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  "work": {
    "slug": "ennead-3",
    "name": "Ennead III — Cosmos, Time, Providence"
  },
  "parents": [
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      "slug": "plotinus-enneads",
      "name": "Enneads",
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  "chapter": {
    "num": 1,
    "slug": "1-fate",
    "title": "III.1 — On Fate",
    "of": 9,
    "words": 3696,
    "text": "## FIRST TRACTATE\n\n\n#### FIRST TRACTATE.\n\nFATE.\n\n\n## Section 1\n\n\n##### Section 1\n\n1. In the two orders of things- those whose existence is that of\nprocess and those in whom it is Authentic Being- there is a\nvariety of\npossible relation to Cause.\n\nCause might conceivably underly all the entities in both\norders or\nnone in either. It might underly some, only, in each order,\nthe others\nbeing causeless. It might, again, underly the Realm of Process\nuniversally while in the Realm of Authentic Existence some\nthings were\ncaused, others not, or all were causeless. Conceivably, on the other\nhand, the Authentic Existents are all caused while in the Realm of\nProcess some things are caused and others not, or all are causeless.\n\nNow, to begin with the Eternal Existents:\n\nThe Firsts among these, by the fact that they are Firsts, cannot\nbe referred to outside Causes; but all such as depend upon those\nFirsts may be admitted to derive their Being from them.\n\nAnd in all cases the Act may be referred to the Essence [as its\ncause], for their Essence consists, precisely, in giving forth an\nappropriate Act.\n\nAs for Things of Process- or for Eternal Existents whose Act is\nnot eternally invariable- we must hold that these are due to Cause;\nCauselessness is quite inadmissible; we can make no place here for\nunwarranted \"slantings,\" for sudden movement of bodies apart from\nany initiating power, for precipitate spurts in a soul with\nnothing to\ndrive it into the new course of action. Such causelessness would\nbind the Soul under an even sterner compulsion, no longer master of\nitself, but at the mercy of movements apart from will and cause.\nSomething willed- within itself or without- something desired, must\nlead it to action; without motive it can have no motion.\n\nOn the assumption that all happens by Cause, it is easy to\ndiscover the nearest determinants of any particular act or state and\nto trace it plainly to them.\n\nThe cause of a visit to the centre of affairs will be that one\nthinks it necessary to see some person or to receive a debt, or, in\na word, that one has some definite motive or impulse confirmed by a\njudgement of expediency. Sometimes a condition may be referred to\nthe arts, the recovery of health for instance to medical science and\nthe doctor. Wealth has for its cause the discovery of a treasure or\nthe receipt of a gift, or the earning of money by manual or\nintellectual labour. The child is traced to the father as its Cause\nand perhaps to a chain of favourable outside circumstances such as a\nparticular diet or, more immediately, a special organic aptitude or\na wife apt to childbirth.\n\nAnd the general cause of all is Nature.\n\n\n## Section 2\n\n\n##### Section 2\n\n2. But to halt at these nearest determinants, not to be\nwilling to\npenetrate deeper, indicates a sluggish mind, a dullness to all that\ncalls us towards the primal and transcendent causes.\n\nHow comes it that the same surface causes produce different\nresults? There is moonshine, and one man steals and the other does\nnot: under the influence of exactly similar surroundings one\nman falls\nsick and the other keeps well; an identical set of operations makes\none rich and leaves another poor. The differences amongst us in\nmanners, in characters, in success, force us to go still\nfurther back.\n\nMen therefore have never been able to rest at the surface causes.\n\nOne school postulates material principles, such as\natoms; from the\nmovement, from the collisions and combinations of these, it derives\nthe existence and the mode of being of all particular phenomena,\nsupposing that all depends upon how these atoms are agglomerated,\nhow they act, how they are affected; our own impulses and states,\neven, are supposed to be determined by these principles.\n\nSuch teaching, then, obtrudes this compulsion, an atomic Anagke,\neven upon Real Being. Substitute, for the atoms, any other material\nentities as principles and the cause of all things, and at once Real\nBeing becomes servile to the determination set up by them.\n\nOthers rise to the first-principle of all that exists and from\nit derive all they tell of a cause penetrating all things, not\nmerely moving all but making each and everything; but they pose this\nas a fate and a supremely dominating cause; not merely all else that\ncomes into being, but even our own thinking and thoughts would\nspring from its movement, just as the several members of an animal\nmove not at their own choice but at the dictation of the leading\nprinciple which animal life presupposes.\n\nYet another school fastens on the universal Circuit as embracing\nall things and producing all by its motion and by the positions and\nmutual aspect of the planets and fixed stars in whose power of\nforetelling they find warrant for the belief that this Circuit is\nthe universal determinant.