VI. 4. 14-15
[The union of soul and body comes about through a drive of body towards ensoulment; there is a pre-established harmony between them.]But we — who are we? Are we that higher self or that which drew near to it and came to be in time? Before this birth came to be we existed There as men different from those we are now, some of us even as gods, pure souls, intellect united with the whole of reality, parts of the world of Nous, not separated or cut off, belonging to the whole; and indeed we are not cut off even now. But now there has come to that higher man another man, wishing to exist and finding us; for we were not outside the universe. He wound himself round us and fastened himself to that man that each one of us was then (as if there was one voice and one word, and someone else came up from elsewhere, and his ear heard and received the sound and became an actual hearing, keeping that which made it actual present to it) and we became a couple, not just the one member of it we were before; and sometimes we become even the other member which we had fastened to us, when the first man is not active and in a different sense not present.
But how did that which came to us come? It had a certain fitness, and held to that which fitted it. It came into being capable of receiving soul; but what comes into being incapable of receiving all soul (though all soul is there, but not for it), like animals and plants, holds as much as it can take; so when a voice speaks a word with meaning, some hearers receive the meaning with the sound of the voice, others only the impact of the voice upon their ears. When a living creature is born, it has a soul present to it which comes from real being, by which it is attached to reality as a whole, and it has a body which is not empty, without a soul, and which was not placed, even before it came to life, in a soulless region; this body draws still nearer by its fitness for soul, and becomes, no longer merely a body, but a living body, and by a sort of proximity acquires a trace of soul, not a piece of soul but a kind of warming or enlightenment coming from it; this causes the growth of desires and pleasures and pains. The body was certainly not something alien to the living creature which came into being.
IV. 4. 20
[Desire begins in the body; nature (the lower soul) takes it over and tries to bring it to its fulfilment; but the ultimate decision whether the desire shall be satisfied or not belongs to the higher soul.]But why are there two desires? Why is it not only that qualified body which we have been discussing that desires? Because, if nature is one thing and the qualified body another which has come into being from nature (for nature exists before the qualified body comes into being, since it makes the qualified body, shaping and forming it), then nature cannot begin desire: the qualified body has particular experiences and feels pain in desiring the opposite of what it experiences, pleasure when it is suffering and sufficiency when it is in want: nature is like a mother, trying to make out the wishes of the sufferer and attempting to set it right and bring it back to herself; and, searching for the remedy, she attaches herself by her search to the desire of the sufferer, and the consummation of the desire passes from it to her. So one might say that the qualified body desires of its own accord, but nature desires as a result of, and because of, something else. And it is another soul which grants or withholds what is desired.
IV. 4. 18
[Body has a principle of life of its own, distinct both from the higher soul and the lower soul, or ‘nature’, a ‘shadow’ or ‘trace’ of soul (the immanent form). This, in its aspiration to communion with soul, is the source of physical pain and pleasure.]Then there is the question whether the body has anything of its own, any special characteristic which it possesses already when it lives by the presence of the soul, or whether what it has is nature, and this is what forms an association with the body. The body which has soul and nature in it cannot be of the same kind as a lifeless thing; it must be like warmed air, not like illuminated air; it is the body of an animal or plant which has a sort of shadow of soul, and pain and the feeling of bodily pleasures are situated in the body qualified in this way: but the body’s pain and this sort of pleasure result for us in dispassionate knowledge. When I say ‘for us’, I am referring to the other soul. The qualified body does not belong to someone else, but is ours, and so we are concerned with it because it belongs to us. We are not it, nor are we clear of it; it depends upon and is attached to us. ‘ We’ means that which rules in us; the body is in a different way ‘ ours’, but ours all the same. So we are concerned with its pains and pleasures, more in proportion as we are weaker and do not separate ourselves, but consider the body the most honourable part of ourselves and the real man and, so to speak, sink ourselves in it. We must say that these sort of experiences of pain and pleasures do not belong to the soul at all, but to the qualified body and something intermediate and joint. For when something is one it is sufficient to itself; for example, what could body suffer if it was lifeless? Division would not affect it, but the unity in it. And soul by itself is not subject even to division, and when it is in this state [of separation] escapes everything. But when two things aspire to unity, since the unity which they have is an extraneous one, because their origin will not permit of their being really one, it is reasonable to expect that they will suffer pain. I do not mean ‘ two’ as if there were two bodies, for two bodies would have one and the same nature; but when one nature aspires to unite with another of a different kind, and the worse takes something from the better and cannot take it itself but only a trace of it, and so there come to be two things and one between what it is and what it cannot grasp, this makes difficulties for itself by acquiring a communion with the other which is hazardous and insecure, always borne from one extreme to the other. It is carried up and down, and as it comes down it proclaims its pain, as it goes up its longing for communion.
