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    "slug": "ennead-3",
    "name": "Ennead III — Cosmos, Time, Providence"
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    "num": 4,
    "slug": "4-our-tutelary-spirit",
    "title": "III.4 — Our Tutelary Spirit (Daemon)",
    "of": 9,
    "words": 2662,
    "text": "## FOURTH TRACTATE\n\n\n#### FOURTH TRACTATE.\n\nOUR TUTELARY SPIRIT.\n\n\n## Section 1\n\n\n##### Section 1\n\n1. Some Existents [Absolute Unity and Intellectual-Principle]\nremain at rest while their Hypostases, or Expressed-Idea, come into\nbeing; but, in our view, the Soul generates by its motion,\nto which is\ndue the sensitive faculty- that in any of its\nexpression-forms- Nature\nand all forms of life down to the vegetable order. Even as it is\npresent in human beings the Soul carries its Expression-form\n[Hypostasis] with it, but is not the dominant since it is not the\nwhole man (humanity including the Intellectual Principal, as\nwell): in\nthe vegetable order it is the highest since there is nothing to\nrival it; but at this phase it is no longer reproductive, or, at\nleast, what it produces is of quite another order; here life ceases;\nall later production is lifeless.\n\nWhat does this imply?\n\nEverything the Soul engenders down to this point comes into\nbeing shapeless, and takes form by orientation towards its author\nand supporter: therefore the thing engendered on the further side\ncan be no image of the Soul, since it is not even alive; it\nmust be an\nutter Indetermination. No doubt even in things of the nearer order\nthere was indetermination, but within a form; they were undetermined\nnot utterly but only in contrast with their perfect state: at this\nextreme point we have the utter lack of determination. Let it be\nraised to its highest degree and it becomes body by taking such\nshape as serves its scope; then it becomes the recipient of\nits author\nand sustainer: this presence in body is the only example of the\nboundaries of Higher Existents running into the boundary of\nthe Lower.\n\n\n## Section 2\n\n\n##### Section 2\n\n2. It is of this Soul especially that we read \"All Soul has care\nfor the Soulless\"- though the several Souls thus care in their own\ndegree and way. The passage continues- \"Soul passes through\nthe entire\nheavens in forms varying with the variety of place\"- the sensitive\nform, the reasoning form, even the vegetative form- and this means\nthat in each \"place\" the phase of the soul there dominant carries\nout its own ends while the rest, not present there, is idle.\n\nNow, in humanity the lower is not supreme; it is an\naccompaniment;\nbut neither does the better rule unfailingly; the lower element also\nhas a footing, and Man, therefore, lives in part under sensation,\nfor he has the organs of sensation, and in large part even by the\nmerely vegetative principle, for the body grows and propagates: all\nthe graded phases are in a collaboration, but the entire form, man,\ntakes rank by the dominant, and when the life-principle leaves the\nbody it is what it is, what it most intensely lived.\n\nThis is why we must break away towards the High: we dare not\nkeep ourselves set towards the sensuous principle, following the\nimages of sense, or towards the merely vegetative, intent upon the\ngratifications of eating and procreation; our life must be pointed\ntowards the Intellective, towards the Intellectual-Principle,\ntowards God.\n\nThose that have maintained the human level are men once more.\nThose that have lived wholly to sense become animals-\ncorresponding in\nspecies to the particular temper of the life- ferocious animals\nwhere the sensuality has been accompanied by a certain measure of\nspirit, gluttonous and lascivious animals where all has been\nappetite and satiation of appetite. Those who in their pleasures\nhave not even lived by sensation, but have gone their way in a\ntorpid grossness become mere growing things, for this lethargy is\nthe entire act of the vegetative, and such men have been busy\nbe-treeing themselves. Those, we read, that, otherwise untainted,\nhave loved song become vocal animals; kings ruling unreasonably but\nwith no other vice are eagles; futile and flighty visionaries ever\nsoaring skyward, become highflying birds; observance of civic and\nsecular virtue makes man again, or where the merit is less\nmarked, one\nof the animals of communal tendency, a bee or the like.\n\n\n## Section 3\n\n\n##### Section 3\n\n3. What, then, is the spirit [guiding the present life and\ndetermining the future]?\n\nThe Spirit of here and now.\n\nAnd the God?\n\nThe God of here and now.\n\nSpirit, God; This in act within us, conducts every life;\nfor, even\nhere and now, it is the dominant of our Nature.\n\nThat is to say that the dominant is the spirit which takes\npossession of the human being at birth?\n\nNo: the dominant is the Prior of the individual spirit; it\npresides inoperative while its secondary acts: so that if the acting\nforce is that of men of the sense-life, the tutelary spirit is the\nRational Being, while if we live by that Rational Being, our\ntutelary Spirit is the still higher Being, not directly operative\nbut assenting to the working principle. The words \"You shall\nyourselves choose\" are true, then; for by our life we elect our own\nloftier.