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    "slug": "ennead-1",
    "name": "Ennead I — Ethics, Aesthetics, Inner Life"
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    "num": 3,
    "slug": "3-on-dialectic-the-upward-way",
    "title": "I.3 — On Dialectic; the Upward Way",
    "of": 9,
    "words": 1820,
    "text": "## THIRD TRACTATE\n\n\n#### THIRD TRACTATE.\n\nON DIALECTIC [THE UPWARD WAY].\n\n\n## Section 1\n\n\n##### Section 1\n\n1. What art is there, what method, what discipline to bring us\nthere where we must go?\n\nThe Term at which we must arrive we may take as agreed: we have\nestablished elsewhere, by many considerations, that our journey is\nto the Good, to the Primal-Principle; and, indeed, the very\nreasoning which discovered the Term was itself something like an\ninitiation.\n\nBut what order of beings will attain the Term?\n\nSurely, as we read, those that have already seen all or most\nthings, those who at their first birth have entered into the\nlife-germ\nfrom which is to spring a metaphysician, a musician or a born lover,\nthe metaphysician taking to the path by instinct, the\nmusician and the\nnature peculiarly susceptible to love needing outside guidance.\n\nBut how lies the course? Is it alike for all, or is there a\ndistinct method for each class of temperament?\n\nFor all there are two stages of the path, as they are making\nupwards or have already gained the upper sphere.\n\nThe first degree is the conversion from the lower life; the\nsecond- held by those that have already made their way to the sphere\nof the Intelligibles, have set as it were a footprint there but must\nstill advance within the realm- lasts until they reach the extreme\nhold of the place, the Term attained when the topmost peak of the\nIntellectual realm is won.\n\nBut this highest degree must bide its time: let us first try to\nspeak of the initial process of conversion.\n\nWe must begin by distinguishing the three types. Let us take the\nmusician first and indicate his temperamental equipment for the task.\n\nThe musician we may think of as being exceedingly quick\nto beauty,\ndrawn in a very rapture to it: somewhat slow to stir of his own\nimpulse, he answers at once to the outer stimulus: as the timid are\nsensitive to noise so he to tones and the beauty they\nconvey; all that\noffends against unison or harmony in melodies and rhythms repels\nhim; he longs for measure and shapely pattern.\n\nThis natural tendency must be made the starting-point to such a\nman; he must be drawn by the tone, rhythm and design in things of\nsense: he must learn to distinguish the material forms from the\nAuthentic-Existent which is the source of all these correspondences\nand of the entire reasoned scheme in the work of art: he must be led\nto the Beauty that manifests itself through these forms; he must be\nshown that what ravished him was no other than the Harmony of the\nIntellectual world and the Beauty in that sphere, not some one shape\nof beauty but the All-Beauty, the Absolute Beauty; and the truths of\nphilosophy must be implanted in him to lead him to faith in that\nwhich, unknowing it, he possesses within himself. What these truths\nare we will show later.\n\n\n## Section 2\n\n\n##### Section 2\n\n2. The born lover, to whose degree the musician also may attain-\nand then either come to a stand or pass beyond- has a certain memory\nof beauty but, severed from it now, he no longer comprehends it:\nspellbound by visible loveliness he clings amazed about that. His\nlesson must be to fall down no longer in bewildered delight before\nsome, one embodied form; he must be led, under a system of mental\ndiscipline, to beauty everywhere and made to discern the One\nPrinciple\nunderlying all, a Principle apart from the material forms, springing\nfrom another source, and elsewhere more truly present. The\nbeauty, for\nexample, in a noble course of life and in an admirably organized\nsocial system may be pointed out to him- a first training this in\nthe loveliness of the immaterial- he must learn to recognise the\nbeauty in the arts, sciences, virtues; then these severed and\nparticular forms must be brought under the one principle by the\nexplanation of their origin. From the virtues he is to be led to the\nIntellectual-Principle, to the Authentic-Existent; thence onward, he\ntreads the upward way.\n\n\n## Section 3\n\n\n##### Section 3\n\n3. The metaphysician, equipped by that very character, winged\nalready and not like those others, in need of disengagement,\nstirring of himself towards the supernal but doubting of the way,\nneeds only a guide. He must be shown, then, and instructed, a\nwilling wayfarer by his very temperament, all but self-directed.\n\nMathematics, which as a student by nature he will take very\neasily, will be prescribed to train him to abstract thought and to\nfaith in the unembodied; a moral being by native disposition, he\nmust be led to make his virtue perfect; after the Mathematics he\nmust be put through a course in Dialectic and made an adept in the\nscience.\n\n\n## Section 4\n\n\n##### Section 4\n\n4. But this science, this Dialectic essential to all the three\nclasses alike, what, in sum, is it?\n\nIt is the Method, or Discipline, that brings with it the power\nof pronouncing with final truth upon the nature and relation of\nthings- what each is, how it differs from others, what common\nquality all have, to what Kind each belongs and in what rank each\nstands in its Kind and whether its Being is Real-Being, and how many\nBeings there are, and how many non-Beings to be distinguished from\nBeings.