\n\nFinally, there are those that dwell on the interconnection of\nthe causative forces and on their linked descent- every later\nphenomenon following upon an earlier, one always leading back to\nothers by which it arose and without which it could not be, and the\nlatest always subservient to what went before them- but this is\nobviously to bring in fate by another path. This school may be\nfairly distinguished into two branches; a section which makes all\ndepend upon some one principle and a section which ignores such a\nunity.\n\nOf this last opinion we will have something to say, but for the\nmoment we will deal with the former, taking the others in their turn.\n\n\n## Section 3\n\n\n##### Section 3\n\n3. \"Atoms\" or \"elements\"- it is in either case an absurdity, an\nimpossibility, to hand over the universe and its contents to\nmaterial entities, and out of the disorderly swirl thus occasioned\nto call order, reasoning, and the governing soul into being; but the\natomic origin is, if we may use the phrase, the most impossible.\n\nA good deal of truth has resulted from the discussion of this\nsubject; but, even to admit such principles does not compel us to\nadmit universal compulsion or any kind of \"fate.\"\n\nSuppose the atoms to exist:\n\nThese atoms are to move, one downwards- admitting a down and an\nup- another slant-wise, all at haphazard, in a confused conflict.\nNothing here is orderly; order has not come into being, though the\noutcome, this Universe, when it achieves existence, is all order;\nand thus prediction and divination are utterly impossible, whether\nby the laws of the science- what science can operate where\nthere is no\norder?- or by divine possession and inspiration, which no\nless require\nthat the future be something regulated.\n\nMaterial entities exposed to all this onslaught may very well be\nunder compulsion to yield to whatsoever the atoms may bring:\nbut would\nanyone pretend that the acts and states of a soul or mind could be\nexplained by any atomic movements? How can we imagine that the\nonslaught of an atom, striking downwards or dashing in from any\ndirection, could force the soul to definite and necessary reasonings\nor impulses or into any reasonings, impulses or thoughts at all,\nnecessary or otherwise? And what of the soul's resistance to bodily\nstates? What movement of atoms could compel one man to be a\ngeometrician, set another studying arithmetic or astronomy, lead a\nthird to the philosophic life? In a word, if we must go,\nlike soulless\nbodies, wherever bodies push and drive us, there is an end to our\npersonal act and to our very existence as living beings.\n\nThe School that erects other material forces into\nuniversal causes\nis met by the same reasoning: we say that while these can warm us\nand chill us, and destroy weaker forms of existence, they can be\ncauses of nothing that is done in the sphere of mind or\nsoul: all this\nmust be traceable to quite another kind of Principle.\n\n\n## Section 4\n\n\n##### Section 4\n\n4. Another theory:\n\nThe Universe is permeated by one Soul, Cause of all things and\nevents; every separate phenomenon as a member of a whole moves in\nits place with the general movement; all the various causes spring\ninto action from one source: therefore, it is argued, the entire\ndescending claim of causes and all their interaction must follow\ninevitably and so constitute a universal determination. A plant\nrises from a root, and we are asked on that account to\nreason that not\nonly the interconnection linking the root to all the members\nand every\nmember to every other but the entire activity and experience of the\nplant, as well, must be one organized overruling, a \"destiny\" of the\nplant.\n\nBut such an extremity of determination, a destiny so\nall-pervasive, does away with the very destiny that is affirmed: it\nshatters the sequence and co-operation of causes.\n\nIt would be unreasonable to attribute to destiny the movement of\nour limbs dictated by the mind and will: this is no case of\nsomething outside bestowing motion while another thing accepts it\nand is thus set into action; the mind itself is the prime mover.\n\nSimilarly in the case of the universal system; if all that\nperforms act and is subject to experience constitutes one substance,\nif one thing does not really produce another thing under causes\nleading back continuously one to another, then it is not a truth\nthat all happens by causes, there is nothing but a rigid\nunity. We are\nno \"We\": nothing is our act; our thought is not ours; our decisions\nare the reasoning of something outside ourselves; we are no more\nagents than our feet are kickers when we use them to kick with.\n\nNo; each several thing must be a separate thing; there must be\nacts and thoughts that are our own; the good and evil done by each\nhuman being must be his own; and it is quite certain that we must\nnot lay any vileness to the charge of the All.\n\n\n## Section 5\n\n\n##### Section 5\n\n5. But perhaps the explanation of every particular act\nor event is\nrather that they are determined by the spheric movement- the Phora-\nand by the changing position of the heavenly bodies as these stand\nat setting or rising or in mid-course and in various aspects\nwith each\nother.