Theos-Talk Archives (March 1996 Message tl00033)

The Six Enneads

  BY PLOTINUS

   Written 250 A.D.
   Translated By Stephen Mackenna And B. S. Page
     _________________________________________________________________

  THE FOURTH ENNEAD - SECOND TRACTATE [extracts]

     ON THE ESSENCE OF THE SOUL (2).
[...]
     There are, we hold, things primarily apt to partition, tending by
     sheer nature towards separate existence: they are things in which no
     part is identical either with another part or with the whole, while,
     also their part is necessarily less than the total and whole: these
     are magnitudes of the realm of sense, masses, each of which has a
     station of its own so that none can be identically present in
     entirety at more than one point at one time.

     But to that order is opposed Essence [Real-Being]; this is in no
     degree susceptible of partition; it is unparted and impartible;
     interval is foreign to it, cannot enter into our idea of it: it has
     no need of place and is not, in diffusion or as an entirety,
     situated within any other being: it is poised over all beings at
     once, and this is not in the sense of using them as a base but in
     their being neither capable nor desirous of existing independently
     of it; it is an essence eternally unvaried: it is common to all that
     follows upon it: it is like the circle's centre to which all the
     radii are attached while leaving it unbrokenly in possession of
     itself, the starting point of their course and of their essential
     being, the ground in which they all participate: thus the
     indivisible is the principle of these divided existences and in
     their very outgoing they remain enduringly in contact with that
     stationary essence.
[...]
     The Essence, very near to the impartible, which we assert to belong
     to the Kind we are now dealing with, is at once an Essence and an
     entrant into body; upon embodiment, it experiences a partition
     unknown before it thus bestowed itself.

     In whatsoever bodies it occupies- even the vastest of all, that in
     which the entire universe is included- it gives itself to the whole
     without abdicating its unity.

     This unity of an Essence is not like that of body, which is a unit
     by the mode of continuous extension, the mode of distinct parts each
     occupying its own space. Nor is it such a unity as we have dealt
     with in the case of quality.

     The nature, at once divisible and indivisible, which we affirm to be
     soul has not the unity of an extended thing: it does not consist of
     separate sections; its divisibility lies in its presence at every
     point of the recipient, but it is indivisible as dwelling entire in
     the total and entire in any part.

     To have penetrated this idea is to know the greatness of the soul
     and its power, the divinity and wonder of its being, as a nature
     transcending the sphere of Things.

     Itself devoid of mass, it is present to all mass: it exists here and
     yet is There, and this not in distinct phases but with unsundered
     identity: thus it is "parted and not parted," or, better, it has
     never known partition, never become a parted thing, but remains a
     self-gathered integral, and is "parted among bodies" merely in the
     sense that bodies, in virtue of their own sundered existence, cannot
     receive it unless in some partitive mode; the partition, in other
     words, is an occurrence in body not in soul.
[...]
     There is, therefore, no escape: soul is, in the degree indicated,
     one and many, parted and impartible. We cannot question the
     possibility of a thing being at once a unity and multi-present,
     since to deny this would be to abolish the principle which sustains
     and administers the universe; there must be a Kind which encircles
     and supports all and conducts all with wisdom, a principle which is
     multiple since existence is multiple, and yet is one soul always
     since a container must be a unity: by the multiple unity of its
     nature, it will furnish life to the multiplicity of the series of an
     all; by its impartible unity, it will conduct a total to wise ends.
[...]
     Soul, therefore, is, in this definite sense, one and many; the
     Ideal-Form resident in body is many and one; bodies themselves are
     exclusively many; the Supreme is exclusively one.
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 First of all, love truth for its own sake, for otherwise no recognition of
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