The Online Library of Liberty

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• Porphyry: On the Life of Plotinus and the Arrangement of His Work
• The First Ennead
• First Tractate the Animate and the Man
• Second Tractate On Virtue
• Third Tractate On Dialectic (the Upward Way)
• Fourth Tractate On True Happiness
• Fifth Tractate Happiness and Extension of Time
• Sixth Tractate Beauty
• Seventh Tractate On the Primal Good and Secondary Forms of Good (otherwise, On Happiness)
• Eighth Tractate On the Nature and Source of Evil
• Ninth Tractate “ the Reasoned Dismissal ”
• Bibliography and Explanatory Matter
• Notes
• I.: The Text
• II.: Previous Translations
• III.: Method of the Present Translation
• IV.: Commentaries
• In English
• French and German
• V.: Terminology
• The Divine Names
• 1.: The One
• 2.: The Intellectual-principle
• 3.: The All-soul
• The Divine-triad As a Unity
• The Gods and Daimones
• Man: His Nature, Powers and Destiny
• Matter
• Evil
• Morality
• The Term and the Way
• Minor Points of Terminology
• The Preller-ritter Extracts Forming a Conspectus of the Plotinian System
• I: The Fall of the Souls: Their Return
• II: The Grandeur of the Soul (human and Divine)
• III: The Soul In Relation to Its Prior, to the Intellectual-principle
• IV: The Intellectual Principle and the Intellectual-realm In Relation to the One
• V: The Beginning of Multiplicity
• VI: The Absolute Transcendence of the One
• VII: Why the Supreme Is a Triad
• VIII: The Soul and the World of Nature
• IX: Matter
• X: Soul and Body
• XI: The Soul In Man
• XII: The Soul After Death
• XIII: Likeness to God
• XIV: The Vision of the Supreme

IV

The Intellectual Principle and the Intellectual-realm in Relation to the One

V. 1, 4. If anything more is needed to establish the magnificence of Divine-Mind, look, with awe, to this sense-known Universe; consider its vastness, and its beauty and the harmony of its eternal course, the Gods within it, the seen Gods and the unseen, and the blessed spirits (n) and all the life of animal and plant. Then ascend to its Original, to its more authentic form, and There contemplate all the Intellectual Host, immortal by their own indwelling right, in the plenitude of their own conscious life: see, presiding above these, the immaculate Divine-Mind; consider that fathomless Wisdom, that veritable Saturnian Age, age of Kronos, who is Son of God and is the Intellect of the Divinity, embracing all the immortal orders—all Intelligence, every God, every soul—in His calm eternal Identity. Eternally identical this Principle must be, for what change or “otherness” could be sought There where all is well? Whither could that Being move outside Itself, having all within Itself? What increase (and, therefore, diversity) could The Most Perfect desire? In Him, in all ways consummate, all things are consummate; of all that He has, all is perfect: and of all that is within His being, all is perfect: of all that is His there is nothing that He does not know—knowing by a knowledge that is never sought but always immediately present (n); and His blessedness is nothing from without but exists, all, in the one Eternity, exists to the Divine Mind which is Itself the veritable Eternity mimicked by that Soul-circling movement of Time which is ever flinging aside the outworn and clutching at the new.

The Soul (principle of movement and author of Time) is occupied always with consecutive things—always with some single object, now Socrates, and now a horse—but Divine Mind knows all as one. Within this all things are contained at rest in Unity; it alone has Authentic Existence and Its “I am” is for ever: nowhere is there any future to It; already It is all Its infinity; nowhere any past for nothing There can pass, but, as all is True-Being There, so all holds steadfast always, all things in the divine finding joy in their state. Each Being of all that are There is Divine Mind, is Authentic Existence; and their entirety constitutes Divine Mind entire and Authentic Existence entire. This Divine Mind, through Its Act, Its Intellection, becomes Existence; and Existence, in that it is the object of the Intellection, brings to Divine Mind both Intellection and Existence.

The First Cause of the Intellectual-Principle is another Principle which is the Cause also of Existence; this Cause, distinct from either, is common to them since they have their substantial existence together, never deserting each other; so that, while they are two, they yet constitute a Unity, which Unity is at once Intellection and Existence, Thinker and Thought—the Intellectual-Principle being the Intellective Subject while Existence is the object of the Intellection (n). For the Intellection could not take place if this Intellectual Kosmos did not contain, at once, identity and difference.

Thus the Primals are Intellection (=The Intellectual-Principle) Existence, Differentiation and Identity. To these must also be added Motion and Rest (n)—Motion corresponding to the Act of Intellection, Rest to the unbroken Identity. Differentiation is implied by there being a Thinker and a Thought (an Intellectual-Principle and an object of Intellection): if this difference did not exist, all would be a silent Oneness.

There must also be a difference among the Divine Thoughts (The Ideas)—with, yet, identity since the Intellectual-Principle is one in itself, a common principle to all: this Difference is that the Ideas are distinct (i.e. it is not a difference of essential nature).

It is this Multiplicity of difference in the Divine Realm itself that produces Number and Quantity and even Quality which is the specific character of these Principles, the sources of all else that exists.

Notes

“Blessed-Spirits”:—These are the Daimones.