\n\nAugury, it is urged, is able from these indications to foretell\nwhat is to happen not merely to the universe as a whole, but even to\nindividuals, and this not merely as regards external conditions of\nfortune but even as to the events of the mind. We observe, too, how\ngrowth or check in other orders of beings- animals and Plants- is\ndetermined by their sympathetic relations with the heavenly\nbodies and\nhow widely they are influenced by them, how, for example, the\nvarious countries show a different produce according to their\nsituation on the earth and especially their lie towards the sun. And\nthe effect of place is not limited to plants and animals; it rules\nhuman beings too, determining their appearance, their height and\ncolour, their mentality and their desires, their pursuits and their\nmoral habit. Thus the universal circuit would seem to be the monarch\nof the All.\n\nNow a first answer to this theory is that its advocates have\nmerely devised another shift to immolate to the heavenly bodies all\nthat is ours, our acts of will and our states, all the evil\nin us, our\nentire personality; nothing is allowed to us; we are left to\nbe stones\nset rolling, not men, not beings whose nature implies a task.\n\nBut we must be allowed our own- with the understanding that to\nwhat is primarily ours, our personal holding, there is added some\ninflux from the All- the distinction must be made between our\nindividual act and what is thrust upon us: we are not to be\nimmolated to the stars.\n\nPlace and climate, no doubt, produce constitutions warmer or\ncolder; and the parents tell on the offspring, as is seen in the\nresemblance between them, very general in personal appearance and\nnoted also in some of the unreflecting states of the mind.\n\nNone the less, in spite of physical resemblance and similar\nenvironment, we observe the greatest difference in temperament and\nin ideas: this side of the human being, then, derives from some\nquite other Principle [than any external causation or destiny]. A\nfurther confirmation is found in the efforts we make to correct both\nbodily constitution and mental aspirations.\n\nIf the stars are held to be causing principles on the ground of\nthe possibility of foretelling individual fate or fortune from\nobservation of their positions, then the birds and all the other\nthings which the soothsayer observes for divination must equally be\ntaken as causing what they indicate.\n\nSome further considerations will help to clarify this matter:\n\nThe heavens are observed at the moment of a birth and the\nindividual fate is thence predicted in the idea that the stars are\nno mere indications, but active causes, of the future events.\nSometimes the Astrologers tell of noble birth; \"the child is born of\nhighly placed parents\"; yet how is it possible to make out the stars\nto be causes of a condition which existed in the father and mother\npreviously to that star pattern on which the prediction is based?\n\nAnd consider still further:\n\nThey are really announcing the fortunes of parents from the\nbirth of children; the character and career of children are included\nin the predictions as to the parents- they predict for the yet\nunborn!- in the lot of one brother they are foretelling the death of\nanother; a girl's fate includes that of a future husband, a\nboy's that\nof a wife.\n\nNow, can we think that the star-grouping over any\nparticular birth\ncan be the cause of what stands already announced in the facts about\nthe parents? Either the previous star-groupings were the\ndeterminants of the child's future career or, if they were not, then\nneither is the immediate grouping. And notice further that physical\nlikeness to the parents- the Astrologers hold- is of purely domestic\norigin: this implies that ugliness and beauty are so caused\nand not by\nastral movements.\n\nAgain, there must at one and the same time be a widespread\ncoming to birth- men, and the most varied forms of animal life at\nthe same moment- and these should all be under the one destiny since\nthe one pattern rules at the moment; how explain that identical\nstar-groupings give here the human form, there the animal?\n\n\n## Section 6\n\n\n##### Section 6\n\n6. But in fact everything follows its own Kind; the birth is a\nhorse because it comes from the Horse Kind, a man by springing from\nthe Human Kind; offspring answers to species. Allow the\nkosmic circuit\nits part, a very powerful influence upon the thing brought\ninto being:\nallow the stars a wide material action upon the bodily part of the\nman, producing heat and cold and their natural resultants in the\nphysical constitution; still does such action explain character,\nvocation and especially all that seems quite independent of material\nelements, a man taking to letters, to geometry, to gambling, and\nbecoming an originator in any of these pursuits? And can we imagine\nthe stars, divine beings, bestowing wickedness? And what of\na doctrine\nthat makes them wreak vengeance, as for a wrong, because they are in\ntheir decline or are being carried to a position beneath the\nearth- as\nif a decline from our point of view brought any change to\nthemselves, as if they ever ceased to traverse the heavenly spheres\nand to make the same figure around the earth.\n\nNor may we think that these divine beings lose or gain\nin goodness\nas they see this one or another of the company in various\naspects, and\nthat in their happier position they are benignant to us and, less\npleasantly situated, turn maleficent. We can but believe that their\ncircuit is for the protection of the entirety of things while they\nfurnish the incidental service of being letters on which the augur,\nacquainted with that alphabet, may look and read the future\nfrom their\npattern- arriving at the thing signified by such analogies as that a\nsoaring bird tells of some lofty event.