The Enneads, Part III.

By Plotinus

Stephen MacKenna, Translator






The Fourth Ennead











First Tractate: On the Essence of the Soul (I.)

§ 1. In the Intellectual Cosmos dwells Authentic Essence, with the Intellectual-Principle (Divine Mind) as the noblest of its content, but containing also souls, since every soul in this lower sphere has come thence: that is the world of unembodied souls while to our world belong those that have entered body and undergone bodily division.

There the Intellectual-Principle is a concentrated all — nothing of it distinguished or divided — and in that Cosmos of unity all souls are concentrated also, with no spatial discrimination.

But there is a difference:

The Intellectual-Principle is forever repugnant to distinction and to partition. Soul, there without distinction and partition, has yet a nature lending itself to divisional existence: its division is secession, entry into body.

In view of this seceding and the ensuing partition we may legitimately speak of it as a partible thing.

But if so, how can it still be described as indivisible?

In that the secession is not of the Soul entire; something of it holds its ground, that in it which recoils from separate existence.

‘Formed from the undivided essence and the essence divided among bodies’: this description of Soul must therefore mean that it has phases above and below, that it is attached to the Supreme and yet reaches down to this sphere, like a radius from a centre.

Thus it is that, entering this realm, it possesses still the vision inherent to that superior phase in virtue of which it unchangingly maintains its integral nature. Even here it is not exclusively the partible soul: it is still the impartible as well: what in it knows partition is parted without partibility; undivided as giving itself to the entire body, a whole to a whole, it is divided as being effective in every part.

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Second Tractate: On the Essence of the Soul (II.)

§ 1. In our attempt to elucidate the Essence of the Soul, we show it to be neither a material fabric nor, among immaterial things, a harmony. The theory that it is some final development, some entelechy, we pass by, holding this to be neither true as presented nor practically definitive. -255-

No doubt we make a very positive statement about it when we declare it to belong to the Intellectual Kind, to be of the divine order; but a deeper penetration of its nature is demanded.

In that allocation we were distinguishing things as they fall under the Intellectual or the sensible, and we placed the Soul in the former class; now, taking its membership of the Intellectual for granted, we must investigate by another path the more specific characteristics of its nature.

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.

So far we have the primarily indivisible — supreme among the Intellectual and Authentically Existent — and we have its contrary, the Kind definitely divisible in things of sense; but there is also another Kind, of earlier rank than the sensible yet near to it and resident within it — an order, not, like body, primarily a thing of part, but becoming so upon incorporation. The bodies are separate, and the Ideal-Form which enters them is correspondingly sundered while, still, it is present as one whole in each of its severed parts, since amid that multiplicity in which complete individuality has entailed complete partition, there is a permanent identity; we may think of colour, qualities of all kinds, some particular shape, which can be present in many unrelated objects at the one moment, each entire and yet with no community of experience among the various manifestations. In the case of such Ideal-Forms we may affirm complete partibility.

But, on the other hand, that first utterly indivisible Kind must be accompanied by a subsequent Essence, engendered by it and holding indivisibility from it but, in virtue of the necessary outgo from source, tending firmly towards the contrary, the wholly partible; this secondary Essence will take an intermediate place between the first substance, -256- the undivided, and that which is divisible in material things and resides in them. Its presence, however, will differ in one respect from that of colour and quantity; these, no doubt, are present identically and entire throughout diverse material masses, but each several manifestation of them is as distinct from every other as the mass is from the mass.

The magnitude present in any mass is definitely one thing, yet its identity from part to part does not imply any such community as would entail common experience; within that identity there is diversity, for it is a condition only, not (as in the case of soul) the actual 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 un- known 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 with- out 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.


§ 2. It can be demonstrated that soul must necessarily be of just this nature, and that there can be no other soul than such a being, one neither wholly impartible nor wholly partible but both at once.

If it had the nature of body it would consist of isolated members each unaware of the conditions of every other; there would be a particular soul — say a soul of the finger — answering as a distinct and independent entity to every local experience; in general terms, there would be a multiplicity of souls administering each individual; and, moreover, the universe would be governed not by one soul but by an incalculable -257- number, each standing apart to itself. But without a dominant unity, continuity is meaningless. The theory that impressions reach the leading-principle by progressive stages must be dismissed as mere illusion.

In the first place, it affirms without investigation a ‘leading’ phase of the Soul.

What can justify this assigning of parts to the Soul, and distinguishing one part from another? What quantity, or what difference of quality, can apply to a thing defined as a self-consistent whole of unbroken unity?

Again, would perception be vested in that leading principle alone, or in the other phases as well?

If a given experience bears only on that ‘leading principle’, it would not be felt as lodged in any particular members of the organism; if, on the other hand, it fastens on some other phase of the Soul — one not constituted for sensation — that phase cannot transmit any experience to the leading principle, and there can be no sensation.

Again, suppose sensation vested in the ‘leading-principle’ itself: then, a first alternative, it will be felt in some one part of that (some specifically sensitive phase), the other part excluding a perception which could serve no purpose; or, in the second alternative, there will be many distinct sensitive phases, an infinite number, with difference from one to another. In that second case, one sensitive phase will declare ‘I had this sensation primarily’; others will have to say ‘I felt the sensation that rose elsewhere’; but either the site of the experience will be a matter of doubt to every phase except the first, or each of the parts of the Soul will be deceived into allocating the occurrence within its own particular sphere.

If, on the contrary, the sensation is vested not merely in the ‘leading principle’, but in any and every part of the Soul, what special function raises the one rather than the other into that leading rank, or why is the sensation to be referred to it rather than elsewhere? And how, at this, account for the unity of the knowledge brought in by diverse senses, by eyes, by ears?

On the other hand, if the Soul is a perfect unity — utterly strange to part, a self-gathered whole — if it continuously eludes all touch of multiplicity and divisibility — then, no whole taken up into it can ever be ensouled; soul will stand as circle-centre to every object (remote on the circumference), and the entire mass of a living being is soulless still.

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 -258- series of an all; by its impartible unity, it will conduct a total to wise ends.

In the case of things not endowed with intelligence, the ‘leading-principle’ is their mere unity — a lower reproduction of the Soul’s efficiency.

This is the deeper meaning of the profound passage (in the Timaeus), where we read: ‘By blending the impartible, eternally unchanging essence with that in division among bodies, he produced a third form of essence partaking of both qualities.’

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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Third Tractate: Problems of the Soul (I.)

§ 1. The Soul: what dubious questions concerning it admit of solution, or where we must abide our doubt — with, at least, the gain of recognizing the problem that confronts us — this is matter well worth attention. On what subject can we more reasonably expend the time required by minute discussion and investigation? Apart from much else, it is enough that such an inquiry illuminates two grave questions: of what sphere the Soul is the principle and whence the Soul itself springs. Moreover, we will be only obeying the ordinance of the God who bade us know ourselves.

Our general instinct to seek and learn will, in all reason, set us inquiring into the nature of the instrument with which we search; so, equally, will our longing to possess ourselves of the adorable vision of the Intellectual-Principle. Even in the universal Intellect (Divine Mind) there was duality, so that we would expect differences of condition in things of part: how some things rather than others come to be receptacles of the divine beings will need to be examined; but all this we may leave aside until we are considering the mode in which soul comes to occupy body. For the moment we return to our argument against those who maintain our souls to be offshoots from the Soul of the universe (parts and not an identity modally parted).

Our opponents will probably deny the validity of our arguments against the theory that the human soul is a mere segment of the All-Soul — the considerations, namely, that it is of identical scope, and that it is intellective in the same degree, supposing them, even, to admit that equality of intellection.

They will object that parts must necessarily fall under one Ideal-Form with their wholes. And they will adduce Plato as expressing their view -259- where, in demonstrating that the All is ensouled, he says, ‘As our body is a portion of the body of the All, so our soul is a portion of the Soul of the All.’ It is admitted on clear evidence that we are borne along by the Circuit of the All; we will be told that — taking character and destiny from it, strictly inbound with it — we must derive our souls, also, from what thus bears us up, and that as within ourselves every part absorbs from our soul, so, analogically, we, standing as parts to the universe, absorb from the Soul of the All as parts of it. They will urge also that the dictum ‘The collective soul cares for all the unensouled’, carries the same implication and could be uttered only in the belief that nothing whatever of later origin stands outside the Soul of the universe, the only soul there can be there to concern itself with the unensouled.


§ 2. To this our first answer is that to place certain things under one identical class — by admitting an identical range of operation — is to make them of one common species, and puts an end to all mention of part; the reasonable conclusion would be, on the contrary, that there is one identical soul, every separate manifestation being that soul complete.

Let our opponents once admit the unity: they will go on to make it dependent on a principle (Soul Absolute) in which we have no longer the soul of this or that, but a soul of nowhere, a soul belonging neither to the Cosmos, nor to anything else, and yet vested with the creation of whatever serves as soul to the Cosmos and to every ensouled thing.

The Soul considered as an entirety cannot be a soul of any one given thing — since it is an Essence (a divine Real-Being) — or, at least, there must be a soul which is not exclusively the soul of any particular thing, and those attached to particulars must so belong merely in some mode of accident.

In such questions as this it is important to clarify the significance of ‘part’.

Part, as understood of body — uniform or varied — need not detain us; it is enough to indicate that, when part is mentioned in respect of things whose members are alike, it refers to mass and not to Ideal-Form (specific idea): take for example, whiteness: the whiteness in a portion of milk is not a part of the whiteness of milk in general: we have the whiteness of a portion, not a portion of whiteness; for whiteness is utterly without magnitude; has nothing whatever to do with quantity.

That is all we need say with regard to part in material things; but part in the unembodied may be taken in various ways. We may think of it in the sense familiar in numbers, ‘two’ a part of the standard ‘ten’ — in abstract numbers of course— or as we think of a segment of a circle or line (abstractly considered), or, again, of a section or branch of knowledge.

In the case of the units of reckoning and of geometrical figure, exactly as in that of corporeal masses, partition must diminish the total; the part must be less than the whole; for these are things of quantity, -260- and have their being as things of quantity; and — since they are not the Ideal-Form Quantity — they are subject to increase and decrease.

Now in such a sense as this, part cannot be affirmed of the Soul.

The Soul is not a thing of quantity; we are not to conceive of the All-Soul as some standard ten with particular souls as its constituent units.

Such a conception would entail many absurdities:

The Ten could not be (essentially) a unity (the Soul would be an aggregation, not a self-standing Real-Being) and, further — unless every one of the single constituents were itself an All-Soul — the All-Soul would be formed of non souls.

Again, it is admitted that the particular soul — this ‘part of the All-Soul’ — is of one Ideal-Form with it, but this does not entail the relation of part to whole, since in objects formed of continuous parts there is nothing inevitably making any portion uniform with the total: take, for example, the parts of a circle or square; we may divide it in different ways so as to get our part; a triangle need not be divided into triangles; all sorts of different figures are possible: yet an absolute uniformity is admitted to reign throughout soul.

In a line, no doubt, the part is inevitably a line; but even here there is a necessary difference in size; and if in the case of the Soul we similarly called upon magnitude as the distinction between constituents and collective soul, then soul, thus classed by magnitude, becomes quantitative, and is simply body.

But it is admitted that all souls are alike, and are entireties; clearly, soul is not subject to part in the sense in which magnitudes are: our opponents themselves would not consent to the notion of the All-Soul being whittled down into fragments, yet this is what they would be doing, annulling the All-Soul — if any collective soul existed at all — making it a mere piece of terminology, thinking of it like wine separated into many portions, each portion, in its jar, being described as a portion of the total thing, wine.

Next there is the conception of the individual soul as a part in the sense in which we speak of some single proposition as a part of the science entire.

The theorem is separate, but the science stands as one undivided thing, the separation into theorems being simply the act of making each constituent notion explicit and efficient: this is partition without severance; each item potentially includes the whole science, which itself remains an unbroken total.

Is this the appropriate parallel?

Yes; in such a relationship the All-Soul, of which the particular souls are to be a part, will not be the Soul of any definite thing, but an entity standing aloof; that means that it will not even be the Soul of the Cosmos, since this will be, itself, one of those partial souls; thus all alike (cosmic soul and particular souls) will be partial and of one nature. -261-

Then why (we may be asked) does one soul belong to the Cosmos and the rest only to parts of the Cosmos?


§ 3. Is it a question of part in the sense that, taking one living being, the Soul in a finger might be called a part of the Soul entire?

This would carry the alternative that either there is no soul outside of body, or that — no soul being within body — the thing described as the Soul of the universe is, none the less, outside the body of the universe. That is a point to be investigated, but for the present we must consider what kind of soul this parallel would give us.

If the particular soul is a part of the All-Soul only in the sense that this bestows itself upon all living things of the partial sphere, such a self-bestowal does not imply division; on the contrary, it is the identical soul that is present everywhere, the one complete thing, multi-present at the one moment: there is no longer question of a soul that is a part against a soul that is an all — especially where an identical power is present. Even difference of function, as in eyes and ears, cannot warrant the assertion of distinct parts concerned in each separate act — such allotment we may leave to others — all is met by the notion of one identical thing, but a thing in which a distinct power operates in each separate function. All the powers are present either in seeing or in hearing; the difference in impression received is due to the difference in the organs concerned; all the varying impressions are our various responses to Ideal-Forms that can be taken in a variety of modes.

A further proof (of the unity of soul) is that perception demands a common gathering place; every organ has its distinct function, and is competent only upon its own material, and must interpret each several experience in its own fashion; the judgement upon these impressions must, then, be vested in some one principle, a judge informed upon all that is said and done.

But again: ‘Everywhere unity’ applies both to Soul itself and to its various functions. To identify the relation of All-Soul to particular souls with the relation between a soul and its sensations would entail that no particular soul but only the All-Soul could have thought or knowledge; to localize thought is to recognize the separate existence of the individual soul. But since the soul is a rational soul, by the very same title by which it is an All-Soul, and is called the rational soul, in the sense of being a whole (and so not merely ‘reasoning locally’), then what is thought of as a part must in reality be no part but the identity of an unparted thing.


§ 4. But if this is the true account of the unity of soul, we must be able to meet the problems that ensue: firstly, the difficulty of one thing being present at the same moment in all things; and, secondly, the difficulty of soul in body as against soul not embodied.

We might be led to think that all soul must always inhabit body; this -262- would seem especially plausible in the case of the Soul of the universe, not thought of as ever leaving its body as the human soul does: there exists, no doubt, an opinion that even the human soul, while it must leave the body, can not become an utterly disembodied thing; but, assuming its complete disembodiment, how comes it that the human soul can go free of the body but the All-Soul not, though they are one and the same?

There is no such difficulty in the case of the Intellectual-Principle; by the primal differentiation, this separates, no doubt, into partial things of widely varying nature, but eternal unity is secured by virtue of the eternal identity of that Essence: it is not so easy to explain how, in the case of the Soul described as separate among bodies, such differentiated souls can still remain one thing.

A possible solution may be offered:

The unit soul (it may be conceived) holds aloof, not actually falling into body; the differentiated souls — the All-Soul, with the others — issue from the unity while still constituting, within certain limits, an association. They are one soul by the fact that they do not belong unreservedly to any particular being; they meet, so to speak, fringe to fringe; they strike out here and there, but are held together at the source much as light is a divided thing upon earth, shining in this house and that, and yet remains uninterruptedly one identical substance.

The All-Soul would always remain above, since essentially it has nothing to do with descent or with the lower, or with any tendency towards this sphere: the other souls would become ours (become ‘partial’, individual in us) because their lot is cast for this sphere, and because they give attention to a thing (the body) which requires their care.

The one — the lowest soul in the total of the All-Soul — would correspond to that in some great growth, silently, unlaboriously conducting the whole; our own lowest soul might be compared to the insect life in some rotted part of the growth — for this is the ratio of the animated body to the universe — while the other soul in us, of one ideal nature with the higher parts of the All-Soul, may be imaged as the gardener concerned about the insects lodged in the tree and anxiously working to amend what is wrong; or we may contrast a healthy man living with the healthy and, by his thought or by his act, lending himself to the service of those about him, with, on the other side, a sick man intent upon his own care and cure, and so living for the body, body-bound.


§ 5. But what place is left for the particular souls, yours and mine and another’s?

May we suppose the Soul to be appropriated on the lower ranges to some individual, but to belong on the higher to that other sphere?

At this there would be a Socrates as long as Socrates’ soul remained -263- in body; but Socrates ceases to exist, precisely on attainment of the highest.

Now nothing of Real Being is ever annulled.

In the Supreme, the Intellectual-Principles are not annulled, for in their differentiation there is no bodily partition, no passing of each separate phase into a distinct unity; every such phase remains in full possession of that identical being. It is exactly so with the souls.

By their succession they are linked to the several Intellectual-Principles, for they are the expression, the Logos, of the Intellectual-Principles, of which they are the unfolding; brevity has opened out to multiplicity; by that point of their being which least belongs to the partial order, they are attached each to its own Intellectual original: they have already chosen the way of division; but to the extreme they cannot go; thus they keep, at once, identification and difference; each soul is permanently a unity (a self) and yet all are, in their total, one being.

Thus the gist of the matter is established: one soul the source of all; those others, as a many founded in that one, are, on the analogy of the Intellectual-Principle, at once divided and undivided; that Soul which abides in the Supreme is the one expression or Logos of the Intellectual-Principle, and from it spring other Reason-Principles, partial but immaterial, exactly as in the differentiation of the Supreme.


§ 6. But how comes it that while the All-Soul has produced a Cosmos, the Soul of the particular has not, though it is of the one ideal Kind and contains, it too, all things in itself?

We have indicated that a thing may enter and dwell at the same time in various places; this ought to be explained, and the inquiry would show how an identity resident simultaneously here and there may, in its separate appearances, act or react — or both — after distinct modes; but the matter deserves to be examined in a special discussion.

To return, then: how and why has the All-Soul produced a Cosmos, while the particular souls simply administer some one part of it?

In the first place, we are not surprised when men of identical knowledge differ greatly in effective power.

But the reason, we will be asked.

The answer might be that there is a similar difference of degree among souls, the one never having fallen away from the All-Soul, but dwelling within it and assuming body therein, while the others received their allotted spheres when the body was already in existence, when their sister soul was already in rule and, as it were, had already prepared habitations for them. Again, the reason may be that the one (the creative All-Soul) looks towards the universal Intellectual-Principle (the exemplar of all that can be) while the others are more occupied with the Intellectual within themselves, that which is already of the sphere of part; perhaps, too, these also could have created, but that they were -264- anticipated by that originator — the work accomplished before them — an impediment inevitable whichsoever of the souls were first to operate.

But it is safer to account for the creative act by nearer connexion with the over-world; the souls whose tendency is exercised within the Supreme have the greater power; immune in that pure seat they create securely; for the greater power takes the least hurt from the material within which it operates; and the power of these souls derives from their remaining enduringly attached to the over-world: it creates, therefore, self-gathered and the created things gather round it; the other souls, on the contrary, themselves go forth; that can mean only that they have deserted towards the abyss; a main phase in them is drawn downward and pulls them with it in the desire towards the lower.

The ‘secondary and tertiary souls’, of which we hear, must be understood in the sense of closer or remoter position: it is much as in ourselves the relation to the Supreme is not identical from soul to soul; some of us are capable of becoming Uniate, others of striving and almost attaining, while a third rank is much less apt; it is a matter of the degree or powers of the Soul by which our expression is determined — the first degree dominant in the one person, the second, the third (the merely animal life) in others while, still, all of us contain all the powers.


§ 7. So far, so good: but what of the passage in the Philebus taken to imply that the other souls are parts of the All-Soul?

The statement there made does not bear the meaning read into it; it expresses only, what the author was then concerned with, that the world is ensouled — a teaching which he maintains in the observation that it is preposterous to make the world soulless when we, who contain a part of the body of the All, have a soul; how, he asks, could there be soul in the part and none in the total?

He makes his teaching quite clear in the Timaeus, where he shows us the other souls brought into existence after the All-Soul, but ‘compounded from the same mixing bowl’; secondary and tertiary are duly marked off from the primal, but every form of soul is presented as being of identical ideal-nature with the All-Soul.

As for the saying of the Phaedrus, ‘All that is soul cares for all that is soulless’, this simply tells us that the corporeal kind cannot be controlled — fashioned, set in place, or brought into being — by anything but the Soul. And we cannot think that there is one soul whose nature includes this power and another without it. ‘The perfect soul, that of the All’, we read, ‘going its lofty journey, operates upon the Cosmos not by sinking into it, but, as it were, by brooding over it’; and ‘every perfect soul exercises this governance’; he distinguishes the other, the Soul in this sphere (not as a part, or as a different being, but) as ‘the soul when its wing is broken.’

As for our souls being entrained in the Cosmic Circuit, and taking character and condition thence; this is no indication that they are parts; -265- soul-nature may very well take some tincture from even the qualities of place, from water and from air; residence in this city or in that, and the varying make-up of the body may have their influence (upon our human souls which, yet, are no parts of place or of body).

We have always admitted that as members of the universe we take over something from the All-Soul; we do not deny the influence of the Cosmic Circuit; but against all this we oppose another soul in us (the Intellectual as distinguished from the merely vitalizing) proven to be distinct by that power of opposition.

As for our being begotten children of the Cosmos, we answer that in motherhood the entrant soul is distinct, is not the mother’s.


§ 8. These considerations, amounting to the settlement of the question, are not countered by the phenomenon of sympathy; the response between soul and soul is due to the mere fact that all spring from that self-same soul (the next to Divine Mind) from which springs the Soul of the All.

We have already stated that the one soul is also multiple; and we have dealt with the different forms of relationship between part and whole: we have investigated the different degrees existing within soul; we may now add, briefly, that differences might be induced, also, by the bodies with which the Soul has to do, and, even more, by the character and mental operations carried over from the conduct of the previous lives. ‘The life-choice made by a soul has a correspondence’ — we read — ‘with its former lives.’

As regards the nature of soul in general, the differences have been defined in the passage in which we mentioned the secondary and tertiary orders and laid down that, while all souls are all-comprehensive, each ranks according to its operative phase — one becoming Uniate in the achieved act, another in knowledge, another in desire, according to the distinct orientation by which each is, or tends to become, what it looks upon. The very fulfillment and perfectionment attainable by souls cannot but be different.

But, if in the total the organization in which they have their being is compact of variety — as it must be since every Reason-Principle is a unity of multiplicity and variety, and may be thought of as a psychic animated organism having many shapes at its command — if this is so and all constitutes a system in which being is not cut adrift from being, if there is nothing chance-borne among beings as there is none even in bodily organisms, then it follows that Number must enter into the scheme; for, once again, Being must be stable; the members of the Intellectual must possess identity, each numerically one; this is the condition of individuality. Where, as in bodily masses, the Idea is not essentially native, and the individuality is therefore in flux, existence under ideal form can rise only out of imitation of the Authentic Existences; these last, on the contrary, not rising out of any such conjunction (as the -266- duality of Idea and dead Matter) have their being in that which is numerically one, that which was from the beginning, and neither becomes what it has not been nor can cease to be what it is.

Even supposing Real-Beings (such as soul) to be produced by some other principle, they are certainly not made from Matter; or, if they were, the creating principle must infuse into them, from within itself, change, as it created more or less. And, after all, why should it thus produce at any given moment rather than remain forever stationary?

Moreover, the produced total, variable from more to less, could not be an eternal: yet the Soul, it stands agreed, is eternal.

But what becomes of the Soul’s infinity if it is thus fixed?

The infinity is a matter of power: there is question, not of the Soul’s being divisible into an infinite number of parts, but of an infinite possible effectiveness: it is infinity in the sense in which the Supreme God, also, is free of all bound.

This means that it is no external limit that defines the individual being or the extension of souls any more than of God; on the contrary each in right of its own power is all that it chooses to be: and we are not to think of it as going forth from itself (losing its unity by any partition): the fact is simply that the element within it, which is apt to entrance into body, has the power of immediate projection any whither: the Soul is certainly not wrenched asunder by its presence at once in foot and in finger. Its presence in the All is similarly unbroken; over its entire range it exists in every several part of everything having even vegetal life, even in a part cut off from the main; in any possible segment it is as it is at its source. For the body of the All is a unit, and soul is everywhere present to it as to one thing.

When some animal rots and a multitude of others spring from it, the Life-Principle now present is not the particular soul that was in the larger body; that body has ceased to be receptive of soul, or there would have been no death; what happens is that whatsoever in the product of the decay is apt material for animal existence of one kind or another becomes ensouled by the fact that soul is nowhere lacking, though a recipient of soul may be. This new ensouling does not mean however an increase in the number of souls: all depend from the one or, rather, all remains one: it is as with ourselves; some elements are shed, others grow in their place; the soul abandons the discarded and flows into the newcoming as long as the one soul of the man holds its ground; in the All the one soul holds its ground forever; its distinct contents now retain soul and now reject it, but the total of spiritual beings is unaffected.


§ 9. But we must examine how soul comes to inhabit the body — the manner and the process — a question certainly of no minor interest.

The entry of soul into body takes place under two forms.

Firstly, there is the entry — metensomatosis — of a soul present in body -267- by change from one (wholly material) frame to another, or the entry — not known as metensomatosis, since the nature of the earlier habitacle is not certainly definable — of a soul leaving an aerial or fiery body for one of earth.

Secondly, there is the entry from the wholly bodiless into any kind of body; this is the earliest form of any dealing between body and soul, and this entry especially demands investigation.

What then can be thought to have happened when soul, utterly clean from body, first comes into commerce with the bodily nature?

It is reasonable, necessary even, to begin with the Soul of the All. Notice that if we are to explain and to be clear, we are obliged to use such words as ‘entry’ and ‘ensoulment’, though never was this All unensouled, never did body subsist with soul away, never was there Matter unelaborate; we separate, the better to understand; there is nothing illegitimate in the verbal and mental sundering of things which must in fact be coexistent.

The true doctrine may be stated as follows:

In the absence of body, soul could not have gone forth, since there is no other place to which its nature would allow it to descend. Since go forth it must, it will generate a place for itself; at once body, also, exists.

While the Soul (as an eternal, a Divine Being) is at rest — in rest firmly based on Repose, the Absolute — yet, as we may put it, that huge illumination of the Supreme pouring outwards comes at last to the extreme bourne of its light and dwindles to darkness; this darkness, now lying there beneath, the Soul sees and by seeing brings to shape; for in the law of things this ultimate depth, neighbouring with soul, may not go void of whatsoever degree of that Reason-Principle it can absorb, the dimmed reason of reality at its faintest.

Imagine that a stately and varied mansion has been built; it has never been abandoned by its architect, who, yet, is not tied down to it; he has judged it worthy in all its length and breadth of all the care that can serve to its Being — as far as it can share in Being — or to its beauty, but a care without burden to its director, who never descends, but presides over it from above: this gives the degree in which the Cosmos is ensouled, not by a soul belonging to it, but by one present to it; it is mastered, nor master; not possessor, but possessed. The Soul bears it up, and it lies within, no fragment of it unsharing.

The Cosmos is like a net which takes all its life, as far as ever it stretches, from being wet in the water; it is at the mercy of the sea which spreads out, taking the net with it just so far as it will go, for no mesh of it can strain beyond its set place: the Soul is of so far-reaching a nature — a thing unbounded — as to embrace the entire body of the All in the one extension; so far as the universe extends, there soul is; and if the universe had no existence, the extent of soul would be the same; it is eternally what it is. The universe spreads as broad as the presence of soul; the bound of its expansion is the point at which, in its downward -268- egression from the Supreme, it still has soul to bind it in one: it is a shadow as broad as the Reason-Principle proceeding from soul; and that Reason-Principle is of scope to generate a cosmic bulk as vast as lay in the purposes of the Idea (the Divine forming power) which it conveys.


§ 10. In view of all this we must now work back from the items to the unit, and consider the entire scheme as one enduring thing.

Just as in the groups air-light-sun and moon-light-sun the members exist simultaneously, though having degrees of primary, secondary, tertiary (i.e. having a logical or causal sequence), so we have Soul eternally unchanging, then graded series like that of fire stretching from primary to ultimate, where the ultimate is conceived as a shadow cast by fire and at once illuminated so that something of the nature of the Forming-Idea (of fire) hovers over the outcast that at first lay in blank obscurity. It is brought under the scheme of reason by the efficacy of soul whose entire extension latently holds this rationalizing power. As we know, the Reason-Principles carried in animal seed fashion and shape living beings into so many universes in the small. For whatsoever touches soul is moulded to the nature of soul’s own Real-Being.

We are not to think that the Soul acts upon the object by conformity to any external judgement; there is no pause for willing or planning: any such procedure would not be an act of sheer nature, but one of applied art: but art is of later origin than soul; it is an imitator, producing dim and feeble copies — toys, things of no great worth — and it is dependent upon all sorts of mechanism by which alone its images can be produced. The Soul, on the contrary, is sovereign over material things by might of Real-Being; their quality is determined by its lead, and those elementary things cannot stand against its will. On the later level, things are hindered one by the other, and thus often fall short of the characteristic shape at which their unextended Reason-Principle must be aiming; in the world as a whole (as distinct from its parts) the entire shape comes from soul, and all that is produced takes and keeps its appointed place in a unity, so that the engendered thing, without labour as without clash, becomes all that it should be. In the world the Soul has elaborated its creation, the images of the gods, dwellings for men, each existing to some peculiar purpose.

Soul could produce none but the things which truly represent its powers: fire produces warmth; another source produces cold; soul has a double efficacy, its act within itself, and its act from within outwards towards the new production.

In soulless entities, the inner act remains dormant, and any efficiency they have is to bring to their own likeness whatever is amenable. All existence has this tendency to bring other things to likeness; but the Soul has the distinction of possessing at once an action of conscious attention within itself, and an action towards the outer. It has thus the function of giving life to all that does not live by prior right, and the -269- life it gives is commensurate with its own; that is to say, living in reason, it communicates reason to the body — an image of the reason within itself, just as the life given to the body is an image of Real-Being — and it bestows, also, upon that material the appropriate shapes of which it contains the Reason-Forms.

The content of the creative soul includes the Ideal shapes of gods and of all else: and hence it is that the Cosmos contains all.


§ 11. I think, therefore, that those ancient sages, who sought to secure the presence of divine beings by the erection of shrines and statues, showed insight into the nature of the All; they perceived that, though this Soul is everywhere tractable, its presence will be secured all the more readily when an appropriate receptacle is elaborated, a place especially capable of receiving some portion or phase of it, something reproducing it, or representing it and serving like a mirror to catch an image of it.

It belongs to the nature of the All to make its entire content reproduce, most felicitously, the Reason-Principles in which it participates; every particular thing is the image within matter of a Reason-Principle which itself images a pre-material Reason-Principle: thus every particular entity is linked to that Divine Being in whose likeness it is made, the divine principle which the Soul contemplated and contained in the act of each creation. Such mediation and representation there must have been since it was equally impossible for the created to be without share in the Supreme, and for the Supreme to descend into the created.

The sun of that sphere — let us return to it as our example — is an Intellectual-Principle, and immediately upon it follows the Soul depending from it, stationary Soul from stationary Intelligence. But the Soul borders also upon the sun of this sphere, and becomes the medium by which it is linked to the over-world; it plays the part of an interpreter between what emanates from that sphere down to this lower universe, and what rises — as far as, through Soul, anything can — from the lower to the highest.

Nothing, in fact, is far away from anything; things are not remote: there is, no doubt, the aloofness of difference and of mingled natures as against the unmingled; but selfhood has nothing to do with spatial position, and in unity itself there may still be distinction.

These Beings (the heavenly bodies) are divine in virtue of cleaving to the Supreme, because, by the medium of the Soul thought of as descending, they remain linked with the Primal Soul, and through it are veritably what they are called and possess the vision of the Intellectual Principle, the single object of contemplation to that soul in which they have their being.


§ 12. The souls of men, seeing their images in the mirror of Dionysus as it were, have entered into that realm in a leap downward from the Supreme: yet even they are not cut off from their origin, from the -270- divine Intellect; it is not that they have come bringing the Intellectual Principle down in their fall; it is that though they have descended even to earth, yet their higher part holds forever above the heavens.

Their initial descent is deepened since that mid-part of theirs is compelled to labour in care of the care-needing thing into which they have entered. But Zeus, the father, takes pity on their toils and makes the bonds in which they labour soluble by death and gives respite in due time, freeing them from the body, that they too may come to dwell there where the Universal Soul, unconcerned with earthly needs, has ever dwelt.

For the container of the total of things must be a self-sufficing entity and remain so: in its periods it is wrought out to purpose under its Reason-Principles which are perdurably valid; by these periods it reverts unfailingly, in the measured stages of defined life-duration, to its established character; it is leading the things of this realm to be of one voice and plan with the Supreme. And thus the cosmic content is carried forward to its purpose, everything in its coordinate place, under one only Reason-Principle operating alike in the descent and return of souls and to every purpose of the system.

We may know this also by the concordance of the souls with the ordered scheme of the Cosmos; they are not dependent, but, by their descent, they have put themselves in contact, and they stand henceforth in harmonious association with the cosmic circuit — to the extent that their fortunes, their life-experiences, their choosing and refusing, are announced by the patterns of the stars — and out of this concordance rises as it were one musical utterance: the music, the harmony, by which all is described, is the best witness to this truth.

Such a consonance can have been procured in one only way:

The All must, in every detail of act and experience, be an expression of the Supreme, which must dominate alike its periods and its stable ordering and the life-careers varying with the movement of the souls as they are sometimes absorbed in that highest, sometimes in the heavens, sometimes turned to the things and places of our earth. All that is Divine Intellect will rest eternally above, and could never fall from its sphere but, poised entire in its own high place, will communicate to things here through the channel of Soul. Soul in virtue of neighbourhood is more closely modelled upon the Idea uttered by the Divine Intellect, and thus is able to produce order in the movement of the lower realm, one phase (the World-Soul) maintaining the unvarying march (of the cosmic circuit), the other (the Soul of the Individual) adapting itself to times and seasons.

The depth of the descent, also, will differ — sometimes lower, sometimes less low — and this even in its entry into any given Kind: all that is fixed is that each several soul descends to a recipient indicated by affinity of condition; it moves towards the thing which it There resembled, and enters, accordingly, into the body of man or animal. -271-


§ 13. The Ineluctable, the Cosmic Law is, thus, rooted in a natural principle under which each several entity is overruled to go, duly and in order, towards that place and Kind to which it characteristically tends, that is towards the image of its primal choice and constitution.

In that archetypal world every form of soul is near to the image (the thing in the world of copy) to which its individual constitution inclines it; there is therefore no need of a sender or leader acting at the right moment to bring it at the right moment whether into body or into a definitely appropriate body: of its own motion it descends at the precisely true time and enters where it must. To every soul its own hour; when that strikes it descends and enters the body suitable to it as at the cry of a herald; thus all is set stirring and advancing as by a magician’s power or by some mighty traction; it is much as, in any living thing, the Soul itself effects the fulfillment of the natural career, stirring and bringing forth, in due season, every element — beard, horn, and all the successive stages of tendency and of output — or, as it leads a tree through its normal course within set periods.

The souls go forth neither under compulsion nor of freewill; or, at least, freedom, here, is not to be regarded as action upon preference; it is more like such a leap of the nature as moves men to the instinctive desire of sexual union, or, in the case of some, to fine conduct; the motive lies elsewhere than in the reason: like is destined unfailingly to like, and each moves hither or thither at its fixed moment.

Even the Intellectual-Principle, which is before all the Cosmos, has, it also, its destiny, that of abiding intact above, and of giving downwards; what it sends down is the particular whose existence is implied in the law (or decreed system) of the universal; for the universal broods closely over the particular; it is not from without that the law derives the power by which it is executed; on the contrary the law is given in the entities upon whom it falls; these bear it about with them. Let but the moment arrive, and what it decrees will be brought to act by those beings in whom it resides; they fulfill it because they contain it; it prevails because it is within them; it becomes like a heavy burden, and sets up in them a painful longing to enter the realm to which they are bidden from within.


§ 14. Thus it comes about that this Cosmos, lit with many lights, gleaming in its souls, receives still further graces, gifts from here and from there, from the gods of the Supreme, and from those other Intellectual-Principles whose nature it is to ensoul. This is probably the secret of the myth in which, after Prometheus had moulded woman, the other gods heaped gifts upon her, Hephaistos ‘blending the clay with moisture and bestowing the human voice and the form of a goddess’; Aphrodite bringing her gifts, and the Graces theirs, and other gods other gifts, and finally calling her by the name (Pandora) which tells of gift and of all giving — for all have added something to this formation brought to -272- being by a Promethean, a fore-thinking power. As for the rejection of Prometheus’ gift by after-thought, Epimetheus, what can this signify but that the wiser choice is to remain in the Intellectual realm? Pandora’s creator is fettered, to signify that he is in some sense held by his own creation; such a fettering is external and the release by Hercules tells that there is power in Prometheus, so that he need not remain in bonds.

Take the myth as we may, it is certainly such an account of the bestowal of gifts upon the Cosmos as harmonizes with our explanation of the universal system.


§ 15. The souls peering forth from the Intellectual Realm descend first to the heavens and there put on a body; this becomes at once the medium by which as they reach out more and more towards magnitude (physical extension) they proceed to bodies progressively more earthy. Some even plunge from heaven to the very lowest of corporeal forms; others pass, stage by stage, too feeble to lift towards the higher the burden they carry, weighed downwards by their heaviness and forgetfulness.

As for the differences among them, these are due to variation in the bodies entered, or to the accidents of life, or to upbringing, or to inherent peculiarities of temperament, or to all these influences together, or to specific combinations of them.

Then again some have fallen unreservedly into the power of the destiny ruling here: some yielding betimes are betimes too their own: there are those who, while they accept what must be borne, have the strength of self-mastery in all that is left to their own act; they have given themselves to another dispensation: they live by the code of the aggregate of beings, the code which is woven out of the Reason-Principles and all the other causes ruling in the Cosmos, out of soul-movements and out of laws springing in the Supreme; a code, therefore, consonant with those higher existences, founded upon them, linking their sequents back to them, keeping unshakably true all that is capable of holding itself set towards the divine nature, and leading round by all appropriate means whatsoever is less natively apt.

In fine all diversity of condition in the lower spheres is determined by the descendent beings themselves.


§ 16. The punishment justly overtaking the wicked must therefore be ascribed to the cosmic order which leads all in accordance with the right.

But what of chastisements, poverty, illness, falling upon the good outside of all justice? These events, we will be told, are equally interwoven into the world order and fall under prediction, and must consequently have a cause in the general reason: are they therefore to be charged to past misdoing?

No: such misfortunes do not answer to reasons established in the nature of things; they are not laid up in the master-facts of the universe, -273- but were merely accidental sequents: a house falls, and anyone that chances to be underneath is killed, no matter what sort of man he be: two squadrons of cavalry are moving in perfect order — or one if you like — but anything getting in the way is wounded or trampled down. Or we may reason that the undeserved stroke can be no evil to the sufferer in view of the beneficent interweaving of the All; or again, no doubt, that nothing is unjust that finds justification in a past history.

We may not think of some things being fitted into a system with others abandoned to the capricious; if things must happen by cause, by natural sequences, under one Reason-Principle and a single set scheme, we must admit that the minor equally with the major is fitted into that order and pattern.

Wrongdoing from man to man is wrong in the doer and must be imputed, but, as belonging to the established order of the universe, is not a wrong even as regards the innocent sufferer; it is a thing that had to be, and, if the sufferer is good, the issue is to his gain. For we cannot think that this ordered combination proceeds without God and justice; we must take it to be precise in the distribution of due, while, yet, the reasons of things elude us, and to our ignorance the scheme presents matter of censure.


§ 17. Various considerations explain why the souls going forth from the Intellectual proceed first to the heavenly regions. The heavens, as the noblest portion of sensible space, would border with the least exalted of the Intellectual, and will, therefore, be first ensouled, first to participate as most apt; while what is of earth is at the very extremity of progression, least endowed towards participation, remotest from the unembodied.

All the souls, then, shine down upon the heavens and spend there the main of themselves and the best; only their lower phases illuminate the lower realms; and those souls which descend deepest show their light furthest down — not themselves the better for the depth to which they have penetrated.

There is, we may put it, something that is centre; about it, a circle of light shed from it; round centre and first circle alike, another circle, light from light; outside that again, not another circle of light but one which, lacking light of its own, must borrow.

The last we may figure to ourselves as a revolving circle, or rather a sphere, of a nature to receive light from that third realm, its next higher, in proportion to the light which that itself receives. Thus all begins with the great light, shining self-centred; in accordance with the reigning plan (that of emanation) this gives forth its brilliance; the later (divine) existents (souls) add their radiation — some of them remaining above, while there are some that are drawn further downward, attracted by the splendour of the object they illuminate. These last find that their charges need more and more care: the steersman of a storm-tossed ship -274- is so intent on saving it that he forgets his own interest and never thinks that he is recurrently in peril of being dragged down with the vessel; similarly the souls are intent upon contriving for their charges and finally come to be pulled down by them; they are fettered in bonds of sorcery, gripped and held by their concern for the realm of Nature.

If every living being were of the character of the All — perfect, self-sufficing, in peril from no outside influence — the Soul now spoken of as indwelling would not occupy the body; it would infuse life while clinging, entire, within the Supreme.


§ 18. There remains still something to be said on the question whether the Soul uses deliberate reason before its descent and again when it has left the body.

Reasoning is for this sphere; it is the act of the Soul fallen into perplexity, distracted with cares, diminished in strength: the need of deliberation goes with the less self-sufficing intelligence; craftsmen faced by a difficulty stop to consider; where there is no problem their art works on by its own forthright power.

But if souls in the Supreme operate without reasoning, how can they be called reasoning souls?

One answer might be that they have the power of deliberating to happy issue, should occasion arise: but all is met by defining the particular kind of reasoning intended: we may represent to ourselves a reasoning that flows uninterruptedly from the Intellectual-Principle in them, an inherent state, an enduring activity, an assertion that is real; in this way they would be users of reason even when in that over-world. We certainly cannot think of them, it seems to me, as employing words when, though they may occupy bodies in the heavenly region, they are essentially in the Intellectual: and very surely the deliberation of doubt and difficulty which they practise here must be unknown to them There; all their act must fall into place by sheer force of their nature; there can be no question of commanding or of taking counsel; they will know, each, what is to be communicated from another, by present consciousness. Even in our own case here, eyes often know what is not spoken; and There all is pure, every being is, as it were, an eye, nothing is concealed or sophisticated, there is no need of speech, everything is seen and known. As for the Celestials (the Daimones) and souls in the air, they may well use speech; for all such are simply Animate-Beings.


§ 19. Are we to think of the indivisible phase of the soul and theAre we to think of the indivisible phase of the Soul and the divided as making one thing in a coalescence; or is the indivisible in a place of its own and under conditions of its own, the divisible being a sequent upon it, a separate part of it, as distinct as the reasoning phase is from the unreasoning?

The answer to this question will emerge when we make plain the nature and function to be attributed to each. -275-

The indivisible phase is mentioned (in the passage of Plato) without further qualification; but not so the divisible; ‘that soul’ we read ‘which becomes divisible in bodies’ — and even this last is presented as becoming partible, not as being so once for all.

‘In bodies’: we must, then, satisfy ourselves as to what form of soul is required to produce life in the corporeal, and what there must be of soul present throughout such a body, such a completed organism.

Now, every sensitive power — by the fact of being sensitive throughout — tends to become a thing of parts: present at every distinct point of sensitiveness, it may be thought of as divided. In the sense, however, that it is present as a whole at every such point, it cannot be said to be wholly divided; it ‘becomes divisible in body’. We may be told that no such partition is implied in any sensations but those of touch; but this is not so; where the participant is body (of itself insensitive and non-transmitting) that divisibility in the sensitive agent will be a condition of all other sensations, though in less degree than in the case of touch. Similarly the vegetative function in the Soul, with that of growth, indicates divisibility; and, admitting such locations as that of desire at the liver and emotional activity at the heart, we have the same result. It is to be noted, however, as regards these (the less corporeal) sensations, that the body may possibly not experience them as a fact of the conjoint thing but in another mode, as rising within some one of the elements of which it has been participant (as inherent, purely, in some phase of the associated soul): reasoning and the act of the intellect, for instance, are not vested in the body; their task is not accomplished by means of the body which in fact is detrimental to any thinking on which it is allowed to intrude.

Thus the indivisible phase of the Soul stands distinct from the divisible; they do not form a unity, but, on the contrary, a whole consisting of parts, each part a self-standing thing having its own peculiar virtue. None the less, if that phase which becomes divisible in body holds indivisibility by communication from the superior power, then this one same thing (the Soul in body) may be at once indivisible and divisible; it will be, as it were, a blend, a thing made up of its own divisible self with, in addition, the quality that it derives from above itself.


§ 20. Here a question rises to which we must find an answer: whether these and the other powers which we call ‘parts’ of the Soul are situated, all, in place; or whether some have place and standpoint, others not; or whether again none are situated in place.

The matter is difficult: if we do not allot to each of the parts of the Soul some form of place, but leave all unallocated — no more within the body than outside it — we leave the body soulless, and are at a loss to explain plausibly the origin of acts performed by means of the bodily organs: if, on the other hand, we suppose some of those phases to be -276- (capable of situation) in place but others not so, we will be supposing that those parts to which we deny place are ineffective in us, or, in other words, that we do not possess our entire soul.

This simply shows that neither the Soul entire nor any part of it may be considered to be within the body as in a space: space is a container, a container of body; it is the home of such things as consist of isolated parts, and is never, therefore, found whole in any part; now, the Soul is not a body and is no more contained than containing.

Neither is it in body as in some vessel: whether as vessel or as place of location, the body would remain, in itself, unensouled. If we are to think of some passing-over from the Soul — that self-gathered thing — to the containing vessel, then soul is diminished by just as much as the vessel takes.

Space, again, in the strict sense is unembodied, and is not, itself, body; why, then, should it need soul?

Besides (if the Soul were contained as in space) contact would be only at the surface of the body, not throughout the entire mass.

Many other considerations equally refute the notion that the Soul is in body as (an object) in space; for example, this space would be shifted with every movement, and a thing itself would carry its own space about.

Of course if by space we understand the interval separating objects, it is still less possible that the Soul be in body as in space: such a separating interval must be a void; but body is not a void; the void must be that in which body is placed; body (not soul) will be in the void.

Nor can it be in the body as in some substratum: anything in a substratum is a condition affecting that — a colour, a form — but the Soul (is no condition of something else,) is a separate existence.

Nor is it present as a part in the whole: soul is no part of body. If we are asked to think of soul as a part in the living total we are faced with the old difficulty: how it is in that whole. It is certainly not there as the wine is in the wine jar, or as the jar in the jar, or as some absolute is self-present.

Nor can the presence be that of a whole in its part: it would be absurd to think of the Soul as a total of which the body should represent the parts.

It is not present as Form is in Matter; for the Form as in Matter is inseparable, and, further, is something superimposed upon an already existent thing; soul, on the contrary, is that which engenders the Form residing within the Matter and therefore is not the Form. If the reference is not to the Form actually present, but to Form as a thing existing apart from all formed objects, it is hard to see how such an entity has found its way into body, and at any rate this makes the Soul separable.

How comes it then that everyone speaks of soul as being in body?

Because the Soul is not seen and the body is: we perceive the body, and by its movement and sensation we understand that it is ensouled, -277- and we say that it possesses a soul; to speak of residence is a natural sequence. If the Soul were visible, an object of the senses, radiating throughout the entire life, if it were manifest in full force to the very outermost surface, we would no longer speak of soul as in body; we would say the minor was within the major, the contained within the container, the fleeting within the perdurable.


§ 21. What does all this come to? What answer do we give to any who, with no opinion of his own to assert, asks us to explain this presence? And what do we say to the question whether there is one only mode of presence of the entire soul or different modes, phase and phase?

Of the modes currently accepted for the presence of one thing in another, none really meets the case of the Soul’s relation to the body. Thus we are given as a parallel the steersman in the ship; this serves adequately to indicate that the Soul is potentially separable, but the mode of presence, which is what we are seeking, it does not exhibit.

We can imagine it within the body in some incidental way — for example, as a voyager in a ship — but scarcely as the steersman: and, of course, too, the steersman is not omnipresent to the ship as the Soul is to the body.

May we, perhaps, compare it to the science or skill that acts through its appropriate instruments — through a helm, let us say, which should happen to be a live thing — so that the soul effecting the movements dictated by seamanship is an indwelling directive force?

No: the comparison breaks down, since the science is something outside of helm and ship.

Is it any help to adopt the illustration of the steersman taking the helm, and to station the Soul within the body as the steersman may be thought to be within the material instrument through which he works? Soul, whenever and wherever it chooses to operate, does in much that way move the body.

No; even in this parallel we have no explanation of the mode of presence within the instrument; we cannot be satisfied without further search, a closer approach.


§ 22. May we think that the mode of the Soul’s presence to body is that of the presence of light to the air?

This certainly is presence with distinction: the light penetrates through and through, but nowhere coalesces; the light is the stable thing, the air flows in and out; when the air passes beyond the lit area it is dark; under the light it is lit: we have a true parallel to what we have been saying of body and soul, for the air is in the light rather than the light in the air.

Plato therefore is wise when, in treating of the All he puts the body in its soul and not its soul in the body, and says that while there is a region of that soul which contains body, there is another region -278- to which body does not enter — certain powers, that is, with which body has no concern. And what is true of the All-Soul is true of the others.

There are, therefore, certain soul-powers whose presence to body must be denied.

The phases present are those which the nature of body demands: they are present without being resident — either in any parts of the body or in the body as a whole.

For the purposes of sensation the sensitive phase of the Soul is present to the entire sensitive being: for the purposes of act, differentiation begins; every soul phase operates at a point peculiar to itself.


§ 23. I explain: a living body is illuminated by soul: each organ and member participates in soul after some manner peculiar to itself; the organ is adapted to a certain function, and this fitness is the vehicle of the soul-faculty under which the function is performed; thus the seeing faculty acts through the eyes, the hearing faculty through the ears, the tasting faculty through the tongue, the faculty of smelling through the nostrils, and the faculty of sentient touch is present throughout, since in this particular form of perception the entire body is an instrument in the Soul’s service.

The vehicles of touch are at the ends of the nerves — which, moreover, are vehicles of the faculty by which the movements of the living being are effected — in them the soul-faculty concerned makes itself present; the nerves start from the brain. The brain therefore has been considered as the centre and seat of the principle which determines feeling and impulse and the entire act of the organism as a living thing; where the instruments are found to be linked, there the operating faculty is assumed to be situated. But it would be wiser to say only that there is situated the first activity of the operating faculty: the power to be exercised by the operator — in keeping with the particular instrument — must be considered as concentrated at the point at which the instrument is to be first applied; or, since the Sours faculty is of universal scope, the sounder statement is that the point of origin of the instrument is the point of origin of the act.

Now, the faculty presiding over sensation and impulse is vested in the sensitive and representative soul; it draws upon the Reason-Principle immediately above itself; downward, it is in contact with an inferior of its own: on this analogy the uppermost member of the living being was taken by the ancients to be obviously its seat; they lodged it in the brain, or not exactly in the brain but in that sensitive part which is the medium through which the Reason-Principle impinges upon the brain. They saw that something must be definitely allocated to body — at the point most receptive of the act of reason — while something utterly isolated from body must be in contact with that superior thing which is a form of soul (and not merely of the vegetative or other quasi-corporeal -279- forms but) of that soul apt to the appropriation of the perceptions originating in the Reason-Principle.

Such a linking there must be, since in perception there is some element of judging, in representation something intuitional, and since impulse and appetite derive from representation and reason. The reasoning faculty, therefore, is present where these experiences occur, present not as in a place but in the fact that what is there draws upon it. As regards perception we have already explained in what sense it is local.

But every living being includes the vegetal principle, that principle of growth and nourishment which maintains the organism by means of the blood; this nourishing medium is contained in the veins; the veins and blood have their origin in the liver: from observation of these facts the power concerned was assigned a place; the phase of the Soul, which has to do with desire, was allocated to the liver. Certainly what brings to birth and nourishes and gives growth must have the desire of these functions. Blood — subtle, light, swift, pure — is the vehicle most apt to animal spirit: the heart, then, its well-spring, the place where such blood is sifted into being, is taken as the fixed centre of the ebullition of the passionate nature.


§ 24. Now comes the question of the Soul leaving the body: where does it go?

It cannot remain in this world where there is no natural recipient for it; and it cannot remain attached to anything not of a character to hold it: it can be held here when only it is less than wise, containing within itself something of that which lures it.

If it does contain any such alien element it gives itself, with increasing attachment, to the sphere to which that element naturally belongs and tends.

The space open to the Soul’s resort is vast and diverse; the difference will come by the double force of the individual condition and of the justice reigning in things. No one can ever escape the suffering entailed by ill deeds done: the divine law is ineluctable, carrying bound up, as one with it, the fore-ordained execution of its doom. The sufferer, all unaware, is swept onward towards his due, hurried always by the restless driving of his errors, until at last wearied out by that against which he struggled, he falls into his fit place and, by self-chosen movement, is brought to the lot he never chose. And the law decrees, also, the intensity and the duration of the suffering while it carries with it, too, the lifting of chastisement and the faculty of rising from those places of pain — all by power of the harmony that maintains the universal scheme.

Souls, body-bound, are apt to body-punishment; clean souls no longer drawing to themselves at any point any vestige of body are, by their very being, outside the bodily sphere; body-free, containing nothing of body — there where Essence is, and Being, and the Divine within the Divinity, among Those, within That, such a soul must be. -280-

If you still ask Where, you must ask where those Beings are — and in your seeking, seek otherwise than with the sight, and not as one seeking for body.


§ 25. Now comes the question, equally calling for an answer, whether those souls that have quitted the places of earth retain memory of their lives — all souls or some, of all things, or of some things, and, again, forever or merely for some period not very long after their withdrawal.

A true investigation of this matter requires us to establish first what a remembering principle must be — I do not mean what memory is, but in what order of beings it can occur. The nature of memory has been indicated, laboured even, elsewhere; we still must try to understand more clearly what characteristics are present where memory exists.

Now a memory has to do with something brought into ken from without, something learned or something experienced; the Memory-Principle, therefore, cannot belong to such beings as are immune from experience and from time.

No memory, therefore, can be ascribed to any divine being, or to the Authentic-Existent or the Intellectual-Principle: these are intangibly immune; time does not approach them; they possess eternity centred around Being; they know nothing of past and sequent; all is an unbroken state of identity, not receptive of change. Now a being rooted in unchanging identity cannot entertain memory, since it has not and never had a state differing from any previous state, or any new intellection following upon a former one, so as to be aware of contrast between a present perception and one remembered from before.

But what prevents such a being (from possessing memory in the sense of) perceiving, without variation in itself, such outside changes as, for example, the cosmic periods?

Simply the fact that following the changes of the revolving Cosmos it would have perception of earlier and later: intuition and memory are distinct.

We cannot hold its self-intellections to be acts of memory; this is no question of something entering from without, to be grasped and held in fear of an escape; if its intellections could slip away from it (as a memory might) its very Essence (as the Hypostasis of inherent Intellection) would be in peril.

For the same reason memory, in the current sense, cannot be attributed to the Soul in connexion with the ideas inherent in its essence: these it holds not as a memory but as a possession, though, by its very entrance into this sphere, they are no longer the mainstay of its Act.

The Soul-action which is to be observed seems to have induced the ancients to ascribe memory, and ‘Recollection’ (the Platonic Anamnesis), to souls bringing into outward manifestation the ideas they contain: we see at once that the memory here indicated is another kind; it is a memory outside of time. -281-

But, perhaps, this is treating too summarily a matter which demands minute investigation. It might be doubted whether that recollection, that memory, really belongs to the highest soul and not rather to another, a dimmer, or even to the Couplement, the Living-Being. And if to that dimmer soul, when and how has it come to be present; if to the Couplement, again when and how?

We are driven thus to inquire into these several points: in which of the constituents of our nature is memory vested — the question with which we started; if in the Soul, then in what power or part; if in the Animate or Couplement — which has been supposed, similarly, to be the seat of sensation — then by what mode it is present, and how we are to define the Couplement; finally whether sensation and intellectual acts may be ascribed to one and the same agent, or imply two distinct principles.


§ 26. Now if sensations of the active order depend upon the Couplement of soul and body, sensation must be of that double nature. Hence it is classed as one of the shared acts: the Soul, in the feeling, may be compared to the workman in such operations as boring or weaving, the body to the tool employed: the body is passive and menial; the Soul is active, reading such impressions as are made upon the body or discerned by means of the body, perhaps entertaining only a judgement formed as the result of the bodily experiences.

In such a process it is at once clear that the sensation is a shared task; but the memory is not thus made over to the Couplement, since the Soul has from the first taken over the impression, either to retain or to reject.

It might be ventured that memory, no less than sensation, is a function of the Couplement, on the ground that bodily constitution determines our memories good or bad; but the answer would come that, whether the body happens or not to be a hindrance, the act of remembering would still be an act of the Soul. And in the case of matters learned (and not merely felt, as corporeal experiences), how can we think of the Couplement of soul and body as the remembering principle? Here, surely, it must be soul alone?

We may be told that the living-being is a Couplement in the sense of something entirely distinct formed from the two elements (so that it might have memory though neither soul nor body had it). But, to begin with, it is absurd to class the living-being as neither body nor soul; these two things cannot so change as to make a distinct third, nor can they blend so utterly that the Soul shall become a mere potentiality in the animate whole. And, further, supposing they could so blend, memory would still be due to the Soul just as in honey- wine all the sweetness will be due to the honey.

It may be suggested that while the Soul is perhaps not in itself a remembering principle, yet that, having lost its purity and acquired -282- some degree of modification by its presence in body, it becomes capable of reproducing the imprints of sensible objects and experiences, and that, seated, as roughly speaking it is, within the body, it may reasonably be thought capable of accepting such impressions, and in such a manner as to retain them (thus in some sense possessing memory).

But, to begin with, these imprints are not magnitudes (are not of corporeal nature at all); there is no resemblance to seal impressions, no stamping of a resistant matter, for there is neither the down-thrust (as of the seal) nor (the acceptance) as in the wax: the process is entirely of the intellect, though exercised upon things of sense; and what kind of resistance (or other physical action) can be affirmed in matters of the intellectual order, or what need can there be of body or bodily quality as a means?

Further there is one order of which the memory must obviously belong to the Soul; it alone can remember its own movements, for example its desires and those frustrations of desire in which the coveted thing never came to the body: the body can have nothing to tell about things which never approached it, and the Soul cannot use the body as a means to the remembrance of what the body by its nature cannot know.

If the Soul is to have any significance — to be a definite principle with a function of its own — we are forced to recognize two orders of fact: an order in which the body is a means but all culminates in soul, and an order which is of the Soul alone. This being admitted, aspiration will belong to soul, and so, as a consequence, will that memory of the aspiration and of its attainment or frustration, without which the Soul’s nature would fall into the category of the unstable (that is to say of the undivine, unreal). Deny this character of the Soul and at once we refuse it perception, consciousness, any power of comparison, almost any understanding. Yet these powers of which, embodied, it becomes the source cannot be absent from its own nature. On the contrary; it possesses certain activities to be expressed in various functions whose accomplishment demands bodily organs; at its entry it brings with it (as vested in itself alone) the powers necessary for some of these functions, while in the case of others it brings the very activities themselves.

Memory, in point of fact, is impeded by the body: even as things are, addition often brings forgetfulness; with thinning and clearing away, memory will often revive. The Soul is a stability; the shifting and fleeting thing which body is can be a cause only of its forgetting, not of its remembering — Lethe stream may be understood in this sense — and memory is a fact of the Soul.


§ 27. But of what soul — of that which we envisage as the more divine, by which we are human beings, or that other which springs from the All?

Memory must be admitted in both of these, personal memories and -283- shared memories; and when the two souls are together, the memories also are as one; when they stand apart, assuming that both exist and endure, each soon forgets the others affairs, retaining for a longer time its own. Thus it is that the Shade of Hercules in the lower regions — this ‘Shade’, as I take it, being the characteristically human part — remembers all the action and experience of the life, since that career was mainly of the hero’s personal shaping; the other souls (soul-phases) going to constitute the joint-being could, for all their different standing, have nothing to recount but the events of that same life, doings which they knew from the time of their association: perhaps they would add also some moral judgement.

What the Hercules standing outside the Shade spoke of we are not told: what can we think that other, the freed and isolated, soul would recount?

The soul which still drags a burden will tell of all the man did and felt; but upon death there will appear, as time passes, memories of the lives lived before, some of the events of the most recent life being dismissed as trivial. As it grows away from the body, it will revive things forgotten in the corporeal state, and if it passes in and out of one body after another, it will tell over the events of the discarded life, it will treat as present that which it has just left, and it will remember much from the former existence. But with lapse of time it will come to forgetfulness of many things that were mere accretion.

Then, free and alone at last, what will it have to remember?

The answer to that question depends on our discovering in what faculty of the Soul memory resides.


§ 28.

Is memory vested in the faculty by which we perceive and learn? Or do we remember objects of desire with the desiring faculty and objects of anger with the passionate faculty?

This will be maintained on the ground that there could scarcely be both a first faculty in direct action and a second to remember what that first experiences It is certain that the desiring faculty is apt to be stirred by what it has once enjoyed; the object presents itself again; evidently, memory is at work; why else, the same object with the same attraction?

But, at that, we might reasonably ascribe to the desiring faculty the very perception of the desired objects and then the desire itself to the perceptive faculty, and so on all through, and in the end conclude that the distinctive names merely indicate the function which happens to be uppermost.

Yet the perception is very different from faculty to faculty; certainly it is sight and not desire that sees the object; desire is stirred merely as a result of the seeing, by a transmission; its act is not in the nature of an identification of an object seen; all is simply blind response (automatic reaction). Similarly with rage; sight reveals the offender and the passion -284- leaps; we may think of a shepherd seeing a wolf at his flock, and a dog, seeing nothing, who springs to the scent or the sound.

In other words the desiring faculty has had the emotion, but the trace it keeps of the event is not a memory; it is a condition, something passively accepted: there is another faculty that was aware of the enjoyment and retains the memory of what has happened. This is confirmed by the fact that many satisfactions which the desiring faculty has enjoyed are not retained in the memory: if memory resided in the desiring faculty, such forgetfulness could not be.


§ 29. Are we, then, to refer memory to the perceptive faculty and so make one principle of our nature the seat of both awareness and remembrance?

Now supposing the very Shade, as we were saying in the case of Hercules, has memory, then the perceptive faculty is twofold; and even if the faculty that remembers is not the faculty that perceives but some other thing, the remembering faculty is twofold. And, further, if the memory deals with matters learned, the perceptive faculty (in order to be identical with memory) will be concerned with thoughts (as well as with matters of observation and feeling): but these two orders certainly require two separate faculties.

Must we then suppose a common faculty of apprehension (one covering both sense-perceptions and ideas) and assign memory in both orders to this?

The solution might serve if there were one and the same percipient for objects of sense and objects of the Intellectual-Kind; but if these stand in definite duality, then, for all we can say or do, we are left with two separate principles of memory; and, supposing each of the two orders of soul to possess both principles, then we have four.

And, on general grounds, what compelling reason is there that the principle by which we perceive should be the principle by which we remember, that these two acts should be vested in the one faculty? Why must the scat of our intellectual action be also the seat of our remembrance of that action? The most powerful thought does not always go with the readiest memory; people of equal perception are not equally good at remembering; some are especially gifted in perception, others, never swift to grasp, are strong to retain.

But, once more, admitting two distinct principles, something quite separate remembering what sense-perception has first known — still this something must have felt what it is required to remember?

No; we may well conceive that where there is to be memory of a sense-perception, this perception becomes a mere presentment, and that to this image-grasping power, a distinct thing, belongs the memory, the retention of the object: for in this imaging faculty the perception culminates; the impression passes away but the vision remains present to the imagination. -285-

By the fact of harbouring the presentment of an object that has disappeared, the imagination is, at once, a seat of memory: where the persistence of the image is brief, the memory is poor; people of powerful memory are those in whom the image-holding power is firmer, not easily allowing the record to be jostled out of its grip.

Remembrance, thus, is vested in the imaging faculty; and memory deals with images. Its differing quality or degree from man to man we would explain by difference or similarity in the strength of the individual powers, by conduct like or unlike, by bodily conditions present or absent, producing change and disorder or not — a point this, however, which need not detain us here.


§ 30. But what of the memory of mental acts: do these also fall under the imaging faculty?

If every mental act is accompanied by an image we may well believe that this image, fixed and like a picture of the thought, would explain how we remember the object of knowledge once entertained. But if there is no such necessary image, another solution must be sought. Perhaps memory would be the reception, into the image-making faculty, of the verbal formula which accompanies the mental conception: this mental conception — an indivisible thing, and one that never rises to the exterior of the consciousness — lies unknown below; the verbal formula — the revealer, the bridge between the concept and the image-taking faculty — exhibits the concept as in a mirror; the apprehension by the image-taking faculty would thus constitute the enduring presence of the concept, would be our memory of it.

This explains, also, another fact: the Soul is unfailingly intent upon intellection; only when it acts upon this image-making faculty does its intellection become a human perception: intellection is one thing, the perception of an intellection is another: we are continuously intuitive but we are not unbrokenly aware: the reason is that the recipient in us receives from both sides, absorbing not merely intellections but also sense-perceptions.


§ 31. But if each of the two phases of the Soul, as we have said, possesses memory, and memory is vested in the imaging faculty, there must be two such faculties. Now that is all very well as long as the two souls stand apart; but, when they are at one in us, what becomes of the two faculties, and in which of them is memory vested?

If each soul has its own imaging faculty the images must in all cases be duplicated, since we cannot think that one faculty deals only with intellectual objects, and the other with objects of sense, a distinction which inevitably implies the coexistence in man of two life-principles utterly unrelated.

And if both orders of image act upon both orders of soul, what difference is there in the souls; and how does the fact escape our knowledge? -286-

The answer is that, when the two souls chime each with each, the two imaging faculties no longer stand apart; the union is dominated by the imaging faculty of the higher soul, and thus the image perceived is as one; the less powerful is like a shadow attending upon the dominant, like a minor light merging into a greater: when they are in conflict, in discord, the minor is distinctly apart, a self-standing thing — though its isolation is not perceived, for the simple reason that the separate being of the two souls escapes observation.

The two have run into a unity in which, yet, one is the loftier: this loftier knows all; when it breaks from the union, it retains some of the experiences of its companion, but dismisses others; thus we accept the talk of our less valued associates, but, on a change of company, we remember little from the first set and more from those in whom we recognize a higher quality.


§ 32. But the memory of friends, children, wife? Country too, and all that the better sort of man may reasonably remember?

All these, the one (the lower man) retains with emotion, the authentic man passively: for the experience, certainly, was first felt in that lower phase from which, however, the best of such impressions pass over to the graver soul in the degree in which the two are in communication.

The lower soul must be always striving to attain to memory of the activities of the higher: this will be especially so when it is itself of a fine quality, for there will always be some that are better from the beginning and bettered here by the guidance of the higher.

The loftier, on the contrary, must desire to come to a happy forgetfulness of all that has reached it through the lower: for one reason, there is always the possibility that the excellence of the higher goes with a baseness in the lower, which is only kept down by sheer force. In any case the more urgent the intention towards the Supreme, the more extensive will be the Soul’s forgetfulness, unless indeed when the entire living has, even here, been such that memory has nothing but the noblest to deal with: in this world itself, all is best when human interests have been held aloof; so, therefore, it must be with the memory of them. In this sense we may truly say that the good soul is the forgetful. It flees multiplicity; it seeks to escape the unbounded by drawing all to unity, for only thus is it free from entanglement, light-footed, self-conducted. Thus it is that even in this world the soul which has the desire of the other is putting away, amid its actual life, all that is foreign to that order. While it is in the heavenly regions it puts away more again. Little of what it gathered here is taken with it to the Intellectual Realm.

The Hercules of the heavenly regions would still tell of his feats: but there is the other man to whom all of that is trivial; he has been translated to a holier place; he has won his way to the Intellectual Realm; he is more than Hercules, proven in the combats in which the combatants are the wise. -287-

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Fourth Tractate: Problems of the Soul (II.)

§ 1. What, then, will be the Soul’s discourse, what its memories in the Intellectual Realm, when at last it has won its way to that Essence?

Obviously from what we have been saying, it will be in contemplation of that order, and have its Act upon the things among which it now is; failing such Contemplation and Act, its being is not there. Of things of earth it will know nothing; it will not, for example, remember an act of philosophic virtue, or even that in its earthly career it had contemplation of the Supreme.

When we seize anything in the direct intellectual act there is room for nothing else than to know and to contemplate the object; the subject is not included in the act of knowing, but asserts itself, if at all, later and is a sign of the altered; this means that, once purely in the Intellectual, no one of us can have any memory of our experience here. Further; if all intellection is timeless — as appears from the fact that the Intellectual beings are of eternity, not of time — there can be no memory in the intellectual world, not merely none of earthly things but none whatever: all is presence There; for there is no discursive thought, no passing from one point to another.

No division, then, of genera into species? No progression from lower to higher, to wider generality? For the higher principle (the Intellectual) evidently not, since it is fully realized as a self-contained unity; but why not for the Soul which has attained to the Intellectual Realm? Yet even the Soul may have the intuition, not by stages and parts, of that Being which is without stage and part.

But that would be in the nature of grasping a pure unity?

No: in the nature of grasping all the intellectual facts or a many that constitutes a unity. For since the object of vision has variety (distinction within its essential oneness) the intuition must be multiple and the intuitions various, just as in a face we see at the one glance eyes and nose and all the rest.

But is not this impossible when the object to be thus divided and treated as a thing of grades is a pure unity?

No: there has already been discrimination within the Intellectual-Principle; the Act of the Soul is little more than a reading of this.

First and last is in the Ideas not a matter of time, and so does not bring time into the Soul’s intuition of earlier and later among them. There is a grading by order as well: the ordered disposition of some growing thing begins with root and reaches to topmost point, but, to one seeing the plant as a whole, there is no other first and last than simply that of the order.

Still, the Soul (in this intuition within the divine) looks to what is a -288- unity; next it entertains multiplicity, all that is: how explain this grasping first of the unity and later of the rest?

The explanation is that the unity of the Soul’s faculty (of intuition) is not incompatible with multiplicity in the object; it does not possess all its content in a single act of thought; each act is incomplete in itself, but all are being constantly exercised; the faculty is permanently there and its effects are external. The object itself is no unity and can therefore harbour a multiplicity which previously it did not contain.


§ 2.

Enough on that point: we come now to the question of memory of the personality.

There will not even be memory of the personality; no thought that the contemplator is the self — Socrates, for example — or that it is Intellect or Soul. In this connexion it should be borne in mind that, in contemplative vision, especially when it is vivid, we are not at the time aware of our own personality; we are in possession of ourselves, but the activity is towards the object of vision with which the thinker becomes identified; he has made himself over as matter to be shaped; he takes ideal form under the action of the vision while remaining, potentially, himself. This means that he is actively himself when he has intellection of nothing.

Or, if he is himself (pure and simple), he is empty of all: if, on the contrary, he is himself (by the self-possession of contemplation) in such a way as to be identified with what is all, then by the act of self-intellection he has the simultaneous intellection of all: in such a case self-intuition by personal activity brings the intellection, not merely of the self, but also of the total therein embraced; and similarly the intuition of the total of things brings that of the personal self as included among all.

But such a process would appear to introduce into the Intellectual that element of change against which we ourselves have only now been protesting?

The answer is that, while unchangeable identity is essential to the Intellectual-Principle, the Soul, lying so to speak on the borders of the Intellectual Realm, is amenable to change; it has, for example, its inward advance, and obviously anything that attains position near to something motionless does so by a change directed towards that unchanging goal and is not itself motionless in the same degree. Nor is it really change to turn from the self to the constituents of self or from those constituents to the self; and in this case the contemplator is the total; the duality has become unity.

None the less the Soul, even in the Intellectual Realm, is under the dispensation of a variety confronting it and a content of its own?

No: once pure in the Intellectual, it too possesses that same unchangeableness: for it possesses identity of essence; when it is in that region it must of necessity enter into oneness with the Intellectual-Principle by the sheer fact of its self-orientation, for by that intention all interval -289- disappears; the Soul advances and is taken into unison, and in that association becomes one with the Intellectual-Principle — but not to its own destruction: the two are one, and two. In such a state there is no question of stage and change: the Soul, without motion (but by right of its essential being) would be intent upon its intellectual act, and in possession, simultaneously, of its self-awareness; for it has become one simultaneous existence with the Supreme.


§ 3. But it leaves that conjunction; it cannot suffer that unity; it falls in love with its own powers and possessions, and desires to stand apart; it leans outward, so to speak: then, it appears to acquire a memory of itself.

In this self-memory a distinction is to be made: the memory dealing with the Intellectual Realm upbears the Soul, not to fall; the memory of things here bears it downwards to this universe; the intermediate memory dealing with the heavenly sphere holds it there too; and, in all its memory, the thing it has in mind it is and grows to; for this bearing-in-mind must be either intuition (i.e. knowledge with identity) or representation by image: and the imaging in the case of the Soul is not a taking in of something (as of an impression) but is vision and condition — so much so, that, in its very sense-sight, it is the lower in the degree in which it penetrates the object. Since its possession of the total of things is not primal but secondary, it does not become all things perfectly (in becoming identical with the All in the Intellectual); it is of the boundary order, situated between two regions, and has tendency to both.


§ 4.

In that realm it has also vision, through the Intellectual-Principle, of The Good which does not so hold to itself as not to reach the Soul; what intervenes between them is not body and therefore is no hindrance — and, indeed, where bodily forms do intervene there is still access in many ways from the primal to the tertiaries.

If, on the contrary, the Soul gives itself to the inferior, the same principle of penetration comes into play, and it possesses itself, by memory and imagination, of the thing it desired: and hence the memory, even dealing with the highest, is not the highest. Memory, of course, must be understood not merely of what might be called the sense of remembrance, but so as to include a condition induced by the past experience or vision. There is such a thing as possessing more powerfully without consciousness than in full knowledge; with full awareness the possession is of something quite distinct from the self; unconscious possession runs very close to identity, and any such approach to identification with the lower means the deeper fall of the Soul.

If the Soul, on abandoning its place in the Supreme, revives its memories of the lower, it must have in some form possessed them even there though the activity of the beings in that realm kept them in abeyance: they could not be in the nature of impressions permanently adopted — a notion which would entail absurdities — but were no more -290- than a potentiality realized after return. When that energy of the Intellectual world ceases to tell upon the Soul, it sees what it saw in the earlier state before it revisited the Supreme.


§ 5. But this power which determines memory, is it also the principle by which the Supreme becomes effective in us?

At any time when we have not been in direct vision of that sphere, memory is the source of its activity within us; when we have possessed that vision, its presence is due to the principle by which we enjoyed it: this principle awakens where it wakens; and it alone has vision in that order; for this is no matter to be brought to us by way of analogy, or by the syllogistic reasoning whose grounds lie elsewhere; the power which we possess of discoursing upon the Intellectual Beings, so far as such discourse is here possible, is vested in that principle which alone is capable of their contemplation. That we must awaken, so to speak, and thus attain the vision of the Supreme, as one, standing on some lofty height and lifting his eyes, sees what to those that have not mounted with him is invisible.

Memory, by this account, commences after the Soul has left the higher spheres; it is first known in the celestial period.

A soul that has descended from the Intellectual region to the celestial and there comes to rest, may very well be understood to recognize many other souls known in its former state — supposing that, as we have said, it retains recollection of much that it knew here. This recognition would be natural if the bodies with which those souls are vested in the celestial must reproduce the former appearance; supposing the spherical form (of the stars inhabited by souls in the mid-realm) means a change of appearance, recognition would go by character, by the distinctive quality of personality: this is not fantastic; conditions changing need not mean a change of character. If the souls have mutual conversation, this too would mean recognition.

But those whose descent from the Intellectual is complete, how is it with them?

They will recall their memories, of the same things, but with less force than those still in the celestial, since they have had other experiences to remember, and the lapse of time will have utterly obliterated much of what was formerly present to them.

But what way of remembering the Supreme is left if the souls have turned to the sense-known Cosmos, and are to fall into this sphere of process?

They need not fall to the ultimate depth: their downward movement may be checked at some one moment of the way; and as long as they have not touched the lowest of the region of process (the point at which non-being begins) there is nothing to prevent them rising once more.


§ 6. Souls that descend, souls that change their state — these, then, may -291- be said to have memory, which deals with what has come and gone; but what subjects of remembrance can there be for souls whose lot is to remain unchanged?

The question touches memory in the stars in general, and also in the sun and moon and ends by dealing with the Soul of the All, even by audaciously busying itself with the memories of Zeus himself. The inquiry entails the examination and identification of acts of understanding and of reasoning in these beings, if such acts take place.

Now if, immune from all lack, they neither seek nor doubt, and never learn, nothing being absent at any time from their knowledge — what reasonings, what processes of rational investigation, can take place in them, what acts of the understanding?

Even as regards human concerns they have no need for observation or method; their administration of our affairs and of earth’s in general does not go so; the right ordering, which is their gift to the universe, is effected by methods very different.


§ 7. In other words, they have seen God and they do not remember?

Ah, no: it is that they see God still and always, and that as long as they see, they cannot tell themselves they have had the vision; such reminiscence is for souls that have lost it.

Well, but can they not tell themselves that yesterday, or last year, they moved round the earth, that they lived yesterday or at any given in their lives?

Their living is eternal, and eternity is an unchanging unity. To identify a yesterday or a last year in their movement would be like isolating the movement of one of the feet, and finding a this or a that and an entire series in what is a single act. The movement of the celestial beings is one movement: it is our measuring that presents us with many movements, and with distinct days determined by intervening nights: There all is one day; series has no place; no yesterday, no last year.

Still: the space traversed is different; there are the various sections of the Zodiac: why, then, should not the Soul say, ‘I have traversed that section and now I AM in this other?’ If, also, it looks down over the concerns of men, must it not see the changes that befall them, that they are not as they were, and, by that observation, that the beings and the things concerned were otherwise formerly? And does not that mean memory?


§ 8. But, we need not record in memory all we see; mere incidental concomitants need not occupy the imagination; when things vividly present to intuition, or knowledge, happen to occur in concrete form, it is not necessary — unless for purposes of a strictly practical administration — to pass over that direct acquaintance, and fasten upon the partial sense-presentation, which is already known in the larger knowledge. -292-

I will take this point by point:

First: it is not essential that everything seen should be laid up in the mind; for when the object is of no importance, or of no personal concern, the sensitive faculty, stimulated by the differences in the objects present to vision, acts without accompaniment of the will, and is alone in entertaining the impression. The Soul does not take into its deeper recesses such differences as do not meet any of its needs, or serve any of its purposes. Above all, when the Soul’s act is directed towards another order, it must utterly reject the memory of such things, things over and done with now, and not even taken into knowledge when they were present.

On the second point: circumstances, purely accidental, need not be present to the imaging faculty, and if they do so appear they need not be retained or even observed, and in fact the impression of any such circumstance does not entail awareness. Thus in local movement, if there is no particular importance to us in the fact that we pass through first this and then that portion of air, or that we proceed from some particular point, we do not take notice, or even know it as we walk.

Similarly, if it were of no importance to us to accomplish any given journey, mere movement in the air being the main concern, we would not trouble to ask at what particular point of place we were, or what distance we had traversed; if we have to observe only the act of movement and not its duration, nothing to do which obliges us to think of time, the minutes are not recorded in our minds.

And finally, it is of common knowledge that, when the understanding is possessed of the entire act undertaken and has no reason to foresee any departure from the normal, it will no longer observe the detail; in a process unfailingly repeated without variation, attention to the unvarying detail is idleness.

So it is with the stars. They pass from point to point, but they move on their own affairs and not for the sake of traversing the space they actually cover; the vision of the things that appear on the way, the journey by, nothing of this is their concern; their passing this or that is of accident not of essence, and their intention is to greater objects: moreover each of them journeys, unchangeably, the same unchanging way; and again, there is no question to them of the time they spend in any given section of the journey, even supposing time-division to be possible in the case. All this granted, nothing makes it necessary that they should have any memory of places or times traversed. Besides, this life of the ensouled stars is one identical thing (since they are one in the All-Soul) so that their very spatial movement is pivoted upon identity and resolves itself into a movement not spatial but vital, the movement of a single living being whose act is directed to itself, a being which to anything outside is at rest, but is in movement by dint of the inner life it possesses, the eternal life. Or we may take the comparison of the movement of the heavenly bodies to a choral dance; if we think of it -293- as a dance which comes to rest at some given period, the entire dance, accomplished from beginning to end, will be perfect while at each partial stage it was imperfect: but if the dance is a thing of eternity, it is in eternal perfection. And if it is in eternal perfection, it has no points of time and place at which it will achieve perfection; it will, therefore, have no concern about attaining to any such points: it will, therefore, make no measurements of time or place; it will have, therefore, no memory of time and place.

If the stars live a blessed life in their vision of the life inherent in their souls, and if, by force of their souls’ tendency to become one, and by the light they cast from themselves upon the entire heavens, they are like the strings of a lyre which, being struck in tune, sing a melody in some natural scale: if this is the way the heavens, as one, are moved, and the component parts in their relation to the whole — the sidereal system moving as one, and each part in its own way, to the same purpose, though each too hold its own place — then our doctrine is all the more surely established; the life of the heavenly bodies is the more clearly an unbroken unity.


§ 9. But Zeus — ordering all, governor, guardian, and disposer, possessor forever of the kingly soul and the kingly intellect, bringing all into being by his providence, and presiding over all things as they come, administering all under plan and system, unfolding the periods of the Cosmos, many of which stand already accomplished — would it not seem inevitable that, in this multiplicity of concern, Zeus should have memory of all the periods, their number, and their differing qualities? Contriving the future, coordinating, calculating for what is to be, must he not surely be the chief of all in remembering, as he is chief in producing?

Even this matter of Zeus’ memory of the cosmic periods is difficult; it is a question of their being numbered, and of his knowledge of their number. A determined number would mean that the All had a beginning in time (which is not so); if the periods are unlimited, Zeus cannot know the number of his works.

The answer is that he will know all to be one thing existing in virtue of one life forever: it is in this sense that the All is unlimited, and thus Zeus’ knowledge of it will not be as of something seen from outside but as of something embraced in true knowledge, for this unlimited thing is an eternal indweller within himself — or, to be more accurate, eternally follows upon him — and is seen by an indwelling knowledge; Zeus knows his own unlimited life, and, in that knowledge, knows the activity that flows from him to the Cosmos; but he knows it in its unity not in its process.


§ 10. The ordering principle is twofold; there is the principle known to us as the Demiurge and there is the Soul of the All; we apply the -294- appellation Zeus sometimes to the Demiurge and sometimes to the principle conducting the universe.

When under the name of Zeus we are considering the Demiurge we must leave out all notions of stage and progress, and recognize one unchanging and timeless life.

But the life in the Cosmos, the life which carries the leading principle of the universe, still needs elucidation; does it operate without calculation, without searching into what ought to be done?

Yes: for what must be stands shaped before the Cosmos, and is ordered without any setting in order: the ordered things are merely the things that come to be; and the principle that brings them into being is Order itself; this production is an act of a soul linked with an unchangeably established wisdom whose reflection in that soul is Order. It is an unchanging wisdom, and there can therefore be no changing in the soul which mirrors it, not sometimes turned towards it and sometimes away from it — and in doubt because it has turned away — but an unremitting soul performing an unvarying task.

The leading principle of the universe is a unity — and one that is sovereign without break, not sometimes dominant and sometimes dominated. What source is there for any such multiplicity of leading principles as might result in contest and hesitation? And this governing unity must always desire the one thing: what could bring it to wish now for this and now for that, to its own greater perplexing? But observe: no perplexity need follow upon any development of this Soul, essentially a unity. The All stands a multiple thing no doubt, having parts, and parts clashing with parts, but that does not imply that it need be in doubt as to its conduct: that Soul does not take its essence from its ultimates or from its parts, but from the Primals; it has its source in the First and thence, along an unhindered path, it flows into a total of things, conferring grace, and, because it remains one same thing occupied in one task, dominating. To suppose it pursuing one new object after another is to raise the question whence that novelty comes into being: the Soul, besides, would be in doubt as to its action; its very work, the Cosmos, would be the less well done by reason of the hesitancy which such calculations would entail.


§ 11. The administration of the Cosmos is to be thought of as that of a living unit: there is the action determined by what is external, and has to do with the parts, and there is that determined by the internal and by the principle: thus a doctor basing his treatment on externals and on the parts directly affected will often be baffled and obliged to all sorts of calculation, while Nature will act on the basis of principle and need no deliberation. And in so far as the Cosmos is a conducted thing, its administration and its administrator will follow not the way or the doctor but the way of Nature.

And in the case of the universe, the administration is all the less -295- complicated from the fact that the Soul actually circumscribes, as parts of a living unity, all the members which it conducts. For all the Kinds included in the universe are dominated by one Kind, upon which they follow, fitted into it, developing from it, growing out of it, just as the Kind manifested in the bough is related to the Kind in the tree as a whole.

What place, then, is there for reasoning, for calculation, what place for memory, where wisdom and knowledge are eternal, unfailingly present, effective, dominant, administering in an identical process?

The fact that the product contains diversity and difference does not warrant the notion that the producer must be subject to corresponding variations. On the contrary, the more varied the product, the more certain the unchanging identity of the producer: even in the single animal the events produced by Nature are many and not simultaneous; there are the age periods, the developments at fixed epochs — horns, beard, maturing breasts, the acme of life, procreation — but the principles which initially determined the nature of the being are not thereby annulled; there is process of growth, but no diversity in the initial principle. The identity underlying all the multiplicity is confirmed by the fact that the principle constituting the parent is exhibited unchanged, undiminished, in the offspring. We have reason, then, for thinking that one and the same wisdom envelops both, and that this is the unalterable wisdom of the Cosmos taken as a whole; it is manifold, diverse and yet simplex, presiding over the most comprehensive of living beings, and in no wise altered within itself by this multiplicity, but stably one Reason-Principle, the concentrated totality of things: if it were not thus all things, it would be a wisdom of the later and partial, not the wisdom of the total, universal living being (the physical Cosmos).


§ 12. It may be urged that all the multiplicity and development are the work of Nature, but that, since there is wisdom within the All, there must be also, by the side of such natural operation, acts of reasoning and of memory.

But this is simply a human error which assumes wisdom to be what in fact is unwisdom, taking the search for wisdom to be wisdom itself. For what can reasoning be but a struggle, the effort to discover the wise course, to attain the principle which is true and derives from real-being? To reason is like playing the cithara for the sake of achieving the art, like practising with a view to mastery, like any learning that aims at knowing. What reasoners seek, the wise hold: wisdom, in a word, is a condition in a being that possesses repose. Think what happens when one has accomplished the reasoning process: as soon as we have discovered the right course, we cease to reason: we rest because we have come to wisdom. If then we are to range the leading principle of the All among learners, we must allow it reasonings, perplexities, and those -296- acts of memory which link the past with the present and the future: if it is to be considered as a knower, then the wisdom within it consists in a rest possessing the object (absolved, therefore, from search and from remembrance).

Again, if the leading principle of the universe knows the future — as it must — then obviously it will know by what means that future is to come about; given this knowledge, what further need is there of its reasoning towards it, or confronting past with present? And, of course, this knowledge of things to come — admitting it to exist — is not like that of the diviners; it is that of the actual causing principles holding the certainty that the thing will exist, the certainty inherent in the all- disposers, above perplexity and hesitancy; the notion is constituent and therefore unvarying. The knowledge of future things is, in a word, identical with that of the present; it is a knowledge in repose and thus a knowledge transcending the processes of cogitation.

If the leading principle of the universe does not know the future which it is of itself to produce, it cannot produce with knowledge or to purpose; it will produce just what happens to come, that is to say by haphazard. As this cannot be, it must create by some stable principle; its creations, therefore, will be shaped in the model stored up in itself; there can be no varying, for, if there were, there could also be failure.

The produced universe will contain difference, but its diversities spring not from its own action but from its obedience to superior principles which, again, spring from the creating power, so that all is guided by Reason-Principles in their series; thus the creating power is in no sense subjected to experimenting, to perplexity, to that preoccupation which to some minds makes the administration of the All seem a task of difficulty. Preoccupation would obviously imply the undertaking of alien tasks, some business — that would mean — not completely within the powers; but where the power is sovereign and sole, it need take thought of nothing but itself and its own will, which means its own wisdom, since in such a being the will is wisdom. Here, then, creating makes no demand, since the wisdom that goes to it is not sought elsewhere, but is the creator’s very self, drawing on nothing outside — not, therefore, on reasoning or on memory, which are handlings of the external.


§ 13. But what is the difference between the Wisdom thus conducting the universe and the principle known as Nature?

This Wisdom is a first (within the All-Soul) while Nature is a last: for Nature is an image of that Wisdom, and, as a last in the Soul, possesses only the last reflection of the Reason-Principle: we may imagine a thick waxen seal, in which the imprint has penetrated to the very uttermost film so as to show on both sides, sharp cut on the upper surface, faint on the under. Nature, thus, does not know, it merely produces: what it holds it passes, automatically, to its next; and this transmission to the corporeal and material constitutes its making power: it acts as a thing -297- warmed communicating to what lies in next contact to it the principle of which it is the vehicle so as to make that also warm in some less degree.

Nature, being thus a mere communicator, does not possess even the imaging act. There is (within the Soul) intellection, superior to imagination; and there is imagination standing midway between that intellection and the impression of which alone Nature is capable. For Nature has no perception or consciousness of anything; imagination (the imaging faculty) has consciousness of the external, for it enables that which entertains the image to have knowledge of the experience encountered, while intellection also engenders — of itself and by an act derived from its own active principle.

Thus the Intellectual-Principle possesses: the Soul of the All eternally receives from it; this is the Soul’s life; its consciousness is its intellection of what is thus eternally present to it; what proceeds from it into Matter and is manifested there is Nature, with which — or even a little before it — the series of real being comes to an end, for all in this order are the ultimates of the intellectual order and the beginnings of the imitative.

There is also the decided difference that Nature operates towards Matter, and receives from it: soul, near to Nature but superior, operates towards Matter but without receiving in turn; and there is the still higher phase (the purely Intellectual) with no action whatever upon body or upon Matter.


§ 14. Of the corporeal thus brought into being by Nature the elemental materials of things are its very produce, but how do animal and vegetable forms stand to it?

Are we to think of them as containers of Nature present within them?

Light goes away and the air contains no trace of it, for light and air remain each itself, never coalescing: is this the relation of Nature to the formed object?