\n\nDialectic treats also of the Good and the not-Good, and of the\nparticulars that fall under each, and of what is the Eternal and\nwhat the not Eternal- and of these, it must be understood, not by\nseeming-knowledge [\"sense-knowledge\"] but with authentic science.\n\nAll this accomplished, it gives up its touring of the realm of\nsense and settles down in the Intellectual Kosmos and there plies\nits own peculiar Act: it has abandoned all the realm of deceit and\nfalsity, and pastures the Soul in the \"Meadows of Truth\": it employs\nthe Platonic division to the discernment of the Ideal-Forms, of the\nAuthentic-Existence and of the First-Kinds [or Categories of Being]:\nit establishes, in the light of Intellection, the unity there is in\nall that issues from these Firsts, until it has traversed the entire\nIntellectual Realm: then, resolving the unity into the particulars\nonce more, it returns to the point from which it starts.\n\nNow rests: instructed and satisfied as to the Being in that\nsphere, it is no longer busy about many things: it has arrived at\nUnity and it contemplates: it leaves to another science all that\ncoil of premisses and conclusions called the art of\nreasoning, much as\nit leaves the art of writing: some of the matter of logic, no doubt,\nit considers necessary- to clear the ground- but it makes itself the\njudge, here as in everything else; where it sees use, it uses;\nanything it finds superfluous, it leaves to whatever department of\nlearning or practice may turn that matter to account.\n\n\n## Section 5\n\n\n##### Section 5\n\n5. But whence does this science derive its own initial laws?\n\nThe Intellectual-Principle furnishes standards, the most certain\nfor any soul that is able to apply them. What else is necessary,\nDialectic puts together for itself, combining and dividing, until it\nhas reached perfect Intellection. \"For,\" we read, \"it is the purest\n[perfection] of Intellection and Contemplative-Wisdom.\" And,\nbeing the\nnoblest method and science that exists it must needs deal with\nAuthentic-Existence, The Highest there is: as\nContemplative-Wisdom [or\ntrue-knowing] it deals with Being, as Intellection with what\ntranscends Being.\n\nWhat, then, is Philosophy?\n\nPhilosophy is the supremely precious.\n\nIs Dialectic, then, the same as Philosophy?\n\nIt is the precious part of Philosophy. We must not think of it\nas the mere tool of the metaphysician: Dialectic does not consist of\nbare theories and rules: it deals with verities; Existences\nare, as it\nwere, Matter to it, or at least it proceeds methodically towards\nExistences, and possesses itself, at the one step, of the notions\nand of the realities.\n\nUntruth and sophism it knows, not directly, not of its\nown nature,\nbut merely as something produced outside itself, something which it\nrecognises to be foreign to the verities laid up in itself; in the\nfalsity presented to it, it perceives a clash with its own canon of\ntruth. Dialectic, that is to say, has no knowledge of propositions-\ncollections of words- but it knows the truth, and, in that\nknowledge, knows what the schools call their propositions: it knows\nabove all, the operation of the soul, and, by virtue of this\nknowing, it knows, too, what is affirmed and what is denied, whether\nthe denial is of what was asserted or of something else, and whether\npropositions agree or differ; all that is submitted to it, it\nattacks with the directness of sense-perception and it leaves petty\nprecisions of process to what other science may care for such\nexercises.\n\n\n## Section 6\n\n\n##### Section 6\n\n6. Philosophy has other provinces, but Dialectic is its precious\npart: in its study of the laws of the universe, Philosophy draws on\nDialectic much as other studies and crafts use Arithmetic, though,\nof course, the alliance between Philosophy and Dialectic is closer.\n\nAnd in Morals, too, Philosophy uses Dialectic: by Dialectic it\ncomes to contemplation, though it originates of itself the\nmoral state\nor rather the discipline from which the moral state develops.\n\nOur reasoning faculties employ the data of Dialectic almost as\ntheir proper possession for they are mainly concerned about Matter\n[whose place and worth Dialectic establishes].\n\nAnd while the other virtues bring the reason to bear upon\nparticular experiences and acts, the virtue of Wisdom [i.e., the\nvirtue peculiarly induced by Dialectic] is a certain super-reasoning\nmuch closer to the Universal; for it deals with correspondence and\nsequence, the choice of time for action and inaction, the adoption\nof this course, the rejection of that other: Wisdom and\nDialectic have\nthe task of presenting all things as Universals and stripped\nof matter\nfor treatment by the Understanding.\n\nBut can these inferior kinds of virtue exist without\nDialectic and\nphilosophy?\n\nYes- but imperfectly, inadequately.\n\nAnd is it possible to be a Sage, Master in Dialectic, without\nthese lower virtues?\n\nIt would not happen: the lower will spring either before or\ntogether with the higher. And it is likely that everyone normally\npossesses the natural virtues from which, when Wisdom steps in, the\nperfected virtue develops. After the natural virtues, then, Wisdom\nand, so the perfecting of the moral nature. Once the natural virtues\nexist, both orders, the natural and the higher, ripen side by side\nto their final excellence: or as the one advances it carries forward\nthe other towards perfection.\n\nBut, ever, the natural virtue is imperfect in vision and in\nstrength- and to both orders of virtue the essential matter is from\nwhat principles we derive them.",
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