I. I. 10
[When we speak of ourselves, we may mean by ‘ we’ either our souls alone or the joint entity made up of body and soul: the former is our true self.]But if we are the soul, and we undergo these experiences, then it would be the soul that undergoes these experiences, and again it will be the soul which does what we do. Yes, but we said that what belongs to both [body and soul] is part of our selves, especially when we have not yet been separated from body: for we say that we experience what our body experiences. So 4we’ is used in two senses, either including the beast or referring to that which even in our present life transcends it. The beast is the body which has been given life. But the true man is different, clear of these experiences; he has the virtues which belong to the sphere of Nous and have their seat actually in the separate soul, separate and separable even while it is still here below. (For when it withdraws altogether, the lower soul which is illumined by it goes away too in its train.) But the virtues which result not from thought but from habit and training belong to that which is common to body and soul; for the vices belong to this, since envy and jealousy and emotional sympathy are located there. But which man does affection belong to? Some to the lower, some to the man within.
II. 9.2
[There are three parts of our soul, one directed to the contemplation of Nous and the One, one concerned with body, and one intermediate; and our spiritual state depends on whether the intermediate part is attracted upwards or downwards.]One part of our soul is always directed to Nous and the Father, another is concerned with the things of this world, and there is another between them. For the soul is one nature in a number of powers, and sometimes the whole of it is in harmony with the best part of itself (which is a part of Real Being), but sometimes the worse part of it is drawn down and draws the middle part with it: for it is not lawful for the whole of it to be drawn down. This is its misfortune, not to remain in the noblest, where the soul remains which is not a part — and at that stage we too are not a part of it1 — and grants to the whole of body to hold whatever it can hold of it, but abides itself untroubled, not thinking out its government or direction but setting things in order with a wonderful power by its contemplation of That which is before it. The more it is directed to that contemplation, the fairer and more powerful it is. It receives from There and gives to what comes after it, always illuminated and illuminating.
III. I. 8
[Plotinus has just rejected the absolute determinism of the Stoics. For him the individual soul is to some extent the free and responsible cause of its own actions. In its higher life, out of the body, it is altogether free, but in so far as it is involved with the body it is subject to the necessity which controls the visible universe. And the degree of its freedom or involvement depends very much on itself.]What other cause, then, is there which will intervene besides these and leave nothing uncaused, which will preserve order and sequence and allow us really to be something, and will not do away with prophecy and divination? We must introduce soul into reality as another originative principle, not only the Soul of the All but the individual soul along with it as an important cause, to weave all things together; for the individual soul too has not come into being like the rest of things from seed-principles,2 but is primary in its causal action. When it is without body it is in fullest control of itself and free and outside the universal chain of causation: but when it is brought into body it is no longer altogether in control, as it forms part of an order with other members. Most of the sum of things in the circuit of the universe, among which it falls when it enters into this world, are directed by chance causes, so that some of its acts are caused by these other things, but sometimes it masters them and directs them according to its will. The better soul masters more, the worse less. The soul which surrenders at all to its union with the body is compelled to feel passions of desire or anger, and is depressed by poverty, made conceited by riches, or tyrannical by power: but the other kind of soul, that which is good by nature, holds out in these very same circumstances, and changes them rather than is changed by them, so that it alters some of them and conforms to others without vice or weakness.