It is rather that existing between fire and the object it has warmed: the fire withdrawn, there remains a certain warmth, distinct from that in the fire, a property, so to speak, of the object warmed. For the shape which Nature imparts to what it has moulded must be recognized as a form quite distinct from Nature itself, though it remains a question to be examined whether besides this (specific) form there is also an intermediary, a link connecting it with Nature, the general principle.

The difference between Nature and the Wisdom described as dwelling in the All has been sufficiently dealt with.


§ 15. But there is a difficulty affecting this entire settlement: Eternity is characteristic of the Intellectual-Principle, time of the Soul — for we hold that time has its substantial being in the activity of the Soul, and springs from soul — and, since time is a thing of division and (unlike eternity) comports a past, it would seem that the activity producing it must also be a thing of division, and that its attention to that past must -298- imply that even the All-Soul has memory? We repeat, identity belongs to the eternal, time must be the medium of diversity; otherwise there is nothing to distinguish them, especially since we deny that the activities of the Soul can themselves experience change.

Can we escape by the theory that, while human souls — receptive of change, even to the change of imperfection and lack — are in time, yet the Soul of the All, as the author of time, is itself timeless? But if it is not in time, what causes it to engender time rather than eternity?

The answer must be that the realm it engenders is not that of eternal things but a realm of things enveloped in time: it is just as the souls (under, or included in, the All-Soul) are not in time, but some of their experiences and productions are. For a soul is eternal, and is before time; and what is in time is of a lower order than time itself: time is folded around what is in time exactly as — we read — place and number are folded about what is in place and in number.


§ 16. But if in the Soul thing follows thing, if there is earlier and later in its productions, if it engenders or creates in time, then it must be looking towards the future; and if towards the future, then towards the past as well?

No: prior and past are in the things it produces; in itself nothing is past; all, as we have said, is one simultaneous grouping of Reason-Principles. In the engendered simultaneity has gone, and with it identity of place: hands and feet, spatially undifferentiated in the Reason-Principles, are apart in the realm of sense. Of course, even in that ideal realm there is apartness, but in a characteristic mode, just as in a mode there is priority.

Now, apartness may be explained as simply differentiation: but how account for priority unless on the assumption of some ordering principle arranging from above, and in that disposal necessarily affirming a serial order?

There must be such a principle, or all would exist simultaneously; but the indicated conclusion does not follow unless order and ordering principle are distinct; if the ordering principle is Primal Order, there is no such affirmation of series; there is simply making, the making of this thing after that thing. The affirmation would imply that the ordering principle looks away towards Order and therefore is not, itself, Order.

But how are Order and this orderer one and the same?

Because the ordering principle is no conjoint of matter and idea but is soul, pure idea, the power and energy second only to the Intellectual-Principle: and because the succession is a fact of the things themselves, inhibited as they are from this comprehensive unity. The ordering soul remains august, a circle, as we may figure it, in complete adaptation to its centre, widening outward, but fast upon it still, an outspreading without interval.

The total scheme may be summarized in the illustration of The Good -299- as a centre, the Intellectual-Principle as an unmoving circle, the Soul as a circle in motion, its moving being its aspiration: the Intellectual-Principle possesses and has ever embraced that which is beyond being; the Soul must seek it still: the sphere of the universe, by its possession of the Soul thus aspirant, is moved to the aspiration which falls within its own nature; this is no more than such power as body may have, the mode of pursuit possible where the object pursued is debarred from entrance; it is the motion of coiling about, with ceaseless return upon the same path — in other words, it is circuit.


§ 17. But how comes it that the intuitions and the Reason-Principles of the Soul are not in the same timeless fashion within ourselves, but that here the later of order is converted into a later of time — bringing in all these doubts?

Is it because in us the governing and the answering principles are many and there is no sovereign unity?

That condition; and, further, the fact that our mental acts fall into a series according to the succession of our needs, being not self-determined but guided by the variations of the external: thus the will changes to meet every incident as each fresh need arises and as the external impinges in its successive things and events.

A variety or governing principles must mean variety in the images formed upon the representative faculty, images not issuing from one internal centre, but, by difference of origin and of acting-point, strange to each other, and so bringing compulsion to bear upon the movements and efficiencies of the self.

When the desiring faculty is stirred, there is a presentment of the object — a sort of sensation, in announcement and in picture, of the experience — calling us to follow and to attain: the personality, whether it resists or follows and procures, is necessarily thrown out of equilibrium. The same disturbance is caused by passion urging revenge and by the needs of the body; every other sensation or experience effects its own change upon our mental attitude; then there is the ignorance of what is good and the indecision of a soul (a human soul) thus pulled in every direction; and, again, the interaction of all these perplexities gives rise to yet others.

But do variations of judgement affect that very highest in us?

No: the doubt and the change of standard are of the Conjoint (of the soul-phase in contact with body); still, the right reason of that highest is weaker by being given over to inhabit this mingled mass: not that it sinks in its own nature: it is much as amid the tumult of a public meeting the best adviser speaks but fails to dominate; assent goes to the roughest of the brawlers and roarers, while the man of good counsel sits silent, ineffectual, overwhelmed by the uproar of his inferiors.

The lowest human type exhibits the baser nature; the man is a compost calling to mind some inferior political organization; in the -300- mid-type we have a citizenship in which some better section sways a demotic constitution not out of control: in the superior type the life is aristocratic; it is the career of one emancipated from what is base in humanity and tractable to the better; in the finest type, where the man has brought himself to detachment, the ruler is one only, and from this master principle order is imposed upon the rest, so that we may think of a municipality in two sections, the superior city and, kept in hand by it, the city of the lower elements.


§ 18. There remains the question whether the body possesses any force of its own — so that, with the incoming of the Soul, it lives in some individuality — or whether all it has is this Nature we have been speaking of, the superior principle which enters into relations with it.

Certainly the body, container of soul and of nature, cannot even in itself be as a soulless form would be: it cannot even be like air traversed by light; it must be like air storing heat: the body holding animal or vegetative life must hold also some shadow of soul; and it is body thus modified that is the seat of corporeal pains and pleasures which appear before us, the true human being, in such a way as to produce knowledge without emotion. By ‘us, the true human being’ I mean the higher soul, for, in spite of all, the modified body is not alien but attached to our nature and is a concern to us for that reason: ‘attached’, for this is not ourselves nor yet are we free of it; it is an accessory and dependent of the human being; ‘we’ means the master-principle; the conjoint, similarly, is in its own way an ‘ours’; and it is because of this that we care for its pain and pleasure, in proportion as we are weak rather than strong, gripped rather than working towards detachment, regarding the body as the most honourable phase of our being, as the true man, and into this penetrating.

Pleasure and pain and the like must not be attributed to the Soul alone, but to the modified body and to something intermediary between soul and body and made up of both. A unity is independent: thus body alone, a lifeless thing, can suffer no hurt — in its dissolution there is no damage to the body, but merely to its unity — and soul in similar isolation cannot even suffer dissolution, and by its very nature is immune from evil.

But when two distinct things become one in an artificial unity, there is a probable source of pain to them in the mere fact that they were inapt to partnership. This does not, of course, refer to two bodies; that is a question of one nature; and I AM speaking of two natures. When one distinct nature seeks to associate itself with another, a different, order of being — the lower participating in the higher, but unable to take more than a Faint trace of it — then the essential duality becomes also a unity, but a unity standing midway between what the lower was and what it cannot absorb, and therefore a troubled unity; the association is artificial and uncertain, inclining now to this side and now to that in -301- ceaseless vacillation; and the total hovers between high and low, telling, downward bent, of misery but, directed to the above, of longing for unison.


§ 19. Thus what we know as pleasure and pain may be identified: pain is our perception of a body despoiled, deprived of the image of the Soul; pleasure our perception of the living frame in which the image of the Soul is brought back to harmonious bodily operation. The painful experience takes place in that living frame; but the perception of it belongs to the sensitive phase of the Soul, which, as neighbouring the living body, feels the change and makes it known to the principle (the imaging faculty) into which the sensations finally merge; then the body feels the pain, or at least the body is affected: thus in an amputation, when the flesh is cut the cutting is an event within the material mass; but the pain felt in that mass is there felt because it is not a mass pure and simple, but a mass under certain (non-material) conditions; it is to that modified substance that the sting of the pain is present, and the Soul feels it by an adoption due to what we think of as proximity.

And, itself unaffected, it feels the corporeal conditions at every point of its being, and is thereby enabled to assign every condition to the exact spot at which the wound or pain occurs. Being present as a whole at every point of the body, if it were itself affected the pain would take it at every point, and it would suffer as one entire being, so that it could not know, or make known, the spot affected; it could say only that at the place of its presence there existed pain — and the place of its presence is the entire human being. As things are, when the finger pains the man is in pain because one of his members is in pain; we class him as suffering, from his finger being painful, just as we class him as fair from his eyes being blue.

But the pain itself is in the part affected unless we include in the notion of pain the sensation following upon it, in which case we are saying only that distress implies the perception of distress. But (this does not mean that the Soul is affected:) we cannot describe the perception itself as distress; it is the knowledge of the distress and, being knowledge, is not itself affected, or it could not know and convey a true message: a messenger, affected, overwhelmed by the event, would either not convey the message or not convey it faithfully.


§ 20. As with bodily pain and pleasure so with the bodily desires; their origin, also, must be attributed to what thus stands midway, to that modified corporeal nature.

Body undetermined cannot be imagined to give rise to appetite and purpose, nor can pure soul be occupied about sweet and bitter: all this must belong to what is specifically body but chooses to be something else as well, and so has acquired a restless movement unknown to the Soul and by that acquisition is forced to aim at a variety of objects, to -302- seek, as its changing states demand, sweet or bitter, water or warmth, with none of which it could have any concern if it remained untouched by life.

In the case of pleasure and pain we showed how upon distress follows the knowledge of it, and that the Soul, seeking to alienate what is causing the condition, inspires a withdrawal which the member primarily affected has itself indicated, in its own mode, by its contraction. Similarly in the case of desire: there is the knowledge in the sensation (the sensitive phase of the Soul) and in the next lower phase, that described as the ‘Nature’ which carries the imprint of the Soul to the body; that Nature knows the fully formed desire which is the culmination of the less formed desire in body; sensation knows the image thence imprinted upon the Nature; and from the moment of the sensation the Soul, which alone is competent, acts upon it, sometimes procuring, sometimes on the contrary resisting, taking control and paying heed neither to that which originated the desire nor to that which subsequently entertained it.

But why, thus, two phases of desire; why should not the body as a determined entity (the living total) be the sole desirer?

Because there are (in man) two distinct things, this Nature and the body, which, through it, becomes a living being: the Nature precedes the determined body which is its creation, made and shaped by it; it cannot originate the desires; they must belong to the living body meeting the experiences of this life and seeking in its distress to alter its state, to substitute pleasure for pain, sufficiency for want: this Nature must be like a mother reading the wishes of a suffering child, and seeking to set it right and to bring it back to herself; in her search for the remedy she attaches herself by that very concern to the sufferer’s desire and makes the child’s experience her own.

In sum, the living body may be said to desire of its own motion in a fore-desiring with, perhaps, impulse as well; Nature desires for, and because of, that living body; granting or withholding belongs to another again, the higher soul.


§ 21. That this is the phase of the human being in which desire takes its origin is shown by observation of the different stages of life: in childhood, youth, maturity, the bodily desires differ; health or sickness also may change them, while the (psychic) faculty is of course the same through all: the evidence is clear that the variety of desire in the human being results from the fact that he is a corporeal entity, a living body subject to every sort of vicissitude.

The total movement of desire is not always stirred simultaneously with what we call the impulses to the satisfaction even of the lasting bodily demands; it may refuse assent to the idea of eating or drinking until reason gives the word: this shows us desire — the degree of it existing in the living body — advancing towards some object, with Nature (the lower soul-phase) refusing its cooperation and approval, -303- and as sole arbiter between what is naturally fit and unfit, rejecting what does not accord with the natural need.

We may be told that the changing state of the body is sufficient explanation of the changing desires in the faculty; but that would require the demonstration that the changing condition of a given entity could effect a change of desire in another, in one which cannot itself gain by the gratification; for it is not the desiring faculty that profits by food, liquid, warmth, movement, or by any relief from over-plenty or any filling of a void; all such services touch the body only.


§ 22. And as regards vegetal forms? Are we to distinguish between a sort of corporeal echo and the principle which gives rise to it — a principle that would be tendency or desire in us and is growth in them? Or are we to think that, while the earth (which nourishes them) contains the principle of desire by virtue of containing soul, the vegetal realm possesses only this latter reflection of desire?

The first point to be decided is what soul is present in the earth.

Is it one coming from the sphere of the All, a radiation upon earth from that which Plato seems to represent as the only thing possessing soul primarily? Or are we to go by that other passage where he describes earth as the first and oldest or all the gods within the scope of the heavens, and assigns to it, as to the other stars, a soul peculiar to itself?

It is difficult to see how earth could be a god if it did not possess a soul thus distinct: but the whole matter is obscure since Plato’s statements increase or at least do not lessen the perplexity. It is best to begin by facing the question as a matter of reasoned investigation.

That earth possesses the vegetal soul may be taken as certain from the vegetation upon it. But we see also that it produces animals; why then should we not argue that it is itself animated? And, animated, no small part of the All, must it not be plausible to assert that it possesses an Intellectual-Principle by which it holds its rank as a god? If this is true of every one of the stars, why should it not be so of the earth, a living part of the living All? We cannot think of it as sustained from without by an alien soul and incapable of containing one appropriate to itself.

Why should those fiery globes be receptive of soul and the earthly globe not? The stars are equally corporeal, and they lack the flesh, blood, muscle, and pliant material of earth, which besides is of more varied content and includes every form of body. If the earth’s immobility is urged in objection, the answer is that this refers only to spatial movement.

But how can perception and sensation (implied in ensoulment) be supposed to occur in the earth?

How (we return) do they occur in the stars? Feeling does not belong to fleshy matter: soul to have perception does not require body; body, on the contrary,requires soul to maintain its being and its efficiency: -304- judgement (the foundation of perception) belongs to the soul which overlooks the body, and, from what is experienced there, forms its decisions.

But, we will be asked to say what are the experiences, within the earth, upon which the earth-soul is thus to form its decisions: certainly vegetal forms, in so far as they belong to earth, have no sensation or perception: in what then, and through what, does such sensation take place, for (we will be told) sensation without organs is too rash a notion. Besides, what would this sense-perception profit the Soul? It could not be necessary to knowledge: surely the consciousness of wisdom suffices to beings which have nothing to gain from sensation?

This argument is not to be accepted: it ignores the consideration that, apart from all question of practical utility, objects of sense provide occasion for a knowing which brings pleasure: thus we ourselves take delight in looking upon sun, stars, sky, landscape, for their own sake. But we will deal with this point later: ror the present we ask, presuming that the earth has perceptions and sensations and is a living being, what objects it would perceive and by what method: this requires us to examine certain difficulties, and above all to decide whether earth could have sensation without organs, and whether this would be directed to some necessary purpose even when incidentally it might bring other results as well.


§ 23. A first principle is that the knowing of sensible objects is an act of the Soul, or of the living conjoint, becoming aware of the quality of certain corporeal entities, and appropriating the Ideas present in them.

This apprehension must belong either to the Soul isolated, self-acting, or to Soul in conjunction with some other entity?

Isolated, self-acting, how is it possible? Self-acting, it has knowledge of its own content, and this is not perception but intellection: if it is also to know things outside itself it can grasp them only in one of two ways: either it must assimilate itself to the external objects, or it must enter into relations with something that has been so assimilated.

Now as long as it remains self-centred it cannot assimilate: a single point cannot assimilate itself to an external line: even line cannot adapt itself to line in another order, line of the intellectual to line of the sensible, just as fire of the intellectual and man of the intellectual remain distinct from fire and man of the sensible. Even Nature, the soul-phase which brings man into being, does not come to identity with the man it shapes and informs: it has the faculty of dealing with the sensible, but it remains isolated, and, its task done, ignores all but the intellectual as it is itself ignored by the sensible and utterly without means of grasping it.

Suppose something visible lying at a distance: the Soul sees it; now, admitting to the full that at first only the pure Idea of the thing is seized — a total without discerned part — yet in the end it becomes to -305- the seeing soul an object whose complete detail of colour and form is known: this shows that there is something more here than the outlying thing and the Soul; for the Soul is immune from experience; there must be a third, something not thus exempt; and it is this intermediate that accepts the impressions of shape and the like.

This intermediate must be able to assume the modifications of the material object so as to be an exact reproduction of its states, and it must be of the one elemental-stuff: it, thus, will exhibit the condition which the higher principle is to perceive; and the condition must be such as to preserve something of the originating object, and yet not be identical with it: the essential vehicle of knowledge is an intermediary which, as it stands between the Soul and the originating object, will, similarly, present a condition midway between the two spheres, of sense and the intellectual — linking the extremes, receiving from one side to exhibit to the other, in virtue of being able to assimilate itself to each. As an instrument by which something is to receive knowledge, it cannot be identical with either the knower or the known: but it must be apt to likeness with both — akin to the external object by its power of being affected, and to the internal, the knower, by the fact that the modification it takes becomes an Idea.

If this theory of ours is sound, bodily organs are necessary to sense-perception, as is further indicated by the reflection that the Soul entirely freed of body can apprehend nothing in the order of sense.

The organ must be either the body entire or some member set apart for a particular function; thus touch for one, vision for another. The tools of craftsmanship will be seen to be intermediaries between the judging worker and the judged object, disclosing to the experimenter the particular character of the matter under investigation: thus a ruler, representing at once the straightness which is in the mind and the straightness of a plank, is used as an intermediary by which the operator proves his work.

Some questions of detail remain for consideration elsewhere: is it necessary that the object upon which judgement or perception is to take place should be in contact with the organ of perception, or can the process occur across space upon an object at a distance? Thus, is the heat of a fire really at a distance from the flesh it warms, the intermediate space remaining unmodified; is it possible to see colour over a sheer blank intervening between the colour and the eye, the organ of vision reaching to its object by its own power?

For the moment we have one certainty, that perception of things of sense belongs to the embodied soul and takes place through the body.


§ 24. The next question is whether perception is concerned only with need.

The Soul, isolated, has no sense-perception; sensations go with the body; sensation itself therefore must occur by means of the body to -306- which the sensations are due; it must be something brought about by association with the body.

Thus either sensation occurs in a soul compelled to follow upon bodily states — since every graver bodily experience reaches at last to soul — or sensation is a device by which a cause is dealt with before it becomes so great as actually to injure us or even before it has begun to make contact.

At this, sense-impressions would aim at utility. They may serve also to knowledge, but that could be service only to some being not living in knowledge but stupefied as the result of a disaster, and the victim of a Lethe calling for constant reminding: they would be useless to any being free from either need or forgetfulness. This reflection enlarges the inquiry: it is no longer a question of earth alone, but of the whole star-system, all the heavens, the Cosmos entire. For it would follow that, in the sphere of things not exempt from modification, sense-perception would occur in every part having relation to any other part: in a whole, however — having relation only to itself, immune, universally self- directed and self-possessing — what perception could there be?

Granted that the percipient must act through an organ and that this organ must be different rrorn the object perceived, then the universe, as an All, can have (no sensation since it has) no organ distinct from object: it can have self-awareness, as we have; but sense-perception, the constant attendant of another order, it cannot have.

Our own apprehension of any bodily condition apart from the normal is the sense of something intruding from without: but besides this, we have the apprehension of one member by another; why then should not the All use the sphere of the fixed stars to perceive the sphere of the planets and the latter to perceive the earth and the earth’s content?

Things of earth are certainly affected by what passes in other regions of the All; what, then, need prevent the All from having, in some appropriate way, the perception of those changes? In addition to that self-contemplating vision vested in the sphere of the fixed stars, may it not have a seeing power like that of an eye able to announce to the All-Soul what has passed before it? Even granted that it is entirely unaffected by other experiences, why, still, should it not see like an eye, ensouled as it is, all lightsome?

Still: ‘eyes were not necessary to it’, we read. If this meant simply that nothing is left to be seen outside of the All, still there is the inner content, and there can be nothing to prevent it seeing what constitutes itself: if the meaning is that such self-vision could serve to no use, we may think that it has vision not as a main intention for vision’s sake but as a necessary concomitant of its characteristic nature: it is difficult to conceive why such a body should be incapable of seeing.


§ 25. But the organ is not the only requisite to vision or to perception of -307- any kind: there must be a state of the Soul inclining it towards the sphere of sense.

Now it is the Soul’s character to be ever in the Intellectual sphere, and even though it were apt to sense-perception, this could be prevented by that intention towards the highest; to ourselves when absorbed in the Intellectual, vision and the other acts of sense are in abeyance for the time; and, in general, any special attention blurs every other. The desire of apprehension from part to part — a subject examining itself — is merely curiosity even in beings of our own standing, and, unless for some definite purpose, is waste of energy: and the desire to apprehend something external — for the sake of a pleasant sight — is the sign of suffering or deficiency.

Smelling, tasting flavours (and such animal perceptions) may perhaps be described as mere accessories, distractions of the Soul, while seeing and hearing would belong to the sun and the other heavenly bodies as incidentals to their being. This would not be unreasonable if seeing and hearing are means by which they apply themselves to their function.

But if they so apply themselves, they must have memory; it is impossible that they should have no remembrance if they are to be benefactors; their service could not exist without memory.


§ 26. Their knowledge of our prayers is due to what we may call an enlinking, a determined relation of things fitted into a system; so, too, the fulfillment of the petitions; in the art of magic all looks to this enlinkment: prayer and its answer, magic and its success, depend upon the sympathy of enchained forces.

This seems to oblige us to accord sense-perception to the earth.

But what perception?

Why not, to begin with, that of contact-feeling, the apprehension of part by part, the apprehension of fire by the rest of the entire mass in a sensation transmitted upwards to the earth’s leading principle? A corporeal mass (such as that of the earth) may be sluggish but is not utterly inert. Such perceptions, of course, would not be of trifles, but of the graver movement of things.

But why even of them?

Because those gravest movements could not possibly remain unknown where there is an immanent soul.

And there is nothing against the idea that sensation in the earth exists for the sake of the human interests furthered by the earth. They would be served by means of the sympathy that has been mentioned; petitioners would be heard and their prayers met, though in a way not ours. And the earth, both in its own interest and in that of beings distinct from itself, might have the experiences of the other senses also — for example, smell and taste where, perhaps, the scent of juices or sap might enter into its care for animal life, as in the constructing or restoring of their bodily part. -308-

But we need not demand for earth the organs by which we, ourselves, act: not even all the animals have these; some, without ears, perceive sound.

For sight it would not need eyes — though if light is indispensable how can it see?

That the earth contains the principle of growth must be admitted; it is difficult not to allow in consequence that, since this vegetal principle is a member of spirit, the earth is primarily of the spiritual order; and how can we doubt that in a spirit all is lucid? This becomes all the more evident when we reflect that, besides being as a spirit lightsome, it is physically illuminated moving in the light of the cosmic revolution.

There is, thus, no longer any absurdity or impossibility in the notion that the soul in the earth has vision: we must, further, consider that it is the soul of no mean body; that in fact it is a god since certainly soul must be everywhere good.


§ 27. If the earth transmits the generative soul to growing things — or retains it while allowing a vestige of it to constitute the vegetal principle in them — at once the earth is ensouled, as our flesh is, and any generative power possessed by the plant world is of its bestowing: this phase of the Soul is immanent in the body of the growing thing, and transmits to it that better element by which it differs from the broken-off part, no longer a thing of growth but a mere lump of material.

But does the entire body of the earth similarly receive anything from the Soul?

Yes: for we must recognize that earthly material broken off from the main body differs from the same remaining continuously attached; thus stones increase as long as they are embedded, and, from the moment they are separated, stop at the size attained.

We must conclude, then, that every part and member of the earth carries its vestige of this principle of growth, an under-phase of that entire principle which belongs not to this or that member but to the earth as a whole: next in order is the nature (the soul-phase) concerned with sensation, this not interfused (like the vegetal principle) but in contact from above: then the higher soul and the Intellectual-Principle, constituting together the being known as Hestia (Earth-Mind) and Demeter (Earth-Soul) — a nomenclature indicating the human intuition of these truths, asserted in the attribution of a divine name and nature.


§ 28. Thus much established, we may return on our path: we have to discuss the seat of the passionate element in the human being.

Pleasures and pains — the conditions, that is, not the perception of them — and the nascent stage of desire, we assigned to the body as a determined thing, the body brought, in some sense, to life: are we entitled to say the same or the nascent stage of passion? Are we to consider passion in all its forms as vested in the determined body or in -309- something belonging to it, for instance in the heart or the bile necessarily taking condition within a body not dead? And are we to think that that which bestows the vestige of the soul is again a distinct entity, or is the vestige in the case of passion an independent thing, and not derived from a vegetal or percipient faculty?

Now in the first case the soul-principle involved, the vegetal, pervades the entire body, and the vestigial phase which it bestows is bestowed upon the entire body, so that pain and pleasure and nascent desire for the satisfaction of need are present all over it — there is possibly some doubt as to the sexual impulse, which, however, it may suffice to assign to the organs by which it is executed — but in general the region about the liver may be taken to be the starting-point of desire, since it is the main acting point of the vegetal principle which transmits the vestige phase of the soul to the liver and body — the seat, because the spring.

But in this other case, of passion, we have to settle what it is, what form of soul it represents: does it act by communicating a lower phase of itself to the regions round the heart, or is it set in motion by the higher soul-phase impinging upon the Conjoint (the animate-total), or is there in such conditions no question of soul-phase, but simply passion itself producing the act or state of (for example) anger?

Evidently the first point for inquiry is what passion is.

Now we all know that we feel anger not only over our own bodily suffering, but also over that of our friends, and indeed over any victim of unseemly conduct. It is at once evident that anger implies some subject capable of sensation and of judgement: and this consideration suffices to show that the vegetal nature is not its source, that we must look for its origin elsewhere.

On the other hand, anger follows closely upon bodily states; people in whom the blood and the bile are intensely active are as quick to anger as those of cool blood and no bile are slow; animals grow angry though they pay attention to no outside combinations except where they recognize physical danger; all this forces us again to place the scat of anger in the strictly corporeal element, the principle by which the animal organism is held together. Similarly, that anger or its first stirring depends upon the condition of the body follows from the consideration that the same people are more irritable ill than well, fasting than after food: it would seem that the bile and the blood, acting as vehicles of life, produce these emotions.

Our conclusion (reconciling with these corporeal facts the psychic or mental element indicated) will identify, first, some suffering in the body answered by a movement in the blood or in the bile: sensation ensues and the Soul, brought by means of the representative faculty to partake in the condition of the affected body, is directed towards the cause of the pain: the reasoning soul, in turn, from its place above — the phase not inbound with body — acts in its own mode when the breach of order has become manifest to it: it calls in the alliance of that ready -310- passionate faculty which is the natural combatant of the evil disclosed.

Thus anger has two phases; there is firstly that which, rising apart from all process of reasoning, draws reason to itself by the medium of the imaging faculty, and secondly that which, rising in reason, touches finally upon the specific principle of the emotion. Both these depend upon the existence of that principle of vegetal life and generation by which the body becomes an organism aware of pleasure and pain: this principle it was that made the body a thing of bile and bitterness, and thus it leads the indwelling soul-phase to corresponding states — churlish and angry under stress of environment — so that being wronged itself, it tries, as we may put it, to return the wrong upon its surroundings, and bring them to the same condition.

That this soul-vestige, which determines the movements of passion, is of one essence (consubstantial) with the other is evident from the consideration that those of us less avid of corporeal pleasures, especially those that wholly repudiate the body, are the least prone to anger and to all experiences not rising from reason.

That this vegetal principle, underlying anger, should be present in trees and yet passion be lacking in them cannot surprise us since they are not subject to the movements of blood and bile. If the occasions of anger presented themselves where there is no power of sensation there could be no more than a physical ebullition with something approaching to resentment (an unconscious reaction); where sensation exists there is at once something more; the recognition of wrong and of the accessary defence carries with it the intentional act.

But the division of the unreasoning phase of the Soul into a desiring faculty and a passionate faculty — the first identical with the vegetal principle, the second being a lower phase of it acting upon the blood or bile or upon the entire living organism — such a division would not give as a true opposition, for the two would stand in the relation of earlier phase to derivative.

This difficulty is reasonably met by considering that both faculties are derivatives and making the division apply to them in so far as they are new productions from a common source; for the division applies to movements of desire as such, not to the essence from which they rise.

That essence is not, of its own nature, desire; it is, however, the force which by consolidating itself with the active manifestation proceeding from it makes the desire a completed thing. And that derivative which culminates in passion may not unreasonably be thought of as a vestige-phase lodged about the heart, since the heart is not the seat of the Soul, but merely the centre to that portion of the blood which is concerned in the movements of passion.


§ 29. But — keeping to our illustration, by which the body is warmed by soul and not merely illuminated by it — how is it that when the higher soul withdraws there is no further trace of the vital principle? -311-

For a brief space there is; and, precisely, it begins to fade away immediately upon the withdrawal of the other, as in the case of warmed objects when the fire is no longer near them: similarly hair and nails still grow on the dead; animals cut to pieces wriggle for a good time after; these are signs of a life-force still indwelling.

Besides, simultaneous withdrawal would not prove the identity of the higher and lower phases: when the sun withdraws there goes with it not merely the light emanating from it, guided by it, attached to it, but also at once that light seen upon obliquely situated objects, a light secondary to the sun’s and cast upon things outside of its path (reflected light showing as colour); the two are not identical and yet they disappear together.

But is this simultaneous withdrawal or frank obliteration?

The question applies equally to this secondary light and to the corporeal life, that life which we think of as being completely sunk into body.

No light whatever remains in the objects once illuminated; that much is certain: but we have to ask whether it has sunk back into its source or is simply no longer in existence.

How could it pass out of being, a thing that once has been?

But what really was it? We must remember that what we know as colour belongs to bodies by the fact that they throw off light, yet when corruptible bodies are transformed the colour disappears and we no more ask where the colour of a burned-out fire is than where its shape is.

Still: the shape is merely a configuration, like the lie of the hands clenched or spread; the colour is no such accidental but is more like, for example, sweetness: when a material substance breaks up, the sweetness of what was sweet in it, and the fragrance of what was fragrant may very well not be annihilated, but enter into some other substance, passing unobserved there because the new habitat is not such that the entrant qualities now offer anything solid to perception.

May we not think that, similarly, the light belonging to bodies that have been dissolved remains in being while the solid total, made up of all that is characteristic, disappears?

It might be said that the seeing is merely the sequel to some law (of our own nature), so that what we call qualities do not actually exist in the substances.

But this is to make the qualities indestructible and not dependent upon the composition of the body; it would no longer be the Reason-Principles within the sperm that produce, for instance, the colours of a bird’s variegated plumage; these principles would merely blend and place them, or if they produced them would draw also on the full store of coloursin the sky, producing in the sense, mainly, of showing in the formed bodies something very different from what appears in the heavens.

But whatever we may think on this doubtful point, if, as long as the -312- bodies remain unaltered, the light is constant and unsevered, then it would seem natural that, on the dissolution of the body, the light — both that in immediate contact and any other attached to that — should pass away at the same moment, unseen in the going as in the coming.

But in the case of the Soul it is a question whether the secondary phases follow their priors — the derivatives their sources — or whether every phase is self-governing, isolated from its predecessors and able to stand alone; in a word, whether no part of the Soul is sundered from the total, but all the souls are simultaneously one soul and many, and, if so, by what mode; this question, however, is treated elsewhere.

Here we have to inquire into the nature and being of that vestige of the soul actually present in the living body: if there is truly a soul, then, as a thing never cut off from its total, it will go with soul as soul must: if it is rather to be thought of as belonging to the body, as the life of the body, we have the same question that rose in the case of the vestige of light; we must examine whether life can exist without the presence of soul, except of course in the sense of soul living above and acting upon the remote object.


§ 30. We have declared acts of memory unnecessary to the stars, but we allow them perceptions, hearing as well as seeing; for we said that prayers to them were heard — our supplications to the sun, and those, even, of certain other men to the stars. It has, moreover, been the belief that in answer to prayer they accomplish many human wishes, and this so light-heartedly that they become not merely helpers towards good but even accomplices in evil. Since this matter lies in our way it must be considered, for it carries with it grave difficulties that very much trouble those who cannot think of divine beings as, thus, authors or auxiliaries in unseemliness even including the connexions of loose carnality.

In view of all this it is especially necessary to study the question with which we began, that of memory in the heavenly bodies.

It is obvious that, if they act on our prayers and if this action is not immediate, but with delay and after long periods of time, they remember the prayers men address to them. This is something that our former argument did not concede; though it appeared plausible that, for their better service of mankind, they might have been endowed with such a faculty as we ascribed to Demeter and Hestia — unless only the earth is to be thought of as beneficent to man.

We have, then, to attempt to show: firstly, how acts implying memory in the heavenly bodies are to be reconciled with our system as distinguished from those others which allow them memory as a matter of course; secondly, what vindication of those gods of the heavenly spheres is possible in the matter of seemingly anomalous acts — a question which philosophy cannot ignore; then too, since the charge goes so far, we must ask whether credence is to be given to those who hold that -313- the entire heavenly system can be put under spell by man’s skill and audacity: our discussion will also deal with the spirit-beings and how they may be thought to minister to these ends — unless indeed the part played by the Celestials prove to be settled by the decision upon the first questions.


§ 31. Our problem embraces all act and all experience throughout the entire Cosmos — whether due to nature, in the current phrase, or effected by art. The natural proceeds, we must hold, from the All towards its members and from the members to the All, or from member to other member: the artificial either remains, as it began, within the limit of the art — attaining finality in the artificial product alone — or is the expression of an art which calls to its aid natural forces and agencies, and so sets up act and experience within the sphere of the natural.

When I speak of the act and experience of the All I mean the total effect of the entire cosmic circuit upon itself and upon its members: for by its motion it sets up certain states both within itself and upon its parts, upon the bodies that move within it, and upon all that it communicates to those other parts of it, the things of our earth.

The action of part upon part is manifest; there are the relations and operations of the sun, both towards the other spheres and towards the things of earth; and again relations among elements of the sun itself, of other heavenly bodies, of earthly things, and of things in the other stars, demand investigation.

As for the arts: such as look to house building and the like are exhausted when the object is achieved; there are again those — medicine, farming, and other serviceable pursuits — which deal helpfully with natural products, seeking to bring them to natural efficiency; and there is a class — rhetoric, music, and every other method of swaying mind or soul, with their power of modifying for better or for worse — and we have to ascertain what these arts come to and what kind of power lies in them.

On all these points, in so far as they bear on our present purpose, we must do what we can to work out some approximate explanation.

It is abundantly evident that the Circuit is a cause; it modifies, firstly, itself and its own content, and undoubtedly also it tells on the terrestrial, not merely in accordance with bodily conditions but also by the states of the soul it sets up; and each of its members has an operation upon the terrestrial and in general upon all the lower.

Whether there is a return action of the lower upon the higher need not trouble us now: for the moment we are to seek, as far as discussion can exhibit it, the method by which action takes place; and we do not challenge the opinions universally or very generally entertained.

We take the question back to the initial act of causation. It cannot be admitted that either heat or cold and the like — what are known as the primal qualities of the elements — or any admixture of these qualities, -314- should be the first causes we are seeking; equally inacceptable, that while the sun’s action is all by heat, there is another member of the Circuit operating wholly by cold — incongruous in the heavens and in a fiery body — nor can we think of some other star operating by liquid fire.

Such explanations do not account for the differences of things, and there are many phenomena which cannot be referred to any of these causes. Suppose we allow them to be the occasion of moral differences — determined, thus, by bodily composition and constitution under a reigning heat or cold — does that give us a reasonable explanation of envy, jealousy, acts of violence? Or, if it does, what, at any rate, are we to think of good and bad fortune, rich men and poor, gentle blood, treasure trove?

An immensity of such examples might be adduced, all leading far from any corporeal quality that could enter the body and soul of a living thing from the elements: and it is equally impossible that the will of the stars, a doom from the All, any deliberation among them, should be held responsible for the fate of each and all of their inferiors. It is not to be thought that such beings engage themselves in human affairs in the sense of making men thieves, slave-dealers, burglars, temple-strippers, or debased effeminates practising and lending themselves to disgusting actions: that is not merely unlike gods; it is unlike mediocre men; it is, perhaps, beneath the level of any existing being where there is not the least personal advantage to be gained.


§ 32. If we can trace neither to material agencies (blind elements) nor to any deliberate intention the influences from without which reach to us and to the other forms of life and to the terrestrial in general, what cause satisfactory to reason remains?

The secret is: firstly, that this All is one universally comprehensive living being, encircling all the living beings within it, and having a soul, one soul, which extends to all its members in the degree of participant membership held by each; secondly, that every separate thing is an integral part of this All by belonging to the total material fabric — unrestrictedly a part by bodily membership, while, in so far as it has also some participation in the All-Soul, it possesses in that degree spiritual membership as well, perfect where participation is in the All-Soul alone, partial where there is also a union with a lower soul.

But, with all this gradation, each several thing is affected by all else in virtue of the common participation in the All, and to the degree of its own participation.

This One-All, therefore, is a sympathetic total and stands as one living being; the far is near; it happens as in one animal with its separate parts: talon, horn, finger, and any other member are not continuous and yet are effectively near; intermediate parts feel nothing, but at a distant point the local experience is known. Correspondent things not side by -315- side but separated by others placed between, the sharing of experience by dint of like condition — this is enough to ensure that the action of any distant member be transmitted to its distant fellow. Where all is a living thing summing to a unity there is nothing so remote in point of place as not to be near by virtue of a nature which makes of the one living being a sympathetic organism.

Where there is similarity between a thing affected and the thing affecting it, the affection is not alien; where the affecting cause is dissimilar the affection is alien and unpleasant.

Such hurtful action of member upon member within one living being need not seem surprising: within ourselves, in our own activities, one constituent can be harmed by another; bile and animal spirit seem to press and goad other members of the human total: in the vegetal realm one part hurts another by sucking the moisture from it. And in the All there is something analogous to bile and animal spirit, as to other such constituents. For visibly it is not merely one living organism; it is also a manifold. In virtue of the unity the individual is preserved by the All: in virtue of the multiplicity of things having various contacts, difference often brings about mutual hurt; one thing, seeking its own need, is detrimental to another; what is at once related and different is seized as food; each thing, following its own natural path, wrenches from something else what is serviceable to itself, and destroys or checks in its own interest whatever is becoming a menace to it: each, occupied with its peculiar function, assists no doubt anything able to profit by that, but harms or destroys what is too weak to withstand the onslaught of its action, like fire withering things round it or greater animals in their march thrusting aside or trampling under foot the smaller.

The rise of all these forms of being, their destruction, and their modification, whether to their loss or gain, all goes to the fulfillment of the natural unhindered life of that one living being: for it was not possible for the single thing to be as if it stood alone; the final purpose could not serve to that only end, intent upon the partial: the concern must be for the whole to which each item is member: things are different both from each other and in their own stages, therefore cannot be complete in one unchanging form of life; nor could anything remain utterly without modification if the All is to be durable; for the permanence of an All demands varying forms.


§ 33. The Circuit does not go by chance but under the Reason-Principle of the living whole; therefore there must be a harmony between cause and caused; there must be some order ranging things to each other’s purpose, or in due relation to each other: every several configuration within the Circuit must be accompanied by a change in the position and condition of things subordinate to it, which thus by their varied rhythmic movement make up one total dance-play.

In our dance-plays there are outside elements contributing to the -316- total effect — fluting, singing, and other linked accessories — and each of these changes in each new movement: there is no need to dwell on these; their significance is obvious. But besides this there is the fact that the limbs of the dancer cannot possibly keep the same positions in every figure; they adapt themselves to the plan, bending as it dictates, one lowered, another raised, one active, another resting as the set pattern changes. The dancer’s mind is on his own purpose; his limbs are submissive to the dance-movement which they accomplish to the end, so that the connoisseur can explain that this or that figure is the motive for the lifting, bending, concealment, effacing, of the various members of the body; and in all this the executant does not choose the particular motions for their own sake; the whole play of the entire person dictates the necessary position to each limb and member as it serves to the plan.

Now this is the mode in which the heavenly beings (the diviner members of the All) must be held to be causes wherever they have any action, and, when they do not act, to indicate.

Or, a better statement: the entire Cosmos puts its entire life into act, moving its major members with its own action and unceasingly setting them in new positions; by the relations thus established, of these members to each other and to the whole, and by the different figures they make together, the minor members in turn are brought under the system as in the movements of some one living being, so that they vary according to the relations, positions, configurations: the beings thus coordinated are not the causes; the cause is the coordinating All; at the same time it is not to be thought of as acting upon a material distinct from itself, for there is nothing external to it since it is the cause by actually being all: on the one side the configurations, on the other the inevitable effects of those configurations upon a living being moving as a unit and, again, upon a living being (an All) thus by its nature conjoined and concomitant and, of necessity, at once subject and object to its own activities.


§ 34. For ourselves, while whatever in us belongs to the body of the All should be yielded to its action, we ought to make sure that we submit only within limits, realizing that the entire man is not thus bound to it: intelligent servitors yield a part of themselves to their masters but in part retain their personality, and are thus less absolutely at beck and call, as not being slaves, not utterly chattels.

The changing configurations within the All could not fail to be produced as they are, since the moving bodies are not of equal speed.

Now the movement is guided by a Reason-Principle; the relations of the living whole are altered in consequence; here in our own realm all that happens reacts in sympathy to the events of that higher sphere: it becomes, therefore, advisable to ask whether we are to think of this realm as following upon the higher by agreement, or to attribute to the configurations the powers underlying the events, and whether such -317- powers would be vested in the configurations simply or in the relations of the particular items.

It will be said that one position of one given thing has by no means an identical effect — whether of indication or of causation — in its relation to another and still less to any group of others, since each several being seems to have a natural tendency (or receptivity) of its own.

The truth is that the configuration of any given group entails both the members and their relationship, and, changing the members, though the relationship remain the same, the effect will be different.

But, this being so, the power will belong, not to the positions but to the beings holding those positions?

To both taken together. For as things change their relations, and as any one thing changes place, there is a change of power.

But what power? That of causation or of indication?

To this double thing — the particular configuration of particular beings — there accrues often the twofold power, that of causation and that of indication, but sometimes only that of indication. Thus we are obliged to attribute powers both to the configuration and to the beings power, and so with all the limbs; the relative positions have much power; and, for a third power, there is that of the accessories and concomitants; underlying the action of the performers’ limbs, there are such items as the clutched fingers and the muscles and veins following suit.


§ 35. But we must give some explanation of these powers. The matter requires a more definite handling. How can there be a difference of power between one triangular configuration and another?

How can there be the exercise of power from star to star; under what law, and within what limits?

The difficulty is that we are unable to attribute causation either to the bodies of the heavenly beings or to their wills: their bodies are excluded because the product transcends the causative power of body, their will because it would be unseemly to suppose divine beings to produce unseemliness.

Let us keep in mind what we have laid down:

The being we are considering is a living unity, and therefore necessarily self sympathetic: it is under a law of reason and therefore the unfolding process of its life must be self-accordant: that life has no haphazard, but knows only harmony and ordinance: all the groupings follow reason: all single beings within it, all the members of this living whole in their choral dance are under a rule of Number.

Holding this in mind we are forced to certain conclusions: in the expressive act of the All are comprised equally the configurations of its members and these members themselves, minor as well as major entering into the configurations. This is the mode of life of the All; and its powers work together to this end under the Nature in which the producing -318- agency within the Reason-Principles has brought them into being. The groupings (within the All) are themselves in the nature of Reason-Principles since they are the out-spacing of a living-being, its reason-determined rhythms and conditions, and the entities thus spaced-out and grouped to pattern are its various members: then again there are the powers of the living being — distinct these, too — which may be considered as parts of it, always excluding deliberate will which is external to it, not contributory to the nature of the living All.

The will of any organic thing is one; but the distinct powers which go to constitute it are far from being one: yet all the several wills look to the object aimed at by the one will of the whole: for the desire which the one member entertains for another is a desire within the All: a part seeks to acquire something outside itself, but that external is another part of which it feels the need: the anger of a moment of annoyance is directed to something alien, growth draws on something outside, all birth and becoming has to do with the external; but all this external is inevitably something included among fellow members of the system: through these its limbs and members, the All is bringing this activity into being while in itself it seeks — or better, contemplates — The Good. Right will, then, the will which stands above accidental experience, seeks The Good and thus acts to the same end with it. When men serve another, many of their acts are done under order, but the good servant is the one whose purpose is in union with his master’s.

In all the efficacy of the sun and other stars upon earthly matters we can but believe that though the heavenly body is intent upon the Supreme, yet — to keep to the sun — its warming of terrestrial things, and every service following upon that, all springs from itself, its own act transmitted in virtue of soul, the vastly efficacious soul of Nature. Each of the heavenly bodies, similarly, gives forth a power, involuntary, by its mere radiation: all things become one entity, grouped by this diffusion of power, and so bring about wide changes or condition; thus the very groupings have power since their diversity produces diverse conditions; that the grouped beings themselves have also their efficiency is clear since they produce differently according to the different membership of the groups.

That configuration has power in itself is within our own observation here. Why else do certain groupments, in contradistinction to others, terrify at sight though there has been no previous experience of evil from them? If some men are alarmed by a particular groupment and others by quite a different one, the reason can be only that the configurations themselves have efficacy, each upon a certain type — an efficacy which cannot fail to reach anything naturally disposed to be impressed by it, so that in one groupment things attract observation which in another pass without effect, even for the same observer.

If we are told that beauty is the motive of attraction, does not this mean simply that the power of appeal to this or that mind depends upon -319- pattern, configuration? How can we allow power to colour and none to configuration? It is surely untenable that an entity should have existence and yet have no power to effect: existence carries with it either acting or answering to action, some things having action alone, others both.

At the same time there are powers apart from pattern: and, in things of our realm, there are many powers dependent not upon heat and cold but upon forces due to differing properties, forces which have been shaped to ideal-quality by the action of Reason-Principles and communicate in the power of Nature: thus the natural properties of stones and the efficacy of plants produce many astonishing results.


§ 36. The Universe is immensely varied, the container of all the Reason-Principles and of infinite and diverse efficacies. In man, we are told, the eye has its power, and the bones have their varied powers, and so with each separate part of hand and of foot; and there is no member or organ without its own definite function, some separate power of its own — a diversity of which we can have no notion unless our studies take that direction. What is true of man must be true of the universe, and much more, since all this order is but a representation of the higher: it must contain an untellably wonderful variety of powers, with which, of course, the bodies moving through the heavens will be most richly endowed.

We cannot think of the universe as a soulless habitation, however vast and varied, a thing of materials easily told off, kind by kind — wood and stone and whatever else there be, all blending into a cosmos: it must be alert throughout, every member living by its own life, nothing that can have existence failing to exist within it.

And here we have the solution of the problem, ‘How an ensouled living form can include the soulless’: for this account allows grades of living within the whole, grades to some of which we deny life only because they are not perceptibly self-moved: in the truth, all of these have a hidden life; and the thing whose life is patent to sense is made up of things which do not live to sense, but, none the less, confer upon their resultant total wonderful powers towards living. Man would never have reached to his actual height if the powers by which he acts were the completely soulless elements of his being; similarly the All could not have its huge life unless its every member had a life of its own; this however does not necessarily imply a deliberate intention; the All has no need of intention to bring about its acts: it is older than intention, and therefore its powers have many servitors.


§ 37. We must not rob the universe of any factor in its being. If any of our theorists of today seek to explain the action of fire — or of any other such form, thought of as an agent — they will find themselves in difficulties unless they recognize the act to be the object’s function -320- in the All, and give a like explanation of other natural forces in common use.

We do not habitually examine or in any way question the normal: we set to doubting and working out identifications when we are confronted by any display of power outside everyday experience: we wonder at a novelty and we wonder at the customary when anyone brings forward some single object and explains to our ignorance the efficacy vested in it.

Some such power, not necessarily accompanied by reason, every single item possesses; for each has been brought into being and into shape within a universe; each in its kind has partaken of soul through the medium of the ensouled All, as being embraced by that definitely constituted thing: each then is a member of an animate being which can include nothing that is less than a full member (and therefore a sharer in the total of power) — though one thing is of mightier efficacy than another, and, especially, members of the heavenly system than the objects of earth, since they draw upon a purer nature — and these powers are widely productive. But productivity does not comport intention in what appears to be the source of the thing accomplished: there is efficacy, too, where there is no will: even attention is not necessary to the communication of power; the very transmission of soul may proceed without either.

A living being, we know, may spring from another without any intention, and as without loss so without consciousness in the begetter: in fact any intention the animal exercised could be a cause of propagation only on condition of being identical with the animal (i.e. the theory would make intention a propagative animal, not a mental act?).

And, if intention is unnecessary to the propagation of life, much more so is attention.


§ 38. Whatever springs automatically from the All out of that distinctive life of its own, and, in addition to that self-moving activity, whatever is due to some specific agency — for example, to prayers, simple or taking the form of magic incantations — this entire range of production is to be referred, not to some one of the heavenly bodies, but to the nature of the thing produced (i.e. to a certain natural tendency in the product to exist with its own quality).

All that forwards life or some other useful purpose is to be ascribed to the transmission characteristic of the All; it is something flowing from the major of an integral to its minor. Where we think we see the transmission of some force unfavourable to the production of living beings, the flaw must be found in the inability of the subject to take in what would serve it: for what happens does not happen upon a void; there is always specific form and quality; anything that could be affected must have an underlying nature definite and characterized. The inevitable blendings, further, have their constructive effect, every element adding something contributory to the life. Then again some influence -321- may come into play at the time when the forces of a beneficent nature are not acting: the coordination of the entire system of things does not always allow to each several entity everything that it needs: and further we ourselves add a great deal to what is transmitted to us.

None the less all entwines into a unity: and there is something wonderful in the agreement holding among these various things of varied source, even of sources frankly opposite; the secret lies in a variety within a unity. When by the standard of the better kind among things of process anything falls short — the reluctance of its material substratum having prevented its perfect shaping under Idea — it may be thought of as being deficient in that noble element whose absence brings to shame: the thing is a blend, something due to the high beings, an alloy from the underlying nature, something added by the self.

Because all is ever being knit, all brought to culmination in unity, therefore all events are indicated; but this does not make virtue a matter of compulsion; its spontaneity is equally inwoven into the ordered system by the general law that the things of this sphere are pendant from the higher, that the content of our universe lies in the hands of the diviner beings in whom our world is participant.


§ 39. We cannot, then, refer all that exists to Reason-Principles inherent in the seed of things (Spermatic Reasons); the universe is to be traced further back, to the more primal forces, to the principles by which that seed itself takes shape. Such spermatic principles cannot be the containers of things which arise independently of them, such as what enters from Matter (the reasonless) into membership of the All, or what is due to the mere interaction of existences.

No: the Reason-Principle of the universe would be better envisaged as a wisdom uttering order and law to a state, in full knowledge of what the citizens will do and why, and in perfect adaptation of law to custom; thus the code is made to thread its way in and out through all their conditions and actions with the honour or infamy earned by their conduct; and all coalesces by a kind of automatism.

The signification which exists is not a first intention; it arises incidentally by the fact that in a given collocation the members will tell some- thing of each other: all is unity sprung of unity and therefore one thing is known by way of another, a cause in the light of the caused, the sequent as rising from its precedent, the compound from the constituents which must make themselves known in the linked total.

If all this is sound, at once our doubts fall and we need no longer ask whether the transmission of any evil is due to the gods (the stars).

For, in sum: firstly, intentions are not to be considered as the operative causes; necessities inherent in the nature of things account for all that comes from above; it is a matter of the inevitable relation of parts, and, besides, all is the sequence to the living existence of a unity. Secondly, there is the large contribution made by the individual. -322-

Thirdly, each several communication, good in itself, takes another quality in the resultant combination. Fourthly, the life in the Cosmos does not look to the individual but to the whole. Finally, there is Matter, the underlie, which being given one thing receives it as something else, and is unable to make the best of what it takes.


§ 40. But magic spells; how can their efficacy be explained?

By the reigning sympathy and by the fact in Nature that there is an agreement of like forces and an opposition of unlike, and by the diversity of those multitudinous powers which converge in the one living universe.

There is much drawing and spell-binding dependent on no interfering machination; the true magic is internal to the All, its attractions and, not less, its repulsions. Here is the primal mage and sorcerer — discovered by men who thenceforth turn those same ensorcellations and magic arts upon one another.

Love is given in Nature; the qualities inducing love induce mutual approach: hence there has arisen an art of magic love-drawing whose practitioners apply by contact certain substances adapted to diverse temperaments and so informed with love as to effect a bond of union; they knit soul to soul as they might train two separate trees towards each other. The magician, too, draws on these patterns of power, and by ranging himself also into the pattern is able tranquilly to possess himself of these forces with whose nature and purpose he has become identified. Supposing the mage to stand outside the All, his evocations and invocations would no longer avail to draw up or to call down; but as things are he operates from no outside standground, he pulls knowing the pull of everything towards any other thing in the living system.

The tune of an incantation, a significant cry, the mien of the operator, these too have a natural leading power over the Soul upon which they are directed, drawing it with the force of mournful patterns or tragic sounds; for it is the reasonless soul, not the will or wisdom, that is beguiled by music, a form of sorcery which raises no question, whose enchantment, indeed, is welcomed, exacted, from the performers. Similarly with regard to prayers; there is no question of a will that grants; the powers that answer to incantations do not act by will; a human being fascinated by a snake has neither perception nor sensation of what is happening; he knows only after he has been caught, and his highest mind is never caught. In other words, some influence falls from the being addressed upon the petitioner — or upon someone else — but that being itself, sun or star, perceives nothing of it all.


§ 41. The prayer is answered by the mere fact that part and other part are wrought to one tone like a musical string which, plucked at one end, vibrates at the other also. Often, too, the sounding of one string awakens what might pass for a perception in another, the result of their being in harmony and tuned to one musical scale; now, if the vibration in a lyre -323- affects another by virtue of the sympathy existing between them, then certainly in the All — even though it is constituted in contraries — there must be one melodic system; for it contains its unisons as well, and its entire content, even to those contraries, is a kinship.

Thus, too, whatever is hurtful to man — the passionate spirit, for example, drawn by the medium of the gall into the principle seated in the liver — comes with no intention of hurt; it is simply as one transferring fire to another might innocently burn him: no doubt, since he actually set the other on nre he is a cause, but only as the attacking fire itself is a cause, that is by the merely accidental fact that the person to whom the fire was being brought blundered in taking it.


§ 42. It follows that, for the purposes which have induced this discussion, the stars have no need of memory or of any sense of petitions addressed to them; they give no such voluntary attention to prayers as some have thought: it is sufficient that, in virtue simply of the nature of parts and of parts within a whole, something proceeds from them whether in answer to prayer or without prayer. We have the analogy of many powers — as in some one living organism — which, independently of plan or as the result of applied method, act without any collaboration of the will: one member or function is helped or hurt by another in the mere play of natural forces; and the art of doctor or magic healer will compel some one centre to purvey something of its own power to another centre. Just so the All: it purveys spontaneously, but it purveys also under spell; a petition brings to some one part the power laid up for each: the All gives to its members by a natural act, and the petitioner is no alien. Even though the suppliant be a sinner, the answering need not shock us; sinners draw from the brooks; and the giver does not know of the gift but simply gives — though we must remember that all is one woof and the giving is always consonant with the order of the universe. A man may therefore help himself to what lies open to all, but if he does so beyond what is right, punishment follows by ineluctable law.

In sum, we must hold that the All cannot be affected; its leading principle remains forever immune whatsoever happens to its members; the affection is really present to them, but since nothing existent can be at strife with the total of existence, no such affection conflicts with its impassivity.

Thus the stars, in so far as they are parts, can be affected and yet are immune on various counts; their will, like that of the All, is untouched, just as their bodies and their characteristic natures are beyond all reach of harm; if they give by means of their souls, their souls lose nothing; their bodies remain unchanged or, if there is ebb or inflow, it is of something going unfelt and coming unawares.


§ 43. And the Proficient (the Sage), how does he stand with regard to magic and philtre-spells? -324-

In the Soul he is immune from magic; his reasoning part cannot be touched by it, he cannot be perverted. But there is in him the unreasoning element which comes from the (material) All, and in this he can be affected, or rather this can be affected in him. Philtre-love, however, he will not know, for that would require the consent of the higher soul to the trouble stirred in the lower. And, just as the unreasoning element responds to the call of incantation, so the adept himself will dissolve those horrible powers by counter-incantations. Death, disease, any experience within the material sphere, these may result, yes; for anything that has membership in the All may be affected by another member, or by the universe of members; but the essential man is beyond harm.

That the effects of magic should be not instantaneous but developed is only in accord with Nature’s way.

Even the Celestials, the Daimones, are not on their unreasoning side immune: there is nothing against ascribing acts of memory and experiences of sense to them, in supposing them to accept the traction of methods laid up in the natural order, and to give hearing to petitioners; this is especially true of those of them that are closest to this sphere, and in the degree of their concern about it.

For everything that looks to another is under spell to that: what we look to, draws us magically. Only the self-intent go free of magic. Hence every action has magic as its source, and the entire life of the practical man is a bewitchment: we move to that only which has wrought a fascination upon us. This is indicated where we read: ‘for the burgher of great-hearted Erechtheus has a pleasant face (but you should see him naked; then you would be cautious).’ For what conceivably turns a man to the external? He is drawn, drawn by the arts not of magicians but of the natural order which administers the deceiving draught and links this to that, not in local contact but in the fellowship of the philtre.


§ 44. Contemplation alone stands untouched by magic; no man self-gathered falls to a spell; for he is one, and that unity is all he perceives, so that his reason is not beguiled but holds the due course, fashioning its own career and accomplishing its task.

In the other way of life, it is not the essential man that gives the impulse; it is not the reason; the unreasoning also acts as a principle, and finds its premisses in emotion. Caring for children, planning marriage — everything that works as bait, taking value by dint of desire — these all tug obviously: so it is with our action, sometimes stirred, not reasonably, by a certain spirited temperament, sometimes as foolishly by greed; political interests, the siege of office, all betray a forth-summoning lust of power; action for security springs from fear; action for gain, from desire; action undertaken for the sake of sheer necessities — that -325- is, for supplying the insufficiency of nature — indicates, manifestly, the cajoling force of nature to the safeguarding of life.

We may be told that no such magic underlies good action, since, at that, Contemplation itself, certainly a good action, implies a magic attraction.

The answer is that there is no magic when actions recognized as good are performed upon sheer necessity with the recollection that the veritable good is elsewhere; this is simply knowledge of need; it is not a bewitchment binding the life to this sphere or to any thing alien; all is permissible under duress of human nature, and in the spirit of adaptation to the needs of existence in general — or even to the needs of the individual existence, since it certainly seems reasonable to fit oneself into life rather than to withdraw from it.

When, on the contrary, the agent falls in love with what is good in those actions, and, cheated by the mere track and trace of the Authentic Good, makes them his own, then, in his pursuit of a lower good, he is the victim of magic. For all dalliance with what wears the mask of the authentic, all attraction towards that mere semblance, tells of a mind misled by the spell of forces pulling towards unreality.

The sorcery of Nature is at work in this; to pursue the non-good as a good, drawn in unreasoning impulse by its specious appearance: it is to be led unknowing down paths unchosen; and what can we call that but magic?

Alone in immunity from magic is he who, though drawn by the alien parts of his total being, withholds his assent to their standards of worth, recognizing the good only where his authentic self sees and knows it, neither drawn nor pursuing, but tranquilly possessing and so never charmed away.


§ 45. From this discussion it becomes perfectly clear that the individual member of the All contributes to that All in the degree of its kind and condition; thus it acts and is acted upon. In any particular animal each of the limbs and organs, in the measure of its kind and purpose, aids the entire being by service performed and counts in rank and utility: it gives what is in its gift and takes from its fellows in the degree of receptive power belonging to its kind; there is something like a common sensitiveness linking the parts, and in the orders in which each of the parts is also animate, each will have, in addition to its rank as part, the very particular functions of a living being.

We have learned, further, something of our human standing; we know that we too accomplish within the All a work not confined to the activity and receptivity of body in relation to body; we know that we bring to it that higher nature of ours, linked as we are by affinities within us towards the answering affinities outside us; becoming by our soul and the conditions of our kind thus linked — or, better, being linked by Nature — with our next highest in the celestial or daemonic realm, and -326- thence onwards with those above the Celestials, we cannot fail to manifest our quality. Still, we are not all able to offer the same gifts or to accept identically: if we do not possess good, we cannot bestow it; nor can we ever purvey any good thing to one that has no power of receiving good. Anyone that adds his evil to the total of things is known for what he is and, in accordance with his kind, is pressed down into the evil which he has made his own, and hence, upon death, goes to whatever region fits his quality — and all this happens under the pull of natural forces.

For the good man, the giving and the taking and the changes of state go quite the other way; the particular tendencies of the nature, we may put it, transpose the cords (so that we are moved by that only which, in Plato’s metaphor of the puppets, draws towards the best).

Thus this universe of ours is a wonder of power and wisdom, everything by a noiseless road coming to pass according to a law which none may elude — which the base man never conceives though it is leading him, all unknowingly, to that place in the All where his lot must be cast — which the just man knows, and, knowing, sets out to the place he must, understanding, even as he begins the journey, where he is to be housed at the end, and having the good hope that he will be with gods.

In a living being of small scope the parts vary but slightly, and have but a faint individual consciousness, and, unless possibly in a few and for a short time, are not themselves alive. But in a living universe, of high expanse, where every entity has vast scope and many of the members have life, there must be wider movement and greater changes. We see the sun and the moon and the other stars shifting place and course in an ordered progression. It is therefore within reason that the souls, also, should have their changes, not retaining unbrokenly the same quality, but ranged in some analogy with their action and experience — some taking rank as head and some as foot in a disposition consonant with the Universal Being which has its degrees in better and less good. A soul, which neither chooses the highest that is here, nor has lent itself to the lowest, is one which has abandoned another, a purer, place, taking this sphere in free election.

The punishments of wrongdoing are like the treatment of diseased parts of the body — here, medicines to knit sundered flesh; there, amputations; elsewhere, change of environment and condition — and the penalties are planned to bring health to the All by settling every member in the fitting place: and this health of the All requires that one man be made over anew and another, sick here, be taken hence to where he shall be weakly no longer. -327-

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Fifth Tractate: Problems of the Soul (3); or, On Sight

§ 1. We undertook to discuss the question whether sight is possible in the absence of any intervening medium, such as air or some other form of what is known as transparent body: this is the time and place.

It has been explained that seeing and all sense-perception can occur only through the medium of some bodily substance, since in the absence of body the Soul is utterly absorbed in the Intellectual Sphere. Sense-perception being the gripping not of the Intellectual but of the sensible alone, the Soul, if it is to form any relationship of knowledge, or of impression, with objects of sense, must be brought in some kind of contact with them by means of whatever may bridge the gap.

The knowledge, then, is realized by means of bodily organs: through these, which (in the embodied soul) are almost of one growth with it, being at least its continuations, it comes into something like unity with the alien, since this mutual approach brings about a certain degree of identity (which is the basis of knowledge).

Admitting, then, that some contact with an object is necessary for knowing it, the question of a medium falls to the ground in the case of things identified by any form of touch; but in the case of sight — we leave hearing over for the present — we are still in doubt; is there need of some bodily substance between the eye and the illumined object?

No: such an intervening material may be a favouring circumstance, but essentially it adds nothing to seeing power.

Dense bodies, such as clay, actually prevent sight; the less material the intervening substance is, the more clearly we see; the intervening substance, then, is a hindrance, or, if not that, at least not a help.

It will be objected that vision implies that whatever intervenes between seen and seer must first (and progressively) experience the object and be, as it were, shaped to it; we will be reminded that anyone standing in front of us and facing to the object sees it equally; we will be asked to deduce that if all the space intervening between seen and seer did not carry the impression of the object we could not receive it.

But all the need is met when the impression reaches that which is adapted to receive it; there is no need for the intervening space to be impressed. If it is, the impression will be of quite another order: the rod between the fisher’s hand and the torpedo fish is not affected in the same way as the hand that feels the shock. And yet there too, if rod and line did not intervene, the hand would not be affected — though even that may be questioned, since after all the fisherman, we are told, is numbed if the torpedo merely lies in his net.

The whole matter seems to bring us back to that sympathy of which we have treated. If a certain thing is of a nature to be sympathetically -328- affected by another in virtue of some similitude between them, then anything intervening, not sharing in that similitude, will not be affected, or at least not similarly. If this be so, anything naturally disposed to be affected will take the impression more vividly in the absence of intervening substance, even of some substance capable, itself, of being affected.


§ 2. If sight depends upon the linking of the light of vision with the light leading progressively to the illumined object, then by the very hypothesis one intervening substance, the light, is indispensable: but if the illuminated body, which is the object of vision, serves as an agent operating certain changes, some such change might very well impinge immediately upon the eye, requiring no medium; this all the more, since, as things are, the intervening substance, which actually does exist, is in some degree changed at the point of contact with the eye (and so cannot be in itself a requisite to vision).

Those who have made vision a forthgoing act (and not an incoming from the object) need not postulate an intervening substance — unless, indeed, to provide against the ray from the eye failing on its path — but this is a ray of light and light flies straight. Those who make vision depend upon resistance are obliged to postulate an intervening substance.

The champions of the image, with its transit through a void, are seeking the way of least resistance; but since the entire absence of intervenient gives a still easier path they will not oppose that hypothesis.

So, too, those that explain vision by sympathy must recognize that an intervening substance will be a hindrance as tending to check or block or enfeeble that sympathy; this theory, especially, requires the admission that any intervenient, and particularly one of kindred nature, must blunt the perception by itself absorbing part of the activity. Apply fire to a body continuous through and through, and no doubt the core will be less affected than the surface: but where we are dealing with the sympathetic parts of one living being, there will scarcely be less sensation because of the intervening substance, or, if there should be, the degree of sensation will still be proportionate to the nature of the separate part, with the intervenient acting merely as a certain limitation; this, though, will not be the case where the element introduced is of a kind to overleap the bridge.

But this is saying that the sympathetic quality of the universe depends upon its being one living thing, and that our amenability to experience depends upon our belonging integrally to that unity; would it not follow that continuity is a condition of any perception of a remote object?

The explanation is that continuity and its concomitant, the bridging substance, come into play because a living being must be a continuous thing, but that, none the less, the receiving of impression is not an -329- essentially necessary result of continuity; if it were, everything would receive such impression from everything else, and if thing is affected by thing in various separate orders, there can be no further question of any universal need of intervening substance.

Why it should be specially requisite in the act of seeing would have to be explained: in general, an object passing through the air does not affect it beyond dividing it; when a stone falls, the air simply yields; nor is it reasonable to explain the natural direction of movement by resistance; to do so would bring us to the absurdity that resistance accounts for the upward movement of fire, which, on the contrary, overcomes the resistance of the air by its own essentially quick energy. If we are told that the resistance is brought more swiftly into play by the very swiftness of the ascending body, that would be a mere accidental circumstance, not a cause of the upward motion: in trees the upthrust from the root depends on no such external propulsion; we, too, in our movements cleave the air and are in no wise forwarded by its resistance; it simply flows in from behind to fill the void we make.

If the severance of the air by such bodies leaves it unaffected, why must there be any severance before the images of sight can reach us?

And, further, once we reject the theory that these images reach us by way of some outstreaming from the objects seen, there is no reason to think of the air being affected and passing on to us, in a progression of impression, what has been impressed upon itself.

If our perception is to depend upon previous impressions made upon the air, then we have no direct knowledge of the object of vision, but know it only as through an intermediary, in the same way as we are aware of warmth where it is not the distant fire itself that warms us, but the warmed intervening air. That is a matter of contact; but sight is not produced by contact: the application of an object to the eye would not produce sight; what is required is the illumination of the intervening medium; for the air in itself is a dark substance. If it were not for this dark substance there would probably be no reason for the existence of light: the dark intervening matter is a barrier, and vision requires that it be overcome by light. Perhaps also the reason why an object brought close to the eye cannot be seen is that it confronts us with a double obscuration, its own and that of the air.


§ 3. For the most convincing proof that vision does not depend upon the transmission of impressions of any kind made upon the air, we have only to consider that in the darkness of night we can see a fire and the stars and their very shapes.

No one will pretend that these forms are reproduced upon the darkness and come to us in linked progression; if the fire thus rayed out its own form, there would be an end to the darkness. In the blackest night, when the very stars are hidden and show no gleam of their light, we can see the fire of the beacon-stations and of maritime signal-towers. -330-

Now if, in defiance of all that the senses tell us, we are to believe that in these examples the fire (as light) traverses the air, then what the eye sees must be that dimmed reproduction in the air, not the clearness of the fire itself. But if an object can be seen on the other side of some intervening darkness, much more would it be visible with nothing intervening.

One point may no doubt be made: the impossibility of vision without an intervening substance does not depend upon that absence in itself: the sole reason is that, with that absence, there would be an end to the sympathy reigning in the living whole and relating the parts to each other in an existent unity.

Perception of every kind seems to depend on the fact that our universe is a living whole sympathetic to itself: that it is so, appears from the universal participation in power from member to member, and especially in remote power.

No doubt it would be worth inquiry — though we pass it for the present — what would take place if there were another cosmos, another living whole having no contact with this one, and the far ridges of our heavens had sight: would our sphere see that other as from a mutually present distance, or could there be no dealing at all from this to that?

To return; there is a further consideration showing that sight is not brought about by this alleged modification of the intervenient.

Any modification of the air substance would necessarily be corporeal: there must be such an impression as is made upon sealing wax. But this would require that each part of the object of vision be impressed on some corresponding portion of the intervenient: the intervenient, however, in actual contact with the eye would be just that portion whose dimensions the pupil is capable of receiving. But as a matter of fact the entire object appears before the pupil; and it is seen entire by all within that air space for a great extent, in front, sideways, close at hand, from the back, as long as the line of vision is not blocked. This shows that any given portion of the air contains the object of vision, in face view so to speak, and, at once, we are confronted by no merely corporeal phenomena; the facts are explicable only as depending upon the greater laws, the spiritual, of a living being one and self-sensitive.


§ 4.

But there is the question of the linked light that must relate the visual organ to its object.

Now, firstly: since the intervening air is not necessary — unless in the purely accidental sense that air may be necessary to light — the light that acts as intermediate in vision will be unmodified: vision depends upon no modification whatever. This one intermediate, light, would seem to be necessary, but, unless light is corporeal, no intervening body is requisite: and we must remember that intervenient and borrowed light is essential not to seeing in general but to distant vision; the question -331- whether light absolutely requires the presence of air we will discuss later. For the present one matter must occupy us:

If in the act of vision that linked light becomes ensouled, if the Soul (or mind) permeates it and enters into union with it, as happens with the eye’s interior light, then in the apprehending of the external object — which is what vision really is — the intervening light is not a necessity: the process of seeing will be like that of touch; the visual faculty of the Soul will perceive by the fact of having entered into the light; all that intervenes remains unaffected, serving simply as the field over which the vision ranges.

This brings up the question whether the sight is made active over its field by the sheer presence of a distance spread before it, or by the presence of a body of some kind within that distance.

If by the presence of such a body, then there will be vision though there be no intervenient; if the distance is the sole attractive agent, then we are forced to think of the visible object as being a Kind utterly without energy, performing no act. But so inactive a body cannot be: touch tells us that, for it does not merely announce that something is by and is touched: it is acted upon by the object so that it reports distinguishing qualities in it, qualities so effective that even at a distance touch itself would register them but for the accidental that it demands proximity.

We catch the heat of a fire just as soon as the intervening air does; no need to wait for it to be warmed: the denser body, in fact, takes in more warmth than the air has to give; in other words, the air transmits the heat but is not the source of our warmth.

When on the one side, that of the object, there is the power in any degree of an outgoing act, and on the other, that of the sight, the capability of being acted upon, surely the object needs no medium through which to be effective upon what it is fully equipped to affect: this would be needing not a help but a hindrance.

Or, again, consider the Dawn: there is no need that the light first flood the air and then come to us; the event is simultaneous to both: often, in fact, we see (in the distance) when the light is not as yet round our eyes at all but very far off, before, that is, the air has been acted upon: here we have vision without any modified intervenient, vision before the organ has received the light with which it is to be linked.

It is difficult to reconcile with this theory the fact of seeing stars or any fire by night.

If (as by the theory of an intervenient) the percipient mind or soul remains within itself and needs the light only as one might need a stick in the hand to touch something at a distance, then the perception will be a sort of tussle: the light must be conceived as something thrusting, something aimed at a mark, and similarly, the object, considered as an illuminated thing, must be conceived to be resistant; for this is the normal process in the case of contact by the agency of an intervenient. -332-

Besides, even on this explanation, the mind must have previously been in contact with the object in the entire absence of intervenient; only if that has happened could contact through an intervenient bring knowledge, a knowledge by way of memory, and, even more emphatically, by way of reasoned comparison (ending in identification): but this process of memory and comparison is excluded by the theory of first knowledge through the agency of a medium.

Finally, we may be told that the impinging light is modified by the thing to be seen and so becomes able to present something perceptible before the visual organ; but this simply brings us back to the theory of an intervenient changed midway by the object, an explanation whose difficulties we have already indicated.


§ 5. But some doubt arises when we consider the phenomena of hearing.

Perhaps we are to understand the process thus: the air is modified by the first movement; layer by layer it is successively acted upon by the object causing the sound; it finally impinges in that modified form upon the sense, the entire progression being governed by the fact that all the air from starting point to hearing point is similarly affected.

Perhaps, on the other hand, the intervenient is modified only by the accident of its midway position, so that, failing any intervenient, whatsoever sound two bodies in clash might make would impinge without medium upon our sense?

Still, air is necessary; there could be no sound in the absence of the air set vibrating in the first movement, however different be the case with the intervenient from that onwards to the perception point.

The air would thus appear to be the dominant in the production of sound: two bodies would clash without even an incipient sound, but that the air, struck in their rapid meeting and hurled outward, passes on the movement successively till it reaches the ears and the sense of hearing.

But if the determinant is the air, and the impression is simply of air-movements, what accounts for the differences among voices and other sounds? The sound of bronze against bronze is different from that of bronze against some other substance: and so on; the air and its vibration remain the one thing, yet the difference in sounds is much more than a matter of greater or less intensity.

If we decide that sound is caused by a percussion upon the air, then obviously nothing turning upon the distinctive nature of air is in question: it sounds at a moment in which it is simply a solid body, until (by its distinctive character) it is sent pulsing outwards: thus air in itself is not essential to the production of sound; all is done by clashing solids as they meet and that percussion, reaching the sense, is the sound. This is shown also by the sounds formed within living beings not in air but by the friction of parts; for example, the grinding of teeth and the -333- crunching of bones against each other in the bending of the body, cases in which the air does not intervene.

But all this may now be left over; we are brought to the same conclusion as in the case of sight; the phenomena of hearing arise similarly in a certain co-sensitiveness inherent in a living whole.


§ 6. We return, then, to the question whether there could be light if there were no air, the sun illuminating corporeal surfaces across an intermediate void which, as things are, takes the light accidentally by the mere fact of being in the path. Supposing air to be the cause of the rest of things being thus affected, the substantial existence of light is due to the air; light becomes a modification of the air, and of course if the thing to be modified did not exist neither could the modification.

The fact is that primarily light is no appanage of air, and does not depend upon the existence of air: it belongs to every fiery and shining body, it constitutes even the gleaming surface of certain stones.

Now if, thus, it enters into other substances from something gleaming, could it exist in the absence of its container?

There is a distinction to be made: if it is a quality, some quality of some substance, then light, equally with other qualities, will need a body in which to lodge: if, on the contrary, it is an activity rising from something else, we can surely conceive it existing, though there be no neighbouring body but, if that is possible, a blank void which it will overleap and so appear on the farther side: it is powerful, and may very well pass over unhelped. If it were of a nature to fall, nothing would keep it up, certainly not the air or anything that takes its light; there is no reason why they should draw the light from its source and speed it onwards.

Light is not an accidental to something else, requiring therefore to be lodged in a base; nor is it a modification, demanding a base in which the modification occurs: if this were so, it would have to remain with whatever object might fall within its path; but it does not; it must come, therefore, as easily as it vanishes.

But where can it be?

Space, pure and simple, is all that it needs.

With unchecked motion of the light outward, the material sun will be losing its energy, for the light is its expression.

Perhaps; but then no other object can possess it. The expressive Act proceeds from a base but does not seek to enter into a base, though having some operation upon any base that may be present.

Life is also an Act, the Act or the Soul, and it remains so when anything — the human body, for instance — comes in its path to be affected by it; and it is equally an Act though there be nothing for it to modify: surely this may be true of light, if we may regard it as the characteristic Act of the luminary source. Certainly light is not brought into being by the dark thing, air, which on the contrary tends to gloom it over -334- with some touch of earth so that it is no longer the brilliant reality: as reasonable to talk of some substance being sweet because it is mixed with something bitter.

If we are told that light is a mode of the air, we answer that this would necessarily imply that the air itself is changed to produce the new mode; in other words, its characteristic darkness must change into non-darkness; but we know that the air maintains its character, in no wise affected: the modification of a thing is an experience within that thing itself: light therefore is not a modification of the air, but a self-existent in whose path the air happens to be present.

On this point we need dwell no longer; but there remains still a question.


§ 7. Our investigation may be furthered by inquiring: Whether light finally perishes or simply returns to its source.

If it be a thing requiring to be caught and kept, domiciled within a recipient, we might think of it finally passing out of existence: if it be an Act not flowing out and away — but in a circuit, with more of it within than is in outward progress from the luminary of which it is the Act — then it will not cease to exist as long as that centre is in being. And as the luminary moves, the light will reach new points — not in virtue of any change of course in or out or around, but simply because the Act of the luminary exists and where there is no impediment is effective. Even if the distance of the sun from us were far greater than it is, the light would be continuous all that further way, as long as nothing checked or blocked it in the interval.

We distinguish two forms of activity; one is gathered within the luminary and is comparable to the life of the shining body; this is the vaster and is, as it were, the foundation or wellspring of all the act; the other lies next to the surface, the outer image of the inner content, a secondary activity though inseparable from the former. For every existent has an Act which is in its likeness: as long as the one exists, so does the other; yet while the original is stationary the activity reaches forth, in some things over a wide range, in others less far. There are weak and faint activities, and there are some, even, that do not appear; but there are also things whose activities are great and far-going; in the case of these the activity must be thought of as being lodged, both in the active and powerful source and in the point at which it settles. This may be observed in the case of an animal’s eyes where the pupils gleam: they have a light which shows outside the orbs. Again there are living things which have an inner fire that in darkness shines out when they expand themselves and ceases to ray outward when they contract: the fire has not perished; it is a mere matter of it being rayed out or not.

But has the light gone inward?

No: it is simply no longer on the outside because the fire (of which -335- it is the activity) is no longer outward-going but has withdrawn towards the centre.

But surely the light has gone inward too?

No: only the fire, and when that goes inward the surface consists only of the non-luminous body; the fire can no longer act towards the outer.

The light, then, raying from bodies is an outgoing activity of a luminous body; the light within luminous bodies — understand, such as are primarily luminous — is the essential being embraced under the Idea of that body. When such a body is brought into association with Matter, its activity produces colour: when there is no such association it does not give colour — it gives merely an incipient on which colour might be formed — for it belongs to another being (primal light) with which it retains its link, unable to desert from it, or from its (inner) activity.

And light is incorporeal even when it is the light of a body; there is therefore no question, strictly speaking, of its withdrawal or of its being present — these terms do not apply to its modes — and its essential existence is to be an activity. As an example: the image upon a mirror may be described as an activity exercised by the reflected object upon the potential recipient: there is no outgoing from the object (or ingoing into the reflecting body); it is simply that, as long as the object stands there, the image also is visible, in the form of colour shaped to a certain pattern, and when the object is not there, the reflecting surface no longer holds what it held when the conditions were favourable.

So it is with the soul considered as the activity of another and prior soul: as long as that prior retains its place, its next, which is its activity, abides.

But what of a soul which is not an activity but the derivative of an activity — as we maintained the life-principle domiciled in the body to be — is its presence similar to that of the light caught and held in material things?

No; for in those things the colour is due to an actual intermixture of the active element (the light being alloyed with Matter); whereas the life-principle of the body is something that holds from another soul closely present to it.

But when the body perishes — by the fact that nothing without part in soul can continue in being — when the body is perishing, no longer supported by that primal lire-giving soul, or by the presence of any secondary phase of it, it is clear that the life-principle can no longer remain; but does this mean that the life perishes?

No: not even it; for it, too, is an image of that first out-shining; it is merely no longer where it was.


§ 8. Imagine that beyond the heavenly system there existed some solid mass, and that from this sphere there was directed to it a vision utterly unimpeded and unrestricted: it is a question whether that solid form could be perceived by what has no sympathetic relation with it, since -336- we have held that sympathetic relation comes about in virtue of the nature inherent in some one living being.

Obviously, if the sympathetic relationship depends upon the fact that percipients and things perceived are all members of one living being, no acts of perception could take place: that far body could be known only if it were a member of this living universe of ours — which condition being met, it certainly would be. But what if, without being thus in membership, it were a corporeal entity, exhibiting light and colour and the qualities by which we perceive things, and belonging to the same ideal category (having the same specific character) as the organ of vision?

If our supposition (of perception by sympathy) is true, there would still be no perception — though we may be told that the hypothesis is clearly untenable since there is absurdity in supposing that sight can fail in grasping an illuminated object lying before it, and that the other senses in the presence of their particular objects remain unresponsive.

But why does such a failing appear impossible to us? We answer: because here and now in all the act and experience of our senses, we are within a unity, and members of it. What the conditions would be otherwise, remains to be considered: if living sympathy suffices the theory is established; if not, there are other considerations to support it.

That every living being is self-sensitive allows of no doubt; if we are concerned with a living being, no more need be said; and what is true of the total must be true of the members, as inbound in that one life.

But what if we are invited to accept the theory of knowledge by likeness (rejecting knowledge by the self-sensitiveness of a living unity)?

Awareness must be determined by the nature and character of the living being in which it occurs; perception, then, means that the likeness demanded by the hypothesis is within this self-identical living being — for the organ by which the perception takes place is in the likeness of the object perceived: thus perception is reduced to a mental awareness by means of organs akin to the object.

If, then, something that is a living whole perceives not its own content but things like to its content, it must perceive them under the conditions of that living whole; this means that, in so far as it has perception, the objects appear not as its content but as related to its content.

And the objects are thus perceived as related because the mind itself has related them in order to make them amenable to its handling: in other words, the causative soul or mind in that other sphere is utterly alien, and the things there, supposed to be related to the content of this living whole, can be nothing to our minds.

This absurdity shows that the hypothesis contains a contradiction which naturally leads to untenable results. In fact, under one and the same heading, it presents mind and no mind, it makes things kin and no -337- kin, it confuses similar and dissimilar: containing these irreconcilable elements, it amounts to no hypothesis at all. At one and the same moment it postulates and denies a soul, it tells of an All that is partial, of a something which is at once distinct and not distinct, of a nothingness which is no nothingness, of a complete thing that is incomplete: the hypothesis therefore must be dismissed; no deduction is possible where a thesis cancels its own propositions.

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Sixth Tractate: Perception and Memory

§ 1. Perceptions are no imprints, we have said, are not to be thought of as seal-impressions on soul or mind: accepting this statement, there is one theory of memory which must be definitely rejected.

Memory is not to be explained as the retaining of information in virtue of the lingering of an impression which in fact was never made; the two things stand or fall together; either an impression is made upon the mind and lingers when there is remembrance, or, denying the impression, we cannot hold that memory is its lingering. Since we reject equally the impression and the retention we are obliged to seek for another explanation of perception and memory, one excluding the notions that the sensible object striking upon soul or mind makes a mark upon it, and that the retention of this mark is memory.

If we study what occurs in the case of the most vivid form of perception, we can transfer our results to the other cases, and so solve our problem.

In any perception we attain by sight, the object is grasped there where it lies in the direct line of vision; it is there that we attack it; there, then, the perception is formed; the mind looks outward; this is ample proof that it has taken and takes no inner imprint, and does not see in virtue of some mark made upon it like that of the ring on the wax; it need not look outward at all if, even as it looked, it already held the image of the object, seeing by virtue of an impression made upon itself. It includes with the object the interval, for it tells at what distance the vision takes place: how could it see as outlying an impression within itself, separated by no interval from itself? Then, the point of magnitude: how could the mind, on this hypothesis, define the external size of the object or perceive that it has any — the magnitude of the sky, for instance, whose stamped imprint would be too vast for it to contain? And, most convincing of all, if to see is to accept imprints of the objects of our vision, we can never see these objects themselves; we see only vestiges they leave within us, shadows: the things themselves would be very different from our vision of them. And, for a conclusive consideration, -338- we cannot see if the living object is in contact with the eye; we must look from a certain distance; this must be more applicable to the mind; supposing the mind to be stamped with an imprint of the object, it could not grasp as an object of vision what is stamped upon itself. For vision demands a duality, of seen and seeing: the seeing agent must be distinct and act upon an impression outside it, not upon one occupying the same point with it: sight can deal only with an object not inset but outlying.


§ 2. But if perception does not go by impression, what is the process?

The mind affirms something not contained within it: this is precisely the characteristic of a power — not to accept impression but, within its allotted sphere, to act.

Besides, the very condition of the mind being able to exercise discrimination upon what it is to see and hear is not, of course, that these objects be equally impressions made upon it; on the contrary, there must be no impressions, nothing to which the mind is passive; there can be only acts of that in which the objects become known.

Our tendency is to think of any of the faculties as unable to know its appropriate object by its own uncompelled act; to us it seems to submit to its environment rather than simply to perceive it, though in reality it is the master, not the victim.

As with sight, so with hearing. It is the air which takes the impression, a kind of articulated stroke which may be compared to letters traced upon it by the object causing the sound; but it belongs to the faculty, and the soul-essence, to read the imprints thus appearing before it, as they reach the point at which they become matter of its knowledge.

In taste and smell also we distinguish between the impressions received and the sensations and judgements; these last are mental acts, and belong to an order apart from the experiences upon which they are exercised.

The knowing of the things belonging to the Intellectual is not in any such degree attended by impact or impression: they come forward, on the contrary, as from within, unlike the sense-objects known as from without: they have more emphatically the character of Acts; they are Acts in the stricter sense, for their origin is in the Soul, and every concept of this Intellectual order is the Soul about its Act.

Whether, in this self-vision, the Soul is a duality and views itself as from the outside — while seeing the Intellectual-Principle as a unity, and itself with the Intellectual-Principle as a unity — this question is investigated elsewhere.


§ 3. With this prologue we come to our discussion of Memory.

That the Soul, or mind, having taken no imprint, yet achieves perception of what it in no way contains need not surprise us; or rather, -339- surprising though it is, we cannot refuse to believe in this remarkable power.

The Soul is the Reason-Principle of the universe, ultimate among the Intellectual Beings — its own essential Nature is one of the Beings of the Intellectual Realm — but it is the primal Reason-Principle of the entire realm of sense.

Thus it has dealings with both orders — benefited and quickened by the one, but by the other beguiled, falling before resemblances, and so led downwards as under spell. Poised midway, it is aware of both spheres.

Of the Intellectual it is said to have intuition by memory upon approach, for it knows them by a certain natural identity with them; its knowledge is not attained by besetting them, so to speak, but by in a definite degree possessing them; they are its natural vision; they are itself in a more radiant mode, and it rises from its duller pitch to that greater brilliance in a sort of awakening, a progress from its latency to its Act.

To the sense-order it stands in a similar nearness and to such things it gives a radiance out of its own store and, as it were, elaborates them to visibility: the power is always ripe and, so to say, in travail towards them, so that, whenever it puts out its strength in the direction of what has once been present in it, it sees that object as present still; and the more intent its effort the more durable is the presence. This is why, it is agreed, children are better at remembering; the things presented to them are not constantly withdrawn but remain in sight; in their case the attention is still limited and not scattered: those whose faculty and mental activity are busied upon a multitude of subjects pass quickly over all, lingering on none.

Now, if memory were a matter of seal-impressions retained, the multiplicity of objects would have no weakening effect on the memory. Further, on the same hypothesis, we would have no need of thinking back to revive remembrance; nor would we be subject to forgetting and recalling; all would lie engraved within.

The very fact that we train ourselves to remember shows that what we get by the process is a strengthening of the mind: just so, exercises for feet and hands enable us to do easily acts which are in no sense contained or laid up in those members, but to which they may be fitted by persevering effort.

How else can it be explained that we forget a thing heard once or twice but remember what is often repeated, and that we recall a long time afterwards what at first hearing we failed to hold?

It is no answer to say that the parts present themselves sooner than the entire imprint — why should they too be forgotten? — (there is no question of parts, for) the last hearing, or our effort to remember, brings the thing back to us in a flash.

All these considerations testify to an evocation of that faculty of the -340- Soul, or mind, in which remembrance is vested: the mind is strengthened, either generally or to this particular purpose.

Observe these facts: memory follows upon attention; those who have memorized much, by dint of their training in the use of leading indications (suggestive words and the like), reach the point of being easily able to retain without such aid: must we not conclude that the basis of memory is the soul-power brought to full strength?

The lingering imprints of the other explanation would tell of weakness rather than power; for to take imprint easily is to be yielding. An impression is something received passively; the strongest memory, then, would go with the least active nature. But what happens is the very reverse: in no pursuit do technical exercises tend to make a man less the master of his acts and states. It is as with sense-perception; the advantage is not to the weak, the weak eye for example, but to that which has the fullest power towards its exercise. In the old, it is significant, the senses are dulled and so is the memory.

Sensation and memory, then, are not passivity but power.

And, once it is admitted that sensations are not impressions, the memory of a sensation cannot consist in the retention of an impression that was never made.

Yes: but if it is an active power of the mind, a fitness towards its particular purpose, why does it not come at once — and not with delay — to the recollection of its unchanging objects?

Simply because the power needs to be poised and prepared: in this it is only like all the others, which have to be readied for the task to which their power reaches, some operating very swiftly, others only after a certain self-concentration.

Quick memory does not in general go with quick wit: the two do not fall under the same mental faculty; runner and boxer are not often united in one person; the dominant Idea differs from man to man.

Yet there could be nothing to prevent men of superior faculty from reading impressions on the mind; why should one thus gifted be incapable of what would be no more than a passive taking and holding?

In general Soul is faculty (and not receptivity), as is evident from its lack of extension (its immateriality).

And — one general reflection — it is not extraordinary that everything concerning soul should proceed in quite other ways than appears to people who either have never inquired, or have hastily adopted delusive analogies from the phenomena of sense, and persist in thinking of perception and remembrance in terms of characters inscribed on plates or tablets; the impossibilities that beset this theory escape those that make the Soul incorporeal equally with those to whom it is corporeal. -341-

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Seventh Tractate: The Immortality of the Soul

§ 1. Whether every human being is immortal or we are wholly destroyed, or whether something of us passes over to dissolution and destruction, while something else, that which is the true man, endures forever — this question will be answered here for those willing to investigate our nature.

