{
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    "schema_version": "1.1",
    "endpoint": "/api/sources/plotinus-enneads/ennead-4/1-on-the-essence-of-the-soul-1.json"
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  "work": {
    "slug": "ennead-4",
    "name": "Ennead IV — On the Soul"
  },
  "parents": [
    {
      "slug": "plotinus-enneads",
      "name": "Enneads",
      "url": "/sources/plotinus-enneads/"
    }
  ],
  "chapter": {
    "num": 1,
    "slug": "1-on-the-essence-of-the-soul-1",
    "title": "IV.1 — On the Essence of the Soul (1)",
    "of": 9,
    "words": 311,
    "text": "## FIRST TRACTATE\n\n\n#### FIRST TRACTATE.\n\nON THE ESSENCE OF THE SOUL (1).\n\n\n## Section 1\n\n\n##### Section 1\n\n1. In the Intellectual Kosmos dwells Authentic Essence, with the\nIntellectual-Principle [Divine Mind] as the noblest of its content,\nbut containing also souls, since every soul in this lower sphere has\ncome thence: that is the world of unembodied spirits while to our\nworld belong those that have entered body and undergone bodily\ndivision.\n\nThere the Intellectual-Principle is a concentrated all-\nnothing of\nit distinguished or divided- and in that kosmos of unity all\nsouls are\nconcentrated also, with no spatial discrimination.\n\nBut there is a difference:\n\nThe Intellectual-Principle is for ever repugnant to distinction\nand to partition. Soul, there without distinction and partition, has\nyet a nature lending itself to divisional existence: its division is\nsecession, entry into body.\n\nIn view of this seceding and the ensuing partition we may\nlegitimately speak of it as a partible thing.\n\nBut if so, how can it still be described as indivisible?\n\nIn that the secession is not of the soul entire; something of it\nholds its ground, that in it which recoils from separate existence.\n\nThe entity, therefore, described as \"consisting of the undivided\nsoul and of the soul divided among bodies,\" contains a soul which is\nat once above and below, attached to the Supreme and yet\nreaching down\nto this sphere, like a radius from a centre.\n\nThus it is that, entering this realm, it possesses still the\nvision inherent to that superior phase in virtue of which it\nunchangingly maintains its integral nature. Even here it is not\nexclusively the partible soul: it is still the impartible as well:\nwhat in it knows partition is parted without partibility;\nundivided as\ngiving itself to the entire body, a whole to a whole, it is\ndivided as\nbeing effective in every part.",
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    "license": null,
    "methodology_url": null
  }
}