the divided part of it is divided without division. It gives itself to the whole body and is undivided because it gives itself as a whole to the whole, and it is divided by being present in every part.