We know that man is not a thing of one only clement; he has a Soul and he has, whether instrument or adjunct in some other mode, a body: this is the first distinction; it remains to investigate the nature and essential being of these two constituents.

Reason tells us that the body as, itself too, a composite, cannot forever hold together; and our senses show us it breaking up, wearing out, the victim of destructive agents of many kinds, each of its constituents going its own way, one part working against another, perverting, wrecking, and this especially when the material masses are no longer presided over by the reconciling Soul.

And when each single constituent is taken as a thing apart, it is still not a unity; for it is divisible into shape and matter, the duality without which bodies at their very simplest cannot cohere.

The mere fact that, as material forms, they have bulk means that they can be lopped and crushed and so come to destruction.

If this body, then, is really a part of us, we are not wholly immortal; if it is an instrument of ours, then, as a thing put at our service for a certain time, it must be in its nature passing.

The sovereign principle, the authentic man, will be as Form to this Matter or as agent to this instrument, and thus, whatever that relation be, the Soul is the man.


§ 2. But of what nature is this sovereign principle?

If material, then definitely it must fall apart; for every material entity, at least, is something put together.

If it is not material but belongs to some other Kind, that new substance must be investigated in the same way or by some more suitable method.

But our first need is to discover into what this material form, since such the Soul is to be, can dissolve.

Now: of necessity life is inherent to soul: this material entity, then, which we call soul must have life ingrained within it; but (being a composite, as by hypothesis material) it must be made up of two or more bodies; that life, then, will be vested, either in each and all of -342- those bodies or in one of them to the exclusion of the other or others; if this be not so, then there is no life present anywhere.

If any one of them contains this ingrained life, that one is the Soul. But what sort of an entity have we there; what is this body which of its own nature possesses soul?

Fire, air, water, earth, are in themselves soulless — whenever soul is in any of them, that life is borrowed — and there are no other forms of body than these four: even the school that believes there are has always held them to be bodies, not souls, and to be without life.

None of these, then, having life, it would be extraordinary if life came about by bringing them together; it is impossible, in fact, that the collocation of material entities should produce life, or mindless entities mind.

No one, moreover, would pretend that a mere chance mixing could give such results: some regulating principle would be necessary, some cause directing the admixture: that guiding principle would be — soul.

Body — not merely because it is a composite, but even were it simplex — could not exist unless there were soul in the universe, for body owes its being to the entrance of a Reason-Principle into Matter, and only from soul can a Reason-Principle come.


§ 3. Anyone who rejects this view, and holds that either atoms or some entities void of part coming together produce soul, is refuted by the very unity of soul and by the prevailing sympathy as much as by the very coherence of the constituents. Bodily materials, in nature repugnant to unification and to sensation, could never produce unity or self-sensitiveness, and soul is self-sensitive. And, again, constituents void of part could never produce body or bulk.

Perhaps we will be asked to consider body as a simple entity (disregarding the question of any constituent elements): they will tell us, then, that no doubt, as purely material, it cannot have a self-springing life — since matter is without quality — but that life is introduced by the fact that the Matter is brought to order under Forming-Idea. But if by this Forming-Idea they mean an essential, a real being, then it is not the conjoint of body and Idea that constitutes soul: it must be one of the two items and that one, being (by hypothesis) outside of the Matter, cannot be body: to make it body would simply force us to repeat our former analysis.

If on the contrary they do not mean by this Forming-Idea a real being, but some condition or modification of the Matter, they must tell us how and whence

this modification, with resultant life, can have found the way into the Matter: for very certainly Matter does not mould itself to pattern or bring itself to life.

It becomes clear that since neither Matter nor body in any mode has this power, life must be brought upon the stage by some directing principle external and transcendent to all that is corporeal. -343-

In fact, body itself could not exist in any form if soul-power did not: body passes; dissolution is in its very nature; all would disappear in a twinkling if all were body. It is no help to erect some one mode of body into soul; made of the same Matter as the rest, this soul-body would fall under the same fate: of course it could never really exist: the universe of things would halt at the material, failing something to bring Matter to shape.

Nay more: Matter itself could not exist: the totality of things in this sphere is dissolved if it be made to depend upon the coherence of a body which, though elevated to the nominal rank of ‘soul’, remains air, fleeting breath (the Stoic pneuma, rarefied matter, ‘spirit’ in the lower sense), whose very unity is not drawn from itself.

All bodies are in ceaseless process of dissolution; how can the Cosmos be made over to any one of them without being turned into a senseless haphazard drift? This pneuma — orderless except under soul — how can it contain order, reason, intelligence? But: given soul, all these material things become its collaborators towards the coherence of the Cosmos and of every living being, all the qualities of all the separate objects converging to the purposes of the universe: failing soul in the things of the universe, they could not even exist, much less play their ordered parts.


§ 4. Our opponents themselves are driven by stress of fact to admit the necessity of a prior to body, a higher thing, some phase or form of soul; their ‘pneuma’ (finer-body or spirit) is intelligent, and they speak of an ‘intellectual fire’; this ‘fire’ and ‘spirit’ they imagine to be necessary to the existence of the higher order which they conceive as demanding some base, though the real difficulty, under their theory, is to find a base for material things whose only possible base is, precisely, the powers of soul.

Besides, if they make life and soul no more than this ‘pneuma’, what is the import of that repeated qualification of theirs ‘in a certain state’, their refuge when they are compelled to recognize some acting principle apart from body? If not every pneuma is a soul, but thousands of them soulless, and only the pneuma in this ‘certain state’ is soul, what follows? Either this ‘certain state’, this shaping or configuration of things, is a real being or it is nothing.

If it is nothing, only the pneuma exists, the ‘certain state’ being no more than a word; this leads imperatively to the assertion that Matter alone exists, Soul and God mere words, the lowest alone is.

If on the contrary this ‘configuration’ is really existent — something distinct from the underlie or Matter, something residing in Matter but itself immaterial as not constructed out of Matter, then it must be a Reason-Principle, incorporeal, a separate nature.

There are other equally cogent proofs that the soul cannot be any form of body. -344-

Body is either warm or cold, hard or soft, liquid or solid, black or white, and so on through all the qualities by which one is different from another; and again if a body is warm it diffuses only warmth, if cold it can only chill, if light its presence tells against the total weight which if heavy it increases; black, it darkens; white, it lightens; fire has not the property of chilling or a cold body that of warming.

Soul, on the contrary, operates diversely in different living beings, and has quite contrary effects in any one: its productions contain the solid and the soft, the dense and the sparse, bright and dark, heavy and light. If it were material, its quality — and the colour it must have — would produce one invariable effect and not the variety actually observed.


§ 5. Again, there is movement: all bodily movement is uniform; failing an incorporeal soul, how account for diversity of movement? Predilections, reasons, they will say; that is all very well, but these already contain that variety and therefore cannot belong to body which is one and simplex, and, besides, is not participant in reason — that is, not in the sense here meant, but only as it is influenced by some principle which confers upon it the qualities of, for instance, being warm or cold.

Then there is growth under a time-law, and within a definite limit: how can this belong strictly to body? Body can indeed be brought to growth, but cannot induce growth except in the sense that the material mass may include a capacity to serve the principle whose action upon the body causes growth.

Supposing the soul to be at once a body and the cause of growth, then, if it is to keep pace with the substance it augments, it too must grow; that means it must add to itself a similar bodily material. For the added material must be either soul or soulless body: if soul, whence and how does it enter, and by what process is it adjoined (to the soul which by hypothesis is body); if soulless, how does such an addition become soul, falling into accord with its precedent, making one thing with it, sharing the stored impressions and notions of that initial soul instead, rather, of remaining an alien ignoring all the knowledge laid up before?

Would not such a soulless addition be subject to just such loss and gain of substance, in fact to the non-identity, which marks the rest of our material mass?

And if this were so how explain our memories or our recognition of familiar things when we have no stably identical soul?

Assume soul to be a body: now in the nature of body, characteristically divisible, no one of the parts can be identical with the entire being; soul, then, is a thing of defined size, and if curtailed must cease to be what it is; in the nature of a quantitative entity this must be so, for if a thing of magnitude on diminution retains its identity in virtue of its quality, this is only saying that bodily and quantitatively it is different even if its identity consists in a quality quite independent of quantity. -345-

What answer can be made by those declaring soul to be corporeal? Is every part of the soul, in any one body, soul entire, soul perfectly rue to its essential being? and may the same be said of every part of the part? If so, the magnitude makes no contribution to the soul’s essential nature, as it must if soul (as corporeal) were a definite magnitude: it is, as body cannot be, an ‘all-everywhere’, a complete identity present at each and every point, the part all that the whole is.

To deny that every part is soul is to make soul a compound from soulless elements. Further, if a definite magnitude, the double limit of larger or smaller, is to be imposed upon each separate soul, then anything outside those limits is no soul.

Now, a single coition and a single sperm suffice to a twin birth or in the animal order to a litter; there is a splitting and diverging of the seed, every diverging part being obviously a whole: surely no honest mind can fail to gather that a thing in which part is identical with whole has a nature which transcends quantity, and must of necessity be without quantity: only so could it remain identical when quantity is filched from it, only by being indifferent to amount or extension, by being in essence something apart. Thus the Soul and the Reason-Principles are without quantity.


§ 6. It is easy to show that if the Soul were a corporeal entity, there could be no sense-perception, no mental act, no knowledge, no moral excellence, nothing of all that is noble.

There can be no perception without a unitary percipient whose identity enables it to grasp an object as an entirety.

The several senses will each be the entrance point of many diverse perceptions; in any one object there may be many characteristics; any one organ may be the channel of a group of objects, as for instance a face is known not by a special sense for separate features, nose, eyes, etc., but by one sense observing all in one act.

When sight and hearing gather their varying information, there must be some central unity to which both report. How could there be any statement of difference unless all sense-impressions appeared before a common identity able to take the sum of all?

This there must be, as there is a centre to a circle; the sense-impressions converging from every point of occurrence will be as lines striking from a circumference to what will be a true centre of perception as being a veritable unity.

If this centre were to break into separate points — so that the sense-impressions fell upon the two ends of a line — then, either it must reknit itself to unity and identity, perhaps at the mid-point of the line, or all remains unrelated, every end receiving the report of its particular field exactly as you and I have our distinct sense-experiences.

Suppose the sense-object be such a unity as a face: all the points of observation must be brought together in one visual total, as is obvious -346- since there could be no panorama of great expanses unless the detail were compressed to the capacity of the pupils. Much more must this be true when the sense-objects impinge upon the centre of consciousness in the guise of indivisible thoughts. Either the object is unified or — supposing it to have quantity and extension — the centre of consciousness must coincide with it point by point of their co-expansion so that any given point in the faculty will perceive solely what coincides with it in the object: and thus nothing in us could perceive any thing as a whole.

This cannot be: the faculty entire must be a unity; no such dividing is possible; this is no matter in which we can think of equal sections coinciding; the centre of consciousness has no such relation of equality with any sensible object. The only possible ratio of divisibility would be that of the number of diverse elements in the impinging sensation: are we then to suppose that each part of the soul and every part of each part, will have perception? Or will the part of the parts have none? That is impossible: every part, then, has perception; the (hypothetical) magnitude, of soul and each part of soul, is infinitely divisible; there will therefore be in each part an infinite number of perceptions of the object, and therefore an infinitude of representations of it at our centre of consciousness.

If the sentient be a material entity (as we are invited to believe), sensation could only be of the order of seal-impressions struck by a ring on wax, in this case by sensible objects on the blood or on the air.

If, at this, the impression is like one made in liquids — as would be reasonable — it will be confused and wavering as upon water, and there can be no memory. If the impressions are permanent then either no fresh ones can be stamped upon the occupied ground — and there can be no change of sensations — or, others being made, the former will be obliterated; and all record of the past is done away with.

If memory implies fresh sensations imposed upon former ones, the earlier not barring their way, the Soul cannot be a material entity.


§ 7. We come to the same result by examining the sense of pain. We say there is pain in the finger: the trouble is doubtless in the finger, but our opponents must admit that the sensation of the pain is in the centre of consciousness. The suffering member is one thing, the sense of suffering is another: the entire soul is involved: how does this happen?

By transmission, they will say: the psychic pneuma (= the semi-material principle of life) stationed at the finger suffers first; and stage by stage the trouble is passed on until at last it reaches the centre of consciousness.

But on this theory, there must be a sensation in the spot first suffering pain, and another sensation at a second point of the line of transmission, another in the third, and so on; many sensations, in fact an unlimited series, to deal with one pain; and at the last moment the centre of -347- consciousness has the sensation of all these sensations and of its own sensation to boot. Or to be exact, these serial sensations will not be of the pain in the finger: the sensation next in succession to the suffering finger will be of pain at the joint, a third will tell of a pain still higher up: there will be a series of separate pains. The centre of consciousness will not feel the pain seated at the finger, but only that impinging upon itself: it will know this alone, ignore the rest, and so have no notion that the finger is in pain.

Thus: transmission would not give sensation of the actual condition at the affected spot: it is not in the nature of body that where one part suffers there should be knowledge in another part — for body is a magnitude, and the parts of every magnitude are distinct parts —; therefore we need, as the sentient, something of a nature to be identical to itself at any and every spot; this property can belong only to some other form of being than body.


§ 8. It can be shown also that the intellectual act would similarly be impossible if the Soul were any form of body.

If sensation is apprehension by means of the Soul’s employment of the body, intellection cannot be a similar use of the body or it would be identical with sensation. If then intellection is apprehension apart from body, much more must there be a distinction between the body and the intellective principle: sensation for objects of sense, intellection for the intellectual object. And even if this be rejected, it must still be admitted that there do exist intellections of intellectual objects and perceptions of objects not possessing magnitude: how, we may then ask, can a thing of magnitude know a thing that has no magnitude, or how can the partless be known by means of what has parts? We will be told, ‘By some partless part’. But, at this, the intellective will not be body: for contact does not need a whole; one point suffices. If then it be conceded — and it cannot be denied — that the primal intellections deal with objects completely incorporeal, the principle of intellection itself must know by virtue of being, or becoming, free from body. Even if they hold that all intellection deals with the ideal forms in Matter, still it always takes place by abstraction from the bodies (in which these forms appear) and the separating agent is the Intellectual-Principle. For assuredly the process by which we abstract circle, triangle, line, or point, is not carried through by the aid of flesh or Matter of any kind; in all such acts the Soul or mind must separate itself from the material: at once we see that it cannot be itself material. Similarly it will be agreed that, as beauty and justice are things without magnitude, so must be the intellective act that grasps them.

When such non-magnitudes come before the Soul, it receives them by means of its partless phase and they will take position there in partless wise.

Again: if the Soul is a body, how can we account for its virtues — -348- 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.


§ 81. There are those who insist on the activities observed in bodies — warming, chilling, thrusting, pressing — and class soul with body, as it were to assure its efficacy. This ignores the double fact that the very bodies themselves exercise such efficiency by means of the incorporeal powers operating in them, and that these are not the powers we attribute to soul: intellection, perception, reasoning, desire, wise and effective action in all regards, these point to a very different form of being.

In transferring to bodies the powers of the unembodied, this school leaves nothing to that higher order. And yet that it is precisely in virtue of bodiless powers that bodies possess their efficiency is clear from certain reflections:

It will be admitted that quality and quantity are two different things, that body is always a thing of quantity but not always a thing of quality: matter is not qualified. This admitted, it will not be denied that quality, being a different thing from quantity, is a different thing from body. Obviously quality could not be body when it has not quantity as (by the admission) all body must; and, again, as we have said, body, any thing of mass, on being reduced to fragments ceases to be what it was, but the quality it possessed remains intact in every particle — for instance the sweetness of honey is still sweetness in each speck — this shows that sweetness and all other qualities are not body.

Further: if the powers in question were bodies, then necessarily the stronger powers would be large masses and those less efficient small masses: but if there are large masses with small powers while not a few -349- of the smaller masses manifest great powers, then the efficiency must be vested in something other than magnitude; efficacy, thus, belongs to non-magnitude.

Again; Matter, they tell us, remains unchanged as long as it is body, but produces variety upon accepting qualities; is not this proof enough that the entrants (with whose arrival the changes happen) are Reason-Principles and not of the bodily order?

They must not remind us that when pneuma and blood are no longer preset, animals die: these are necessary no doubt to life, but so are many other things of which none could possibly be soul: and neither pneuma nor blood is present throughout the entire being; but soul is.


§ 82. If the Soul is body and permeates the entire body-mass, still even in this entire permeation the blending must be in accord with what occurs in all cases of bodily admixing.

Now: if in the admixing of bodies neither constituent can retain its efficacy, the Soul too could no longer be effective within the bodies; it could but be latent; it will have lost that by which it is soul, just as in an admixture of sweet and bitter the sweet disappears: we have, thus, no soul.

Two bodies (i.e. by hypothesis, the Soul and the human body) are blended, each entire through the entirety of the other; where the one is, the other is also; each occupies an equal extension and each the whole extension; no increase of size has been caused by the juncture: the one body thus inblended can have left in the other nothing undivided. This is no case of mixing in the sense of considerable portions alternating; that would be described as collocation: no; the incoming entity goes through the other to the very minutest point — an impossibility, of course; the less becoming equal to the greater; still, all is traversed throughout and divided throughout. Now if, thus, the inblending is to occur point by point, leaving no undivided material anywhere, the division of the body concerned must have been a division into (geometrical) points: an impossibility. The division is an infinite series — any material particle may be cut in two — and the infinities are not merely potential, they are actual.

Therefore body cannot traverse anything as a whole traversing a whole. But soul does this. It is therefore incorporeal.


§ 83. We come to the theory that this pneuma is in an earlier form the nature-principle, but on entering the cold and being tempered by it develops into soul by growing finer under that new condition. This is absurd at the start, since many living beings rise in warmth and have a soul that has not been tempered by cold: still that is the theory — the Soul has an earlier form, and develops its true nature by force of external accidents. Thus these teachers make the inferior precede the higher, and before that inferior they put something still lower, their ‘Habitude’. It is obvious that the Intellectual-Principle is last and has sprung from -350- the Soul, for if it were first of all, the order of the series must be, second the Soul, then the nature-principle, and always the later inferior, as the system actually stands.

If they treat God as they do the Intellectual-Principle — as later, engendered, and deriving intellection from without — soul and intellect and God may prove to have no existence: this would follow if a potentiality could not come to existence, or does not become actual, unless the corresponding actuality exists. And what could lead it onward if there were no separate being in previous actuality? Even on the absurd supposition that the potentially existent brings itself to actuality, it must be looking to some Term, and that must be no potentiality but actual.

No doubt we may conceive a potentiality which retains eternal self-identity and of itself imparts actuality: it is still of a lower order than the actuality which is its desired Term.

Thus the higher is the earlier, and it has a nature other than body, and it exists always in actuality: Intellectual-Principle and Soul precede Nature: thus, Soul does not stand at the level of pneuma or of body.

These arguments are sufficient in themselves, though many others have been framed, to show that the Soul is not to be thought of as a body.


§ 84. Soul belongs, then, to another nature. What is this? Is it something which, while distinct from body, still belongs to it, for example a harmony or accord?

This view, which the Pythagorean school holds with some difference, envisages the Soul as comparable to the accord in the strings of a lyre. When the lyre is strung a certain condition is produced upon the strings, and this is known as accord: in the same way our body is formed of distinct constituents brought together, and the blend produces at once life and that soul which is the condition existing upon the bodily total.

That this opinion is untenable has already been shown at length. The Soul is a prior (to body), the accord is a secondary to the lyre. Soul rules, guides, and often combats the body; as an accord of body it could not do these things. Soul is a real being, accord is not. That due blending (or accord) or the corporeal materials which constitute our frame would be simply health. Each separate part of the body, entering as a distinct entity into the total, would require a distinct soul (its own accord or note), so that there would be many souls to each person. Weightiest of all: before this soul there would have to be another soul to bring about the accord as, in the case of the musical instrument, there is the musician who produces the accord upon the strings by his own possession of the principle on which he tunes them: neither musical strings nor human bodies could put themselves in tune.

Briefly, the soulless is treated as ensouled, the unordered becomes orderly by accident, and instead of order being due to soul, soul itself owes its substantial existence to order — which is self-caused. Neither -351- in the sphere of the partial, nor in that of wholes could this be true. The Soul, therefore, is not a harmony or accord.


§ 85. We come to the doctrine of the Entelechy, and must inquire how it is applied to soul.

It is thought that in the Conjoint of body and soul the Soul holds the rank of Form to the Matter which here is the ensouled body — not, then, Form to every example of body or to body as merely such, but to a natural organic body having the potentiality of life.

Now; if the Soul has been so injected as to be assimilated into the body as the design of a statue is worked into the bronze, it will follow that, upon any dividing of the body, the Soul is divided with it, and if any part of the body is cut away a fragment of soul must go with it. Since an Entelechy must be inseparable from the being of which it is the accomplished actuality, the withdrawal of the Soul in sleep cannot occur; in fact sleep itself cannot occur. Moreover, if the Soul is an Entelechy, there is an end to the resistance offered by reason to the desires; the total (of body and Entelechy-Soul) must have one uniform experience throughout, and be aware of no internal contradiction. Sense-perception might occur; but intellection would be impossible. The very upholders of the Entelechy are thus compelled to introduce another soul, the Intellect, to which they ascribe immortality. The reasoning soul, then, must be an Entelechy — if the word is to be used at all — in some other mode.

Even the sense-perceiving soul, in its possession of the impressions of absent objects, must hold these without aid from the body; for otherwise the impression must be present in it like shape and images, and that would mean that it could not take in fresh impressions: the perceptive soul, then, cannot be described as this Entelechy inseparable from the body. Similarly the desiring principle, dealing not only with food and drink but with things quite apart from body; this also is no inseparable Entelechy.

There remains the vegetal principle which might seem to suggest the possibility that, in this phase, the Soul may be the inseparable Entelechy of the doctrine. But it is not so. The principle of every growth lies at the root; in many plants the new springing takes place at the root or just above it: it is clear that the life-principle, the vegetal soul, has abandoned the upper portions to concentrate itself at that one spot: it was therefore not present in the whole as an inseparable Entelechy. Again, before the plant’s development the life-principle is situated in that small beginning: if, thus, it passes from large growth to small and from the small to the entire growth, why should it not pass outside altogether?

An Entelechy is not a thing of parts; how then could it be present partwise in the partible body?

An identical soul is now the soul of one living being, now of another: -352- how could the soul of the first become the soul of the latter if soul were the Entelechy of one particular being? Yet that this transference does occur is evident from the facts of animal metensomatosis.

The substantial existence of the Soul, then, does not depend upon serving as Form to anything: it is an Essence which does not come into being by finding a seat in body; it exists before it becomes also the soul of some particular, for example, of a living being, whose body would by this doctrine be the author of its soul.

What, then, is the Soul’s Being? If it is neither body nor a state or experience of body, but is act and creation: if it holds much and gives much, and is an existence outside of body; of what order and character must it be? Clearly it is what we describe as Veritable Essence. The other order, the entire corporeal Kind, is process; it appears and it perishes; in reality it never possesses Being, but is merely protected, in so far as it has the capacity, by participating in what authentically is.


§ 9. Over against that body stands the principle which is self-caused, which is all that neither enters into being nor passes away, the principle whose dissolution would mean the end of all things never to be restored if once this had ceased to be, the sustaining principle of things individually, and of this Cosmos, which owes its maintenance and its ordered system to the Soul.

This is the starting-point of motion and becomes the leader and provider of motion to all else: it moves by its own quality, and every living material form owes life to this principle, which of itself lives in a life that, being essentially innate, can never fail.

Not all things can have a life merely at second hand; this would give an infinite series: there must be some nature which, having life primally, shall be of necessity indestructible, immortal, as the source of life to all else that lives. This is the point at which all that is divine and blessed must be situated, living and having being of itself, possessing primal being and primal life, and in its own essence rejecting all change, neither coming to be nor passing away.

Whence could such a Being arise or into what could it disappear? — the very word, strictly used, means that the thing is perdurable. Similarly white, the colour, cannot be now white and now not white: if this ‘white’ were a real being it would be eternal as well as being white: the colour is merely white but whatsoever possesses being, indwelling by nature and primal, will possess also eternal duration. In such an entity this primal and eternal Being cannot be dead like stone or plank: it must be alive, and that with a life unalloyed as long as it remains self-gathered: when the primal Being blends with an inferior principle, it is hampered in its relation to the highest, but without suffering the loss of its own nature since it can always recover its earliest state by turning its tendency back to its own.


§ 10. That the Soul is of the family of the diviner nature, the eternal, is -353- clear from our demonstration that it is not material: besides it has neither shape or colour nor is it tangible. But there are other proofs.

Assuming that the divine and the authentically existent possesses a life beneficent and wise, we take the next step and begin with working out the nature of our own soul.

Let us consider a soul, not one that has appropriated the unreasoned desires and impulses of the bodily life, or any other such emotion and experience, but one that has cast all this aside, and as far as possible has no commerce with the bodily. Such a soul demonstrates that all evil is accretion, alien, and that in the purged soul the noble things are immanent, wisdom and all else that is good, as its native store.

If this is the soul once it has returned to its self, how deny that it is of the nature we have identified with all the divine and eternal? Wisdom and authentic virtue are divine, and could not be found in the chattel mean and mortal: what possesses these must be divine by its very capacity of the divine, the token of kinship and of identical substance.

Hence, too, any one of us that exhibits these qualities will differ but little as far as soul is concerned from the Supernals; he will be less than they only to the extent in which the soul is, in him, associated with body.

This is so true that, if every human being were at that stage, or if a great number lived by a soul of that degree, no one would be so incredulous as to doubt that the Soul in man is immortal. It is because we see everywhere the spoiled souls of the great mass that it becomes difficult to recognize their divinity and immortality.

To know the nature of a thing we must observe it in its unalloyed state, since any addition obscures the reality. Clear, then look: or, rather, let a man first purify himself and then observe: he will not doubt his immortality when he sees himself thus entered into the pure, the Intellectual. For, what he sees is an Intellectual-Principle looking on nothing of sense, nothing of this mortality, but by its own eternity having intellection of the eternal: he will see all things in this Intellectual substance, himself having become an Intellectual Cosmos and all lightsome, illuminated by the truth streaming from The Good, which radiates truth upon all that stands within that realm of the divine.

Thus he will often feel the beauty of that word, ‘Farewell: I AM to you an immortal God’, for he has ascended to the Supreme, and is all one strain to enter into likeness with it.

If the purification puts the human into knowledge of the highest, then, too, the science latent within becomes manifest, the only authentic knowing. For it is not by running hither and thither outside of itself that the Soul understands morality and right conduct: it learns them of its own nature, in its contact with itself, in its intellectual grasp of itself, seeing deeply impressed upon it the images of its primal state; what was one mass of rust from long neglect it has restored to purity.

Imagine living gold: it files away all that is earthy about it, all that -354- kept it in self-ignorance preventing it from knowing itself as gold; seen now unalloyed it is at once filled with admiration of its worth and knows that it has no need of any other glory than its own, triumphant if only it be allowed to remain purely to itself.


§ 11. What intelligent mind can doubt the immortality of such a value, one in which there is a life self springing and therefore not to be destroyed?

This is at any rate a life not imported from without, not present in the mode of the heat in fire — for if heat is characteristic of the fire proper, it certainly is adventitious to the Matter underlying the fire; or fire, too, would be everlasting — it is not in any such mode that the Soul has life: this is no case of a Matter underlying and a life brought into that Matter and making it into soul (as heat comes into matter and makes it fire).

Either life is Essential Reality, and therefore self-living — the very thing we have been seeking — and undeniably immortal: or it, too, is a compound and must be traced back through all the constituents until an immortal substance is reached, something deriving movement from itself, and therefore debarred from accepting death.

Even supposing life could be described as a condition imposed upon Matter, still the source from which this condition entered the Matter must necessarily be admitted to be immortal simply by being unable to take into itself the opposite of the life which it conveys.

Of course, life is no such mere condition, but an independent principle, effectively living.


§ 12. A further consideration is that if every soul is to be held dissoluble the universe must long since have ceased to be: if it is pretended that one kind of soul, our own for example, is mortal, and another, that of the All, let us suppose, is immortal, we demand to know the reason of the difference alleged.

Each is a principle of motion, each is self-living, each touches the same sphere by the same tentacles, each has intellection of the celestial order and of the super-celestial, each is seeking to win to what has essential being, each is moving upwards to the primal source.

Again: the SouPs understanding of the Absolute Forms by means of the visions stored up in it is effected within itself; such perception is reminiscence; the Soul then must have its being before embodiment, and drawing on an eternal science, must itself be eternal.

Every dissoluble entity, that has come to be by way of groupment, must in the nature of things be broken apart by that very mode which brought it together: but the Soul is one and simplex, living not in the sense of potential reception of life but by its own energy; and this can be no cause of dissolution.

But, we will be told, it tends to destruction by having been divided (in the body) and so becoming fragmentary. -355-

No: the Soul, as we have shown, is not a mass, not a quantity.

May not it change and so come to destruction?

No: the change that destroys annuls the form but leaves the under-lying substance: and that could not happen to anything except a compound.

If it can be destroyed in no such ways it is necessarily indestructible.


§ 13. But how does the Soul enter into body from the aloofness of the Intellectual?

There is the Intellectual-Principle which remains among the intellectual beings, living the purely intellective life; and this, knowing no impulse or appetite, is forever stationary in that Realm. But immediately following upon it, there is that which has acquired appetite and, by this accruement, has already taken a great step outward; it has the desire of elaborating order on the model of what it has seen in the Intellectual-Principle: pregnant by those Beings, and in pain to the birth, it is eager to make, to create. In this new zest it strains towards the realm of sense: thus, while this primal soul in union with the Soul of the All transcends the sphere administered, it is inevitably turned outward, and has added the universe to its concern: yet in choosing to administer the partial and exiling itself to enter the place in which it finds its appropriate task, it still is not wholly and exclusively held by body: it is still in possession of the unembodied; and the Intellectual-Principle in it remains immune. As a whole it is partly in body, partly outside: it has plunged from among the primals and entered this sphere of tertiaries: the process has been an activity of the Intellectual-Principle, which thus, while itself remaining in its identity, operates throughout the Soul to flood the universe with beauty and penetrant order — immortal mind, eternal in its unfailing energy, acting through immortal soul.


§ 14. As for the souls of the other living beings, fallen to the degree of entering brute bodies, these too must be immortal. And if there is in the animal world any other phase of soul, its only possible origin, since it is the life-giver, is, still, that one principle of life: so too with the soul in the vegetal order.

All have sprung from one source, all have life as their own, all are incorporeal, indivisible, all are real-beings.

If we are told that man’s soul being tripartite must as a compound entity be dissolved, our answer shall be that pure souls upon their emancipation will put away all that has fastened to them at birth, all that increment which the others will long retain.

But even that inferior phase thus laid aside will not be destroyed as long as its source continues to exist, for nothing from the realm of Real Being shall pass away.


§ 15. Thus far we have offered the considerations appropriate to those -356- asking for demonstration: those whose need is conviction by evidence of the more material order are best met from the abundant records relevant to the subject: there are also the oracles of the Gods ordering the appeasing of wronged souls and the honouring of the dead as still sentient, a practice common to all mankind: and again, not a few souls, once among men, have continued to serve them after quitting the body and by revelations, practically helpful, make clear, as well, that the other souls, too, have not ceased to be.

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Eighth Tractate: The Soul’s Descent Into Body

§ 1. Many times it has happened: lifted out of the body into myself; becoming external to all other things and self-encentered; beholding a marvellous beauty; then, more than ever, assured of community with the loftiest order; enacting the noblest life, acquiring identity with the divine; stationing within It by having attained that activity; poised above whatsoever within the Intellectual is less than the Supreme: yet, there comes the moment of descent from intellection to reasoning, and after that sojourn in the divine, I ask myself how it happens that I can now be descending, and how did the Soul ever enter into my body, the Soul which, even within the body, is the high thing it has shown itself to be.

Heraclitus, who urges the examination of this matter, tells of compulsory alternation from contrary to contrary, speaks of ascent and descent, says that ‘change reposes’, and that ‘it is weariness to keep toiling at the same things and to be always overcome by them’; but he seems to teach by metaphor, not concerning himself about making his doctrine clear to us, probably with the idea that it is for us to seek within ourselves as he sought for himself and found.

Empedocles — where he says that it is law for faulty souls to descend to this sphere, and that he himself was here because he turned a deserter, wandered from God, in slavery to a raving discord — reveals neither more nor less than Pythagoras and his school seem to me to convey on this as on many other matters; but in his case, versification has some part in the obscurity.

We have to fall back on the illustrious Plato, who uttered many noble sayings about the Soul, and has in many places dwelt upon its entry into body so that we may well hope to get some light from him.

What do we learn from this philosopher?

We will not find him so consistent throughout that it is easy to discover his mind.

Everywhere, no doubt, he expresses contempt for all that is of sense, -357- blames the commerce of soul with body as an enchainment, an entombment, and upholds as a great truth the saying of the Mysteries that the Soul is here a prisoner. In the Cavern of Plato and in the Cave of Empedocles, I discern this universe, where the breaking of the fetters and the ascent from the depths are figures of the wayfaring towards the Intellectual Realm.

In the Phaedrus he makes a failing of the wings the cause of the entry to this realm: and there are Periods which send back the Soul after it has risen; there are judgements and lots and fates and necessities driving other souls down to this order.

In all these explanations he finds guilt in the arrival of the Soul at body. But treating, in the Timaeus, of our universe he exalts the Cosmos and entitles it a blessed god, and holds that the Soul was given by the goodness of the Creator to the end that the total of things might be possessed of intellect, for thus intellectual it was planned to be, and thus it cannot be except through soul. There is a reason, then, why the Soul of this All should be sent into it from God: in the same way the Soul of each single one of us is sent, that the universe may be complete; it was necessary that all beings of the Intellectual should be tallied by just so many forms of living creatures here in the realm of sense.


§ 2. Inquiring, then, of Plato as to our own soul, we find ourselves forced to inquire into the nature of soul in general — to discover what there can be in its character to bring it into partnership with body, and, again, what this Cosmos must be in which, willing unwilling or in any way at all, soul has its activity.

We have to face also the question as to whether the Creator has planned well, or whether the World-Soul, it may be, resembles our human souls which, in governing their inferior, the body, must sink deeper and deeper into it if they are to control it.

No doubt the individual body — though in all cases appropriately placed within the universe — is of itself in a state of dissolution, always on the way to its natural terminus, demanding much irksome forethought to save it from every kind of outside assailant, always gripped by need, requiring every help against constant difficulty: but the body inhabited by the World-Soul — complete, competent, self-sufficing, exposed to nothing contrary to its nature — this needs no more than a brief word of command, while the governing soul is undeviatingly what its nature makes it wish to be, and, amenable neither to loss nor to addition, knows neither desire nor distress.

This is how we come to read that our soul, entering into association with that complete soul and itself thus made perfect, walks the lofty ranges, administering the entire Cosmos, and that as long as it does not secede and is neither inbound to body nor held in any sort of servitude, so long it tranquilly bears its part in the governance of the All, exactly like the World-Soul itself; for in fact it suffers no hurt whatever by -358- furnishing body with the power to existence, since not every form of care for the inferior need wrest the providing soul from its own sure standing in the highest.

The Soul’s care for the universe takes two forms: there is the supervising of the entire system, brought to order by deedless command in a kingly presidence, and there is that over the individual, implying direct action, the hand to the task, one might say, in immediate contact: in the second kind of care the agent absorbs much of the nature of its object.

Now in its comprehensive government of the heavenly system, the Soul’s method is that of an unbroken transcendence in its highest phases, with penetration by its lower power: at this, God can no longer be charged with lowering the All-Soul, which has not been deprived of its natural standing and from eternity possesses and will unchangeably possess that rank and habit which could never have been intruded upon it against the course of nature but must be its characteristic quality, neither failing ever nor ever beginning.

Where we read that the souls of stars stand to their bodily forms as the All-Soul to the body of the All — for these starry bodies are declared to be members of the Soul’s circuit — we are given to understand that the star-souls also enjoy the blissful condition of transcendence and immunity that becomes them.

And so we might expect: commerce with the body is repudiated for two only reasons, as hindering the Soul’s intellective act and as filling it with pleasure, desire, pain; but neither of these misfortunes can befall a soul which has never deeply penetrated into the body, is not a slave but a sovereign ruling a body of such an order as to have no need and no shortcoming and therefore to give ground for neither desire nor fear.

There is no reason why it should be expectant of evil with regard to such a body nor is there any such preoccupied concern, bringing about a veritable descent, as to withdraw it from its noblest and most blessed vision; it remains always intent upon the Supreme, and its governance of this universe is effected by a power not calling upon act.


§ 3. The Human Soul, next:

Everywhere we hear of it as in bitter and miserable durance in body, a victim to troubles and desires and fears and all forms of evil, the body its prison or its tomb, the Cosmos its cave or cavern.

Now this does not clash with the first theory (that of the impassivity of soul as in the All); for the descent of the human Soul has not been due to the same causes (as that of the All-Soul).

All that is Intellectual-Principle has its being — whole and all — in the place of Intellection, what we call the Intellectual Cosmos: but there exist, too, the intellective powers included in its being, and the separate intelligences — for the Intellectual-Principle is not merely one; it is one and many. In the same way there must be both many souls and one, -359- the one being the source of the differing many just as from one genus there rise various species, better and worse, some of the more intellectual order, others less effectively so.

In the Intellectual-Principle a distinction is to be made: there is the Intellectual-Principle itself, which like some huge living organism contains potentially all the other forms; and there are the forms thus potentially included now realized as individuals. We may think of it as a city which itself has soul and life, and includes, also, other forms of life; the living city is the more perfect and powerful, but those lesser forms, in spite of all, share in the one same living quality: or, another illustration, from fire, the universal, proceed both the great fire and the minor fires; yet all have the one common essence, that of fire the universal, or, more exactly, participate in that from which the essence of the universal fire proceeds.

No doubt the task of the Soul, in its more emphatically reasoning phase, is intellection: but it must have another as well, or it would be undistinguishable from the Intellectual-Principle. To its quality of being intellective it adds the quality by which it attains its particular manner of being: it ceases to be an Intellectual-Principle, and has thenceforth its own task, as everything must that exists among real beings.

It looks towards its higher and has intellection; towards itself and conserves its peculiar being; towards its lower and orders, administers, governs.

The total of things could not have remained stationary in the Intellectual Cosmos, once there was the possibility of continuous variety, of beings inferior but as necessarily existent as their superiors.


§ 4. So it is with the individual souls; the appetite for the divine Intellect urges them to return to their source, but they have, too, a power apt to administration in this lower sphere; they may be compared to the light attached upwards to the sun, but not grudging its bounty to what lies beneath it. In the Intellectual, then, they remain with the All-Soul, and are immune from care and trouble; in the heavenly sphere, inseparable from the All-Soul, they are administrators with it just as kings, associated with the supreme ruler and governing with him, do not descend from their kingly stations: the souls indeed are thus far in the one place; but there comes a stage at which they descend from the universal to become partial and self-centred; in a weary desire of standing apart they find their way, each to a place of its very own. This state long maintained, the Soul is a deserter from the totality; its differentiation has severed it; its vision is no longer set in the Intellectual; it is a partial thing, isolated, weakened, full of care, intent upon the fragment; severed from the whole, it nestles in one form of being; for this, it abandons all else, entering into and caring for only the one, for a thing buffeted about by a worldful of things: thus it has drifted away from the universal and, by an actual presence, it administers the particular; -360- it is caught into contact now, and tends to the outer to which it has become present and into whose inner depths it henceforth sinks far.

With this comes what is known as the casting of the wings, the enchaining in body: the Soul has lost that innocency of conducting the higher which it knew when it stood with the All-Soul, that earlier state to which all its interest would bid it hasten back.

It has fallen: it is at the chain: debarred from expressing itself now through its intellectual phase, it operates through sense; it is a captive; this is the burial, the encavernment, of the Soul.

But in spite of all it has, forever, something transcendent: by a conversion towards the intellective act, it is loosed from the shackles and soars — when only it makes its memories the starting-point of a new vision of essential being. Souls that take this way have place in both spheres, living of necessity the life there and the life here by turns, the upper life reigning in those able to consort more continuously with the divine Intellect, the lower dominant where character or circumstances are less favourable.

All this is indicated by Plato, without emphasis, where he distinguishes those of the second mixing-bowl, describes them as ‘parts’, and goes on to say that, having in this way become partial, they must of necessity experience birth.

Of course, where he speaks of God sowing them, he is to be understood as when he tells of God speaking and delivering orations; what is rooted in the nature of the All is figuratively treated as coming into being by generation and creation: stage and sequence are transferred, for clarity of exposition, to things whose being and definite form are eternal.


§ 5. It is possible to reconcile all these apparent contradictions — the divine sowing to birth, as opposed to a voluntary descent aiming at the completion of the universe; the judgement and the cave; necessity and free choice — in fact the necessity includes the choice; embodiment as an evil; the Empedoclean teaching of a flight from God, a wandering away, a sin bringing its punishment; the ‘solace by flight’ of Heraclitus; in a word, a voluntary descent which is also involuntary.

All degeneration is no doubt involuntary, yet when it has been brought about by an inherent tendency, that submission to the inferior may be described as the penalty of an act.

On the other hand these experiences and actions are determined by an eternal law of nature, and they are due to the movement of a being which in abandoning its superior is running out to serve the needs of another: hence there is no inconsistency or untruth in saying that the Soul is sent down by God; final results are always to be referred to the starting-point even across many intervening stages.

Still there is a twofold flaw: the first lies in the motive of the Soul’s descent (its audacity, its Tolma), and the second in the evil it does when -361- actually here: the first is punished by what the Soul has suffered by its descent: for the faults committed here, the lesser penalty is to enter into body after body — and soon to return — by judgement according to desert, the word judgement indicating a divine ordinance; but any outrageous form of ill-doing incurs a proportionately greater punishment administered under the surveillance of chastising daimons.

Thus, in sum, the Soul, a divine being and a dweller in the loftier realms, has entered body: it is a god, a later phase of the divine: but, under stress of its powers and of its tendency to bring order to its next lower, it penetrates to this sphere in a voluntary plunge: if it turns back quickly all is well; it will have taken no hurt by acquiring the knowledge of evil and coming to understand what sin is, by bringing its forces into manifest play, by exhibiting those activities and productions which, remaining merely potential in the unembodied, might as well never have been even there, if destined never to come into actuality, so that the Soul itself would never have known that suppressed and inhibited total.

The act reveals the power, a power hidden, and we might almost say obliterated or non-existent, unless at some moment it became effective: in the world as it is, the richness of the outer stirs us all to the wonder of the inner whose greatness is displayed in acts so splendid.


§ 6. Something besides a unity there must be or all would be indiscernibly buried, shapeless within that unbroken whole: none of the real beings (of the Intellectual Cosmos) would exist if that unity remained at halt within itself: the plurality of these beings, offspring of the unity, could not exist without their own nexts taking the outward path; these are the beings holding the rank of souls.

In the same way the outgoing process could not end with the souls, their issue stifled: every Kind must produce its next; it must unfold from some concentrated central principle as from a seed, and so advance to its term in the varied forms of sense. The prior in its being will remain unalterably in the native seat; but there is the lower phase, begotten to it by an ineffable faculty of its being, native to soul as it exists in the Supreme.

To this power we cannot impute any halt, any limit of jealous grudging; it must move forever outward until the universe stands accomplished to the ultimate possibility. All, thus, is produced by an inexhaustible power giving its gift to the universe, no part of which it can endure to see without some share in its being.

There is, besides, no principle that can prevent anything from partaking, to the extent of its own individual receptivity, in the nature of Good. If, therefore, Matter has always existed, that existence is enough to ensure its participation in the being which, according to each receptivity, communicates the supreme Good universally: if on the contrary, Matter has come into being as a necessary sequence of the causes -362- preceding it, that origin would similarly prevent it standing apart from the scheme as though it were out of reach of the principle to whose grace it owes its existence.

In sum: the loveliness that is in the sense-realm is an index of the nobleness of the Intellectual sphere, displaying its power and its goodness alike: and all things are forever linked; the one order Intellectual in its being, the other of sense; one self-existent, the other eternally taking its being by participation in that first, and to the full of its power reproducing the Intellectual nature.


§ 7. The Kind, then, with which we are dealing is twofold, the Intellectual against the sensible: better for the Soul to dwell in the Intellectual, but, given its proper nature, it is under compulsion to participate in the sense-realm also. There is no grievance in its not being, through and through, the highest; it holds mid-rank among the authentic existences, being of divine station but at the lowest extreme of the Intellectual and skirting the sense-known nature; thus, while it communicates to this realm something of its own store, it absorbs in turn whenever — instead of employing in its government only its safeguarded phase — it plunges in an excessive zeal to the very midst of its chosen sphere; then it abandons its status as whole soul with whole soul, though even thus it is always able to recover itself by turning to account the experience of what it has seen and suffered here, learning, so, the greatness of rest in the Supreme, and more clearly discerning the finer things by comparison with what is almost their direct antithesis. Where the faculty is incapable of knowing without contact, the experience of evil brings the clearer perception of Good.

The outgoing that takes place in the Intellectual-Principle is a descent to its own downward ultimate: it cannot be a movement to the transcendent; operating necessarily outwards from itself, wherein it may not stay inclosed, the need and law of Nature bring it to its extreme term, to soul — to which it entrusts all the later stages of being while itself turns back on its course.

The Soul’s operation is similar: its next lower act is this universe: its immediate higher is the contemplation of the Authentic Existences. To individual souls such divine operation takes place only at one of their phases and by a temporal process when from the lower in which they reside they turn towards the noblest; but that soul, which we know as the All-Soul, has never entered the lower activity, but, immune from evil, has the property of knowing its lower by inspection, while it still cleaves continuously to the beings above itself; thus its double task becomes possible; it takes hence and, since as soul it cannot escape touching this sphere, it gives hither.


§ 8. And — if it is desirable to venture the more definite statement of a personal conviction clashing with the general view — even our human -363- Soul has not sunk entire; something of it is continuously in the Intellectual Realm, though if that part, which is in this sphere of sense, hold the mastery, or rather be mastered here and troubled, it keeps us blind to what the upper phase holds in contemplation.

The object of the Intellectual Act comes within our ken only when it reaches downward to the level of sensation: for not all that occurs at any part of the Soul is immediately known to us; a thing must, for that knowledge, be present to the total soul; thus desire locked up within the desiring faculty remains unknown except when we make it fully ours by the central faculty of perception, or by deliberate choice, or by both at once. Once more, every soul has something of the lower on the body side and something of the higher on the side of the Intellectual-Principle.

The Soul of the All, as an entirety, governs the universe through that part of it which leans to the body side, but since it does not exercise a will based on calculation as we do — but proceeds by purely intellectual act as in the execution of an artistic conception — its ministrance is that of a labourless overpoising, only its lowest phase being active upon the universe it embellishes.

The souls that have gone into division and become appropriated to some thing partial have also their transcendent phase, but are preoccupied by sensation, and in the mere fact of exercising perception they take in much that clashes with their nature and brings distress and trouble since the object of their concern is partial, deficient, exposed to many alien influences, filled with desires of its own and taking its pleasure, that pleasure which is its lure.

But there is always the other (the transcendent phase of soul), that which finds no savour in passing pleasure, but holds its own even way.

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Ninth Tractate: Are All Souls One?

§ 1. That the Soul of every individual is one thing we deduce from the fact that it is present entire at every point of the body — the sign of veritable unity — not some part of it here and another part there. In all sensitive beings the sensitive soul is an omnipresent unity, and so in the forms of vegetal life the vegetal soul is entire at each several point throughout the organism.

Now are we to hold similarly that your soul and mine and all are one, and that the same thing is true of the universe, the soul in all the several forms of life being one soul, not parcelled out in separate items, but an omnipresent identity?

If the soul in me is a unity, why need that in the universe be otherwise, -364- seeing that there is no longer any question of bulk or body? And if that, too, is one soul, and yours and mine belong to it, then yours and mine must also be one: and if, again, the soul of the universe and mine depend from one soul, once more all must be one.

What then in itself is this one soul?

First we must assure ourselves of the possibility of all souls being one as that of any given individual is.

It must, no doubt, seem strange that my soul and that of any and everybody else should be one thing only: it might mean my feelings being felt by someone else, my goodness another’s too, my desire his desire, all our experience shared with each other and with the (one-souled) universe, so that the very universe itself would feel whatever I felt.

Besides how are we to reconcile this unity with the distinction of reasoning soul and unreasoning, animal soul and vegetal?

Yet if we reject that unity, the universe itself ceases to be one thing and souls can no longer be included under any one principle.


§ 2. Now to begin with, the unity of soul, mine and another’s, is not enough to make the two totals of soul and body identical. An identical thing in different recipients will have different experiences; the identity Man, in me as I move and you at rest, moves in me and is stationary in you: there is nothing stranger, nothing impossible, in any other form of identity between you and me; nor would it entail the transference of my emotion to any outside point: when in any one body a hand is in pain, the distress is felt not in the other but in the hand as represented in the centralizing unity.

In order that my feelings should of necessity be yours, the unity would have to be corporeal: only if the two recipient bodies made one, would the souls feel as one.

We must keep in mind, moreover, that many things that happen even in one same body escape the notice of the entire being, especially when the bulk is large: thus in huge sea-beasts, it is said, the animal as a whole will be quite unaffected by some membral accident too slight to traverse the organism.

Thus unity in the subject of any experience does not imply that the resultant sensation will be necessarily felt with any force upon the entire being and at every point of it: some transmission of the experience may be expected, and is indeed undeniable, but a full impression on the sense there need not be.

That one identical soul should be virtuous in me and vicious in someone else is not strange: it is only saying that an identical thing may be active here and inactive there.

We are not asserting the unity of soul in the sense of a complete negation of multiplicity — only of the Supreme can that be affirmed — we are thinking of soul as simultaneously one and many, participant in -365- the nature divided in body, but at the same time a unity by virtue of belonging to that Order which suffers no division.

In myself some experience occurring in a part of the body may take no effect upon the entire man, but anything occurring in the higher reaches would tell upon the partial: in the same way any influx from the All upon the individual will have manifest effect since the points of sympathetic contact are numerous, but as to any operation from ourselves upon the All there can be no certainty.


§ 3. Yet, looking at another set of facts, reflection tells us that we are in sympathetic relation to each other, suffering, overcome, at the sight of pain, naturally drawn to forming attachments; and all this can be due only to some unity among us.

Again, if spells and other forms of magic are efficient even at a distance to attract us into sympathetic relations, the agency can be no other than the one soul.

A quiet word induces changes in a remote object, and makes itself heard at vast distances — proof of the oneness of all things within the one soul.

But how reconcile this unity with the existence of a reasoning soul, an unreasoning, even a vegetal soul?

(It is a question of powers): the indivisible phase is classed as reasoning because it is not in division among bodies, but there is the later phase, divided among bodies, but still one thing and distinct only so as to secure sense-perception throughout; this is to be classed as yet another power; and there is the forming and making phase which again is a power. But a variety of powers does not conflict with unity; seed contains many powers and yet it is one thing, and from that unity rises, again, a variety which is also a unity.

But why are not all the powers of this unity present everywhere?

The answer is that even in the case of the individual soul described, similarly, as permeating its body, sensation is not equally present in all the parts, reason does not operate at every point, the principle of growth is at work where there is no sensation — and yet all these powers join in the one soul when the body is laid aside.

The nourishing faculty as dependent from the All belongs also to the All-Soul: why then does it not come equally from ours?

Because what is nourished by the action of this power is a member of the All, which itself has sensation passively; but perception judges its object with the help of an Intellectual-Principle and has no need to create what already exists, though it would have done so had the power not been previously included, of necessity, in the nature of the All.


§ 4. These reflections should show that there is nothing strange in that reduction of all souls to one. But it is still necessary to inquire into the mode and conditions of the unity. -366-

Is it the unity of origin in a unity? And if so, is the one divided or does it remain entire and yet produce variety? and how can an essential being, while remaining its one self, bring forth others?

Invoking God to become our helper, let us assert that the very existence of many souls makes certain that there is first one from which the many rise.

Let us suppose, even, the first soul to be corporeal.

Then (by the nature of body) the many souls could result only from the splitting up of that entity, each an entirely different substance: if this body-soul be uniform in kind, each of the resultant souls must be of the one kind; they will all carry the one Form undividedly and will differ only in their volumes. Now, if their being souls depended upon their volumes they would be distinct; but if it is Ideal-Form that makes them souls, then all are, in virtue of this Idea, one.

But this is simply saying that there is one identical soul dispersed among many bodies, and that, preceding this, there is yet another not thus dispersed, the source of the soul in dispersion which may be thought of as a widely repeated image of the soul in unity — much as a multitude of seals bear the impression of one ring. By that first mode the soul is a unit broken up into a variety of points: in the second mode it is incorporeal. Similarly if the soul were a condition or modification of body, we could not wonder that this quality (the condition or modification) — this one thing from one source — should be present in many objects. The same reasoning would apply if soul were an effect (or manifestation) of the Conjoint.

We, of course, hold it to be bodiless, an essential existence.


§ 5. How then can a multitude of essential beings be really one?

Obviously either the one essence will be entire in all, or the many will rise from a one which remains unaltered and yet includes the one-many in virtue of giving itself, without self-abandonment, to its own multiplication.

It is competent thus to give and remain, because while it penetrates all things it can never itself be sundered: this is an identity in variety.

There is no reason for dismissing this explanation: we may think or a science with its constituents standing as one total, the source of all those various elements: again, there is the seed, a whole, producing those new parts in which it comes to its division; each of the new growths is a whole while the whole remains undiminished: only the material element is under the mode of part, and all the multiplicity remains an entire identity still.

It may be objected that in the case of science the constituents are not each the whole.

But even in the science, while the constituent selected for handling to meet a particular need is present actually and takes the lead, still all the other constituents accompany it in a potential presence, so that the -367- whole is in every part: only in this sense (of particular attention) is the whole science distinguished from the part: all, we may say, is here simultaneously effected: each part is at your disposal as you choose to take it; the part invites the immediate interest, but its value consists in its approach to the whole.

The detail cannot be considered as something separate from the entire body of speculation: so treated it would have no technical or scientific value; it would be childish divagation. The one detail, when it is matter of science, potentially includes all. Grasping one such constituent of his science, the expert deduces the rest by force of sequence.

(As a further illustration of unity in plurality) the geometrician, in his analysis, shows that the single proposition includes all the items that go to constitute it and all the propositions which can be developed from it.

It is our feebleness that leads to doubt in these matters; the body obscures the truth, but There all stands out clear and separate. -368-

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The Fifth Ennead











First Tractate: The Three Initial Hypostases


§ 1. What can it be that has brought the souls to forget the father, God, and, though members of the Divine and entirely of that world, to ignore at once themselves and It?

The evil that has overtaken them has its source in self-will, in the entry into the sphere of process, and in the primal differentiation with the desire for self-ownership. They conceived a pleasure in this freedom and largely indulged their own motion; thus they were hurried down the wrong path, and in the end, drifting further and further, they came to lose even the thought of their origin in the Divine. A child wrenched young from home and brought up during many years at a distance will fail in knowledge of its father and of itself: the souls, in the same way, no longer discern either the divinity or their own nature; ignorance of their rank brings self-depreciation; they misplace their respect, honouring everything more than themselves; all their awe and admiration is for the alien, and, clinging to this, they have broken apart, as far as a soul may, and they make light of what they have deserted; their regard for the mundane and their disregard of themselves bring about their utter ignoring of the Divine.

Admiring pursuit of the external is a confession of inferiority; and nothing thus holding itself inferior to things that rise and perish, nothing counting itself less honourable and less enduring than all else it admires could ever form any notion of either the nature or the power of God.

A double discipline must be applied if human beings in this pass are to be reclaimed, and brought back to their origins, lifted once more towards the Supreme and One and First.

There is the method, which we amply exhibit elsewhere, declaring the dishonour of the objects which the Soul holds here in honour; the second teaches or recalls to the Soul its race and worth; this latter is the leading truth, and, clearly brought out, is the evidence of the other.

It must occupy us now, for it bears closely upon our inquiry (as to the Divine Hypostases) to which it is the natural preliminary: the seeker is soul and it must start from a true notion of the nature and quality by which soul may undertake the search; it must study itself in order to learn whether it has the faculty for the inquiry, the eye for the object proposed, whether in fact we ought to seek; for if the object is alien the search must be futile, while if there is relationship the solution of our problem is at once desirable and possible. -369-


§ 2. Let every soul recall, then, at the outset the truth that soul is the author of all living things, that it has breathed the life into them all, whatever is nourished by earth and sea, all the creatures of the air, the divine stars in the sky; it is the maker of the sun; itself formed and ordered this vast heaven and conducts all that rhythmic motion: and it is a principle distinct from all these to which it gives law and movement and life, and it must of necessity be more honourable than they, for they gather or dissolve as soul brings them life or abandons them, but soul, since it never can abandon itself, is of eternal being.

How life was purveyed to the universe of things and to the separate beings in it may be thus conceived:

That great soul must stand pictured before another soul, one not mean, a soul that has become worthy to look, emancipate from the lure, from all that binds its fellows in bewitchment, holding itself in quietude. Let not merely the enveloping body be at peace, body’s turmoil stilled, but all that lies around, earth at peace, and sea at peace, and air and the very heavens. Into that heaven, all at rest, let the great soul be conceived to roll inward at every point, penetrating, permeating, from all sides pouring in its light. As the rays of the sun throwing their brilliance upon a louring cloud make it gleam all gold, so the soul entering the material expanse of the heavens has given life, has given immortality: what was abject it has lifted up; and the heavenly system, moved now in endless motion by the soul that leads it in wisdom, has become a living and a blessed thing; the soul domiciled within, it takes worth where, before the soul, it was stark body — clay and water — or, rather, the blankness of Matter, the absence of Being, and, as an author says, ‘the execration of the Gods’.

The Soul’s nature and power will be brought out more clearly, more brilliantly, if we consider next how it envelops the heavenly system and guides all to its purposes: for it has bestowed itself upon all that huge expanse so that every interval, small and great alike, all has been ensouled.

The material body is made up of parts, each holding its own place, some in mutual opposition and others variously separated; the Soul is in no such condition; it is not whittled down so that life tells of a part of the Soul and springs where some such separate portion impinges; each separate life lives by the Soul entire, omnipresent in the likeness of the engendering father, entire in unity and entire in diffused variety. By the power of the Soul the manifold and diverse heavenly system is a unit: through soul this universe is a God: and the sun is a God because it is ensouled; so too the stars: and whatsoever we ourselves may be, it is all in virtue of soul; for ‘dead is viler than dung’.

This, by which the gods are divine, must be the oldest God of them all: and our own soul is of that same Ideal nature, so that to consider it, purified, freed from all accruement, is to recognize in ourselves that same value which we have found soul to be, honourable above all that -370- is bodily. For what is body but earth, and even if it be fire (as Stoics think), what (but soul) is its burning power? So it is with all the compounds of earth and fire, even with water and air added to them.

If, then, it is the presence of soul that brings worth, how can a man slight himself and run after other things? You honour the Soul elsewhere; honour then yourself.


§ 3. The Soul once seen to be thus precious, thus divine, you may hold the faith that by its possession you are already nearing God: in the strength of this power make upwards towards Him: at no great distance you must attain: there is not much between.

But over this divine, there is a still diviner: grasp the upward neighbour of the Soul, its prior and source.

Soul, for all the worth we have shown to belong to it, is yet a secondary, an image of the Intellectual-Principle: reason uttered is an image of the reason stored within the Soul, and in the same way soul is an utterance of the Intellectual-Principle: it is even the total of its activity, the entire stream of life sent forth by that Principle to the production of further being; it is the forthgoing heat of a fire which has also heat essentially inherent. But within the Supreme we must see energy not as an overflow but in the double aspect of integral inherence with the establishment of a new being. Sprung, in other words, from the Intellectual-Principle, soul is intellective, but with an intellection operating by the method of reasonings: for its perfecting it must look to that Divine Mind, which may be thought of as a father watching over the development of his child born imperfect in comparison with himself.

Thus its substantial existence conies from the Intellectual-Principle; and the Reason within it becomes Act in virtue of its contemplation of that prior; for its thought and act are its own intimate possession when it looks to the Supreme Intelligence; those only are soul-acts which are of this intellective nature and are determined by its own character; all that is less noble is foreign (traceable to Matter) and is accidental to the Soul in the course of its peculiar task.

In two ways, then, the Intellectual-Principle enhances the divine quality of the Soul, as father and as immanent presence; nothing separates them but the fact that they are not one and the same, that there is succession, that over against a recipient there stands the Ideal-Form received; but this recipient, Matter to the Supreme Intelligence, is also noble as being at once informed by divine intellect and uncompounded.

What the Intellectual-Principle must be is carried in the single word that Soul, itself so great, is still inferior.


§ 4. But there is yet another way to this knowledge:

Admiring the world of sense as we look out upon its vastness and beauty and the order of its eternal march, thinking of the gods within -371- it, seen and hidden, and the celestial spirits and all the life of animal and plant, let us mount to its archetype, to the yet more authentic sphere: there we are to contemplate all things as members of the Intellectual — eternal in their own right, vested with a self-springing consciousness and life — and, presiding over all these, the unsoiled Intelligence and the unapproachable wisdom.

That archetypal world is the true Golden Age, age of Kronos, whose very name suggests (in Greek) Exuberance (κόρος) and Intellect (νοῦς). For here is contained all that is immortal: nothing here but is Divine Mind; all is God; this is the place of every soul. Here is rest unbroken: for how can that seek change, in which all is well; what need that reach to, which holds all within itself; what increase can that desire, which stands utterly achieved? All its content, thus, is perfect, that itself may be perfect throughout, as holding nothing that is less than the divine, nothing that is less than intellective. Its knowing is not by search but by possession, its blessedness inherent, not acquired; for all belongs to it eternally and it holds the authentic Eternity imitated by Time which, circling round the Soul, makes towards the new thing and passes by the old. Soul deals with thing after thing — now Socrates; now a horse: always some one entity from among beings — but the Intellectual-Principle is all and therefore its entire content is simultaneously present in that identity: this is pure being in eternal actuality; nowhere is there any future, for every then is a now; nor is there any past, for nothing there has ever ceased to be; everything has taken its stand forever, an identity well pleased, we might say, to be as it is; and everything, in that entire content, is Intellectual-Principle and Authentic-Existence; and the total of all is Intellectual-Principle entire and Being entire. Intellectual-Principle by its intellective act establishes Being, which in turn, as the object of intellection, becomes the cause of intellection and of existence to the Intellectual-Principle — though, of course, there is another cause of intellection which is also a cause to Being, both rising in a source distinct from either.

Now while these two are coalescents, having their existence in common, and are never apart, still the unity they form is two-sided; there is Intellectual-Principle as against Being, the intellectual agent as against the object of intellection; we consider the intellective act and we have the Intellectual-Principle; we think of the object of that act and we have Being.

Such difference there must be if there is to be any intellection; but similarly there must also be identity (since, in perfect knowing, subject and object are identical).

Thus the Primals (the first ‘Categories’) are seen to be: Intellectual- Principle; Existence; Difference; Identity: we must include also Motion and Rest: Morion provides for the intellectual act, Rest preserves identity as Difference gives at once a Knower and a Known, for, failing this, all is one, and silent. -372-

So too the objects of intellection (the ideal content of the Divine Mind) — identical in virtue of the self-concentration of the principle which is their common ground — must still be distinct each from another; this distinction constitutes Difference.

The Intellectual Cosmos thus a manifold, Number and Quantity arise: Quality is the specific character of each of these Ideas which stand as the principles from which all else derives.


§ 5. As a manifold, then, this God, the Intellectual-Principle, exists above the Soul here, the Soul which once for all stands linked a member of the divine, unless by a deliberate apostasy.

Bringing itself close to the divine Intellect, becoming, as it were, one with this, it seeks still further: what Being, now, has engendered this God, what is the Simplex preceding this multiple; what the cause at once of its existence and of its existing as a manifold; what the source of this Number, this Quantity?

Number, Quantity, is not primal: obviously before even duality, there must stand the unity.

The Dyad is a secondary; deriving from unity, it finds in unity the determinant needed by its native indetermination: once there is any determination, there is Number, in the sense, of course, of the real (the archetypal) Number. And the Soul is such a number or quantity. For the Primals are not masses or magnitudes; all of that gross order is later, real only to the sense-thought; even in seed the effective reality is not the moist substance but the unseen — that is to say Number (as the determinant of individual being) and the Reason-Principle (of the product to be).

Thus by what we call the Number and the Dyad of that higher realm, we mean Reason Principles and the Intellectual-Principle: but while the Dyad is undetermined — representing, as it were, the underlie (or Matter) of the Intellectual World — the number which rises from the Dyad and The One is always a Form-Idea: thus the Intellectual-Principle is, so to speak, shaped by the Ideas rising within it — or rather, it is shaped in a certain sense by The One and in another sense by itself, since its potential vision becomes actual and intellection is, precisely, an act of vision occupied upon The One.


§ 6. But how and what does the Intellectual-Principle see and, especially, how has it sprung from that which is to become the object of its vision? The mind demands the existence of these Beings, but it is still in trouble over the problem endlessly debated by the most ancient philosophers: from such a unity as we have declared The One to be, how does anything at all come into substantial existence, any multiplicity, dyad, or number? Why has the Primal not remained self-gathered so that there be none of this profusion of the manifold which we observe in existence and yet are compelled to trace to that absolute unity? -373-

In venturing an answer, we first invoke God Himself, not in loud word but in that way of prayer which is always within our power, leaning in soul towards Him by aspiration, alone towards the alone. But if we seek the vision of that great Being within the Inner Sanctuary — self-gathered, tranquilly remote above all else — we begin by considering the images stationed at the outer precincts, or, more exactly to the moment, the first image that appears. How the Divine Mind comes into being must be explained:

Everything moving has necessarily an object towards which it advances; but since the Supreme can have no such object, we may not ascribe motion to it: anything that comes into being after it can be produced only as a consequence of its unfailing self-intention; and, of course, we dare not talk of generation in time, dealing as we are with eternal Beings: where we speak of origin in such reference, it is in the sense, merely, of cause and subordination: origin from the Supreme must not be taken to imply any movement in it: that would make the Being resulting from the movement not a second principle but a third: the Movement would be the second hypostasis.

Given this immobility in the Supreme, it can neither have yielded assent nor uttered decree nor stirred in any way towards the existence of a secondary.

What happened, then? What are we to conceive as rising in the neighbourhood of that immobility?

It must be a circumradiation — produced from the Supreme but from the Supreme unaltering — and may be compared to the brilliant light encircling the sun and ceaselessly generated from that unchanging substance.

All existences, as long as they retain their character, produce — about themselves, from their essence, in virtue of the power which must be in them — some necessary, outward-facing hypostasis continuously attached to them and representing in image the engendering archetypes: thus fire gives out its heat; snow is cold not merely to itself; fragrant substances are a notable instance; for, as long as they last, something is diffused from them and perceived wherever they are present.

Again, all that is fully achieved engenders: therefore the eternally achieved engenders eternally an eternal being. At the same time, the offspring is always minor: what then are we to think of the All-Perfect but that it can produce nothing less than the very greatest that is later than itself? This greatest, later than the divine unity, must be the Divine Mind, and it must be the second of all existence, for it is that which sees The One on which alone it leans while the First has no need whatever of it. The offspring of the prior to Divine Mind can be no other than that Mind itself and thus is the loftiest being in the universe, all else following upon it — the Soul, for example, being an utterance and act of the Intellectual-Principle as that is an utterance and act of The One. But in soul the utterance is obscured, for soul is an image and must -374- look to its own original: that Principle, on the contrary, looks to the First without mediation — thus becoming what it is — and has that vision not as from a distance but as the immediate next with nothing intervening, close to the One as Soul to it.

The offspring must seek and love the begetter; and especially so when begetter and begotten are alone in their sphere; when, in addition, the begetter is the highest Good, the offspring (inevitably seeking its good) is attached by a bond of sheer necessity, separated only in being distinct.


§ 7. We must be more explicit:

The Intellectual-Principle stands as the image of The One, firstly because there is a certain necessity that the first should have its offspring, carrying onward much of its quality, in other words that there be something in its likeness as the sun’s rays tell of the sun. Yet The One is not an Intellectual-Principle; how then does it engender an Intellectual-Principle?

Simply by the fact that in its self-quest it has vision: this very seeing is the Intellectual-Principle. Any perception of the external indicates either sensation or intellection, sensation symbolized by a line, intellection by a circle …[corrupt passage].

Of course the divisibility belonging to the circle does not apply to The One; here, to be sure, is a unity, but there the Unity which is the potentiality of all existence.

The items of this potentiality the divine intellection brings out, so to speak, from the unity and knows them in detail, as it must if it is to be an intellectual principle.

It has besides a consciousness, as it were, within itself of this same potentiality; it knows that it can of itself beget an hypostasis and can determine its own Being by the virtue emanating from its prior; it knows that its nature is in some sense a definite part of the content of that First; that it thence derives its essence, that its strength lies there, and that its Being takes perfection as a derivative and a recipient from the First. It sees that, as a member in some sense of the realm of division and part, it receives life and intellection and all else it has and is, from the undivided and partless, since that First is no member of existence, but can be the source of all on condition only of being held down by no one distinctive shape but remaining the undeflected unity.

To be all in itself would place it in the realm of Being. And so the First is not a thing among the things contained by the Intellectual-Principle though the source of all. In virtue of this source things of the later order are essential beings; for from that fact there is determination; each has its form: what has being cannot be envisaged as outside of limit; the nature must be held fast by boundary and fixity; though to the Intellectual Beings this fixity is no more than determination and form, the foundations of their substantial existence. A being of this quality, like the Intellectual-Principle, must be felt -375- to be worthy of the all-pure: it could not derive from any other than from the first principle of all; as it comes into existence, all other beings must be simultaneously engendered — all the beauty of the Ideas, all the Gods of the Intellectual realm. And it still remains pregnant with this offspring; for it has, so to speak, drawn all within itself again, holding them lest they fall away towards Matter to be ‘brought up in the House of Rhea’ (in the realm of flux). This is the meaning hidden in the Mysteries, and in the Myths of the gods: Kronos, as the wisest, exists before Zeus; he must absorb his offspring that, full within himself, he may be also an Intellectual-Principle manifest in some product of his plenty; afterwards, the myth proceeds, Kronos engenders Zeus, who already exists as the (necessary and eternal) outcome of the plenty there; in other words the offspring of the Divine Intellect, perfect within itself, is Soul (the life-principle carrying forward the Ideas in the Divine Mind). The perfection entails the offspring; a power so vast could not remain unfruitful.

Now, even in the Divine the engendered could not be the very highest; it must be a lesser, an image; it will be undetermined, as its progenitor was, but will receive determination, and, so to speak, its shaping idea, from the progenitor.

Yet the offspring of the Intellectual-Principle must be a Reason-Principle, that is to say, a substantial existence (hypostasis) identified with the principle of deliberative thought (in the Timaeus): such then is that (higher Soul) which circles about the Divine Mind, its light, its image inseparably attached to it: on the upper level united with it, filled from it, enjoying it, participant in its nature, intellective with it, but on the lower level in contact with the realm beneath itself, or, rather, generating in turn an offspring which must lie beneath; of this lower we will treat later; so far we deal still with the Divine.


§ 8. This is the explanation of Plato’s Triplicity, in the passage where he names as the Primals the Beings gathered about the King of All and establishes a Secondary containing the Secondaries and a Third containing the Tertiaries.

He teaches, also, that there is an author of the Cause, that is of the Intellectual-Principle, which to him is the Creator who made the Soul, as he tells us, in the famous mixing bowl. This author of the causing principle, of the divine mind, is to him the Good, that which transcends the Intellectual-Principle and transcends Being: often too he uses the term ‘The Idea’ to indicate Being and the Divine Mind. Thus Plato knows the order of generation — from the Good, the Intellectual-Principle; from the Intellectual-Principle, the Soul. These teachings are, therefore, no novelties, no inventions of today, but long since stated, if not stressed; our doctrine here is the explanation of an earlier and can show the antiquity of these opinions on the testimony of Plato himself.

Earlier, Parmenides made some approach to the doctrine in identifying -376- Being with Intellectual-Principle while separating Real Being from the realm of sense.

‘Knowing and Being are one thing’, he says, and this unity is to him motionless in spite of the intellection he attributes to it: to preserve its unchanging identity he excludes all bodily movement from it; and he compares it to a huge sphere in that it holds and envelops all existence and that its intellection is not an outgoing act but internal. Still, with all his affirmation of unity, his own writings lay him open to the reproach that his unity turns out to be a multiplicity.

The Platonic Parmenides is more exact; the distinction is made between the Primal One, a strictly pure Unity, and a secondary One which is a One-Many and a third which is a One-and-Many; thus he too is in accordance with our thesis of the Three Kinds.


§ 9. Anaxagoras, again, in his assertion of a Mind pure and unmixed, affirms a simplex First and a sundered One, though writing long ago he failed in precision.

Heraclitus, with his sense of bodily forms as things of ceaseless process and passage, knows the One as eternal and intellectual.

In Empedocles, similarly, we have a dividing principle, ‘Strife’, set against ‘Friendship’ — which is The One and is to him bodiless, while the elements represent Matter.

Later there is Aristotle; he begins by making the First transcendent and intellective but cancels that primacy by supposing it to have self-intellection. Further, he affirms a multitude of other intellective beings — as many indeed as there are orbs in the heavens; one such principle as mover to every orb — and thus his account of the Intellectual Realm differs from Plato’s and, failing necessity, he brings in probability; though it is doubtful whether he has even probability on his side, since it would be more probable that all the spheres, as contributory to one system, should look to a unity, to the First.

We are obliged also to ask whether to Aristotle’s mind all these Intellectual Beings spring from one, and that one their First; or whether the Principles in the Intellectual are many.

If from one, then clearly the Intellectual system will be analogous to that of the universe of sense — sphere encircling sphere, with one, the outermost, dominating all: the First (in the Intellectual) will envelop the entire scheme and will be an Intellectual (or Archetypal) Cosmos; and as in our universe the spheres are not empty but the nrst sphere is thick with stars and none without them, so, in the Intellectual Cosmos, those principles of Movement will envelop a multitude of Beings, and that world will be the realm of the greater reality.

If on the contrary each is a principle, then the effective powers become a matter of chance; under what compulsion are they to hold together and act with one mind towards that work of unity, the harmony of the entire heavenly system? Again what can make it necessary -377- that the material bodies of the heavenly system be equal in number to the Intellectual moving principles, and how can these incorporeal Beings be numerically many when there is no Matter to serve as the basis of difference?

For these reasons the ancient philosophers that ranged themselves most closely to the school of Pythagoras and of his later followers and to that of Pherecydes, have insisted upon this Nature, some developing the subject in their writings while others treated of it merely in un- written discourses, some no doubt ignoring it entirely.


§ 10. We have shown the inevitability of certain convictions as to the scheme of things:

There exists a Principle which transcends Being; this is The One, whose nature we have sought to establish in so far as such matters lend themselves to proof. Upon The One follows immediately the Principle which is at once Being and the Intellectual-Principle. Third comes the Principle, Soul.

Now just as these three exist for the system of Nature, so, we must hold, they exist for ourselves. I AM not speaking of the material order — all that is separable — but of what lies beyond the sense realm in the same way as the Primals are beyond all the heavens; I mean the corresponding aspect of man, what Plato calls the Interior Man.

Thus our soul, too, is a divine thing, belonging to another order than sense; such is all that holds the rank of soul, but (above the life-principle) there is the Soul perfected as containing Intellectual-Principle with its double phase, reasoning and giving the power to reason. The reasoning phase of the Soul, needing no bodily organ for its thinking but maintaining, in purity, its distinctive Act that its thought may be uncontaminated — this we cannot err in placing, separate and not mingled into body, within the first Intellectual. We may not seek any point of space in which to seat it; it must be set outside of all space: its distinct quality, its separateness, its immateriality, demand that it be a thing alone, untouched by all of the bodily order. That is why we read of the universe, that the Demiurge cast the Soul around it from without — understand that phase of soul which is permanently seated in the Intellectual — and of ourselves that the charioteer’s head reaches upwards towards the heights.

The admonition to sever soul from body is not, of course, to be understood spatially — that separation stands made in Nature — the reference is to holding our rank, to use of our thinking, to an attitude of alienation from the body in the effort to lead up and attach to the over-world, equally with the other, that phase of soul seated here and, alone, having to do with body, creating, moulding, spending its care upon it.


§ 11. Since there is a Soul which reasons upon the right and good — for reasoning is an inquiry into the Tightness and goodness of this rather -378- than that — there must exist some permanent Right, the source and foundation of this reasoning in our soul; how, else, could any such discussion be held? Further, since the Soul’s attention to these matters is intermittent, there must be within us an Intellectual-Principle acquainted with that Right not by momentary act but in permanent possession. Similarly there must be also the principle of this principle, its cause, God. This Highest cannot be divided and allotted, must remain intangible but not bound to space, it may be present at many points, wheresoever there is anything capable of accepting one of its manifestations: thus a centre is an independent unity; everything within the circle has its term at the centre; and to the centre the radii bring each their own. Within our nature is such a centre by which we grasp and are linked and held; and those of us are firmly in the Supreme whose being is concentrated There.


§ 12. Possessed of such powers, how does it happen that we do not lay hold of them, but for the most part, let these high activities go idle — some, even, of us never bringing them in any degree to effect?

The answer is that all the Divine Beings are unceasingly about their own act, the Intellectual-Principle and its Prior always self-intent; and so, too, the Soul maintains its unfailing movement; for not all that passes in the Soul is, by that fact, perceptible; we know just as much as impinges upon the faculty of sense. Any activity not transmitted to the sensitive faculty has not traversed the entire Soul: we remain unaware because the human being includes sense-perception; man is not merely a part (the higher part) of the Soul but the total.

None the less every being of the order of soul is in continuous activity as long as life holds, continuously executing to itself its characteristic act: knowledge of the act depends upon transmission and perception. If there is to be perception of what is thus present, we must turn the perceptive faculty inward and hold it to attention there. Hoping to hear a desired voice we let all others pass and are alert for the coming at last of that most welcome of sounds: so here, we must let the hearings of sense go by, save for sheer necessity, and keep the Soul’s perception bright and quick to the sounds from above. -379- Top ↑


Second Tractate: The Origin and Order of the Beings Following on the First

§ 1. The One is all things and no one of them; the source of all things is not all things; and yet it is all things in a transcendental sense — all things, so to speak, having run back to it: or, more correctly, not all as yet are within it, they will be.

But a universe from an unbroken unity, in which there appears no diversity, not even duality?

It is precisely because there is nothing within the One that all things are from it: in order that Being may be brought about, the source must be no Being but Being’s generator, in what is to be thought of as the primal act of generation. Seeking nothing, possessing nothing, lacking nothing, the One is perfect and, in our metaphor, has overflowed, and its exuberance has produced the new: this product has turned again to its begetter and been filled and has become its contemplator and so an Intellectual-Principle.

That station towards the One (the fact that something exists in presence of the One) establishes Being; that vision directed upon the One establishes the Intellectual-Principle; standing towards the One to the end of vision, it is simultaneously Intellectual-Principle and Being; and, attaining resemblance in virtue of this vision, it repeats the act of the One in pouring forth a vast power.

This second outflow is an image or representation of the Divine Intellect as the Divine Intellect represented its own prior, The One.

This active power sprung from essence (from the Intellectual- Principle considered as Being) is Soul.

Soul arises as the idea and act of the motionless Intellectual-Principle — which itself sprang from its own motionless prior — but the Soul’s operation is not similarly motionless; its image is generated from its movement. It takes fullness by looking to its source; but it generates its image by adopting another, a downward, movement.

This image of Soul is Sense and Nature, the vegetal principle.

Nothing, however, is completely severed from its prior. Thus the human Soul appears to reach away as far down as to the vegetal order: in some sense it does, since the life of growing things is within its province; but it is not present entire; when it has reached the vegetal order it is there in the sense that having moved thus far downwards it produces — by its outgoing and its tendency towards the less good — another hypostasis or form of being, just as its prior (the loftier phase of the Soul) is produced from the Intellectual-Principle which yet remains in untroubled self-possession. -380-

(From end of second chapter)

But does this Soul-phase in the vegetal order produce nothing?

It engenders precisely the Kind in which it is thus present: how, is a question to be handled from another starting-point.


§ 2. To resume: there is from the first principle to ultimate an outgoing in which unfailingly each principle retains its own seat while its offshoot takes another rank, a lower, though on the other hand every being is in identity with its prior as long as it holds that contact.

In the case of soul entering some vegetal form, what is there is one phase, the more rebellious and less intellectual, outgone to that extreme; in a soul entering an animal, the faculty of sensation has been dominant and brought it there; in soul entering man, the movement outward has either been wholly of its reasoning part or has come from the Intellectual-Principle in the sense that the soul, possessing that principle as immanent to its being, has an inborn desire of intellectual activity and of movement in general.

But, looking more minutely into the matter, when shoots or topmost boughs are lopped from some growing thing, where goes the soul that was present in them? Simply, whence it came: soul never knew spatial separation and therefore is always within the source. If you cut the root to pieces, or burn it, where is the life that was present there? In the soul, which never went outside of itself.

No doubt, despite this permanence, the soul must have been in something if it re-ascends; and if it does not, it is still somewhere; it is in some other vegetal soul: but all this means merely that it is not crushed into some one spot; if a soul-power re-ascends, it is within the soul-power preceding it; that in turn can be only in the soul-power prior again, the phase reaching upwards to the Intellectual-Principle. Of course nothing here must be understood spatially: soul never was in space; and the Divine Intellect, again, is distinguished from soul as being still more free.

Soul thus is nowhere but in the Principle which has that characteristic existence at once nowhere and everywhere.

If the soul on its upward path has halted midway before wholly achieving the supreme heights, it has a mid-rank life and has centred itself upon the mid-phase of its being. All in that mid-region is Intellectual-Principle not wholly itself — nothing else because deriving thence (and therefore of that name and rank), yet not that because the Intellectual-Principle in giving it forth is not merged into it.

There exists, thus, a life, as it were, of huge extension, a total in which each several part differs from its next, all making a self-continuous whole under a law of discrimination by which the various forms of things arise with no effacement of any prior in its secondary. (See end of chapter i.) -381-

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Third Tractate: The Knowing Hypostases and the Transcendent

§ 1. Are we to think that a being knowing itself must contain diversity, that self-knowledge can be affirmed only when some one phase of the self perceives other phases, and that therefore an absolutely simplex entity would be equally incapable of introversion and of self-awareness?

No: a being that has no parts or phases may have this consciousness; in fact there would be no real self-knowing in an entity presented as knowing itself in virtue of being a compound — some single element in it perceiving other elements — as we may know our own form and entire bodily organism by sense-perception: such knowing does not cover the whole field; the knowing element has not had the required cognizance at once of its associates and of itself; this is not the self-knower asked for; it is merely something that knows something else.

Either we must exhibit the self-knowing of an uncompounded being — and show how that is possible — or abandon the belief that any being can possess veritable self-cognition.

To abandon the belief is not possible in view of the many absurdities thus entailed.

It would be already absurd enough to deny this power to the Soul (or mind), but the very height of absurdity to deny it to the nature of the Intellectual-Principle, presented thus as knowing the rest of things but not attaining to knowledge, or even awareness, of itself.

It is the province of sense and in some degree of understanding and judgement, but not of the Intellectual-Principle, to handle the external, though whether the Intellectual-Principle holds the knowledge of these things is a question to be examined, but it is obvious that the Intellectual-Principle must have knowledge of the Intellectual objects. Now, can it know those objects alone or must it not simultaneously know itself, the being whose function it is to know just those things? Can it have self- knowledge in the sense (dismissed above as inadequate) of knowing its content while it ignores itself? Can it be aware of knowing its members and yet remain in ignorance of its own knowing self? Self and content must be simultaneously present: the method and degree of this knowledge we must now consider.


§ 2. We begin with the Soul, asking whether it is to be allowed self-knowledge and what the knowing principle in it would be and how operating.

The sense-principle in it, we may at once decide, takes cognizance only of the external; even in any awareness of events within the body it occupies, this is still the perception of something external to a principle dealing with those bodily conditions not as within but as beneath itself. -382-

The reasoning-principle in the Soul acts upon the representations standing before it as the result of sense-perception; these it judges, combining, distinguishing: or it may also observe the impressions, so to speak, rising from the Intellectual-Principle, and has the same power of handling these; and reasoning will develop to wisdom where it recognizes the new and late-coming impressions (those of sense) and adapts them, so to speak, to those it holds from long before — the act which may be described as the Soul’s Reminiscence.

So far as this, the efficacy of the Intellectual-Principle in the Soul certainly reaches; but is there also introversion and self-cognition or is that power to be reserved strictly for the Divine Mind?

If we accord self-knowing to this phase of the Soul we make it an Intellectual-Principle and will have to show what distinguishes it from its prior; if we refuse it self-knowing, all our thought brings us step by step to some principle which has this power, and we must discover what such self-knowing consists in. If, again, we do allow self-knowledge in the lower we must examine the question of degree; for if there is no difference of degree, then the reasoning principle in Soul is the IntellectualPrinciple unalloyed.

We ask, then, whether the understanding principle in the Soul has equally the power of turning inwards upon itself or whether it has no more than that of comprehending the impressions, superior and inferior, which it receives.

The first stage is to discover what this comprehension is.


§ 3. Sense sees a man and transmits the impression to the understanding. What does the understanding say? It has nothing to say as yet; it accepts and waits; unless, rather, it questions within itself, ‘Who is this?’ — someone it has met before — and then, drawing on memory, says, ‘Socrates’.

If it should go on to develop the impression received, it distinguishes various elements in what the representative faculty has set before it; supposing it to say ‘Socrates, if the man is good’, then, while it has spoken upon information from the senses, its total pronouncement is its own; it contains within itself a standard of good.

But how does it thus contain the good within itself?

It is, itself, of the nature of the good and it has been strengthened still towards the perception of all that is good by the irradiation of the Intellectual-Principle upon it; for this pure phase of the Soul welcomes to itself the images implanted from its prior.

But why may we not distinguish this understanding phase as Intellectual-Principle and take Soul to consist of the later phases from the sensitive downwards?

Because all the activities mentioned are within the scope of a reasoning faculty, and reasoning is characteristically the function of Soul. -383-

Why not, however, absolve the question by assigning self-cognizance to this phase?

Because we have allotted to Soul the function of dealing — in thought and in multiform action — with the external, and we hold that observation of self and of the content of self must belong to Intellectual- Principle.

If any one says, ‘Still; what precludes the reasoning Soul from observing its own content by some special faculty?’ he is no longer positing a principle of understanding or of reasoning but, simply, bringing in the Intellectual-Principle unalloyed.

But what precludes the Intellectual-Principle from being present, unalloyed, within the Soul? Nothing, we admit; but are we entitled therefore to think of it as a phase of Soul?

We cannot describe it as belonging to the Soul though we do describe it as our Intellectual-Principle, something distinct from the understanding, advanced above it, and yet ours even though we cannot include it among soul-phases: it is ours and not ours; and therefore we use it sometimes and sometimes not, whereas we always have use of the understanding; the Intellectual-Principle is ours when we act by it, not ours when we neglect it.

But what is this acting by it? Does it mean that we become the Intellectual-Principle so that our utterance is the utterance of the Intellectual-Principle, or that (at best) we represent it?

We are not the Intellectual-Principle; we represent it in virtue of that highest reasoning faculty which draws upon it.

Again; we perceive by means of the perceptive faculty and are not, ourselves, the percipients: may we then say the same of the understanding (the principle of reasoning and discursive thought)?

No: our reasoning is our own; we ourselves think the thoughts that occupy the understanding — for this is actually the We — but the operation of the Intellectual-Principle enters from above us as that of the sensitive faculty from below; the We is the Soul at its highest, the mid-point between two powers, between the sensitive principle, inferior to us, and the intellectual principle superior. We think of the perceptive act as integral to ourselves because our sense-perception is uninterrupted; we hesitate as to the Intellectual-Principle both because we are not always occupied with it and because it exists apart, not a principle inclining to us but one to which we incline when we choose to look upwards.

The sensitive principle is our scout; the Intellectual-Principle our King.


§ 4. But we, too, are king when we are moulded to the Intellectual- Principle.

That correspondence may be brought about in two ways: either through laws of conduct engraved upon our souls as tablets or else by -384- our being, as it were, filled full of the Divine Mind, which again may have become to us a thing seen and felt as a presence.

Hence our self-knowing comes to the knowing of all the rest of our being in virtue of this thing patently present; or by that power itself communicating to us its own power of self-knowing; or by our becoming identical with that principle of knowledge.

Thus the self-knower is a double person: there is the one that takes cognizance of the principle in virtue of which understanding occurs in the Soul or mind; and there is the higher, knowing himself by the Intellectual-Principle with which he becomes identical: this latter knows the self as no longer man but as a being that has become something other through and through: he has thrown himself as one thing over into the superior order, taking with him only that better part of the Soul which alone is winged for the Intellectual Act and gives the man, once established There, the power to appropriate what he has seen. We can scarcely suppose this understanding faculty to be unaware that it has understanding; that it takes cognizance of things external; that in its judgements it decides by the rules and standards within itself held directly from the Intellectual-Principle; that there is something higher than itself, something which, moreover, it has no need to seek but fully possesses. What can we conceive to escape the self-knowledge of a principle which admittedly knows the place it holds and the work it has to do? It affirms that it springs from Intellectual-Principle whose second and image it is, that it holds all within itself, the universe of things, engraved, so to say, upon it as all is held There by the eternal engraver. Aware so far of itself, can it be supposed to halt at that? Are we to suppose that all we can do is to apply a distinct power of our nature and come thus to awareness of that Intellectual-Principle as aware of itself? Or may we not appropriate that principle — which belongs to us as we to it — and thus attain to awareness, at once, of it and of ourselves? Yes: this is the necessary way if we are to experience the self-knowledge vested in the Intellectual-Principle. And a man becomes Intellectual-Principle when, ignoring all other phases of his being, he sees through that only and sees only that and so knows himself by means of the self — in other words attains the self-knowledge which the Intellectual-Principle possesses.


§ 5. Does it all come down, then, to one phase of the self knowing another phase?

That would be a case of knower distinguished from known, and would not be self-knowing.

What, then, if the total combination were supposed to be of one piece, knower quite undistinguished from known, so that, seeing any given part of itself as identical with itself, it sees itself by means of itself, knower and known thus being entirely without differentiation?