\n\nBut how does this spirit come to be the determinant of our fate?\n\nIt is not when the life is ended that it conducts us here or\nthere; it operates during the lifetime; when we cease to live, our\ndeath hands over to another principle this energy of our own\npersonal career.\n\nThat principle [of the new birth] strives to gain control, and\nif it succeeds it also lives and itself, in turn, possesses a\nguiding spirit [its next higher]: if on the contrary it is weighed\ndown by the developed evil in the character, the spirit of the\nprevious life pays the penalty: the evil-liver loses grade because\nduring his life the active principle of his being took the tilt\ntowards the brute by force of affinity. If, on the contrary, the Man\nis able to follow the leading of his higher Spirit, he\nrises: he lives\nthat Spirit; that noblest part of himself to which he is being led\nbecomes sovereign in his life; this made his own, he works for the\nnext above until he has attained the height.\n\nFor the Soul is many things, is all, is the Above and the\nBeneath to the totality of life: and each of us is an Intellectual\nKosmos, linked to this world by what is lowest in us, but, by what\nis the highest, to the Divine Intellect: by all that is intellective\nwe are permanently in that higher realm, but at the fringe of the\nIntellectual we are fettered to the lower; it is as if we gave forth\nfrom it some emanation towards that lower, or, rather some Act,\nwhich however leaves our diviner part not in itself diminished.\n\n\n## Section 4\n\n\n##### Section 4\n\n4. But is this lower extremity of our intellective phase\nfettered to body for ever?\n\nNo: if we turn, this turns by the same act.\n\nAnd the Soul of the All- are we to think that when it turns from\nthis sphere its lower phase similarly withdraws?\n\nNo: for it never accompanied that lower phase of itself; it\nnever knew any coming, and therefore never came down; it remains\nunmoved above, and the material frame of the Universe draws close to\nit, and, as it were, takes light from it, no hindrance to it, in no\nway troubling it, simply lying unmoved before it.\n\nBut has the Universe, then, no sensation? \"It has no Sight,\" we\nread, since it has no eyes, and obviously it has not ears, nostrils,\nor tongue. Then has it perhaps such a consciousness as we have of\nour own inner conditions?\n\nNo: where all is the working out of one nature, there is nothing\nbut still rest; there is not even enjoyment. Sensibility is\npresent as\nthe quality of growth is, unrecognized. But the Nature of the World\nwill be found treated elsewhere; what stands here is all that the\nquestion of the moment demands.\n\n\n## Section 5\n\n\n##### Section 5\n\n5. But if the presiding Spirit and the conditions of life are\nchosen by the Soul in the overworld, how can anything be left to\nour independent action here?\n\nThe answer is that very choice in the over-world is merely an\nallegorical statement of the Soul's tendency and temperament, a\ntotal character which it must express wherever it operates.\n\nBut if the tendency of the Soul is the master-force and, in the\nSoul, the dominant is that phase which has been brought to\nthe fore by\na previous history, then the body stands acquitted of any bad\ninfluence upon it? The Soul's quality exists before any bodily life;\nit has exactly what it chose to have; and, we read, it never changes\nits chosen spirit; therefore neither the good man nor the bad is the\nproduct of this life?\n\nIs the solution, perhaps, that man is potentially both good and\nbad but becomes the one or the other by force of act?\n\nBut what if a man temperamentally good happens to enter a\ndisordered body, or if a perfect body falls to a man naturally\nvicious?\n\nThe answer is that the Soul, to whichever side it\ninclines, has in\nsome varying degree the power of working the forms of body\nover to its\nown temper, since outlying and accidental circumstances cannot\noverrule the entire decision of a Soul. Where we read that, after\nthe casting of lots, the sample lives are exhibited with the casual\ncircumstances attending them and that the choice is made upon\nvision, in accordance with the individual temperament, we\nare given to\nunderstand that the real determination lies with the Souls, who\nadapt the allotted conditions to their own particular quality.\n\nThe Timaeus indicates the relation of this guiding spirit to\nourselves: it is not entirely outside of ourselves; is not bound up\nwith our nature; is not the agent in our action; it belongs to us as\nbelonging to our Soul, but not in so far as we are particular human\nbeings living a life to which it is superior: take the\npassage in this\nsense and it is consistent; understand this Spirit otherwise\nand there\nis contradiction. And the description of the Spirit,\nmoreover, as \"the\npower which consummates the chosen life,\" is, also, in agreement\nwith this interpretation; for while its presidency saves us from\nfalling much deeper into evil, the only direct agent within\nus is some\nthing neither above it nor equal to it but under it: Man cannot\ncease to be characteristically Man.\n\n\n## Section 6\n\n\n##### Section 6\n\n6. What, then, is the achieved Sage?