\n\n\n## Section 7\n\n\n##### Section 7\n\n7. It remains to notice the theory of the one Causing-Principle\nalleged to interweave everything with everything else, to make\nthings into a chain, to determine the nature and condition of each\nphenomenon- a Principle which, acting through seminal Reason-Forms-\nLogoi Spermatikoi- elaborates all that exists and happens.\n\nThe doctrine is close to that which makes the Soul of\nthe Universe\nthe source and cause of all condition and of all movement whether\nwithout or- supposing that we are allowed as individuals some little\npower towards personal act- within ourselves.\n\nBut it is the theory of the most rigid and universal Necessity:\nall the causative forces enter into the system, and so every several\nphenomenon rises necessarily; where nothing escapes Destiny, nothing\nhas power to check or to change. Such forces beating upon us, as it\nwere, from one general cause leave us no resource but to go\nwhere they\ndrive. All our ideas will be determined by a chain of\nprevious causes;\nour doings will be determined by those ideas; personal action\nbecomes a mere word. That we are the agents does not save our\nfreedom when our action is prescribed by those causes; we have\nprecisely what belongs to everything that lives, to infants guided\nby blind impulses, to lunatics; all these act; why, even fire acts;\nthere is act in everything that follows the plan of its being,\nservilely.\n\nNo one that sees the implications of this theory can hesitate:\nunable to halt at such a determinant principle, we seek for other\nexplanations of our action.\n\n\n## Section 8\n\n\n##### Section 8\n\n8. What can this other cause be; one standing above those\ntreated of; one that leaves nothing causeless, that\npreserves sequence\nand order in the Universe and yet allows ourselves some reality and\nleaves room for prediction and augury?\n\nSoul: we must place at the crest of the world of beings, this\nother Principle, not merely the Soul of the Universe but, included\nin it, the Soul of the individual: this, no mean Principle, is\nneeded to be the bond of union in the total of things, not, itself,\na thing sprung like things from life-seeds, but a first-hand Cause,\nbodiless and therefore supreme over itself, free, beyond the reach\nof kosmic Cause: for, brought into body, it would not be\nunrestrictedly sovereign; it would hold rank in a series.\n\nNow the environment into which this independent principle\nenters, when it comes to this midpoint, will be largely led by\nsecondary causes [or, by chance-causes]: there will therefore be a\ncompromise; the action of the Soul will be in part guided by this\nenvironment while in other matters it will be sovereign, leading the\nway where it will. The nobler Soul will have the greater power; the\npoorer Soul, the lesser. A soul which defers to the bodily\ntemperament\ncannot escape desire and rage and is abject in poverty,\noverbearing in\nwealth, arbitrary in power. The soul of nobler nature holds good\nagainst its surroundings; it is more apt to change them than to be\nchanged, so that often it improves the environment and, where it\nmust make concession, at least keeps its innocence.\n\n\n## Section 9\n\n\n##### Section 9\n\n9. We admit, then, a Necessity in all that is brought about by\nthis compromise between evil and accidental circumstance: what room\nwas there for anything else than the thing that is? Given all the\ncauses, all must happen beyond aye or nay- that is, all the external\nand whatever may be due to the sidereal circuit- therefore when the\nSoul has been modified by outer forces and acts under that\npressure so\nthat what it does is no more than an unreflecting acceptance of\nstimulus, neither the act nor the state can be described as\nvoluntary:\nso, too, when even from within itself, it falls at times below its\nbest and ignores the true, the highest, laws of action.\n\nBut when our Soul holds to its Reason-Principle, to the guide,\npure and detached and native to itself, only then can we speak of\npersonal operation, of voluntary act. Things so done may truly be\ndescribed as our doing, for they have no other source; they are the\nissue of the unmingled Soul, a Principle that is a First, a leader,\na sovereign not subject to the errors of ignorance, not to be\noverthrown by the tyranny of the desires which, where they can break\nin, drive and drag, so as to allow of no act of ours, but mere\nanswer to stimulus.\n\n\n## Section 10\n\n\n##### Section 10\n\n10. To sum the results of our argument: All things and events\nare foreshown and brought into being by causes; but the causation is\nof two Kinds; there are results originating from the Soul and\nresults due to other causes, those of the environment.\n\nIn the action of our Souls all that is done of their own\nmotion in\nthe light of sound reason is the Soul's work, while what is\ndone where\nthey are hindered from their own action is not so much done as\nsuffered. Unwisdom, then, is not due to the Soul, and, in general-\nif we mean by Fate a compulsion outside ourselves- an act is fated\nwhen it is contrary to wisdom.\n\nBut all our best is of our own doing: such is our nature as long\nas we remain detached. The wise and good do perform acts; their\nright action is the expression of their own power: in the others it\ncomes in the breathing spaces when the passions are in abeyance; but\nit is not that they draw this occasional wisdom from outside\nthemselves; simply, they are for the time being unhindered.",
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