To begin with, the distinction in one self thus suggested is a strange -385- phenomenon. How is the self to make the partition? The thing cannot happen of itself. And, again, which phase makes it? The phase that decides to be the knower or that which is to be the known? Then how can the knowing phase know itself in the known when it has chosen to be the knower and put itself apart from the known? In such self-knowledge by sundering it can be aware only of the object, not of the agent; it will not know its entire content, or itself as an integral whole; it knows the phase seen but not the seeing phase and thus has knowledge of something else, not self-knowledge.

In order to perfect self-knowing it must bring over from itself the knowing phase as well: seeing subject and seen objects must be present as one thing. Now if in this coalescence of seeing subject with seen objects the objects were merely representations of the reality, the subject would not possess the realities: if it is to possess them it must do so not by seeing them as the result of any self-division but by knowing them, containing them, before any self-division occurs.

At that, the object known must be identical with the knowing act (or agent), the Intellectual-Principle, therefore, identical with the Intellectual Realm. And in fact, if this identity does not exist, neither does truth; the Principle that should contain realities is found to contain a transcript, something different from the realities; that constitutes non-Truth; Truth cannot apply to something conflicting with itself; what it affirms it must also be.

Thus we find that the Intellectual-Principle, the Intellectual Realm, and Real Being constitute one thing, which is the Primal Being; the primal Intellectual-Principle is that which contains the realities or, rather, which is identical with them.

But taking Primal Intellection and its intellectual object to be a unity, how does that give an Intellective Being knowing itself? An intellection enveloping its object or identical with it is far from exhibiting the Intellectual-Principle as self-knowing.

All turns on the identity. The intellectual object is itself an activity, not a mere potentiality; it is not lifeless; nor are the life and intellection brought into it as into something naturally devoid of them, some stone or other dead matter; no, the intellectual object is essentially existent, the primal reality. As an active force, the first activity, it must be, also itself, the noblest intellection, intellection possessing real being since it is entirely true; and such an intellection, primal and primally existent, can be no other than the primal principle of Intellection: for that primal principle is no potentiality and cannot be an agent distinct from its act and thus, once more, possessing its essential being as a mere potentiality. As an act — and one whose very being is an act — it must be undistinguishably identical with its act: but Being and the Intellectual object are also identical with that act; therefore the Intellectual-Principle, its exercise of intellection, and the object of intellection all are identical. Given its intellection identical with intellectual object and the object -386- identical with the Principle itself, it cannot but have self-knowledge: its intellection operates by the intellectual act, which is itself, upon the intellectual object, which similarly is itself. It possesses self-knowing, thus, on every count; the act is itself; and the object, seen in that act-self, is itself.


§ 6. Thus we have shown that there exists that which in the strictest sense possesses self-knowing.

This self-knowing agent, perfect in the Intellectual-Principle, is modified in the Soul.

The difference is that, while the Soul knows itself as within something else, the Intellectual-Principle knows itself as self-depending, knows all its nature and character, and knows by right of its own being and by simple introversion. When it looks upon the authentic existences it is looking upon itself; its vision is its effective existence, and this efficacy is itself since the Intellectual-Principle and the Intellectual Act are one: this is an integral seeing itself by its entire being, not a part seeing by a part.

But has our discussion issued in an Intellectual-Principle having a persuasive activity (furnishing us with probability)?

No: it brings compulsion, not persuasion; compulsion belongs to the Intellectual-Principle, persuasion to the Soul or mind, and we seem to desire to be persuaded rather than to see the truth in the pure intellect.

As long as we were Above, collected within the Intellectual nature, we were satisfied; we were held in the intellectual act; we had vision because we drew all into unity — for the thinker in us was the Intellectual Principle telling us of itself — and the Soul or mind was motionless, assenting to that act of its prior. But now that we are once more here — living in the secondary, the Soul — we seek for persuasive probabilities: it is through the image we desire to know the archetype.

Our way is to teach our Soul how the Intellectual-Principle exercises self-vision; the phase thus to be taught is that which already touches the intellective order, that which we call the understanding or intelligent Soul, indicating by the very name (διάνοια) that it is already of itself in some degree an Intellectual-Principle or that it holds its peculiar power through and from that Principle. This phase must be brought to understand by what means it has knowledge of the thing it sees and warrant for what it affirms: if it became what it affirms, it would by that fact possess self-knowing. All its vision and affirmation being in the Supreme or deriving from it — There where itself also is — it will possess self-knowledge by its right as a Reason-Principle, claiming its kin and bringing all into accord with the divine imprint upon it.

The Soul therefore (to attain self-knowledge) has only to set this image (that is to say, its highest phase) alongside the veritable Intellectual-Principle which we have found to be identical with the truths constituting the objects of intellection, the world of Primals and -387- Reality: for this Intellectual-Principle, by very definition, cannot be outside of itself, the Intellectual Reality: self-gathered and unalloyed, it is Intellectual-Principle through all the range of its being — for unintelligent intelligence is not possible — and thus it possesses of necessity self-knowing, as a being immanent to itself and one having for function and essence to be purely and solely Intellectual-Principle. This is no doer; the doer, not self-intent but looking outward, will have knowledge, in some kind, of the external, but, if wholly of this practical order, need have no self-knowledge; where, on the contrary, there is no action — and of course the pure Intellectual-Principle cannot be straining after any absent good — the intention can be only towards the self; at once self-knowing becomes not merely plausible but inevitable; what else could living signify in a being immune from action and existing in Intellect?


§ 7. The contemplating of God, we might answer.

But to admit its knowing God is to be compelled to admit its self-knowing. It will know what it holds from God, what God has given forth or may; with this knowledge, it knows itself at the stroke, for it is itself one of those given things — in fact is all of them. Knowing God and His power, then, it knows itself, since it comes from Him and carries His power upon it; if, because here the act of vision is identical with the object, it is unable to see God clearly, then all the more, by the equation of seeing and seen, we are driven back upon that self-seeing and self-knowing in which seeing and thing seen are undistinguishably one thing.

And what else is there to attribute to it?

Repose, no doubt; but to an Intellectual-Principle Repose is not an abdication from intellect; its Repose is an Act, the act of abstention from the alien: in all forms of existence repose from the alien leaves the characteristic activity intact, especially where the Being is not merely potential but fully realized.

In the Intellectual-Principle, the Being is an Act and in the absence of any other object it must be self-directed; by this self-intellection it holds its Act within itself and upon itself; all that can emanate from it is produced by this self-centring and self-intention; first self-gathered, it then gives itself or gives something in its likeness; fire must first be self-centred and be fire, true to fire’s natural Act; then it may reproduce itself elsewhere.

Once more, then: the Intellectual-Principle is a self-intent activity, but Soul has the double phase, one inner, intent upon the Intellectual-Principle, the other outside it and facing to the external; by the one it holds the likeness to its source; by the other, even in its unlikeness, it still comes to likeness in this sphere, too, by virtue of action and production; in its action it still contemplates, and its production produces Ideal-forms — divine intellections perfectly wrought out — so that all its creations are representations of the divine Intellection and of the divine -388- Intellect, moulded upon the archetype, of which all are emanations and images, the nearer more true, the very latest preserving some faint likeness of the source.


§ 8. Now comes the question: what sort of thing does the Intellectual-Principle see in seeing the Intellectual Realm and what in seeing itself?

We are not to look for an Intellectual realm reminding us of the colour or shape to be seen on material objects: the intellectual antedates all such things; and even in our sphere the production is very different from the Reason-Principle in the seeds from which it is produced. The seed principles are invisible and the beings of the Intellectual still more characteristically so; the Intellectuals are of one same nature with the Intellectual Realm which contains them, just as the Reason-Principle in the seed is identical with the Soul, or life-principle, containing it.

But the Soul (considered as apart from the Intellectual-Principle) has no vision of what it thus contains, for it is not the producer but, like the Reason-Principles also, an image of its source: that source is the brilliant, the authentic, the primarily existent, the thing self-sprung and self-intent; but its image, Soul, is a thing which can have no permanence except by attachment, by living in that other; the very nature of an image is that as a secondary it shall have its being in something else, if at all it exist apart from its original. Hence this image (Soul) has not vision, for it has not the necessary light, and if it should see, then, as finding its completion elsewhere, it sees another, not itself.

In the pure Intellectual there is nothing of this: the vision and the envisioned are a unity; the seen is as the seeing and seeing as seen.

What, then, is there that can pronounce upon the nature of this all-unity?

That which sees: and to see is the function of the Intellectual-Principle. Even in our own sphere (we have a parallel to this self-vision of a unity), our vision is light or rather becomes one with the light, and it sees light for it sees colours. In the intellectual, the vision sees not through some medium but by and through itself alone, for its object is not external: by one light it sees another, not through any intermediate agency; a light sees a light, that is to say a thing sees itself. This light shining within the Soul enlightens it; that is, it makes the Soul intellective, working it into likeness with itself, the light above.

Think of the traces of this light upon the Soul, then say to yourself that such, and more beautiful and broader and more radiant, is the light itself; thus you will approach to the nature of the Intellectual-Principle and the Intellectual Realm, for it is this light, itself lit from above, which gives the Soul its brighter life.

It is not the source of the generative life of the Soul which, on the contrary, it draws inward, preserving it from such diffusion, holding it to the love of the splendour of its Prior.

Nor does it give the life of perception and sensation, for that looks to -389- the external and to what acts most vigorously upon the senses, whereas one accepting that light of truth may be said no longer to see the visible, but the very contrary.

This means in sum that the life the Soul takes thence is an intellective life, a trace of the life in the (divine) Intellect, in which alone the authentic exists.

The life in the Divine Intellect is also an Act: it is the primal light outlamping to itself primarily, its own torch; lightgiver and lit at once; the authentic intellectual object, knowing at once and known, seen to itself and needing no other than itself to see by, self-sufficing to the vision, since what it sees it is; known to us by that very same light, our knowledge of it attained through itself, for from nowhere else could we find the means of telling of it. By its nature, its self-vision is the clearer but, using it as our medium, we too may come to see by it.

In the strength of such considerations we lead up our own Soul to the Divine, so that it poses itself as an image of that Being, its life becoming an imprint and a likeness of the Highest, its every act of thought making it over into the Divine and the Intellectual.

If the Soul is questioned as to the nature of that Intellectual-Principle — the perfect and all-embracing, the primal self-knower — it has but to enter into that Principle, or to sink all its activity into that, and at once it shows itself to be in effective possession of those priors whose memory it never lost: thus, as an image of the Intellectual-Principle, it can make itself the medium by which to attain some vision of it; it draws upon that within itself which is most closely resemblant, as far as resemblance is possible between divine Intellect and any phase of Soul.


§ 9. In order, then, to know what the Divine Mind is we must observe Soul and especially its most God-like phase.

One certain way to this knowledge is to separate first, the man from the body — yourself, that is, from your body; next to put aside that Soul which moulded the body, and, very earnestly, the system of sense with desires and impulses and every such futility, all setting definitely towards the mortal: what is left is the phase of the Soul which we have declared to be an image of the Divine Intellect, retaining some light from that source, like the light of the sun which goes beyond its spherical mass, issues from it and plays about it.

Of course we do not pretend that the sun’s light (as the analogy might imply) remains a self-gathered and sun-centred thing: it is at once out-rushing and indwelling; it strikes outward continuously, lap after lap, until it reaches us upon our earth: we must take it that all the light, including that which plays about the sun’s orb, has travelled; otherwise we would have next to the orb a void expanse. The Soul, on the contrary — a light springing from the Divine Mind and shining about it — is in closest touch with that source; it is not in transit but remains centred there, and, in likeness to that principle, it has no place: the light -390- of the sun is actually in the air, but the Soul is clean of all such contact so that its immunity is patent to itself and to any other of the same order.

And by its own characteristic act, though not without reasoning process, it knows the nature of the Intellectual-Principle which, on its side, knows itself without need of reasoning, for it is ever self-present whereas we become so by directing our Soul towards it; our life is broken and there are many lives, but that principle needs no changings of life or of things; the lives it brings to being are for others, not for itself: it cannot need the inferior; nor does it for itself produce the less when it possesses or is the all, nor the images when it possesses or is the prototype.

Anyone not of the strength to lay hold of the first Soul, that possessing pure intellection, must grasp that which has to do with our ordinary thinking and thence ascend: if even this prove too hard, let him turn to account the sensitive phase which carries the ideal forms of the less fine degree, that phase which, too, with its powers, is immaterial and lies just within the realm of Ideal-principles.

One may even, if it seem necessary, begin as low as the reproductive Soul and its very production and thence make the ascent, mounting from those ultimate ideal principles to the ultimates in the higher sense, that is to the primals.


§ 10. This matter need not be elaborated at present: it suffices to say that if the created were all, these ultimates (the higher) need not exist: but the Supreme does include primals, the primals because the producers. In other words, there must be, with the made, the making source and these must be identical; otherwise there will be need of a Transcendent. But will not this Transcendent demand in turn a further transcendent? No: the demand comes from the Intellectual-Principle. If we are asked why this Transcendent also should not have self-vision (a duality to be transcended), our answer is that it has no need of vision; but this we will discuss later: for the moment we go back, since the question at issue is gravely important.

We repeat that the Intellectual-Principle must have, actually has, self-vision, firstly because it has multiplicity, next because it exists for the external and therefore must be a seeing power, one seeing that external; in fact its very essence is vision. Given some external, there must be vision; and if there be nothing external the Intellectual-Principle (Divine Mind) exists in vain. Unless there is something beyond bare unity, there can be no vision: vision must converge with a visible object. And this which the seer is to see can be only a multiple, no undistinguishable unity; nor could a universal unity find anything upon which to exercise any act; all, one and desolate, would be utter stagnation; in so far as there is action, there is diversity. If there be no distinctions, what is there to do, what direction in which to move? An agent must either act upon the extern or be a multiple and so able to act upon itself: -391- making no advance towards anything other than itself, it is motionless, and where it could know only blank fixity it can know nothing.

The intellective power, therefore, when occupied with the intellectual act, must be in a state of duality, whether one of the two elements stand actually outside or both lie within: the intellectual act will always comport diversity as well as the necessary identity, and in the same way its characteristic objects (the Ideas) must stand to the Intellectual-Principle as at once distinct and identical. This applies equally to the single object; there can be no intellection except of something containing separable detail and, since the object is a Reason-Principle (a discriminated Idea), it has the necessary element of multiplicity. The Intellectual-Principle, thus, is informed of itself by the fact of being a multiple organ of vision, an eye receptive of many illuminated objects. If it had to direct itself to a memberless unity, it would be dereasoned: what could it say or know of such an object? The self-affirmation of (even) a memberless unity implies the repudiation of all that does not enter into the character: in other words, it must be multiple as a preliminary to being itself.

Then, again, in the assertion ‘I AM this particular thing’, either the ‘particular thing’ is distinct from the assertor — and there is a false statement — or it is included within it, and, at once, multiplicity is asserted: otherwise the assertion is ‘I AM what I AM’, or ‘I AM I’.

If it be no more than a simple duality able to say ‘I and that other phase’, there is already multiplicity, for there is distinction and ground of distinction, there is number with all its train of separate things.

In sum, then, a knowing principle must handle distinct items: its object must, at the moment of cognition, contain diversity; otherwise the thing remains unknown; there is mere conjunction, such a contact, without affirmation or comprehension, as would precede knowledge, the intellect not yet in being, the impinging agent not percipient.

Similarly the knowing principle itself cannot remain simplex, especially in the act of self-knowing: all silent though its self-perception be, it is dual to itself.

Of course The One has no need of minute self-handling since it has nothing to learn by an intellective act; it is in full possession of its being before Intellect exists. Knowledge implies desire, for it is, so to speak, discovery crowning a search; the utterly undifferentiated remains self-centred and makes no inquiry about that self: anything capable of analysing its content must be a manifold.


§ 11. Thus the Intellectual-Principle, in the act of knowing the Transcendent, is a manifold. It knows the Transcendent in very essence but, with all its effort to grasp that prior as a pure unity, it goes forth amassing successive impressions, so that, to it, the object becomes multiple: thus in its outgoing to its object it is not (fully realized) Intellectual-Principle; it is an eye that has not yet seen; in its return it is an eye possessed of the -392- multiplicity which it has itself conferred: it sought something of which it found the vague presentment within itself; it returned with something else, the manifold quality with which it has of its own act invested the simplex.

If it had not possessed a previous impression of the Transcendent it could never have grasped it, but this impression, originally of unity, becomes an impression of multiplicity; and the Intellectual-Principle in taking cognizance of that multiplicity knows the Transcendent and so is realized as an eye possessed of its vision.

It is now Intellectual-Principle since it actually holds its object, and holds it by the act of intellection: before, it was no more than attendance, an eye blank of impression: it was in motion towards the transcendental; now that it has attained, it has become Intellectual-Principle: always implicit (in the Transcendent), it now, in virtue of this intellection, holds the character of Intellectual-Principle, of Essential Existence, and of Intellectual Act where, previously, not possessing the Intellectual Object, it was not Intellectual Perception, and, not yet having exercised the Intellectual Act, it was not Intellectual-Principle.

The Principle before all these principles is no doubt the first principle of the universe, but not as immanent: immanence is not for primal sources but for engendering secondaries; that which stands as primal source of everything is not a thing but is distinct from all things: it is not, then, a member of the total but earlier than all, earlier, thus, than the Intellectual-Principle — which in fact envelops the entire train of things.

Thus we come, once more, to a Being above the Intellectual-Principle and, since the sequent amounts to no less than the All, we recognize, again, a Being above the All. This assuredly cannot be one of the things to which it is prior. We may not call it Intellect; therefore, too, we may not call it the Good, if the Good is to be taken in the sense of some one member of the universe; if we mean that which precedes the universe of things, the name may be allowed.

The Intellectual-Principle is established in multiplicity; its intellection, self sprung though it be, is in the nature of something added to it (some accidental dualism) and makes it multiple: the utterly simplex, and therefore first of all beings, must, then, transcend the Intellectual-Principle; and, obviously, if this had intellection it would no longer transcend the Intellectual-Principle but be it, and at once be a multiple.


§ 12. But why, after all, should it not be such a manifold as long as it remains one substantial existence, having the multiplicity not of a compound being but of a unity with a variety of activities?

Now, no doubt, if these various activities are not themselves substantial existences — but merely manifestations of latent potentiality — there is no compound; but, on the other hand, it remains incomplete until its substantial existence be expressed in act. If its substantial existence consists in its Act, and this Act constitutes multiplicity, then its -393- substantial existence will be strictly proportioned to the extent of the multiplicity.

We allow this to be true for the Intellectual-Principle to which we have allotted (the multiplicity of) self-knowing; but for the first principle of all, never. Before the manifold, there must be The One, that from which the manifold rises: in all numerical series, the unit is the first.

But — we will be answered — for number, well and good, since the suite makes a compound; but in the real beings why must there be a unit from which the multiplicity of entities shall proceed?

Because (failing such a unity) the multiplicity would consist of disjointed items, each starting at its own distinct place and moving accidentally to serve to a total.

But, they will tell us, the Activities in question do proceed from a unity, from the Intellectual-Principle, a simplex.

By that they admit the existence of a simplex prior to the Activities; and they make the Activities perdurable and class them as substantial existences (hypostases); but as Hypostases they will be distinct from their source, which will remain simplex; while its product will in its own nature be manifold and dependent upon it.

Now if these activities arise from some unexplained first activity in that principle, then it too contains the manifold: if on the contrary they are the very earliest activities and the source and cause of any multiple product and the means by which that Principle is able, before any activity occurs, to remain self-centred, then they are allocated to the product of which they are the cause; for this principle is one thing, the activities going forth from it are another, since it is not, itself, in act. If this be not so, the first act cannot be the Intellectual-Principle: the One does not provide for the existence of an Intellectual-Principle which thereupon appears; that provision would be something (an Hypostasis) intervening between the One and the Intellectual-Principle its offspring. There could, in fact, be no such providing in The One, for it was never incomplete; and such provision could name nothing that ought to be provided. It cannot be thought to possess only some part of its content, and not the whole; nor did anything exist to which it could turn in desire. Clearly anything that comes into being after it arises without shaking to its permanence in its own habit. It is essential to the existence of any new entity that the First remain in self-gathered repose throughout: otherwise, it moved before there was motion and had intellectual act before any intellection — unless, indeed, that first act (as motionless and without intelligence) was incomplete, nothing more than a tendency. And what can we imagine it lights upon to become the object of such a tendency?

The only reasonable explanation of act flowing from it lies in the analogy of light from a sun. The entire intellectual order may be figured as a kind of light with the One in repose at its summit as its King: but -394- this manifestation is not cast out from it: we may think, rather, of the One as a light before the light, an eternal irradiation resting upon the Intellectual Realm; this, not identical with its source, is yet not severed from it nor of so remote a nature as to be less than Real-Being; it is no blind thing, but is seeing, self-knowing, the primal knower.

The One, as transcending Intellect, transcends knowing: above all need, it is above the need of the knowing which pertains solely to the Secondary Nature. Knowing is a unitary thing, but defined: the first is One, but undefined: a defined One would not be the One-Absolute! the absolute is prior to the definite.


§ 13. Thus The One is in truth beyond all statement: any affirmation is of a thing; but ‘all-transcending, resting above even the most august divine Mind’ — this is the only true description, since it does not make it a thing among things, nor name it where no name could identify it: we can but try to indicate, in our own feeble way, something concerning it. When in our perplexity we object, ‘Then it is without self-perception, without self-consciousness, ignorant of itself’, we must remember that we have been considering it only in its opposites.

If we assume within it the distinction of knowing and known, we make it a manifold; and if we allow intellection in it, we make it at that point indigent: supposing that in fact intellection accompanies it, intellection by it must be superfluous.

Self-intellection — which is the truest — implies the entire perception of a total self formed from a variety converging into an integral; every single unit in this variety is self-subsistent and has no need to look outside itself: if its intellectual act is, on the other hand, directed upon something outside, then, the agent is deficient and the intellection faulty.

The wholly simplex and veritable self-sufficing can be lacking at no point: self-intellection begins in that principle which, secondarily self-sufficing, yet needs itself and therefore needs to know itself; this principle, by its self-presence, achieves its sufficiency in virtue of its entire content (it is the all): it becomes thus competent from the total of its being, in the act of living towards itself and looking upon itself.

Consciousness, as the very word indicates, is a conperception, an act exercised upon a manifold: and even intellection, earlier (nearer to the divine) though it is, implies that the agent turns back upon itself, upon a manifold, then. If that agent says no more than ‘I AM a being’, it speaks (by the implied dualism) as a discoverer of the extern; and rightly so, for being is a manifold; when it faces towards the unmanifold and says, ‘I AM that being’, it misses both itself and the being (since the simplex cannot be thus divided into knower and known): if it is (to utter) truth it cannot indicate by ‘being’ something (single) like a stone; in the one phrase multiplicity is asserted; for the being thus affirmed — the veritable, as distinguished from such a mere container of some trace of being as -395- ought not to be called a being since it stands merely as image to archetype — this must possess multiplicity.

But will not each item in that multiplicity be an object of intellection to us?

Taken bare and single, no: but Being itself is manifold within itself, and whatever else you may name has Being.

This accepted, it follows that anything that is to be thought of as the most utterly simplex of all, cannot have self-intellection; to have that would mean being multiple. The Transcendent, thus, neither knows itself nor is known in itself.


§ 14. How, then, do we ourselves come to be speaking of it?

No doubt we deal with it, but we do not state it; we have neither knowledge nor intellection of it.

But in what sense do we even deal with it when we have no hold upon it?

We do not, it is true, grasp it by knowledge, but that does not mean that we are utterly void of it; we hold it not so as to state it, but so as to be able to speak about it. And we can and do state what it is not, while we are silent as to what it is: we are, in fact, speaking of it in the light of its sequels; unable to state it, we may still possess it.

Those divinely possessed and inspired have at least the knowledge that they hold some greater thing within them though they cannot tell what it is; from the movements that stir them and the utterances that come from them they perceive the power, not themselves, that moves them: in the same way, it must be, we stand towards the Supreme when we hold the Intellectual-Principle pure; we know the divine Mind within, that which gives Being and all else of that order: but we know, too, that other, know that it is none of these, but a nobler principle than anything we know as Being; fuller and greater; above reason, mind, and feeling; conferring these powers, not to be confounded with them.


§ 15. Conferring — but how? As itself possessing them or not? How can it convey what it does not possess, and yet if it does possess how is it simplex? And if, again, it does not, how is it the source of the manifold?

A single, unmanifold emanation we may very well allow — how even that can come from a pure unity may be a problem, but we may always explain it on the analogy of the irradiation from a luminary — but a multitudinous production raises question.

The explanation is, that what comes from the Supreme cannot be identical with it and assuredly cannot be better than it — what could be better than The One or could exceed it in any sense? The emanation, then, must be less good, that is to say, less self-sufficing: now what must that be which is less self-sufficing than The One? Obviously the Not-One, that is to say, multiplicity but a multiplicity striving towards unity; that is to say, a One-that-is-many. -396-

All that is not One is conserved by virtue of the One, and from the One derives its characteristic nature: if it had not attained such unity as is consistent with being made up of multiplicity we could not affirm its existence: if we are able to affirm the nature of single things, this is in virtue of the unity, the identity even, which each of them possesses. But the all-transcendent, utterly void of multiplicity, has no mere unity of participation but is unity’s self, independent of all else, as being that from which, by whatever means, all the rest take their degree of unity in their standing, near or far, towards it.

The second principle shows that it is next in order (after the all- transcendent One) by the fact that its multiplicity is at the same time an all-embracing unity: all the variety lies in the midst of a sameness, and identity cannot be separated from diversity since all stands as one; each item in that content, by the fact of participating in life, is a One- many: for the item could not make itself manifest as a One-and-all.

Only the Transcendent can be that; it is the great beginning, and the beginning must be a really existent One, wholly and truly One, while its sequent, poured down in some way from the One, is all, a total which has participation in unity and whose every member is similarly all and one.

What then is the All?

The total of which the Transcendent is the Source.

But in what way is it that source? In the sense, perhaps, of sustaining things as bestower of the unity of each single item?

That too; but also as having established them in being.

But how? As having, perhaps, contained them previously?

We have indicated that, thus, the First would be a manifold.

May we think, perhaps, that the First contained the universe as an indistinct total whose items are elaborated to distinct existence within the Second by the Reason-Principle there? That Second is certainly an Activity; the Transcendent would contain only the potentiality or the universe to come.

But the nature of this contained potentiality would have to be explained: it cannot be that of Matter, a receptivity, for thus the Source becomes passive, the very negation of production.

How then does it produce what it does not contain? Certainly not at haphazard and certainly not by selection. How then?

We have observed that anything that may spring from the One must be different from it. Differing, it is not One, since then it would be the Source. If unity has given place to duality, from that moment there is multiplicity; for there is variety side by side with identity, and this imports quality and all the rest.

We may take it as proved that the emanation of the Transcendent must be a Not-One, something other than pure unity: but that it is a multiplicity, and especially that it is such a multiplicity as is exhibited in the sequent universe, this is a statement worthy of deliberation: some -397- further inquiry must be made, also, as to the necessity of any sequel to the First.


§ 16. We have, of course, already seen that a secondary must follow upon the First, and that this is a power immeasurably fruitful; and we indicated that this truth is confirmed by the entire order of things since there is nothing, not even in the lowest ranks, void of the power of generating. We have now to add that, since things engendered tend downwards and not upwards and, especially, move towards multiplicity, the first principle of all must be less a manifold than any.

That which engenders the world of sense cannot itself be a sense-world; it must be the Intellect and the Intellectual world; similarly, the prior which engenders the Intellectual-Principle and the Intellectual world cannot be either, but must be something of less multiplicity. The manifold does not rise from the manifold: the intellectual multiplicity has its source in what is not manifold; by the mere fact of being manifold, the thing is not the first principle: we must look to something earlier.

All must be grouped under a unity which, as standing outside of all multiplicity and outside of any ordinary simplicity, is the veritably and essentially simplex.

But how does the offspring of unity become a Reason-Principle, characteristically a manifold, a total, when the source is obviously not a Reason-Principle? Yet if it is not, how can we explain the derivation of Reason-Principle from non-Reason-Principle?

And how does the secondarily good (the imaged Good) derive from The Good, the Absolute? What does it hold from the Absolute Good to entitle it to the name?

Similarity to the prior is not enough, it does not help towards goodness; we demand similarity only to an actually existent Good: the goodness must depend upon derivation from a Prior of such a nature that the similarity is desirable because that Prior is good, just as the similarity would be undesirable if the Prior were not good.

Does the similarity with the Prior consist, then, in a voluntary resting upon it?

It is rather that, finding its condition satisfying, it seeks nothing: the similarity depends upon the all-sufficiency of what it possesses; its existence is agreeable because all is present to it, and present in such a way as not to be even different from it (Intellectual-Principle is Being).

All life belongs to it, life brilliant and perfect; thus all in it is at once life-principle and Intellectual-Principle, nothing in it aloof from either life or intellect: it is therefore self-sufficing and seeks nothing: and if it seeks nothing this is because it has in itself what, lacking, it must seek. It has, therefore, its Good within itself, either by being of that order — in what we have called its life and intellect — or in some other quality or character going to produce these. -398-

If this (secondary principle) were The Good (The Absolute) nothing could transcend these things, life and intellect: but, given the existence of something higher, this Intellectual-Principle must possess a life directed towards that Transcendent, dependent upon it, deriving its being from it, living towards it as towards its source. The First, then, must transcend this principle of life and intellect which directs thither both the life in itself, a copy of the Reality of the First, and the intellect in itself which is again a copy, though of what original there we cannot know.


§ 17. But what can it be which is loftier than that existence — a life compact of wisdom, untouched by struggle and error, or than this Intellect which holds the Universe with all there is of life and intellect?

If we answer ‘The Making Principle’, there comes the question, ‘making by what virtue’? and unless we can indicate something higher there than in the made, our reasoning has made no advance: we rest where we were.

We must go higher — if it were only for the reason that the self-sufficiency of the maker is different from that of a totality of which each member is patently indigent, and that everything has participated in The One and, as drawing on unity, is itself not unity.

What then is this in which each particular entity participates, the author of being to the universe and to each item of the total?

Since it is the author of all that exists, and since the multiplicity in each thing is converted into a self-sufficing existence by this presence of The One, so that even the particular itself becomes self-sufficing, then clearly this principle, author at once of Being and of self-sufficingness, is not itself a Being but is above Being and above even self-sufficing.

May we stop, content, with that? No: the Soul is yet, and even more, in pain. Is she ripe, perhaps, to bring forth, now that in her pangs she has come so close to what she seeks? No: we must call upon yet another spell if anywhere the assuagement is to be found. Perhaps in what has already been uttered, there lies the charm if only we tell it over often? No: we need a new, a further, incantation. All our effort may well skim over every truth, and through all the verities in which we have part, and yet the reality escape us when we hope to affirm, to understand: for the understanding, in order to its affirmation, must possess itself of item after item; only so does it traverse all the field: but how can there be any such peregrination of that in which there is no variety?

All the need is met by a contact purely intellective. At the moment of touch there is no power whatever to make any affirmation; there is no leisure; reasoning upon the vision is for afterwards. We may know we have had the vision when the Soul has suddenly taken light. This light is from the Supreme and is the Supreme; we may believe in the Presence when, like that other God on the call of a certain man, He comes bringing light: the light is the proof of the advent. Thus, the -399- Soul unlit remains without that vision; lit, it possesses what it sought. And this is the true end set before the Soul, to take that light, to see the Supreme by the Supreme and not by the light of any other principle — to see the Supreme which is also the means to the vision; for that which illumines the Soul is that which it is to see, just as it is by the sun’s own light that we see the sun.

But how is this to be accomplished?

Cut away everything.

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Fourth Tractate: How the Secondaries Rise From The First: and on The One

§ 1. Anything existing after The First must necessarily arise from that First, whether immediately or as tracing back to it through intervenients; there must be an order of secondaries and tertiaries, in which any second is to be referred to The First, any third to the second.

Standing before all things, there must exist a Simplex, differing from all its sequel, self-gathered not interblended with the forms that rise from it, and yet able in some mode of its own to be present to those others: it must be authentically a unity, not merely something elaborated into unity and so in reality no more than unity’s counterfeit; it will debar all telling and knowing except that it may be described as transcending Being — for if there were nothing outside all alliance and compromise, nothing authentically one, there would be no Source. Untouched by multiplicity, it will be wholly self-sufficing, an absolute First, whereas any not-first demands its earlier, and any non-simplex needs the simplicities within itself as the very foundations of its composite existence.

There can be only one such being: if there were another, the two (as indiscernible) would resolve into one, for we are not dealing with two corporal entities.

Our One-First is not a body: nothing simplex can be a body and, as a thing of process cannot be a First, the Source cannot be a thing of generation: only a principle outside of body, and utterly untouched by multiplicity, could be The First.

Any unity, then, later than The First must be no longer simplex; it can be no more than a unity in diversity.

Whence must such a sequent arise?

It must be an offspring of The First; for suppose it the product of chance, that First ceases to be the Principle of All.

But how does it arise from The First? -400-

If The First is perfect, utterly perfect above all, and is the beginning of all power, it must be the most powerful of all that is, and all other powers must act in some partial imitation of it. Now other beings, coming to perfection, are observed to generate; they are unable to remain self-closed; they produce: and this is true not merely of beings endowed with will, but of growing things where there is no will; even lifeless objects impart something of themselves, as far as they may; fire warms, snow chills, drugs have their own outgoing efficacy; all things to the utmost of their power imitate the Source in some operation tending to eternity and to service.

How then could the most perfect remain self-set — the First Good, the Power towards all, how could it grudge or be powerless to give of itself, and how at that would it still be the Source?

If things other than itself are to exist, things dependent upon it for their reality, it must produce since there is no other source. And, further, this engendering principle must be the very highest in worth; and its immediate offspring, its secondary, must be the best of all that follows.


§ 2. If the Intellectual-Principle were the engendering Source, then the engendered secondary, while less perfect than the Intellectual-Principle, would be close to it and similar to it: but since the engendering Source is above the Intellectual-Principle, the secondary can only be that principle.

But why is the Intellectual-Principle not the generating source?

Because (it is not a self-sufficing simplex): the Act of the Intellectual-Principle is intellection, which means that, seeing the intellectual object towards which it has turned, it is consummated, so to speak, by that object, being in itself indeterminate like sight (a vague readiness for any and every vision) and determined by the intellectual object. This is why it has been said that ‘out of the indeterminate Dyad and The One arise the Ideas and the numbers’: for the Ideas and the numbers constitute the Intellectual-Principle.

Thus it is not a simplex; it is manifold; it exhibits a certain composite quality — within the Intellectual or divine order, of course — as the principle that sees the manifold. It is, further, itself simultaneously object and agent of intellection and is on that count also a duality: and it possesses, besides, another object of intellection in the order following upon itself.

But how can the Intellectual-Principle be a product of the Intellectual Object?

In this way: the intellectual object is self-gathered (self-compact) and is not deficient as the seeing and knowing principle must be — deficient, I mean, as needing an object — it is therefore no unconscious thing: all its content and accompaniment are its possession; it is self- distinguishing throughout; it is the seat of life as of all things; it is, -401- itself, that self-intellection which takes place in eternal repose, that is to say, in a mode other than that of the Intellectual-Principle.

But if something arises from an entity which in no way looks outside itself, it must arise when that entity is in the fullness of its being: stable in its identity, it produces; but the product is that of an un- changed being: the producer is unchangeably the intellectual object, the product is produced as the Intellectual Act, an Act taking intellection of its source — the only object that exists for it — and so becoming Intellectual-Principle, that is to say, becoming another intellectual being, resembling its source, a reproduction and image of that.

But how from amid perfect rest can an Act arise?

There is in everything the Act of the Essence and the Act going out from the Essence: the first Act is the thing itself in its realized identity, the second Act is an inevitably following outgo from the first, an emanation distinct from the thing itself.

Thus even in fire there is the warmth comported by its essential nature and there is the warmth going instantaneously outward from that characterizing heat by the fact that the fire, remaining unchangeably fire, utters the Act native to its essential reality.

So it is in the divine also: or rather we have there the earlier form of the double act: the divine remains in its own unchanging being, but from its perfection and from the Act included in its nature there emanates the secondary or issuing Act which — as the output of a mighty power, the mightiest there is — attains to Real Being as second to that which stands above all Being. That transcendent was the potentiality of the All; this secondary is the All made actual.

And if this is all things, that must be above and outside of all, and, so, must transcend real being. And again, if that secondary is all things, and if above its multiplicity there is a unity not ranking among those things, once more this unity transcends Real Being and therefore transcends the Intellectual-Principle as well. There is thus something transcending Intellectual-Principle, for we must remember that real being is no corpse, the negation of life and of intellection, but is in fact identical with the Intellectual-Principle. The Intellectual-Principle is not something taking cognizance of things as sensation deals with sense objects existing independently of sense: on the contrary, it actually is the things it knows: it does not merely possess their images or representations: whence could it have taken them? No: it resides with its objects, identical with them, making a unity with them; knowledge of the immaterial is universally identical with its objects. -402-

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Fifth Tractate: That the Intellectual Beings are not Outside the Intellectual-Principle: and on The Nature of the Good

§ 1. The Intellectual Principle, the veritably and essentially intellective, can this be conceived as ever falling into error, ever failing to think reality?

Assuredly no: it would no longer be intelligent and therefore no longer Intellectual-Principle: it must know unceasingly and never forget; and its knowledge can be no guess-work, no hesitating assent, no acceptance of an alien report. Nor can it call on demonstration or, if we are told it may at times act by this method, at least there must be something patent to it in virtue of its own nature. In actual fact reason tells us that all its knowledge is thus inherent to it, for there is no means by which to distinguish between the spontaneous knowledge and the other. But, in any case, some knowledge, it is conceded, is inherent to it. Whence are we to understand the certainty of this knowledge to come to it or how do its objects carry the conviction of their reality?

Consider sense-knowledge: its objects seem most patently certified, yet the doubt returns whether the apparent reality may not lie in the states of the percipient rather than in the material before him; the decision demands intelligence or reasoning. Besides, even granting that what the senses grasp is really contained in the objects, none the less what is thus known by the senses is an image: sense can never grasp the thing itself; this remains forever outside.

Now, if the Intellectual-Principle in its act — that is in knowing the intellectual — is to know these its objects as alien, we have to explain how it makes contact with them: obviously it might never come upon them, and so might never know them; or it might know them only upon the meeting: its knowing, at that, would not be an enduring condition. If we are told that the Intellectual-Principle and the Intellectual Objects are linked in a standing unity, we demand the description of this unity.

Next, the intellections would be impressions, that is to say not native act but violence from without: now how is such impressing possible and what shape could the impressions bear?

Intellection, again, becomes at this a mere handling of the external, exactly like sense-perception. What then distinguishes it unless that it deals with objects of less extension? And what certitude can it have that its knowledge is true? Or what enables it to pronounce that the object is good, beautiful, or just, when each of these Ideas is to stand -403- apart from itself? The very principles of judgement, by which it must be guided, would be excluded: with objects and canons alike outside it, so is truth.

Again; either the objects of the Intellectual-Principle are senseless and devoid of life and intellect or they are in possession of Intellect.

Now, if they are in possession of Intellect, that realm is a union of both, and is Truth. This combined Intellectual realm will be the Primal Intellect: we have only then to examine how this reality, conjoint of Intellectual-Principle and its object, is to be understood, whether as combining self-united identity with yet duality and difference, or what other relation holds between them.

If on the contrary the objects of Intellectual-Principle are without intelligence and life, what are they? They cannot be premisses, axioms, or predicates: as predicates they would not have real existence; they would be affirmations linking separate entities, as when we affirm that justice is good though justice and good are distinct realities.

If we are told that they are self-standing entities — the distinct beings Justice and Good — then (supposing them to be outside) the Intellectual Realm will not be a unity nor be included in any unity: all is sundered individuality. Where, then, are they and what spatial distinction keeps them apart? How does the Intellectual-Principle come to meet with them as it travels round; what keeps each true to its character; what gives them enduring identity; what conceivable shape or character can they have? They are being presented to us as some collection of figures, in gold or some other material substance, the work of some unknown sculptor or graver: but at once the Intellectual-Principle which contemplates them becomes sense-perception; and there still remains the question how one of them comes to be Justice and another something else.

But the great argument is that if we go so far as to allow that these objects of Intellection are outside the Intellectual-Principle which therefore must see them as external, then inevitably it cannot possess the truth of them.

In all it looks upon, it sees falsely; for those objects must be the authentic things; yet it looks upon them without containing them and in such knowledge holds only their images; that is to say, not containing the authentic, adopting phantasms of the true, it holds the false; it never possesses reality. If it knows that it possesses the false, it must confess itself excluded from the truth; if it fails of this knowledge also, imagining itself to possess the truth which has eluded it, then the doubled falsity puts it the deeper into error.

It is thus, I suppose, that in sense-perception we have belief instead of truth; belief is our lief; we satisfy ourselves with something very different from the original which is the occasion of perception.

In fine, there would be on the hypothesis no truth in the Intellectual-Principle. But such an Intellectual-Principle would not be truth, nor -404- truly an Intellectual-Principle. There would be no Intellectual-Principle at all (no Divine Mind): yet elsewhere truth cannot be.


§ 2. Thus we may not look for the Intellectual objects (the Ideas) outside of the Intellectual-Principle, treating them as impressions of reality upon it: we cannot strip it of truth and so make its objects unknowable and non-existent and in the end annul the Intellectual-Principle itself. We must provide for knowledge and for truth; we must secure reality; being must become knowable essentially and not merely in that knowledge of quality which could give us a mere image or vestige of the reality in lieu of possession, intimate association, absorption.

The only way to this is to leave nothing outside of the veritable Intellectual-Principle which thus has knowledge in the true knowing (that of identification with the object), cannot forget, need not go wandering in search. At once truth is there, this is the seat of the authentic Existents, it becomes living and intellective: these are the essentials of that most lofty Principle; and, failing them, where is its worth, its grandeur?

Only thus (by this inherence of the Ideas) is it dispensed from demonstration and from acts of faith in the truth of its knowledge: it is its entire self, self-perspicuous: it knows a prior by recognizing its own source; it knows a sequent to that prior by its self-identity; of the reality of this sequent, of the fact that it is present and has authentic existence, no outer entity can bring it surer conviction.

Thus veritable truth is not accordance with an external; it is self-accordance; it affirms nothing other than itself and is nothing other; it is at once existence and self-affirmation. What external, then, can call it to the question and from what source of truth could the refutation be brought? Any counter affirmation (of truth) must fall into identity with the truth which first uttered itself; brought forward as new it has to appear before the Principle which made the earlier statement and to show itself identical with that: for there is no finding anything truer than the true.


§ 3. Thus we have here one identical Principle, the Intellect, which is the universe of authentic beings, the Truth: as such it is a great god or, better, not a god among gods but the Godhead entire. It is a god, a secondary god manifesting before there is any vision of that other, the Supreme which rests over all, enthroned in transcendence upon that splendid pediment, the nature following close upon it.

The Supreme in its progress could never be borne forward upon some soulless vehicle nor even directly upon the Soul: it will be heralded by some ineffable beauty: before the great King in his progress there comes first the minor train, then rank by rank the greater and more exalted, closer to the King the kinglier; next his own honoured company until, last among all these grandeurs, suddenly appears the -405- Supreme Monarch himself, and all — unless indeed for those who have contented themselves with the spectacle before his coming and gone away — prostrate themselves and hail him.

In that royal progress the King is of another order from those that go before him, but the King in the Supreme is no ruler over externs; he holds that most just of governances, rooted in nature, the veritable kingship, for he is King of Truth, holding sway by all reason over a dense offspring his own, a host that shares his divinity, King over a king and over kings and even more justly called father of Gods.

Zeus (Universal Soul) is in this a symbol of him, Zeus who is not content with the contemplation of his father (Kronos, divine Intellect) but looks to that father’s father (to Ouranos, the Transcendent) as what may be called the divine energy working to the establishment of real being.


§ 4. We have said that all must be brought back to a unity: this must be an authentic unity, not belonging to the order in which multiplicity is unified by participation in what is truly a One; we need a unity independent of participation, not a combination in which multiplicity holds an equal place: we have exhibited, also, the Intellectual Realm and the Intellectual-Principle as more closely a unity than the rest of things, so that there is nothing closer to The One. Yet even this is not The purely One.

This purely One, essentially a unity untouched by the multiple, this we now desire to penetrate if in any way we may.

Only by a leap can we reach to this One which is to be pure of all else, halting sharp in fear of slipping ever so little aside and impinging on the dual: for if we fail of the centre, we are in a duality which does not even include The authentic One but belongs, on both sides, to the later order. The One does not bear to be numbered in with anything else, with a one or a two or any such quantity; it refuses to take number because it is measure and not the measured; it is no peer of other entities to be found among them; for thus, it and they alike would be included in some container and this would be its prior, the prior it cannot have. Not even essential (ideal or abstract) number can belong to The One and certainly not the still later number applying to quantities; for essential number first appears as the unfailing provider of Substance to the divine Intellection, while quantitative number is that (still later and lower) which furnishes the Quantity found in conjunction with other things or which provides for Quantity independent of things, if this is to be thought of as number at all. The Principle which in objects having quantitative number looks to the unity from which they spring is a copy (or lower phase) of the Principle which in the earlier order of number (in essential or ideal number) looks to the veritable One; and it attains its existence without in the least degree dissipating or shattering that prior unity: the dyad has come into being, but the -406- precedent monad still stands; and this monad is quite distinct within the dyad from either of the two constituent unities, since there is nothing to make it one rather than the other: being neither, but simply that thing apart, it is present without being inherent.

But how are the two unities distinct and how is the dyad a unity, and is this unity the same as the unity by which each of the constituents is one thing?

Our answer must be that the unity is that of a participation in the primal unity with the participants remaining distinct from that in which they partake; the dyad, in so far as it is one thing, has this participation, but in a certain degree only; the unity of an army is not that of a single building; and even the building, as a thing of extension, is not strictly a unit either quantitatively or in manner of being.

Are we then to take it that the monads in the pentad and decad differ while the unity in the pentad is the same as that in the decad?

Yes, in the sense in which, big and little, ship is one with ship, army with army, city with city; otherwise, no. But certain difficulties in this matter will be dealt with later.


§ 5. We return to our statement that The First remains intact even when other entities spring from it.

In the case of numbers the unit remains intact while something else produces, and thus number arises in dependence on the unit: much more then does the unit, The One, remain intact in the principle which is before all beings; especially since the entities produced in its likeness, while it thus remains intact, owe their existence to no other, but to its own all-sufficient power.

And just as there is, primarily or secondarily, some form or idea from the monad in each of the successive numbers — the later still participating, though unequally, in the unit — so the series of Beings following upon The First bear, each, some form or idea derived from that source. In Number the participation establishes Quantity; in the realm of Being, the trace of The One establishes reality: existence is a trace of The One — our word for entity may probably be connected with that for unity.

What we know as Being, the first sequent upon The One, advanced a little outward, so to speak, then chose to go no further, turned inward again and comes to rest and is now the reality and hearth (οὐσία and ἑστία) of the universe. Pressing (with the rough breathing) on the word for Being (ὄν) we have the word for One (ἕν), an indication that in our very form of speech we tell, as far as may be, that Being (the weaker) is that which proceeds from (the stronger,) The One. Thus both the thing that comes to be and Being itself are carriers of a copy, since they are outflows from the power of The Primal One: the Soul sees and in its emotion tries to represent what it sees and breaks into speech ‘ἕν — εἶναι — οὐσία — ἑστία’ (Existent; Existence; Essence; Hestia -407- or Hearth), sounds which labour to express the essential nature of the universe produced by the travail of the utterer and so to represent, as far as sounds may, the origin of reality.


§ 6. All this, however, we may leave to the individual judgement: to proceed:

This produced reality is an Ideal-form — for certainly nothing springing from the Supreme can be less — and it is not a particular form but the form of all, beside which there is no other; it follows that The First must be without form, and, if without form, then it is no Being; Being must have some definition and therefore be limited; but the First cannot be thought of as having definition and limit, for thus it would be not the Source but the particular item indicated by the definition assigned to it. If all things belong to the produced, which of them can be thought of as the Supreme? Not included among them, this can be described only as transcending them: but they are Being and the Beings; it therefore transcends Being.

Note that the phrase ‘transcending Being’ assigns no character, makes no assertion, allots no name, carries only the denial of particular being; and in this there is no attempt to circumscribe it: to seek to throw a line about that illimitable Nature would be folly, and anyone thinking to do so cuts himself off from any slightest and most momentary approach to its least vestige.

As one wishing to contemplate the Intellectual Nature will lay aside all the representations of sense and so may see what transcends the sense-realm, in the same way one wishing to contemplate what transcends the Intellectual attains by putting away all that is of the intellect, taught by the intellect, no doubt, that the Transcendent exists but never seeking to define it.

Its definition, in fact, could be only ‘the indefinable’: what is not a thing is not some definite thing. We are in agony for a true expression; we are talking of the untellable; we name, only to indicate for our own use as best we may. And this name, The One, contains really no more than the negation of plurality: under the same pressure the Pythagoreans found their indication in the symbol ‘Apollo’ (α = not; α πολλῶν = of many) with its repudiation of the multiple. If we are led to think positively of The One, name and thing, there would be more truth in silence: the designation, a mere aid to inquiry, was never intended for more than a preliminary affirmation of absolute simplicity to be followed by the rejection of even that statement: it was the best that offered, but remains inadequate to express the nature indicated. For this is a principle not to be conveyed by any sound; it cannot be known on any hearing but, if at all, by vision; and to hope in that vision to see a form is to fail of even that.


§ 7. Consider the act of ocular vision:

There are two elements here; there is the form perceptible to the -408- senseand there is the medium by which the eye sees that form. This medium is itself perceptible to the eye, distinct from the form to be seen, but the cause of the seeing; it is perceived at the one stroke in that form and on it and hence is not distinguished from it, the eye being held entirely by the illuminated object. When on the contrary this medium presents itself alone it is seen directly — though even then actual sight demands some solid base; there must be something besides the medium which unless embracing some object eludes perception; thus the light inherent to the sun would not be perceived but for the solidity of the mass. If it is objected that the sun is light entire, this would only be a proof of our assertion: no other visible form will contain light which must, then, have no other property than that of visibility, and in fact all other visible objects are something more than light alone.

So it is with the act of vision in the Intellectual Principle.

This vision sees, by another light, the objects illuminated by the First Principle: setting itself among them, it sees veritably; declining towards the lower nature, that upon which the light from above rests, it has less of that vision. Passing over the visible and looking to the medium by which it sees, then it holds the Light and the source of Light.

But since the Intellectual-Principle is not to see this light as something external we return to our analogy: the eye is not wholly dependent upon an outside and alien light; there is an earlier light within itself, a more brilliant, which it sees sometimes in a momentary flash. At night in the darkness a gleam leaps from within the eye: or again we make no effort to see anything; the eyelids close; yet a light flashes before us; or we rub the eye and it sees the light it contains. This is sight without the act, but it is the truest seeing, for it sees light whereas its other objects were the lit, not the light.

It is certainly thus that the Intellectual-Principle, hiding itself from all the outer, withdrawing to the inmost, seeing nothing, must have its vision — not of some other light in some other thing but of the light within itself, unmingled, pure, suddenly gleaming before it; —


§ 8. so that we are left wondering whence it came, from within or without; and when it has gone, we say, ‘It was here. Yet no; it was beyond!’ But we ought not to question whence; there is no whence, no coming or going in place; now it is seen and now not seen. We must not run after it, but fit ourselves for the vision and then wait tranquilly for its appearance, as the eye waits on the rising of the sun, which in its own time appears above the horizon — out of the ocean, as the poets say — and gives itself to our sight.

This Principle, of which the sun is an image, where has it its dawning, what horizon does it surmount to appear?

It stands immediately above the contemplating Intellect which has held itself at rest towards the vision, looking to nothing else than the good and beautiful, setting its entire being to that in a perfect surrender, -409- and now tranquilly filled with power and taking a new beauty to itself, gleaming in the light of that presence.

This advent, still, is not by expectation: it is coming without approach; the vision is not of something that must enter but of something present before all else, before the Intellect itself made any movement. Yet it is the Intellect that must move, to come and to go — going because it has not known where it should stay and where that presence stays, the nowhere contained.

And if the Intellect, too, could hold itself in that nowhere — not that it is ever in place; it too is uncontained, utterly unplaced — it would remain forever in the vision of its prior, or, indeed, not in vision but in identity, all duality annulled. But it is Intellect (having a sphere of its own) and when it is to see it must see by that in it which is not Intellect (by its divinest power).

No doubt it is wonderful that The First should thus be present without any coming, and that, while it is nowhere, nowhere is it not: but wonderful though this be in itself, the contrary would be more wonderful to those who know. Of course neither this contrary nor the wonder at it can be entertained. But we must explain:


§ 9. Everything brought into being under some principle not itself is contained either within its maker or, if there is any intermediate, within that: having a prior essential to its being, it needs that prior always, otherwise it would not be contained at all. It is the order of nature: the last in the immediately preceding lasts, these in their priors, and so thing within thing up to the very pinnacle of source.

That Source, having no prior, cannot be contained: uncontained by any of those other forms of being, each held within the series of priors, it is orbed round all, but so as not to be pointed off to hold them part for part; it possesses but is not possessed. Holding all — though itself nowhere held — it is omnipresent, for where its presence failed something would elude its hold. At the same time, in the sense that it is nowhere held it is not present: thus it is both present and not present; not present as not being circumscribed by anything; yet, as being utterly unattached, not inhibited from presence at any point. That inhibition would mean that the First was determined by some other being; the later series, then, would be without part in the Supreme; God has His limit and is no longer self-governed but mastered by inferiors.

While the contained must be where its container is, what is uncontained by place is not debarred from any: for, imagine a place where it is not and evidently some other place retains it; at once it is contained and there is an end of its placelessness.

But if the ‘nowhere’ is to stand and the ascription of a ‘where’, implying station in the extern, is to fall, then nothing can be left void; and at once — nothing void, yet no point containing — God is sovereignly -410- present through all. We cannot think of something of God here and something else there, nor of all God gathered at some one spot: there is an instantaneous presence everywhere, nothing containing and nothing left void, everything therefore fully held by the divine.

Consider our universe. There is none before it and therefore it is not, itself, in a universe or in any place — what place was there before the universe came to be? — its linked members form and occupy the whole. But Soul is not in the universe, on the contrary the universe is in the Soul; bodily substance is not a place to the Soul; Soul is contained in Intellectual-Principle and is the container of body. The Intellectual-Principle in turn is contained in something else; but that prior principle has nothing in which to be: the First is therefore in nothing, and, therefore, nowhere. But all the rest must be somewhere; and where but in the First?

This can mean only that the First is neither remote from things nor directly within them; there is nothing containing it; it contains all. It is The Good to the universe if only in this way, that towards it all things have their being, all dependent upon it, each in its mode, so that thing rises above thing in goodness according to its fuller possession of authentic being.


§ 10. Still, do not, I urge you, look for The Good through any of these other things; if you do, you will see not itself but its trace: you must form the idea of that which is to be grasped, cleanly standing to itself, not in any combination, the unheld in which all have hold: for no other is such, yet one such there must be.

Now it is clear that we cannot possess ourselves of the power of this principle in its concentrated fullness: so to do one must be identical with it: but some partial attainment is within our reach.

You who make the venture will throw forward all your being but you will never tell it entire — for that, you must yourself be the divine Intellect in Act — and at your utmost success it will still pass from you or, rather, you from it. When you see The Good, see it entire: later you may think of it and identify with The Good whatever you can remember.

It is The Good since, being a power (being effective outwardly), it is the cause of the intelligent and intellective life as of life and intellect: for these grow from it as from the source of essence and of existence, the Source as being One (where all else has duality), simplex and first because before it was nothing. All derives from this: it is the origin of the primal movement which it does not possess and of the repose which is but its absence of need; for neither rest nor movement can belong to that which has no place in which either could occur; centre, object, ground, all are alike unknown to it, for it is before all. Yet its being is not limited; what is there to set bounds to it? Nor, on the other hand, is it infinite in the sense of magnitude; what place can there be to -411- which it must extend, or why should there be movement where there is no lacking? All its infinitude resides in its power: it does not change and will not fail; and in it all that is unfailing finds duration.


§ 11. It is infinite also by right of being a pure unity with nothing towards which to direct any partial content. Absolutely One, it has never known measure and stands outside of number, and so is under no limit either in regard to any extern or within itself; for any such determination would bring something of the dual into it. And having no constituent parts it accepts no pattern, forms no shape.

Reason recognizing it as such a nature, you may not hope to see it with mortal eyes, nor in any way that would be imagined by those who make sense the test of reality and so annul the supremely real. For what passes for the most truly existent is most truly non-existent — the thing of extension least real of all — while this unseen First is the source and principle of Being and sovereign over Reality.


“You must turn appearances about or you will be left void of God.”


You must turn appearances about or you will be left void of God. You will be like those at the festivals who in their gluttony cram themselves with things which none going to the gods may touch; they hold these goods to be more real than the vision of the God who is to be honoured and they go away having had no share in the sanctities of the shrine.

In these rites of philosophy, the unseen god leaves those in doubt of his existence who think nothing patent but what may be known to the flesh: it happens as if a man slept a life through and took the dream world in perfect trust; wake him, and he would refuse belief to the report of his open eyes and settle down to sleep again.


§ 12. Knowing demands the organ fitted to the object; eyes for one kind, ears for another: similarly some things, we must believe, are to be known by the Intellectual-Principle in us. We must not confuse intellection with hearing or seeing; this would be trying to look with the ears or denying sound because it is not seen. Certain people, we must keep in mind, have forgotten that to which from the beginning onwards their longing and effort are pointed: for all that exists desires and aspires towards the Supreme by a compulsion of nature, as if all had received the oracle that without it they cannot be.

The perception of Beauty and the awe and the stirring of passion towards it are for those already in some degree knowing and awakened: but the Good, as possessed long since and setting up a natural tendency, is inherently present to even those asleep and brings them no wonder when some day they see it, since it is no occasional reminiscence but is always with them though in their drowse they are not aware of it: the love of Beauty on the contrary sets up pain when it appears, for those that have seen it must pursue. This love of Beauty then is later than the love of Good and comes with a more sophisticated understanding; -412- hence we know that Beauty is a secondary: the more primal appetition, not patent to sense, our movement towards our good, gives witness that The Good is the earlier, the prior.

Again; all that have possessed themselves of The Good feel it sufficient; they have attained the end: but Beauty not all have known and those that have judge it to exist for itself and not for them, as in the charm of this world the beauty belongs only to its possessor.

Then, too, it is thought enough to appear loveable whether one is so or not: but no one wants his Good in semblance only. All are seeking The First as something ranking before aught else, but they struggle venomously for Beauty as something secondary like themselves: thus some minor personage may perhaps challenge equal honour with the King’s right-hand man on pretext of similar dependence, forgetting that, while both owe their standing to the monarch, the other holds the higher rank.

The source of the error is that while both The Good and The Beautiful participate in the common source, The One precedes both; and that, in the Supreme also, The Good has no need of The Beautiful, while The Beautiful does need The Good.

The Good is gentle and friendly and tender, and we have it present when we but will. Beauty is all violence and stupefaction; its pleasure is spoiled with pain, and it even draws the thoughtless away from The Good as some attraction will lure the child from the father’s side: these things tell of youth. The Good is the older — not in time but by degree of reality — and it has the higher and earlier power, all power in fact, for the sequent holds only a power subordinate and delegated of which the prior remains sovereign.

Not that God has any need of His derivatives: He ignores all that produced realm, never necessary to Him, and remains identically what He was before He brought it into being. So too, had the secondary never existed, He would have been unconcerned, exactly as He would not have grudged existence to any other universe that might spring into being from Him, were any such possible; of course no other such could be since there is nothing that has not existence once the All exists.

But God never was the All; that would make Him dependent upon the universe: transcending all, He was able at once to make all things and to leave them to their own being, He above.


§ 13. The Supreme, as the Absolute Good and not merely a good being or thing, can contain nothing, since there is nothing that could be its good.

Anything it could contain must be either good to it or not good; but in the supremely and primally Good there can be nothing not good; nor can the Absolute Good be a container to the Good: containing, then, neither the good nor the not-good it contains nothing and, containing nothing, it is alone: it is void of all but itself. -413-

If the rest of being either is good — without being the absolute good — or is not good while on the other hand the Supreme contains neither what is good nor what is not good, then, containing nothing, it is The Good by that very absence or content.

Thus we rob it of its very being as The Absolute Good if we ascribe anything to it, existence or intellect or goodness. The only way is to make every denial and no assertion, to feign no quality or content there but to permit only the ‘It is’ in which we pretend to no affirmation of non-existent attribute: there is an ignorant praise which, missing the true description, drags in qualities beneath the real worth and so abases; philosophy must guard against attaching to the Supreme what is later and lower: moving above all that order, it is the cause and source of all these, and is none of them.

For, once more, the nature of the Good is not such as to make it all things or a thing among all: that would range it under the same classification with them all and it would differ, thus, only by its individual quality, some speciality, some addition. At once it becomes not a unity but a duality; there is one common element not good and another element that is good; but a combination so made up of good and not-good cannot be the purely good, the primarily good; the primarily good must be that principle in which the better element has more effectively participated and so attained its goodness. Any good thing has become so by communion; but that in which it has communion is not a thing among the things of the All; therefore the Good is not a thing of the All.

Since there is this Good in any good thing — the specific difference by which the combination becomes good — it must enter from elsewhere than the world of things: it must be simplex, good alone: and therefore — and much more — must that source be a Good absolute and isolated.

Thus is revealed to us the Primarily existent, the Good, above all that has being, good unalloyed, containing nothing in itself, utterly unmingling, all-transcending, cause of all.

Certainly neither Being nor Beauty springs from evil or from the neutral; the maker, as the more consummate, must surpass the made. -414-

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Sixth Tractate: That the Principle Transcending Being has no Intellectual Act. What Being has Intellection Primally and What Being has it Secondarily

§ 1. There is a principle having intellection of the external and another having self-intellection and thus further removed from duality.

Even the first mentioned is not without an effort towards the pure unity of which it is not so capable: it does actually contain its object, though as something other than itself.

In the self-intellective there is not even this distinction of being: self-conversing, the subject is its own object, and thus takes the double form while remaining essentially a unity. The intellection is the more profound for this internal possession of the object.

This principle is the primally intellective since there can be no intellection without duality in unity. If there is no unity, perceiving principle and perceived object will be different, and the intellection, therefore, not primal: a principle concerned with something external cannot be the primally intellective since it does not possess the object as integrally its own or as itself; if it does possess the object as itself — the condition of true intellection — the two are one. Thus (in order to primal intellection) there must be a unity in duality, while a pure unity with no counterbalancing duality can have no object for its intellection and ceases to be intellective: in other words the primally intellective must be at once simplex and something else.

But the surest way of realizing that its nature demands this combination of unity and duality is to proceed upwards from the Soul where the distinction can be made more clearly since the duality is exhibited more obviously.

We can imagine the Soul as a double light, a lesser corresponding to the soul proper, a purer representing its intellective phase; if now we suppose this intellective light equal to the light which is to be its object, we no longer distinguish between them; the two are recognized as one: we know, indeed, that there are two, but as we see them they have become one: this gives us the relation between the intellective subject and the object of intellection (in the duality and unity required by that primal intellection): in our thought we have made the two into one; but on the other hand the one thing has become two, making itself into a duality at the moment of intellection, or to be more exact, being dual by the fact of intellection and single by the fact that its intellectual object is itself. -415-


§ 2. Thus there is the primally intellective and there is that in which intellection has taken another mode; but this indicates that what transcends the primarily intellective has no intellection; for, to have intellection, it must become an Intellectual-Principle, and, if it is to become that, it must possess an intellectual object and, as primarily intellective, it must possess that intellectual object as something within itself.

But it is not inevitable that every intellectual object should both possess the intellective principle in itself and exercise intellection: at that, it would be not merely object but subject as well and, besides, being thus dual, could not be primal: further, the intellectual principle that is to possess the intellectual object could not cohere unless there existed an essence purely intellectual, something which, while standing as intellectual object to the intellectual principle, is in its own essence neither an agent nor an object of intellection. The intellectual object points to something beyond itself (to a percipient); and the intellectual agent has its intellection in vain unless by seizing and holding an object — since, failing that, it can have no intellection but is consummated only when it possesses itself of its natural term.

There must have been something standing consummate independently of any intellectual act, something perfect in its own essence: thus that in which this completion is inherent must exist before intellection; in other words it has no need of intellection, having been always self-sufficing: this, then, will have no intellectual act.

Thus we arrive at: a principle having no intellection, a principle having intellection primarily, a principle having it secondarily.

It may be added that, supposing The First to be intellective, it thereby possesses something (some object, some attribute): at once it ceases to be a first; it is a secondary, and not even a unity; it is a many; it is all of which it takes intellectual possession; even though its intellection fell solely upon its own content, it must still be a manifold.


§ 3. We may be told that nothing prevents an identity being thus multiple. But there must be a unity underlying the aggregate: a manifold is impossible without a unity for its source or ground, or at least failing some unity related or unrelated. This unity must be numbered as first before all and can be apprehended only as solitary and self-existent.

When we recognize it, resident among the mass of things, our business is to see it for what it is — present to the items but essentially distinguished from them — and, while not denying it there, to seek this underlie of all no longer as it appears in those other things but as it stands in its pure identity by itself. The identity resident in the rest of things is no doubt close to authentic identity but cannot be it; and if the identity of unity is to be displayed beyond itself it must also exist within itself alone.

It may be suggested that its existence takes substantial form only by its being resident among outside things: but, at this, it is itself no -416- longer simplex nor could any coherence of manifolds occur. On the one hand things could take substantial existence only if they were in their own virtue simplex. On the other hand, failing a simplex, the aggregate of multiples is itself impossible: for the simplex individual thing could not exist if there were no simplex unity independent of the individual (a principle of identity), and, not existing, much less could it enter into composition with any other such: it becomes impossible then for the compound universe, the aggregate of all, to exist; it would be the coming together of things that are not, things not merely lacking an identity of their own but utterly non-existent.

Once there is any manifold, there must be a precedent unity: since any intellection implies multiplicity in the intellective subject, the non- multiple must be without intellection; that non-multiple will be the First: intellection and the Intellectual-Principle must be characteristic of beings coming later.


§ 4. Another consideration is that if The Good (and First) is simplex and without need, it can neither need the intellective act nor possess what it does not need: in fact, it possesses nothing: it will therefore not have intellection. It is without intellection because, also, it contains no duality.

Again; an Intellectual-Principle is distinct from The Good and takes a certain goodness only by its intellection of The Good.

Yet again: in any dual object there is the unity (the principle of identity) side by side with the rest of the thing; an associated member cannot be the unity of the two and there must be a self-standing unity (within the duality) before this unity of members can exist: by the same reasoning there must be also the supreme unity entering into no association whatever, something which is unity-simplex by its very being, utterly devoid of all that belongs to the thing capable of association.

How could anything be present in anything else unless in virtue of a source existing independently of association? The simplex (or absolute) requires no derivation; but any manifold, or any dual, must be dependent.

We may use the figure of, first, light; then, following it, the sun; as a third, the orb of the moon taking its light from the sun: Soul carries the Intellectual-Principle as something imparted and lending the light which makes it essentially intellective; Intellectual-Principle carries the light as its own though it is not purely the light but is the being into whose very essence the light has been received; highest is That which, giving forth the light to its sequent, is no other than the pure light itself by whose power the Intellectual-Principle takes character.

How can this highest have need of any other? It is not to be identified with any of the things that enter into association; the self-standing is of a very different order. -417-


§ 5. And again: the multiple must be always seeking its identity, desiring self-accord and self-awareness: but what scope is there within what is an absolute unity in which to move towards its identity, or at what term may it hope for self-knowing? It holds its identity in its very essence and is above consciousness and all intellective act. Intellection is not a primal either in the fact of being or in the value of being; it is secondary and derived: for The Good gives it being and moves it back towards itself, while its sequent by that movement has its characteristic vision. The intellective act may be defined as a movement towards The Good in some being that aspires towards it; the effort produces the fact; the two are coincident; to see is to have desired to see: hence again the Authentic Good has no need of intellection since itself and nothing else is its good.

The intellective act is a movement towards the unmoved Good: thus the self-intellection in all save the Absolute Good is the working of the imaged Good within them: the Intellectual-Principle recognizes the likeness, sees itself as a good to itself, an object of attraction: it grasps at that manifestation of The Good, and in holding that holds self-vision: if the state of goodness is constant, it remains constantly self- attractive and self-intellective. The self-intellection is not deliberate: it sees itself as an incident in its contemplation of The Good; for it sees itself in virtue of its Act; and in all that exists the Act is towards The Good.


§ 6. If this reasoning is valid, The Good has no scope whatever for intellection, which demands something attractive from outside. The Good, then, is without Act. What Act, indeed, could be vested in Activity’s self? No activity has yet again an activity; and whatever we may add to such activities as depend from something else, at least we must leave the first Activity of them all, that from which all depend, as an uncontaminated identity, one to which no such addition can be made.

That primal Activity, then, is not an intellection, for there is nothing upon which it could exercise intellection since it is The First; besides, intellection itself does not exercise the intellective act; this belongs to some principle in which intellection is vested. There is, we repeat, duality in any thinking being; and the First is wholly above the dual.

But all this may be made more evident by a clearer recognition of the twofold principle at work wherever there is intellection:

When we affirm the reality of the Real Beings and their individual identity of being and declare that these Real Beings exist in the Intellectual Realm, we do not mean merely that they remain unchangeably self-identical by their very essence as contrasted with the fluidity and instability of the sense-realm; the sense-realm itself may contain the enduring. No; we mean rather that these principles possess, as by their own virtue, the consummate fullness of being. The Essence described -418- as the primally existent cannot be a shadow cast by Being, but must possess Being entire; and Being is entire when it holds the form and idea of intellection and of life. In a Being, then, the existence, the intellection, the life are present as an aggregate. When a thing is a Being, it is also an Intellectual-Principle; when it is an Intellectual-Principle, it is a Being; intellection and Being are coexistents. Therefore intellection is a multiple not a unitary, and that which (like the Good) does not belong to this order can have no intellection. And if we turn to the partial and particular, there is the Intellectual form of man, and there is man, there is the Intellectual form of horse and there is horse, the Intellectual form of justice, and justice.

Thus all is dual: the unit is a duality and yet again the dual reverts to unity.

That, however, which stands outside all this category can be neither an individual unity nor an aggregate of all the duals or in any way a duality. How the duals rose from The One is treated elsewhere.

What stands above Being stands above intellection: it is no weakness in it not to know itself, since as pure unity it contains nothing which it needs to explore. But it also need not be known by beings outside itself: it gives them something greater and better than a knowledge of what constitutes the good of other things — it gives them in their own identity to cling, in whatever measure be possible, to a principle thus lofty.

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Seventh Tractate: Is There an Ideal Archetype of Particular Beings?

§ 1. We have to examine the question whether there exists an ideal archetype of individuals, in other words whether I and every other human being go back to the Intellectual, every (living) thing having origin and principle There.

If Socrates, Socrates’ soul, is eternal, then the Authentic Socrates — to adopt the term — must be There; that is to say, the individual soul has an existence in the Supreme as well as in this world. If there is no such permanent endurance — and what was Socrates may with change of time become another soul and be Pythagoras or someone else — then the individual Socrates has not that existence in the Divine.

But if the Soul of the individual contains the Reason-Principles of all that it traverses, once more all men have their (archetypic) existence There: and it is our doctrine that every soul contains all the Reason-Principles that exist in the Cosmos: since then the Cosmos contains the Reason-Principles not merely of man, but also of all individual living -419- things, so must the Soul. Its content of Reason-Principles, then, must be limitless, unless there be a periodical renovation bounding the boundlessness by the return of a former series.

But if (in virtue of this periodic return) each archetype may be reproduced by numerous existents, what need is there that there be distinct Reason-Principles and archetypes for each existent in any one period? Might not one (archetypal) man suffice for all, and similarly a limited number of souls produce a limitless number of men?

No: one Reason-Principle cannot account for distinct and differing individuals: one human being does not suffice as the exemplar for many distinct each from the other not merely in material constituents but by innumerable variations of ideal type: this is no question of various pictures or images reproducing an original Socrates; the beings produced differ so greatly as to demand distinct Reason-Principles. The entire soul-period conveys with it all the requisite Reason-Principles and so too the same existents appear once more under their action.

There is no need to baulk at this limitlessness in the Intellectual; it is an infinitude having nothing to do with number or part; what we may think of as its outgoing is no other than its characteristic Act.


§ 2. But individuals are brought into being by the union of the Reason-Principles of the parents male and female: this seems to do away with a definite Reason-Principle for each of the offspring: one of the parents — the male let us say — is the source; and the offspring is determined not by Reason-Principles differing from child to child but by one only, the father’s or that of the father’s father.

No: a distinct Reason-Principle may be the determinant for the child since the parent contains all: they would become effective at different times.

And so of the differences among children of the same parents: it is a matter of varying dominance: not that the offspring — whether it so appears or not — has been mainly determined by, now, the male, now, the female but, while each principle has given itself entire and lies there within, yet the bodily substance may be effectively moulded by both or by one only of the two.

And how are the differences to be explained which are caused by birth in different parts of the womb?

Is the differentiating element to be found in the varying resistance of the material of the body?

No: if this were so, all men with the exception of one only would be untrue to nature.

Difference often results in beauty, and so there must be differing archetypes. Deformity alone should be explained by a power in Matter to thwart nature by overmastering the perfect Reason-Principles, hidden but given, all.

Still, admitting the diversity of the Reason-Principles, why need -420- there be as many as there are men born in each Period, once it is granted that different beings may take external manifestation under the presence of the same principles?

Under the presence of all; agreed: but with the dominance of the very same? That is still open to question.

May we not take it that there may be identical reproduction from one Period to another but not in the same Period?


§ 3. In the case of twin birth among human beings how can we make out the Reason-Principles to be different; and still more when we turn to the animals and especially those with litters?

Where the young are precisely alike, there is one Reason-Principle.

But this would mean that after all there are not as many Reason-Principles as separate beings?

As many as there are of differing beings, differing by something more than a mere failure in complete reproduction of their Idea.

And why may there not be different Reason-Principles even in beings untouched by differentiation, if indeed there be any such?

A craftsman even in constructing an object identical with a model must envisage that identity in a mental differentiation enabling him to make a second thing by bringing in some difference side by side with the identity: similarly in nature, where the new thing comes about not by reasoning but in sole virtue of Reason-Principles, that differentiation must be included in the archetypal idea, though it is not in our power to perceive the difference.

The consideration of Quantity brings the same result:

If production is undetermined in regard to Quantity, we need an- other line of approach; but if there is a measured system the Quantity has been determined by the unrolling and unfolding of the Reason-Principles of all the existences.

Thus when the universe has reached its term, there will be a fresh beginning, since the entire Quantity which the Cosmos is to exhibit, every item that is to emerge in its course, all is laid up from the first in the Being that contains the Reason-Principles.

Are we, then, looking to the brute realm, to hold that there are as many Reason-Principles as distinct creatures born in a litter?

Why not? There is nothing alarming about such limitlessness in generative forces and in Reason-Principles, when Soul is there to sustain all.

As in Soul (principle of Life) so in Divine Mind (principle of Idea) there is this infinitude of recurring generative powers; the Beings there are unfailing. -421-

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Eighth Tractate: On the Intellectual Beauty

§ 1. It is a principle with us that one who has attained to the vision of the Intellectual Beauty and grasped the beauty of the Authentic Intellect will be able also to come to understand the Father and Transcendent of that Divine Being. It concerns us, then, to try to see and say, for ourselves and as far as such matters may be told, how the Beauty of the divine Intellect and of the Intellectual Cosmos may be revealed to contemplation.

Let us go to the realm of magnitudes: — suppose two blocks of stone lying side by side: one is unpatterned, quite untouched by art; the other has been minutely wrought by the craftsman’s hands into some statue of god or man, a Grace or a Muse, or if a human being, not a portrait but a creation in which the sculptor’s art has concentrated all loveliness.

Now it must be seen that the stone thus brought under the artist’s hand to the beauty of form is beautiful not as stone — for so the crude block would be as pleasant — but in virtue of the Form or Idea introduced by the art. This form is not in the material; it is in the designer before ever it enters the stone; and the artificer holds it not by his equipment of eyes and hands but by his participation in his art. The beauty, therefore, exists in a far higher state in the art; for it does not come over integrally into the work; that original beauty is not transferred; what comes over is a derivative and a minor: and even that shows itself upon the statue not integrally and with entire realization of intention but only in so far as it has subdued the resistance of the material.

Art, then, creating in the image of its own nature and content, and working by the Idea or Reason-Principle of the beautiful object it is to produce, must itself be beautiful in a far higher and purer degree since it is the seat and source of that beauty, indwelling in the art, which must naturally be more complete than any comeliness of the external. In the degree in which the beauty is diffused by entering into matter, it is so much the weaker than that concentrated in unity; everything that reaches outwards is the less for it, strength less strong, heat less hot, every power less potent, and so beauty less beautiful.

Then again every prime cause must be, within itself, more powerful than its effect can be: the musical does not derive from an unmusical source but from music; and so the art exhibited in the material work derives from an art yet higher.

Still the arts are not to be slighted on the ground that they create by imitation of natural objects; for, to begin with, these natural objects are themselves imitations; then, we must recognize that they give no -422- bare reproduction of the thing seen but go back to the Reason-Principles from which Nature itself derives, and, furthermore, that much of their work is all their own; they are holders of beauty and add where nature is lacking. Thus Pheidias wrought the Zeus upon no model among things of sense but by apprehending what form Zeus must take if he chose to become manifest to sight.


§ 2. But let us leave the arts and consider those works produced by Nature and admitted to be naturally beautiful which the creations of art are charged with imitating, all reasoning life and unreasoning things alike, but especially the consummate among them, where the moulder and maker has subdued the material and given the form he desired. Now what is the beauty here? It has nothing to do with the blood or the menstrual process: either there is also a colour and form apart from all this or there is nothing unless sheer ugliness or (at best) a bare recipient, as it were the mere Matter of beauty.

Whence shone forth the beauty of Helen, battle-sought; or of all those women like in loveliness to Aphrodite; or of Aphrodite herself; or of any human being that has been perfect in beauty; or of any of these gods manifest to sight, or unseen but carrying what would be beauty if we saw?

In all these is it not the Idea, something of that realm but communicated to the produced from within the producer, just as in works of art, we held, it is communicated from the arts to their creations? Now we can surely not believe that, while the made thing and the Idea thus impressed upon Matter are beautiful, yet the Idea not so alloyed but resting still with the creator — the Idea primal, immaterial, firmly a unity — is not Beauty.

If material extension were in itself the ground of beauty, then the creating principle, being without extension, could not be beautiful: but beauty cannot be made to depend upon magnitude since, whether in a large object or a small, the one Idea equally moves and forms the mind by its inherent power. A further indication is that as long as the object remains outside us we know nothing of it; it affects us by entry; but only as an Idea can it enter through the eyes which are not of scope to take an extended mass: we are, no doubt, simultaneously possessed of the magnitude which, however, we take in not as mass but by an elaboration upon the presented form.

Then again the principle producing the beauty must be, itself, ugly, neutral, or beautiful: ugly, it could not produce the opposite; neutral, why should its product be the one rather than the other? The Nature, then, which creates things so lovely must be itself of a far earlier beauty; we, undisciplined in discernment of the inward, knowing nothing of it, run after the outer, never understanding that it is the inner which stirs us; we are in the case of one who sees his own reflection but not realizing whence it comes goes in pursuit of it. -423-

But that the thing we are pursuing is something different and that the beauty is not in the concrete object is manifest from the beauty there is in matters of study, in conduct and custom; briefly, in soul or mind. And it is precisely here that the greater beauty lies, perceived whenever you look to the wisdom in a man and delight in it, not wasting attention on the face, which may be hideous, but passing all appearance by and catching only at the inner comeliness, the truly personal; if you are still unmoved and cannot acknowledge beauty under such conditions, then looking to your own inner being you will find no beauty to delight you and it will be futile in that state to seek the greater vision, for you will be questing it through the ugly and impure.

This is why such matters are not spoken of to everyone; you, if you are conscious of beauty within, remember.


§ 3. Thus there is inthe Nature-Principle itself an Ideal archetype of the beauty that is found in material forms and, of that archetype again, the still more beautiful archetype in Soul, source of that in Nature. In the proficient soul this is brighter and of more advanced loveliness: adorning the soul and bringing to it a light from that greater light which is Beauty primally, its immediate presence sets the soul reflecting upon the quality of this prior, the archetype which has no such entries, and is present nowhere but remains in itself alone, and thus is not even to be called a Reason-Principle but is the creative source of the very first Reason-Principle which is the Beauty to which Soul serves as Matter.

This prior, then, is the Intellectual-Principle, the veritable, abiding and not fluctuant since not taking intellectual quality from outside itself. By what image, thus, can we represent it? We have nowhere to go but to what is less. Only from itself can we take an image of it; that is, there can be no representation of it, except in the sense that we represent gold by some portion of gold — purified, either actually or mentally, if it be impure — insisting at the same time that this is not the total thing gold, but merely the particular gold of a particular parcel. In the same way we learn in this matter from the purified Intellect in ourselves or, if you like, from the gods and the glory of the Intellect in them.

For assuredly all the gods are august and beautiful in a beauty beyond our speech. And what makes them so? Intellect; and especially Intellect operating within them (the divine sun and stars) to visibility. It is not through the loveliness of their corporeal forms: even those that have body are not gods by that beauty; it is in virtue of Intellect that they, too, are gods, and as gods beautiful. They do not veer between wisdom and folly: in the immunity of Intellect unmoving and pure, they are wise always, all-knowing, taking cognizance not of the human but of their own being and of all that lies within the contemplation of Intellect. Those of them whose dwelling is in the heavens are ever in this meditation — what task prevents them? — and from afar they look, -424- too, into that further heaven by a lifting of the head. The gods belonging to that higher Heaven itself, they whose station is upon it and in it, see and know in virtue of their omnipresence to it. For all There is heaven; earth is heaven, and sea heaven; and animal and plant and man; all is the heavenly content of that heaven: and the gods in it, despising neither men nor anything else that is there where all is of the heavenly order, traverse all that country and all space in peace.


§ 4. To ‘live at ease’ is There; and to these divine beings verity is mother and nurse, existence and sustenance; all that is not of process but of authentic being they see, and themselves in all: for all is transparent, nothing dark, nothing resistant; every being is lucid to every other, in breadth and depth; light runs through light. And each of them contains all within itself, and at the same time sees all in every other, so that everywhere there is all, and all is all and each all, and infinite the glory. Each of them is great; the small is great; the sun, There, is all the stars; and every star, again, is all the stars and sun. While some one manner of being is dominant in each, all are mirrored in every other.

Movement There is pure (as self-caused), for the moving principle is not a separate thing to complicate it as it speeds.

So, too, Repose is not troubled, for there is no admixture of the unstable; and the Beauty is all beauty since it is not resident in what is not beautiful. Each There walks upon no alien soil; its place is its essential self; and, as each moves, so to speak, towards what is Above, it is attended by the very ground from which it starts: there is no distinguishing between the Being and the Place; all is Intellect, the Principle and the ground on which it stands, alike. Thus we might think that our visible sky (the ground or place of the stars), lit as it is, produces the light which reaches us from it, though of course this is really produced by the stars (as it were, by the Principles of light alone, not also by the ground as the analogy would require).

In our realm all is part rising from part and nothing can be more than partial; but There each being is an eternal product of a whole and is at once a whole and an individual manifesting as part but, to the keen vision There, known for the whole it is.

The myth of Lynceus seeing into the very deeps of the earth tells us of those eyes in the divine. No weariness overtakes this vision which yet brings no such satiety as would call for its ending; for there never was a void to be filled so that, with the fullness and the attainment of purpose, the sense of sufficiency be induced: nor is there any such incongruity within the divine that one Being There could be repulsive to another: and of course all There are unchangeable. This absence of satisfaction means only a satisfaction leading to no distaste for that which produces it; to see is to look the more, since for them to continue in the contemplation of an infinite self and of infinite objects is but to acquiesce in the bidding of their nature. -425-

Life, pure, is never a burden; how then could there be weariness There where the living is most noble? That very life is wisdom, not a wisdom built up by reasonings but complete from the beginning, suffering no lack which could set it inquiring, a wisdom primal, unborowed, not something added to the Being, but its very essence. No wisdom, thus, is greater; this is the authentic knowing, assessor to the divine Intellect as projected into manifestation simultaneously with it; thus, in the symbolic saying, Justice is assessor to Zeus.

(Perfect wisdom:) for all the Principles of this order, dwelling There, are as it were visible images projected from themselves, so that all becomes an object of contemplation to contemplators immeasurably blessed. The greatness and power of the wisdom There we may know from this, that it embraces all the real Beings, and has made all and all follow it, and yet that it is itself those beings, which sprang into being with it, so that all is one and the essence There is wisdom. If we have failed to understand, it is that we have thought of knowledge as a mass of theorems and an accumulation of propositions, though that is false even for our sciences of the sense-realm. But in case this should be questioned, we may leave our own sciences for the present, and deal with the knowing in the Supreme at which Plato glances where he speaks of ‘that knowledge which is not a stranger in something strange to it’ — though in what sense, he leaves us to examine and declare, if we boast ourselves worthy of the discussion. This is probably our best starting-point.


§ 5. All that comes to be, work of nature or of craft, some wisdom has made: everywhere a wisdom presides at a making.

No doubt the wisdom of the artist may be the guide of the work; it is sufficient explanation of the wisdom exhibited in the arts; but the artist himself goes back, after all, to that wisdom in Nature which is embodied in himself; and this is not a wisdom built up of theorems but one totality, not a wisdom consisting of manifold detail coordinated into a unity but rather a unity working out into detail.

Now, if we could think of this as the primal wisdom, we need look no further, since, at that, we have discovered a principle which is neither a derivative nor a ‘stranger in something strange to it’. But if we are told that, while this Reason-Principle is in Nature, yet Nature itself is its source, we ask how Nature came to possess it; and, if Nature derived it from some other source, we ask what that other source may be; if, on the contrary, the principle is self-sprung, we need look no further: but if (as we assume) we are referred to the Intellectual-Principle we must make clear whether the Intellectual-Principle engendered the wisdom: if we learn that it did, we ask whence: if from itself, then inevitably it is itself Wisdom.

The true Wisdom, then (found to be identical with the Intellectual- Principle), is Real Being; and Real Being is Wisdom; it is wisdom that -426- gives value to Real Being; and Being is Real in virtue of its origin in wisdom. It follows that all forms of existence not possessing wisdom are, indeed, Beings in right of the wisdom which went to their forming, but, as not in themselves possessing it, are not Real Beings.

We cannot, therefore, think that the divine Beings of that sphere, or the other supremely blessed There, need look to our apparatus of science: all of that realm (the very Beings themselves), all is noble image, such images as we may conceive to lie within the soul of the wise — but There not as inscription but as authentic existence. The ancients had this in mind when they declared the Ideas (Forms) to be Beings, Essentials.


§ 6. Similarly, as it seems to me, the wise of Egypt — whether in precise knowledge or by a prompting of nature — indicated the truth where, in their effort towards philosophical statement, they left aside the writing-forms that take in the detail of words and sentences — those characters that represent sounds and convey the propositions of reasoning — and drew pictures instead, engraving in the temple-inscriptions a separate image forevery separate item: thus they exhibited the absence of discursiveness in the Intellectual Realm.

For each manifestation of knowledge and wisdom is a distinct image, an object in itself, an immediate unity, not an aggregate of discursive reasoning and detailed willing. Later from this wisdom in unity there appears, in another form of being, an image, already less compact, which announces the original in terms of discourse and seeks the causes by which things are such that the wonder rises how a generated world can be so excellent.

For, one who knows must declare his wonder that this Wisdom, while not itself containing the causes by which Being exists and takes such excellence, yet imparts them to the entities produced in Being’s realm. This excellence, whose necessity is scarcely or not at all manifest to search, exists, if we could but find it out, before all searching and reasoning.

What I say may be considered in one chief thing, and thence applied to all the particular entities:


§ 7. Consider the universe: we are agreed that its existence and its nature come to it from beyond itself; are we, now, to imagine that its maker first thought it out in detail — the earth, and its necessary situation in the middle; water and, again, its position as lying upon the earth; all the other elements and objects up to the sky in due place and order; living beings with their appropriate forms as we know them, their inner organs and their outer limbs — and that having thus appointed every item beforehand, he then set about the execution?

Such designing was not even possible; how could the plan for a universe come to one that had never looked outward? Nor could he -427- work on material gathered from elsewhere as our craftsmen do, using hands and tools; feet and hands are of the later order.

One way, only, remains: all things must exist in something else; of that prior — since there is no obstacle, all being continuous within the realm of reality — there has suddenly appeared a sign, an image, whether given forth directly or through the ministry of soul or of some phase of soul, matters nothing for the moment: thus the entire aggregate of existence springs from the divine world, in greater beauty There because There unmingled but mingled here.

From the beginning to end all is gripped by the Forms of the Intellectual Realm: Matter itself is held by the Ideas of the elements and to these Ideas are added other Ideas and others again, so that it is hard to work down to crude Matter beneath all that sheathing of Idea. Indeed since Matter itself is, in its degree, an Idea — the lowest — all this universe is Idea and there is nothing that is not Idea as the archetype was. And all is made silently, since nothing had part in the making but Being and Idea — a further reason why creation went without toil. The Exemplar was the Idea of an All and so an All must come into being.

Thus nothing stood in the way of the Idea, and even now it dominates, despite all the clash of things: the creation is not hindered on its way even now; it stands firm in virtue of being All. To me, moreover, it seems that if we ourselves were archetypes, Ideas, veritable Being, and the Idea with which we construct here were our veritable Essence, then our creative power, too, would toillessly effect its purpose: as man now stands, he does not produce in his work a true image of himself: become man, he has ceased to be the All; ceasing to be man — we read — ‘he soars aloft and administers the Cosmos entire’; restored to the All he is maker of the All.

But — to our immediate purpose — it is possible to give a reason why the earth is set in the midst and why it is round and why the ecliptic runs precisely as it does, but, looking to the creating principle, we cannot say that because this was the way therefore things were so planned: we can say only that because the Exemplar is what it is, therefore the things of this world are good; the causing principle, we might put it, reached the conclusion before all formal reasoning and not from any premisses, not by sequence or plan but before either, since all of that order is later, all reason, demonstration, persuasion.