\n\nOne whose Act is determined by the higher phase of the Soul.\n\nIt does not suffice to perfect virtue to have only this Spirit\n[equivalent in all men] as cooperator in the life: the\nacting force in\nthe Sage is the Intellective Principle [the diviner phase of\nthe human\nSoul] which therefore is itself his presiding spirit or is\nguided by a\npresiding spirit of its own, no other than the very Divinity.\n\nBut this exalts the Sage above the Intellectual Principle as\npossessing for presiding spirit the Prior to the Intellectual\nPrinciple: how then does it come about that he was not, from the\nvery beginning, all that he now is?\n\nThe failure is due to the disturbance caused by birth- though,\nbefore all reasoning, there exists the instinctive movement reaching\nout towards its own.\n\nOn instinct which the Sage finally rectifies in every respect?\n\nNot in every respect: the Soul is so constituted that its\nlife-history and its general tendency will answer not merely to its\nown nature but also to the conditions among which it acts.\n\nThe presiding Spirit, as we read, conducting a Soul to the\nUnderworld ceases to be its guardian- except when the Soul\nresumes [in\nits later choice] the former state of life.\n\nBut, meanwhile, what happens to it?\n\nFrom the passage [in the Phaedo] which tells how it presents the\nSoul to judgement we gather that after the death it resumes the form\nit had before the birth, but that then, beginning again, it\nis present\nto the Souls in their punishment during the period of their renewed\nlife- a time not so much of living as of expiation.\n\nBut the Souls that enter into brute bodies, are they\ncontrolled by\nsome thing less than this presiding Spirit? No: theirs is still a\nSpirit, but an evil or a foolish one.\n\nAnd the Souls that attain to the highest?\n\nOf these higher Souls some live in the world of Sense, some\nabove it: and those in the world of Sense inhabit the Sun or another\nof the planetary bodies; the others occupy the fixed Sphere\n[above the\nplanetary] holding the place they have merited through having lived\nhere the superior life of reason.\n\nWe must understand that, while our Souls do contain an\nIntellectual Kosmos they also contain a subordination of\nvarious forms\nlike that of the Kosmic Soul. The world Soul is distributed so as to\nproduce the fixed sphere and the planetary circuits corresponding to\nits graded powers: so with our Souls; they must have their provinces\naccording to their different powers, parallel to those of the World\nSoul: each must give out its own special act; released, each will\ninhabit there a star consonant with the temperament and\nfaculty in act\nwithin and constituting the principle of the life; and this star or\nthe next highest power will stand to them as God or more exactly as\ntutelary spirit.\n\nBut here some further precision is needed.\n\nEmancipated Souls, for the whole period of their sojourn there\nabove, have transcended the Spirit-nature and the entire fatality of\nbirth and all that belongs to this visible world, for they have\ntaken up with them that Hypostasis of the Soul in which the desire\nof earthly life is vested. This Hypostasis may be described as the\ndistributable Soul, for it is what enters bodily forms and\nmultiplies itself by this division among them. But its\ndistribution is\nnot a matter of magnitudes; wherever it is present, there is the\nsame thing present entire; its unity can always be\nreconstructed: when\nliving things- animal or vegetal- produce their constant\nsuccession of\nnew forms, they do so in virtue of the self-distribution of\nthis phase\nof the Soul, for it must be as much distributed among the\nnew forms as\nthe propagating originals are. In some cases it communicates\nits force\nby permanent presence the life principle in plants for instance- in\nother cases it withdraws after imparting its virtue- for instance\nwhere from the putridity of dead animal or vegetable matter a\nmultitudinous birth is produced from one organism.\n\nA power corresponding to this in the All must reach down and\nco-operate in the life of our world- in fact the very same power.\n\nIf the Soul returns to this Sphere it finds itself under the\nsame Spirit or a new, according to the life it is to live. With this\nSpirit it embarks in the skiff of the universe: the \"spindle of\nNecessity\" then takes control and appoints the seat for the voyage,\nthe seat of the lot in life.\n\nThe Universal circuit is like a breeze, and the voyager, still\nor stirring, is carried forward by it. He has a hundred varied\nexperiences, fresh sights, changing circumstances, all sorts of\nevents. The vessel itself furnishes incident, tossing as it\ndrives on.\nAnd the voyager also acts of himself in virtue of that individuality\nwhich he retains because he is on the vessel in his own person and\ncharacter. Under identical circumstances individuals answer very\ndifferently in their movements and acts: hence it comes\nabout that, be\nthe occurrences and conditions of life similar or dissimilar, the\nresult may differ from man to man, as on the other hand a similar\nresult may be produced by dissimilar conditions: this\n(personal answer\nto incident) it is that constitutes destiny.",
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