“Knowledge immediately present”:—Enquiry implies an imperfect mentality and therefore cannot be imputed to the Intellectual-Principle: the Soul has, of itself, only the Reasoning-Intelligence. Thus:—

V. 1, 10. “Our Soul is a Divine Thing, outside of the Realm of Sense as Soul-Nature must be: it is consummate when it has attached itself to the Intellectual-Principle, which in part is eternally self-wrapped in Intellection but in part is occupied abroad in leading the Soul towards Intellection.” “The higher part of the Soul,” Plotinus continues, “is ever absorbed in the Divine Mind.”

So also:—

V. 1, 11. “And if the Soul, though it must sometimes reason towards the Just and the Good, may sometimes know them immediately, there must be within us the Intellectual-Principle which never seeks but eternally knows the Right.”

All Reasoning belongs to the inferior order:—

IV. 3, 18. “Does the Soul employ Reasoning before it enters the body and when it has left body, or only while it is here? Only here, where it knows doubt and care and weakness; for Intelligence is the less self-sufficing for needing to reason, just as in the crafts or arts reasoning means hesitation in the workman, but when all is plain the craft takes its own masterly way. In the Intellectual Order there is no ratiocination and the man arrived at this degree does not employ it.”

V. 5, 1. “The Intellectual-Principle must ever know and never overlook or forget; its knowing can never come by way of conjecture, never be doubtful, never depend upon learning from without or upon any proving. This Intellectual-Principle (even in man) has nothing to do with sense-reports; it contemplates nothing outside of itself.”

“The Intellective Subject and the Object of Intellection”:—Authentic-Existence and The Divine Mind are customarily named together by Plotinus as one entity: to him there is no real being except what is of the Intellectual and Intelligible order:—

V. 4, 2. “The Intellectual-Principle is Itself the Intelligible—the object of True-Knowing—and at the same time the Intelligent—the True-Knower. Real-Being and the Intellectual-Principle are identical, for the Divine Mind does not act upon Its object as sensation acts upon material things which must exist apart from the sensation: the Intellectual-Principle actually is all the Existence upon which it exercises its Act.”

So again:—

V. 1, 10. “And in sequence upon The First comes Existence, that is the Intellectual-Principle.”

This Existence (or Being) is also called Essence:—e.g. in I. 7, 1 we read of “Intelligence and Essence” where the reference is to the Second Principle, the Emanation directly proceeding from the First, the One.

“Motion and Rest”:—Since the Intellectual-Principle is identical with its Act (Intellection) and with its object (Existence) it follows that Motion and Rest must be attributed to it: for “Intellection is the First Life” (III. 8, 7) and Life is identical with Act (expressive or functional activity) as we are told more than once. Compare VI. 2, 8. “Activity and movement accompany the Intellection in the Divine Mind: in Its Self-Intellection is the foundation of Essence and Being: It exists while it thinks and it knows both itself and its objects as possessing Being . . . and Being is the absolutely unmoving, the very base in which all that is most motionless is founded.”

Often, however, all motion is limited to the Soul, rest being given as the characteristic of the Intellectual-Principle:—

II. 9, 1. “The Divine Mind remains true to its own Being, ever in the one state, unmoving in its stable Act: all movement around It, as towards It, begins with Soul.”

IV. 4, 16. “Making The Good the centre, the Intellectual-Principle will be a motionless circle and the Soul a circle in motion, moved by its aspiration inwards: for the Intellectual-Principle contains The Good immediately, and the Soul must strive towards it.

The Intellectual-Principle rests ever in Itself, contemplates nothing else (except The First) never moves elsewhere and is therefore not an agent (praktikos).”

V. 3, 6. “This principle is not an agent under need of acquiring knowledge of the outer, as for instance a man must, when he goes out from himself into the business of life.”

The Soul does not of its own right and nature possess this Intellectual-Principle which merely takes possession if the Soul turns towards It:—

V. 6, 4. “The Soul possesses the Intellectual-Principle as something added to it: Intellection belongs essentially to the Intellectual-Principle.”

The Soul therefore has external action when it builds the Kosmos:—

IV. 8, 3. “The Intellective Soul has Intellection for its Act, but not Intellection unalloyed: if it had, it would be identical with its prior. To its nature as an Intellective it adds another Act which constitutes its characteristic “person” (hypostasis) and so it becomes something distinct from the Intellectual-Principle. The Soul too has its function, as every member of the Divine must; looking towards its prior, it has Intellection; looking to itself, it preserves its own essence; looking to what comes after it, to what it orders and conducts, it rules the lower world.”

Still, on deeper examination, it is discovered that all action subserves thought and is performed for purposes of contemplation:—

III. 8, 5. “All action is in view of contemplation . . . what we have not the will-power to get by the direct way we seek by the round. When we acquire what our action sought, achieve what we proposed, what is it for? Not to be ignored but to be known, to be seen: we act for the sake of some satisfaction we desire, and this not that it may remain outside the bound of our possessions but that it may be ours. This means that it be . . . where? Where but in the mind? Thus all act circles back to thought, for what the act lays up in the soul, which is a Reason-Principle, can be nothing else than a Reason-Form, a silent thought (a thought not marred by the noise of action).”

Even the very Kosmos, shaped or created by the Soul, is itself a “Contemplation” (or, as we might say, a Mentation, an intellectual activity).

III. 8, 4. “Treating of Nature we said that all engendering was a Contemplation: we come now to the Soul which is prior to Nature and say that by the Soul’s Contemplation—its zest for knowledge, its desire for experience, the birth-pangs induced in it by what it knows, its teeming plenty—the Soul, itself a Contemplation entire, has begotten another Contemplation . . . a weaker than itself.”