Since there is a Source, all the created must spring from it and in accordance with it; and we are rightly told not to go seeking the causes impelling a Source to produce, especially when this is the perfectly sufficient Source and identical with the Term: a Source which is Source and Term must be the All-Unity, complete in itself.


§ 8. This then is Beauty primally: it is entire and omnipresent as an entirety; and therefore in none of its parts or members lacking in beauty; beautiful thus beyond denial. Certainly it cannot be anything -428- (be, for example, Beauty) without being wholly that thing; it can be nothing which it is to possess partially or in which it utterly fails (and therefore it must entirely be Beauty entire).

If this principle were not beautiful, what other could be? Its prior does not deign to be beautiful; that which is the first to manifest itself — Form and object of vision to the intellect — cannot but be lovely to see. It is to indicate this that Plato, drawing on something well within our observation, represents the Creator as approving the work he has achieved: the intention is to make us feel the lovable beauty of the archetype and of the Divine Idea; for to admire a representation is to admire the original upon which it was made.

It is not surprising if we fail to recognize what is passing within us: lovers, and those in general that admire beauty here, do not stay to reflect that it is to be traced, as of course it must be, to the Beauty There. That the admiration of the Demiurge is to be referred to the Ideal Exemplar is deliberately made evident by the rest of the passage: ‘He admired; and determined to bring the work into still closer likeness with the Exemplar’: he makes us feel the magnificent beauty of the Exemplar by telling us that the Beauty sprung from this world is, itself, a copy from That.

And indeed if the divine did not exist, the transcendently beautiful, in a beauty beyond all thought, what could be lovelier than the things we see? Certainly no reproach can rightly be brought against this world save only that it is not That.


§ 9. Let us, then, make a mental picture of our universe: each member shall remain what it is, distinctly apart; yet all is to form, as far as possible, a complete unity so that whatever comes into view, say the outer orb of the heavens, shall bring immediately with it the vision, on the one plane, of the sun and of all the stars with earth and sea and all living things as if exhibited upon a transparent globe.

Bring this vision actually before your sight, so that there shall be in your mind the gleaming representation of a sphere, a picture holding all the things of the universe moving or in repose or (as in reality) some at rest, some in motion. Keep this sphere before you, and from it imagine another, a sphere stripped of magnitude and of spatial differences; cast out your inborn sense of Matter, taking care not merely to attenuate it: call on God, maker of the sphere whose image you now hold, and pray Him to enter. And may He come bringing His own Universe with all the gods that dwell in it — He who is the one God and all the gods, where each is all, blending into a unity, distinct in powers but all one god in virtue of that one divine power of many facets.

More truly, this is the one God who is all the gods; for, in the coming to be of all those, this, the one, has suffered no diminishing. He and all have one existence, while each again is distinct. It is distinction by state without interval: there is no outward form to set one here and -429- another there and to prevent any from being an entire identity; yet there is no sharing of parts from one to another. Nor is each of those divine wholes a power in fragment, a power totalling to the sum of the measurable segments: the divine is one all-power, reaching out to infinity, powerful to infinity: and so great is God that his very members are infinites. What place can be named to which He does not reach?

Great, too, is this firmament of ours and all the powers constellated within it, but it would be greater still, unspeakably, but that there is inbound in it something of the petty power of body; no doubt the powers of fire and other bodily substances might themselves be thought very great, but in fact, it is through their failure in the true power that we see them burning, destroying, wearing things away, and slaving towards the production of life; they destroy because they are themselves in process of destruction, and they produce because they belong to the realm of the produced.

The power in that other world has merely Being and Beauty of Being. Beauty without Being could not be, nor Being voided of Beauty: abandoned of Beauty, Being loses something of its essence. Being is desirable because it is identical with Beauty; and Beauty is loved because it is Being. How then can we debate which is the cause of the other, where the nature is one? The very figment of Being needs some imposed image of Beauty to make it passable, and even to ensure its existence; it exists to the degree in which it has taken some share in the beauty of Idea; and the more deeply it has drawn on this, the less imperfect it is, precisely because the nature which is essentially the beautiful has entered into it the more intimately.


§ 10. This is why Zeus, although the oldest of the gods and their sovereign, advances first (in the Phaedrus myth) towards that vision, followed by gods and demigods and such souls as are of strength to see. That Being appears before them from some unseen place and rising loftily over them pours its light upon all things, so that all gleams in its radiance; it upholds some beings, and they see; the lower are dazzled and turn away, unfit to gaze upon that sun, the trouble falling the more heavily on those most remote.

Of those looking upon that Being and its content, and able to see, all take something but not all the same vision always: intently gazing, one sees the fount and principle of Justice, another is filled with the sight of Moral Wisdom, the original of that quality as found, sometimes at least, among men, copied by them in their degree from the divine virtue which, covering all the expanse, so to speak, of the Intellectual Realm is seen, last attainment of all, by those who have known already many splendid visions.

The gods see, each singly and all as one. So, too, the souls; they see all There in right of being sprung, themselves, of that universe and -430-therefore including all from beginning to end and having their existence There if only by that phase which belongs inherently to the Divine, though often too they are There entire, those of them that have not incurred separation.

This vision Zeus takes and it is for such of us, also, as share his love and appropriate our part in the Beauty There, the final object of all seeing, the entire beauty upon all things; for all There sheds radiance, and floods those that have found their way thither so that they too become beautiful; thus it will often happen that men climbing heights where the soil has taken a yellow glow will themselves appear so, borrowing colour from the place on which they move. The colour flowering on that other height we speak of is Beauty; or rather all There is light and beauty, through and through, for the beauty is no mere bloom upon the surface.

To those that do not see entire, the immediate impression is alone taken into account; but those drunken with this wine, filled with the nectar, all their soul penetrated by this beauty, cannot remain mere gazers: no longer is there a spectator outside gazing on an outside spectacle; the clear-eyed hold the vision within themselves, though, for the most part, they have no idea that it is within but look towards it as to something beyond them and see it as an object of vision caught by a direction of the will.

All that one sees as a spectacle is still external; one must bring the vision within and see no longer in that mode of separation but as we know ourselves; thus a man filled with a god — possessed by Apollo or by one of the Muses — need no longer look outside for his vision of the divine being; it is but finding the strength to see divinity within.


§ 11. Similarly any one, unable to see himself, but possessed by that God, has but to bring that divine-within before his consciousness and at once he sees an image of himself, himself lifted to a better beauty: now let him ignore that image, lovely though it is, and sink into a perfect self-identity, no such separation remaining; at once he forms a multiple unity with the God silently present; in the degree of his power and will, the two become one; should he turn back to the former duality, still he is pure and remains very near to the God; he has but to look again and the same presence is there.

This conversion brings gain: at the first stage, that of separation, a man is aware of self; but retreating inwards, he becomes possessor of all; he puts sense away behind him in dread of the separated life and becomes one in the Divine; if he plans to see in separation, he sets himself outside.

The novice must hold himself constantly under some image of the Divine Being and seek in the light of a clear conception; knowing thus, in a deep conviction, whither he is going — into what a sublimity he penetrates — he must give himself forthwith to the inner and, radiant -431- with the Divine Intellections (with which he is now one), be no longer the seer, but, asthat place has made him, the seen.

Still, we will be told, one cannot be in beauty and yet fail to see it. The very contrary: to see the divine as something external is to be outside of it; to become it is to be most truly in beauty: since sight deals with the external, there can here be no vision unless in the sense of identification with the object.

And this identification amounts to a self-knowing, a self-consciousness, guarded by the fear of losing the self in the desire of a too wide awareness.

It must be remembered that sensations of the ugly and evil impress us more violently than those of what is agreeable and yet leave less knowledge as the residue of the shock: sickness makes the rougher mark, but health, tranquilly present, explains itself better; it takes the first place, it is the natural thing, it belongs to our being; illness is alien, unnatural, and thus makes itself felt by its very incongruity, while the other conditions are native and we take no notice. Such being our nature, we are most completely aware of ourselves when we are most completely identified with the object of our knowledge.

This is why in that other sphere, when we are deepest in that knowledge by intellection, we are aware of none; we are expecting some impression on sense, which has nothing to report since it has seen nothing and never could in that order sec anything. The unbelieving element is sense; it is the other, the Intellectual-Principle, that sees; and if this too doubted, it could not even credit its own existence, for it can never stand away and with bodily eyes apprehend itself as a visible object.


§ 12. We have told how this vision it to be procured, whether by the mode of separation or in identity: now, seen in either way, what does it give to report?

The vision has been of God in travail of a beautiful offspring, God engendering a universe within himself in a painless labour and — rejoiced in what he has brought into being, proud of his children — keeping all closely by Him, for the pleasure He has in his radiance and in theirs.

Of this offspring — all beautiful, but most beautiful those that have remained within — only one has become manifest without; from him (Zeus, sovereign over the visible universe), the youngest born, we may gather, as from some image, the greatness of the Father and of the Brothers that remain within the Father’s house.

Still the manifested God cannot think that he has come forth in vain from the father; for through him another universe has arisen, beautiful as the image of beauty, and it could not be lawful that Beauty and Being should fail of a beautiful image.

This second Cosmos at every point copies the archetype: it has life and being in copy, and has beauty as springing from that diviner -432- world. Inits character of image it holds, too, that divine perpetuity without which it would only at times be truly representative and sometimes fail like a construction of art; for every image whose existence lies in the nature of things must stand during the entire existence of the archetype.

Hence it is false to put an end to the visible sphere as long as the Intellectual endures, or to found it upon a decision taken by its maker at some given moment.

That teaching shirks the penetration of such a making as is here involved: it fails to see that as long as the Supreme is radiant there can be no failing of its sequel but, that existing, all exists. And — since the necessity of conveying our meaning compels such terms — the Supreme has existed forever and forever will exist.


§ 13. The God fettered (as in the Kronos Myth) to an unchanging identity leaves the ordering of this universe to his son (to Zeus), for it could not be in his character to neglect his rule within the divine sphere, and, as though sated with the Authentic-Beauty, seek a lordship too recent and too poor for his might. Ignoring this lower world, Kronos (Intellectual-Principle) claims for himself his own father (Ouranos, the Absolute, or One) with all the upward-tending between them: and he counts all that tends to the inferior, beginning from his son (Zeus, the All-Soul), as ranking beneath him. Thus he holds a mid-position determined on the one side by the differentiation implied in the severance from the very highest and, on the other, by that which keeps him apart from the link between himself and the lower: he stands between a greater father and an inferior son. But since that father is too lofty to be thought of under the name of Beauty, the second God remains the primally beautiful.

Soul also has beauty, but is less beautiful than Intellect as being its image and therefore, though beautiful in nature, taking increase of beauty by looking to that original. Since then the All-Soul — to use the more familiar term — since Aphrodite herself is so beautiful, what name can we give to that other? If Soul is so lovely in its own right, of what quality must that prior be? And since its being is derived, what must that power be from which the Soul takes the double beauty, the borrowed and the inherent?

We ourselves possess beauty when we are true to our own being; our ugliness is in going over to another order; our self-knowledge, that is to say, is our beauty; in self-ignorance we are ugly.

Thus beauty is of the Divine and comes Thence only.

Do these considerations suffice to a clear understanding of the Intellectual Sphere or must we make yet another attempt by another road? -433-

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Ninth Tractate: The Intellectual-Principle, the Ideas, and the Existence

§ 1. All human beings from birth onward live to the realm of sense more than to the Intellectual.

Forced of necessity to attend first to the material, some of them elect to abide by that order and, their life throughout, make its concerns their first and their last; the sweet and the bitter of sense are their good and evil; they feel they have done all if they live along pursuing the one and barring the doors to the other. And those of them that pretend to reasoning have adopted this as their philosophy; they are like the heavier birds which have incorporated much from the earth and are so weighted down that they cannot fly high for all the wings Nature has given them.

Others do indeed lift themselves a little above the earth; the better in their soul urges them from the pleasant to the nobler, but they are not of power to see the highest and so, in despair of any surer ground, they fall back in virtue’s name, upon those actions and options of the lower from which they sought to escape.

But there is a third order — those godlike men who, in their mightier power, in the keeness of their sight, have clear vision of the splendour above and rise to it from among the cloud and fog of earth and hold firmly to that other world, looking beyond all here, delighted in the place of reality, their native land, like a man returning after long wanderings to the pleasant ways of his own country.


§ 2. What is this other place and how is it accessible?

It is to be reached by those who, born with the nature of the lover, are also authentically philosophic by inherent temper; in pain of love towards beauty but not held by material loveliness, taking refuge from that in things whose beauty is of the soul — such things as virtue, knowledge, institutions, law and custom — and thence, rising still a step, reach to the source of this loveliness of the Soul, thence to whatever be above that again, until the uttermost is reached, The First, the Principle whose beauty is self-springing: this attained, there is an end to the pain inassuageable before.

But how is the ascent to be begun? Whence comes the power? In what thought is this love to find its guide?

The guiding thought is this: that the beauty perceived on material things is borrowed.

The pattern giving beauty to the corporeal rests upon it as Idea to its Matter and the substrate may change and from being pleasant -434- become distasteful, a sign, in all reason, that the beauty comes by participation.

Now, what is this that gives grace to the corporeal?

Two causes in their degree: the participation in beauty and the power of Soul, the maker, which has imprinted that form.

We ask then: Is soul, of itself, a thing of beauty? We find it is not since differences are manifest, one soul wise and lovely, another foolish and ugly: soul-beauty is constituted by wisdom.

The question thus becomes, What principle is the giver of wisdom to the soul? and the only answer is ‘The Intellectual-Principle’, the veritably intellectual, wise without intermission and therefore beautiful of itself.

But does even this suffice for our First?

No; we must look still inward beyond the Intellectual, which, from our point of approach, stands before the Supreme Beginning, in whose forecourt, as it were, it announces in its own being the entire content of the Good, that prior of all, locked in unity, of which this is the expression already touched by multiplicity.


§ 3. We will have to examine this Nature, the Intellectual, which our reasoning identifies as the authentically existent and the veritable essential: but first we must take another path and make certain that such a principle does necessarily exist.

Perhaps it is ridiculous to set out inquiring whether an Intellectual-Principle has place in the total of being: but there may be some to hesitate even as to this and certainly there will be the question whether it is as we describe it, whether it is a separate existence, whether it actually is the real beings, whether it is the seat of the Ideas; to this we now address ourselves.

All that we see, and describe as having existence, we know to be compound; hand-wrought or compacted by nature, nothing is simplex. Now the hand-wrought, with its metal or stone or wood, is not realized out of these materials until the appropriate craft has produced statue, house, or bed, by imparting the particular Idea from its own content. Similarly with natural forms of being; those including several constituents, compound bodies as we call them, may be analysed into the materials and the Idea imposed upon the total; the human being, for example, into soul and body; and the human body into the four elements. Finding everything to be a compound of Matter and shaping principle — since the Matter of the elements is of itself shapeless — you will inquire whence this forming Idea comes; and you will ask whether in the Soul we recognize a simplex or whether this also has constituents, something representing Matter and something else representing Form, namely, the Intellectual Principle within it, this corresponding both to the shape on the statue and to the artist giving the shape.

Applying the same method to the total of things, here too we discover -435- theIntellectual-Principle and this we set down as veritably the maker and creator of the All. The underlie has adopted, we see, certain shapes by which it becomes fire, water, air, earth; and these shapes have been imposed upon it by something else. This other is Soul which, hovering over the Four (the elements), imparts the pattern of the Cosmos, the Ideas for which it has itself received from the Intellectual-Principle as the soul or mind of the craftsman draws upon his craft for the plan of his work.

The Intellectual-Principle is in one phase the Form of the Soul, its shape; in another phase it is the giver of the shape — the sculptor, possessing inherently what is given — imparting to Soul nearly the authentic reality while what body receives is but image and imitation.


§ 4. But, Soul reached, why need we look higher; why not make this The First?

A main reason is that the Intellectual-Principle is at once something other and something more powerful than Soul and that the more powerful is in the nature of things the prior. For it is certainly not true, as people imagine, that the Soul, brought to perfection, produces Intellect. How could that potentiality come to actuality unless there be, first, an effective principle to induce the actualization which, left to chance, might never occur?

The Firsts must be supposed to exist in actuality, looking to nothing else, self-complete. Anything incomplete must be sequent upon these, and take its completion from the principles engendering it which, like fathers, labour in the improvement of an offspring born imperfect: the produced is as Matter to the producing principle and is worked over by it into a shapely perfection.

And if, further, Soul is passible while something impassible there must be or by the mere passage of time all wears away, here too we are led to something above Soul.

Again there must be something prior to Soul because Soul is in the world and there must be something outside a world in which, all being corporeal and material, nothing has enduring reality: failing such a prior, neither man nor the Ideas would be eternal or have true identity.

These and many other considerations establish the necessary existence of an Intellectual-Principle prior to Soul.


§ 5. This Intellectual-Principle, if the term is to convey the truth, must be understood to be not a principle merely potential and not one maturing from unintelligence to intelligence — that would simply send us seeking, once more, a necessary prior — but a principle which is intelligence in actuality and in eternity.

Now a principle whose wisdom is not borrowed must derive from itself any intellection it may make; and anything it may possess within itself it can hold only from itself: it follows that, intellective by its own -436- resource and upon its own content, it is itself the very things on which its intellection acts.

For supposing its essence to be separable from its intellection and the objects of its intellection to be not-itself, then its essence would be unintellectual; and it would be intellectual not actually but potentially. The intellection and its object must then be inseparable — however the habit induced by our conditions may tempt us to distinguish, There too, the thinker from the thought.

What then is its characteristic Act and what the intellection which makes knower and known here identical?

Clearly, as authentic Intellection, it has authentic intellection of the authentically existent, and establishes their existence. Therefore it is the Authentic Beings.

Consider: it must perceive them either somewhere else or within itself as its very self: the somewhere else is impossible — where could that be? — they are therefore itself and the content of itself.

Its objects certainly cannot be the things of sense, as people think: no First could be of the sense-known order; for in things of sense the Idea (Form) is but an image of the authentic, an image thrown upon Matter, and every Idea thus derivative and exiled traces back to that original and is no more than an image of it.

Further, if the Intellectual-Principle is to be the maker of this All, it cannot make by looking outside itself to what does not yet exist. The Authentic Beings must, then, exist before this All, no copies made on a model but themselves archetypes, primals, and the essence of the Intellectual-Principle.

We may be told that Reason-Principles suffice (to the subsistence of the All): but then these, clearly, must be eternal; and if eternal, if immune, then they must exist in an Intellectual-Principle such as we have indicated, a principle earlier than condition, than nature, than soul, than anything whose existence is potential (or contingent).

The Intellectual-Principle, therefore, is itself the authentic existences, not a knower knowing them in some sphere foreign to it. The Authentic Beings, thus, exist neither before nor after it: it is the primal legislator to Being or, rather, is itself the law of Being. Thus it is true that ‘Intellection and Being are identical’; in the immaterial the knowledge of the thing is the thing. And this is the meaning of the dictum ‘I sought myself’, namely, as one of the Beings: it also bears on reminiscence.

For none of the Beings is outside the Intellectual-Principle or in space; they remain forever in themselves, accepting no change, no decay, and by that are the authentically existent. Things that arise and fall away draw on real being as something to borrow from; they are not of the real; the true being is that on which they draw.

It is by participation that the sense-known has the being we ascribe to it; the underlying nature has taken its shape from elsewhere; thus bronze and wood are shaped into what we see by means of an image -437- introduced by sculpture or carpentry; the craft permeates the materials while remaining integrally apart from the material and containing in itself the reality of statue or couch. And it is so, of course, with all corporeal things.

This universe, characteristically participant in images, shows how the image differs from the authentic beings: against the variability of the one order, there stands the unchanging quality of the other, self-situate, not needing space because having no magnitude, holding an existence intellective and self-sufficing. The body-kind seeks its endurance in another kind; the Intellectual-Principle, sustaining by its marvellous Being the things which of themselves must fall, does not itself need to look for a staying ground.


§ 6. We take it, then, that the Intellectual-Principle is the authentic existences and contains them all — not as in a place but as possessing itself and being one thing with this its content. All are one There and yet are distinct: similarly the mind holds many branches and items of knowledge simultaneously, yet none of them merged into any other, each acting its own part at call quite independently, every conception coming out from the inner total and working singly. It is after this way, though in a closer unity, that the Intellectual-Principle is all Being in one total — and yet not in one, since each of these beings is a distinct power which, however, the total Intellectual-Principle includes as the species in a genus, as the parts in a whole. This relation may be illustrated by the powers in seed; all lies undistinguished in the unit, the formative ideas gathered as in one kernel; yet in that unit there is eye- principle, and there is hand-principle, each of which is revealed as a separate power by its distinct material product. Thus each of the powers in the seed is a Reason-Principle one and complete yet including all the parts over which it presides: there will be something bodily, the liquid for example, carrying mere Matter; but the principle itself is Idea and nothing else, Idea identical with the generative Idea belonging to the lower soul, image of a higher. This power is sometimes designated as Nature in the seed-life; its origin is in the divine; and, outgoing from its priors as light from fire, it converts and shapes the matter of things, not by push and pull and the lever work of which we hear so much, but by bestowal of the Ideas.


§ 7. Knowledge in the reasoning soul is on the one side concerned with objects of sense, though indeed this can scarcely be called knowledge and is better indicated as opinion or surface-knowing; it is of later origin than the objects since it is a reflection from them: but on the other hand there is the knowledge handling the intellectual objects and this is the authentic knowledge; it enters the reasoning soul from the Intellectual-Principle and has no dealing with anything in sense. Being true knowledge it actually is everything of which it takes cognizance; it carries as its own content the intellectual act and the intellectual object since -438- it carries the Intellectual-Principle which actually is the primals and is always self-present and is in its nature an Act, never by any want forced to seek, never acquiring or traversing the remote — for all such experience belongs to soul — but always self-gathered, the very Being of the collective total, not an extern creating things by the act of knowing them.

Not by its thinking God does God come to be; not by its thinking Movement does Movement arise. Hence it is an error to call the Ideas intellections in the sense that, upon an intellectual act in this Principle, one such Idea or another is made to exist or exists. No: the object of this intellection must exist before the intellective act (must be the very content not the creation of the Intellectual-Principle). How else could that Principle come to know it? Certainly not (as an external) by luck or by haphazard search.


§ 8. If, then, the Intellection is an act upon the inner content (of the Intellectual-Principle), that content is the Form, and the Form is the Idea.

What, then, is that content?

An Intellectual-Principle and an Intellective Essence, no Idea distinguishable from the Intellectual-Principle, each actually being that Principle. The Intellectual-Principle entire is the total of the Ideas, and each of them is the (entire) Intellectual-Principle in a special form. Thus a science entire is the total of the relevant considerations each of which, again, is a member of the entire science, a member not distinct in space yet having its individual efficacy in a total.

This Intellectual-Principle, therefore, is a unity while by that possession of itself it is, tranquilly, the eternal abundance.

If the Intellectual-Principle were envisaged as preceding Being, it would at once become a principle whose expression, its intellectual Act, achieves and engenders the Beings: but, since we are compelled to think of existence as preceding that which knows it, we can but think that the Beings are the actual content of the knowing principle and that the very act, the intellection, is inherent to the Beings, as fire stands equipped from the beginning with fire-act; in this conception, the Beings contain the Intellectual-Principle as one and the same with themselves, as their own activity. But Being is itself an activity: there is one activity, then, in both or, rather, both are one thing.

Being, therefore, and the Intellectual-Principle are one Nature: the Beings, and the Act of that which is, and the Intellectual-Principle thus constituted, all are one: and the resultant Intellections are the Idea of Being and its shape and its act.

It is our separating habit that sets the one order before the other: for there is a separating intellect, of another order than the true, distinct from the Intellect, inseparable and unseparating, which is Being and the universe of things. -439-


§ 9. What, then, is the content — inevitably separated by our minds — of this one Intellectual-Principle? For there is no resource but to represent the items in accessible form just as we study the various articles constituting one science.

This universe is a living thing capable of including every form of life; but its Being and its modes are derived from elsewhere; that source is traced back to the Intellectual-Principle: it follows that the all- embracing archetype is in the Intellectual Principle, which, therefore, must be an intellectual Cosmos, that indicated by Plato in the phrase ‘The living existent’.

Given the Reason-Principle (the outgoing divine Idea) of a certain living thing and the Matter to harbour this seed-principle, the living thing must come into being: in the same way once there exists an intellective Nature, all powerful, and with nothing to check it — since nothing intervenes between it and that which is of a nature to receive it — inevitably the higher imprints form and the lower accepts it. The recipient holds the Idea in division, here man, there sun, while in the giver all remains in unity.


§ 10. All, then, that is present in the sense realm as Idea comes from the Supreme. But what is not present as Idea, does not. Thus of things conflicting with nature, none is There: the inartistic is not contained in the arts; lameness is not in the seed; for a lame leg is either inborn through some thwarting of the Reason-Principle or is a marring of the achieved form by accident. To that Intellectual Cosmos belong qualities, accordant with Nature, and quantities; number and mass; origins and conditions; all actions and experiences not against nature; movement and repose, both the universals and the particulars: but There time is replaced by eternity and space by its intellectual equivalent, mutual inclusiveness.

In that Intellectual Cosmos, where all is one total, every entity that can be singled out is an intellective essence and a participant in life: it is identity and difference, movement and rest, the object moving and the object at rest, essence and quality. All There is pure essence; for every real being must be in actuality, not merely in potentiality, and therefore quality is never separated from essence.

This suggests the question whether the Intellectual Cosmos contains the form only of the things of sense or of other existents as well. But first we will consider how it stands with artistic creations: there is no question of an ideal archetype of evil: the evil of this world is begotten of need, privation, deficiency, and is a condition peculiar to Matter distressed and to what has come into likeness with Matter.


§ 11. Now as to the arts and crafts and their productions:

The imitative arts — painting, sculpture, dancing, pantomimic gesturing— are, largely, earth-based; they follow models found in sense, since -440- they copy forms and movements and reproduce seen symmetries; they cannot therefore be referred to that higher sphere except indirectly, through the Reason-Principle in humanity.

On the other hand any skill which, beginning with the observation of the symmetry of living things, grows to the symmetry of all life, will be a portion of the Power There which observes and meditates the symmetry reigning among all beings in the Intellectual Cosmos. Thus all music — since its thought is upon melody and rhythm — must be the earthly representation of the music there is in the rhythm of the Ideal Realm.

The crafts such as building and carpentry which give us Matter in wrought forms, may be said, in that they draw on pattern, to take their principles from that realm and from the thinking There: but in that they bring these down into contact with the sense-order, they are not wholly in the Intellectual, except as contained in the Idea of man. So agriculture, dealing with material growths; so medicine watching over physical health; so the art which aims at corporeal strength and well-being: power and well-being mean something else There, the fearlessness and self-sufficing quality of all that lives.

Oratory and generalship, administration and sovereignty — under any forms in which their activities are associated with Good and when they look to that — possess something derived thence and building up their knowledge from the knowledge There.

Geometry, as a science of the Intellectual entities, holds place There: so, too, philosophy, whose high concern is Being.

For the arts and products of art, these observations may suffice.


§ 12. It should, however, be added that if the Idea of man exists in the Supreme, there must exist the Idea of reasoning man and of man with his arts and crafts; such arts as are the offspring of intellect must be There.

It must be observed that the Ideas will be of universals; not of Socrates but of Man: though as to man we may inquire whether the individual may not also have place There. Ideas of individual men may be justified by the fact that the same feature varies from man to man, the simian type, for example, and the aquiline: the aquiline and the simian must be taken to be differences in the Idea of Man as there are different types of the animal: but Matter also has its effect in bringing about the degree of aquilinity. Similarly with difference of complexion, determined partly by the Reason-Principle, partly by Matter and by diversity of place.


§ 13. It remains to decide whether only what is known in sense exists There or whether on the contrary, as Absolute-Man differs from individual man, so there is in theSupreme an Absolute-Soul differing from Soul and an Absolute-Intellect differing from Intellectual-Principle. -441-

It must be stated at the outset that we cannot take all that is here to be image of archetype, or Soul to be an image of Absolute-Soul: one soul, doubtless, ranks higher than another, but here too, though perhaps not as identified with this realm, is the Absolute-Soul.

Every soul, authentically a soul, has some form of rightness and moral wisdom; in the souls within ourselves there is true knowing: and these attributes are no images or copies from the Supreme, as in the sense-world, but actually are those very originals in a mode peculiar to this sphere. For those Beings are not set apart in some defined place; wherever there is a soul that has risen from body, there too these are: the world of sense is one-where, the Intellectual Cosmos is everywhere. Whatever the freed soul attains to here, that it is There.

Thus, if by the content of the sense-world we mean simply the visible objects, then the Supreme contains not only what is in the realm of sense but more: if in the content of the Cosmos we mean to include Soul and the Soul-things, then all is here that is There.


§ 14. There is, thus, a Nature comprehending in the Intellectual all that exists, and this Principle must be the source of all. But how, seeing that the veritable source must be a unity, simplex utterly?

The mode by which from the unity arises the multiple, how all this universe comes to be, why the Intellectual-Principle is all and whence it springs, these matters demand another approach.

But on the question as to whether the repulsive and the products of putridity have also their Idea — whether there is an Idea of filth and mud — it is to be observed that all that the Intellectual-Principle derived from The First is of the noblest; in those Ideas the base is not included: these repulsive things point not to the Intellectual-Principle but to the Soul which, drawing upon the Intellectual-Principle, takes from Matter certain other things, and among them these.

But all this will be more clearly brought out when we turn to the problem of the production of multiplicity from unity. Compounds, we shall see — as owing existence to hazard and not to the Intellectual-Principle, having been fused into objects of sense by their own impulse — are not to be included under Ideas.

The products of putrefaction are to be traced to the Soul’s inability to bring some other thing to being — something in the order of nature, which, else, it would — but producing where it may.

In the matter of the arts and crafts, all that are to be traced to the needs of human nature are laid up in the Absolute Man.

And before the particular Soul there is another Soul, a universal, and, before that, an Absolute-Soul, which is the Life existing in the Intellectual-Principle before Soul came to be and therefore rightly called (as the Life in the Divine) the Absolute-Soul. -442-

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The Sixth Ennead











First Tractate: On the Kinds of Being: First Treatise

§ 1. Philosophy at a very early stage investigated the number and character of the Existents. Various theories resulted: some declared for one Existent, others for a finite number, others again for an infinite number, while as regards the nature of the Existents — one, numerically finite, or numerically infinite — there was a similar disagreement. These theories, in so far as they have been adequately examined by later workers, may be passed over here; our attention must be directed upon the results of those whose examination has led them to posit on their own account certain well-defined genera.

These thinkers rejected pure unity on the ground of the plurality observed even in the Intellectual world; they rejected an infinite number as not reconcilable with the facts and as defying knowledge: considering the foundations of being to be ‘genera’ rather than elements strictly so called, they concluded for a finite number. Of these ‘genera’ some found ten, others less, others no doubt more.

But here again there is a divergence of views. To some the genera are first-principles; to others they indicate only a generic classification of the Existents themselves.

Let us begin with the well-known tenfold division of the Existents, and consider whether we are to understand ten genera ranged under the common name of Being, or ten categories. That the term Being has not the same sense in all ten is rightly maintained.

But a graver problem confronts us at the outset: Are the ten found alike in the Intellectual and in the Sensible realms? Or are all found in the Sensible and some only in the Intellectual? All in the Intellectual and some in the Sensible is manifestly impossible.

At this point it would be natural to investigate which of the ten belong to both spheres, and whether the Existents of the Intellectual are to be ranged under one and the same genus with the Existents in the Sensible, or whether the term ‘Existence’ (or Substance) is equivocal as applied to both realms. If the equivocation exists, the number of genera will be increased: if there is no equivocation, it is strange to find the one same ‘Existence’ applying to the primary and to the derivative Existents when there is no common genus embracing both primal and secondary.

These thinkers are, however, not considering the Intellectual realm -443- in their division, which was not intended to cover all the Existents; the Supreme they overlooked.


§ 2. But are we really obliged to consider the ten categories as genera? Take Substance — for Substance must certainly be our starting-point: what are the grounds for regarding Substance as one single genus?

It has been remarked that Substance cannot be a single entity common to both the Intellectual and the Sensible worlds. We may add that such community would entail the existence of something prior to Intellectual and Sensible Substance alike, something distinct from both as predicated of both; and this prior would be neither body nor unembodied; for if it were one or the other, body would be unembodied, or the unembodied would be body.

This conclusion must not, however, prevent our seeking in the actual substances of the Sensible world an element held in common by Matter, by Form, and by their Composite, all of which are designated as substances, though it is not maintained that they are Substance in an equal degree; Form is held to be Substance in a higher degree than Matter, and rightly so, in spite of those who would have Matter to be the more truly real.

There is further the distinction drawn between what are known as First and Second Substances. But what is their common basis, seeing that the First are the source from which the Second derive their right to be called substances?

But, in sum, it is impossible to define Substance: determine its property, and still you have not attained to its essence. Even the definition, ‘That which, numerically one and the same, is receptive of contraries’, will hardly be applicable to all substances alike.


§ 3. But perhaps we should rather speak of some single category (as distinct from a genus), embracing Intellectual Substance, Matter, Form, and the Composite of Matter and Form. One might refer to the family of the Heraclids as a unity in the sense, not of a common element in all its members, but of a common origin: similarly, Intellectual Substance would be Substance in the first degree, the others being substances by derivation and in a lower degree.

But (pursuing this principle) what is the objection to including everything in a single category, all else of which existence is predicated being derived from that one thing, Existence or Substance? Because, granted that things be no more than modifications of Substance, there is a distinct grading of substances themselves. Moreover, the single category does not put us in a position to build on Substance, or to grasp it in its very truth as the plausible source of the other substances.

Supposing we grant that all things known as substances are homogeneous as possessing something denied to the other genera, what precisely is this something, this individuality, this subject which is never -444- a predicate, this thing not present in any thing as in a subject, this thing which does not owe its essential character to any other thing, as a quality takes character from a body and a quantity from a substance, as time is related to motion and motion to the moved?

The Second Substance is, it is true, a predicate. But predication in this case signifies a different relation from that just considered; it reveals the genus inherent in the subject and the subject’s essential character, whereas whiteness is predicated of a thing in the sense of being present (as an attribute) in the thing.

The properties adduced may indeed be allowed to distinguish Substance from the other Existents. They afford a means or grouping substances together and calling them by a common name. They do not however establish the unity of a genus, and they do not bring to light the concept and the nature of Substance.

These considerations are sufficient for our purpose: let us now proceed to investigate the nature of Quantity.


§ 4. We are told that number is Quantity in the primary sense, number together with all continuous magnitude, space, and time: these are the standards to which all else that is considered as Quantity is referred, including motion which is Quantity because its time is quantitative — though perhaps, conversely, the time takes its continuity from the motion.

If it is maintained that the continuous is a Quantity by the fact of its continuity, then the discrete will not be a Quantity. If, on the contrary, the continuous possesses Quantity as an accident, what is there common to both continuous and discrete to make them quantities?

Suppose we concede that numbers are quantities: we are merely allowing them the name of quantity; the principle which gives them this name remains obscure.

On the other hand, line and surface and body are not called quantities; they are called magnitudes: they become known as quantities only when they are rated by number — two yards, three yards. Even the natural body becomes a quantity when measured, as does the space which it occupies; but this is quantity accidental, not quantity essential; what we seek to grasp is not accidental quantity but Quantity independent and essential, Quantity-Absolute. Three oxen is not a quantity; it is their number, the three, that is Quantity; for in three oxen we are dealing with two categories. So too with a line of a stated length, a surface of a given area; the area will be a quantity but not the surface, which only comes under that category when it constitutes a definite geometric figure.

Are we then to consider numbers, and numbers only, as constituting the category of Quantity? If we mean numbers in themselves, they are (not quantities but) substances, for the very good reason that they exist independently. If we mean numbers displayed in the objects participant -445- in number, the numbers which give the count of the objects — ten horses or ten oxen, and not ten units — then we have a paradoxical result: first, the numbers in themselves, it would appear, are substances but the numbers in objects are not; and secondly, the numbers inhere in the objects as measures (of extension or weight), yet as standing outside the objects they have no measuring power, as do rulers and scales. If, however, their existence is independent, and they do not inhere in the objects, but are simply called in for the purpose of measurement, the objects will be quantities only to the extent of participating in Quantity. So with the numbers themselves: how can they (in these circumstances) constitute the category of Quantity? They are measures; but how do measures come to be quantities or Quantity? Doubtless in that, existing as they do among the Existents and not being adapted to any of the other categories, they find their place under the influence of verbal suggestion and so are referred to the so-called category of Quantity. We see the unit mark off one measurement and then proceed to another; and number thus reveals the amount of a thing, and the mind uses the number to measure the total.

It follows that in measuring it is not measuring essence; it pronounces its ‘one’ or ‘two’, whatever the character of the objects, even summing contraries. It does not take count of condition — hot, handsome; it simply notes how many.

Number then, whether regarded in itself or in the participant objects, goes into the category of Quantity, but the participant objects do not; ‘three yards long’ does not, but only the ‘three’.

Why then are magnitudes classed as quantities? Not because they are so in the strict sense, but because they approximate to Quantity, and because objects in which magnitudes inhere are themselves designated as quantities. We call a thing great or small from its participation in a high number or a low. True, greatness and smallness are not claimed to be quantities, but relations: but it is by their apparent possession of quantity that they are thought of as relations. All this, however, needs more careful examination.

In sum, we hold that there is no single genus of Quantity. Only number is Quantity, the rest (magnitudes, space, time, motion) quantities only in a secondary degree. We have therefore not strictly one genus, but one category grouping the approximate with the primary and the secondary.

We have, however, to inquire in what sense the abstract numbers are substances. Can it be that they are also in a manner quantitative? Into whatever category they fall, the other numbers (those inherent in objects) can have nothing in common with them but the name.


§ 5. Speech, time, motion — in what sense are these quantities?

Let us begin with speech. It is subject to measurement, but only in so far as it is sound; it is not a quantity in its essential nature, which -446- nature is that it be significant, as noun and verb are significant. The air is (not its essence but) its Matter, as it is Matter to verb and noun, the components of speech.

To be more precise, we may define speech as an impact (made upon the outer air by the breath), though it is not so much the impact as the impression which the impact produces and which as it were imposes Form (upon the air). Speech, thus, is rather an action than a quantity — an action with a significance. Though perhaps it would be truer to say that while this motion, this impact, is an action, the counter-motion is an experience (or Passion); or each may be from different points of view either an action or an experience: or we may think of speech as action upon a substrate (air) and experience within that substrate.

If, however, voice is not characteristically impact, but is simply air, two categories will be involved: voice is significant, and the one category will not be sufficient to account for this significance without associating with a second.

With regard to time, if it is to be thought of as a measure, we must determine what it is that applies this measure. It must clearly be either Soul or the Present Moment. If on the contrary we take time to be something measured and regard it as being of such and such extension — a year, for example — then we may consider it as a quantity: essentially, however, time is of a different nature; the very fact that we can attribute this or that length to it shows us that it is not length: in other words, time is not Quantity. Quantity in the strict sense is the Quantity not inbound with things; if things became quantities by mere participation in Quantity, then (not only time but) Substance itself would be identical with Quantity.

Equality and inequality must be regarded as properties of Quantity- Absolute, not of the participants, or of them not essentially but only accidentally: such participants as ‘three yards’ length’, which becomes a quantity, not as belonging to a single genus of Quantity, but by being subsumed under the one head, the one category.


§ 6. In considering Relation we must inquire whether it possesses the community of a genus, or whether it may on other grounds be treated as a unity.

Above all, has Relation — for example, that of right and left, double and half — any actuality? Has it, perhaps, actuality in some cases only, as for instance in the second pair but not the first? Or is its actuality in no case conceivable?

What meaning, then, are we to attach to double and half and all other cases of less and more; to habit and disposition, reclining, sitting, standing; to father, son, master, slave; to like, unlike, equal, unequal; to active and passive, measure and measured; or again to knowledge and sensation, as related respectively to the knowable and the sensible?

Knowledge, indeed, may be supposed to entail in relation to the -447- known object some actual entity corresponding to that object’s Ideal Form, and similarly with sensation as related to the sense-object. The active will perform some constant function in relation to the passive, as will the measure in relation to the measured.

But what will emerge from the relation of like to like? Nothing will emerge. Likeness is the inherence of qualitative identity; its entire content is the quality present in the two objects.

From equality, similarly, nothing emerges. The relation merely presupposes the existence of a quantitative identity; it is nothing but our judgement comparing objects essentially independent and concluding, ‘This and that have the same magnitude, the same quality; this has produced that; this is superior to that’.

Again, what meaning can sitting and standing have apart from sitter and stander? The term ‘habit’ either implies a having, in which case it signifies Possession, or else it arises from something had, and so denotes Quality; and similarly with disposition.

What then in these instances can be the meaning of correlatives apart from our conception of their juxtaposition? ‘Greater’ may refer to very different magnitudes; ‘different’ to all sorts of objects: the comparison is ours; it does not lie in the things themselves.

Right and left, before and behind, would seem to belong less to the category of Relation than to that of Situation. Right means ‘situated at one point’, left means ‘situated at another’. But the right and left are in our conception, nothing of them in the things themselves.

Before and after are merely two times; the relation is again of our making.


§ 7. Now if we do not mean anything by Relation but are victims of words, none of the relations mentioned can exist: Relation will be a notion void of content.

Suppose, however, that we do possess ourselves of objective truth when in comparing two points of time we pronounce one prior, or posterior, to the other, that priority and posteriority do entail something distinct from the objects to which they refer; admit an objective truth behind the relation of left and right; let it apply also to magnitudes, with their relation of excess and deficiency as something distinct from the quantities involved.

One thing, we are supposing, is double of another quite apart from our speech or thought; one thing possesses and another is possessed before we notice the fact; equals do not await our comparison but — and this applies to Quality as well as Quantity — rest upon an identity existing between the objects compared: in all the conditions in which we assert Relation the mutual relation exists over and above the objects; we perceive it as already existent; our knowledge is directed upon a thing, there to be known — a clear testimony to the reality of Relation.

In these circumstances we can no longer put the question of its -448- existence. We have simply to distinguish: sometimes the relation subsists while the objects remain unaltered and even apart; sometimes it depends upon their combination; sometimes, while they remain unchanged, the relation utterly ceases, or, as happens with right and near, becomes different. These are the facts which chiefly account for the notion that Relation has no reality in such circumstances.

Our task, thus, is to give full value to this elusive character of Relation, and then to inquire what there is that is constant in all these particular cases and whether this constant is generic or accidental; and having found this constant, we must discover what sort of actuality it possesses.

It need hardly be said that we are not to affirm Relation where one thing is simply an attribute of another, as a habit is an attribute of a soul or of a body; it is not Relation when a soul belongs to this individual or dwells in that body. Relation enters only when the actuality of the relationships is derived from no other source than Relation itself; the actuality must be, not that which is characteristic of the substances in question, but that which is specifically called relative. Thus double with its correlative half gives actuality neither to two yards’ length or the number two, nor to one yard’s length or the number one; what happens is that when these quantities are viewed in their relation, they are found to be not merely two and one respectively, but to produce the assertion and to exhibit the fact of standing one to the other in the condition of double and half. Out of the objects in a certain conjunction this condition of being double and half has issued as something distinct from either; double and half have emerged as correlatives, and their being is precisely this of mutual dependence; the double exists by its superiority over the half, and the half by its inferiority; there is no priority to distinguish double from half; they arise simultaneously.

It is another question whether they endure simultaneously. Take the case of father and son, and such relationships; the father dies, but the other is still his son, and so with brothers. Moreover, we see likeness where one of the like people is dead.


§ 8. But we are digressing: we have noted a discrepancy and suggested the way to an explanation. We must now be informed what reality, common to all cases, is possessed by this Existence derived from mutual conditions.

The common principle cannot be a body. The only alternative is that, if it does exist, it be something bodiless, either in the objects thus brought together or outside of them.

Further, if Relation always takes the same form, the term is univocal (and specific differentiation is impossible); if not, that is if it differs from case to case, the term is equivocal, and the same reality will not necessarily be implied by the mere use of the term Relation.

How then shall we distinguish relations? We may observe that some -449- things have an inactive or dormant relation, which is only real in so far as they are entirely simultaneous; others, combining power and function with their relation, either have the relation in some mode always even though the mode be merely that of potentiality, though it becomes actual when the correlatives are brought into contact; or else they simply resolve themselves into producer and product, where the product merely gives a name to the producer of its actuality: an example of this is the relation of father to son, though here both producer and product have a sort of actuality, which we call life.

Are we thus, then, to divide Relation, and thereby reject the notion of an identical common element in the different kinds of Relation, recognizing instead two types utterly different in character? There will thus be nothing but the name in common between the active relationship which produces both action and passion as though these two were one, and the relationship which, though itself inactive, presupposes a separate active principle above the two correlatives. Take the case of equality, producing equals: nothing is equal without equality, nothing identical without identity. Greatness and smallness both entail a presence — the presence of greatness and smallness respectively. When we come to greater and smaller, the participants in these relations are greater and smaller only when greatness and smallness are actually observed in them.


§ 9. It follows that in the cases specified above — agent, knowledge, and the rest — the relation must be considered as in actual operation, and the Act and the Reason-Principle in the Act must be assumed to be real: in all other cases there will be simply participation in an Ideal-Form, in a Reason-Principle.

If Reality implied embodiment, we should indeed be forced to deny Reality to these conditions called relative; if, however, we accord the pre-eminent place to the unembodied and to the Reason-Principles, and at the same time maintain that relations are Reason-Principles and participate in Ideal-Forms, we are bound to seek their causes in that higher sphere. Doubleness, it is clear, is the cause of a thing being double, and from it is derived halfness.

Some correlatives owe their designations to the same Form, others to opposite Forms; it is thus that two objects are simultaneously double and half, and one great and the other small. It may happen that both correlatives exist in one object — likeness and unlikeness, and, in general, identity and difference, so that the same thing will be at once like and unlike, identical and different.

The question arises here whether sharing in the same Form could make one man depraved and another more depraved. In the case of total depravity, clearly the two are made equal by the absence of a Form. Where there is a difference of degree, the one has participated in a Form which has failed to predominate, the other in a Form which -450- has failed still more: or we may compare them in respect of their privation of Form, treating the privation as though it were a Form itself.

Sensation may be regarded as a Form of double origin (determined both by the sense-organ and by the sensible object); and similarly with knowledge.

Habit is an Act directed upon something had (some experience produced by habit) and binding it, as it were, with the subject having (experiencing); it has an element of creativeness.

Measurement is an Act of the measurer upon the measured object: it too is therefore a kind of Reason-Principle.

Now if the condition of being related is regarded as a Form having a generic unity, Relation must be allowed to be a single genus with an actuality represented by a Reason-Principle involved in all instances. If, however, the Reason-Principles (governing the correlatives) stand opposed and have the differences to which we have referred, there may perhaps not be a single genus, but this will not prevent all relatives being expressed in terms of a certain likeness, and falling under a single category.

But even if the cases of which we have spoken can be subsumed under a single head, it is nevertheless impossible to include in a single genus all that goes with them in the one common category: for the category is made to include negations and derivatives — not only, for example, doubleness but its negative and the object possessing doubleness. But we cannot include in one genus both the thing and its negative — double and not-double, relative and not-relative — any more than in dealing with the genus animal we can insert in it the non-animal. Moreover, doubleness and the double object have no more identity than whiteness has with what is white.


§ 10. As regards Quality, the source of what we call a ‘quale’, we must in the first place consider what nature it possesses in accordance with which it produces the ‘qualia’, and whether, remaining one and the same in virtue of that common ground, it has also differences whereby it produces the variety of species. If there is no common ground and the term Quality involves many connotations, there cannot be a single genus of Quality.

What then will be the common ground in habit, disposition, passive quality, figure, shape? In light, thick, and lean? If we hold this common ground to be a power adapting itself to the forms of habits, dispositions, and physical capacities, a power which gives the possessor whatever capacities he has, we have no plausible explanation of incapacities. Besides, how are figure and the shape of a given thing to be regarded as a power?

Moreover, at this, Being will have no power qua Being but only when Quality has been added to it; and the activities of those substances which are activities in the highest degree, will be traceable to Quality, -451- although they are autonomous and owe their essential character to powers wholly their own!

Perhaps, however, qualities are to be identified with powers which are posterior to the substances as such (and so do not interfere with their essential activities). Boxing, for example, is not a power of man qua man; reasoning is: in other words, reasoning — which is an ambiguous term — is not necessarily a quality, but only that reasoning which is acquired by the exercise of virtue (i.e. which supervenes upon fully achieved human excellence). Thus, Quality is a power which adds the property of being qualia to substances already existent.

The differences distinguishing substances from each other are called qualities only by analogy; they are, more strictly, Acts and Reason-Principles, or parts of Reason-Principles, and though they may appear merely to qualify the substance, they in fact indicate its essence.

Qualities in the true sense — those, that is, which determine qualia — being in accordance with our definition powers, will in virtue of this common ground be a kind of Reason-Principle; they will also be in a sense Forms, that is, excellences and imperfections whether of soul or of body.

But how can they all be powers? Beauty or health of soul or body, very well: but surely not ugliness, disease, weakness, incapacity. In a word, is powerlessness a power?

It may be urged that these are qualities in so far as qualia are also named after them: but may not the qualia be so called by analogy, and not in the strict sense of the single principle? Not only may the term be understood in the four ways (of Aristotle), but each of the four may have at least a twofold significance.

In the first place, Quality is not merely a question of action and passion, involving a simple distinction between the potentially active (quality) and the passive: health, disposition and habit, disease, strength and weakness are also classed as qualities. It follows that the common ground is not power, but something we have still to seek.

Again, not all qualities can be regarded as Reason-Principles: chronic disease cannot be a Reason-Principle. Perhaps, however, we must speak in such cases of privations, restricting the term Quantities to Ideal-Forms and powers. Thus we shall have, not a single genus, but reference only to the unity of a category. Knowledge will be regarded as a Form and a power, ignorance as a privation and powerlessness.

On the other hand, powerlessness and disease are a kind of Form; disease and vice have many powers though looking to evil.

But how can a mere failure be a power? Doubtless the truth is that every quality performs its own function independently of a standard; for in no case could it produce an effect outside of its power.

Even beauty would seem to have a power of its own. Does this apply to triangularity?

Perhaps, after all, it is not a power we must consider, but a disposition. -452-

Thus, qualities will be determined by the forms and characteristics of the object qualified: their common element, then, will be Form and ideal type, imposed upon Substance and posterior to it.

But then, how do we account for the powers? We may doubtless remark that even the natural boxer is so by being constituted in a particular way; similarly, with the man unable to box: to generalize, the quality is a characteristic non-essential. Whatever is seen to apply alike to Being and to non-Being, as do heat and whiteness and colours generally, is one thing when associated with Being — is, for example, an Act of Being — but in the other case it is but a secondary, derived from the first, its image and likeness, and calls for a substrate to contain it.

But if Quality is determined by formation and characteristic and Reason-Principle, how explain the various cases of powerlessness and deformity? Doubtless we must think of Principles imperfectly present, as in the case of deformity. And disease — how does that imply a Reason- Principle? Here, no doubt, we must think of a principle disturbed, the Principle of health.

But it is not necessary that all qualities involve a Reason-Principle; a sufficient common ground may be found in some kind of disposition distinct from Substance, and it is what comes after the substance that constitutes Quality in an object.

But triangularity is a quality of that in which it is present; it is however no longer triangularity as such, but the triangularity present in that definite object and modified in proportion to its success in shaping that object.

Does that imply that humanity shapes the human Being? No: it constitutes his substance or essence.


§ 11. But if these considerations are sound, why has Quality more than one species? What is the ground for distinguishing between habit and disposition, seeing that no differentia of Quality is involved in permanence and non-permanence? A disposition of any kind is sufficient to constitute a quality; permanence is a mere external addition. It might, however, be urged that dispositions are but incomplete ‘forms’ — if the term may pass — habits being complete ones. But incomplete, they are not qualities; if already qualities, the permanence is an external addition.

How do physical powers form a distinct species? If they are classed as qualities in virtue of being powers, power, we have seen, is not a necessary concomitant of qualities. If, however, we hold that the natural boxer owes his quality to a particular disposition, power is something added and does not contribute to the quality, since power is found in habits also.

Another point: why is natural ability to be distinguished from that acquired by learning? Surely, if both are qualities, they cannot be differentiae of Quality: gained by practice or given in nature, it is the same ability; the differentia will be external to Quality; it cannot be -453- deduced from the Ideal Form of (say) boxing. Whether some qualities as distinguished from others are derived from experience is immaterial; the source of the quality makes no difference — none, I mean, pointing to variations and differences of Quality.

A further question would seem to be involved: If certain qualities are derived from experience but there is a discrepancy in the manner and source of the experience, how are they to be included in the same species? And again, if some create the experience, others are created by it, the term Quality as applied to both classes will be equivocal.

And what part is played by the individual form? If it constitutes the individual’s specific character, it is not a quality; if, however, it is what makes an object beautiful or ugly after the specific form has been determined, then it could claim to be a quality.

Rough and smooth, tenuous and dense may rightly be classed as qualities. It is true that they are not determined by distances and approximations, or in general by even or uneven dispositions, of parts; though, were they so determined, they might well even then be qualities.

Knowledge of the meaning of light and heavy will reveal their place in the classification. An ambiguity will however be latent in the term ‘light’, unless it be determined by comparative weight: it would then implicate leanness and fineness, and involve another species distinct from the four (of Aristotle).


§ 12. If then we do not propose to divide Quality in this (fourfold) manner, what basis of division have we?

We must examine whether qualities may not prove to be divisible on the principle that some belong to the body and others to the soul. Those of the body would be subdivided according to the senses, some being attributed to sight, others to hearing and taste, others to smell and touch. Those of the soul would presumably be allotted to appetite, emotion, reason; though, again, they may be distinguished by the differences of the activities they condition, inasmuch as activities are engendered by these qualities; or according as they are beneficial or injurious, the benefits and injuries being duly classified. This last is applicable also to the classification of bodily qualities, which also produce differences of benefit and injury: these differences must be regarded as distinctively qualitative; for either the benefit and injury are held to be derived from Quality and the quale, or else some other explanation must be found for them.

A point for consideration is how the quale, as conditioned by Quality, can belong to the same category: obviously there can be no single genus embracing both.

Further, if ‘boxer’ is in the category of Quality, why not ‘agent’ as well? And with agent goes ‘active’. Thus ‘active’ need not go into the category of Relation; nor again need ‘passive’, if ‘patient’ is a quale. -454-

Moreover, ‘agent’ is perhaps better assigned to the category of Quality for the reason that the term implies power and power is Quality. But if power as such were determined by Substance (and not by Quality), the agent, though ceasing to be a quale, would not necessarily become a relative. Besides, ‘active’ is not like ‘greater’: the greater, to be the greater, demands a less, whereas ‘active’ stands complete by the mere possession of its specific character.

It may, however, be urged that while the possession of that character makes it a quale, it is a relative in so far as it directs upon an external object the power indicated by its name. Why, then, is not ‘boxer’ a relative, and ‘boxing’ as well? Boxing is entirely related to an external object; its whole theory presupposes this external. And in the case of the other arts — or most of them — investigation would probably warrant the assertion that in so far as they affect (dispose) the Soul they are qualities, while in so far as they look outward they are active and as being directed to an external object are relatives. They are relatives in the other sense also that they are thought of as habits.

Can it then be held that there is any distinct reality implied in activity, when the active is identified with the quale? It may perhaps be held that the tendency towards action of living beings, and especially of those having free-will, implies a reality of activity (as well as a reality of Quality).

But what is the function of the active in connexion with those non-living powers which we have classed as qualities? Doubtless to recruit any object it encounters, making the object a participant in its content.

But if one same object both acts and is acted upon, how do we then explain the active? Observe also that the greater — in itself perhaps a fixed three yards’ length — will present itself as both greater and less according to its external contacts.

It will be objected that greater and less are due to participation in greatness and smallness; and it might be conceded that a thing is active or passive by participation in activity or passivity.

This is the place for inquiring also whether the qualities of the Sensible and Intellectual realms can be included under one head — a question intended only for those who ascribe qualities to the higher realm as well as the lower. And even if Ideal Forms of qualities are not posited, yet once the term ‘habit’ is used in reference to Intellect, the question arises whether there is anything common to that habit and the habit we know in the lower.

Wisdom too is generally admitted to exist There. Obviously, if it shares only its name with our wisdom, it is not to be reckoned among things of this sphere; if, however, the import is in both cases the same, then Quality is common to both realms — unless, of course, it be maintained that everything There, including even intellection, is Substance.

This question, however, applies to all the categories: are the two spheres irreconcilable, or can they be coordinated within a unity? -455-


§ 13. With regard to Date: If ‘yesterday’, ‘tomorrow’, ‘last year’, and similar terms denote parts of time, why should they not be included in the same genus as time? It would seem only reasonable to range under time the past, present, and future, which are its species. But time is referred to Quantity; what then is the need for a separate category of Date?

If we are told that past and future — including under past such definite dates as yesterday and last year which must clearly be subordinate to past time — are not merely time, to be identified with the present moment (time-now), but are time-when, we reply, in the first place, that the notion of time-when involves time; that, further, if ‘yesterday’ is time-gone-by, it will be a composite, since time and gone-by are distinct notions: we have two categories instead of the single one required.

But suppose that Date is defined not as time but as that which is in time; if by that which is in time is meant the subject — Socrates in the proposition ‘Socrates existed last year’ — that subject is external to the notion of time, and we have again a duality.

Consider, however, the proposition ‘Socrates — or some action — exists at this time’; what can be the meaning here other than ‘in a part of time’? But if, admitted that Date is ‘a part of time’, it be felt that the part requires definition and involves something more than mere time, that we must say (for example) the part of time gone by, several notions are massed in the proposition: we have the part which qua part is a relative; and we have ‘gone-by’ which, if it is to have any import at all, must mean the past: but this ‘past’, we have shown, is a species of time.

It may be urged that ‘the past’ is in its nature indefinite, while ‘yesterday’ and ‘last year’ are definite. We reply, first, that we demand some place in our classification for the past: secondly, that ‘yesterday’, as definite past, is necessarily definite time. But definite time implies a certain quantity of time: therefore, if time is quantitative, each of the terms in question must signify a definite quantity.

Again, if by ‘yesterday’ we are expected to understand that this or that event has taken place at a definite time gone by, we have more notions than ever. Besides, if we must introduce fresh categories because one thing acts in another — as in this case something acts in time — we have more again from its acting upon another in another. This point will be made plain by what follows in our discussion of Location.


§ 14. The category of Location; for example, ‘in the Lyceum’, ‘in the Academy’:

The Academy and the Lyceum are places, and parts of place, just as ‘above’, ‘below’, ‘here’ are species or parts of place; the difference is of minuter delimitation.

If then ‘above’, ‘below’, ‘the middle’ are places — Delphi, for example, -456- is the middle (of the earth) — and ‘near-the-middle’ is also a place — Athens, and of course the Lyceum and the other places usually cited, are near the middle — what need have we to go further and seek beyond place, admitting as we do that we refer in every instance to a place?

If, however, we have in mind the presence of one thing in another, we are not speaking of a single entity, we are not expressing a single notion.

Another consideration: when we say that a man is here, we present a relation of the man to that in which he is, a relation of the container to the contained. Why then do we not class as a relative whatever may be produced from this relation?

Besides, how does ‘here’ differ from ‘at Athens’? The demonstrative ‘here’ admittedly signifies place; so, then, does ‘at Athens’: ‘at Athens’ therefore refers to place.

Again, if ‘at Athens’ means ‘is at Athens’, then the ‘is’ as well as the place belongs to the predicate; but this cannot be right: we do not regard ‘is a quality’ as predicate, but ‘a quality’.

Furthermore, if ‘in time’, ‘in place’ are to be ranged under a category other than that applying to time and place, why not a separate category for ‘in a vessel’? Why not distinct categories for ‘in Matter’, ‘in a subject’, ‘a part in a whole’, ‘a whole in its parts’, ‘a genus in its species’, ‘a species in a genus’? We are certainly on the way to a goodly number of categories.


§ 15. The ‘category of Action’:

The quantum has been regarded as a single genus on the ground that Quantity and Number are attributes of Substance and posterior to it; the quale has been regarded as another genus because Quality is an attribute of Substance: on the same principle it is maintained that since activity is an attribute of Substance, Action constitutes yet another genus.

Does then the action constitute the category, or the activity from which the action springs, in the same way as Quality is the category, with the quale derived? Perhaps activity, action, and agent should all be embraced under a single head? But, on the one hand, the action — unlike activity — tends to comport the agent; and on the other, it signifies being in some activity and therefore Being-in-Act (actual as distinct from potential Being). Consequently the category will be one of Act rather than of Action.

Act moreover incontestably manifests itself in Substance, as was found to be the case with Quality: it is connected with Substance as being a form of motion. Thus Motion emerges as a separate genus: for, seeing that Quality is a distinct attribute of Substance, and Quantity a distinct attribute, and Relative takes its being from the relation of one substance to another, there can be no reason why Motion, also an attribute of Substance, should not also constitute a distinct genus, -457-


§ 16. If it be urged that Motion is but imperfect Act, there would be no objection to giving priority to Act and subordinating to it Motion with its imperfection as a species: Act would thus be predicated of Motion, but with the qualification ‘imperfect’.

Motion is thought of as imperfect, not because it is not an Act, but because, entirely an Act, it yet entails repetition (lacks finality). It repeats, not in order that it may achieve actuality — it is already actual — but that it may attain a goal distinct from itself and posterior: it is not the motion itself that is then consummated but the result at which it aims. Walking is walking from the outset; when one should traverse a racecourse but has not yet done so, the deficiency lies not in the walking — not in the motion — but in the amount of walking accomplished; no matter what the amount, it is walking and motion already: a moving man has motion and a cutter cuts before there is any question of Quantity. And just as we can speak of Act without implying time, so we can of Motion, except in the sense of motion over a defined area; Act is timeless, and so is Motion pure and simple.

Are we told that Motion is necessarily in time, inasmuch as it involves continuity? But, at this, sight, never ceasing to see, will also be continuous and in time. Our critic, it is true, may find support in that principle of proportion which states that you may make a division of no matter what motion, and find that neither the motion nor its duration has any beginning but that the division may be continued indefinitely in the direction of the motion’s origin: this would mean that a motion just begun has been in progress from an infinity of time, that it is infinite as regards its beginning.

Such then is the result of separating Act from Motion: Act, we aver, is timeless; yet we are forced to maintain not only that time is necessary to quantitative motion, but, unreservedly, that Motion is quantitative in its very nature; though indeed, if it were a case of motion occupying a day or some other quantity of time, the exponents of this view would be the first to admit that Quantity is present to Motion only by way of accident.

In sum, just as Act is timeless, so there is no reason why Motion also should not primarily be timeless, time attaching to it only in so far as it happens to have such and such an extension.

Timeless change is sanctioned in the expression, ‘as if change could not take place all at once’; if then change is timeless, why not Motion also? — Change, be it noted, is here distinguished from the result of change, the result being unnecessary to establish the change itself.


§ 17. We may be told that neither Act nor Motion requires a genus for itself, but that both revert to Relation, Act belonging to the potentially active, Motion to the potentially motive. Our reply is that Relation produces relatives and is more than the mere reference to an external standard; given the existence of a thing, whether attributive or relative, -458- it holds its essential character prior to any relationship: so then must Act and Motion, and even such an attribute as habit; they are not prevented from being prior to any relationship they may occupy, or from being conceivable in themselves. Otherwise, everything will be relative; for anything you think of — even Soul — bears some relationship to something else.

But, to return to activity proper and the action, is there any reason why these should not be referred to Relation? They must in every instance be either Motion or Act.

If, however, activity is referred to Relation and the action made a distinct genus, why is not Motion referred to Relation and the movement made a distinct genus? Why not bisect the unity, Motion, and so make Action and Passion two species of the one thing, ceasing to consider Action and Passion as two genera?


§ 18. There are other questions calling for consideration:

First: Are both Acts and motions to be included in the category of Action, with the distinction that Acts are momentary while motions, such as cutting, are in time? Or will both be regarded as motions or (at least) as involving Motion?

Secondly: Will all activities be related to passivity, or will some — for example, walking and speaking — be considered as independent of it?

Thirdly: Will all those related to passivity be classed as motions and the independent as Acts, or will the two classes overlap? Walking, for instance, which is an independent, would, one gathers, be a motion; thinking, which also does not essentially involve passivity, an Act: otherwise we must hold that thinking and walking are not even actions. But if they are not in the category of Action, where then in our classification must they fall?

It may perhaps be urged that the act of thinking, together with the faculty of thought, should be regarded as relative to the thought object; for is not the faculty of sensation treated as relative to the sensible object? If then, we may ask, in the analogue the faculty of sensation is treated as relative to the sensible object, why not the sensory act as well? The fact is that even sensation, though related to an external object, has something besides that relation: it has, namely, its own status of being either an Act or a Passion. Now the Passion is separable from the condition of being attached to some object and caused by some object: so, then, is the Act a distinct entity. Walking is similarly attached and caused, and yet has besides the status of being a motion. It follows that thought, in addition to its relationship, will have the status of being either a motion or an Act.


§ 19. We have to ask ourselves whether there are not certain Acts which without the addition of a time-element will be thought of as imperfect and therefore classed with motions. Take for instance living and life. -459- The life of a definite person implies a certain adequate period, just as his happiness is no merely instantaneous thing. Life and happiness are, in other words, of the nature ascribed to Motion: both therefore must be treated as motions, and Motion must be regarded as a unity, a single genus; besides the quantity and quality belonging to Substance we must take count of the motion manifested in it.

We may further find it desirable to distinguish bodily from psychic motions, or spontaneous motions from those induced by external forces, or the original from the derivative, the original motions being activities whether externally related or independent, while the derivative will be Passions.

But surely the motions having external tendency are actually identical with those of external derivation: the cutting issuing from the cutter and that effected in the object are one, though to cut is not the same as to be cut.

Perhaps, however, the cutting issuing from the cutter and that which takes place in the cut object are in fact not one, but ‘to cut’ implies that from a particular Act and motion there results a different motion in the object cut. Or perhaps the difference (between Action and Passion) lies not in the fact of being cut, but in the distinct emotion supervening, pain for example: passivity has also this connotation.

But when there is no pain, what occurs? Nothing, surely, but the Act of the agent upon the patient object: this is all that is meant in such cases by Action. Action, thus, becomes twofold: there is that which occurs in the external, and that which does not. The duality of Action and Passion, suggested by the notion that Action (always) takes place in an external, is abandoned.

Even writing, for example, though taking place upon an external object, does not call for passivity, since no effect is produced upon the tablet beyond the Act or the writer, nothing like pain; we may be told that the tablet has been inscribed, but this does not suffice for passivity.

Again, in the case of walking there is the earth trodden upon, but no one thinks of it as having experienced Passion (or suffering). Treading on a living body, we think of suffering, because we reflect not upon the walking but upon the ensuing pain: otherwise we should think of suffering in the case of the earth as well.

It is so in every case of Action: we cannot but think of it as knit into a unity with its opposite, Passion. Not that this later ‘Passion’ is the opposite of Action in the way in which being burned is the opposite of burning: by Passion in this sense we mean the effect supervening upon the combined facts of the burning and the being burned, whether this effect be pain or some such process as withering.

Suppose that an agent acts with the express purpose of causing pain: have we not still the duality of agent and patient, two results from the one Act? The Act may not retain the will to cause pain; but it produces something distinct from itself, a pain-causing medium which enters -460- into the object about to experience pain: this medium, while preserving its individuality, produces something yet different, the feeling of pain.

What does this suggest? Surely that the very medium — the act of hearing, for instance — is, even before it produces pain or without producing pain at all, a Passion of that into which it enters.

But hearing, with sensation in general, is in fact not a Passion. Yet to feel pain is to experience a Passion — a Passion, however, which is not opposed to Action.


§ 2O. But though not opposed, it is still different from Action and cannot belong to the same genus as activity; though if they are both Motion, it will so belong, on the principle that alteration must be regarded as qualitative motion.

Does it follow that whenever alteration proceeds from the agent, it will be activity and Action, the agent remaining impassive? It may be that if the agent remains impassive, the alteration will be in the category of Action; whereas if, while its energy is directed outwards, it also suffers — as in beating — it will cease to belong to that category: or perhaps there is nothing to prevent its being in both categories at one and the same moment.

If then Passivity arises in the course of Action, as is the case with rubbing, on what ground is it assigned to Action rather than to Passivity? Perhaps the Passivity arises from the fact that a counter-rubbing is involved. But are we, in view of this counter-motion, to recognize the presence of two distinct motions? No: one only.

How then can this one motion be both Action and Passion? We must suppose it to be Action in proceeding from an object, and Passion in being directed upon another — though it remains the same motion throughout.

Suppose, however, Passion to be a different motion from Action: how then does its modification of the patient object change that patient’s character without the agent being affected by the patient? For obviously an agent cannot be passive to the operation it performs upon another. Can it be that the fact of motion existing elsewhere creates the Passion, which was not Passion in the agent?

If the whiteness of the swan, produced by its Reason-Principle, is given at its birth, are we to affirm Passion of the swan on its passing into being? And if the swan becomes white after birth? Suppose a cause of growth and the corresponding result: are we to say that the growth is a Passion or must we confine Passion to purely qualitative change?

One thing confers beauty and another takes it: is that which takes beauty to be regarded as patient? If then the source of beauty — tin, suppose — should deteriorate or actually disappear, while the recipient — copper — improves, are we to think of the copper as passive and the tin active? -461-

Take the learner: how can he be regarded as passive, seeing that the Act of the agent passes into him (and becomes his Act)? How can the Act, necessarily a simple entity, be both Act and Passion? No doubt the Act is not in itself a Passion; nonetheless, the learner coming to possess it will be a patient by the fact of his appropriation of an experience from outside: he will not, of course, be a patient in the sense of having himself performed no Act; learning — like seeing — is not analogous to being struck, since it involves the acts of apprehension and recognition.


§ 21. How then are we to recognize Passivity, since clearly it is not to be found in the Act from outside which the recipient in turn makes his own? Surely we must look for it in cases where the patient remains without Act, the passivity pure.

Imagine, then, a case where a patient improves, though the Act tends towards deterioration. Or, say, a man’s activity is guided by evil and is allowed to dominate another’s without restraint. In these cases the Act is clearly wrong, the Passion blameless.

What then is the real distinction between Action and Passion? Is it that Action starts from within and is directed upon an outside object, while Passion is derived from without and fulfilled within? What, then, are we to say of such cases as thought and opinion which originate within but are not directed outwards? Again, the Passion ‘being heated’ rises within the self, when that self is provoked by an opinion to reflection or to anger, without the intervention of any external. Still, it remains true that Action, whether self-centred or with external tendency, is a motion rising in the self.

How then do we explain desire and other forms of aspiration? Aspiration must be a motion having its origin in the object aspired to — though some might disallow ‘origin’ and be content with saying that the motion aroused is subsequent to the object; in what respect, then, does aspiring differ from taking a blow or being borne down by a thrust?

Perhaps, however, we should divide aspirations into two classes, those which follow intellect being described as Actions, the merely impulsive being Passions. Passivity now will not turn on origin, without or within — ‘within’ meaning that passivity may occur, as in decomposition, apart from external cause; but whenever a thing, without itself assisting in the process, undergoes an alteration not directed to the creation of Being but changing the thing for the worse or not for the better, such an alteration will be regarded as a Passion and as entailing passivity.

If, however, ‘being heated’ means acquiring heat, and is sometimes found to contribute to the production of Being and sometimes not, passivity will be identical with impassivity: besides, ‘being heated’ must then have a double significance (according as it does or does not contribute to Being). -462-

The fact is, however, that ‘being heated’, even when it contributes to Being, involves the presence or a patient (distinct from the being produced). Take the case of the bronze which has to be heated and so is a patient; the being is a statue, which is not heated except accidentally (by the accident of being contained in the bronze). If then the bronze becomes more beautiful as a result of being heated and in the same proportion, it certainly becomes so by passivity; for passivity must, clearly, take two forms: there is the passivity which tends to alteration for the worse, and there is the passivity which tends to alteration for the better or has neither tendency.


§ 22. Passivity, thus, implies the existence within of a motion functioning somehow or other in the direction of alteration. Action too implies motion within, whether the motion be aimless or whether it be driven by the impulse comported by the term ‘Action’ to find its goal in an external object. There is Motion in both Action and Passion, but the differentia distinguishing Action from Passion keeps Action as such impassive, while Passion is recognized by the fact that a new state replaces the old, though nothing is added to the essential character of the patient; whenever a new being or substance is produced, the patient remains distinct.

Thus, what is Action in one relation may be Passion in another. One same motion will be Action from the point of view of A, Passion from that of B; for the two are so disposed that they might well be consigned to the category of Relation — at any rate in the cases where the Action entails a corresponding Passion: neither correlative is found in isolation; each involves both Action and Passion, though A acts as mover and B is moved: each then involves two categories.

Again, A gives motion to B, B receives it, so that we have a giving and a receiving — in a word, a relation.

But a recipient must possess what it has received. A thing is admitted to possess its natural colour: why not its motion also (which would put motion into the category of Possession)? Besides, independent motions such as walking and thought do, in fact, involve the possession of the powers respectively to walk and to think.

We are reminded to inquire whether (thought in the form of) providence constitutes Action; to be subject to providence is apparently Passion, for such thought is directed to an external, the object of the providential arrangement. But it may well be that neither is the exercise of providence an action, even though the thought is concerned with an external, nor subjection to it a Passion. Thought itself need not be an action, for it does not go outward towards its object but merely attends to it. It is not always an activity; all Acts need not be definable as activities, for they need not produce an effect; activity belongs to Act only accidentally.

Does it follow (conversely) that if a man as he walks produces -463- footprints, he cannot be considered to have performed an action? Certainly as a result of his existing something distinct from himself has come into being. Yet perhaps we should regard both action and Act as merely accidental, because he did not aim at this result: it would be as we speak of Action even in things inanimate — ‘fire heats’, ‘the drug worked’. So much for Action and Passion.


§ 23. As for Possession, if the term is used comprehensively, why are not all its modes to be brought under one category? Possession, thus, would include the quantum as possessing magnitude, the quale as possessing colour; it would include fatherhood and the complementary relationships, since the father possesses the son and the son possesses the father: in short, it would include all belongings.

If, on the contrary, the category of Possession comprises only the things of the body, such as weapons and shoes, we first ask why this should be so, and why their possession produces a distinct category, while burning, cutting, burying, or casting them out do not give another or others. If it is because these things are carried on the person, then one’s mantle lying on a couch will come under a different category from that of the mantle covering the person. If the ownership of possession suffices, then clearly one must refer to the one category of Possession all objects identified by being possessed, every case in which possession can be established; the character of the possessed object will make no difference.

If, however, Possession is not to be predicated of Quality because Quality stands recognized as a category, nor of Quantity because the category of Quantity has been received, nor of parts because they have been assigned to the category of Substance, why should we predicate Possession of weapons, when they too are comprised in the accepted category of Substance? Shoes and weapons are clearly substances.

How, further, is ‘He possesses weapons’, signifying as it does that the action of arming has been performed by a subject, to be regarded as an entirely simple notion, assignable to a single category?

Again, is Possession to be restricted to an animate possessor, or does it hold good even of a statue as possessing the objects above mentioned? The animate and inanimate seem to possess in different ways, and the term is perhaps equivocal. Similarly, ‘standing’ has not the same connotation as applied to the animate and the inanimate.

Besides, how can it be reasonable for what is found only in a limited number of cases to form a distinct generic category?


§ 24. There remains Situation, which like Possession is confined to a few instances such as reclining and sitting.

Even so, the term is not used without qualification: we say ‘they are placed in such and such a manner’, ‘he is situated in such and such a position’. The position is added from outside the genus. -464-

In short, Situation signifies ‘being in a place’; there are two things involved, the position and the place: why then must two categories be combined into one?

Moreover, if sitting signifies an Act, it must be classed among Acts; if a Passion, it goes under the category to which belong Passions complete and incomplete.

Reclining is surely nothing but ‘lying up’, and tallies with ‘lying down’ and ‘lying midway’. But if the reclining belongs thus to the category of Relation, why does not the recliner also? For as ‘on the right’ goes with relations, so does ‘the thing on the right’; and similarly with ‘the thing on the left’.


§ 25. There are those who lay down four categories and make a fourfold division into Substrates, Qualities, States, and Relative States, and find in these a common Something, and so include everything in one genus.

Against this theory there is much to be urged, but particularly against this posing of a common Something and a single all-embracing genus. This Something, it may be submitted, is unintelligible to themselves, is indefinable, and does not account either for bodies or for the bodiless. Moreover, no room is left for a differentia by which this Something may be divided (to form species). Besides, this common Something is either existent or non-existent: if existent, it must be one or other of its (four) species; if non-existent, the existent is classed under the non-existent. But the objections are countless; we must leave them for the present and consider the several heads of the division.

To the first genus are assigned Substrates, including Matter, to which is given a priority over the others; so that what is ranked as the first principle comes under the same head with things which must be posterior to it since it is their principle.

First, then: the prior is made homogeneous with the subsequent. Now this is impossible: in this relation the subsequent owes its existence to the prior, whereas among things belonging to one same genus each must have, essentially, the equality implied by the genus; for the very meaning of genus is to be predicated of the species in respect of their essential character. And that Matter is the basic source of all the rest of things, this school, we may suppose, would hardly deny.

Secondly: since they treat the Substrate as one thing, they do not enumerate the Existents; they look instead for principles of the Existents. There is, however, a difference between speaking of the actual Existents and of their principles.

If Matter is taken to be the only Existent, and all other things as modifications of Matter, it is not legitimate to set up a single genus to embrace both the Existent and the other things; consistency requires that Being (Substance) be distinguished from its modifications and that these modifications be duly classified.

Even the distinction which this theory makes between Substrates -465- and the rest of things is questionable. The Substrate is (necessarily) one thing and admits of no differentia — except perhaps in so far as it is split up like one mass into its various parts; and yet not even so, since the notion of Being implies continuity: it would be better, therefore, to speak of the Substrate in the singular.


§ 26. But the error in this theory is fundamental. To set Matter the potential above everything, instead of recognizing the primacy of actuality, is in the highest degree perverse. If the potential holds the primacy among the Existents, its actualization becomes impossible; it certainly cannot bring itself into actuality: either the actual exists previously, and so the potential is not the first-principle, or, if the two are to be regarded as existing simultaneously, the first-principles must be attributed to hazard. Besides, if they are simultaneous, why is not actuality given the primacy? Why is the potential more truly real than the actual?

Supposing, however, that the actual does come later than the potential, how must the theory proceed? Obviously Matter does not produce Form: the unqualified does not produce Quality, nor does actuality take its origin in the potential; for that would mean that the actual was inherent in the potential, which at once becomes a dual thing.

Furthermore, God becomes a secondary to Matter, inasmuch as even he is regarded as a body composed of Matter and Form — though how he acquires the Form is not revealed. If, however, he be admitted to exist apart from Matter in virtue of his character as a principle and a rational law, God will be bodiless, the Creative Power bodiless. If we are told that he is without Matter but is composite in essence by the fact of being a body, this amounts to introducing another Matter, the Matter of God.

Again, how can Matter be a first-principle, seeing that it is body? Body must necessarily be a plurality, since all bodies are composite of Matter and Quality. If, however, body in this case is to be understood in some different way, then Matter is identified with body only by an equivocation.

If the possession of three dimensions is given as the characteristic of body, then we are dealing simply with mathematical body. If resistance is added, we are no longer considering a unity: besides, resistance is a quality or at least derived from Quality.

And whence is this resistance supposed to come? Whence the three dimensions? What is the source of their existence? Matter is not comprised in the concept of the three-dimensional, nor the three- dimensional in the concept of Matter; if Matter partakes thus of extension, it can no longer be a simplex.

Again, whence does Matter derive its unifying power? It is assuredly not a unifying force in itself, but only through participation in Unity.

We inevitably conclude that Mass or Extension cannot be ranked as -466- the first of things; Non-Extension and Unity must be prior. We must begin with the One and conclude with the Many, proceed to magnitude from that which is free from magnitude: a One is necessary to the existence of a Many, Non-Magnitude to that of Magnitude. Magnitude is a unity not by being Unity-Absolute, but by participation and in an accidental mode: there must be a primary and absolute preceding the accidental, or the accidental relation is left unexplained.

The manner of this relation demands investigation. Had this been undertaken, the thinkers of this school would probably have lighted upon that Unity which is not accidental but essential and underived.


§ 27. On other grounds also it is indefensible not to have reserved the high place for the true first-principle of things but to have set up in its stead the formless, passive and lifeless, the irrational, dark and indeterminate, and to have made this the source of Being. In this theory God is introduced merely for the sake of appearance: deriving existence from Matter he is a composite, a derivative, or worse, a mere state of Matter.

Another consideration is that if Matter is a substrate, there must be something outside it, which, acting on it and distinct from it, makes it the substrate of what is poured into it. But if God is lodged in Matter and by being involved in Matter is himself no more than a substrate, he will no longer make Matter a substrate nor be himself a substrate in conjunction with Matter. For of what will they be substrates, when that which could make them substrates is eliminated? This so-called substrate turns out to have swallowed up all that is; but a substrate must be relative, and relative not to its content but to something which acts upon it as upon a datum.

Again, the substrate comports a relation to that which is not substrate; hence, to something external to it: there must, then, be something apart from the substrate. If nothing distinct and external is considered necessary, but the substrate itself can become everything and adopt every character like the versatile dancer in the pantomime, it ceases to be a substrate: it is, essentially, everything. The mime is not a substrate of the characters he puts on; these are in fact the realization of his own personality: similarly, if the Matter with which this theory presents us comports in its own being all the realities, it is no longer the substrate of all: on the contrary, the other things can have no reality whatever, if they are no more than states of Matter in the sense that the poses of the mime are states through which he passes.

Then, those other things not existing, Matter will not be a substrate, nor will it have a place among the Existents; it will be Matter bare, and for that reason not even Matter, since Matter is a relative. The relative is relative to something else: it must, further, be homogeneous with that something else: double is relative to half, but not Substance to double. -467-

How then can an Existent be relative to a Non-existent, except accidentally? But (by this theory) the True-Existent and Matter are related to each other as Existent to Existent. For if potentiality is that which holds the promise of existence and that promise does not constitute Complete Reality, the potentiality cannot be a Reality. In sum, these very teachers who deprecate the production of Realities from Non-realities, themselves produce Non-reality from Reality; for to them the universe as such is not a Reality.

But is it not a paradox that while Matter, the Substrate, is to them an existence, bodies should not have more claim to existence, the universe yet more, and not merely a claim grounded on the reality of one of its parts?

It is no less paradoxical that the living form should owe existence not to its soul but to its Matter only, the soul being but an affection of Matter and posterior to it. From what source then did Matter receive ensoulment? Whence, in short, is soul’s entity derived? How does it occur that Matter sometimes turns into bodies, while another part of it turns into Soul? Even supposing that Form might come to it from elsewhere, that accession of Quality to Matter would account not for Soul, but simply for organized body soulless. If, on the contrary, there is something which both moulds Matter and produces Soul, then prior to the produced there must be Soul the producer.


§ 28. Many as are the objections to this theory, we pass on for fear of the ridicule we might incur by arguing against a position itself so manifestly ridiculous. We may be content with pointing out that it assigns the primacy to the Non-existent and treats it as the very summit of Existence: in short, it places the last thing first. The reason for this procedure lies in the acceptance of sense-perception as a trustworthy guide in distinguishing the Primal from other entities.

This philosophy began by identifying the Real with body; then, viewing with apprehension the transmutations of bodies, decided that Reality was that which is permanent beneath the superficial changes — which is much as if one regarded space as having more title to Reality than the bodies within it, on the principle that the space does not perish with them. Space is as permanent as their Substrate: but it was a fault to take mere permanence as in itself a sufficient definition of the Real; the right method would have been to consider what properties must characterize Reality, by the presence of which properties it has also that of unfailing permanence. Thus if a shadow had permanence, accompanying an object through every change, that would not make it more real than the object itself. The sensible universe, as including the Substrate and a multitude of attributes, will thus have more claim to be Reality entire than has any one of its component entities (such as Matter): but if the sensible universe is itself unreal, how can the Substrate (as part of it) be real? -468-

Most surprising of all is that, while they make sense-perception their guarantee of everything, they hold that the Real cannot be grasped by sensation; for they have no right to assign to Matter even so much as resistance, since resistance is a quality. If, however, they profess to grasp Reality by Intellect, is it not a strange Intellect which ranks Matter above itself, giving Reality to Matter and not to itself? And as their ‘Intellect’ has, thus, no Real-Existence, how can it be trustworthy when it speaks of things higher than itself, things to which it has no affinity whatever?

But an adequate treatment of this entity (Matter) and of substrates will be found elsewhere.


§ 29. Qualities must be for this school distinct from Substrates. This in fact they acknowledge by counting them as the second category. If then they form a distinct category, they must be simplex; that is to say, not composite; that is to say that as qualities, pure and simple, they must be devoid of Matter: hence, bodiless and active, since Matter is their substrate — a relation of passivity.

If nevertheless they hold Qualities to be composite, that is a strange classification which first contrasts simple and composite things, then proceeds to include them in one genus, and finally includes one of the two species (simple) in the other (composite); it is like dividing knowledge into two species, the first comprising grammatical knowledge, the second made up of grammatical and other knowledge.

Again, if they identify Qualities with qualifications of Matter, then in the first place even their Seminal Principles (Logoi) will be material, and will not have to reside in Matter to produce a composite, but prior to the composite thus produced they will themselves be composed of Matter and Form: in other words, they will not be Forms or Principles. Further, if they maintain that the Seminal Principles are nothing but Matter in a certain state, they evidently identify Qualities with States, and should accordingly classify them in their fourth genus. If this is a state of some peculiar kind, what precisely is its differentia? Clearly the state by its association with Matter receives (on this theory) an accession of Reality: yet if that means that when divorced from Matter it is not a Reality, how can State be treated as a single genus or species? Certainly one genus cannot embrace the Existent and the Non-existent.

And what is this state implanted in Matter? It is either real, or unreal: if real, it is at all events bodiless: if unreal, it is introduced to no purpose; Matter is all there is; Quality therefore is nothing. The same is true of State, for that is even more unreal; the alleged Fourth Category more so.

Matter then is the sole Reality. But how do we come to know this? Certainly not from Matter itself. How, then? From Intellect? But Intellect is (in their view) merely a state of Matter, and even the ‘state’ is an empty qualification. We are left after all with Matter alone competent to make these assertions, to fathom these problems. And if its -469- assertions were intelligent, we must wonder how it thinks and performs the functions of Soul without possessing either Intellect or Soul. If, then, it were to make foolish assertions, affirming itself to be what it is not and cannot be, to what should we ascribe this folly? Doubtless to Matter, if it was in truth Matter that spoke. But Matter does not speak; anyone who says that it does proclaims the predominance of Matter in himself; he may have a soul, but to Matter he is resigned, and lives in ignorance of himself and of the faculty alone capable of uttering the truth in these things.


§ 30. With regard to States:

It may seem strange that States should be set up as a third class — or whatever class it is — since all States are referable to Matter. We shall be told that there is a difference among States, and that a State as in Matter has definite characteristics distinguishing it from States proper and further that, whereas Qualities are States of Matter, States properly so called belong to Qualities. But if Qualities are nothing but States of Matter, States (in the strict sense of the term) are ultimately reducible to Matter, and belong to Matter.

Further, how can States constitute a single genus, when there is such manifold diversity among them? How can we group together ‘three yards long’ and ‘white’ — Quantity and Quality respectively? Or again Time and Place? How can ‘yesterday’, ‘last year’, ‘in the Lyceum’, ‘in the Academy’, be States at all? How can Time be in any sense a State? Neither is Time a State nor the events in Time, neither the objects in Space nor Space itself.

And how can Action be a State? One acting is not in a state of being but in a state of Action, or rather in Action simply: no state is involved. Similarly, what is predicated of the patient is not a state of being but a state of Passion, or, strictly, Passion unqualified by state.

But it would seem that State was the right category at least for cases of Situation and Possession: yet Possession does not imply possession of some particular state, but is Possession absolute.

As for the Relative State, if the theory does not include it in the same class as the other States, another question arises: we must inquire whether any actuality is attributed to this particular type of relation, for to many types actuality is denied.

It is, moreover, absurd that an entity which depends upon the prior existence of other entities should be classed in the same genus with those priors: one and two must, clearly, exist, before half and double can.


The various other speculations on the subject of the Existents and the principles of the Existents, whether they have entailed an infinite or a finite number, bodily or bodiless, or even supposed the Composite to be the Authentic Existent, may well be considered severally with the help of the criticisms made by the ancients upon them. -470-

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Second Tractate: On the Kinds of Being: Second Treatise

§ 1. We have examined the proposed ‘ten genera’: we have discussed also the theory which gathers the total of things into one genus and to this subordinates what may be thought of as its four species. The next step is, naturally, to expound our own views and to try to show the agreement of our conclusions with those of Plato.

Now if we were obliged to consider Being as a unity, the following questions would be unnecessary:

Is there one genus embracing everything, or are there genera which cannot be subsumed under such a unity? Are there first-principles? Are first-principles to be identified with genera, or genera with first-principles? Or is it perhaps rather the case that while not all genera are first-principles, all first-principles are at the same time genera? Or is the converse true? Or is it the fact that in both cases only some principles are genera and only some genera principles; or that in one case all that belongs to the one class belongs to the other, whereas in the other case there is only a partial overlap?

Since, however, we affirm that Being is not a unity — the reason for this affirmation is stated by Plato and others — these questions become imperative, once we are satisfied as to the number of genera to be posited and the grounds for our choice.

The subject of our inquiry, then, is the Existent or Existents, and it presents immediately two problems demanding separate analysis:

What do we mean by the Existent? — This is naturally the first question to be examined.

What is that which, often taken for Being (for the Existent), is in our view Becoming and never really Being? — Note, however, that these concepts are not to be taken as distinguished from each other in the sense of belonging to a genus, Something, divided into Being and Becoming; and we must not suppose that Plato took this view. It would be absurd to assign Being to trie same genus as non-Being: this would be to make one genus of Socrates and his portrait. The division here (between what has Being and what is in Becoming) means a definite marking-off, a setting asunder, leading to the assertion that what takes the appearance of Being is not Being and implying that the nature of True Being has been quite misapprehended. Being, we are taught, must have the attribute of eternity, must be so constituted as never to belie its own nature.

This, then, is the Being of which we shall treat, and in our investigation we shall assume that it is not a unity: subsequently we ask leave to say something on the nature of Becoming and on what it is that comes to be, that is, on the nature of the world of Sense.


§ 2. In asserting that Being is not a unity, do we imply a definite number of existences or an infinite number? What precisely do we mean by ‘not a unity’? Simply that it is many as well as one, that it is, so to speak, a diversified unity, a plurality in unity.

It follows that either the unity so regarded is a unity of genus under which the Existents, involving as they do plurality as well as unity, stand as species; or that while there are more genera than one, yet all are subordinate to a unity; or there may be more genera than one, though no one genus is subordinate to any other, but all with their own subordinates — whether these be lesser genera, or species with individuals for their subordinates — all are elements in one entity, and from their totality the Intellectual realm — that which we know as Being — derives its constitution.

If this last is the truth, we have here not merely genera, but genera which are at the same time principles of Being. They are genera because they have subordinates — other genera, and successively species and individuals; they are also principles, since from this plurality Being takes its rise, constituted in its entirety from these its elements.

Suppose, however, a number of origins which by their mere totality comprised, without possessing any subordinates, the whole of Being; these would be first-principles but not genera: it would be as if one constructed the sensible world from the four elements — fire and the others; these elements would be first-principles, but they would not be genera, unless the term ‘genus’ is to be used equivocally.

But does this assertion of certain genera which are at the same time first-principles imply that by combining the genera, each with its subordinates, we find the whole of Being in the resultant combination? But then, taken separately, their existence will not be actual but only potential, and they will not be found in isolation.

Suppose, on the other hand, we ignore the genera and combine the particulars: what then becomes of the ignored genera? They will, surely, exist in the purity of their own isolation, and the mixtures will not destroy them. The question of how this result is achieved may be postponed.

For the moment we take it as agreed that there are genera which are also principles of Being and that, on another plane, principles (elements) are to be opposed to compounds. We are, thus, obliged to show in what relation we speak of genera and why we distinguish them instead of summing them under a unity; for otherwise we imply that their coalescence into a unity is fortuitous, whereas it would be more plausible to dispense with their separate existence.

If all the genera could be species of Being, all individuals without exception being immediately subordinate to these species, then such a unification becomes feasible. But that supposition bespeaks annihilation for the genera: the species will no longer be species; plurality will no longer be subordinated to unity; everything must be the unity, unless -472- there exist some thing or things outside the unity. The One never becomes many — as the existence of species demands — unless there is something distinct from it: it cannot of itself assume plurality, unless we are to think of it as being broken into pieces like some extended body: but even so, the force which breaks it up must be distinct from it: if it is itself to effect the breaking up — or whatever form the division may take — then it is itself previously divided.

For these and many other reasons we must abstain from positing a single genus, and especially because neither Being nor Substance can be the predicate of any given thing. If we do predicate Being, it is only as an accidental attribute; just as when we predicate whiteness of a substance, we are not predicating the Absolute Whiteness.


§ 3. We assert, then, a plurality of Existents, but a plurality not fortuitous and therefore a plurality deriving from a unity.

But even admitting this derivation from a unity — a unity, however, not predicated of them in respect of their essential being — there is, surely, no reason why each of these Existents, distinct in character from every other, should not in itself stand as a separate genus.

Is, then, this unity external to the genera thus produced, this unity which is their source though it cannot be predicated of them in respect of their essence? It is indeed external; the One is beyond; it cannot, therefore, be included among the genera: it is the (transcendent) source, while they stand side by side as genera. Yet surely the one must some- how be included (among the genera)? No: it is the Existents we are investigating, not that which is beyond Existence.

We pass on, then, to consider that unity which is included, and find to our surprise the cause included with the things it causes: it is surely strange that causes and effects should be brought into the same genus.

But if the unity of which we speak is included with its effects in the sense that generic and all such determinations are posterior, that these effects have nothing in common with it, that it is never predicated of them whether as their genus or in any other relation, the effects are obviously themselves genera with subordinates of their own: you may, for example, be the cause of the operation of walking, but the walking is not subordinate to you in the relation of species to genus; and if walking had nothing prior to it as its genus, but had posteriors, then it would be a (primary) genus and rank among the Existents.

Perhaps, however, it must be utterly denied that unity is even the cause of other things; they should be considered rather as its parts or elements — if the terms may be allowed — their totality constituting a single entity which our thinking divides. All unity though it be, it goes by a wonderful power out into everything; it appears as many and becomes many, when, for example, there is motion; the fecundity of its nature causes the One to be no longer one, and we, displaying what we call its parts, consider them each as a unity and make them into -473- ‘genera’, unaware of our failure to see the whole at once. We display it, then, in parts, though, unable to restrain for long their natural tendency to coalesce, we bring these parts together again, resign them to the whole, and allow them to become a unity, or rather to be a unity.

All this will become clearer in the light of further consideration — when, that is to say, we have ascertained the number of the genera; for thus we shall also discover their causes. It is not enough to deny; we must advance by dint of thought and comprehension. The way is clear:


§ 4. If we had to ascertain the nature of body and the place it holds in the universe, surely we should take some sample of body, say stone, and examine into what constituents it may be divided. There would be what we think of as the substrate of stone; its quantity — in this case, a magnitude; its quality — for example, the colour of stone. As with stone, so with every other body: we should see that in this thing, body, there are three distinguishable characteristics — the pseudo-substance, the quantity, the quality — though they all make one and are only logically trisected, the three being found to constitute the unit thing, body. If motion were equally inherent in its constitution, we should include this as well, and the four would form a unity, the single body depending upon them all for its unity and characteristic nature.

The same method must be applied in examining the Intellectual Substance and the genera and first-principles of the Intellectual sphere.

But we must begin by substracting what is peculiar to body, its coming-to-be, its sensible nature, its magnitude — that is to say, the characteristics which produce isolation and mutual separation. It is an Intellectual Being we have to consider, an Authentic Existent, possessed of a unity surpassing that of any sensible thing.

Now the wonder comes how a unity of this type can be many as well as one. In the case of body it was easy to concede unity-with- plurality; the one body is divisible to infinity; its colour is a different thing from its shape, since in fact they are separated. But if we take Soul, single, continuous, without extension, of the highest simplicity — as the first effort of the mind makes manifest — how can we expect to find multiplicity here too? We believed that the division of the living being into body and soul was final: body indeed was manifold, composite, diversified; but in soul we imagined we had found a simplex, and boldly made a halt, supposing that we had come to the limit of our course.

Let us examine this soul, presented to us from the Intellectual realm as body from the Sensible. How is its unity a plurality? How is its plurality a unity? Clearly its unity is not that of a composite formed from diverse elements, but that of a single nature comprising a plurality.

This problem attacked and solved, the truth about the genera comprised in Being will thereby, as we asserted, be elucidated also. -474-


§ 5. A first point demanding consideration:

Bodies — those, for example, of animals and plants — are each a multiplicity founded on colour and shape and magnitude, and on the forms and arrangement of parts: yet all these elements spring from a unity. Now this unity must be either Unity-Absolute or some unity less thorough-going and complete, but necessarily more complete than the bodily unity which emerges from it; and also having more claim to reality, for divergence from unity involves a corresponding divergence from Reality. Since, thus, bodies take their rise from unity, but not ‘unity’ in the sense of the complete unity or Unity- Absolute — for this could never yield discrete plurality — it remains that they be derived from a unity pluralized. But the creative principle (in bodies) is Soul: Soul therefore is a pluralized unity.

We then ask whether the plurality here consists of the Reason-Principles of the things of process. Or is this unity not something different from the mere sum of these Principles? Certainly Soul itself is one Reason-Principle, the chief of the Reason-Principles, and these are its Act as it functions in accordance with its essential being; this essential being, on the other hand, is the potentiality of the Reason-Principles. This is the mode in which this unity is a plurality, its plurality being revealed by the effect it has upon the external.

But, to leave the region of its effect, suppose we take it at the higher non-effecting part of Soul; is not plurality of powers to be found in this part also?

The existence of Soul will, we may presume, be at once conceded. But is this existence to be taken as identical with that of the stone? Surely not. Being in the case of the stone is not Being pure and simple, but stone-being: so here; Soul’s being denotes not merely Being but Soul-being.

Is then that ‘being’ distinct from what else goes to complete the essence (or substance) of Soul? Is it to be identified with Being (the Absolute), while to some differentia of Being is ascribed the production of Soul? No doubt Soul is in a sense Being, and this not as a man ‘is’ white, but from the fact of its being purely an essence: in other words, the being it possesses it holds from no source external to its own essence.


§ 6. But must it not draw on some source external to its essence, if it is to be conditioned, not only by Being, but by being an entity of a particular character? But if it is conditioned by a particular character, and this character is external to its essence, its essence does not comprise all that makes it Soul; its individuality will determine it; a part of Soul will be essence, but not Soul entire.

Furthermore, what being will it have when we separate it from its other components? The being of a stone? No: the being must be a form of Being appropriate to a source, so to speak, and a first-principle, or -475- rather must take the forms appropriate to all that is comprised in Soul’s being: the being here must, that is, be life, and the life and the being must be one.

One, in the sense of being one Reason-Principle? No; it is the substrate of Soul that is one, though one in such a way as to be also two or more — as many as are the Primaries which constitute Soul. Either, then, it is life as well as Substance, or else it possesses life.

But if life is a thing possessed, the essence of the possessor is not inextricably bound up with life. If, on the contrary, this is not possession, the two, life and Substance, must be a unity.

Soul, then, is one and many — as many as are manifested in that oneness— one in its nature, many in those other things. A single Existent, it makes itself many by what we may call its motion: it is one entire, but by its striving, so to speak, to contemplate itself, it is a plurality; for we may imagine that it cannot bear to be a single Existent, when it has the power to be all that it in fact is. The cause of its appearing as many is this contemplation, and its purpose is the Act of the Intellect; if it were manifested as a bare unity, it could have no intellection, since in that simplicity it would already be identical with the object of its thought.


§ 7. What, then, are the several entities observable in this plurality?

We have found Substance (Essence) and life simultaneously present in Soul. Now, this Substance (Soul’s being) is a common property of Soul, but life, likewise common to all souls, is furthermore a property of Intellect.

Having thus introduced Intellect and its life we make a single genus of what is common to all life, namely, Motion. Substance and the Motion which constitutes the highest life we must consider as two genera; for even though they form a unity, they are separable to thought which finds their unity not a unity; otherwise, it could not distinguish them.

Observe also how in other things Motion or life is clearly separated from Being — a separation impossible, doubtless, in True Being, but possible in its shadow and namesake. In the portrait of a man much is left out, and above all the essential thing, life: the ‘Being’ of sensible things is just such a shadow of True Being, an abstraction from that Being complete which was life in the Archetype. At all events we have found the way to separate Being from life and life from Being.

Being, then, containing many species, is but one genus. Motion, however, is to be classed as neither a subordinate nor a superordinate of Being but as its concomitant; for we have not found Being serving as substrate to Motion. Motion is Being’s Act; neither is separated from the other except in thought; the two natures are one; for Being is inevitably actual, not potential.

No doubt we observe Motion and Being separately, Motion as contained -476- in Being and Being as involved in Motion, and in the One-Being (the Intellectual world) either taken separately may contain the other; but the dualism is an affirmation of our thought, and that thought sees either form as a duality within a unity.

Now Motion, thus manifested in conjunction with Being, does not alter Being’s nature — unless to complete its essential character — and it does retain forever its own peculiar nature: at once, then, we are forced to introduce Stability. To reject Stability would be more un- reasonable than to reject Motion; for Stability is associated in our thought and conception with Being more than Motion; unalterable condition, unchanging mode, single Reason-Principle — these are characteristics of the higher sphere.

Stability, then, may also be taken as a single genus. Obviously distinct from Motion and perhaps even its contrary, that it is also distinct from Being may be shown by many considerations. We may especially observe that if Stability were identical with Being, so also would Motion be, with equal right. Why identity in the case of Stability and not in that of Motion, when Motion is virtually the very life and Act both of Substance and of Absolute Being? However, on the very same principle on which we separated Motion from Being with the understanding that it is the same and not the same — that they are two and yet one — we also separate Stability from Being, holding it, yet, inseparable; it is only a logical separation entailing the inclusion among the Existents of this other genus. To identify Stability with Being, with no difference between them, and to identify Being with Motion, would be to identify Stability with Motion through the mediation of Being, and so to make Motion and Stability one and the same thing.


§ 8. We cannot indeed escape positing these three, Being, Motion, Stability, once it is the fact that the Intellect discerns them as separates; and if it thinks of them at all, it posits them by that very thinking; if they are thought, they exist. Things whose existence is bound up with Matter have no being in the Intellect: these three principles are, however, free of Matter; and in that which goes free of Matter to be thought is to be.

We are in the presence of Intellect undefiled. Fix it firmly, but not with the eyes of the body. You are looking upon the hearth of Reality, within it a sleepless light: you see how it holds to itself, and how it puts apart things that were together, how it lives a life that endures and keeps a thought acting not upon any future but upon that which already is, upon an eternal present — a thought self-centred, bearing on nothing outside of itself.

Now in the Act of Intellect there are energy and motion; in its self-intellection Substance and Being. In virtue of its Being it thinks, and it thinks of itself as Being, and of that as Being upon which it is, so to speak, pivoted. Not that its Act self-directed ranks as Substance, but -477- Being stands as the goal and origin of that Act, the object of its contemplation though not the contemplation itself: and yet this Act too involves Being, which is its motive and its term. By the fact that its Being is actual and not merely potential, Intellect bridges the dualism (of agent and patient) and abjures separation: it identifies itself with Being and Being with itself.

Being, the most firmly set of all things, that in virtue of which all other things receive Stability, possesses this Stability not as from without but as springing within, as inherent. Stability is the goal of intellection, a Stability which had no beginning, and the state from which intellection was impelled was Stability, though Stability gave it no impulsion; for Motion neither starts from Motion nor ends in Motion. Again, the Form-Idea has Stability, since it is the goal of Intellect: intellection is the Form’s Motion.

Thus all the Existents are Being, Motion, and Stability; these are genera all-pervading, and every subsequent is a particular being, a particular stability, and a particular motion.

We have caught the radiance of Being, and beheld it in its three manifestations: Being, revealed by the Being within ourselves; the Motion of Being, revealed by the motion within ourselves; and its Stability revealed by ours. We accommodate our being, motion, stability to those (of the Archetype), unable however to draw any distinction but finding ourselves in the presence of entities inseparable and, as it were, interfused. We have, however, in a sense, set them a little apart, holding them down and viewing them in isolation; and thus we have observed Being Stability, Motion — these three, of which each is a unity to itself; in so doing, have we not regarded them as being different from each other? By this posing of three entities, each a unity, we have, surely, found Being to contain Difference.

Again, inasmuch as we restore them to an all-embracing unity identifying all with unity, do we not see in this amalgamation Identity emerging as a Real Existent?

Thus, in addition to the other three (Being, Motion, Stability), we are obliged to posit the further two, Identity and Difference, so that we have in all five genera. In so doing, we bestow Identity and Difference upon their subsequents, each of which exhibits a particular identity and a particular difference. Thus, Identity and Difference, considered apart from particulars, have the generic status.

They will, moreover, be primary genera, because nothing can be predicated of them as denoting their essential nature. Nothing, of course we mean, but Being; but this Being is not their genus, since they cannot be identified with any particular kind of being. Similarly, Being will not stand as genus to Motion or Stability, for these also are not its species. Beings (or Existents) comprise not merely what are to be regarded as species of the genus Being, but also participants in Being. On the other hand, Being does not participate in the other four principles -478- as its genera: they are not prior to Being; they do not transcend it.


§ 9. The above considerations — to which others, doubtless, might be added — suffice to show that these five are primary genera. But that they are the only primary genera, that there are no others, how can we be confident of this? Why do we not add unity to them? Quantity? Quality? Relation? and all else included by our various forerunners?

As tor unity: If the term is to mean a unity in which nothing else is present, neither Soul nor Intellect nor anything else, this can be predicated of nothing, and therefore cannot be a genus. If it denotes the unity present in Being, in which case we speak of the One-Being, this unity is not primal.

Besides, unity, containing no differences, cannot produce species, and not producing species, cannot be a genus. You cannot so much as divide unity: to divide it would be to make it many. Unity, aspiring to be a genus, becomes a plurality and annuls itself.

Again, you must add to it to divide it into species; for there can be no differentiae in unity as there are in Being. The mind accepts differences of Being, but differences within unity there cannot be. Every differentia introduces a duality destroying the unity; for the addition of a unit always does away with the previous quantity.

It may be contended that the unity which is implicit in Being and in Motion and the other genera is common to all, and that therefore Being and unity are identical. But we rejected the idea that Being is a genus over and above all the other genera, on the ground that these others are not species of Being, but beings in another mode: in the same way, we assert, unity is not a genus, the Primary Unity having a character distinct from all other unities.

Suppose that we are asked to treat Unity not as an all-comprehending genus but as having a distinctive place beside the other primary genera. We reply that if Being and unity are identified, then since Being has already been included among the genera, it is but a name that is introduced in unity: if, however, they are different, some principle is implied: if there is anything in addition (to this principle), unity is predicated of this added thing; if there is nothing added, the reference is again to that unity predicated of nothing. If, however, the unity referred to is that which accompanies Being, we have already decided that it is not unity in the primary sense.

But is there any reason why this unity should not be Primary Unity if once we exclude Unity Absolute? Its posterior we rank as Being, and ‘Being’ in the sense of the Primary Being. The reason is that the prior of this Being cannot itself be Being — or else, if the prior is Being, this is not Primary Being: but the prior of the unity is The One.

Furthermore, unity, abstracted from Being, has no differentiae.

Again, even taking it as bound up with Being: If it is a consequent -479-of Being, then it is a consequent of everything, and therefore the latest of things: but the genus takes priority. If it is simultaneous with Being, it is simultaneous with everything: but a genus is not thus simultaneous. If it is prior to Being, it is of the nature of a Principle, and therefore will belong only to Being; but if it serves as Principle to Being, it is not its genus: if it is not genus to Being, it is equally not a genus of anything else; for that would make Being the principle of all other things.

In sum, the unity exhibited in Being on the one hand approximates to Unity-Absolute and on the other tends to identify itself with Being: Being is a unity in relation to the Absolute, but by virtue of its sequence upon that Absolute is potentially also a plurality, whereas the Absolute Unity remains a unity and rejecting division refuses thereby to become a genus.


§ 10. In what sense is the particular manifestation of Being a unity? Clearly, in so far as it is one thing, it forfeits its unity; with one and thing we have already plurality. No species can be a unity in more than an equivocal sense: a species is a plurality, so that the ‘unity’ here is that of an army or a chorus. The unity of the higher order does not belong to species; unity is, thus, ambiguous, not taking the same form in Being and in particular beings.

It follows that unity is not a genus. For a genus is such that wherever it is affirmed its opposites cannot also be affirmed; anything of which, as a whole, unity and its opposites are alike affirmed cannot have unity as a genus. Consequently unity can be affirmed as a genus neither of the primary genera — since the One-Being is as much a plurality as a unity, and none of the other (primary) genera is a unity to the entire exclusion of plurality — nor of things posterior to Being, for these most certainly are a plurality. In sum, no genus can be a unity; so that unity to become a genus must forfeit its unity. The unit is prior to number; yet number it must be, if it is to be a genus.

Again, the unit is a unit from the point of view of number: if it is a unit generically, it will not be a unit in the strict sense.

Again, just as the unit, as appearing in numbers, is not regarded as a genus predicated of them, but is thought of as inherent in them, so also unity, though present in Being, cannot stand as genus to Being or to the other genera or to anything whatever.

Further, as the simplex must be the principle of the non-simplex, though not its genus — for then the non-simplex too would be simplex — so it stands with unity; if unity is a Principle, it cannot be a genus to its subsequents, and therefore cannot be a genus of Being or of other things. If it is nevertheless to be a genus, everything of which it is a genus must be taken as a unit — a notion which implies the separation of unity from substance: it will not, therefore, be all-embracing. Just as Being is not a genus of everything but only of species each of which is a being, so too unity will be a genus of species each of which is a -480- unity. But that raises the question of what difference there is between one thing and another in so far as they are both units, corresponding to the difference between one being and another.

Unity, it may be suggested, is divided in its conjunction with Being and Substance; Being because it is so divided is considered a genus — the one genus manifested in many particulars; why then should not unity be similarly a genus, inasmuch as its manifestations are as many as those of Substance and it is divided into as many particulars?

In the first place, the mere fact that an entity inheres in many things is not enough to make it a genus of those things or of anything else: in a word, a common property need not be a genus. The point inherent in a line is not a genus of lines, or a genus at all; nor again, as we have observed, is the unity latent in numbers a genus either of the numbers or of anything else: genus demands that the common property of diverse objects involve also differences arising out of its own character, that it form species, and that it belong to the essence of the objects. But what differences can there be in unity? What species does it engender? If it produces the same species as we find in connexion with Being, it must be identical with Being: only the name will differ, and the term Being may well suffice.


§ 11. We are bound, however, to inquire under what mode unity is contained in Being. How is what is termed the ‘dividing’ effected — especially the dividing of the genera Being and unity? Is it the same division, or is it different in the two cases?

First then: In what sense, precisely, is any given particular called and known to be a unity? Secondly: Does ‘…’unity‘…’ as used of the One-Being carry the same connotation as in reference to the Absolute?

Unity is not identical in all things; it has a different significance according as it is applied to the Sensible and the Intellectual realms — Being too, of course, comports such a difference — and there is a difference in the unity affirmed among sensible things as compared with each other; the unity is not the same in the cases of chorus, camp, ship, house; there is a difference again as between such discrete things and the continuous. Nevertheless, all are representations of the one exemplar, some quite remote, others more effective: the truer likeness is in the Intellectual; Soul is a unity, and still more is Intellect a unity and Being a unity.

When we predicate Being of a particular, do we thereby predicate of it unity, and does the degree of its unity tally with that of its being? Such correspondence is accidental: unity is not proportionate to Being; less unity need not mean less Being. An army or a choir has no less being than a house, though less unity.

It would appear, then, that the unity of a particular is related not so much to Being as to the Good: in so far as the particular attains goodness, so far is it a unity; and the degree of unity depends on this -481- attainment. The particular aspires not simply to Being, but to a Being combined with Goodness: it is in this strain towards their good that such beings as do not possess unity strive their utmost to achieve it.

Things of nature tend by their very nature to coalesce with each other and also to unify each within itself; their movement is not away from but towards each other and inwards upon themselves. Souls, moreover, seem to desire always to pass into a unity over and above the unity of their own substance. Unity in fact confronts them on two sides: their origin and their goal alike are unity; from unity they have arisen, and towards unity they strive. Unity is thus identical with Goodness; for no being ever came into existence without possessing, from that very moment, an irresistible tendency towards unity.

From natural things we turn to the artificial. Every art in all its operation aims at whatsoever unity its capacity and its models permit.

Most of all, Being achieves unity since it is closer at the start. That is why in speaking of other entities we assert the name only, for example man; when we say ‘one man’, we have in mind more than one; and if we affirm unity of him in any other connexion, we regard it as supplementary (to his essence): but when we speak of Being we use the compound expression ‘One-Being’ and imply in the reference to unity its close association with Goodness.

Thus for Being, as for the others, unity turns out to be, in some sense, Principle and Term, not however in the same sense as for things of the physical order — a discrepancy leading us to infer that even in unity there are degrees of priority.

How, then, do we characterize the unity (thus diverse) in Being? Are we to think of it as a common property seen alike in all its parts? In the first place (we observe) the point is common to lines and yet is not their genus, and this unity we are considering may also be common to numbers and not be their genus — though, we need hardly say, the unity of Unity-Absolute is not that of the numbers, one, two, and the rest. Secondly, in Being there is nothing to prevent the existence of prior and posterior, simple and composite: but unity, even if it be identical in all the manifestations of Being, having no differentiae can produce no species; but producing no species it cannot be a genus.


§ 12. Enough upon that side of the question. But how does the good of numbers, lifeless things, depend upon their particular unity? Just as all other inanimates find their good in their unity.

If it should be objected that numbers are simply nonexistent, we should point out that our discussion is concerned (not with units as such, but) with beings considered from the aspect of their unity.

We may again be asked how the point participates in goodness. Suppose its independent existence granted: then presumably it is chosen as an inanimate object and the question applies to all such objects. If, on the other hand, it is regarded as incorporated in such figures as the -482-circle, then the good of the point will be merged in that of the circle: it will aspire to this good and strive to attain it, as far as it can, through the circle.

But how do the five genera form the particulars? Is it by being broken up into parts? No; the genus exists as a whole in each of the things whose genus it is.

But how, at that, can it remain a unity? The unity of a genus must be considered as a whole-in-many.

Does it exist then only in the things participating in it? No; it has an independent existence of its own as well. — But this will, no doubt, become clearer as we proceed.


§ 13. We turn to ask why Quantity is not included among the primary genera, and Quality also.

Quantity is not among the primaries, because these are permanently associated with Being. Motion is bound up with Actual Being (Being-in-Act), since it is its life; with Motion Stability too gained its foothold in Reality; with these are associated even more closely Difference and Identity, so that they also are seen in conjunction with Being. But number (the basis of Quantity) is a posterior. It is posterior not only with regard to these genera but also within itself; in number the posterior is derived from the prior; this is a sequence in which the posteriors are latent in the priors (and do not appear simultaneously). Number therefore cannot be included among the primary genera; whether it constitutes a genus at all remains to be examined.

Magnitude (extended quantity) is in a still higher degree posterior and composite, for it contains within itself number, line, and surface. Now if continuous magnitude derives its quantity from number, and number is not a genus, how can magnitude hold that status? Besides, magnitudes, like numbers, admit of priority and posteriority.

If, then, Quantity be constituted by a common element in both number and magnitude, we must ascertain the nature of this common element, and consider it, once discovered, as a posterior genus, not as one of the Primaries: thus failing of primary status, it must be related, directly or indirectly, to one of the Primaries.

We may take it as clear that it is the nature of Quantity to indicate a certain quantum, and to measure the quantum of the particular; Quantity is moreover, in a sense, itself a quantum. But if the quantum is the common element in number and magnitude, either we have number as a primary with magnitude derived from it, or else number must consist of a blending of Motion and Stability, while magnitude will be a form of Motion or will originate in Motion, Motion going forth to infinity and Stability creating the unit by checking that advance.

But the problem of the origin of number and magnitude, or rather of how they subsist and are conceived, must be held over. It may, thus, -483- be found that number is among the primary genera, while magnitude is posterior and composite; or that number belongs to the genus Stability, while magnitude must be consigned to Motion. But we propose to discuss all this at a later stage.


§ 14. Why is Quality not included among the Primaries? Because like Quantity it is a posterior, subsequent to Substance. Primary Substance must necessarily contain Quantity and Quality as its consequents; it cannot owe its subsistence to them, or require them for its completion: that would make it posterior to Quality and Quantity.

Now in the case of composite substances — those constituted from diverse elements — number and qualities provide a means of differentiation: the qualities may be detached from the common core around which they are found to group themselves. But in the primary genera there is no distinction to be drawn between simples and composites; the difference is between simples and those entities which complete not a particular substance but Substance as such. A particular substance may very well receive completion from Quality, for though it already has Substance before the accession of Quality, its particular character is external to Substance. But in Substance itself all the elements are substantial.

Nevertheless, we ventured to assert elsewhere that while the complements of Substance are only by analogy called qualities, yet accessions of external origin and subsequent to Substance are really qualities; that, further, the properties which inhere in substances are their activities (Acts), while those which are subsequent are merely modifications (or Passions): we now affirm that the attributes of the particular substance are never complementary to Substance (as such); an accession of Substance does not come to the substance of man qua man; he is, on the contrary, Substance in a higher degree before he arrives at differentiation, just as he is already ‘living being’ before he passes into the rational species.


§ 15. How then do the four genera (we have posited) complete Substance without qualifying it or even particularizing it?

It has been observed that Being is primary, and it is clear that none of the four — Motion, Stability, Difference, Identity — is distinct from it. That this Motion does not produce quality is doubtless also clear, but a word or two will make it clearer still.

If Motion is the Act of Substance (Reality), and Being and the Primaries in general are its Act, then Motion is not an accidental attribute: as the Act of what is necessarily actual (what necessarily involves Act), it is no longer to be considered as the complement of Substance but as Substance itself. For this reason, then, it has not been assigned to a posterior class, or referred to Quality, but has been made contemporary with Being. -484-

The truth is not that Being first is and then takes Motion, first is and then acquires Stability: neither Stability nor Motion is a mere modification of Being. Similarly, Identity and Difference are not later additions: Being did not grow into plurality; its very unity was a plurality; but plurality implies Difference, and unity-in-plurality involves Identity.

Substance (Real Being) requires no more than these five constituents; but when we have to turn to the lower sphere, we find other principles giving rise no longer to Substance (as such) but to quantitative Substance and qualitative: these other principles may be regarded as genera but not primary genera.


§ 16. As for Relation, manifestly an offshoot, how can it be included among primaries? Relation is of thing ranged against thing; it is not self-pivoted, but looks outward.

Location and Date are still more remote from Being. Location denotes the presence of one entity within another, so that it involves a duality; but a genus must be a unity, not a composite. Besides, place does not exist in the higher sphere, and the present discussion is concerned with the realm of True Being.

Whether time is There, remains to be considered. Presumably not. If it is a measurement, and that a measurement of Motion, we have two entities; the whole is a composite and posterior to Motion; therefore it is not on an equal footing with Motion in our classification.

Action and Passivity presuppose Motion; if, then, they exist in the higher sphere, they each involve a duality; neither is a simplex.

Possession is a duality, while Situation, as signifying one thing situated in another, is a threefold conception.


§ 17. 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 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.

Does this imply that the nature of Being is not good? Not good, to begin with, in the sense in which The First is good, but in another sense of the word: moreover, Being does not possess its goodness as a quality but as a constituent.

But the other genera too, we said, are constituents of Being, and are regarded as genera because each is a common property found in many things. If then goodness is similarly observed in every part of Substance -485- or Being, or in most parts, why is goodness not a genus, and a primary genus? Because it is not found identical in all the parts of Being, but appears in degrees, first, second, and subsequent, whether it be because one part is derived from another — posterior from prior — or because all are posterior to the transcendent Unity, different parts of Being participating in it in diverse degrees corresponding to their characteristic natures.

If, however, we must make goodness a genus as well (as a constituent), it will be a posterior genus, for goodness is posterior to Substance and posterior to what constitutes the generic notion of Being, however unfailingly it be found associated with Being: but the Primaries, we decided, belong to Being as such, and go to form Substance.

This indeed is why we posit that which transcends Being, since Being and Substance cannot but be a plurality, necessarily comprising the genera enumerated and therefore forming a one-and-many.

It is true that we do not hesitate to speak of ‘the goodness inherent in Being’ when we are thinking of that Act by which Being tends, of its nature, towards the One: thus, we affirm goodness of it in the sense that it is thereby moulded into the likeness of The Good. But if this ‘goodness inherent in Being’ is an Act directed towards The Good, it is the life of Being: this life is Motion, and Motion is already one of the genera.


§ 18. To pass to the consideration of beauty:

If by beauty we mean the primary Beauty, the same or similar arguments will apply here as to goodness: and if the beauty in the Ideal- Form is, as it were, an effulgence (from that primary Beauty), we may observe that it is not identical in all participants and that an effulgence is necessarily a posterior.

If we mean the beauty which identifies itself with Substance, this has been covered in our treatment of Substance.

If, again, we mean beauty in relation to ourselves as spectators in whom it produces a certain experience, this Act (of production) is Motion — and none the less Motion by being directed towards Absolute Beauty.

Knowledge, again, is Motion originating in the self; it is the observation of Being — an Act, not a State: hence it too falls under Motion, or perhaps more suitably under Stability, or even under both; if under both, knowledge must be thought of as a complex, and if a complex, is posterior.

Intelligence, since it connotes intelligent Being and comprises the total of existence, cannot be one of the genera: the true Intelligence (or Intellect) is Being taken with all its concomitants (with the other four genera); it is actually the sum of all the Existents: Being on the contrary, stripped of its concomitants, may be counted as a genus and held to be an element in Intelligence. -486-

Justice and self-control (sophrosyny), and virtue in general — these are all various Acts of Intelligence: they are consequently not primary genera; they are posterior to a genus, that is to say, they are species.


§ 19. Having established our four primary genera, it remains for us to inquire whether each of them of itself alone produces species. And especially, can Being be divided independently, that is without drawing upon the other genera? Surely not: the differentiae must come from outside the genus differentiated: they must be differentiae of Being proper, but cannot be identical with it.

Where then is it to find them? Obviously not in non-beings. If then in beings, and the three genera are all that is left, clearly it must find them in these, by conjunction and couplement with these, which will come into existence simultaneously with itself.

But if all come into existence simultaneously, what else is produced but that amalgam of all the Existents which we have just considered (Intellect)? How can other things exist over and above this all-including amalgam? And if all the constituents of this amalgam are genera, how do they produce species? How does Motion produce species of Motion? Similarly with Stability and the other genera.

A word of warning must here be given against sinking the various genera in their species; and also against reducing the genus to a mere predicate, something merely seen in the species. The genus must exist at once in itself and in its species; it blends, but it must also be pure; in contributing along with other genera to form Substance (Reality), it must not destroy itself. There are problems here that demand investigation.

But since we identified the amalgam of the Existents (or primary genera) with the particular intellect, Intellect as such being found identical with Being or Substance, and therefore prior to all the Existents, which may be regarded as its species or members, we may infer that the intellect, considered as completely unfolded, is a subsequent.

Our treatment of this problem may serve to promote our investigation; we will take it as a kind of example, and with it embark upon our inquiry.


§ 20. We may, then, distinguish two phases of Intellect, in one of which it may be taken as having no contact whatever with particulars and no Act upon anything; thus it is kept apart from being a particular intellect. In the same way science is prior to any of its constituent species, and the specific science is prior to any of its component parts; being none of its particulars it is the potentiality of all; each particular, on the other hand, is actually itself, but potentially the sum of all the particulars: and as with the specific science, so with science as a whole. The specific sciences lie in potentiality in science the total; even in their specific character they are potentially the whole; they have the whole -487-predicated of them and not merely a part of the whole. At the same time, science must exist as a thing in itself, unharmed by its divisions.

So with Intellect. Intellect as a whole must be thought of as prior to the intellects actualized as individuals; but when we come to the particular intellects, we find that what subsists in the particulars must be maintained from the totality. The Intellect subsisting in the totality is a provider for the particular intellects, is the potentiality of them: it involves them as members of its universality, while they in turn involve the universal Intellect in their particularity, just as the particular science involves science the total.

The great Intellect, we maintain, exists in itself and the particular intellects in themselves; yet the particulars are embraced in the whole, and the whole in the particulars. The particular intellects exist by themselves and in another, the universal by itself and in those. All the particulars exist potentially in that self-existent universal, which actually is the totality, potentially each isolated member: on the other hand, each particular is actually what it is (its individual self), potentially the totality. In so far as what is predicated of them is their essence, they are actually what is predicated of them; but where the predicate is a genus, they are that only potentially. On the other hand, the universal in so far as it is a genus is the potentiality of all its subordinate species, though none of them in actuality; all are latent in it, but because its essential nature exists in actuality before the existence of the species, it does not submit to be itself particularized. If then the particulars are to exist in actuality — to exist, for example, as species — the cause must lie in the Act radiating from the universal.


§ 21. How then by our theory does the universal Intellect produce the particulars while itself remaining a unity? In other words, how do the subordinate kinds, as we call them, arise from the four primaries? Here is this great, this infinite Intellect, not given to idle utterance but to sheer intellection, all-embracing, integral, no part, no individual: how, we ask, can it possibly be the source of all this plurality?

Number at all events it possesses in the objects of its contemplation: it is thus one and many, and the many are powers, wonderful powers, not weak but, being pure, supremely great and, so to speak, full to overflowing — powers in very truth, knowing no limit, so that they are infinite, infinity, Magnitude-Absolute.

As we survey this Magnitude with the beauty of Being within it and the glory and light around it, all contained in Intellect, we see, simultaneously, Quality already in bloom, and along with the continuity of its Act we catch a glimpse of Magnitude at rest. Then, with one, two, and three in Intellect, Magnitude appears as of three dimensions, with Quantity entire. Quantity thus given and Quality, both merging into one and, we may almost say, becoming one, there is at once shape. Difference slips in to divide both Quantity and Quality, and so we have -488- variations in shape and differences of Quality. Identity, coming in with Difference, creates equality, Difference meanwhile introducing into Quantity inequality, whether in number or in magnitude: thus are produced circles and squares, and irregular figures, with number like and unlike, odd and even.

The life of Intellect is intelligent, and its activity (Act) has no failing-point: hence it excludes none of the constituents we have discovered within it, each one of which we now see as an intellectual function, and all of them possessed by virtue of its distinctive power and in the mode appropriate to Intellect.

But though Intellect possesses them all by way of thought, this is not discursive thought: it lacks nothing that is capable of serving as Reason-Principle, while it may itself be regarded as one great and perfect Reason-Principle, holding all the Principles as one and proceeding from its own Primaries, or rather having eternally proceeded, so that ‘proceeding’ is never true of it. It is a universal rule that whatever reasoning discovers to exist in Nature is to be found in Intellect apart from all ratiocination: we conclude that Intellect has so created Being that its reasoning is after a mode similar to that of the Principles which produce living beings; for the Reason-Principles, prior to reasoning though they are, act invariably in the manner which the most careful reasoning would adopt, in order to attain the best results.

What conditions, then, are we to think of as existing in that realm which is prior to Nature and transcends the Principles of Nature? In a sphere in which Substance is not distinct from Intellect, and neither Being nor Intellect is of alien origin, it is obvious that Being is best served by the domination of Intellect, so that Being is what Intellect wills and is: thus alone can it be authentic and primary Being; for if Being is to be in any sense derived, its derivation must be from Intellect.

Being, thus, exhibits every shape and every quality; it is not seen as a thing determined by some one particular quality; there could not be one only, since the principle of Difference is there; and since Identity is equally there, it must be simultaneously one and many. And so Being is; such it always was: unity-with-plurality appears in all its kinds, as witness all the variations of magnitude, shape, and quality. Clearly nothing may legitimately be excluded (from Being), for the whole must be complete in the higher sphere which, otherwise, would not be the whole.

Life too burst upon Being, or rather was inseparably bound up with it; and thus it was that all living things of necessity came to be. Body too was there, since Matter and Quality were present.

Everything exists forever, unfailing, involved by very existence in eternity. Individuals have their separate entities, but are at one in the (total) unity. The complex, so to speak, of them all, thus combined, is Intellect; and Intellect, holding all existence within itself, is a complete living being, and the essential Idea of Living Being. In so far as Intellect -489- submits to contemplation by its derivative (Soul), becoming an Intelligible, it gives that derivative the right also to be called ‘intellect’.


§ 22. We may here adduce the pregnant words of Plato: ‘Inasmuch as Intellect perceives the variety and plurality of the Ideas (Forms) present in the complete Living Being’. The words apply equally to Soul; Soul is subsequent to Intellect, yet by its very nature it involves Intellect in itself and perceives more clearly in that prior. There is Intellect in our intellect also, which again perceives more clearly in its prior, for while of itself it merely perceives, in the prior it also perceives its own perception.

This intellect, then, to which we ascribe perception, though not divorced from the prior in which it originates, evolves plurality out of unity and has bound up with it the principle of Difference: it therefore takes the form of a plurality-in-unity. A plurality-in-unity, it produces the many intellects by the dictate of its very nature.

It is certainly no numerical unity, no individual thing; for whatever you find in that sphere is a species, since it is divorced from Matter. This may be the import of the difficult words of Plato, that Substance is broken up into an infinity of parts. So long as the division proceeds from genus to species, infinity is not reached; a limit is set by the species generated: the lowest species, however — that which is not divided into further species — may be more accurately regarded as infinite. And this is the meaning of the words: ‘to relegate them once and for all to infinity and there abandon them’. As for particulars, they are, considered in themselves, infinite, but come under number by being embraced in the (total) unity. Soul has Intellect for its prior, is therefore circumscribed by number down to its ultimate extremity; at that point infinity is reached.

Such an intellect, though all-embracing and complete, is a partial thing, and its various manifestations are in actuality parts of that part. Soul too is a part of a part, though in the sense of being an Act (actuality) derived from it. When the Act of Intellect is directed upon itself, the result is the manifold (particular) intellects; when it looks outwards, Soul is produced.

If Soul acts as a genus or a species, the various (particular) souls must act as species. Their activities (Acts) will be twofold: the activity upward is Intellect; that which looks downward constitutes the other powers or faculties of Soul in due order; the lowest activity is in its contact with Matter to which it brings Form.

This lower phase of Soul does not prevent the rest from being entirely in the higher sphere: indeed what we call the lower phase is but an image of Soul: not that it is cut off from Soul; it is like the reflection in the mirror, depending upon the original which stands outside of it.

But we must keep in mind what this ‘outside’ means. Up to the -490- production of the image stretches the Intellectual realm, wholly and exclusively composed of Intellectual Beings: in the same way the Sensible world, representing that in so far as it is able to retain the likeness of a Living Being, is itself a living being: the relation is like that of a portrait or reflection to the original which is regarded as prior to the water or the painting reproducing it.

The representation, notice, in the portrait or on the water is not of the dual being, but of the one element (Matter) as shaped by the other (Form). Similarly, this likeness of the Intellectual realm carries images, not of the creative element, but of the entities contained in that creator, including Man with every other living being: creator and created are alike living beings, though of a different life, and both coexist in the Intellectual realm.

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Third Tractate: On the Kinds of Being: Third Treatise

§ 1. We have now explained our conception of Reality (True Being) and considered how far it agrees with the teaching of Plato. We have still to investigate the opposed principle (the principle of Becoming).

There is the possibility that the genera posited for the Intellectual sphere will suffice for the lower also; possibly with these genera others will be required; again, the two series may differ entirely; or perhaps some of the sensible genera will be identical with their intellectual prototypes, and others different — ‘identical’, however, being understood to mean only analogous and in possession of a common name, as our results will make clear.

We must begin on these lines:

The subject of our discussion is the Sensible realm: Sensible Existence is entirely embraced by what we know as the Universe: our duty, then, would seem to be clear enough — to take this Universe and analyse its nature, classifying its constituent parts and arranging them by genus and species. Suppose that we were making a division of speech: we should reduce its infinity to finite terms, and from the identity appearing in many instances evolve a unity, then another and another, until we arrived at some definite number; each such unit we should call a species if imposed upon individuals, a genus if imposed upon species. Thus, every species of speech — and similarly all phenomena — might be referred to a unity; speech — or element — might be predicated of them all.

This procedure, however, is, as we have already shown, impossible in dealing with the subject of our present inquiry. New genera must be sought for this Universe — genera distinct from those of the -491- Intellectual, inasmuch as this realm is different from that, analogous indeed but never identical, a mere image of the higher. True, it involves in its composite nature the parallel existence of Body and Soul, for the Universe is a living being: essentially, however, Soul is of the Intellectual and does not enter into the structure of what is called Sensible Being.

Remembering this fact, we must — however great the difficulty — exclude Soul from the present investigation, just as in a census of citizens, taken in the interests of commerce and taxation, we should ignore the alien population. As for the experiences to which Soul is indirectly subject in its conjunction with Body and by reason of Body’s presence, their classification must be attempted at a later stage, when we inquire into the details of Sensible Existence.


§ 2. Our first observations must be directed to what passes in the Sensible realm for Substance. It is, we shall agree, only by analogy that the nature manifested in bodies is designated as Substance, and by no means because such terms as Substance or Being tally with the notion of bodies in flux; the proper term would be Becoming.

But Becoming is not a uniform nature; bodies comprise under the single head simples and composites, together with accidentals or consequents, these last themselves capable of separate classification.

Alternatively, Becoming may be divided into Matter and the Form imposed upon Matter. These may be regarded each as a separate genus, or else both may be brought under a single category and receive alike the name of Substance.

But what, we may ask, have Matter and Form in common? In what sense can Matter be conceived as a genus, and what will be its species? What differentia is there in Matter? In which genus, Matter or Form, are we to rank the composite of both? It may be this very composite which constitutes the Substance manifested in bodies, neither of the components by itself answering to the conception of Body: how, then, can we rank them in one and the same genus as the composite? How can the elements of a thing be brought within the same genus as the thing itself? Yet if we begin with bodies, our first-principles will be compounds.

Why not resort to analogy? Admitted that the classification of the Sensible cannot proceed along the identical lines marked out for the Intellectual: is there any reason why we should not for Intellectual- Being substitute Matter, and for Intellectual Motion substitute Sensible Form, which may be regarded as the life and consummation of Matter? The inertia of Matter would correspond with Stability, while the Identity and Difference of the Intellectual would find their counterparts in the ample similarity and diversity which obtain in the Sensible realm.

But, in the first place, Matter does not possess or acquire Form as its life or its Act; Form enters it from without, and remains foreign to its -492- nature. Secondly, Form in the Intellectual is an Act and a motion; in the Sensible Motion is different from Form and accidental to it: Form in relation to Matter approximates rather to Stability than to Motion; for by determining Matter‘…’s indetermination it confers upon it a sort of repose.

In the higher realm Identity and Difference presuppose a unity at once identical and different: a thing in the lower is different only by participation in Difference and in relation to some other thing; Identity and Difference are here predicated of the particular, which is, as it is not in that realm, a posterior.

As for Stability, how can it belong to Matter, which is distorted into every variety of mass, receiving its forms from without, and even with the aid of these forms incapable of offspring?

This mode of division must accordingly be abandoned.


§ 3. How then do we go to work?

Let us begin by distinguishing Matter, Form, the Mixture of both, and the Attributes of the Mixture. The Attributes may be subdivided into those which are mere predicates, and those serving also as accidents. The accidents may be either inclusive or included; they, further, comprise activities, experiences, consequents.

Matter will be found common to all substances, not however as a genus, since it has no differentiae — unless indeed differentiae be ascribed to it on the ground of its taking such various forms as fire and air.

It may be held that Matter is sufficiently constituted a genus by the fact that the things in which it appears hold it in common, or in that it presents itself as a whole of parts. In this sense Matter will indeed be a genus, though not in the accepted sense of the term. Matter, we may remark, is also a single element, if the element as such is able to constitute a genus.

As to Form: the qualification ‘bound up with, involved in Matter’ separates a Form from other Forms: it does not, however, embrace the whole of Substantial Form (as, to be the genus of Form, it must).

We may, again, regard Form as the creator of Substance and make the Reason-Principle of Substance dependent upon Form: yet we do not come thereby to an understanding of the nature of Substance.

We may, also, restrict Substance to the Composite. Matter and Form then cease to be substances. If they are Substance equally with the Composite, it remains to inquire what there is common to all three.

The ‘mere predicates’ fall under the category of Relation: such are cause and element. The accidents included in the composite substances are found to be either Quality or Quantity; those which are inclusive of the substances are of the nature of Place and Time. Activities and experiences comprise Motions; consequents Place and Time, which are consequents respectively of the Composites and of Motion.

The first three entities (Matter, Form, Composite) possess, as we have -493- discovered, the unity of a common designation, the Sensible counterpart of Substance. Then follow in order Relation, Quantity, Quality, Time-during-which, Place-in-which, Motion, Place, Time; though we may eliminate Place and Time (as being external, mere consequents), and then Time-during-which and Place-in-which become superfluous. Thus we have five classes, counting the first three as one. If these are not massed into a unity, the series will be Matter, Form, Composite, Relation, Quantity, Quality, Motion. The last three may, again, be included in Relation, which is capable of bearing this wider extension.


§4. What, then, we have to ask, is the constant element in the first three entities? What is it that identifies them with their inherent Substance?

Is it the capacity to serve as a base? But Matter, we maintain, serves as the base and seat of Form: Form, thus, will be excluded from the category of Substance. Again, the Composite is the base and seat of attributes: hence, Form combined with Matter will be the basic ground of Composites, or at any rate of all posteriors of the Composite — Quantity, Quality, Motion, and the rest.

But perhaps we may think Substance validly defined as that which is not predicated of anything else. White and black are predicated of an object having one or other of these qualities; double presupposes something distinct from itself — we refer not to the half, but to the length of wood of which doubleness is affirmed; father qua father is a predicate; knowledge is predicated of the subject in whom the knowledge exists; space is the limit of something, time the measure of something. Fire, on the other hand, is predicated of nothing; wood as such is predicated of nothing; and so with man, Socrates, and the composite substance in general.

Equally the Substantial Form is never a predicate, since it never acts as a modification of anything. Form is not an attribute of Matter (hence, is not predicable of Matter); it is simply a constituent of the Couplement. On the other hand, the Form of a man is not different from the man himself (and so does not ‘modify’ the Couplement).

Matter, similarly, is part of a whole, and belongs to something else only as to a whole and not as to a separate thing of which it is predicated. White, on the contrary, essentially belongs to something distinct from itself.

We conclude that nothing belonging to something else and predicated of it can be Substance. Substance is that which belongs essentially to itself, or, in so far as it is a part of the differentiated object, serves only to complete the Composite. Each or either part of the Composite belongs to itself, and is only affirmed of the Composite in a special sense: only qua part of the whole is it referred to something else; qua individual it is never in its essential nature predicated of an external.

It may be claimed as a common element in Matter, Form, and the Couplement that they are all substrates. But the mode in which Matter -494- is the substrate of Form is different from that in which Form and the Couplement are substrates of their modifications.

And is it strictly true to say that Matter is the substrate of Form? Form is rather the completion which Matter’s nature as pure potentiality demands.

Moreover, Form cannot be said to reside in Matter (as in a substrate). When one thing combines with another to form a unity, the one does not reside in the other; both alike are substrates of a third: thus, Man (the Form) and a man (the Composite) are substrates of their experiences, and are prior to their activities and consequents.

Substance, then, is that from which all other things proceed and to which they owe their existence; it is the centre of passivity and the source of action.


§ 5. These are incontrovertible facts in regard to the pseudo-substance of the Sensible realm: if they apply also in some degree to the True Substance of the Intellectual, the coincidence is, doubtless, to be attributed to analogy and ambiguity of terms.

We are aware that ‘the first’ is so called only in relation to the things which come after it: ‘first’ has no absolute significance; the first of one series is subsequent to the last of another. ‘Substrate’, similarly, varies in meaning (as applied to the higher and to the lower), while as for passivity its very existence in the Intellectual is questionable; if it does exist there, it is not the passivity of the Sensible.

Moreover, the fact of ‘not being present in a subject (or substrate)’ is not universally true of Substance, unless presence in a subject be stipulated as not including the case of the part present in the whole or of one thing combining with another to form a distinct unity; a thing will not be present as in a subject in that with which it cooperates in the formation of a composite substance. Form, therefore, is not present in Matter as in a subject, nor is Man so present in Socrates, since Man is part of Socrates.

Substance, then, is that which is not present in a subject. But if we adopt the definition ‘neither present in a subject nor predicated of a subject’, we must add to the second ‘subject’ the qualification ‘distinct’, in order that we may not exclude the case of Man predicated of a particular man. When I predicate Man of Socrates, it is as though I affirmed, not that a piece of wood is white, but that a white object is white; for in asserting that Socrates is a man, I predicate Man (the universal) of a particular man, I affirm Man of the manhood of Socrates; I AM really saying only that Socrates is Socrates, or that this particular rational animal is an animal.

It may be objected that non-presence in a subject is not peculiar to Substance, inasmuch as the differentia of a substance is no more present in a subject than the substance itself; but this objection results from taking a part of the whole substance, such as ‘two-footed’ in our -495-example, and asserting that this part is not present in a subject: if we take, not ‘two-footed’ which is merely an aspect of Substance, but ‘two-footedness’ by which we signify not Substance but Quality, we shall find that this ‘two-footedness’ is indeed present in a subject.

We may be told that neither Time nor Place is present in a subject. But if the definition of Time as the measure of Motion be regarded as denoting something measured, the ‘measure’ will be present in Motion as in a subject, while Motion will be present in the moved: if, on the contrary, it be supposed to signify a principle of measurement, the ‘measure’ will be present in the measurer.

Place is the limit of the surrounding space, and thus is present in that space.

The truth is, however, that the ‘Substance’ of our inquiry may be apprehended in directly opposite ways: it may be determined by one of the properties we have been discussing, by more than one, by all at once, according as they answer to the notions of Matter, Form, and the Couplement.


§ 6. Granted, it may be urged, that these observations upon the nature of Substance are sound, we have not yet arrived at a statement of its essence. Our critic doubtless expects to see this ‘Sensible’: but its essence, its characteristic being, cannot be seen.

Do we infer that fire and water (being visible) are not Substance? They certainly are not Substance because they are visible. Why, then? Because they possess Matter? No. Or Form? No. Nor because they involve a Couplement of Matter and Form. Then why are they Substance? By existing. But does not Quantity exist, and Quality? This anomaly is to be explained by an equivocation in the term ‘existence’.

What, then, is the meaning of ‘existence’ as applied to fire, earth, and the other elements? What is the difference between this existence and existence in the other categories? It is the difference between being simply — that which just is — and being white. But surely the being qualified by ‘white’ is the same as that having no qualification? It is not the same: the latter is Being in the primary sense, the former is Being only by participation and in a secondary degree. Whiteness added to Being produces a being white; Being added to whiteness produces a white being: thus, whiteness becomes an accident of Being, and Being an accident of whiteness.

The case is not equivalent to predicating white of Socrates and Socrates of white; for Socrates remains the same, though white would appear to have a different meaning in the two propositions, since in predicating Socrates of white we include Socrates in the (whole) sphere of whiteness, whereas in the proposition ‘Socrates is white’ whiteness is plainly an attribute of Socrates.

‘Being is white’ implies, similarly, that Being possesses whiteness as -496- an attribute, while in the proposition ‘whiteness is Being (or, is a being)’ Being is regarded as comprising whiteness in its own extension.

In sum, whiteness has existence because it is bound up with Being and present in it: Being is, thus, the source of its existence. Being is Being on its own account, but the white is due to whiteness — not because it is ‘present in’ whiteness, but because whiteness is present in it.

The Being of the Sensible resembles the white in not originating in itself. It must therefore be regarded as dependent for its being upon the Authentic Being, as white is dependent upon the Authentic Whiteness, and the Authentic Whiteness dependent for its whiteness upon participation in that Supreme Being whose existence is underived.


§ 7. But Matter, it may be contended, is the source of existence to the Sensible things implanted in it. From what source, then, we retort, does Matter itself derive existence and being?

That Matter is not a Primary we have established elsewhere. If it be urged that other things can have no subsistence without being implanted in Matter, we admit the claim for Sensible things. But though Matter be prior to these, it is not thereby precluded from being posterior to many things — posterior, in fact, to all the beings of the Intellectual sphere. Its existence is but a pale reflection, and less complete than that of the things implanted in it. These are Reason-Principles and more directly derived from Being: Matter has of itself no Reason-Principle whatever; it is but a shadow of a Principle, a vain attempt to achieve a Principle.

But, our critic may pursue, Matter gives existence to the things implanted in it, just as Socrates gives existence to the whiteness implanted in himself? We reply that the higher being gives existence to the lower, the lower to the higher never.

But once concede that Form is higher in the scale of Being than Matter, and Being can no longer be regarded as a common element in both, nor Substance as a genus embracing Matter, Form, and the Couplement. True, these will have many common properties, to which we have already referred, but their being (or existence) will none the less be different. When a higher being comes into contact with a lower, the lower, though first in the natural order, is yet posterior in the scale of Reality: consequently, if Being does not belong in equal degrees to Matter, to Form, and to the Couplement, Substance can no longer be common to all three in the sense of being their genus: to their posteriors it will bear a still different relation, serving them as a common base by being bound up with all alike. Substance, thus, resembles life, dim here, clearer there, or portraits of which one is an outline, another more minutely worked. By measuring Being by its dim manifestation and neglecting a fuller revelation elsewhere, we may come to regard this dim existence as a common ground.

But this procedure is scarcely permissible. Every grade of being is a -497- distinct whole. The dim manifestation is in no sense a common ground, just as there is no common ground in the vegetal, the sensory, and the intellectual forms of life.

We conclude that even within the Sensible world the term ‘Being’ must have different connotations as applied to Matter, to Form, and to both conjointly, in spite of the single source pouring into the different streams.

Take a second derived from a first and a third from the second: it is not merely that the one will rank higher and its successor be poorer and of lower worth; there is also the consideration that, even deriving from the same source, one thing, subjected in a certain degree to fire, will give us an earthen jar, while another, taking less of the heat, does not produce the jar.

Perhaps we cannot even maintain that Matter and Form are derived from a single source; in the Intellectual realm itself there is a difference between them.


§ 8. The division into elements must, in short, be abandoned, especially in regard to Sensible Substance, known necessarily by sense rather than by reason. We must no longer look for help in constituent parts, since such parts will not be substances, or at any rate not sensible substances.

Our plan must be to apprehend what is constant in stone, earth, water, and the entities which they compose — the vegetal and animal forms, considered purely as sensibles — and to confine this constant within a single genus. Neither Matter nor Form will thus be over- looked, for Sensible Substance comports them; fire and earth and the two intermediaries consist of Matter and Form, while composite things are actually many substances in one. They all, moreover, have that common property which distinguishes them from other things: serving as subjects to these others, they are never themselves present in a subject nor predicated of any other thing. Similarly, all the characteristics which we have ascribed to Substance find a place in this classification.

But Sensible Substance is never found apart from magnitude and quality: how then do we proceed to separate these accidents? If we subtract them — magnitude, figure, colour, dryness, moistness — what is there left to be regarded as Substance itself? All the substances under consideration are, of course, qualified.

There is, however, something in relation to which whatever turns Substance into qualified Substance is accidental: thus, the whole of fire is not Substance, but only a part of it — if the term ‘part’ be allowed.

What then can this ‘part’ be? Matter may be suggested. But are we actually to maintain that the particular sensible substance consists of a conglomeration of qualities and Matter, while Sensible Substance as a whole is merely the sum of these coagulations in the uniform Matter, each one separately forming a quale or a quantum or else a thing of many qualities? Is it true to say that everything whose absence leaves -498- subsistence incomplete is a part of the particular substance, while all that is accidental to the substance already existent takes independent rank and is not submerged in the mixture which constitutes this so- called substance?

I decline to allow this for the Intelligible world — that whatever combines with anything else is Substance if it helps to produce a single mass having quantity and quality, whereas taken by itself and divorced from this complementary function it is a quality: not even There is everything which composes the amalgam Substance, but only the amalgam as a whole.

And let no one take exception on the ground that we produce Sensible Substance from non-substances. The whole amalgam itself is not True Substance; it is merely an imitation of that True Substance which has Being apart from its concomitants, these indeed being derived from it as the possessor of True Being. In the lower realm the case is different: the underlying ground is sterile, and from its inability to produce fails to attain to the status of Being; it remains a shadow, and on this shadow is traced a sketch — the world of Appearance.


§ 9. So much for one of the genera — the ‘Substance’, so called, of the Sensible realm.

But what are we to posit as its species? how divide this genus?

The genus as a whole must be identified with body. Bodies may be divided into the characteristically material and the organic: the material bodies comprise fire, earth, water, air; the organic the bodies of plants and animals, these in turn admitting of formal differentiation.

The next step is to find the species of earth and of the other elements, and in the case of organic bodies to distinguish plants and animals either according to their forms, or else by their habitations — on the earth, in the earth, and similarly for the other elements. Alternatively, bodies may be classified as light, heavy, and intermediate: some bodies in fact stand in the middle of the universe, others circumscribe it from above, others occupy a middle sphere: in each case we shall find bodies different in shape, so that the bodies of the living beings of the heavens may be differentiated from those of the other elements.

Once we have classified bodies into the four species, we are ready to combine them on a different principle, at the same time intermingling their differences of place, form, and constitution; the resultant combinations will be known as fiery or earthy on the basis of the excess or predominance of some one element.

The distinction between First and Second Substances, between fire and a given example of fire, entails a difference of a peculiar kind — the difference between universal and particular. This, however, is not a difference characteristic of Substance; there is also in Quality the distinction between whiteness and the white object, between grammar and some particular grammar. -499-

The question may here be asked: what deficiency has grammar compared with a particular grammar, and science as a whole in comparison with a science? Grammar is certainly not posterior to the particular grammar: on the contrary, the grammar as in you depends upon the prior existence of grammar as such: the grammar as in you becomes a particular by the fact of being in you; it is otherwise identical with grammar the universal.

Turn to the case of Socrates: it is not Socrates who bestows manhood upon what previously was not Man, but Man upon Socrates; the individual man exists by participation in the universal.

Besides, Socrates is merely a particular instance of Man; this particularity can have no effect whatever in adding to his essential manhood.

We may be told that Man (the universal) is Form alone, Socrates Form in Matter. But on this very ground Socrates will be less fully Man than the universal; for the Reason-Principle will be less effectual in Matter. If, on the contrary, Man is not determined by Form alone, but presupposes Matter, what deficiency has Man in comparison with the material manifestation of Man — the Reason-Principle in isolation as compared with its embodiment in a unit of Matter?

Besides, the more general is by nature prior; hence, the Form-Idea is prior to the individual: but what is prior by nature is prior unconditionally. How then can the Form take a lower rank? The individual, it is true, is prior in the sense of being more readily accessible to our cognizance; this fact, however, entails no objective difference.

Moreover, such a difference, if established, would be incompatible with a single definition of Substance; First and Second Substances could not have the same definition, nor be brought under a single genus.


§ 10. Another method of division is possible: substances may be classed as hot-dry, dry-cold, cold-moist, or however we choose to make the coupling. We may then proceed to the combination and blending of these couples, either halting at that point and going no further than the compound, or else subdividing by habitation — on the earth, in the earth — or by form and by the differences exhibited by living beings, not qua living, but in their bodies viewed as instruments of life.

Differentiation by form or shape is no more out of place than a division based on qualities — heat, cold, and the like. If it be objected that qualities go to make bodies what they are, then, we reply, so do blendings, colours, shapes. Since our discussion is concerned with Sensible Substance, it is not strange that it should turn upon distinctions related to sense-perception: this Substance is not Being pure and simple, but the Sensible Being which we call the Universe.

We have remarked that its apparent subsistence is in fact an assemblage of Sensibles, their existence guaranteed to us by sense-perception. But since their combination is unlimited, our division must be guided by the Form-Ideas of living beings, as for example the Form-Idea of Man -500- implanted in Body; the particular Form acts as a qualification of Body, but there is nothing unreasonable in using qualities as a basis of division.

We may be told that in our division we have coordinated simple and composite bodies, even ranking them as opposites. But our distinction, we reply, was between material and organic bodies, and raised no question of the composite. In fact, there exists no means of opposing the composite to the simple; it is necessary to determine the simples in the first stage of division, and then, combining them on the basis of a distinct underlying principle, to differentiate the composites in virtue of their places and shapes, distinguishing for example the heavenly from the earthly.

These observations will suffice for the Being (Substance), or rather the Becoming, which obtains in the Sensible realm.


§ 11. Passing to Quantity and the quantum, we have to consider the view which identifies them with number and magnitude on the ground that everything quantitative among Sensible things is numbered or rated by the extension of its substrate: we are here, of course, discussing not Quantity in isolation, but that which causes a piece of wood to be three yards long and gives the five in ‘five horses’.

Now we have often maintained that number and magnitude are to be regarded as the only true qualities, and that Space and Time have no right to be conceived as quantitative: Time as the measure of Motion should be assigned to Relation, while Space, being that which circumscribes Body, is also a relative and falls under the same category; though continuous, it is, like Motion, not included in Quantity.

On the other hand, why do we not find in the category of Quantity ‘great’ and ‘small’? It is some kind of Quantity which gives greatness to the great; greatness is not a relative, though greater and smaller are relatives, since these, like doubleness, imply an external correlative.

What is it, then, which makes a mountain small and a grain of millet large? Surely, in the first place, ‘small’ is equivalent to ‘smaller’. It is admitted that the term is applied only to things of the same kind, and from this admission we may infer that the mountain is ‘smaller’ rather than ‘small’, and that the grain of millet is not large in any absolute sense but large for a grain of millet. In other words, since the comparison is between things of the same kind, the natural predicate would be a comparative.

Again, why is not beauty classed as a relative? Beauty we regard as absolute and as a quality; ‘more beautiful’ is the relative. Yet even the term ‘beautiful’ may be attached to something which in a given relation may appear ugly: the beauty of man, for example, is ugliness when compared with that of the gods; ‘the most beautiful of monkeys’, we may quote, ‘is ugly in comparison with any other type’. None the less, a thing is beautiful in itself; as related to something else it is either more or less beautiful. -501-

Similarly, an object is great in itself, and its greatness is due, not to any external, but to its own participation in the Absolute Great.

Are we actually to eliminate the beautiful on the pretext that there is a more beautiful? No more then must we eliminate the great because of the greater: the greater can obviously have no existence whatever apart from the great, just as the more beautiful can have no existence without the beautiful.


§ 12. It follows that we must allow contrariety to Quantity: whenever we speak of great and small our notions acknowledge this contrariety by evolving opposite images, as also when we refer to many and few; indeed, ‘few’ and ‘many’ call for similar treatment to ‘small’and ‘great’.

‘Many’, predicated of the inhabitants of a house, does duty for the comparative, ‘more’: ‘few’ people are said to be in the theatre instead of ‘less’.

‘Many’, again, necessarily involves a large numerical plurality. This plurality can scarcely be a relative; it is simply an expansion of number, its contrary being a contraction.

The same applies to the continuous (magnitude), the notion of which entails prolongation to a distant point.

Quantity, then, appears whenever there is a progression from the unit or the point: if either progression comes to a rapid halt, we have respectively ‘few’ and ‘small’; if it goes forward and does not quickly cease, ‘many’ and ‘great’.

What, we may be asked, is the limit of this progression? What, we retort, is the limit of beauty, or of heat? Whatever limit you impose, there is always a ‘hotter’; yet ‘hotter’ is accounted a relative,‘hot’ a pure quality.

In sum, just as there is a Reason-Principle of Beauty, so there must be a Reason-Principle of greatness, participation in which makes a thing great, as the Principle of beauty makes it beautiful.

To judge from these instances, there is contrariety in Quantity. Place we may neglect as not strictly coming under the category of Quantity; if it were admitted, ‘above’ could only be a contrary if there were something in the universe which was ‘below’: as referring to the partial, the terms ‘above’ and ‘below’ are used in a purely relative sense, and must go with ‘right’ and ‘left’ into the category of Relation.

Syllable and discourse are only indirectly quantities or substrates of Quantity; it is voice that is quantitative: but voice is a kind of Motion; it must accordingly in any case (quantity or no quantity) be referred to Motion, as must activity also.


§ 13. It has been remarked that the continuous is effectually distinguished from the discrete by their possessing the one a common, the other a separate limit.

The same principle gives rise to the numerical distinction between -502- odd and even; and it holds good that if there are differentiae found in both contraries, they are either to be abandoned to the objects numbered, or else to be considered as differentiae of the abstract numbers, and not of the numbers manifested in the sensible objects. If the numbers are logically separable from the objects, that is no reason why we should not think of them as sharing the same differentiae.

But how are we to differentiate the continuous, comprising as it does line, surface, and solid? The line may be rated as of one dimension, the surface as of two dimensions, the solid as of three, if we are only making a calculation and do not suppose that we are dividing the continuous into its species; for it is an invariable rule that numbers, thus grouped as prior and posterior, cannot be brought into a common genus; there is, accordingly, no common basis in first, second, and third dimensions. Yet there is a sense in which they would appear to be equal — namely, as pure measures of Quantity: of higher and lower dimensions, they are not however more or less quantitative.

Numbers have similarly a common property in their being numbers all; and the truth may well be, not that one creates two, and two creates three, but that all have a common source.

Suppose, however, that they are not derived from any source whatever, but exist independently; we at any rate conceive them as being derived, and so may be assumed to regard the smaller as taking priority over the greater: yet, even so, by the mere fact of their being numbers they are reducible to a single type.

What applies to numbers is equally true of magnitudes; though here we have to distinguish between line, surface, and solid — the last also referred to as ‘body’ — on the ground that, while all are magnitudes, they differ specifically.

It remains to inquire whether these species are themselves to be divided: the line into straight, circular, spiral; the surface into rectilinear and circular figures; the solid into the various solid figures — sphere and polyhedra: whether these last should be subdivided, as by the geometers, into those contained by triangular and quadrilateral planes: and whether a further division should be performed.


§ 14. How are we to classify the straight line? Shall we deny that it is a magnitude?

The suggestion may be made that it is a qualified magnitude. May we not, then, consider straightness as a differentia of ‘line’, to which, and to which alone, it belongs? We at any rate draw on Quality for differentiae of Substance.

The straight line is, thus, a quantity plus a differentia; but it is not on that account a composite made up of straightness and line: if it be a composite, the composite possesses a differentia of its own.

But (if the line is a quantity) why is not the product of three lines included in Quantity? The answer is that a triangle consists not merely -503- of three lines but of three lines in a particular disposition, a quadrilateral of four lines in a particular disposition: even the straight line involves disposition as well as quantity.

Holding that the straight line is not mere quantity, we should naturally proceed to assert that the line as limited is not mere quantity, but for the fact that the limit of a line is a point, which is in the same category, Quantity. Similarly, the limited surface will be a quantity, since lines, which have a far better right than itself to this category, constitute its limits. With the introduction of the limited surface — rectangle, hexagon, polygon — into the category of Quantity, this category will be brought to include every figure whatsoever.

If, however, by classing the triangle and the rectangle as qualia we propose to bring figures under Quality, we are not thereby precluded from assigning the same object to more categories than one: in so far as it is a magnitude — a magnitude of such and such a size — it will belong to Quantity; in so far as it presents a particular shape, to Quality.

It may be urged that the triangle is essentially a particular shape. Then what prevents our ranking the sphere also as a quality?

To proceed on these lines would lead us to the conclusion that geometry is concerned not with magnitudes but with Quality. But this conclusion is untenable; geometry is the study of magnitudes. The differences of magnitudes do not eliminate the existence of magnitudes as such, any more than the differences of substances annihilate the substances themselves.

Moreover, every surface is limited; it is impossible for any surface to be infinite in extent.

Again, when I find Quality bound up with Substance, I regard it as substantial quality: I AM not less, but far more, disposed to see in figures or shapes (qualitative) varieties of Quantity. Besides, if we are not to regard them as varieties of magnitude, to what genus are we to assign them?

Suppose, then, that we allow differences of magnitude; we commit ourselves to a specific classification of the magnitudes so differentiated.


§ 15. How far is it true that equality and inequality are characteristic of Quantity?

Triangles, it is significant, are said to be similar rather than equal. But we also refer to magnitudes as similar, and the accepted connotation of similarity does not exclude similarity or dissimilarity in Quantity. It may, of course, be the case that the term ‘similarity’ has a different sense here from that understood in reference to Quality.

Furthermore, if we are told that equality and inequality are characteristic of Quantity, that is not to deny that similarity also may be predicated of certain quantities. If, on the contrary, similarity and dissimilarity are to be confined to Quality, the terms as applied to Quantity must, as we have said, bear a different meaning. -504-

But suppose similarity to be identical in both genera; Quantity and Quality must then be expected to reveal other properties held in common.

May the truth be this: that similarity is predicable of Quantity only in so far as Quantity possesses (qualitative) differences? But as a general rule differences are grouped with that of which they are differences, especially when the difference is a difference of that thing alone. If in one case the difference completes the substance and not in another, we inevitably class it with that which it completes, and only consider it as independent when it is not complementary: when we say ‘completes the substance’, we refer not to Substance as such but to the differentiated substance; the particular object is to be thought of as receiving an accession which is non-substantial.

We must not, however, fail to observe that we predicate equality of triangles, rectangles, and figures generally, whether plane or solid: this may be given as a ground for regarding equality and inequality as characteristic of Quantity.

It remains to inquire whether similarity and dissimilarity are characteristic of Quality.

We have spoken of Quality as combining with other entities, Matter and Quantity, to form the complete Sensible Substance; this Substance, so called, may be supposed to be the resulting manifold, which is not so much an essence as a quale. Thus, for the essence of fire we must look to the Reason-Principle; the visible form which it produces is, properly speaking, a quale.

Man’s essence will lie in his Reason-Principle; that which is perfected in the corporeal nature is a mere image of the Reason-Principle, a quale rather than an essence.

Consider: the visible Socrates is a man, yet we give the name of Socrates to that likeness of him in a portrait, which consists of mere colours, mere pigments: similarly, it is a Reason-Principle which constitutes Socrates, but we apply the name Socrates to the Socrates we see: in truth, however, the colours and shapes which make up the visible Socrates are but reproductions of those in the Reason-Principle, while this Reason-Principle itself bears a corresponding relation to the truest Reason-Principle of Man. But we need not elaborate this point.


§ 16. When each of the entities bound up with the pseudo-substance is taken apart from the rest, the name or Quality is given to that one among them, by which without pointing to essence or quantity or motion we signify the distinctive mark, the type or aspect of a thing — for example, the beauty or ugliness of a body. This beauty — need we say? — is identical in name only with Intellectual Beauty: it follows that the term ‘Quality’ as applied to the Sensible and the Intellectual -505- is necessarily equivocal; even blackness and whiteness are different in the two spheres.

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 affecting 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 surely some virtues will take rank as Sensible, others as Intellectual, qualities.

It may even be doubted whether the arts, as Reason-Principles, can fairly be classed among Sensible qualities; they are, it is true, Reason- Principles residing in Matter, but ‘matter’ for them means Soul. On the other hand, their being found even in company with Matter commits them in some degree to the lower sphere. Take the case of lyrical music: it is performed upon strings; melody, which may be termed a part of the art, is sensuous sound — though, perhaps, we should speak here not of parts but of manifestations (Acts): yet, called manifestations, they are none the less sensuous. The beauty inherent in body is similarly bodiless; but it is subject to sense-perception and we have therefore assigned it to the order of things bound up with body and subordinate to it.

Geometry and arithmetic are, we shall maintain, of a twofold character: in their earthly types they rank with Sensible Quality, but in so far as they are functions of pure Soul, they necessarily belong to that other world in close proximity to the Intellectual. This, too, is in Plato’s view the case with music and astronomy.

The arts concerned with material objects and making use of perceptible instruments and sense-perception must be classed with Sensible Quality, even though they are dispositions of the Soul, since they are attendant upon the Soul’s apostasy.

There is also every reason for consigning to this category the practical virtues whose function is directed to a social end: these do not release Soul by inclining it towards the higher; their manifestation makes for beauty in this world, a beauty regarded not as necessary but as desirable.

On this principle, the beauty in the germ, and still more the blackness and whiteness in it, will be included among Sensible Qualities.

Are we, then, to rank the individual Soul, as containing these Reason- Principles, with Sensible Substance? But we do not even identify the Principles (much less Soul) with body; we merely include them in Sensible Quality on the ground that they are connected with body and are activities of body. The constituents of Sensible Substance have already been specified; we have no intention whatever of adding to them Substance bodiless.

As for Qualities, we hold that they are invariably bodiless, but we -506- have included them in the lower realm, since they are affections arising in Sensible Substance or Reason-Principles of the individual Soul: the affections, torn between two worlds by their objects and their abode, we have assigned to Quality, which is indeed not bodily but manifested in body.

But we refrain from assigning Soul to Sensible Substance, on the ground that we have already referred to Quality (which is Sensible) those affections of Soul which are related to body. On the contrary, Soul, conceived apart from affection and Reason-Principle, we have restored to its origin, leaving in the lower realm no substance which is in any sense Intellectual.


§ 17. This procedure, if approved, will entail a distinction between psychic and bodily qualities, the latter belonging specifically to body.

If we decide to refer all psychic qualities to the higher, we are still at liberty to perform for Sensible qualities a division founded upon the senses themselves — the eyes, the ears, touch, taste, smell; and if we are to look for further differences, colours may be subdivided according to varieties of vision, sounds according to varieties of hearing, and so with the other senses: sounds may also be classified qualitatively as sweet, harsh, soft.

Here a difficulty may be raised: we distinguish the varieties of Substance and their functions and activities, fair or foul or indeed of any kind whatsoever, on the basis of Quality, Quantity rarely, if ever, entering into the differences which produce species; Quantity, again, we divide in accordance with qualities of its own: how then are we to divide Quality itself into species? what differences are we to employ, and from what genus shall we take them? To take them from Quality itself would be no less absurd than setting up substances as differences of Substance.

How, then, are we to distinguish black from white? how differentiate colours in general from tastes and tangible qualities? By the variety of sense-organs? Then there will be no difference in the objects themselves.

But (waiving this objection) how deal with qualities perceived by the same sense-organ? We may be told that some colours integrate, others disintegrate the vision, that some tastes integrate, others disintegrate the tongue: we reply that, first, it is the actual experiences (of colour and taste, and not the sense-organs) that we are discussing and it is to these that the notions of integration and disintegration must be applied; secondly, a means of differentiating these experiences has not been offered.

It may be suggested that we divide them by their powers (or effects), and this suggestion is so far reasonable that we may well agree to divide the non-sensuous qualities, the sciences for example, on this basis; but we see no reason for resorting to their effects for the division of qualities -507- sensuous. Even if we divide the sciences by their powers, founding our division of their processes upon the faculties of the mind, we can only grasp their differences in a rational manner if we look not only to their subject-matter but also to their Reason-Principles.

But, granted that we may divide the arts by their Reason-Principles and theorems, this method will hardly apply to embodied qualities. Even in the arts themselves an explanation would be required for the differences between the Reason-Principles themselves. Besides, we have no difficulty in seeing that white differs from black; to account for this difference is the purpose of our inquiry.


§ 18. These problems at any rate all serve to show that, while in general it is necessary to look for differences by which to separate things from each other, to hunt for differences of the differences themselves is both futile and irrational. We cannot have substances of substances, quantities of quantities, qualities of qualities, differences of differences; differences must, where possible, be found outside the genus, in creative powers and the like: but where no such criteria are present, as in distinguishing dark green from pale green, both being regarded as derived from white and black, what expedient may be suggested?

Sense-perception and intelligence maybe trusted to indicate diversity but not to explain it: explanation is outside the province of sense-perception, whose function is merely to produce a variety of information; while, as for intelligence, it works exclusively with intuitions and never resorts to explanations to justify them in detail; there is in the movements of intelligence a diversity which separates one object from another, making further differentiation unnecessary.

Do all qualities constitute differentiae, or not? Granted that whiteness and colours in general and the qualities dependent upon touch and taste can, even while they remain species (of Quality), become differentiae of other things, how can grammar and music serve as differentiae? Perhaps in the sense that minds may be distinguished as grammatical and musical, especially if the qualities are innate, in which case they do become specific differentiae.

It remains to decide whether there can be any differentia derived from the genus to which the differentiated thing belongs, or whether it must of necessity belong to another genus. The former alternative would produce differentiae of things derived from the same genus as the differentiae themselves — for example, qualities of qualities. Virtue and vice are two states differing in quality: the states are qualities, and their differentiae qualities — unless indeed it be maintained that the state undifferentiated is not a quality, that the differentia creates the quality.

But consider the sweet as beneficial, the bitter as injurious: then bitter and sweet are distinguished, not by Quality, but by Relation. We might also be disposed to identify the sweet with the thick, and the pungent with the thin: ‘thick’, however, hardly reveals the essence but -508- merely the cause of sweetness — an argument which applies equally to pungency.

We must therefore reflect whether it may be taken as an invariable rule that Quality is never a differentia of Quality, any more than Substance is a differentia of Substance, or Quantity of Quantity.

Surely, it may be interposed, five differs from three by two. No: it exceeds it by two; we do not say that it differs: how could it differ by a ‘two’ in the ‘three’? We may add that neither can Motion differ from Motion by Motion. There is, in short, no parallel in any of the other genera.

In the case of virtue and vice, whole must be compared with whole, and then virtue and vice will be the differentiae. As for the differentiae being derived from the same genus as themselves, namely, Quality, and from no other genus, if we proceed on the principle that virtue is bound up with pleasure, vice with lust, virtue again with the acquisition of food, vice with idle extravagance, and accept these definitions as satis- factory, then clearly we have, here too, differentiae which are not qualities.


§ 19. With Quality we have undertaken to group the dependent qualia, in so far as Quality is bound up with them; we shall not, however, introduce into this category the qualified objects (qua objects), that we may not be dealing with two categories at once; we shall pass over the objects to that which gives them their (specific) name.

But how are we to classify such terms as ‘not white’? If ‘not white’ signifies some other colour, it is a quality. But if it is merely a negation or an enumeration of things not white, it will be either a meaningless sound, or else a name or a definition of something actual: if a sound, it is a kind of motion; if a name or definition, it is a relative, inasmuch as names and definitions are significant. But if we are not merely concerned with an enumeration of things by genus but must take account of terms and their meanings as determining the genus in each case, then we shall assert that positive terms by merely indicating things affirm their existence whereas negative terms deny it. Perhaps, however, it would be better not to include (in the generic classification) either affirmative or negative propositions in view of their composite nature.

What view, then, shall we take of privations? If they are privations of qualities, they will themselves be qualities: ‘toothless’ and ‘blind’, for example, are qualities. ‘Naked’ and ‘clothed’, on the other hand, are neither of them qualities but states: they therefore comport a relation to something else.

(With regard to passive qualities:)

Passivity, while it lasts, is not a quality but a motion; when it is a past experience remaining in one‘…’s possession, it is a quality; if one ceases to possess the experience then regarded as a finished occurrence, one is considered to have been moved — in other words, to have been -509- in Motion. (Such is the theory.) But in none of these cases is it necessary to conceive of anything but Motion; the idea of time should be excluded; even present time has no right to be introduced.

‘Well’ and similar adverbial expressions are to be referred to the single generic notion (of Quality).

It remains to consider whether Quality which includes ‘rubicund’ must exclude ‘blushing’ or ‘flushed’. The fact of becoming flushed is rightly not referred to Quality; for it involves passivity — in short, Motion. But if one has ceased to become flushed and is actually red, this is surely a case of Quality, which is independent of time. How indeed are we to measure the time (at which a disposition passes into a state)? We must rely on the aspect which a substance presents: by predicating of a man redness, we clearly ascribe to him a quality. Otherwise we shall maintain that states alone, and not dispositions, constitute qualities: thus, ‘hot’ is different from ‘growing hot’, ‘ill’ from ‘turning ill’.


§ 20. We have to ascertain whether there is not to every quality a contrary. In the case of virtue and vice even the mean appears to be contrary to the extremes.

But when we turn to colours, we do not find the intermediates so related. If we regard the intermediates as Mendings of the extremes, we must not posit any contrariety other than that between black and white, but must show that all other colours are combinations of these two. Contrariety, however, demands that there be some one distinct quality in the intermediates, though this quality may be seen to arise from a combination.

It may further be suggested that contraries not only differ from each other, but also entail the greatest possible difference. But ‘the greatest possible difference’ would seem to presuppose that intermediates have already been established: eliminate the series, and how will you define ‘the greatest possible’? Sight, we may be told, will reveal to us that grey is nearer than black to white; and taste may be our judge when we have hot, cold, and an intermediate which is neither.

That we are accustomed to act upon these assumptions is obvious enough; but the following considerations may perhaps commend themselves:

White and yellow are entirely different from each other — a statement which applies to any colour whatsoever as compared with any other; they are accordingly contrary qualities. Their contrariety is independent of the presence of intermediates: between health and disease no intermediate intrudes, and yet they are contraries.

It may be urged that the products of a contrariety exhibit the greatest diversity. But ‘the greatest diversity’ is clearly meaningless, unless we can point to lower degrees of diversity in the means. Thus, we cannot speak of ‘the greatest diversity’ in reference to health and disease. This definition of contrariety is therefore inadmissible. -510-

Suppose that we say ‘great diversity’ instead of ‘the greatest’: if ‘great’ is equivalent to greater and implies a less, immediate contraries will again escape us; if, on the other hand, we mean strictly ‘great’ and assume that every quality shows a great divergence from every other, we must not suppose that the divergence can be measured by a comparative.

None the less, we must endeavour to find a meaning for the term ‘contrary’. Can we accept the principle that when things have a certain similarity which is not generic nor in any sense due to admixture, whether in a greater or a less degree, with other ‘forms’, they differ in degree but are not contraries; contraries being rather those things which have no specific (or formal) identity? It would be necessary to stipulate that they belong to the same genus, Quality. By this definition we should cover those immediate contraries which have nothing conducing to similarity, inasmuch as there are no intermediates looking both ways, as it were, and having a mutual similarity to each other; some contraries at least have no such intermediates.

If these observations be sound, colours which have a common ground will not be contraries. But there will be nothing to prevent, not indeed every colour from being contrary to every other, but any one colour from being contrary to any other; and similarly with tastes. This will serve as a statement of the problem.

As for Degree (subsisting in Quality), it was given as our opinion that it exists in the objects participating in Quality, though whether it enters into qualities as such — into health and justice — was left open to question. If indeed these qualities possess an extension quite apart from their participants, we must actually ascribe to them degrees. In the Intellectual realm, however, each entity is the whole and does not admit of degree.


§ 21. The claim of Motion to be established as a genus will depend upon three conditions: first, that it cannot rightly be referred to any other genus; second, that nothing higher than itself can be predicated of it in respect of its essence; third, that by assuming differences it will produce species.

To what genus, then, shall we refer it? Clearly it cannot be identified with either the Substance or the Quality of the things which possess it. It cannot, further, be consigned to Action, for Passivity also comprises a variety of motions; nor again to Passivity itself, because many motions are actions: on the contrary, actions and passions are to be referred to Motion.

Furthermore, it cannot lay claim to the category of Relation on the mere ground that it has an attributive and not a self-centred existence: on this ground Quality too would find itself in that same category; for Quality is an attribute and contained in an external: and the same is true or Quantity. -511-

If we are agreed that Quality and Quantity, though attributive, are real entities, and on the basis of this reality distinguishable as Quality and Quantity respectively: then, on the same principle, since Motion, though an attribute, has a reality prior to its attribution, it is incumbent upon us to discover the intrinsic nature of this reality. We must never be content to regard as a relative something which exists prior to its attribution, but only that which is engendered by Relation and has no existence apart from the relation to which it owes its name: the double, strictly so called, takes birth and actuality in juxtaposition with a yard’s length, and, inconceivable before, by this very process of being juxtaposed with a correlative acquires the name and exhibits the fact of being double.

What, then, is that entity, called Motion, which, though attributive, has an independent reality, which makes its attribution possible — the entity corresponding to Quality, Quantity, and Substance?

But first, perhaps, we should make sure that there is nothing prior to Motion and predicated of it as its genus.

Change may be suggested as a prior. But, in the first place, either it is identical with Motion, or else, if change be claimed as a genus, it will stand distinct from the genera so far considered: secondly, Motion will evidently take rank as a species and have some other species opposed to it — becoming, say — which will be regarded as a change but not as a motion.

What, then, is the ground for denying that becoming is a motion? The fact, perhaps, that what comes to be does not yet exist, whereas Motion has no dealings with the non-existent. But, on that ground, becoming will not be a change either. If, however, it be alleged that becoming is merely a type of alteration or growth since it takes place when things alter and grow, the antecedents of becoming are being confused with becoming itself. Yet becoming, entailing as it does these antecedents, must necessarily be a distinct species; for the event and process of becoming cannot be identified with merely passive alteration, like turning hot or white: it is possible for the antecedents to take place without becoming as such being accomplished, except in so far as the actual alteration (implied in the antecedents) has ‘come to be’; birth implies animal or vegetal life, and so a Form.

The contrary might be maintained: that change is more plausibly ranked as a species than is Motion, because change signifies merely the substitution of one thing for another, whereas Motion involves also the removal of a thing from the place to which it belongs, as is shown by locomotion. Even rejecting this distinction, we must accept as types of Motion knowledge and musical performance — in short, changes of condition: thus, alteration will come to be regarded as a species of Motion — namely, motion displacing.


§ 22. But suppose that we identify alteration with Motion on the ground -512- that Motion itself results in difference: how then do we proceed to define Motion?

It may roughly be characterized as the passage from the potentiality to its realization. That is potential which can either pass into a Form — for example, the potential statue — or else pass into activity — such as the ability to walk: whenever progress it made towards the statue, this progress is Motion; and when the ability to walk is actualized in walking, this walking is itself Motion: dancing is, similarly, the motion produced by the potential dancer taking his steps.

In the one type of Motion a new and distinct Form comes into existence created by the motion; the other constitutes, as it were, the pure Form of the potentiality, and leaves nothing behind it when once the motion has ceased. Accordingly, the view would not be unreasonable which, taking some Forms to be active, others inactive, regarded Motion as a dynamic Form in opposition to the other Forms which are static, and further as the cause of whatever new Form ensues upon it. To proceed to identify this motion which we are now discussing (i.e. sensible motion) with the life of bodies would not be unwarrantable; we necessarily use the same term, though the meaning is different, for the motions of Intellect and Soul.

That Motion is a genus we may be all the more confident in virtue of the difficulty — the impossibility even — of confining it within a definition.

But how can it be a Form in cases where the motion leads to deterioration, or is purely passive? Motion, we may suggest, is like the heat of the sun causing some things to grow and withering others. In so far as Motion is a common property, it is identical in both conditions; its apparent difference is due to the objects moved.

Is, then, becoming ill identical with becoming well? As motions they are identical. In what respect, then, do they differ? In their substrates? or is there some other criterion?

This question may, however, be postponed until we come to consider alteration: at present we have to discover what is the constant element in every motion, for only on this basis can we establish the claim of Motion to be a genus.

Perhaps the one term covers many meanings; its claim to generic status would then correspond to that of Being.

As a solution of the problem we may suggest that motions conducing to the natural state or functioning in natural conditions should perhaps, as we have already asserted, be regarded as being in a sense Forms, while those whose direction is contrary to nature must be supposed to be assimilated to the results towards which they lead.

But what is the constant element in alteration, in growth and birth and their opposites, in local change? What is that which makes them all motions? Surely it is the fact that in every case the object is never in the same state before and after the motion, that it cannot remain still -513- and in complete inactivity but, so long as the motion is present, is continually urged to take a new condition, never acquiescing in Identity but always courting Difference; deprived of Difference, Motion perishes.

Thus, Difference may be predicated of Motion, not merely in the sense that it arises and persists in a difference of conditions, but in the sense of being itself perpetual difference. It follows that Time, as being created by Motion, also entails perpetual difference: Time is the measure of unceasing Motion, accompanying its course and, as it were, carried along its stream.

In short, the common basis of all Motion is the existence of a progression and an urge from potentiality and the potential to actuality and the actual: everything which has any kind of motion whatsoever derives this motion from a pre-existent potentiality within itself of activity or passivity.


§ 23. The Motion which acts upon Sensible objects enters from without, and so shakes, drives, rouses, and thrusts its participants that they may neither rest nor preserve their identity — and all to the end that they may be caught into that restlessness, that flustering excitability which is but an image of Life.

We must avoid identifying Motion with the objects moved: by walking we do not mean the feet but the activity springing from a potentiality in the feet. Since the potentiality is invisible, we see of necessity only the active feet — that is to say, not feet simply, as would be the case if they were at rest, but something besides feet, something invisible but indirectly seen as an accompaniment by the fact that we observe the feet to be in ever-changing positions and no longer at rest. We infer alteration, on the other hand, from the qualitative change in the thing altered.

Where, then, does Motion reside, when it moves an object and at the same time passes from an inherent potentiality to actuality? In the mover? How then will the moved, the patient, participate in the motion? In the moved? Then why does not Motion remain in it, once having come? It would seem that Motion must neither be separated from the active principle nor allowed to reside in it; it must proceed from agent to patient without so inhering in the latter as to be severed from the former, passing from one to the other like a breath of wind.

Now, when the potentiality of Motion consists in an ability to walk, it may be imagined as thrusting a man forward and causing him to be continually adopting a different position; when it lies in the capacity to heat, it heats; when the potentiality takes hold of Matter and builds up the organism, we have growth; and when another potentiality demolishes the structure, the result is decay, that which has the potentiality of demolition experiencing the decay. Where the birth-giving principle is active, we find birth; where it is impotent and the power to -514- destroy prevails, destruction takes place — not the destruction of what already exists, but that which intervenes upon the road to existence.

Health comes about in the same way — when the power which produces health is active and predominant; sickness is the result of the opposite power working in the opposite direction.

Thus Motion is conditioned, not only by the objects in which it occurs, but also by its origins and its course, and it is a distinctive mark of Motion to be always qualified and to take its quality from circumstances.


§ 24. With regard to locomotion: if ascending is to be held contrary to descending, and circular motion different (in kind) from motion in a straight line, we may ask how this difference is to be defined — the difference, for example, between throwing over the head and under the feet.

The driving power is one — though indeed it might be maintained that the upward drive is different from the downward, and the downward passage of a different character from the upward, especially if it be a natural motion, in which case the up-motion constitutes lightness, the down-motion heaviness.

But in all these motions alike there is the common tendency to seek an appointed place, with the result that in locomotion variety seems to depend upon externals.

As for motion in a circle and motion in a straight line, if the former is in practice indistinguishable from the latter, how can we regard them as different? The only difference lies in the shape of the course, unless the view be taken that circular motion is ‘impure’, as not being entirely a motion, not involving a complete surrender of identity.

However, it appears in general that locomotion is a definite unity, taking its differences from externals.


§ 25. The nature of integration and disintegration calls for scrutiny. Are they different from the motions above mentioned, from coming-to-be and passing-away, from growth and decay, from change of place, and from alteration? or must they be referred to these? or, again, must some of these be regarded as types of integration and disintegration?

If integration implies that one element proceeds towards another, implies in short an approach, and disintegration, on the other hand, a retreat into the background, such motions may be termed local; we have clearly a case of two things moving in the direction of unity, or else making away from each other.

If, however, the things achieve a sort of fusion, mixture, blending, and if a new unity comes into being, not when the process of combination is already complete, but in the very act of combining, to which of our specified motions shall we refer this type? There will certainly be locomotion at first, but it will be succeeded by something different; -515- just as in growth locomotion is found at the outset, though later it is supplanted by quantitative motion. The present case is similar: locomotion leads the way, but integration or disintegration does not inevitably follow; integration takes place only when the impinging elements become intertwined, disintegration only when they are rent asunder by the contact.

On the other hand, it often happens that locomotion follows disintegration, or else occurs simultaneously, though the experience of the disintegrated is not conceived in terms of locomotion: so too in integration a distinct experience, a distinct unification, accompanies the locomotion and remains separate from it.

Are we then to posit a new species for these two motions, adding to them, perhaps, alteration? A thing is altered by becoming dense — in other words, by integration; it is altered again by being rarefied — that is, by disintegration. When wine and water are mixed, something is produced different from either of the pre-existing elements: thus, integration takes place, resulting in alteration.

But perhaps we should recall a previous distinction, and while holding that integrations and disintegrations precede alterations, should maintain that alterations are none the less distinct from either; that, further, not every alteration is of this type (presupposing, that is to say, integration or disintegration), and, in particular, rarefaction and condensation are not identical with disintegration and integration, nor in any sense derived from them: to suppose that they were would involve the admission of a vacuum.

Again, can we use integration and disintegration to explain blackness and whiteness? But to doubt the independent existence of these qualities means that, beginning with colours, we may end by annihilating almost all qualities, or rather all without exception; for if we identify every alteration, or qualitative change, with integration and disintegration, we allow nothing whatever to come into existence; the same elements persist, nearer or farther apart.

Finally, how is it possible to class learning and being taught as integrations?


§ 26. We may now take the various specific types of Motion and once again inquire whether, to begin with, locomotion is not to be divided on the basis of direction, up, down, straight, circular — a question already raised; whether organic motion should be distinguished from inorganic — they are clearly not alike; whether, again, organic motions should be subdivided into walking, swimming, and flight.

Perhaps we should also distinguish in each species natural from unnatural motions: this distinction would, however, imply that motions have differences which are not external. It may indeed be the case that motions create these differences and cannot exist without them; but Nature may be supposed to be the ultimate source of these motions. -516-

Motions may also be classed as natural, artificial, and purposive: ‘natural’ embracing growth and decay; ‘artificial’’ architecture and ship-building; ‘purposive’ inquiry, learning, government, and, in general, all speech and action.

Again, with regard to growth, alteration, and birth, the division may proceed from the natural and unnatural, or, speaking generally, from the characters of the moved objects.


§ 27.What view are we to take of that which is opposed to Motion, whether it be Stability or Rest? Are we to consider it as a distinct genus, or to refer it to one of the genera already established? We should, no doubt, be well advised to assign Stability to the Intellectual, and to look in the lower sphere for Rest alone.

First, then, we have to discover the precise nature of this Rest. If it presents itself as identical with Stability, we have no right to expect to find it in the sphere where nothing is stable and the apparently stable has merely a less strenuous motion.

Suppose the contrary: we decide that Rest is different from Stability, inasmuch as Stability belongs to the utterly immobile, Rest to the stationary which, though of a nature to move, does not move. Now, if Rest means coming to rest, it must be regarded as a motion which has not yet ceased but still continues; but if we suppose it to be incompatible with Motion, we have first to ask whether there is in the Sensible world anything without motion.

Yet nothing can experience every type of motion; certain motions must be ruled out in order that we may speak of the moving object as an object: may we not, then, say of that which has no locomotion and is at rest as far as pertains to that specific type of motion, simply that it does not move?

Rest, accordingly, is the negation of Motion: in other words, it has no generic status. It is in fact related only to one type of motion, namely, locomotion; it is therefore the negation of this motion that is meant.

But, it may be asked, why not regard Motion as the negation of Stability? We reply that Motion does not appear alone; it is accompanied by a force which actualizes its object, forcing it on, as it were, giving it a thousand forms and destroying them all: Rest, on the contrary, comports nothing but the object itself, and signifies merely that the object has no motion.

Why, then, did we not in discussing the Intellectual realm assert that Stability was the negation of Motion? Because it is not indeed possible to consider Stability as an annulling of Motion, for Stability does not exist when Motion ceases, but requires for its own existence the simultaneous existence of Motion; Stability in that realm does not arise from the fact that what is of a nature to move is not moving; what is There is stable because Stability has taken hold of it; in so far as it has Motion, it will never cease to move: thus, it is stationary under the influence of -517- Stability, and moves under the influence of Motion. In the lower realm, too, a thing moves in virtue of Motion, but its Rest is caused by a deficiency; it has been deprived of its due motion.

What we have to observe is the essential character of this Sensible counterpart of Stability.

Consider sickness and health. The convalescent moves in the sense that he passes from sickness to health. What species of rest are we to oppose to this convalescence? If we oppose the condition from which he departs, that condition is sickness, not Stability; if that into which he passes, it is health, again not the same as Stability.

It may be declared that health or sickness is indeed some form of Stability: we are to suppose, then, that Stability is the genus of which health and sickness are species; which is absurd.

Stability may, again, be regarded as an attribute of health: according to this view health will be health before possessing Stability.

These questions may however be left to the judgement of the individual.


§ 28. We have already indicated that Activity and Passivity are to be regarded as motions, and that it is possible to distinguish absolute motions, actions, passions.

As for the remaining so-called genera, we have shown that they are reducible to those which we have posited.

With regard to the relative, we have maintained that Relation belongs to one object as compared with another, that the two objects enter into the relation simultaneously, and that Relation is found whenever a substance is in such a condition as to produce it; not that the substance in itself is a relative, except in so far as it constitutes part of a whole — a hand, for example, or head or cause or principle or element.

We may also adopt the ancient division of relatives into creative principles, measures, excesses and deficiencies, and those which in general separate objects on the basis of similarities and differences.

Our investigation into the kinds of Being is now complete.

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Fourth Tractate: On the Integral Omnipresence of the Authentic Existent (I.)

§ 1.How are we to explain the omnipresence of the Soul? Does it depend upon the definite magnitude of the material universe coupled with some native tendency in Soul to distribute itself over material mass, or is it a characteristic of Soul apart from body?

In the latter case, Soul will not appear just where body may bring it; -518- body will meet Soul awaiting it everywhere; wheresoever body finds place, there Soul lay before ever body was; the entire material mass of the universe has been set into an existent Soul.

But if Soul spread thus wide before material extension existed, then as covering all space it would seem to be of itself a thing of magnitude, and in what mode could it exist in the All before the All was in being, before there was any All? And who can accept a Soul described as partless and massless and yet, for all that absence of extension, extending over a universe? We may perhaps be told that, though extended over the corporeal, it does not itself become so: but thus to give it magnitude as an accidental attribute leaves the problem still unsolved: precisely the same question must in all reason arise: How can the Soul take magnitude even in the mode of accident?

We cannot think of Soul being diffused as a quality is, say sweetness or colour, for while these are actual states of the masses affected so that they show that quality at every point, none of them has an independent existence; they are attributes of body and known only as in body; such quality is necessarily of a definite extension. Further, the colour at any point is independent of that at any other; no doubt the Form, White, is the same all over, but there is not arithmetical identity; in Soul there is; it is one Soul in foot and in hand, as the facts of perception show. And yet in the case of qualities the one is observably distributed part for part; in the Soul the identity is undistributed; what we sometimes call distribution is simply omnipresence.

Obviously, we must take hold of the question from the very beginning in the hope of finding some clear and convincing theory as to how Soul, immaterial and without magnitude, can be thus broad-spread, whether before material masses exist or as enveloping them. Of course, should it appear that this omnipresence may occur apart from material things, there is no difficulty in accepting its occurrence within the material.


§ 2. Side by side exist the Authentic All and its counterpart, the visible universe. The Authentic is contained in nothing, since nothing existed before it; of necessity anything coming after it must, as a first condition of existence, be contained by this All, especially since it depends upon the Authentic and without that could have neither stability nor movement.

We may be reminded that the universe cannot be contained in the Authentic as in a place, where place would mean the boundaries of some surrounding extension considered as an envelope, or some space formerly a part of the Void and still remaining unoccupied even after the emergence of the universe, that it can only support itself, as it were, upon the Authentic and rest in the embrace of its omnipresence; but this objection is merely verbal and will disappear if our meaning is grasped; we mention it for another purpose; it goes to enforce our real -519- assertion, that the Authentic All, at once primal and veritable, needs no place and is in no way contained. The All, as being an integral, cannot fall short of itself; it must ever have fulfilled its own totality, ever reached to its own equivalence; as far as the sum of entities extends, there this is; for this is the All.

Inevitably, also, anything other than this All that may be stationed therein must have part in the All, merge into it, and hold by its strength; it is not that the thing detaches a portion of the All but that within itself it finds the All which has entered into it while still unbrokenly self-abiding, since Being cannot lodge in non-Being, but, if anything, non-Being within Being.

Being, then, is present to all Being; an identity cannot tear itself asunder; the omnipresence asserted of it must be presence within the realm of Being; that is, it must be a self-presence. And it is in no way strange that the omnipresence should be at once self-abiding and universal; this is merely saying omnipresence within a unity.

It is our way to limit Being to the sense-known and therefore to think of omnipresence in terms of the concrete; in our overestimate of the sensible, we question how that other Nature can reach over such vastness; but our great is small, and this, small to us, is great; it reaches integrally to every point of our universe — or, better, our universe, moving from every side and in all its members towards this, meets it everywhere as the omnipresent All ever stretching beyond.

The universe in all its reach can attain nothing further — that would mean overpassing the total of Being — and therefore is content to circle about it; not able to encompass or even to fill the All, it is content to accept place and subordination, for thus it preserves itself in neighbouring the higher present to it — present and yet absent; self-holding, whatever may seek its presence.

Wherever the body of the universe may touch, there it finds this All; it strives for no further advance, willing to revolve in that one circle, since to it that is the All and in that movement its every part embraces the All.

If that higher were itself in place there would be the need of seeking that precise place by a certain right path; part of seeker must touch part of sought, and there would be far and near. But since there is no far and near there must be, if presence at all, presence entire. And presence there indubitably is; this highest is present to every being of those that, free of far and near, are of power to receive.


§ 3. But are we to think of this Authentic Being as, itself, present, or does it remain detached, omnipresent in the sense only that powers from it enter everywhere?

Under the theory of presence by powers, souls are described as rays; the source remains self-locked and these are flung forth to impinge upon particular living things. -520-

Now, in beings whose unity does not reproduce the entire nature of that principle, any presence is presence of an emanant power: even this, however, does not mean that the principle is less than integrally present; it is not sundered from the power which it has uttered; all is offered, but the recipient is able to take only so much. But in Beings in which the plenitude of these powers is manifested, there clearly the Authentic itself is present, though still as remaining distinct; it is distinct in that, becoming the informing principle of some definite thing, it would abdicate from its standing as the total and from its uttermost self-abiding and would belong, in some mode of accident, to another thing as well. Still it is not the property of what may seek to join with it; it chooses where it will and enters as the participant’s power may allow, but it does not become a chattel; it remains the quested and so in another sense never passes over. There is nothing disquieting in omnipresence after this mode where there is no appropriation: in the same accidental way, we may reasonably put it, Soul concurs with body, but it is Soul self-holding, not inbound with Matter, free even of the body which it has illuminated through and through.

Nor does the placelessness of Being make it surprising that it be present universally to things of place; on the contrary, the wonder would be — the more than wonder, the impossibility — if from a place of its own it were present to other things in their place, or if having place it were present at all — and, especially present, as we assert, integrally.

But set it outside of place, and reason tells us that it will be present entire where it is present at all and that, present to the total, it must be present in the same completeness to every several unity; otherwise something of it is here and something there and at once it is fragmentary, it is body.

How can we so dispart Being? We cannot break Life into parts; if the total was Life, the fragment is not. But do we not thus sunder Intelligence, one intelligence in this man, another in that? No; such a fragment would not be Intelligence. But the Being of the individual? Once more, if the total thing is Being, then a fragment could not be. Are we told that in a body, a total of parts, every member is also a body? But here we are dividing not body but a particular quantity of body, each of those divisions being described as body in virtue of possessing the Form or Idea that constitutes body; and this Idea has no magnitude, is incapable of magnitude.


§ 4. But how explain beings by the side of Being, and the variety of intelligences and of souls, when Being has the unity of omnipresent identity and not merely that of a species, and when intellect and Soul are likewise numerically one? We certainly distinguish between the Soul of the All and the particular souls.

This seems to conflict with our view which, moreover, for all its logical necessity, scarcely carries conviction against our mental -521- reluctance to the notion of unity identically omnipresent. It would appear more plausible to suppose a partition of the All — the original remaining undiminished — or, in a more legitimate phrase, an engendering from the All.

Thus the Authentic would be left self-gathered, while what we think of as the parts — the separate souls — would come into being to produce the multiple total of the universe.

But if the Authentic Being is to be kept unattached in order to remove the difficulty of integral omnipresence, the same considerations must apply equally to the souls; we would have to admit that they cannot be integrally omnipresent in the bodies they are described as occupying; either, Soul must be distributed, part to body’s part, or it is lodged entire at some one point in the body giving forth some of its powers to the other points; and these very powers, again, present the same difficulty.

A further objection is that some one spot in the body will hold the Soul, the others no more than a power from it.

Still, how account for the many souls, many intelligences, the beings by the side of Being?

No doubt the beings proceed from the Priors in the mode only of numerical distinction and not as concrete masses, but the difficulty remains as to how they come to constitute the plenitude of the material universe.

This explanation by progression does not clear the problem.

We are agreed that diversity within the Authentic depends not upon spatial separation but sheerly upon differentiation; all Being, despite this plurality, is a unity still; ‘Being neighbours Being’; ‘all holds together’; and thus the Intellectual-Principle (which is Being and the Beings) remains an integral, multiple by differentiation, not by spatial distinction.

Soul too? Souls too. That principle distributed over material masses we hold to be in its own nature incapable of distribution; the magnitude belongs to the masses; when this soul-principle enters into them — or rather they into it — it is thought of as distributable only because, within the discrimination of the corporeal, the animating force is to be recognized at any and every point. For Soul is not articulated, section of Soul to section of body; there is integral omnipresence manifesting the unity of that principle, its veritable partlessness.

Now as in Soul unity does not debar variety, so with Being and the Beings; in that order multiplicity does not conflict with unity. Multiplicity. This is not due to the need of flooding the universe with life; nor is the extension of the corporeal the cause of the multiplicity of souls; before body existed Soul was one and many; the many souls fore-existed in the All nor potentially but each effectively; that one collective Soul is no bar to the variety; the variety does not abrogate the unity; the souls are apart without partition, present each to all as -522- never having been set in opposition; they are no more hedged off by boundaries than are the multiple items of knowledge in one mind; the one Soul so exists as to include all souls; the nature of such a principle must be utterly free of boundary.


§ 5. Herein lies its greatness, not in mass; mass is limited and may be whittled down to nothingness; in that order no such paring off is possible — nor, if it were, could there be any falling short. Where limitation is unthinkable, what fear can there be of absence at any point? Nowhere can that principle fail which is the unfailing, the everlasting, the undwindling; suppose it in flux and it must at some time flow to its end; since it is not in flux — and, besides (as the All), it has nowhere to flow to — it lies spread over the universe; in fact it is the universe, too great to be held by body, giving, therefore, to the material universe but little of itself, the little which that participant can take.

We may not make this principle the lesser, or if in the sense of mass we do, we must not begin to mistrust the power of that less to stretch to the greater. Of course, we have in fact no right to affirm it less or to measure the thing of magnitude against that which has none; as well talk of a doctor’s skill being smaller than his body. This greatness is not to be thought of in terms of quantity; the greater and less of body have nothing to do with Soul.

The nature of the greatness of Soul is indicated by the fact that as the body grows, the larger mass is held by the same Soul that sufficed to the smaller; it would be in many ways absurd to suppose a corresponding enlargement in the Soul.


§ 6. But why does not one same soul enter more than one body? Because any second body must approach, if it might; but the first has approached and received and keeps.

Are we to think that this second body, in keeping its soul with a like care, is keeping the same soul as the first?

Why not: what difference is there? Merely some additions (from the experiences of life, none in the Soul itself).

We ask further why one soul in foot and hand and not one soul in the distinct members of the universe.

Sensations no doubt differ from soul to soul but only as do the conditions and experiences; this is difference not in the judging principle but in the matters coming to judgement; the judge is one and the same soul pronouncing upon various events, and these not its own but belonging to a particular body; it is only as a man pronounces simultaneously upon a pleasant sensation in his finger and a pain in his head.

But why is not the soul in one man aware, then, of the judgement passed by another?

Because it is a judgement made, not a state set up; besides, the soul that has passed the judgement does not pronounce but simply judges: -523- similarly a man’s sight does not report to his hearing, though both have passed judgement; it is the reason above both that reports, and this is a principle distinct from either. Often, as it happens, reason does become aware of a verdict formed in another reason and takes to itself an alien experience: but this has been dealt with elsewhere.


§ 7. Let us consider once more how it is possible for an identity to extend over a universe. This comes to the question how each variously placed entity in the multiplicity of the sense order can have its share in one identical Principle.

The solution is in the reasons given for refusing to distribute that principle; we are not to parcel it out among the entities of the multiple; on the contrary, we bring the distributed multiples to the unity. The unity has not gone forth to them: from their dispersion we are led to think of it as broken up to meet them, but this is to distribute the controller and container equally over the material handled.

A hand may very well control an entire mass, a long plank, or anything of that sort; the control is effective throughout and yet is not distributed, unit for unit, over the object of control: the power is felt to reach over the whole area, though the hand is only hand-long, not taking the extension of the mass it wields; lengthen the object and, provided that the total is within the strength, the power handles the new load with no need of distributing itself over the increased area. Now let us eliminate the corporeal mass of the hand, retaining the power it exerted: is not that power, the impartible, present integrally over the entire area of control?

Or imagine a small luminous mass serving as centre to a transparent sphere, so that the light from within shows upon the entire outer surface, otherwise unlit: we surely agree that the inner core of light, intact and immobile, reaches over the entire outer extension; the single light of that small centre illuminates the whole field. The diffused light is not due to any bodily magnitude of that central point which illuminates not as body but as body lit, that is by another kind of power than corporeal quality: let us then abstract the corporeal mass, retaining the light as power: we can no longer speak of the light in any particular spot; it is equally diffused within and throughout the entire sphere. We can no longer even name the spot it occupied so as to say whence it came or how it is present; we can but seek, and wonder as the search shows us the light simultaneously present at each and every point in the sphere. So with the sunlight: looking to the corporeal mass you are able to name the source of the light shining through all the air, but what you see is one identical light in integral omnipresence. Consider too the effect of bodies which intercept the sun’s light (as in an eclipse): without letting the light pass through them to the side opposite to its source, they yet do not divide it. And supposing, as before, that the sun were simply an unembodied illuminant, the light would no longer -524- be fixed to any one definite spot: having no starting-point, no centre of origin, it would be an integral unity omnipresent.


§ 8. The light of our world can be allocated because it springs from a corporeal mass of known position, but conceive an immaterial entity, independent of body as being of earlier nature than all body, a nature firmly self-based or, better, without need of base: such a principle, incorporeal, autonomous, having no source for its rising, coming from no place, attached to no material mass, this cannot be allotted part here and part there: that would be to give it both a previous position and a present attachment. Finally, anything participating in such a principle can participate only as entirety with entirety; there can be no allotment and no partition.

A principle attached to body might be exposed, at least by way of accident, to such partition and so be definable as passive and partible in view of its close relationship with the body of which it is so to speak a state or a Form; but that which is not inbound with body, which on the contrary body must seek, will of necessity go utterly free of every bodily modification and especially of the very possibility of partition which is entirely a phenomenon of body, belonging to its very essence. As partibility goes with body, so impartibility with the bodiless: what partition is possible where there is no magnitude? If a thing of magnitude participates to any degree in what has no magnitude, it must be by a participation without division; divisibility implies magnitude.

When we affirm unity in multiplicity we do not mean that the unity has become the multiples; we link the variety in the multiples with the unity which we discern, undivided, in them; and the unity must be understood as forever distinct from them, from separate item and from total; that unity remains true to itself, remains itself, and so long as it remains itself cannot fail within its own scope (and therefore does reach over the multiple), yet it is not to be thought of as coextensive with the material universe or with any member of the All; utterly outside of the quantitative, it cannot be coextensive with anything.

Extension is of body; what is not of body, but of the opposed order, must be kept free of extension; but where there is no extension there is no spatial distinction, nothing of the here and there which would end its freedom of presence. Since, then, partition goes with place — each part occupying a place of its own — how can the placeless be parted? The unity must remain self-concentrated, immune from part, however much the multiple aspire or attain to contact with it. This means that any movement towards it is movement towards its entirety, and any participation attained is participation in its entirety. Its participants, then, link with it as with something unparticipated, something never appropriated: thus only can it remain intact within itself and within the multiples in which it is manifested. And if it did not remain thus -525- intact, it would cease to be itself; any participation, then, would not be in the object of quest but in something never quested.


§ 9. If in such apartition of the unity, that which entered into each participant were an entire — always identical with the first — then, in the progressive severance, the firsts would become numerous, each particular becoming a first: and then what prevents these many firsts from reconstituting the collective unity? Certainly not the bodies they have entered, for those firsts cannot be present in the material masses as their Forms if they are to remain identical with the First from which they come. On the other hand, taking the part conceived as present in the multiple to be simply a power (emanating from the First), at once such a part ceases to be the unity; we have then to ask how these powers come to be cut off, to have abandoned their origin; they certainly have not moved away with no purpose in their movement.

Again, are those powers, entering the universe of sense, still within the First or not?

If they are not, we have the absurdity that the First has been lessened, disempowered, stripped of power originally possessed. Besides, how could powers thus cut off subsist apart from the foundations of their being? Suppose these powers to be at once within the First and elsewhere; then the universe of sense contains either the entire powers or parts of them; if parts of powers, the other parts are There; if entires, then either the powers There are present here also undivided — and this brings us back to an identity omnipresent in integral identity — or they are each an entire which has taken division into a multiplicity of similars so that attached to every essence there is one power only — that particularly appropriated to it — the other powers remaining powers unattached: yet power apart from Being is as impossible as Being apart from power; for There power is Being or something greater than Being.

Or, again, suppose the powers coming Thence are other than their source — lesser, fainter, as a bright light dwindles to a dim — but each attached to its essence as a power must always be: such secondary powers would be perfectly uniform and at once we are forced to admit the omnipresence of the one same power or at the least the presence — as in one and the same body — of some undivided identity integral at every point.

And if this is the case with a particular body, why not with the entire universe?

If we think of the single power as being endlessly divided, it is no longer a power entire; partition means lessening of power; and, with part of power for part of body, the conditions of consciousness cease.

Further, a vestigial cut off from its source disappears — for example, a reflected light — and in general an emanant ceases to exist once it is severed from the original which it reproduces: just so the powers -526- derived from that source must vanish if they do not remain attached to it.

This being so, where these powers appear, their source must be present with them; thus, once more, that source must itself be omnipresent as an undivided whole.


§ 10. We may be told that an image need not be thus closely attached to its archetype, that we know images holding in the absence of their archetype and that a warmed object may retain its heat when the fire is withdrawn.

To begin with the image and archetype: if we are reminded of an artist’s picture we observe that here the image was produced by the artist, not by his subject; even in the case of a self-portrait, the picture is no ‘image of archetype’, since it is not produced by the painter’s body, the original represented: the reproduction is due to the effective laying on of the colours.

Nor is there strictly any such making of image as we see in water or in mirrors or in a shadow; in these cases the original is the cause of the image which, at once, springs from it and cannot exist apart from it. Now, it is in this sense that we are to understand the weaker powers to be images of the Priors. As for the illustration from the fire and the warmed object, the warmth cannot be called an image of the fire unless we think of warmth as containing fire so that the two are separate things. Besides, the fire removed, the warmth does sooner or later disappear, leaving the object cold.

If we are told that these powers fade out similarly, we are left with only one imperishable: the souls, the Intellectual-Principle, become perishable; then since Being (identical with the Intellectual-Principle) becomes transitory, so also must the Beings, its productions. Yet the sun, so long as it holds its station in the universe, will pour the same light upon the same places; to think its light may be lessened is to hold its mass perishable. But it has been abundantly stated that the emanants of the First are not perishable, that the souls, and the Intellectual-Principle with all its content, cannot perish.


§ 11. Still, this integral omnipresence admitted, why do not all things participate in the Intellectual Order in its entirety? Why has it a first participant, a second, and so on?

We can but see that presence is determined by the fitness of the participant so that, while Being is omnipresent to the realm of Being, never falling short of itself, yet only the competent possess themselves of that presence which depends not upon situation but upon adequacy; the transparent object and the opaque answer very differently to the light. These firsts, seconds, thirds, of participance are determined by rank, by power, not by place but by differentiation; and difference is no bar to coexistence, witness soul and Intellectual-Principle: similarly our own -527- knowledge, the trivial next the gravest; one and the same object yields colour to our sight, fragrance to smell, to every sense a particular experience, all presented simultaneously.

But would not this indicate that the Authentic is diverse, multiple?

That diversity is simplex still; that multiple is one; for it is a Reason-Principle, which is to say a unity in variety: all Being is one; the differing being is still included in Being; the differentiation is within Being, obviously not within non-Being. Being is bound up with the unity which is never apart from it; wheresoever Being appears, there appears its unity; and the unity of Being is self-standing, for presence in the sensible does not abrogate independence: things of sense are present to the Intellectual — where this occurs — otherwise than as the Intellectual is present within itself; so too body’s presence to soul differs from that of knowledge to soul; two items of knowledge within the same mind are present to each other in a different manner again; a body’s presence to body is, once more, another form of relation.


§ 12. Think of a sound passing through the air and carrying a word; an ear within range catches and comprehends; and the sound and word will strike upon any other ear you may imagine within the intervening void, upon any that attends; from a great distance many eyes look to the one object and all take it fully; all this, because eye and ear exist. In the same way what is apt for soul will possess itself of soul, while from the one identical presence another will draw, and then another.

Now the sound was diffused throughout the air not in sections but as one sound, entire at every point of that space. So with sight: if the air carries a shape impressed upon it this is one undivided whole; for, wherever there be an eye, there the shape will be grasped; even to such as reject this particular theory of sight, the facts of vision still stand as an example of participation determined by an identical unity.

The sound is the clearer illustration: the form conveyed is an entirety over all the air space, for unless the spoken word were entire at every point, for every ear to catch the whole alike, the same effect could not be made upon every listener; the sound, evidently, is not strung along the air, section to section. Why, then, need we hesitate to think of Soul as a thing not extended in broken contact, part for part, but omnipresent within the range of its presence, indwelling in totality at every point throughout the All?

Entered into such bodies as are apt to it, the soul is like the spokensound present in the air; before that entry, like the speaker about to speak — though even embodied it remains at once the speaker and the silent. No doubt these illustrations are imperfect, but they carry a serviceable similitude: the soul belongs to that other Kind, and we must not conceive a part of it embodied and a part intact; it is at once a self-enclosed unity and a principle manifested in diversity. -528-

Further, any newcoming entity achieving soul receives mysteriously that same principle which was equally in the previously ensouled; for it is not in the dispensation that a given part of soul situate at some given point should enter here and there; what is thought of as entering was always a self-enclosed entire and, for all the seeming entry, so remains: no real entry is conceivable. If, then, the soul never entered and yet is now seen to be present — present without waiting upon the participant — clearly it is present, here too, without breach of its self-inclusion. This can mean only that the participant came to soul; it lay outside the veritable reality but advanced towards it and so established itself in the cosmos of life. But this cosmos of life is a self-gathered entire, not divisible into constituent masses but prior to mass; whatever enters is not entering a mass; in other words, the participation is of entire in entire. Any newcomer into that cosmos of life will participate in it entire. Admitting, then, that this cosmos of life is present entire in the universe, it must be similarly entire in each several entity; an identity numerically one, it must be an undivided entire, omnipresent.


§ 13. But howaccount, at this, for its extension over all the heavens and all living beings?

There is no such extension. Sense-perception, by insistence upon which we doubt, tells of Here and There; but reason certifies that the Here and There do not attach to that principle; the extended has participated in that cosmos of life which itself has no extension.

Clearly no participant can participate in itself; self-participation would be merely identity. Body, then, as participant does not participate in body; body it has; its participation must be in what is not body. So too magnitude does not participate in magnitude; it has it: not even in addition of quantity does the initial magnitude participate in magnitude: the two cubits do not themselves become three cubits; what occurs is that an object totalling to a certain quantity now totals to another: for magnitude to participate in magnitude the actual two cubits must themselves become the new three (which cannot occur).

If, then, the divided and quantitatively extended is to participate in another kind, is to have any sort of participation, it can participate only in something undivided, unextended, wholly outside of quantity. Therefore, that which is to be introduced by the participation must enter as itself an omnipresent indivisible.

This indivisibility must, of course, not be taken in any sense of littleness: littleness would be still divisible, could not cover the extension of the participant and could not maintain integral presence against that expansion. Nor is it the indivisibility of a geometric point: the participant mass is no single point but includes an infinity of points; so that on the theory this principle must be an infinity of points, not a continuous whole, and so, again, will fail to cover the participant. -529-

If, then, the participant mass in its entirety is to contain that principle entire, the universe must hold that one soul present at its every point.


§ 14. But, admitting this one soul at every point, how is there a particular soul of the individual and how the good soul and the bad?

The one soul reaches to the individual but none the less contains all souls and all intelligences; this, because it is at once a unity and an infinity; it holds all its content as one yet with each item distinct, though not to the point of separation. Except by thus holding all its content as one — life entire, soul entire, all intelligence — it could not be infinite; since the individualities are not fenced off from each other, it remains still one thing. It was to hold life not single but infinite and yet one life, one in the sense not of an aggregate built up but of the retention of the unity in which all rose. Strictly, of course, it is a matter not of the rising of the individuals but of their being eternally what they are; in that order, as there is no beginning, so there is no apportioning except as an interpretation by the recipient. What is of that realm is the ancient and primal; the relation to it of the thing of process must be that of approach and apparent merging with always dependence.

But we ourselves, what are We?

Are we that higher or the participant newcomer, the thing of beginnings in time?

Before we had our becoming Here we existed There, men other than now, some of us gods: we were pure souls, Intelligence inbound with the entire of reality, members of the Intellectual, not fenced off, not cut away, integral to that All. Even now, it is true, we are not put apart; but upon that primal Man there has intruded another, a man seeking to come into being and finding us there, for we were not outside of the universe. This other has wound himself about us, foisting himself upon the Man that each of us was at first. Then it was as if one voice sounded, one word was uttered, and from every side an ear attended and received and there was an effective hearing, possessed through and through of what was present and active upon it: now we have lost that first simplicity; we are become the dual thing, sometimes indeed no more than that later foisting, with the primal nature dormant and in a sense no longer present.


§ 13. But how did this intruder find entrance?

It had a certain aptitude and it grasped at that to which it was apt. In its nature it was capable of soul: but what is unfitted to receive soul entire — present entire but not for it — takes what share it may; such are the members of the animal and vegetal order. Similarly, of a significant sound some forms of being take sound and significance together, others only the sound, the blank impact.

A living thing comes into existence containing soul, present to it from the Authentic, and by soul is inbound with Reality entire; it -530- possesses also a body; but this body is not a husk having no part in soul, not a thing that earlier lay away in the soulless; the body had its aptitude and by this draws near: now it is not body merely, but living body. By this neighbouring it is enhanced with some impress of soul — not in the sense of a portion of soul entering into it, but that it is warmed and lit by soul entire: at once there is the ground of desire, pleasure, pain: the body of the living form that has come to be was certainly no unrelated thing.

The Soul sprung from the divine lay self-enclosed at peace, true to its own quality; but its neighbour, in uproar through weakness, instable of its own nature and beaten upon from without, cries, at first to itself and afterwards upon the living total, spreading the disorder at large. Thus, at an assembly the Elders may sit in tranquil meditation, but an unruly populace, crying for food and casting up a host of grievances, will bring the whole gathering into ugly turmoil; when this sort of people hold their peace so that a word from a man of sense may reach them, some passable order is restored and the baser part ceases to prevail; otherwise the silence of the better allows the rabble to rule, the distracted assembly unable to take the word from above.

This is the evil of state and of council: and this is the evil of man; man includes an inner rabble — pleasures, desires, fears — and these become masters when the man, the manifold, gives them play.

But one that has reduced his rabble and gone back to the Man he was, lives to that and is that Man again, so that what he allows to the body is allowed as to something separate.

There is the man, too, that lives partly in the one allegiance and partly in the other; he is a blend of the good that is himself with the evil that is alien.


§ 16. But if that Principle can never fall to evil and we have given a true account of the Soul’s entry or presence to body, what are we to say of the periodic Descents and Returns, the punishments, the banishment into animal forms? That teaching we have inherited from those ancient philosophers who have best probed into soul and we must try to show that our own doctrine is accordant with it, or at least not conflicting.

We have seen that the participation of things here in that higher means not that the soul has gone outside of itself to enter the corporeal, but that the corporeal has approached soul and is now participant in it; the coming affirmed by the ancients can be only that approach of the body to the higher by which it partakes of life and of soul; this has nothing to do with local entry but is some form of communion; by the descent and embodiment of current phrasing must be understood not that soul becomes an appanage of body but that it gives out to it something of itself; similarly, the soul’s departure is the complete cessation of that communion.

The various rankings of the universe will determine various degrees -530- of the communion; soul, ultimate of the Intellectual, will give forth freely to body as being more nearly of the one power and standing closer, as distance holds in that order.

The soul’s evil will be this association, its good the release. Why? Because, even unmerged, a soul in any way to be described as attached to this universe is in some degree fallen from the All into a state of partition; essentially belonging to the All, it no longer directs its act Thither: thus, a man’s knowledge is one whole, but he may guide him- self by no more than some single item of it, where his good would lie in living not by some such fragment but by the total of his knowing.

That One Soul — member of the Intellectual cosmos and there merging what it has of partial into the total — has broken away, so to speak, from the All to the part and to that devotes itself, becoming partial with it; thus fire that might consume everything may be set to ply its all-power upon some trifle. So long as the soul remains utterly unattached it is soul not singled out; when it has accepted separation — not that of place but that of act determining individualities — it is a part, no longer the soul entire, or at least not entire in the first sense; when, on the contrary, it exercises no such outward control it is perfectly the All-Soul, the partial in it latent.

As for the entry into the World of the Shades, if this means into the unseen, that is its release; if into some lower place, there is nothing strange in that, since even here the soul is taken to be where the body is, in place with the body.

But on the dissolution of the body?

So long as the image-soul has not been discarded, clearly the higher will be where that is; if, on the contrary, the higher has been completely emancipated by philosophic discipline, the image-soul may very well go alone to that lower place, the authentic passing uncontaminated into the Intellectual, separated from that image but none the less the soul entire.

Let the image — offspring of the individuality — fare as it may, the true soul when it turns its light upon itself, chooses the higher and by that choice blends into the All, neither acting now nor extinct.

But it is time to return to our main theme:

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Fifth Tractate: On the Integral Omnipresence of the Authentic Existent (II.)

§ 1. The integral omnipresence of a unity numerically identical is in fact universally received; for all men instinctively affirm the god in each of us to be one, the same in all. It would be taken as certain if no one asked how or sought to bring the conviction to the test of reasoning; with this effective in their thought, men would be at rest, finding their -532- stay in that oneness and identity, so that nothing would wrench them from this unity. This principle, indeed, is the most solidly established of all, proclaimed by our very souls; we do not piece it up item by item, but find it within beforehand; it precedes even the principle by which we affirm unquestionably that all things seek their good; for this universal quest of good depends on the fact that all aim at unity and possess unity and that universally effort is towards unity.

Now this unity in going forth, so far as it may, towards the Other Order must become manifest as multiplicity and in some sense become multiple; but the primal nature and the appetition of the good, which is appetition of unity, lead back to what is authentically one; to this every form of Being is urged in a movement towards its own reality. For the good to every nature possessing unity is to be self-belonging, to be itself, and that means to be a unity.

In virtue of that unity the Good may be regarded as truly inherent. Hence the Good is not to be sought outside; it could not have fallen outside of what is; it cannot possibly be found in non-Being; within Being the Good must lie, since it is never a non-Being.

If that Good has Being and is within the realm of Being, then it is present, self-contained, in everything: we, therefore, are not separated from Being; we are in it; nor is Being separated from us: therefore all beings are one.


§ 2. Now the reasoning faculty which undertakes this problem is not a unity but a thing of parts; it brings the bodily nature into the inquiry, borrowing its principles from the corporeal: thus it thinks of the Essential Existence as corporeal and as a thing of parts; it baulks at the unity because it does not start from the appropriate principles. We, however, must be careful to bring the appropriately convincing principles to the discussion of the Unity, of perfect Being: we must hold to the Intellectual principles which alone apply to the Intellectual Order and to Real Being.

On the one hand there is the unstable, exposed to all sorts of change, distributed in place, not so much Being as Becoming: on the other, there is that which exists eternally, not divided, subject to no change of state, neither coming into being nor falling from it, set in no region or place or support, emerging from nowhere, entering into nothing, fast within itself.

In dealing with that lower order we would reason from its own nature and the characteristics it exhibits; thus, on a plausible foundation, we achieve plausible results by a plausible system of deduction: similarly, in dealing with the Intellectual, the only way is to grasp the nature of the essence concerned and so lay the sure foundations of the argument, not forgetfully straying over into that other order but basing our treatment on what is essential to the Nature with which we deal. -533-

In every entity the essential nature is the governing principle and, as we are told, a sound definition brings to light many even of the concomitants: where the essential nature is the entire being, we must be all the more careful to keep to that, to look to that, to refer all to that.


§ 3. If this principle is the Authentic Existent and holds unchanging identity, does not go forth from itself, is untouched by any process of becoming or, as we have said, by any situation in place, then it must be always self-gathered, never in separation, not partly here and partly there, not giving forth from itself: any such instability would set it in thing after thing or at least in something other than itself: then it would no longer be self-gathered; nor would it be immune, for anything within which it were lodged would affect it; immune, it is not in anything. If, then, not standing away from itself, not distributed by part, not taking the slightest change, it is to be in many things while remaining a self-concentrated entire, there is some way in which it has multi- presence; it is at once self-enclosed and not so: the only way is to recognize that while this principle itself is not lodged in anything, all other things participate in it — all that are apt and in the measure of their aptitude.

Thus, we either cancel all that we have affirmed and the principles laid down, and deny the existence of any such Nature, or, that being impossible, we return to our first position:

The One, numerically identical, undistributed, an unbroken entire, yet stands remote from nothing that exists by its side; but it does not, for that, need to pour itself forth: there is no necessity either that certain portions of it enter into things, or again that, while it remains self-abiding, something produced and projected from it enter at various points into that other order. Either would imply something of it remaining there while the emanant is elsewhere: thus separated from what has gone forth, it would experience local division. And would those emanants be, each in itself, whole or part? If part, the One has lost its nature, that of an entire, as we have already indicated; if whole, then either the whole is broken up to coincide point for point with that in which it is become present or we are admitting that an unbroken identity can be omnipresent.

This is a reasoning, surely, founded on the thing itself and its essential nature, not introducing anything foreign, anything belonging to the Other Order.


§ 4. Then consider this god (in man) whom we cannot think to be absent at some point and present at another. All that have insight into the nature of the divine beings hold the omnipresence of this god and of all the gods, and reason assures us that so it must be.

Now all-pervasion is inconsistent with partition; that would mean no longer the god throughout but part of the god at one point and part -534- at another; the god ceases to be one god, just as a mass cut up ceases to be a mass, the parts no longer giving the first total. Further, the god becomes corporeal.

If all this is impossible, the disputed doctrine presents itself again; holding the god to pervade the Being of man, we hold the omnipresence of an integral identity.

Again, if we think of the divine nature as infinite — and certainly it is confined by no bounds — this must mean that it nowhere fails; its presence must reach to everything; at the point to which it does not reach, there it has failed; something exists in which it is not.

Now, admitting any sequent to the absolute unity, that sequent must be bound up with the absolute; any third will be about that second and move towards it, linked to it as its offspring. In this way all participants in the Later will have share in the First. The Beings of the Intellectual are thus a plurality of firsts and seconds and thirds attached like one sphere to one centre, not separated by interval but mutually present; where, therefore, the Intellectual tertiaries are present the secondaries and firsts are present too.


§ 5. Often for the purpose of exposition — as a help towards stating the nature of the produced multiplicity — we use the example of many lines radiating from one centre; but while we provide for individualization we must carefully preserve mutual presence. Even in the case of our circle we need not think of separated radii; all may be taken as forming one surface: where there is no distinction even upon the one surface but all is power and reality undifferentiated, all the beings may be thought of as centres uniting at one central centre: we ignore the radial lines and think of their terminals at that centre, where they are at one. Restore the radii; once more we have lines, each touching a generating centre of its own, but that centre remains coincident with the one first centre; the centres all unite in that first centre and yet remain what they were, so that they are as many as are the lines to which they serve as terminals; the centres themselves appear as numerous as the lines starting from them and yet all those centres constitute a unity.

Thus we may liken the Intellectual Beings in their diversity to many centres coinciding with the one centre and themselves at one in it but appearing multiple on account of the radial lines — lines which do not generate the centres but merely lead to them. The radii, thus, afford a serviceable illustration for the mode of contact by which the Intellectual Unity manifests itself as multiple and multipresent.


§ 6. The Intellectual Beings, thus, are multiple and one; in virtue of their infinite nature their unity is a multiplicity, many in one and one over many, a unit-plurality. They act as entire upon entire; even upon the partial thing they act as entire; but there is the difference that at first the partial accepts this working only partially though the entire enters -535- later. Thus, when Man enters into human form there exists a particular man who, however, is still Man. From the one thing Man — man in the Idea — material man has come to constitute many individual men: the one identical thing is present in multiplicity, in multi-impression, so to speak, from the one seal.

This does not mean that Man Absolute, or any Absolute, or the Universe in the sense of a Whole, is absorbed by multiplicity; on the contrary, the multiplicity is absorbed by the Absolute, or rather is bound up with it. There is a difference between the mode in which a colour may be absorbed by a substance entire and that in which the soul of the individual is identically present in every part of the body: it is in this latter mode that Being is omnipresent.


§ 7. To Real Being we go back, all that we have and are; to that we return as from that we came. Of what is There we have direct knowledge, not images or even impressions; and to know without image is to be; by our part in true knowledge we are those Beings; we do not need to bring them down into ourselves, for we are There among them. Since not only ourselves but all other things also are those Beings, we all are they; we are they while we are also one with all: therefore we and all things are one.

When we look outside of that on which we depend we ignore our unity; looking outward we see many faces; look inward and all is the one head. If a man could but be turned about — by his own motion or by the happy pull of Athene — he would see at once God and himself and the All. At first no doubt all will not be seen as one whole, but when we find no stop at which to declare a limit to our being we cease to rule ourselves out from the total of reality; we reach to the All as a unity — and this not by any stepping forward, but by the fact of being and abiding there where the All has its being.


§ 8. For my part I AM satisfied that anyone considering the mode in which Matter participates in the Ideas will be ready enough to accept this tenet of omnipresence in identity, no longer rejecting it as incredible or even difficult. This because it seems reasonable and imperative to dismiss any notion of the Ideas lying apart with Matter illumined from them as from somewhere above — a meaningless conception, for what have distance and separation to do here?

This participation cannot be thought of as elusive or very perplexing; on the contrary, it is obvious, accessible in many examples.

Note, however, that when we sometimes speak of the Ideas illuminating Matter this is not to suggest the mode in which material light pours down on a material object; we use the phrase in the sense only that, the material being image while the Ideas are archetypes, the two orders are distinguished somewhat in the manner of illuminant and illuminated. But it is time to be more exact. -536-

We do not mean that the Idea, locally separate, shows itself in Matter like a reflection in water; the Matter touches the Idea at every point, though not in a physical contact, and, by dint of neighbourhood — nothing to keep them apart — is able to absorb thence all that lies within its capacity, the Idea itself not penetrating, not approaching, the Matter, but remaining self-locked.

We take it, then, that the Idea, say of Fire — for we had best deal with Matter as underlying the elements — is not in the Matter. The Ideal Fire, then, remaining apart, produces the form of fire throughout the entire enfired mass. Now let us suppose — and the same method will apply to all the so-called elements — that this Fire in its first material manifestation is a multiple mass. That single Fire is seen producing an image of itself in all the sensible fires; yet it is not spatially separate; it does not, then, produce that image in the manner of our visible light; for in that case all this sensible fire, supposing that it were a whole of parts (as the analogy would necessitate), must have generated spatial positions out of itself, since the Idea or Form remains in a non-spatial world; for a principle thus pluralized must first have departed from its own character in order to be present in that many and to ensure frequent participation in the one same Form.

The Idea, impartible, gives nothing of itself to the Matter; its unbreaking unity, however, does not prevent it shaping that multiple by its own unity and being present to the entirety of the multiple, bringing it to pattern not by acting part upon part but by presence entire to the object entire. It would be absurd to introduce a multitude of Ideas of Fire, each several fire being shaped by a particular idea; the Ideas of fire would be infinite. Besides, how would these resultant fires be distinct, when fire is a continuous unity? and if we apply yet another fire to certain matter and produce a greater fire, then the same Idea must be allowed to have functioned in the same way in the new matter as in the old; obviously there is no other Idea.


§ 9. The elements in their totality, as they stand produced, may be thought of as one spheric figure; this cannot be the piecemeal product of many makers each working from some one point on some one portion. There must be one cause; and this must operate as an entire, not by part executing part; otherwise we are brought back to a plurality of makers. The making must be referred to a partless unity, or, more precisely, the making principle must be a partless unity not permeating the sphere but holding it as one dependent thing. In this way the sphere is enveloped by one identical life in which it is inset; its entire content looks to the one life: thus all the souls are one, a one, however, which yet is infinite.

It is in this understanding that the Soul has been taken to be a numerical principle, while others think of it as in its nature a self-increasing number; this latter notion is probably designed to meet the -537-consideration that the Soul at no point fails but, retaining its distinctive character, is ample for all, so much so that were the Cosmos vaster yet the virtue of Soul would still compass it — or rather the Cosmos still be sunk in Soul entire.

Of course, we must understand this adding of extension not as a literal increase but in the sense that the Soul, essentially a unity, becomes adequate to omnipresence; its unity sets it outside of quantitative measurement, the characteristic of that other order which has but a counterfeit unity, an appearance by participation.

The essential unity is no aggregate to be annulled upon the loss of some one of the constituents; nor is it held within any allotted limits, for so it would be the less for a set of things, more extensive than itself, outside its scope; or it must wrench itself asunder in the effort to reach to all; besides, its presence to things would be no longer as whole to all but by part to part; in vulgar phrase, it does not know where it stands; dismembered, it no longer performs any one single function.

Now if this principle is to be a true unity — where the unity is of the essence — it must in some way be able to manifest itself as including the contrary nature, that of potential multiplicity, while by the fact that this multiplicity belongs to it not as from without but as from and by itself, it remains authentically one, possessing boundlessness and multiplicity within that unity; its nature must be such that it can appear as a whole at every point; this, as encircled by a single self-embracing Reason-Principle, which holds fast about that unity, never breaking with itself but over all the universe remaining what it must be.

The unity is in this way saved from the local division of the things in which it appears; and, of course, existing before all that is in place, it could never be founded upon anything belonging to that order of which, on the contrary, it is the foundation; yet, for all that they are based upon it, it does not cease to be wholly self-gathered; if its fixed seat were shaken, all the rest would fall with the fall of their foundation and stay; nor could it be so unintelligent as to tear itself apart by such a movement and, secure within its own being, trust itself to the insecurity of place which, precisely, looks to it for safety.


§ 10. It remains, then, poised in wisdom within itself; it could not enter into any other; those others look to it and in their longing find it where it is. This is that ‘Love waiting at the door’, ever coming up from without, striving towards the beautiful, happy when to the utmost of its power it attains. Even here the lover does not so much possess himself of the beauty he has loved as wait before it; that Beauty is abidingly self-enfolded but its lovers, the Many, loving it as an entire, possess it as an entire when they attain, for it was an entire that they loved. This seclusion does not prevent it sufficing to all, but is the very reason for its adequacy; because it is thus entire for all it can be The Good to all. -538-

Similarly wisdom is entire to all, and thus (in the well-known saying) ‘shared by all’; it is not distributed parcel wise; it cannot without absurdity be fixed to place; it is not spread about like a colouring, for it is not corporeal; in any true participation in wisdom there must be one thing acting as unit upon unit. So must it be in our participation in the Supreme; we shall not take our several portions of it, nor you some separate entire and I another. Think of what happens in Assemblies and all kinds of meetings; the road to sense is the road to unity; singly the members are far from wise; as they begin to grow together, each, in that true growth, generates wisdom while he recognizes it. There is nothing to prevent our intelligences meeting at one centre from their several positions; all one, they seem apart to us as when without looking we touch one object or sound one string with different fingers and think we feel several. Or take our souls in their possession of good; it is not one good for me and another for you; it is the same for both and not in the sense merely of distinct products of an identical source, the good somewhere above with something streaming from it into us; in any real receiving of good, giver is in contact with taker and gives not as to a recipient outside but to one in intimate contact.

The Intellectual giving is not an act of transmission; even in the case of corporeal objects, with their local separation, the mutual giving (and taking) is of things of one order and their communication, every effect they produce, is upon their like; what is corporeal in the All acts and is acted upon within itself, nothing external impinging upon it. Now if in body, whose very nature is self-eluding, there is no incursion of the alien, how can there be any in the order in which no partition exists?

It is therefore by identification that we see the good and touch it, brought to it by becoming identical with what is of the Intellectual within ourselves. In that realm exists what is far more truly a cosmos of unity; otherwise there will be two sensible universes, divided into correspondent parts; the Intellectual sphere, if a unity only as this sphere is, will be undistinguishable from it — except, indeed, that it will be less worthy of respect since in the nature of things extension is appropriate in the lower while the Intellectual will have wrought out its own extension with no motive, in a departure from its very character.

And what is there to hinder this unification? There is no question of one member pushing another out as occupying too much space, any more than happens in our own minds where we take in the entire fruit of our study and observation, all uncrowded.

We may be told that this unification is not possible in Real Beings; it certainly would not be possible, if the Reals had extension.


§ 11. But how can the unextended reach over the defined extension of the corporeal? How can it, so, maintain itself as a unity, an identity? This is a problem often raised and reason calls vehemently for a -539- solutionof the difficulties involved. The fact stands abundantly evident but there is still the need of intellectual satisfaction.

We have, of course, no slight aid to conviction, indeed the very strongest, in the exposition of the character of that principle. It is not like a stone, some vast block lying where it lies, covering the space of its own extension, held within its own limits, having a fixed quantity of mass and of assigned stone-power. It is a First Principle, measureless, not bounded within determined size — such measurement belongs to another order — and therefore it is all-power, nowhere under limit. Being so, it is outside of Time.

Time in its ceaseless onward sliding produces parted interval; Eternity stands in identity, pre-eminent, vaster by unending power than Time with all the vastness of its seeming progress; Time is like a radial line running out apparently to infinity but dependent upon that, its centre, which is the pivot of all its movement; as it goes it tells of that centre, but the centre itself is the unmoving principle of all the movement.

Time stands, thus, in analogy with the principle which holds fast in unchanging identity of essence: but that principle is infinite not only in duration but also in power: this infinity of power must also have its counterpart, a principle springing from that infinite power and dependent upon it; this counterpart will, after its own mode, run a course — corresponding to the course of Time — in keeping with that stationary power which is its greater as being its source: and in this too the source is present throughout the full extension of its lower correspondent.

This secondary of Power, participating as far as it may in that higher, must be identified.

Now the higher power is present integrally but, in the weakness of the recipient material, is not discerned at every point; it is present as an identity everywhere not in the mode of the material triangle — identical though in many representations numerically multiple, but in the mode of the immaterial, ideal triangle which is the source of the material figures. If we are asked why the omnipresence of the immaterial triangle does not entail that of the material figure, we answer that not all Matter enters into the participation necessary; Matter accepts various forms and not all Matter is apt for all form; the First Matter, for example, does not lend itself to all but is for the First Kinds first and for the others in due order, though these, too, are omnipresent.


§ 12. To return: How is that Power present to the universe?

As a One Life.

Consider the life in any living thing; it does not reach only to some fixed point, unable to permeate the entire being; it is omnipresent. If on this again we are asked, How?, we appeal to the character of this power, not subject to quantity but such that though you divide it mentally forever you still have the same power, infinite to the core; -540- in it there is no Matter to make it grow less and less according to the measured mass.

Conceive it as a power of an ever-fresh infinity, a principle unfailing, inexhaustible, at no point giving out, brimming over with its own vitality. If you look to some definite spot and seek to fasten on some definite thing, you will not find it. The contrary is your only way; you cannot pass on to where it is not; you will never halt at a dwindling point where it fails at last and can no longer give; you will always be able to move with it — better, to be in its entirety — and so seek no further; denying it, you have strayed away to something of another order and you fall; looking elsewhere you do not see what stands there before you.

But supposing you do thus ‘seek no further’, how will you ever be convinced of attainment?

In that you have entered into the All, no longer content with the part; you cease to think of yourself as under limit but, laying all such determination aside, you become an All. No doubt you were always that, but there has been an addition and by that addition you are diminished; for the addition was not from the realm of Being — you can add nothing to Being — but from non-Being. It is not by some admixture of non-Being that one becomes an entire, but by putting non-Being away. By the lessening of the alien in you, you increase. Cast it aside and there is the All within you; engaged in the alien, you will not find the All. Not that it has to come and so be present to you; it is you that have turned from it. And turn though you may, you have not severed yourself; it is there; you are not in some far region: still there before it, you have faced to its contrary.

It is so with the lesser gods; of many standing in their presence it is often one alone that sees them; that one alone was alone in the power to see. These are the gods who ‘in many guises seek our cities’; but there is That Other whom the cities seek, and all the earth and heaven — Him who is everywhere self-abiding and from whom derives Being and the Real Beings down to Soul and Life, all bound to Him and so moving to that unity which by its very lack of extension is infinite.

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Sixth Tractate: On Numbers

§ 1.

It is suggested that multiplicity is a falling away from The Unity, infinity (limitlessness) being the complete departure, an innumerable multiplicity, and that this is why unlimit is an evil and we evil at the stage of multiplicity.

A thing, in fact, becomes a manifold when, unable to remain -541- self-centred, it flows outward and by that dissipation takes extension: utterly losing unity it becomes a manifold since there is nothing to bind part to part; when, with all this outflowing, it becomes something definite, there is a magnitude.

But what is there so grievous in magnitude?

Given consciousness, there will be, since the thing must feel its exile, its sundrance from its essence. Everything seeks not the alien but itself; in that outward moving there is frustration or compulsion; a thing most exists, not when it takes multiplicity or extension, but when it holds to its own being, that is when its movement is inward. Desire towards extension is ignorance of the authentically great, a movement not on the appropriate path but towards the strange; to the possession of the self the way is inward.

Consider the thing that has taken extension; broken into so many independent items, it is now those several parts and not the thing it was; if that original is to persist, the members must stand collected to their total; in other words, a thing is itself not by being extended but by remaining, in its degree, a unity: through expansion and in the measure of the expansion, it is less itself; retaining unity, it retains its essential being.

Yet the universe has at once extension and beauty?

Yes; because it has not been allowed to slip away into the limitless but is held fast by unity; and it has beauty in virtue of Beauty, not of Magnitude; it needed Beauty to parry that magnitude; in the degree of its extension it was void of beauty and to that degree ugly. Thus extension serves as Matter to Beauty since what calls for its ordering is a multiplicity. The greater the expansion, the greater the disorder and ugliness.


§ 2. What, then, of the ‘Number of the Infinite’?

To begin with, how is Number consistent with infinity?

Objects of sense are not unlimited and therefore the Number applying to them cannot be so. Nor is an enumerator able to number to infinity; though we double, multiply over and over again, we still end with a finite number; though we range over past and future, and consider them, even, as a totality, we still end with the finite.

Are we then to dismiss absolute limitlessness and think merely that there is always something beyond?

No; that more is not in the reckoner’s power to produce; the total stands already defined.

In the Intellectual the Beings are determined and with them Number, the number corresponding to their total; in this sphere of our own — as we make a man a multiple by counting up his various characteristics, his beauty and the rest — we take each image of Being and form a corresponding image of number; we multiply a non-existent in and so produce multiple numbers; if we number years we draw on the numbers -542-in our own minds and apply them to the years; these numbers are still our possession.


§ 3. And there is the question, How can the infinite (the limitless) have existence and remain unlimited? Whatever is in actual existence is by that very fact determined numerically.

But, first, if multiplicity holds a true place among Beings, how can it be an evil?

As existent it possesses unity; it is a unit-multiple, saved from stark multiplicity; but it is of a lessened unity and, by that inwoven multiplicity, it is evil in comparison with unity pure. No longer steadfast in that nature, but fallen, it is the less, while in virtue of the unity thence retained it keeps some value; multiplicity has value in so far as it tends to return to unity and to abide in it.

But how explain the unlimited? It would seem that either it is among beings and so is limited or, if unlimited, is not among beings but, at best, among things of process such as Time. To be brought to limit it must be unlimited; not the limited but the unlimited is the subject of limitation, since between the limited and the unlimited there is no intermediate to accept the principle of limitation. The unlimited recoils by very nature from the Idea of limit, though it may be caught and held by it from without: the recoil, of course, is not from one place to another; the limitless can have nothing to do with place, which arises only with the limiting of the unlimited. Hence what is known as the flux of the unlimited is not to be understood as local change; nor does any other sort of recognizable motion belong to it in itself; therefore the limitless cannot move: neither can it be at rest: in what, since all place is later? Its movement means little more than that it is not fixed in rest.

Is it, then, suspended at some one point, or rocking to and fro?

No; any such poising, with or without side motion, could be known only by place (which Matter precedes).

How, then, are we to form any conception of its being?

We must fasten on the bare notion and take what that gives us — opposites that still are not opposed: we think of large and small and the unlimited becomes either, of stationary and moving and it will be either of these. But primarily it can be neither in any defined degree, or at once it is under limit. Limitless in this unlimited and undefined way, it is able to appear as either of a pair of opposites: draw near, taking care to throw no net of limit over it, and you have something that slips away; you come upon no unity for so it would be defined; approach the thing as a unit and you find it manifold; call it a manifold and again you falsify, for when the single thing is not a unity neither is the total a manifold. In one manifestation it takes the appearance of movement, in another of rest, as the mind envisages it.

Its inability to be seen through itself betokens a movement out of -543- Intellectual-Principle, a sliding away. That it cannot break free but is under rigorous compulsion from without and has no possibility of advance, in this would be its rest. Thus it is not true to speak of it (Matter, the unlimited) as being solely in flux.


§ 4. We have to inquire into the existence of the Numbers in the Intellectual. Are they something added to the Ideas — in other words, necessary concomitants to the Ideas? In that case, Being, as the first (in the Intellectual), would give us the conception of the Monad; then since Being produces motion and rest, Three exists; and so on for all the other members of the realm of Being.

Or perhaps (secondly) there is one monad for each member, or a monad for the first, with a dyad for its next, since there exists a scries, and a corresponding number for every successive total, dekad for ten, and so on.

If, a third possibility, Number is a direct production of the Intellectual-Principle (an Idea in itself), there is the question whether it preceded orfollowed the other Ideas.

Plato, where he says that men arrived at the conception of Number by way of the changes of day and night — thus making the concept depend upon variation among things — seems to hold that the things numerable precede and by their differences produce number: Number then would consist in a process within the human mind passing onwards from thing to thing; it results by the fact that the mind takes count, that is when the mind traverses things and reports their differences; observing pure identity unbroken by difference, it says ‘One’. But there is the passage where he tells us that the veritable Number has Being, is a Being; this is the opposed view that Number is no product of the reckoning mind but a reality in itself, the concept of which is re- awakened in the mind by changes in things of sense.


§ 5. What then is the veritable nature of Number?

Is it an accompaniment upon each substance, something seen in the things as in a man we see one man, in a being one being, and in the total of Intellectual beings the total of number?

But how explain the dyad and triad? How comes the total to be unitary and any particular number to be brought under unity? The theory offers a multiplicity of units, and no number is reducible to unity but the simple ‘one’. It might be suggested that a dyad is that thing — or rather what is observed upon that thing — which has two powers combined, a compound thing related to a unity: or numbers might be what the Pythagoreans seem to hold them in their symbolic system in which Justice, for example, is a Tetrad: but this is rather to add the number, a number of manifold unity like the dekad, to the multiplicity of the thing which yet is one thing. Now it is not so that we treat the ten things; we bring them together and apply the figure -544- ten to the several items. Or rather in that case we say ten, but when the several items form a unity we say dekad. This would apply in the Intellectual as in the sensible.

But how then can number, observed upon things, rank among Real Beings?

One answer might be that whiteness is similarly observed upon things and yet is real, just as movement is observed upon things and there is still a real existence of movement. But movement is not on a par with number: it is because movement is an entity that unity can be observed upon it. Besides, the kind of real existence thus implied annuls the reality of number, making it no more than an attribute; but that cannot be since an attribute must exist before it can be attributed; it may be inseparable from the subject but still must in itself be something, some entity as whiteness is; to be a predicate it must be that which is to be predicated. Thus if unity is observed in every subject, and ‘one man’ says more than ‘man’ — the oneness being different from the manness and common to all things — then this oneness must be something prior to man and to all the rest: only so can the unity come to apply to each and to all: it must therefore be prior also to even movement, prior to Being, since without unity these could not be each one thing: of course what is here meant is not the unity postulated as transcending Being but the unity predicable of each and every Idea. So too there is a dekad prior to the subject in which we affirm it; this prior would be the dekad absolute, for certainly the thing in which the dekad is observed is not that absolute.

Is this unity, then, connate and coexistent to the Beings? Suppose it coexistent merely as an accidental like health in man, it still must exist of itself; suppose it present as an element in a compound, there must first exist unity and the unity absolute that can thus enter into composition; moreover, if it were compounded with an object brought into being by its agency it would make that object only spuriously a unity; its entry would produce a duality.

But what of the dekad? Where lies the need of dekad to a thing which, by totalling to that power, is dekad already?

The need may be like that of Form to Matter; ten and dekad may exist by its virtue; and, once more, the dekad must previously exist of its own existence, dekad unattached.


§ 6. Granted, then, that there exist, apart from things, a unity absolute and a dekad absolute — in other words, that the Intellectual beings, together with their characteristic essence, have also their order, Henads, Dyads, Triads, what is the nature of these numerical entities and how does it come into being? Not that ‘coming into being’ applies literally to the Intellectual realm.

As a beginning, what is the nature of the Ideas in general? It is not that the thinking principle thought of each Idea and by that act of -545- thought procured their several existences; not because Justice and Movement were thus thought did they come to be; that would imply that while the thought is later than the thing — the concept of Justice must be later than Justice itself — yet the thought precedes what, as founded on the thinking, owes its existence to it. Besides, if Justice is only a certain definite thought we have the absurdity that Justice is nothing more than a definition of Justice. Thinking of Justice or Movement is but grasping their nature; this would mean grasping the non- existent, an impossibility.

We may be reminded that in immaterial objects the knowledge is identical with the thing; but we must not misapply that statement; it does not say that the knowledge is the thing known, or that the reason surveying the thing is the thing, but that the immaterial thing, being an Intellectual object, is also a thought; this does not imply a definition or conception of the object; the thing itself, as belonging to the Intellectual, can be nothing else than Intellect or knowledge. This is not a transmutes the knowledge, which is not fixed like the knowledge of material things; in other words it makes it true knowledge, that is to say no image of the thing but the thing directly.

Thus it is not the conception of movement that brings movement to be; movement absolute produces that conception; it produces itself as at once movement and the concept of movement, for movement as it exists There, bound up with Being, is a concept. It is movement absolute because it is the first movement — there can be none till this exist — and it is the authentic Movement since it is not accidental to something else but is the activity of actual Being in motion. Thus it is a real existent though the notion of Being is different.

Justice therefore is not the thought of Justice but, as we may put it, a state of the Intellectual-Principle, or rather an activity of it — an appearance so lovely that neither evening nor dawn is so fair, nor any- thing else in all the realm of sense, an Intellectual manifestation self-rising, self-seen, or, rather, self-being.


§ 7. It is inevitably necessary to think of all as contained within one nature; one nature must hold and encompass all; there cannot be as in the realm of sense thing apart from thing, here a sun and elsewhere something else; all must be mutually present within a unity. This is the very nature of the Intellectual-Principle as we may know from Soul which reproduces it and from what we call Nature under which and by which the things of process are brought into their disjointed being while that Nature itself remains indissolubly one.

But within the unity There, the several entities have each its own distinct existence; the all-embracing Intellect sees what is in it, what is within Being; it need not look out upon them since it contains them, need not separate them since they stand forever distinct within it. -546-

Against doubters we cite the fact of participation; the greatness and beauty of the Intellectual-Principle we know by the Soul’s longing towards it; the longing of the rest towards Soul is set up by its likeness to its higher and by the possibility open to them of attaining resemblance through it.

It is surely inconceivable that any living thing be beautiful failing a Life-Absolute of a wonderful, an ineffable, beauty: this must be the Collective Life, made up of all living things, or embracing all, forming a unity coextensive with all, as our universe is a unity embracing all the visible.


§ 8. As then there is a Life-Form primal — which therefore is the Life-Form Absolute — and there is Intellectual-Principle or Being, Authentic Being, these, we affirm, contain all living things and all Number, and Absolute Justice and Beauty and all of that order; for we ascribe an existence of their own to Absolute Man, Absolute Number, Absolute Justice. It remains to discover, in so far as such knowledge is possible, how these distinct entities come to be and what is the manner of their being.

At the outset we must lay aside all sense-perception; by Intellectual-Principle we know Intellectual-Principle. We reflect that within ourselves there is life, there is intellect, not in extension but as power without magnitude, that Authentic Being has divested itself of extension and magnitude and is power self-existing, no vacuity but a thing most living and intellective — nothing more living, more intelligent, more real — and producing its effect by contact and in the ratio of the contact, closely to the close, more remotely to the remote. If Being is to be sought, then most to be sought is Being at its intensest; so, too, the intensest of Intellect if the Intellectual act has worth; and so, too, of Life.

First, then, we take Being as first in order; then Intellectual-Principle; then the Living-Form considered as containing all things: Intellectual-Principle, as the Act of Real Being, is a second.

Thus it is clear that Number cannot be dependent upon the Living-Form since unity and duality existed before that; nor does it rise in the Intellectual-Principle since before that there existed Real Being which is both one and numerous.


§ 9. It remains then to consider whether Being by its distinction produced Number or Number produced that distinction. It is certain that either Number was the cause of Being, movement, rest, identity, and difference, or these the cause of Number.

The first question is whether Number can exist in and of itself or is dependent upon things — Two being something observed in two things, Three in three; and so of the arithmetical One, for if this could exist apart from numbered objects it could exist also before the divisions of Being. -547-

But could it precede Being itself?

For the present we must take it that Being precedes Number, is its source. But if One means one being and the duality two beings, then unity precedes Being, and Number precedes the Beings.

Mentally, to our approach? Yes: and in reality of existence as well.

Let us consider: When we think of the existence and the fine appearance ofa man as forming one thing, that unity is certainly thought of as subsequent to a precedent duality; when we group a horse with a dog, the duality is obviously the subsequent. But think of that which brings man or horse or dog into being or produces them, with full intention, from where they lie latent within itself: the producer must say, ‘I begin with a first, I pass on to a second; that makes two; counting myself there are three’. Of course there was no such numbering even of Beings for their production since the due number was known from the very beginning; but this consideration serves to show that all Number precedes the very Beings themselves.

But if Number thus preceded the Beings, then it is not included among them?

The truth is that it existed within the Authentic Being but not as applying to it, for Being was still imparted; the potentiality of Number existed and so produced the division within Being, put in travail with multiplicity; Number must be either the substance of Being or its Activity; the Life-Form as such and the Intellectual-Principle must be Number. Clearly Being is to be thought of as Number collective, while the Beings are Number unfolded: the Intellectual-Principle is Number moving within itself, while the Living-Form is Number container of the universe. Even Being is the outcome of the Unity and since the prior is unity the secondary must be Number.

Hence it is that the Forms have been described as Henads and Numbers. This is the authentic Number; the other, the ‘monadic’, is its image. The Authentic is that made manifest in the Forms and helping to bring them to be; primally it is the Number in the Authentic Being, inherent to it and preceding the Beings, serving to them as root, fount, first principle.

For the Unity is source to Being; Being’s Being is stayed upon the Unity as its safeguard from dissolution; the Unity cannot rest upon Being which at that would be a unity before possessing unity; and so with the dekad before possessing dekadhood.


§ 10. When it takes lot with multiplicity, Being becomes Number by the fact of awakening to manifoldness; before, it was a preparation, so to speak, of the Beings, their fore-promise, a total of henads offering a stay for what was to be based upon them.

Here with us a man will say, ‘I wish I had such and such a quantity of gold’ — or ‘such and such a number of houses’. Gold is one thing: the wish is not to bring the numerical quantity into gold but to bring -548- the gold to quantity; the quantity, already present in the mind, is to be passed on to the gold so that it acquire that numerical value.

If the Beings preceded the number and this were discerned upon them at the stirring, to such and such a total, of the numbering principle, then the actual number of the Beings would be a chance not a choice; since that total is not a matter of chance, Number is a causing principle preceding that determined total.

Number then pre-exists and is the cause by which produced things participate in quantity.

The single thing derives its unity by participation in Unity-Absolute; its being it derives from Being- Absolute, which holds its Being from itself alone; a unity is a unity in virtue of Being; the particular unity — where the unity is a multiple unity — is one thing only as the Triad is; the collective Being is a unity of this kind, the unity not of the monad but of the myriad or any such collective number.

Take a man affirming the presence of ten thousand things; it is he that produces the number; he does not tell us that the ten thousand have uttered it; they merely exhibit their several forms; the enumerator’s mind supplies the total which would never be known if the mind kept still.

How does the mind pronounce?

By being able to enumerate; that is by knowing Number: but in order to this, Number must be in existence and that that Principle should not know its own total content is absurd, impossible.

It is with Number as with Good. When we pronounce things to be good either we mean that they are in their own nature so or we affirm goodness as an accidental in them. Dealing with the primals, the goodness we have in mind is that First Hypostasis; where the goodness is an accidental we imply the existence of a Principle of Good as a necessary condition of the accidental presence; there must be some source of that good which is observed elsewhere, whether this source be an Absolute Good or something that of its own nature produces the good. Similarly with number; in attributing the dekad to things we affirm either the truly existent dekad or, where the dekadhood is accidental, we necessarily posit the self-subsistent dekad, dekad not associated; if things are to be described as forming a dekad, then either they must be of themselves the dekad or be preceded by that which has no other being than that of dekadhood.

It must be urged as a general truth that anything affirmed of a subject not itself either found its way in from outside or is the characteristic Act of that subject; and supposing the predicated attribute to show no variation of presence and absence but to be always present, then, if the subject is a Real Being so also is the accidental in an equal degree; or, failing Real Being, it at least belongs to the existents, it exists. In the case when the subject can be thought of as remaining without its Act, yet that Act is inbound with it even though to our minds it appears as a -549-later; when on the contrary the subject cannot be conceived without the attribute — man, for example, without unity — then the attribute is either not later but concomitant or, being essential to the existence, is precedent. In our view, Unity and Number are precedent.


§ 11. It may be suggested that the dekad is nothing more than so many henads; admitting the one henad why should we reject the ten? As the one is a real existence why not the rest? We are certainly not compelled to attach that one henad to some one thing and so deprive all the rest of the means to unity: since every existent must be one thing, the unity is obviously common to all. This means one principle applying to many, the principle whose existence within itself we affirmed to be presupposed by its manifestation outside.

But if a henad exists in some given object and further is observed in something else, then, that first henad being real, there cannot be only one henad in existence; there must be a multiplicity of henads.

Supposing that first henad alone to exist, it must obviously be lodged either in the thing of completest Being or at all events in the thing most completely a unity. If in the thing of completest Being, then the other henads are but nominal and cannot be ranked with the first henad, or else Number becomes a collection of unlike monads and there are differences among monads (an impossibility). If that first henad is to be taken as lodged in the thing of completest unity, there is the question why that most perfect unity should require the first henad to give it unity.

Since all this is impossible, then, before any particular can be thought of as a unit, there must exist a unity bare, unrelated by very essence. If in that realm also there must be a unity apart from anything that can be called one thing, why should there not exist another unity as well?

Each particular, considered in itself, would be a manifold of monads, totalling to a collective unity. If however Nature produces continuously— or rather has produced once for all — not halting at the first production but bringing a sort of continuous unity into being, then it produces the minor numbers by the sheer fact of setting an early limit to its advance: outgoing to a greater extent — not in the sense of moving from point to point but in its inner changes — it would produce the larger numbers; to each number so emerging it would attach the due quantities and the appropriate thing, knowing that without this adaptation to Number the thing could not exist or would be a stray, something outside, at once, of both Number and Reason.


§ 12. We may be told that unity and monad have no real existence, that the only unity is some definite object that is one thing, so that all comes to an attitude of the mind towards things considered singly.

But, to begin with, why at this should not the affirmation of Being -550- pass equally as an attitude of mind so that Being too must disappear? No doubt Being strikes and stings and gives the impression of reality; but we find ourselves just as vividly struck and impressed in the presence of unity. Besides, is this attitude, this concept itself, a unity or a manifold? When we deny the unity of an object, clearly the unity mentioned is not supplied by the object since we are saying it has none; the unity therefore is within ourselves, something latent in our minds in- dependently of any concrete one thing.

[An objector speaks:] But the unity we thus possess comes by our acceptance of a certain idea or impression from things external; it is a notionderived from an object. Those that take the notion of numbers and of unity to be but one species of the notions held to be inherent in the mind must allow to numbers and to unity the reality they ascribe to any of the others and upon occasion they must be met; but no such real existence can be posited when the concept is taken to be an attitude or notion rising in us as a by-product of the objects; this happens when we say ‘This’, ‘What’, and still more obviously in the affirmations ‘Crowd’, ‘Festival’, ‘Army’, ‘Multiplicity’. As multiplicity is nothing apart from certain constituent items and the festival nothing apart from the people gathered happily at the rites, so when we affirm unity we are not thinking of some Oneness self-standing, unrelated. And there are many other such cases; for instance ‘On the right’, ‘Above’, and their opposites; what is there of reality about this ‘On-the-right-ness’ but the fact that two different positions are occupied? So with ‘Above’: ‘Above’ and ‘Below’ are a mere matter of position and relative to parts of the universe called by these names.

Now in answer to this series of objections our first remark is that there does exist an actuality implicit in each one of the relations cited; though this is not the same for all or the same for correlatives or the same for every reference to unity.

But these objections must be taken singly.


§ 13. It cannot reasonably be thought that the notion of unity is derived from the object since this is physical — man, animal, even stone; a presentation of that order is something very different from unity (which must be a thing of the Intellectual); if that presentation were unity, the mind could never affirm unity unless of that given thing, man, for example.

Then again, just as in the case of ‘On the right’ or other such affirmation of relation, the mind does not affirm in some caprice but from observation of contrasted position, so here it affirms unity in virtue of perceiving something real; assuredly the assertion of unity is not a bare attitude towards something non-existent. It is not enough that a thing be alone and be itself and not something else: and that very ‘something else’ tells of another unity. Besides, Otherness and Difference are later; unless the mind has first rested upon unity it cannot affirm Otherness or -551- Difference; when it affirms Aloneness it affirms unity-with-aloneness; thus unity is presupposed in Aloneness.

Besides, that in us which asserts unity of some object is first a unity, itself; and the object is a unity before any outside affirmation or conception.

A thing must be either one thing or more than one, manifold: and if there is to be a manifold there must be a precedent unity. To talk of a manifold is to talk of what has something added to unity; to think of an army is to think of a multitude under arms and brought to unity. In refusing to allow the manifold to remain manifold, the mind makes the truth clear; it draws a separate many into one, either supplying a unity not present or keen to perceive the unity brought about by the ordering of the parts; in an army, even, the unity is not a fiction but as real as that of a building erected from many stones, though of course the unity of the house is more compact.

If, then, unity is more pronounced in the continuous, and more again where there is no separation by part, this is clearly because there exists, in real existence, something which is a Nature or Principle of Unity. There cannot be a greater and less in the non-existent: as we predicate Substance of everything in sense, but predicate it also of the Intellectual order and more strictly there — since we hold that the greater and more sovereign substantiality belongs to the Real Beings and that Being is more marked in Substance, even sensible Substance, than in the other Kinds — so, finding unity to exhibit degree of more and less, differing in sense- things as well as in the Intellectual, we must similarly admit that Unity exists under all forms though still by reference, only, to that primal Unity.

As Substance and Real Being, despite the participation of the sensible, are still of the Intellectual and not of the sensible order, so too the unity observed present in things of sense by participation remains still an Intellectual and to be grasped by an Intellectual Act. The mind, from a thing present to it, comes to knowledge of something else, a thing not presented; that is, it has a prior knowledge. By this prior knowledge it recognizes Being in a particular being; similarly when a thing is one it can affirm unity as it can affirm also duality and multiplicity.

It is impossible to name or conceive anything not making one or two orsome number; equally impossible that the thing should not exist without which nothing can possibly be named or conceived; impossible to deny the reality of that whose existence is a necessary condition of naming or affirming anything; what is a first need, universally, to the formation of every concept and every proposition must exist before reasoning and thinking; only as an existent can it be cited to account for the stirring of thought. If Unity is necessary to the substantial existence of all that really is — and nothing exists which is not one — Unity must precede Reality and be its author. It is, therefore, an existent Unity, not an existent that develops Unity; considered as Being-with- -552- Unity it would be a manifold, whereas in the pure Unity there is no Being save in so far as Unity attends to producing it.

As regards the word ‘This’, it is not a bare word; it affirms an indicated existence without using the name, it tells of a certain presence whether a substance or some other existent; any This must be significant; it is no attitude of the mind applying itself to a non-existent; the This shows a thing present, as much as if we used the strict name of the object.


§ 14. To the argument touching relation we have an answer surely legitimate:

The Unity is not of a nature to lose its own manner of being only because something else experiences a change which it does not itself share; to stray from its unity it must itself suffer division into duality or the still wider plurality.

If by division the one identical mass can become a duality without loss of quantity, clearly the unity it possessed and by this destructive division lost was something distinct. What may be alternatively present and absent to the same subject must be classed among Real-Beings, regardless of position; an accidental elsewhere, it must have reality in itself whether it be manifested in things of sense or in the Intellectual — an accidental in the Laters but self-existent in the higher, especially in the First in its aspect of Unity developing into Being. We may be told that Unity may lose that character without change in itself, becoming duality by association with something else; but this is not true; unity does not become two things; neither the added nor what takes the addition becomes two; each remains the one thing it was; the duality is predicable of the group only, the unity remaining unchanged in each of those unchanged constituents.

Two and the Dyad are not essentially relative: if the only condition to the construction of duality were meeting and association such a relation might perhaps constitute Twoness and Duality; but in fact we see Duality produced by the very opposite process, by the splitting apart of a unity. This shows that duality — or any other such numerical form — is no relation produced either by scission or association. If one configuration produces a certain thing it is impossible that the opposite should produce the same so that the thing may be identified with the relation.

What then is the actual cause?

Unity is due to the presence of Unity; duality to that of Duality; it is precisely as things are white by Whiteness, just by Justice, beautiful by Beauty. Otherwise we must reject these universals and call in relation here also: Justice would arise from a certain attitude in a given situation, Beauty from a certain pattern of the person with nothing present able to produce the beauty, nothing coming from without to effect that agreeable appearance.

You see something which you pronounce to be a unity; that thing -553-possesses also size, form, and a host of other characteristics you might name; size, bulk, sweetness, bitterness, and other properties are actually present in the thing; why not unity? It surely cannot be thought that, while every conceivable quality has Real-Being, quantity (Number) has not, and that while continuous quantity exists, discrete quantity does not — and this though continuous quantity is measured by the discrete. No: as size by the presence of Magnitude, and Oneness by the presence of Unity, so with Duality and all the other numerical modes. As to the How of participation, the inquiry is that of all participation in Ideal Forms; we must note, however, that the presence of the Dekad (for instance) in the looser totals is different from its presence in the continuous; there is difference again in its presence within many powers where multiplicity is concentred in unity; arrived at the Intellectuals, there too we discover Number, the Authentic Number, no longer entering the alien, Dekad-Absolute not Dekad of some particular Intellectual group.


§ 15. We must repeat: The Collective Being, the Authentic, There, is at once Being and Intellectual-Principle and the Complete Living Form; thus it includes the total of living things; the Unity There is reproduced by the unity of this living universe in the degree possible to it — for the sense-nature as such cannot compass that transcendental unity — thus that Living-All is inevitably Number-Entire: if the Number were not complete, the All would be deficient to the extent of some number, and if every number applicable to living things were not contained in it, it would not be the all-comprehending Life-Form. Therefore, Number exists before every living thing, before the collective Life-Form.

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.

Similarly, the Intellectual-Principle by its very nature contains all intelligences as severally members within itself. 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.

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. -554-

Next we come to Being, fully realized, and this is the seat of Number; by Number Being brings forth the Beings; its movement is planned to Number; it establishes the numbers of its offspring before bringing them to be, in the same way as it establishes its own unity by linking pure Being to the First: the numbers do not link the lower to the First; it suffices that Being is so linked; for Being, in taking form as Number, binds its members to itself. As a unity, it suffers no division, remaining self-constant; as a thing of division, containing its chosen total of members, it knows that total and so brings forth Number, a phase therefore of its content: its development of parts is ruled by the powers of Number, and the Beings it produces sum to that Number. Thus Number, the primal and true, is Principle and source of actuality to the Beings.

Hence it is that in our sphere, also, Number accompanies the coming to be of particular things, and to suppose another number than the actual is to suppose the production of something else or of nothing.

These then are the primal numbers; they are numerable; the numbers of the other order are of a double character; as derived from the first numbers they are themselves numerable but as acting for those first they are measures of the rest of things, numbering numbers and numerables. For how could they declare a Dekad save in the light of numbers within themselves?


§ 16. But here we may be questioned about these numbers which we describe as the primal and authentic:

Where do you place these numbers, in what genus among Beings? To everyone they seem to come under Quantity and you have certainly brought Quantity in, where you say that discrete Quantity equally with the continuous holds place among Beings; but you go on to say that there are the numbers belonging to the Firsts and then talk of other numbers quite distinct, those of reckoning; tell us how you arrange all this, for there is difficulty here. And then, the unity in sense-things — is that a quantity or is quantity here just so many units brought together, the unity being the starting-point of quantity but not quantity itself? And, if the starting-point, is it a kindred thing or of another genus? All this you owe it to us to make clear.

Be it so; we begin by pointing out a distinction:

You take one thing with another — for we must first deal with objects of sense — a dog and a man, or two men; or you take a group and affirm ten, a dekad of men: in this case the number affirmed is not a Reality, even as Reality goes in the sphere of sense, but is purely Quantity: similarly when you resolve into units, breaking up the dekad, those units are your principle of Quantity since the single individual is not a unity absolute.

But the case is different when you consider one man in himself and -555- affirm a certain number, duality, for example, in that he is at once living and reasoning.

By this analysis and totalling you get quantity; but there are two objects under consideration and each of these is one; each of the unities contributes to the complete being and the oneness is inherent in each; this is another kind of number, number essential; even the duality so formed is no posterior; it does not signify a quantity apart from the thing but the quantity in the essence which holds the thing together. The number here is no mere result of your detailing; the things exist of themselves and are not brought together by your reckoning, but what has it to do with essential reality that you count one man in with another? There is here no resultant unity such as that of a choir; the dekad is real only to you who count the ten; in the ten of your reckoning there cannot be a dekad without a unitary basis; it is you that make the ten by your counting, by fixing that tenness down to quantity; in choir and army there is something more than that, something not of your placing.

But how do you come to have a number to place? The Number inherent apart from any enumeration has its own manner of being, but the other, that resulting upon the appearance of an external to be appraised by the Number within yourself, is either an Act of these inherent numbers or an Act in accordance with them; in counting we produce number and so bring quantity into being just as in walking we bring a certain movement into being.

But what of that ‘Number within us having its own manner of being?’

It is the Number of our essence. ‘Our essence’ we read ‘partakes of Number and harmony and, also, is Number and harmony.’ ‘Neither body nor magnitude’, someone says: Soul, then, is Number since it is essence. The number belonging to body is an essence of the order of body; the number belonging to Soul constitutes the essences of souls.

In the Intellectuals, also, if the Absolute Living-Form There is a multiple — a triad, let us say — that Triad of the Living-Form is of the nature of essence: and the Triad prior to any living thing, Triad in the realm of Being, is a principle of essence.

When you enumerate two things — say, animal and beauty — each of these remains one thing; the number is your production; it lay within yourself; it is you that elaborate quantity, here the dyad. But when you declare virtue to be a Tetrad, you are affirming a Tetrad which does actually exist; the parts, so to speak, make one thing; you are taking as the object of your act a Unity-Tetrad to which you accommodate the Tetrad within yourself.


§ 17. But what of the Infinite Number we hear of; does not all this reasoning set it under limit? -556-

And rightly so if the thing is to be a number; limitlessness and number are in contradiction.

How, then, do we come to use the term? Is it that we think of Number as we think of an infinite line, not with the idea that any such line exists but that even the very greatest — that of the (path of the) universe, for example — may be thought of as still greater? So it might be with number; let it be fixed, yet we still are free to think of its double, though not of course to produce the doubled quantity since it is impossible to join to the actual what is no more than a conception, a phantasm, private to ourselves.

It is our view that there does exist an infinite line, among the Intellectual Beings: for There a line would not be quantitative and being without quantity could be numerically infinite. This, however, would be in another mode than that of limitless extension. In what mode, then? In that the conception of the Absolute Line does not include the conception of limit.

But what sort of thing is the Line in the Intellectual and what place does it hold?

It is later than Number since unity is observed in it; it rises at one point and traverses one course and simply lacks the quantity that would be the measure of the distance.

But where does this thing lie? Is it existent only in the defining thought, so to speak?

No; it is also a thing, though a thing of the Intellectual. All that belongs to that order is at once an Intellectual and in some degree the concrete thing. There is a position, as well as a manner of being, for all configurations, for surface, for solid. And certainly the configurations are not of our devising; for example, the configurations of the universe are obviously antecedent to ourselves; so it must be with all the configurations of the things of nature; before the bodily reproductions all must exist There, without configuration, primal configurations. For these primals are not shapes in something; self-belonging they are perfect without extension; only the extended needs the external. In the sphere of Real-Being the configuration is always a unity; it becomes discrete either in the Living-Form or immediately before: I say ‘becomes discrete’ not in the sense that it takes magnitude There but that it is broken apart for the purposes of the Living-Form and is allotted to the bodies within that Form — for instance, to Fire There the Intellectual Pyramid. And because the Ideal-Form is There, the fire of this sphere seeks to produce that configuration against the check of Matter: and so of all the rest as we read in the account of the realm of sense.

But does the Life-Form contain the configurations by the mere fact of its life?

They are in the Intellectual-Principle previously but they also exist in the Living-Form; if this be considered as including the Intellectual- -557- Principle, then they are primally in the Life-Form, but if that Principle comes first, then they are previously in that. And if the Life-Form entire contains also souls, it must certainly be subsequent to the Intellectual-Principle.

No doubt there is the passage, ‘Whatever Intellect sees in the entire Life-Form’; thus seeing, must not the Intellectual-Principle be the later?

No; the seeing may imply merely that the reality comes into being in the process of that seeing; the Intellectual-Principle is not external to the Life-Form; all is one; the Act of the Intellectual-Principle possesses itself of bare sphere, while the Life-Form holds the sphere as sphere of a living total.


§ 18. It appears then that Number in that realm is definite; it is we that can conceive the ‘more than is present’; the infinity lies in our counting: in the Real is no conceiving more than has been conceived; all stands entire; no number has been or could be omitted to make addition possible. It might be described as infinite in the sense that it has not been measured — who is there to measure it? — but it is solely its own, a concentrated unit, entire, not ringed round by any boundary; its manner of being is settled for it by itself alone. None of the Real-Beings is under limit; what is limited, measured, is what needs measure to prevent it running away into the unbounded. There every being is Measure; and therefore it is that all is beautiful. Because that is a living thing it is beautiful, holding the highest life, the complete, a life not tainted towards death, nothing mortal there, nothing dying. Nor is the life of that Absolute Living-Form some feeble flickering; it is primal, the brightest, holding all that life has of radiance; it is that first light which the souls There draw upon for their life and bring with them when they come here. It knows for what purpose it lives, towards What it lives, from Whence it lives; for the Whence of its life is the Whither: and close above it stands the wisdom of all, the collective Intellectual-Principle, knit into it, one with it, colouring it to a higher goodness, by kneading wisdom into it, making its beauty still more august. Even here the august and veritably beautiful life is the life in wisdom, here dimly seen, There purely. For There wisdom gives sight to the seer and power for the fuller living and in that tenser life both to see and to become what is seen.

Here attention is set for the most part upon the unliving and, in the living, upon what is lifeless in them; the inner life is taken only with alloy: There, all are Living Beings, living wholly, unalloyed; however you may choose to study one of them apart from its life, in a moment that life is flashed out upon you: once you have known the Essence that pervades them, conferring that unchangeable life upon them, once you perceive the judgement and wisdom and knowledge that are theirs, you can but smile at all the lower nature with its pretension to Reality.

In virtue of this Essence it is that life endures, that the Intellectual-Principle -558- endures, that the Beings stand in their eternity; nothing alters it, turns it, moves it; nothing, indeed, is in being beside it to touch it; anything that is must be its product; anything opposed to it could not affect it. Being itself could not make such an opposite into Being; that would require a prior to both and that prior would then be Being; so that Parmenides was right when he taught the identity of Being and Unity. Being is thus beyond contact not because it stands alone but because it is Being. For Being alone has Being in its own right.

How then can we deny to it either Being or anything at all that may exist effectively, anything that may derive from it?

As long as it exists it produces: but it exists forever; so, therefore, do its products. And so great is it in power and beauty that it remains the allurer, all things of the universe depending from it and rejoicing to hold their trace of it and through that to seek their good. To us existence is before the good; all this world desires life and wisdom in order to Being; every soul and every intellect seeks to be its Being; but Being is sufficient to itself.

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Seventh Tractate: How the Multiplicity of the Ideal-Forms Came into Being; and on The Good

§ 1. God, or some one of the gods, in sending the souls to their birth, placed eyes in the face to catch the light and allotted to each sense the appropriate organ, providing thus for the safety which comes by seeing and hearing in time and seeking or avoiding under guidance of touch.

But what led to this provision?

It cannot be that other forms of being were produced first and that, these perishing in the absence of the senses, the maker at last supplied the means by which men and other living beings might avert disaster.

We may be told that it lay within the divine knowledge that animal life would be exposed to heat and cold and other such experiences incident to body and that in this knowledge he provided the senses and the organs apt to their activity in order that the living total might not fall an easy prey.

Now, either he gave these organs to souls already possessing the sensitive powers or he gave senses and organs alike.

But if the souls were given the powers as well as the organs, then, souls though they were, they had no sensation before that giving. If they possessed these powers from the moment of being souls and be- came souls in order to their entry into process, then it is of their very nature to belong to process, unnatural to them to be outside of process and within the Intellectual: they were made in the intent that they -556- should belong to the alien and have their being amid evil; the divine provision would consist in holding them to their disaster; this is God’s reasoned purpose, this the plan entire.

Now what is the foundation of reasoned plan?

Precedent planning, it may be; but still we are forced back to some thing or things determining it. What would these be here?

Either sense-perception or intellect. But sense-perception does not yet exist: intellect is life; yet, starting from intellect, the conclusion will be knowledge, not therefore the handling of the sensible; what begins with the intellectual and proceeds to the intellectual can certainly not end in dealings with the sensible. Providence, then, whether over living beings or over the sensible universe in general, was never the outcome of plan.

There is in fact no planning There; we speak of reasoned purpose in the world of things only to convey that the universe is of the character which in the later order would point to a wise purposing; Providence implies that things are as in the later order a competent fore-planning would produce them. Reasoning serves, in beings not of the order above that need, to supply for the higher power; foresight is necessary in the lack of power which could dispense with it; it labours towards some one occurrence in preference to another and it goes in a sort of dread of the unfitting; where only the fitting can occur, there is no foreseeing. So with planning; where one only of two things can be, what place is there for plan? The alone and one and utterly simplex cannot have an explicated plan, a ‘this to avert that’: if the ‘this’ could not be, the ‘that’ must; the serviceable thing appeared and at once approved itself so.

But surely this is foreseeing, deliberating: are we not back at what was said at the beginning, that God did to this end give both the senses and the powers, however perplexing that giving be?

No: all turns on the necessary completeness of Act; we cannot think anything belonging to God to be other than a whole and all and therefore in anything of God‘…’s that all must be contained; God therefore must take in the future, present beforehand. Certainly there is no later in the divine; what is There as present is future for elsewhere. If then the future is present, it must be present as having been fore-conceived for later coming to be; at that divine stage therefore it lacks nothing and therefore can never lack; all existed, eternally and in such a way that at the later stage any particular thing may be said to exist for this or that purpose; the All, in its extension and so to speak unfolding, is able to present succession, but while it is bound up together, it is a single total fact: in other words, it contains its cause (as well as everything else) within itself.


§ 2. Thus we have even here the means of knowing the nature of the Intellectual-Principle, though, seeing it more closely than anything else, we still see it at less than its worth. We know that it exists but its cause -560- we do not see, or, if we do, we see that cause as something apart. We see a man — or an eye, if you like — but this is an image or part of an image; what is in that Principle is at once Man and the reason of his being; for There man — or eye — must be, itself, an intellective thing and a cause of its being; it could not exist at all unless it were that cause, whereas here everything partial is separate, and so is the cause of each. In the Intellectual all is at one so that the thing is identical with the cause.

Even here the thing and its cause are often identical — an eclipse furnishes an example — what then is there to prevent other things too being identical with their cause and this cause being the essence of the thing? It must be so; and by this search after the cause the thing’s essence is reached, for the essence of a thing is its cause. I AM not here saying that the informing Idea is the cause of the thing — though this is true — but that the Idea itself, unfolded, reveals the cause inherent in it.

A thing of inactivity, a lifeless thing, cannot include its own cause; but where could a Forming-Idea, a member of the Intellectual-Principle, turn in quest of its cause? We may be answered, ‘In the Intellectual-Principle’; but the two are not distinct; the Idea is the Intellectual-Principle; and if that Principle must contain the Ideas complete, their cause must be contained in them. The Intellectual-Principle itself contains every cause of the things of its content; but these of its content are identically Intellectual-Principle, each of them Intellectual-Principle; none of them, thus, can lack its own cause; each springs into being carrying with it the reason of its being. No result of chance, each must rise complete with its cause; it is an integral and so includes the excellence bound up with the cause. This is how all participants in the Idea are put into possession of their cause.

In our universe, a coherent total of multiplicity, the several items are linked each to the other, and by the fact that it is an all every cause is included in it: even in the particular thing the part is discernibly related to the whole, for the parts do not come into being separately and successively but are mutually cause and caused at one and the same moment. Much more in the higher realm must all the singles exist for the whole and each for itself: if then that world is the conjoint reality of all, of an all not chance-ruled and not sectional, the caused There must include the causes: every item must hold, in its very nature, the uncaused possession of its cause; uncaused, independent, and standing apart from cause, they must be self-contained, cause and all.

Further, since nothing There is chance-sprung, and the multiplicity in each comprehends the entire content, then the cause of every member can be named; the cause was present from the beginning, inherent, not a cause but a fact of the being; or, rather, cause and manner of being were one. What could an Idea have, as cause, over and above the Intellectual-Principle? It is a thought of that Principle and cannot, at -561- that, be considered as anything but a perfect product. If it is thus perfect we cannot speak of anything in which it is lacking nor cite any reason for such lack. That thing must be present and we can say why. The why is inherent, therefore, in the entity, that is to say in every thought and activity of the Intellectual-Principle. Take for example the Idea of Man; Man entire is found to contribute to it; he is in that Idea in all his fullness including everything that from the beginning belonged to Man. If Man were not complete There, so that there were something to be added to the Idea, that additional must belong to a derivative: but Man exists from eternity and must therefore be complete; the man born is the derivative.


§ 3. What then is there to prevent man having been the object of planning There?

No: all stands in that likeness, nothing to be added or taken away; this planning and reasoning is based only on an assumption; things are taken to be in process and this suggests planning and reasoning; insist on the eternity of the process and planning falls to the ground. There can be no planning over the eternal; that would imply forgetfulness of a first state; further, if the second state were better, things stood ill at first; if they stood well, so they must remain.

Only in conjunction with their causes are things good; even in this sphere a thing is good in virtue of being complete; form means that the thing is complete, the Matter duly controlled; this control means that nothing has been left crude; but something is so left if anything belonging to the shape be missing — eye, or other part. Thus to state cause is to state the thing complete. Why eyes or eyebrows? For completion: if you say ‘For preservation’, you affirm an indwelling safeguard of the essence, something contributory to the being: the essence, then, preceded the safeguard and the cause was inbound with the essence; distinct, this cause is in its nature a part of the essence.

All parts, thus, exist in regard to each other: the essence is all- embracing, complete, entire; the excellency is inbound with the cause and embraced by it; the being, the essence, the cause, all are one.

But, at this, sense-perception — even in its particular modes — is involved in the Idea by eternal necessity, in virtue of the completeness of the Idea; Intellectual-Principle, as all-inclusive, contains in itself all by which we are brought, later, to recognize this perfection in its nature; the cause, There, was one total, all-inclusive; thus Man in the Intellectual was not purely intellect, sense-perception being an addition made upon his entry into birth: all this would seem to imply a tendance in that great Principle towards the lower, towards this sphere. Sense- perception is, precisely, perception of the world of sense.

But surely it is untenable on the one hand that the capacity for sense-perception should exist There, from eternity, and on the other that only upon the debasement of the soul should there be actual sense-perception -562- here and the accomplishment in this realm of the Act of what was always a power in that?


§ 4. To meet the difficulty we must make a close examination of the nature of Man in the Intellectual; perhaps, though, it is better to begin with the man of this plane lest we be reasoning to Man There from a misconception of Man here. There may even be some who deny the difference.

We ask first whether man as here is a Reason-Principle different to that soul which produces him as here and gives him life and thought; or is he that very soul or, again, the (yet lower) soul using the human body?

Now if man is a reasonable living being and by living being is meant a conjoint of soul and body, the Reason-Principle of man is not identical with soul. But if the conjoint of rational soul and body is the reason- principle of man, how can man be an eternal reality, seeing that it is only when soul and body have come together that the Reason-Principle so constituted appears?

That Reason-Principle will be the foreteller of the man to be, not the Man Absolute with which we are dealing but more like his definition, and not at that indicating his nature since what is indicated is not the Idea that is to enter Matter but only that of the known thing, the con- joint. We have not yet found the Man we are seeking, the equivalent of the Reason-Principle.

But — it may be said — the Reason-Principle of such beings must be some conjoint, one element in another.

This does not define the principle of either. If we are to state with entire accuracy the Reason-Principles of the Forms in Matter and associated with Matter, we cannot pass over the generative Reason-Principle, in this case that of Man, especially since we hold that a complete definition must cover the essential manner of being.

What, then, is this essential of Man? What is the indwelling, inseparable something which constitutes Man as here? Is the Reason-Principle itself a reasoning living being, or is the living being the conjoint of Form and Matter, while the Reason-Principle is merely a maker of that reasoning life-form? and what is it apart from that act of making?

The living being corresponds to a reasoning life in the Reason-Principle; man therefore is a reasoning life: but there is no life without soul; either, then, the soul supplies the reasoning life — and man therefore is not an essence but simply an activity of the soul — or the soul is the man.

But if reasoning soul is the man, why does it not constitute man upon its entry into some other animal form?


§ 5. Man, thus, must be some Reason-Principle other than soul. But why should he not be some conjoint — a soul in a certain Reason-Principle — -563- the Reason-Principle being, as it were, a definite activity which however could not exist without that which acts?

This is the case with the Reason-Principles in seed which are neither soulless nor entirely soul. For these productive principles cannot be devoid of soul and there is nothing surprising in such essences being Reason-Principles.

But these principles producing man, of what phase of soul are they activities? Of the vegetal soul? Rather of that which produces animal life, a brighter soul and therefore one more intensely living.

The soul of that order, the soul that has entered into Matter of that order, is man by having, apart from body, a certain disposition; within body it shapes all to its own fashion, producing another form of Man, man reduced to what body admits, just as an artist may make a reduced image of that again.

It is this other (lower) form of Man that holds the pattern and Reason-Principles of Man, the natural tendencies, the dispositions and powers — all feeble since this is not the Primal Man — and it contains also its own kinds of sensation, different from those in the archetype, bright to all seeming, but images and dim in comparison with those of the earlier order.

The higher Man, above this sphere, rises from the more godlike soul, a soul possessed of a nobler humanity and brighter perceptions. This must ‘be the Man of Plato’s definition (‘Man is Soul’) where the addition ‘Soul as using body’ marks the distinction between the soul which uses body directly and the soul, poised above, which touches body only through that intermediary.

The Man of the realm of birth has sense-perception: the higher soul enters to bestow a brighter life, or rather does not so much enter as simply impart itself; for soul does not leave the Intellectual but maintaining that contact holds the lower life as pendant from it, blending with it by the natural link of Reason-Principle to Reason-Principle: and man, the dimmer, brightens under that illumination.


§ 6. But how can that higher soul have sense-perception?

It is the perception of what falls under perception There, sensation in the mode of that realm: it is the source of the lower soul’s perception of the correspondences in the sense-realm. Man as sense-percipient becomes aware of these correspondences and accommodates the sense-realm to the lowest extremity of its counterpart There, proceeding from the fire here to the fire Intellectual which was perceptible to the higher soul by reason of that soul’s natural adaptability to perceiving it. If material things existed There, the soul would perceive them; Man in the Intellectual, Man as Intellectual soul, would be aware of the terrestrial. This is how the secondary Man, copy of Man in the Intellectual, contains the Reason-Principles in copy; and Man in the Intellectual-Principle contained the Man that existed before any man. The -564- diviner shines out upon the secondary and the secondary upon the tertiary; and even the latest possesses them all — not in the sense of actually living by them all but as standing in under-parallel to them. Some of us act by this lowest; in another rank there is a double activity, a trace of the next higher being included; in yet another there is a blending of the third (i.e. highest) grade with the others: each is that Man by which he acts while each too contains all the grades, though in some sense not so. On the separation of the third life and third Man from the body, then if the second also departs — of course not losing hold on the Above — the two, as we are told, will occupy the same place. No doubt it seems strange that a soul which has been the Reason-Principle of a man should come to occupy the body of an animal: but the soul has always been all, and will at different times be this and that.

Pure, not yet fallen to evil, the soul chooses man and is man, for this is the higher and it produces the higher. It produces also the still loftier beings, the Celestials (Daimones), who are of one Form with the soul that makes Man: higher still stands that Being more entirely of the Celestial rank, in truth a god; and God is reproduced in the Celestial who is as closely bound to God as man to the Celestial. For that Being to which man is bound is not to be called a god; there remains the difference which distinguishes souls, all of the same race though they be. This is taking ‘Celestial’ (‘Daimon’) in the sense of Plato.

When a soul which in the human state has been thus attached chooses animal nature and descends to that, it is giving forth the Reason- Principle — necessarily in it — of the animal as it was in the Intellectual: this it contained and the activity has been to the lower.


§ 7. But if it is by becoming evil and inferior that the soul produces the animal nature, the making of ox or horse was not at the outset in its character; the Reason-Principle of the animal, and the animal itself, must lie outside of the natural plan?

Inferior, yes; but outside of nature, no. The thing There (Soul in the Intellectual) was in some sense horse and dog from the beginning; given the condition, it produces the higher kind; let the condition fail, then since produce it must, it produces what it may: it is like a skillful craftsman competent to create all kinds of works of art but reduced to making what is ordered and what the aptitude of his material indicates.

The power of the All-Soul, as Reason-Principle of the universe, may be considered as laying down a pattern before the effective separate powers go forth from it: this plan would be something like a tentative illumining of Matter; the elaborating soul would give minute articulation to these representations of itself; every separate effective soul would become that towards which it tended, assuming that particular form as the choral dancer adapts himself to the action set down for him.

But this is to anticipate: our inquiry was, How there can be sense- perception in man without the implication that the Divine addresses -565- itself to the realm of process. We maintained, and proved, that the Divine does not look to this realm but that things here are dependent upon those and represent them and that man here holding his powers from Thence is directed Thither, so that, while sense makes the environment of what is of sense in him, the Intellectual in him is linked to the Intellectual.

What we have called the perceptibles of that realm enter into cognizance in a way of their own, since they are not material, while the sensible sense here — so distinguished as dealing with corporeal objects — is fainter than the perception belonging to that higher world, but gains a specious clarity because its objects are bodies; the man of this sphere has sense-perception because existing in a less true degree and taking only enfeebled images of things There: perceptions here are Intellections of the dimmer order, and the Intellections There are vivid perceptions.


§ 8.prototype There of the whole animal, horse or any other, must look deliberately towards this sphere; and, that being so, the idea of horse must have been worked out in order that there be a horse here?

Yet what was that There to present the idea of the horse it was desired to produce? Obviously the idea of horse must exist before there was any planning to make a horse; it could not be thought of in order to be made; there must have been horse unproduced before that which was later to come into being. If then the thing existed before it was produced — if it cannot have been thought of in order to its production — the Being that held the horse as There held it in presence without any looking to this sphere; it was not with intent to set horse and the rest in being here that they were contained There; it is that, the universal existing, the reproduction followed of necessity since the total of things was not to halt at the Intellectual. Who was there to call a halt to a power capable at once of self-concentration and of outflow?

But how come these animals of earth to be There? What have they to do within God? Reasoning beings, all very well; but this host of the unreasoning, what is there august in them? Surely the very contrary?

The answer is that obviously the unity of this (the Intellectual) universe must be that of a manifold since it is subsequent to that Unity-Absolute; otherwise it would be not next to that but the very same thing. As a next it could not hold the higher rank of being more perfectly a unity; it must fall short: since the best is a unity, inevitably there must be something more than unity, for deficiency involves plurality.

But why should it not be simply a dyad?

Because neither of the constituents could ever be a pure unity, but at the very least a duality and so progressively (in an endless dualization). Besides, in that first duality of the hypothesis there would be also -566- movement and rest, Intellect and the life included in Intellect, all- embracing Intellect and life complete. That means that it could not be one Intellect; it must be Intellect agglomerate including all the particular intellects, a thing therefore as multiple as all the Intellects and more so; and the life in it would not be that of one soul but of all the souls with the further power of producing the single souls: it would be the entire living universe containing much besides man; for if it contained only man, man would be alone here.


§ 9. Admitted, then — it will be said — for the nobler forms of life; but how can the divine contain the mean, the unreasoning? The mean is the unreasoning since value depends upon reason and the worth of the intellective implies worthlessness where intellection is lacking. Yet how can there be question of the unreasoning or unintellective when all particulars exist in the divine and come forth from it?

In taking up the refutation of these objections, we must insist upon the consideration that neither man nor animals here can be thought of as identical with the counterparts in the higher realm; those ideal forms must be taken in a larger way. And again the reasoning thing is not of that realm: here the reasoning, There the pre-reasoning.

Why then does man alone reason here, the others remaining reasonless?

Degrees of reasoning here correspond to degrees of Intellection in that other sphere, as between man and the other living beings There; and those others do in some measure act by understanding.

But why are they not at man’s level of reason: why also the difference from man to man?

We must reflect that since the many forms of lives are movements — and so with the Intellections — they cannot be identical: there must be different lives, distinct intellections, degrees of lightsomeness and clarity: there must be firsts, seconds, thirds, determined by nearness to the Firsts. This is how some of the Intellections are gods, others of a secondary order having what is here known as reason, while others again belong to the so-called unreasoning: but what we know here as unreasoning was There a Reason-Principle; the unintelligent was an Intellect; the Thinker of Horse was Intellect and the Thought, Horse, was an Intellect.

But (it will be objected) if this were a matter of mere thinking we might well admit that the intellectual concept, remaining concept, should take in the unintellectual, but where concept is identical with thing, how can the one be an Intellection and the other without intelligence? Would not this be Intellect making itself unintelligent?

No: the thing is not unintelligent; it is Intelligence in a particular mode, corresponding to a particular aspect of Life; and just as life in whatever form it may appear remains always life, so Intellect is not annulled by appearing in a certain mode. Intellectual-Principle adapted -567- to some particular living being does not cease to be the Intellectual-Principle of all, including man: take it where you will, every manifestation is the whole, though in some special mode; the particular is produced but the possibility is of all. In the particular we see the Intellectual-Principle in realization; the realized is its latest phase; in one case the last aspect is horse; at horse ended the progressive outgoing towards the lesser forms of life, as in another case it will end at something lower still. The unfolding of the powers of this Principle is always attended by some abandonment in regard to the highest; the outgoing is by loss and the loss is various, but according to the deficiency of the life-form produced by their failing they find the means of adding various requisites; the safeguards of life becoming inadequate, there appear nail, talon, fang, horn. Thus the Intellectual-Principle by its very descent is directed towards the perfect sufficiency of the natural constitution, finding there within itself the remedy of the failure.


§ 10. But failure There? What can defensive horns serve to There? To sufficiency as living form, to completeness. That principle must be complete as living form, complete as Intellect, complete as life, so that if it is not to be one thing it may be another. Its characteristic difference is in this power of being now this, now that, so that, summing all, it may be the completest life-form, Intelligence complete, life in the greatest fullness with each of the particulars complete in its degree while yet, over all that multiplicity, unity reigns.

It is a manifold, but not a manifold of identical parts: that would make it nothing but a self-sufficing unity. Like every compound it must consist of things progressively differing in form and safeguarded in that form. This is in the very nature of shape and Reason-Principle; a shape, that of man let us suppose, must include a certain number of differences of part but all dominated by a unity; there will be the noble and the inferior, eye and finger, but all within a unity; the part will be inferior in comparison with the total but best in its place. The Reason-Principle, too, is at once the living form and something else, something distinct from the being of that form. It is so with virtue also; it contains at once the universal and the particular; and the total is good because the universal is not differentiated.


§ 11. The very heavens, patently multiple, cannot be thought to disdain any form of life since this universe holds everything. Now how do these things come to be here? Does the higher realm contain all of the lower?

All that has been shaped by Reason-Principle and conforms to Idea.

But, having fire (warmth) and water, it will certainly have vegetation; how does vegetation exist There? How does fire live? Earth, too? Either these are alive or they are There as dead things and then not everything There has life. How in sum can the things of this realm be also There?- 568-

Vegetal life we can well admit, for the plant is a Reason-Principle established in life. If in the plant the Reason-Principle, entering Matter and constituting the plant, is a certain form of life, a definite soul, then, since every Reason-Principle is a unity, then either this of plant-life is the primal or before it there is a primal plant, source of its being: that first plant would be a unity; those here, being multiple, must derive from a unity. This being so, that primal must have much the truer life and be the veritable plant, the plants here deriving from it in the secondary and tertiary degree and living by a vestige of its life.

But earth; how is there earth There? What is the being of earth and how are we to represent to ourselves the living earth of that realm?

First, what is earth in the physical realm, what the mode of its being?

Earth, here and There alike, must possess shape and a Reason- Principle. Now in the case of the vegetal, the Reason-Principle of the plant here was found to be living in that higher realm: is there such a Reason-Principle in our earth?

Take the most earthy of things produced and found shaped in earth and they exhibit, even they, the indwelling earth-principle. The growing and shaping of stones, the internal moulding of mountains as they rise, reveal the working of an ensouled Reason-Principle fashioning them from within and bringing them to that shape: this, we must take it, is the creative earth-principle corresponding to what we call the specific principle of a tree; what we know as earth is like the wood of the tree; to cut out a stone is like lopping a twig from a tree, whereas if the stone remains a member of the earth, it is as the twig uncut from the living tree.

Realizing thus that the creative force inherent in our earth is life within a Reason-Principle, we are easily convinced that the earth There is much more primally alive, that it is a reasoned Earth-Livingness, the earth of Real-Being, earth primally, the source of ours.

Fire, similarly, with other such things, must be a Reason-Principle established in Matter: fire certainly does not originate in the friction to which it may be traced; the friction merely brings out a fire already existent in the scheme and contained in the materials rubbed together. Matter does not in its own character possess this fire-power: the true cause is something informing the Matter, that is to say, a Reason-Principle, obviously therefore a soul having the power of bringing fire into being; that is, a life and a Reason-Principle in one.

It is with this in mind that Plato says there is soul in everything of this sphere. That soul is the cause of the fire of the sense-world; the cause of fire here is a certain Life of fiery character, the more authentic fire. That transcendent fire being more truly fire will be more veritably alive; the fire absolute possesses life. And the same principles apply to the other elements, water and air.

Why, then, are water and air not ensouled as earth is? -569-

Now, it is quite certain that these are equally within the living total, parts of the living all; life does not appear visibly in them; but neither does it in the case of the earth where its presence is inferred by what earth produces: but there are living things in fire and still more manifestly in water and there are systems of life in the air. The particular fire, rising only to be quenched, eludes the soul animating the universe; it slips away from the magnitude which would manifest the soul within it; so with air and water. If these Kinds could naturally be fastened down to magnitude they would exhibit the soul within them, now concealed by the fact that their function requires them to be loose or flowing. It is much as in the case of the fluids within ourselves; the flesh and all that is formed out of the blood into flesh show the soul within, but the blood itself, not bringing us any sensation, seems not to have soul; yet it must; the blood is not subject to blind force; its nature obliges it to abstain from the soul which none the less is indwelling in it. This must be the case with the three elements; it is the fact that the living beings formed from the close conglomeration of air (the Celestials, or Daimones) are not susceptible to suffering. But just as air, so long as it remains itself, eludes the light which is and remains unyielding, so too, by the effect of its circular movement, it eludes soul — and, in another sense, does not. And so with fire and water.


§ 12. Or take it another way: Since in our view this universe stands to that as copy to original, the living total must exist There beforehand; that is the realm of complete Being and everything must exist There.

The sky There must be living and therefore not bare of stars, here known as the heavens — for stars are included in the very meaning of the word. Earth too will be There, and not void but even more intensely living and containing all that lives and moves upon our earth and the plants obviously rooted in life; sea will be There and all waters with the movement of their unending life and all the living things of the water; air too must be a member of that universe with the living things of air as here.

The content of that living thing must surely be alive — as in this sphere — and all that lives must of necessity be There. The nature of the major parts determines that of the living forms they comprise; by the being and content of the heaven There are determined all the heavenly forms of life; if those lesser forms were not There, that heaven itself would not be.

To ask how those forms of life come to be There is simply asking how that heaven came to be; it is asking whence comes life, whence the All-Life, whence the All-Soul, whence collective Intellect: and the answer is that There no indigence or impotence can exist but all must be teeming, seething, with life. All flows, so to speak, from one fount not to be thought of as some one breath or warmth but rather as one quality englobing and safeguarding all qualities — sweetness with -570- fragrance, wine-quality, and the savours of everything that may be tasted, all colours seen, everything known to touch, all that ear may hear, all melodies, every rhythm.


§ 13. For Intellectual-Principle is not a simplex, nor is the Soul that proceeds from it: on the contrary things include variety in the degree of their simplicity, that is to say in so far as they are not compounds but Principles and Activities; the activity of the lowest is simple in the sense of being a fading-out, that of the First as the total of all activity. Intellectual-Principle is moved in a movement unfailingly true to one course but its unity and identity are not those of the partial; they are those of its universality; and indeed the partial itself is not a unity but divides to infinity.

We know that Intellectual-Principle has a source and advances to some term as its ultimate; now, is the intermediate between source and term to be thought of as a line or as some distinct kind of body uniform and unvaried?

Where at that would be its worth? If it had no change, if no differentiation woke it into life, it would not be a Force; that condition would in no way differ from mere absence of power and, even calling it movement, it would still be the movement of a life not all-varied but indiscriminate; now it is of necessity that life be all-embracing, covering all the realms, and that nothing fail of life. Intellectual-Principle, therefore, must move in every direction upon all, or more precisely must ever have so moved.

A simplex moving retains its character; either there is no change, movement has been null, or if there has been advance it still remains a simplex and at once there is a permanent duality: if the one member of this duality is identical with the other, then it is still as it was, there has been no advance; if one member differs from the other, it has advanced with differentiation, and, out of a certain identity and difference, it has produced a third unity. This production, based on Identity and Difference, must be in its nature identical and different; it will be not some particular different thing but Collective Difference, as its Identity is Collective Identity.

Being thus at once Collective Identity and Collective Difference, Intellectual-Principle must reach over all different things; its very nature then is to modify itself into a universe. If the realm of different things existed before it, these different things must have modified it from the beginning; if they did not, this Intellectual-Principle produced all, or rather was all.

Beings could not exist save by the activity of Intellectual-Principle; wandering down every way it produces thing after thing, but wandering always within itself in such self-bound wandering as authentic Intellect may know; this wandering permitted to its nature is among real beings which keep pace with its movement; but it is always itself; -571- this is a stationary wandering, a wandering within the Meadow of Truth from which it does not stray.

It holds and covers the universe which it has made the space, so to speak, of its movement, itself being also that universe which is space to it. And this Meadow of Truth is varied so that movement through it may be possible; suppose it not always and everywhere varied, the failing of diversity is a failure of movement; failure in movement would mean a failing of the Intellectual Act; halting, it has ceased to exercise its Intellectual Act; this ceasing, it ceases to be.

The Intellectual-Principle is the Intellectual Act; its movement is complete, filling Being complete; and the entire of Being is the Intellectual Act entire, comprehending all life and the unfailing succession of things. Because this Principle contains Identity and Difference its division is ceaselessly bringing the different things to light. Its entire movement is through life and among living things. To a traveller over land all is earth but earth abounding in difference: so in this journey the life through which Intellectual-Principle passes is one life but, in its ceaseless changing, a varied life.

Throughout this endless variation it maintains the one course because it is not, itself, subject to change but on the contrary is present as identical and unvarying Being to the rest of things. For if there be no such principle of unchanging identity to things, all is dead, activity and actuality exist nowhere. These ‘other things’ through which it passes are also Intellectual-Principle itself; otherwise it is not the all-comprehending principle: if it is to be itself, it must be all-embracing; failing that, it is not itself. If it is complete in itself, complete because all-embracing, and there is nothing which does not find place in this total, then there can be nothing belonging to it which is not different; only by difference can there be such cooperation towards a total. If it knew no otherness but was pure identity its essential Being would be the less for that failure to fulfil the specific nature which its completion requires.


§ 14. On the nature of the Intellectual-Principle we get light from its manifestations; they show that it demands such diversity as is incompatible with its being a monad. Take what principle you will, that of plant or animal: if this principle were a pure unity and not a specifically varied thing, it could not so serve as principle; its product would be Matter, the principle not having taken all those forms necessary if Matter is to be permeated and utterly transformed. A face is not one mass; there are nose and eyes; and the nose is not a unity but has the differences which make it a nose; as bare unity it would be mere mass. There is infinity in Intellectual-Principle since, of its very nature, it is a multiple unity, not with the unity of a house but with that of a Reason-Principle, multiple in itself: in the one Intellectual design it includes within itself, as it were in outline, all the outlines, all the 572 patterns. All is within it, all the powers and intellections; the division is not determined by a boundary but goes ever inward; this content is held as the living universe holds the natural forms of the living creatures in it from the greatest to the least, down even to the minutest powers where there is a halt at the individual form. The discrimination is not of items huddled within a sort of unity; this is what is known as the Universal Sympathy, not of course the sympathy known here which is a copy and prevails amongst things in separation; that authentic Sympathy consists in all being a unity and never discriminate. Discrimination, we read, is the mode of the physical universe.


§ 15. That Life, the various, the all-including, the primal and one, who can consider it without longing to be of it, disdaining all the other?

All other life is darkness, petty and dim and poor; it is unclean and polluting the clean, for if you do but look upon it you no longer see nor live this life which includes all living, in which there is nothing that does not live and live in a life of purity void of all that is ill. For evil is here where life is in copy and Intellect in copy; There is the archetype (the Intellectual-Principle) which has the form of Good — we read — as holding the Good in its Forms (or Ideas). That Good is distinct from Intellectual-Principle itself which maintains its life by contemplation (of the Good); and it sees also as good the objects of its contemplation because it holds them in its act of contemplating the Principle of Good. But the Good comes to it not as it was in its primal state but in accord with the condition of the Intellectual-Principle. The Good is the source from which the objects of contemplation come to be seen in the Intellectual-Principle; Intellectual-Principle has produced them by its vision of the Good. In the very law, never, looking to That, could it fail of Intellectual Act; never, on the other hand, could its objects be in the Good — otherwise it (the Intellectual-Principle) would not produce them itself. Thence it must draw its power to bring forth, to teem with offspring of itself; but the Good bestows what itself does not possess. From that Unity came multiplicity to Intellectual-Principle; it could not sustain the power poured upon it and therefore broke it up; it turned that one power into variety so as to carry it piecemeal.

All its production, effected in the power of The Good, contains goodness; it is good, itself, since it is constituted by these things of good; it is Good made diverse. It might be likened to a living sphere teeming with variety, to a globe of faces radiant with faces all living, to a unity of souls, all the pure souls, not the faulty but the perfect, with Intellect enthroned over all so that the place entire glows with Intellectual splendour.

But this would be to see it from without, one thing seeing another; the true way is to become Intellectual-Principle and be, our very selves, what we are to see. -573-


§ 16. But even there we are not to remain always, in that beauty of the multiple; we must make haste yet higher, above this heaven of ours and even that; leaving all else aside we ask in awe, Who produced that realm and how? Everything There is a single Idea in an individual impression and, informed by The Good, possesses a common property which extends to all. Everything possesses Being as a common property, and possesses also the Form of Living-Being in virtue of that life which belongs to all alike; and perhaps possesses much else in common.

But what is the Nature of this Transcendent in view of which and by way of which the Ideas are good?

The best way of putting the question is to ask whether, when Intellectual-Principle looked towards The Good, it had Intellection of that unity as a multiplicity and, itself a unity, applied its Act by breaking into parts what it was too feeble to know as a whole.

At first it was not Intellect looking upon the Good; it was a looking void of Intellection. We must think of it not as looking but as living; dependent upon That, it kept itself turned Thither; all the tendance taking place There and upon That must be a movement teeming with life and must so fill the looking Principle; there is no longer bare Act, there is a filling to saturation. Forthwith it becomes all things, knows that fact in virtue of its self-knowing and at once becomes Intellectual- Principle, filled so as to hold within itself that object of its vision, seeing all by the light from the Giver and bearing that light with it.

In this way the Supreme may be understood to be the cause at once of essential reality and of the knowing of reality. The sun, cause of the existence of sense-things and of their being seen, is indirectly the cause of sight, without being either the faculty or the object: similarly this Principle, The Good, cause of Being and Intellectual-Principle, is a light appropriate to what is to be seen There and to their seer; neither the Beings nor the Intellectual-Principle, it is their source and by the light it sheds upon both makes them objects of Intellection. This filling procures the existence; after the filling the being; the existence achieved, the seeing followed: the beginning is that state of not yet having been filled, though there is, also, the beginning which means that the Filling Principle was outside and by that act of filling gave shape to the filled.


§ 17. But how does Intellectual-Principle acquire its content, and how does it come to exist, if the content was not in the Filling Principle? It was not in the filled which before that moment was void of all content.

Giving need not comport possessing; in this order we are to think of a giver as a greater and of a gift as a lower; this is the meaning of origin among real Beings. First there must be an actualized thing; its laters must be potentially their own priors; a first must transcend its derivatives; the giver transcends the given, as a superior. If therefore there is a prior to actuality, that prior transcends Activity and so transcends -574- Life. Our sphere containing life, there is a Giver of Life, a principle ofgreater good, of greater worth than Life; this possessed Life and had no need tolook for it to any giver in possession of Life’s variety.

But the Life was a vestige of that Primal, not a life lived by it; Life, then, as it looked towards That was undetermined; having looked it had determination though That had none. Life looks to unity and is determined by it, taking bound, limit, form. But this form is in the shaped, the shaper had none; the limit was not external as something drawn about a magnitude; the limit was that of the multiplicity of the Life There, limitless itself as radiated from its great Prior; the Life itself was not that of some determined being, or it would be no more than the life of an individual. Yet it is defined; it must then have been defined as the Life of a unity including multiplicity; certainly too each item of the multiplicity is determined, determined as multiple by the multiplicity of Life but as a unity by the fact of limit.

As what, then, is its unity determined?

As Intellectual-Principle: determined Life is Intellectual-Principle. And the multiplicity?

As the multiplicity of Intellectual-Principles: all its multiplicity resolves itself into Intellectual-Principles — on the one hand the collective Principle, on the other the particular Principles.

But does this collective Intellectual-Principle include each of the particular Principles as identical with each other?

No: it would be thus the container of only the one thing; since there are many Intellectual-Principles within the collective, there must be differentiation.

Once more, how does the particular Intellect come to this differentiation?

It takes its characteristic difference by becoming entirely a unity within the collective whose totality could not be identical with any particular.

Thus the Life in the Supreme was the collectivity of power; the vision taking place There was the potentiality of all; Intellectual-Principle, thus arising, is manifested as this universe of Being. It stands over the Beings not as itself requiring base but that it may serve them as base through its vision of that Form of the Firsts, the Formless Form. And it takes position towards the soul, becoming a light to the soul as itself finds its light in the First; whenever Intellectual-Principle becomes the determinant of soul it shapes it into Reasoning Soul, by communicating a trace of what itself has come to possess.

Thus Intellectual-Principle is a vestige of the Supreme; but since the vestige is a Form going out into extension, into plurality, that Prior, as the source of Form, must be itself without shape and Form: if the Prior were a Form, the Intellectual-Principle itself could be only a Reason-Principle. It was necessary that The First be utterly without multiplicity, for otherwise it must be again referred to a prior. -575-


§ 18. But in what way is the content of Intellectual-Principle participant in good? Is it because each member of it is an Idea or because of their beauty, or how?

Anything coming from The Good carries the image and type belonging to that original or deriving from it, as anything going back to warmth or sweetness carries the memory of those originals: Life entered into Intellectual-Principle from The Supreme, for its origin is in the Activity streaming Thence; Intellectual-Principle springs from the Supreme, and with it the beauty of the Ideas; at once all these, Life, Intellectual-Principle, Idea, must inevitably have goodness.

But what is the common element in them? Derivation from the First is not enough to procure identical quality; there must be some element held in common by the things derived: one source may produce many differing things as also one outgoing thing may take difference in various recipients: what enters into the First Act is different from what that Act transmits and there is difference, again, in the effect here. None the less every item may be good in a degree of its own. To what, then, is the highest degree due?

But first we must ask whether Life is a good, bare Life, or only the Life streaming Thence, very different from the Life known here? Once more, then, what constitutes the goodness of Life?

The Life of The Good, or rather not its Life but that given forth from it.

But if in that higher Life there must be something from That, something which is the Authentic Life, we must admit that since nothing worthless can come Thence that Authentic Life in which it appears is good; so too we must admit in the case of Authentic and Primary Intellectual-Principle that it is good; thus it becomes clear that every Idea is good and informed by the Good. The Ideas must have something of good whether as a common property or as a distinct attribution or as held in some distinct measure.

Thus it is established that the particular Idea contains in its essence something of good and thereby becomes a good thing; for Life we found to be good not in the bare being but in its derivation from the Authentic, the Supreme whence it sprung: and the same is true of Intellectual-Principle: we are forced therefore to admit a certain identity.

When, with all their differences, things may be affirmed to have a measure of identity, the matter of the identity may very well be established in their very essence and yet be mentally abstracted; thus life in man or horse yields the notion of animal; from water or fire we may get that of warmth; the first case is a definition of kind, the other two cite qualities, primary and secondary respectively. The other possibility is that two or more terms might receive the same predicate by an equivocation.

Is The Good, then, inherent in the Ideas essentially? Each of them -576- is good but the goodness is not that of the Unity-Good. How, then, is it present?

By the mode of parts.

But The Good is without parts?

No doubt The Good is a unity; but here it has become particularized. The First Activity is good and anything determined in accord with it is good, as also is any resultant. There is the good that is good by origin in The First, the good that is an ordered system derived from that earlier, and the good that is in the actualization (in the thing participant). Derived, then, not identical — like the speech and walk and other characteristics of one man, each playing its due part.

Here, it is obvious, goodness depends upon order, rhythm, but what equivalent exists There?

We might answer that in the case of the sense-order, too, the good is imposed since the ordering is of things different from the Orderer but that There the very things are good.

But why are they thus good in themselves? We cannot be content with the conviction of their goodness on the ground of their origin in that realm: we do not deny that things deriving Thence are good, but our subject demands that we discover the mode by which they come to possess that goodness.


§ 19. Are we to rest all on pursuit and on the soul? Is it enough to put faith in the soul’s choice and call that good which the soul pursues, never asking ourselves the motive of its choice? We marshal demonstration as to the nature of everything else; is the good to be dismissed as choice?

Several absurdities would be entailed. The good becomes a mere contingency; pursuers are many and pursue different objects, so that mere choice gives no assurance that the thing chosen is the best; in fact we cannot know the best until we know the good.

Are we to determine the good by the respective values of things?

This is to make Idea and Reason-Principle the test: all very well; but arrived at these, what explanation have we to give as to wfiy Idea and Reason-Principle themselves are good? In the lower we recognize goodness — in its less perfect form — by comparison with what is poorer still; we are without a standard There where no evil exists, the Bests holding the field, alone. Reason demands to know what constitutes goodness; those principles are good in their own nature and we are left in perplexity because cause and fact are identical: and even though we should state a cause, the doubt still remains until our reason claims its rights There. But we need not abandon the search; another path may lead to the light.


§ 20. Since we are not entitled to make desire the test by which to decide -577- on the nature and quality of the good, we may perhaps have recourse to judgement.

We would apply the opposition of things — order, disorder; symmetry, irregularity; health, illness; form, shapelessness; real-being, decay: in a word, continuity against dissolution. The first in each pair, no one could doubt, belong to the concept of good and therefore whatever tends to produce them must be ranged on the good side.

Thus virtue and Intellectual-Principle and life and soul — reasoning soul, at least — belong to the idea of good and so therefore does all that a reasoned life aims at.

Why not halt, then — it will be asked — at Intellectual-Principle and make that The Good? Soul and life are traces of Intellectual-Principle; that principle is the Term of Soul which on judgement sets itself towards Intellectual-Principle, pronouncing right preferable to wrong and virtue in every form to vice, and thus ranking by its choosing.

The soul aiming only at that Principle would need a further lessoning; it must be taught that Intellectual-Principle is not the ultimate, that not all things look to that while all do look to The Good. Not all that is outside of Intellectual-Principle seeks to attain it; what has attained it does not halt there but looks still towards good. Besides, Intellectual- Principle is sought upon motives of reasoning, The Good before all reason. And in any striving towards life and continuity of existence and activity, the object is aimed at not as Intellectual-Principle but as good, as rising from good and leading to it: life itself is desirable only in view of good.


§ 21. Now what in all these objects of desire is the fundamental making them good?

We must be bold:

Intellectual-Principle and that life are of the order of good and hold their desirability, even they, in virtue of belonging to that order; they have their goodness, I mean, because Life is an Activity in The Good — or rather, streaming from The Good — while Intellectual-Principle is the Activity as already defined; both are of radiant beauty and, because they come Thence and lead Thither, they are sought after by the soul — sought, that is, as things congenial though not veritably good while yet, as belonging to that order, not to be rejected; the related if not good is shunned in spite of that relationship, and even remote and ignobler things may at times prove attractive.

The intense love called forth by Life and Intellectual-Principle is due not to what they are but to their receiving from above something quite apart from their own nature.

Material forms containing light incorporated in them need still a light apart from them that their own light may be manifest; just so the Beings of that sphere, all lightsome, need another and a lordlier light or even they would not be visible to themselves and beyond. -578-


§ 22. That light known, then indeed we are stirred towards those Beings in longing and rejoicing over the radiance about them, just as earthly love is not for the material form but for the Beauty manifested upon it. Every one of those Beings exists for itself but becomes an object of desire by the colour cast upon it from The Good, source of those graces and of the love they evoke. The soul taking that outflow from the divine is stirred; seized with a Bacchic passion, goaded by these goads, it becomes Love. Before that, even Intellectual-Principle with all its loveliness did not stir the soul; for that beauty is dead until it take the light of The Good, and the soul lies supine, cold to all, unquickened even to Intellectual-Principle there before it. But when there enters into it a glow from the divine, it gathers strength, awakens, spreads true wings, and however urged by its nearer environing, speeds its buoyant way elsewhere, to something greater to its memory: so long as there exists anything loftier than the near, its very nature bears it upwards, lifted by the giver of that love. Beyond Intellectual-Principle it passes but beyond The Good it cannot, for nothing stands above That. Let it remain in Intellectual-Principle and it sees the lovely and august, but it is not there possessed of all it sought; the face it sees is beautiful no doubt but not of power to hold its gaze because lacking in the radiant grace which is the bloom upon beauty.

Even here we have to recognize that beauty is that which irradiates symmetry rather than symmetry itself and is that which truly calls out our love.

Why else is there more of the glory of beauty upon the living and only some faint trace of it upon the dead though the face yet retains all its fullness and symmetry? Why are the most living portraits the most beautiful, even though the other happen to be more symmetric? Why is the living ugly more attractive than the sculptured handsome? It is that the one is more nearly what we are looking for, and this because there is soul there, because there is more of the Idea of The Good, because there is some glow of the light of The Good and this illumination awakens and lifts the soul and all that goes with it, so that the whole man is won over to goodness and in the fullest measure stirred to life.


§ 23. That which soul must quest, that which sheds its light upon Intellectual-Principle, leaving its mark wherever it falls, surely we need not wonder that it be of power to draw to itself, calling back from every wandering to rest before it. From it came all and so there is nothing mightier; all is feeble before it. Of all things the best, must it not be The Good? If by The Good we mean the principle most wholly self-sufficing, utterly without need of any other, what can it be but this? Before all the rest it was what it was, when evil had yet no place in things.

If evil is a Later, there found where there is no trace of This — among the very ultimates, so that on the downward side evil has no -579- beyond — then to This evil stands full contrary with no linking intermediate: This therefore is The Good: either good there is none, or if there must be, This and no other is it.

And to deny The Good would be to deny evil also; there can then be no difference in objects coming up for choice: but thatis untenable.

To This looks all else that passes for good; This, to nothing.

What then does it effect out of its greatness?

It has produced Intellectual-Principle, it has produced Life, the souls which Intellectual-Principle sends forth and everything else that partakes of Reason, of Intellectual-Principle, or of Life. Source and spring of so much, how describe its goodness and greatness?

But what does it effect now?

Even now it is preserver of what it produced; by it the Intellectual Beings have their Intellection and the living their life; it breathes Intellect in, breathes Life in and, where life is impossible, existence.


§ 24. But ourselves — how does it touch us?

We may recall what we have said of the nature of the light shining from it into Intellectual-Principle and so by participation into the soul. But for the moment let us leave that aside and put another question:

Does The Good hold that nature and name because some outside thing finds it desirable? May we put it that a thing desirable to one is good to that one and that what is desirable to all is to be recognized as The Good?

No doubt this universal questing would make the goodness evident but still there must be in the nature something to earn that name.

Farther, is the questing determined by the hope of some acquisition or by sheer delight? If there is acquisition, what is it? If it is a matter of delight, why here rather than in something else?

The question comes to this: Is goodness in the appropriate or in something apart, and is The Good good as regards itself also or good only as possessed?

Any good is such, necessarily, not for itself but for something outside; and whatever may be the nature for which it is good, there is always some other for which it is not good.

And we must not overlook what some surly critic will surely bring up against us:

What’s all this: you scatter praises here, there, and everywhere: Life is good, Intellectual-Principle is good: and yet The Good is above them; how then can Intellectual-Principle itself be good? What good do we gain by contemplating the Ideas? Do we merely see a particular Idea (and not also the Good)? If we are happy in this contemplation we may be deceived into thinking it a good, and life itself a good when it is merely pleasant. But suppose our lot unhappy, why should we speak of good? Is mere personal existence good? What profit is there in it? What is the advantage in existence over utter non-existence — unless -580- goodness is to be founded upon our love of self? It is the deception rooted in the nature of things and our dread of dissolution that lead to all the ‘goods’ of your positing.


§ 25. It is in view, probably, of this difficulty that Plato in the Philebus makes pleasure, an element in the Term; the good is not defined as a simplex or set in Intellectual-Principle alone; while he rightly refrains from identifying the good with the pleasant, yet he does not allow Intellectual-Principle, in the absence of pleasure, to be The Good, since he sees no attractive power in it. He may also have had in mind that the good, to answer to its name, must be a thing of delight and that an object of pursuit must at least hold some pleasure for those that acquire and possess it, so that where there is no joy the good too is absent; further that pleasure, implying pursuit, cannot pertain to the First and that therefore good cannot.

All this was very well; there the inquiry was not as to the Primal Good but as to ours; the good dealt with in that passage pertains to a distinct subject; it is a good falling short of that higher; it is a mingled thing. We are to understand that good does not hold place in the One and Alone whose being is too great and different for that.

The good must, no doubt, be a thing pursued, not, however, good because it is pursued but pursued because it is good.

The solution, it would seem, lies in priority:

To the lowest of things the good is its immediate higher; each step represents the good to what stands lower so long as the movement does not tend awry but advances continuously towards the superior: thus there is a halt at the Ultimate, beyond which no ascent is possible: that is the First Good, the authentic, the supremely sovereign, the source of good to the rest of things.

Matter would have Forming-Idea for its good, since were it conscious it would welcome that; body would look to soul, without which it could not be or endure; soul must look to virtue; still higher stands Intellectual-Principle; above that again is the principle we call the Primal. Each of these progressive priors must have act upon those minors to which they are, respectively, the good: some will confer order and place, others life, others wisdom and the good life: Intelletual-Principle will draw upon the Authentic Good which we hold to enter into it, both as being an Activity put forth from it and as even now taking what we designate as light from it. This good we will define later.


§ 26. Any conscious being, if the good come to him, will know the good and affirm his possession of it.

But what if one be deceived? In that case there must be some resemblance to account for the error: the good will be the original which the delusion counterfeited and whenever the true presents itself we turn from the spurious. -581-

All the striving, all the pain, show that to everything something is a good: the lifeless finds its share in something outside itself; where there is life the longing for good sets up pursuit; the very dead are cared for and mourned for by the living; the living plan for their own good. The witness of attainment is betterment, absence of regret, satisfaction, settlement, suspension of pursuit. Here pleasure shows itself inadequate: its choice does not hold; repeated, it is no longer the same; it demands endless novelty. The good, worthy of the name, can be no such tasting of the casual; anyone that takes this kind of thing for the good goes empty, carrying away nothing but an emotion which the good might have produced. No one could be content to take his pleasure thus in an emotion over a thing not possessed any more than over a child not there; I cannot think that those setting their good in bodily satisfactions find table-pleasure without the meal or love-pleasure without intercourse with their chosen or any pleasure where nothing is done.


§ 27. But what is that whose entry supplies every such need?

Some Idea, we maintain. There is a Form to which Matter aspires: to soul moral excellence is this Form.

But is this Form a good to the thing as being apt to it, does the striving aim at the apt?

No: the aptest would be the most resemblant to the thing itself, but that, however sought and welcomed, does not suffice for the good: the good must be something more: to be a good to another a thing must have something beyond aptness; that only can be adopted as the good which represents the apt in its better form and is best to what is best in the quester’s self, to that which the quester tends potentially to be.

A thing is potentially that to which its nature looks; this, obviously, it lacks; what it lacks, of its better, is its good. Matter is of all the most in need; its next is the lowest Form; Form at lowest is just one grade higher than Matter. If a thing is a good to itself, much more must its perfection, its Form, its better, be a good to it; this better, good in its own nature, must be good also to the quester whose good it procures.

But why should the Form which makes a thing good be a good to that thing? As being most appropriate?

No: but because it is, itself, a portion of the Good. This is why the least alloyed and nearest to the good are most at peace within themselves.

It is surely out of place to ask why a thing good in its own nature should be a good; we can hardly suppose it dissatisfied with its own goodness so that it must strain outside its essential quality to the good which it effectually is.

There remains the question with regard to the Simplex: where there is utter absence of distinction does this self-aptness constitute the good to that Simplex?

If thus far we have been right, the striving of the lower possesses -582- itself of the good as of a thing resident in a certain kind and it is not the striving that constitutes the good but the good that calls out the striving: where the good is attained something is acquired and on this acquisition there follows pleasure. But the thing must be chosen even though no pleasure ensued; it must be desirable for its own sake.


§ 28. Now to see what all this reasoning has established:

Universally what approaches as a good is a Form; Matter itself contains this good which is Form: are we to conclude that if Matter had will it would desire to be Form unalloyed?

No: that would be desiring its own destruction whereas everything seeks what will do it good. But perhaps Matter would not wish to remain at its own level but would prefer to attain Being and, this acquired, to lay aside its evil.

If we are asked how the evil thing can have tendency towards the good, we answer that we have not attributed tendency to Matter; our argument needed the hypothesis of sensation in Matter — in so far as possible consistently with retention of its character — and we asserted that the entry of Form, that dream of the Good, must raise it to a nobler order. If then Matter is Evil, there is no more to be said; if it is something else — a wrong thing, let us say — then in the hypothesis that its essence acquire sensation would not the appropriate upon the next or higher plane be its good, as in the other cases? But not what is evil in Matter would be the quester of good but that element in it (lowest Form) which is associated with evil.

But if Matter by very essence is evil how could it choose the good?

This question implies that if Evil were self-conscious it would admire itself: but how can the unadmirable be admired; and did we not decline to identify the good with what was apt to the nature?

There that question may rest. But if universally the good is Form and the higher the ascent the more there is of Form — Soul more truly Form than body is and phases of soul progressively of higher Form and Intellectual-Principle standing as Form to soul collectively — then the Good advances by the opposite of Matter and, therefore, by a cleansing and casting away to the utmost possible at each stage: and the greatest good must be there where all that is of Matter has disappeared. The Principle of Good rejecting Matter entirely — or rather never having come near it at any point or in any way — must hold itself aloft with that Formless in which Primal Form takes its origin. But we will return to this.


§ 29. Suppose, however, that pleasure did not result from the good but there were something preceding pleasure and accounting for it, would not this be a thing to be embraced?

But when we say ‘to be embraced’ we say ‘pleasure’. -583-

But what if accepting its existence, we think of that existence as leaving still the possibility that it were not a thing to be embraced?

This would mean the good being present and the sentient possessor failing, none the less, to perceive it.

It would seem possible, however, to perceive and yet be unmoved by the possession; this is quite likely in the case of the wiser and least dependent — and indeed it is so with the First, immune not merely because simplex, but because pleasure by acquisition implies lack.

But all this will become clear on the solution of our remaining difficulties and the rebuttal of the argument brought up against us. This takes the form of the question: What gain is there in the Good to one who, fully conscious, feels nothing when he hears of these things, whether because he has no grasp of them but takes merely the words or because he holds to false values, perhaps being all in search of sense, finding his good in money or such things?

The answer is that even in his disregard of the good proposed he is with us in setting a good before him but fails to see how the good we define fits into his own conception. It is impossible to say ‘Not that’if one is utterly without experience or conception of the ‘That’; there will generally have been, even, some inkling of the good beyondIntellection. Besides, one attaining or approaching the Good but not recognizing it may assure himself in the light of its contraries; otherwise he will not even hold ignorance an evil though everyone prefers to know and is proud of knowing so that our very sensations seek to ripen into knowledge.

If the knowing principle — and specially primal Intellectual-Principle — is valuable and beautiful, what must be present to those of power to see the Author and Father of Intellect? Anyone thinking slightingly of this principle of Life and Being brings evidence against himself and all his state: of course distaste for the life that is mingled with death does not touch that Life Authentic.


§ 30. Whether pleasure must enter into the good, so that life in the contemplation of the divine things and especially of their source remains still imperfect, is a question not to be ignored in any inquiry into the nature of the Good.

Now to found the good upon the Intellect and upon that state of soul or mind which springs from wisdom does not imply that the end or the Absolute Good is the conjunction (of Intellect and state): it would follow merely that Intellect is the good and that we feel happy in possession of that good. That is one theory; another associates pleasure with Intellect in the sense that the good is taken to be some one thing founded upon both but depending upon our attaining or at least contemplating an Intellect so modified; this theory would maintain that the isolated and unrelated could not be the good, could not be an object of desire. -584-

But how could Intellect and pleasure combine into one mutually complementary nature?

Bodily pleasure no one, certainly, would think capable of blending in with Intellect; the unreasoning satisfactions of soul (or lower mind) are equally incompatible with it.

Every activity, state, and life will be followed and as it were escorted by the overdwelling consciousness; sometimes as these take their natural course they will be met by hindrance and by intrusion of the conflicting so that the life is the less self-guided; sometimes the natural activity is unmixed, wholly free, and then the life goes brilliantly; this last state of the Intellect is judged the pleasantest, the most to be chosen; so, for lack of an accurate expression, we hear of ‘Intellect in conjunction with pleasure’. But this is no more than metaphor, like a hundred others drawn by the poets from our natural likings — ‘Drunk with nectar’, ‘To banquet and feast’, ‘The father smiled’. No: the veritably pleasant lies away in that other realm, the most to be loved and sought for, not something brought about and changing but the very principle of all the colour and radiance and brightness found here. This is why we read of ‘Truth introduced into the Mixture’ and of the ‘measuring standard as a prior condition’ and are told that the symmetry and beauty necessary to the Mixture come Thence into whatever has beauty; it is in this way that we have our share in Beauty; but in another way, also, we achieve the truly desirable, that is by leading ourselves up to what is best within us; this best is what is symmetry, beauty, collective Idea, life clear, intellective, and good.


§ 31. But since the beauty and light in all come from That which is before all, it is Thence that Intellectual-Principle took the brilliance of the Intellectual Energy which flashed Nature (Soul?) into being; Thence soul took power towards life, in virtue of that fuller life streaming into it. Intellectual-Principle was raised thus to that Supreme and remains with it, happy in that presence. Soul too, that soul which as possessing knowledge and vision was capable, clung to what it saw;and as its vision so its rapture; it saw and was stricken; but having in itself something of that principle it felt its kinship and was moved to longing like those stirred by the image of the beloved to desire of the veritable presence. Lovers here mould themselves to the beloved; they seek to increase their attraction of person and their likeness of mind; they are unwilling to fall short in moral quality or in other graces lest they be distasteful to those possessing such merit — and only among such can true love be. In the same way the soul loves the Supreme Good, from its very beginnings stirred by it to love. The soul which has never strayed from this love waits for no reminding from the beauty of our world: holding that love — perhaps unawares — it is ever in quest, and, in its longing to be borne Thither, passes over what is lovely here and with one glance at the beauty of the universe dismisses all; for it -585- sees that all is put together of flesh and Matter, befouled by its housing, made fragmentary by corporal extension, not the Authentic Beauty which could never venture into the mud of body to be soiled, annulled.

By only noting the flux of things it knows at once that from elsewhere comes the beauty that floats upon them and so it is urged Thither, passionate in pursuit of what it loves: never — unless someone robs it of that love — never giving up till it attain.

There indeed all it saw was beautiful and veritable; it grew in strength by being thus filled with the life of the True; itself becoming veritable Being and attaining veritable knowledge, it enters by that neighbouring into conscious possession of what it has long been seeking.


§ 32. Where, then? where exists the author of this beauty and life, the begetter of the veritable?

You see the splendour over all the manifold Forms or Ideas; well might we linger here: but amid all these things of beauty we cannot but ask whence they come and whence the beauty. This source can be none of the beautiful objects; were it so, it too would be a mere part. It can be no shape, no power, nor the total of powers and shapes that have had the becoming that has set them here; it must stand above all the powers, all the patterns. The origin of all this must be the formless — formless not as lacking shape but as the very source of even shape Intellectual.

In the realm of process anything coming to be must come to be something; to every thing its distinctive shape: but what shape can that have which no one has shaped? It can be none of existing things; yet it is all: none, in that beings are later; all, as the wellspring from which they flow. That which can make all can have, itself, no extension; it must be limitless and so without magnitude; magnitude itself is of the Later and cannot be an element in that which is to bring it into being. The greatness of the Authentic cannot be a greatness of quantity; all extension must belong to the subsequent: the Supreme is great in the sense only that there can be nothing mightier, nothing to equal it, nothing with anything in common with it: how then could anything be equal to any part of its content? Its eternity and universal reach entail neither measure nor measurelessness; given either, how could it be the measure of things? So with shape: granted beauty, the absence of shape or form to be grasped is but enhancement of desire and love; the love will be limitless as the object is, an infinite love.

Its beauty, too, will be unique, a beauty above beauty: it cannot be beauty since it is not a thing among things. It is lovable and the author of beauty; as the power to all beautiful shape, it will be the ultimate of beauty, that which brings all loveliness to be; it begets beauty and makes it yet more beautiful by the excess of beauty streaming from itself, the source and height of beauty. As the source of beauty it makes beautiful whatsoever springs from it. And this conferred beauty is not itself in shape; the thing that comes to be is without shape, though in another -586- sense shaped; what is denoted by shape is, in itself, an attribute of something else, shapeless at first. Not the beauty but its participant takes the shape.


§ 33. When therefore we name beauty, all such shape must be dismissed; nothing visible is to be conceived, or at once we descend from beauty to what but bears the name in virtue of some faint participation. This formless Form is beautiful as Form, beautiful in proportion as we strip away all shape, even that given in thought to mark difference, as for instance the difference between Justice and Sophrosyny, beautiful in their difference.

The Intellectual-Principle is the less for seeing things as distinct, even in its act of grasping in unity the multiple content of its Intellectual realm; in its knowing of the particular it possesses itself of one Intellectual shape; but, even thus, in this dealing with variety as unity, it leaves us still with the question how we are to envisage that which stands beyond this all-lovely, beyond this principle at once multiple and above multiplicity, the Supreme for which the soul hungers though unable to tell why such a being should stir its longing — reason, however, urging that This at last is the Authentic Term because the Nature best and most to be loved may be found there only where there is no least touch of Form. Bring something under Form and present it so before the mind; immediately we ask what Beyond imposed that shape; reason answers that while there exists the giver having shape to give — a giver that is shape, idea, an entirely measured thing — yet this is not alone, is not adequate in itself, is not beautiful in its own right but is a mingled thing. Shape and idea and measure will always be beautiful, but the Authentic Beauty, or rather the Beyond-Beauty, cannot be under measure and therefore cannot have admitted shape or be Idea: the primal Beauty, The First, must be without Form; the beauty of that higher realm must be, simply, the Nature of the Intellectual Good.

Take an example from love: so long as the attention is upon the visible form, love has not entered: when from that outward form the lover elaborates within himself, in his own partless soul, an immaterial image, then it is that love is born, then the lover longs for the sight of the beloved to make that fading image live again. If he could but learn to look elsewhere, to the more nearly formless, his longing would be for that: his first experience was loving a great luminary by way of some thin gleam from it.

Shape is an impress from the unshaped; it is the unshaped that produces shape, not shape the unshaped; and Matter is needed for the producing; Matter, in the nature of things, is the furthest away, since of itself it has not even the lowest degree of shape. Thus lovableness does not belong to Matter but to that which draws upon Form: the Form upon Matter comes by way of soul; soul is more nearly Form -587- and therefore more lovable; Intellectual-Principle, nearer still, is even more to be loved: by these steps we are led to know that the primary nature of Beauty must be formless.


§ 34. No longer can we wonder that the principle evoking such longing should be utterly free from shape, even shape Intellectual. The very soul, once it has conceived the straining love towards this, lays aside all the shape it has taken, even to the Intellectual shape that has informed it. There is no vision, no union, for those handling or acting by any thing other; the soul must see before it neither evil nor good nor anything else, that alone it may receive the Alone.

Suppose the soul to have attained: the highest has come to her, or rather has revealed its presence; she has turned away from all about her and made herself apt, beautiful to the utmost, brought into likeness with the divine — by those preparings and adornings which come unbidden to those growing ready for the vision — she has seen that presence suddenly manifesting within her, for there is nothing between: here is no longer a duality but a two in one; for, so long as the presence holds, all distinction fades: it is as lover and beloved here, in a copy of that union, long to blend; the soul has now no further awareness of being in body and will give herself no foreign name, not man, not living being, not being, not all; any observation of such things falls away; the soul has neither time nor taste for them; This she sought and This she has found and on This she looks and not upon herself; and who she is that looks she has not leisure to know. Once There she will barter for This nothing the universe holds; not though one would make over the heavens entire to her; than This there is nothing higher, nothing of more good; above This there is no passing; all the rest however lofty lies on the down- going path: she is of perfect judgement and knows that This was her quest, that nothing higher is. Here can be no deceit; where could she come upon truer than the truth? and the truth she affirms, that she is herself; but all the affirmation is later and is silent. In this happiness she knows beyond delusion that she is happy; for this is no affirmation of an excited body but of a soul become again what she was in the time of her early joy. All that she had welcomed of old — office, power, wealth, beauty, knowledge — of all she tells her scorn as she never could had she not found their better; linked to This she can fear no disaster, nor even once she has had the vision; let all about her fall to pieces, so she would have it that she may be wholly with This, so huge the happiness she has won to.


§ 35. Such in this union is the soul’s temper that even the act of Intellect once so intimately loved she now dismisses; Intellection is movement and she has no wish to move; the object of her vision has itself, she says, no Intellection, even though it is by means of the Intellectual-Principle that she has attained the vision, herself made over into Intellectual-Principle -588- and becoming that principle so as to be able to take stand in that Intellectual space. Entered there and making herself over to that, she at first contemplates that realm, but once she sees that higher still she leaves all else aside. Thus when a man enters a house rich in beauty he might gaze about and admire the varied splendour before the master appears; but, face to face with that great person — no thing of ornament but calling for the truest attention — he would ignore everything else and look only to the master. In this state of absorbed contemplation there is no longer question of holding an object: the vision is continuous so that seeing and seen are one thing; object and act of vision have become identical; of all that until then filled the eye no memory remains. And our comparison would be closer if instead of a man appearing to the visitor who had been admiring the house it were a god, and not a god manifesting to the eyes but one filling the soul.

Intellectual-Principle, thus, has two powers, first that of grasping intellectively its own content, the second that of an advancing and receiving whereby to know its transcendent; at first it sees, later by that seeing it takes possession of Intellectual-Principle, becoming one only thing with that: the first seeing is that of Intellect knowing, the second that of Intellect loving; stripped of its wisdom in the intoxication of the nectar, it comes to love; by this excess it is made simplex and is happy; and to be drunken is better for it than to be too staid for these revels.

But is its vision parcel wise, thing here and thing there?

No; reason unravelling gives process; Intellectual-Principle has unbroken knowledge and has, moreover, an Act unattended by knowing, a vision by another approach. In this seeing of the Supreme it becomes pregnant and at once knows what has come to be within it; its knowledge of its content is what is designated by its Intellection; its knowing of the Supreme is the virtue of that power within it by which, in a later (lower) stage, it is to become ‘Intellective’.

As for soul, it attains that vision by — so to speak — confounding and annulling the Intellectual-Principle within it; or rather that Principle immanent in soul sees first and thence the vision penetrates to soul and the two visions become one.

The Good spreading out above them and adapting itself to that union which it hastens to confirm is present to them as giver of a blessed sense and sight; so high it lifts them that they are no longer in space or in that realm of difference where everything is rooted in some other thing; for The Good is not in place but is the container of the Intellectual place; The Good is in nothing but itself.

The soul now knows no movement since the Supreme knows none; it is now not even soul since the Supreme is not in life but above life; it is no longer Intellectual-Principle, for the Supreme has not Intellection and the likeness must be perfect; this grasping is not even by Intellection, for the Supreme is not known intellectively. -589-


§ 36. We need not carry this matter further; we turn to a question already touched but demanding still some brief consideration. We may proceed from the point we have reached and follow the logical development.

Knowing 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.

Here, we put aside all the learning; disciplined to this pitch, established in beauty, the quester holds knowledge still of the ground he rests on, but, suddenly, swept beyond it all by the very crest of the wave of Intellect surging beneath, he is lifted and sees, never knowing how; the vision floods the eyes with light, but it is not a light showing some other object, the light is itself the vision. No longer is there thing seen and light to show it, no longer Intellect and object of Intellection; this is the very radiance that brought both Intellect and Intellectual object into being for the later use and allowed them to occupy the quester’s mind. With This he himself becomes identical, with that radiance whose Act is to engender Intellectual-Principle, not losing in that en- but forever unchanged, the engendered coming to be simply because that Supreme exists. If there were no such principle above change, no derivative could rise.


§ 37. Those ascribing Intellection to the First have not supposed him to know the lesser, the emanant — though, indeed, some have thought it impossible that he should not know everything. But those denying his knowing of the lesser have still attributed self-knowing to him, because they find nothing nobler; we are to suppose that so he is the more august, as if Intellection were something nobler than his own manner of being, not something whose value derives from him.

But we ask in what must his grandeur lie, in his Intellection or in himself. If in the Intellection, he has no worth or the less worth; if in himself, he is perfect before the Intellection, not perfected by it. We may be told that he must have Intellection because he is an Act, not a potentiality. Now if this means that he is an essence eternally intellective, he is represented as a duality — essence and Intellective Act — he ceases to be a simplex; an external has been added: it is just as the eyes are not the same as their sight though the two are inseparable. If on the -590- other hand by this actualization it is meant that he is Act and Intellection, then as being Intellection he does not exercise it, just as movement is not itself in motion.

But do not we ourselves assert that the Beings There are essence and Act?

The Beings, yes, but they are to us manifold and differentiated: the First we make a simplex; to us Intellection begins with the emanant in its seeking of its essence, of itself, of its author; bent inward for this vision and having a present thing to know, there is every reason why it should be a principle of Intellection; but that which, never coming into being, has no prior but is ever what it is, how could that have motive to Intellection? As Plato rightly says, it is above Intellect.

An Intelligence not exercising Intellection would be unintelligent; where the nature demands knowing, not to know is to fail of intelligence; but where there is no function, why import one and declare a defect because it is not performed? We might as well complain because the Supreme does not act as a physician. He has no task, we hold, because nothing can present itself to him to be done; he is sufficient; he need seek nothing beyond himself, he who is over all; to himself and to all he suffices by simply being what he is.


§ 38. And yet this ‘He is’ does not truly apply: the Supreme has no need of Being: even ‘He is good’ does not apply since it indicates Being: the ‘is’ should not suggest something predicated of another thing; it is to state identity. The word ‘good’ used of him is not a predicate asserting his possession of goodness; it conveys an identification. It is not that we think it exact to call him either good or The Good: it is that sheer negation does not indicate; we use the term The Good to assert identity without the affirmation of Being.

But how admit a Principle void of self-knowledge, self-awareness; surely the First must be able to say ‘I possess Being’?

But he does not possess Being.

Then, at least he must say ‘I AM good’?

No: once more, that would be an affirmation of Being.

But surely he may affirm merely the goodness, adding nothing: the goodness would be taken without the being and all duality avoided?

No: such self-awareness as good must inevitably carry the affirmation ‘I AM the Good’; otherwise there would be merely the unattached conception of goodness with no recognition of identity; any such intellection would inevitably include the affirmation ‘I AM’.

If that intellection were the Good, then the intellection would not be self-intellection but intellection of the Good; not the Supreme but that intellection would be the Good: if on the contrary that intellection of the Good is distinct from the Good, at once the Good exists before its knowing; all-sufficiently good in itself, it needs none of that knowing of its own nature. -591-

Thus the Supreme does not know itself as Good.

As what then?

No such foreign matter is present to it: it can have only an immediate intuition self-directed.


§ 39.Since the Supreme has no interval, no self-differentiation, what can have this intuitional approach to it but itself? Therefore it quite naturally assumes difference at the point where Intellectual-Principle and Being are differentiated.

Intellect, to act at all, must inevitably comport difference with identity; otherwise it could not distinguish itself from its object by standing apart from it, nor could it ever be aware of the realm of things whose existence demands otherness, nor could there be so much as a duality.

Again, if the Supreme is to have intellection it cannot know only itself; that would not be intellection, for, if it (did know itself, nothing could prevent it knowing all things; but this is impossible. With self-intellection it would no longer be simplex; any intellection, even in the Supreme, must be aware of something distinct; as we have been saying, the inability to see the self as external is the negation of intellection. That act requires a manifold — agent, object, movement, and all the other conditions of a thinking principle. Further we must remember what has been indicated elsewhere that, since every intellectual act in order to be what it must be requires variety, every movement simple and the same throughout, though it may comport some form of contact, is devoid of the intellective.

It follows that the Supreme will know neither itself nor anything else but will hold an august repose. All the rest is later; before them all, This was what This was; any awareness of that other would be acquired, the shifting knowledge of the instable. Even in knowing the stable he would be manifold, for it is not possible that, while in the act of knowing the laters possess themselves of their object, the Supreme should know only in some unpossessing observation.

As regards Providence, that is sufficiently saved by the fact that This is the source from which all proceeds; the dependent he cannot know when he has no knowledge of himself but keeps that august repose. Plato dealing with essential Being allows it intellection but not this august repose: intellection then belongs to Essential Being; this august repose to the Principle in which there is no intellection. Repose, of course, is used here for want of a fitter word; we are to understand that the most august, the truly so, is That which transcends (the movement of) Intellection.


§ 40. That there can be no intellection in the First will be patent to those that have had such contact; but some further confirmation is desirable, if indeed words can carry the matter; we need overwhelming persuasion. -592-

It must be borne in mind that all intellection rises in some principle and takes cognizance of an object. But a distinction is to be made:

There is the intellection that remains within its place of origin; it has that source as substratum but becomes a sort of addition to it in that it is an activity of that source perfecting the potentiality there, not by producing anything but as being a completing power to the principle in which it inheres. There is also the intellection inbound with Being — Being’s very author — and this could not remain confined to the source since there it could produce nothing; it is a power to production; it produces therefore of its own motion and its act is Real-Being and there it has its dwelling. In this mode the intellection is identical with Being; even in its self-intellection no distinction is made save the logical distinction of thinker and thought with, as we have often observed, the implication of plurality.

This is a first activity and the substance it produces is Essential Being; it is an image, but of an original so great that the very copy stands a reality. If instead of moving outward it remained with the First, it would be no more than some appurtenance of that First, not a self-standing existent.

As the earliest activity and earliest intellection it can be preceded by no act or intellection: if we pass beyond this being and this intellection we come not to more being and more intellection but to what overpasses both, to the wonderful which has neither, asking nothing of these products and standing its unaccompanied self.

That all-transcending cannot have had an activity by which to produce; this activity — acting before act existed — or have had thought in order to produce thinking — applying thought before thought exists — all intellection, even of the Good, is beneath it.

In sum, this intellection of the Good is impossible: I do not mean that it is impossible to have intellection of the Good — we may admit the possibility — but there can be no intellection by The Good itself, for this would be to include the inferior with the Good.

If intellection is the lower, then it will be bound up with Being; if intellection is the higher, its object is lower. Intellection, then, does not exist in the Good; as a lesser, taking its worth through that Good, it must stand apart from it, leaving the Good unsoiled by it as by all else. Immune from intellection the Good remains incontaminably what it is, not impeded by the presence of the intellectual act which would annul its purity and unity.

Anyone making the Good at once Thinker and Thought identifies it with Being and with the Intellection vested in Being so that it must perform that act of intellection: at once it becomes necessary to find another principle, one superior to that Good: for either this act, this intellection, is a completing power of some such principle serving as its ground, or it points, by that duality, to a prior principle having intellection as a characteristic. It is because there is something before -593- it that it has an object of intellection; even in its self-intellection it may be said to know its content by its vision of that prior.

What has no prior and no external accompaniment could have no intellection, either of itself or of anything else. What could it aim at, what desire? To essay its power of knowing? But this would make the power something outside itself; there would be, I mean, the power it grasped and the power by which it grasped: if there is but the one power, what is there to grasp at?


§ 41. Intellection seems to have been given as an aid to the diviner but weaker beings, an eye to the blind. But the eye itself need not see Being since it is itself the light; what must take the light through the eye needs the light because of its darkness. If then intellection is the light and light does not need the light, surely that brilliance (The First) which does not need light can have no need of intellection, will not add this to its nature. What could it do with intellection? What could even intellection need and add to itself for the purpose of its act?

The First has no self-awareness; there is no need. It is no duality — or rather, no manifold consisting of itself, its intellective act distinct from itself, and the inevitable third, the object of intellection. No doubt since knower, knowing, and known are identical, all merges into a unity: but the distinction has existed and, once more, such a unity cannot be the First; we must put away all otherness from the Supreme which can need no such support; anything we add is so much lessening of what lacks nothing.

To us intellection is a boon since the soul needs it; to the Intellectual-Principle it is appropriate as being one thing with the very essence of the principle constituted by the Intellectual Act, so that principle and act coincide in a continuous self-consciousness carrying the assurance of identity, of the unity of the two. But pure unity must be independent, in need of no such assurance.

‘…’Know yourself is a precept for those who, being manifold, have the task of appraising themselves so as to become aware of the number and nature or their constituents, some or all of which they ignore as they ignore their very principle and their manner of being. The First, on the contrary, if it have content must exist in a way too great to have any knowledge, intellection, perception of it. To itself it is nothing; accepting nothing, self-sufficing, it is not even a good to itself: to others it is good for they have need of it; but it could not lack itself: it would be absurd to suppose The Good standing in need of goodness.

It does not see itself: seeing aims at acquisition: all this it abandons to the subsequent: in fact nothing found elsewhere can be There; even Being cannot be There. Nor therefore has it intellection since Being goes with intellection: the first and true Intellection is identical with Being. Reason, perception, intelligence, none of these can have place in that Principle in which no presence can be affirmed. -594-


§ 42. Faced by the difficulty of placing these powers, you must in reason allocate to the secondaries what you count august: secondaries must not be foisted upon the First or tertiaries upon the secondaries. Secondaries are to be ranged under the First, tertiaries under the secondaries: this is giving everything its place, the later dependent on their priors, circling about them, those priors free.

This is included in that true saying, ‘About the King of All, all has being and in view of Him all is’: we are to understand from the attribution of all things to Him and from the words ‘in view of Him’ that He is their cause and they reach to Him as to something differing from them all and containing nothing that they contain: for certainly his very nature requires that nothing of the later be in Him.

Thus, Intellectual-Principle, finding place in the universe, cannot have place in Him. Where we read that He is the cause of all beauty we are clearly to understand that beauty depends upon the Forms, He being set above all that is beautiful here. The Forms are in that passage secondaries, their sequels being attached to them as dependent thirds: it is clear thus that by the products of the thirds is meant this world, dependent upon soul.

Soul dependent upon Intellectual-Principle and Intellectual-Principle upon the Good, all is linked to the Supreme by intermediaries, some close, some nearing those of the closer attachment, while the order of sense stands remotest, dependent upon soul.

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Eighth Tractate: On Free Will and the Will of The One

§ 1. Can there be question as to whether the gods have voluntary action? Or are we to take it that while we may well inquire in the case of men with their combination of powerlessness and hesitating power, the gods must be declared omnipotent, not merely some things but all lying at their nod? Or is power entire, freedom of action in all things, to be reserved to one alone, of the rest some being powerful, others powerless, others again a blend of power and impotence?

All this must come to the test: we must dare it even of the Firsts and of the All-Transcendent and if we find omnipotence possible work out how far freedom extends. The very notion of power must be scrutinized lest in this ascription we be really setting up an antithesis of power (potency) and Act, and identifying power with Act not yet achieved.

But for the moment we may pass over these questions to deal with the traditional problem of freedom of action in ourselves.

To begin with, what must be intended when we assert that something is in our power; what is the conception here?

To establish this will help to show whether we are to ascribe freedom -595- to the gods and still more to God, or to refuse it, or again, while asserting it, to question still, in regard both to the higher and lower, the mode of its presence.

What then do we mean when we speak of freedom in ourselves and why do we question it?

My own reading is that, moving as we do amid adverse fortunes, compulsions, violent assaults of passion crushing the soul, feeling ourselves mastered by these experiences, playing slave to them, going where they lead, we have been brought by all this to doubt whether we are anything at all and dispose of ourselves in any particular.

This would indicate that we think of our free act as one which we execute of our own choice, in no servitude to chance or necessity or overmastering passion, nothing thwarting our will; the voluntary is conceived as an event amenable to will and occurring or not as our will dictates. Everything will be voluntary that is produced under no compulsion and with knowledge; our free act is what we are masters to perform.

Differing conceptually, the two conditions will often coincide but sometimes will clash. Thus a man would be master to kill but the act will not be voluntary if in the victim he had failed to recognize his own father. Perhaps, however, that ignorance is not compatible with real freedom: for the knowledge necessary to a voluntary act cannot be limited to certain particulars but must cover the entire field. Why, for example, should killing be involuntary in the failure to recognize a father and not so in the failure to recognize the wickedness of murder? If because the killer ought to have learned, still ignorance of the duty of learning and the cause of that ignorance remain alike involuntary.


§ 2. A cardinal question is where are we to place the freedom of action ascribed to us.

It must be founded in impulse or in some appetite, as when we act or omit in lust or rage or upon some calculation of advantage accompanied by desire.

But if rage or desire implied freedom we must allow freedom to animals, infants, maniacs, the distraught, the victims of malpractice producing incontrollable delusions. And if freedom turns on calculation with desire, does this include faulty calculation? Sound calculation, no doubt, and sound desire; but then comes the question whether the appetite stirs the calculation or the calculation the appetite.

Where the appetites are dictated by the very nature they are the desires of the conjoint of soul and body and then soul lies under physical compulsions: if they spring in the soul as an independent, then much that we take to be voluntary is in reality outside of our free act. Further, every emotion is preceded by some meagre reasoning; how then can a compelling imagination, an appetite drawing us where it will, be supposed to leave us masters in the ensuing act? How can we be masters -596- when we are compelled? Need, inexorably craving satisfaction, is not free in face of that to which it is forced: and how at all can a thing have efficiency of its own when it rises from an extern, has an extern for very principle, thence taking its being as it stands? It lives by that extern, lives as it has been moulded: if this be freedom, there is freedom in even the soulless; fire acts in accordance with its characteristic being. We may be reminded that the Living Form and the Soul know what they do. But if this is knowledge by perception it does not help towards the freedom of the act; perception gives awareness, not mastery: if true knowing is meant, either this is the knowing of something happening — once more awareness — with the motive-force still to seek, or the reasoning and knowledge have acted to quell the appetite; then we have to ask to what this repression is to be referred and where it has taken place. If it is that the mental process sets up an opposing desire we must assure ourselves how; if it merely stills the appetite with no further efficiency and this is our freedom, then freedom does not depend upon act but is a thing of the mind — and in truth all that has to do with act, the very most reasonable, is still of mixed value and cannot carry freedom.


§ 3. All this calls for examination; the inquiry must bring us close to the solution as regards the gods.

We have traced self-disposal to will, will to reasoning and, next step, to right reasoning; perhaps to right reasoning we must add knowledge, for however sound opinion and act may be they do not yield true freedom when the adoption of the right course is the result of hazard or of some presentment from the fancy with no knowledge of the foundations of that Tightness.

Taking it that the presentment of fancy is not a matter of our will and choice, how can we think those acting at its dictation to be free agents? Fancy strictly, in our use, takes its rise from conditions of the body; lack of food and drink sets up presentments and so does the meeting of these needs; similarly with seminal abundance and other humours of the body. We refuse to range under the principle of freedom those whose conduct is directed by such fancy: the baser sort, therefore, mainly so guided, cannot be credited with self-disposal or voluntary act. Self-disposal, to us, belongs to those who, through the activities of the Intellectual-Principle, live above the states of the body. The spring of freedom is the activity of Intellectual-Principle, the highest in our being; the proposals emanating thence are freedom; such desires as are formed in the exercise of the Intellectual act cannot be classed as involuntary; the gods, therefore, that live in this state, living by Intellectual-Principle and by desire conformed to it, possess freedom.


§ 4. It will be asked how act rising from desire can be voluntary since desire pulls outward and implies need; to desire is still to be drawn, even though towards the good. -597-

Intellectual-Principle itself comes under the doubt; having a certain nature and acting by that nature can it be said to have freedom and self-disposal — in an act which it cannot leave unenacted? It may be asked, also, whether freedom may strictly be affirmed of such beings as are not engaged in action.

However that may be, where there is such act there is compulsion from without, since, failing motive, act will not be performed. These higher beings, too, obey their own nature; where then is their freedom?

But, on the other hand, can there be talk of constraint where there is no compulsion to obey an extern; and how can any movement towards a good be counted compulsion? Effort is free once it is towards a fully recognized good; the involuntary is, precisely, motion away from a good and towards the enforced, towards something not recognized as a good; servitude lies in being powerless to move towards one’s good, being debarred from the preferred path in a menial obedience. Hence the shame of slavedom is incurred not when one is held from the hurtful but when the personal good must be yielded in favour of another’s.

Further, this objected obedience to the characteristic nature would imply a duality, master and mastered; but an undivided Principle, a simplex Activity, where there can be no difference of potentiality and act, must be free; there can be no thought of ‘action according to the nature’, in the sense of any distinction between the being and its efficiency, there where being and act are identical. Where act is performed neither because of another nor at another’s will, there surely is freedom. Freedom may of course be an inappropriate term: there is something greater here: it is self-disposal in the sense, only, that there is no disposal by the extern, no outside master over the act.

In a principle, act and essence must be free. No doubt Intellectual-Principle itself is to be referred to a yet higher; but this higher is not extern to it; Intellectual-Principle is within the Good; possessing its own good in virtue of that indwelling, much more will it possess freedom and self-disposal which are sought only for the sake of the good. Acting towards the good, it must all the more possess self-disposal, for by that Act it is directed towards the Principle from which it proceeds, and this its act is self-centred and must entail its very greatest good.


§ 5. Are we, however, to make freedom and self-disposal exclusive to Intellectual-Principle as engaged in its characteristic Act, Intellectual-Principle unassociated, or do they belong also to soul acting under that guidance and performing acts of virtue?

If freedom is to be allowed to soul in its Act, it certainly cannot be allowed in regard to issue, for we are not master of events: if in regard to fine conduct and all inspired by Intellectual-Principle, that may very well be freedom; but is the freedom ours?

Because there is war, we perform some brave feat; how is that our free act, since had there been no war it could not have been performed? -598-

So in all cases of fine conduct; there is always some impinging event leading out our quality to show itself in this or that act. And suppose virtue itself given the choice whether to find occasion for its exercise — war evoking courage; wrong, so that it may establish justice and good order; poverty that it may show liberality — or to remain inactive, everything going well, it would choose the peace of inaction, nothing calling for its intervention, just as a physician like Hippocrates would prefer no one to stand in need of his skill.

If thus virtue whose manifestation requires action becomes inevitably a collaborator under compulsion, how can it have untrammelled self-disposal?

Should we, perhaps, distinguish between compulsion in the act and freedom in the preceding will and reasoning?

But in setting freedom in those preceding functions, we imply that virtue has a freedom and self-disposal apart from all act; then we must state what is the reality of the self-disposal attributed to virtue as state or disposition. Are we to put it that virtue comes in to restore the disordered soul, taming passions and appetites? In what sense, at that, can we hold our goodness to be our own free act, our fine conduct to be uncompelled? In that we will and adopt, in that this entry of virtue prepares freedom and self-disposal, ending our slavery to the masters we have been obeying. If then virtue is, as it were, a second Intellectual-Principle, and heightens the Soul to Intellectual quality, then, once more, our freedom is found to lie not in act but in Intellectual-Principle immune from act.


§ 6. How then did we come to place freedom in the will when we made out free action to be that produced — or as we also indicated, suppressed — at the dictate of will?

If what we have been saying is true and our former statement is consistent with it, the case must stand thus:

Virtue and Intellectual-Principle are sovereign and must be held the sole foundation of our self-disposal and freedom; both then are free; Intellectual-Principle is self-confined: Virtue in its government of the soul which it seeks to lift into goodness would wish to be free; in so far as it does so it is free and conifers freedom; but inevitably experiences and actions are forced upon it by its governance: these it has not planned for, yet when they do arise it will watch still for its sovereignty, calling these also to judgement. Virtue does not follow upon occurrences as a saver of the imperiled; at its discretion it sacrifices a man; it may decree the jettison of life, means, children, country even; it looks to its own high aim and not to the safeguarding of anything lower. Thus our freedom of act, our self-disposal, must be referred not to the doing, not to the external thing done but to the inner activity, to the Intellection, to virtue’s own vision.

So understood, virtue is a mode of Intellectual-Principle, a mode not -599- involving any of the emotions or passions controlled by its reasonings, since such experiences, amenable to morality and discipline, touch closely — we read — on body.

This makes it all the more evident that the unembodied is the free; to this our self-disposal is to be referred; herein lies our will which remains free and self-disposing in spite of any orders which it may necessarily utter to meet the external. All then that issues from will and is the effect of will is our free action, whether the will is directed outwards or remains unattached; all that will adopts and brings, unimpeded, into existence is in the highest degree at our free disposal.

The contemplating Intellect, the first or highest, has self-disposal to the point that its operation is utterly independent; it turns wholly upon itself; its very action is itself; at rest in its good it is without need, complete, and may be said to live to its will; there the will is intellection: it is called will because it expresses the Intellectual-Principle in the willing-phase and, besides, what we know as will imitates this operation good which the act of Intellectual-Principle realizes. Thus that principle holds what will seeks, that good whose attainment makes will identical with Intellection.

But if self-disposal is founded thus on the will aiming at the good, how can it possibly be denied to that principle permanently possessing the good, sole object of the aim?

Anyone scrupulous about setting self-disposal so high may find some loftier word.