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  "work": {
    "slug": "ennead-4",
    "name": "Ennead IV — On the Soul"
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      "slug": "plotinus-enneads",
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  "chapter": {
    "num": 7,
    "slug": "7-the-immortality-of-the-soul",
    "title": "IV.7 — On the Immortality of the Soul",
    "of": 9,
    "words": 7951,
    "text": "## SEVENTH TRACTATE\n\n\n#### SEVENTH TRACTATE.\n\nTHE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL.\n\n\n## Section 1\n\n\n##### Section 1\n\n1. Whether every human being is immortal or we are wholly\ndestroyed, or whether something of us passes over to dissolution and\ndestruction, while something else, that which is the true\nman, endures\nfor ever- this question will be answered here for those willing to\ninvestigate our nature.\n\nWe know that man is not a thing of one only element; he\nhas a soul\nand he has, whether instrument or adjunct in some other mode, a\nbody: this is the first distinction; it remains to investigate the\nnature and essential being of these two constituents.\n\nReason tells us that the body as, itself too, a composite,\ncannot for ever hold together; and our senses show us it breaking\nup, wearing out, the victim of destructive agents of many kinds,\neach of its constituents going its own way, one part working against\nanother, perverting, wrecking, and this especially when the material\nmasses are no longer presided over by the reconciling soul.\n\nAnd when each single constituent is taken as a thing apart, it\nis still not a unity; for it is divisible into shape and matter, the\nduality without which bodies at their very simplest cannot cohere.\n\nThe mere fact that, as material forms, they have bulk means that\nthey can be lopped and crushed and so come to destruction.\n\nIf this body, then, is really a part of us, we are not wholly\nimmortal; if it is an instrument of ours, then, as a thing put at\nour service for a certain time, it must be in its nature passing.\n\nThe sovereign principle, the authentic man, will be as Form to\nthis Matter or as agent to this instrument, and thus, whatever that\nrelation be, the soul is the man.\n\n\n## Section 2\n\n\n##### Section 2\n\n2. But of what nature is this sovereign principle?\n\nIf material, then definitely it must fall apart; for every\nmaterial entity, at least, is something put together.\n\nIf it is not material but belongs to some other Kind, that new\nsubstance must be investigated in the same way or by some more\nsuitable method.\n\nBut our first need is to discover into what this material form,\nsince such the soul is to be, can dissolve.\n\nNow: of necessity life is inherent to soul: this material\nentity, then, which we call soul must have life ingrained within it;\nbut [being a composite as by hypothesis, material] it must be made\nup of two or more bodies; that life, then, will be vested, either in\neach and all of those bodies or in one of them to the\nexclusion of the\nother or others; if this be not so, then there is no life present\nanywhere.\n\nIf any one of them contains this ingrained life, that one is the\nsoul. But what sort of an entity have we there; what is this body\nwhich of its own nature possesses soul?\n\nFire, air, water, earth, are in themselves soulless-\nwhenever soul\nis in any of them, that life is borrowed- and there are no\nother forms\nof body than these four: even the school that believes there are has\nalways held them to be bodies, not souls, and to be without life.\n\nNone of these, then, having life, it would be extraordinary if\nlife came about by bringing them together; it is impossible, in\nfact, that the collocation of material entities should produce life,\nor mindless entities mind.\n\nNo one, moreover, would pretend that a mere chance mixing could\ngive such results: some regulating principle would be necessary,\nsome Cause directing the admixture: that guiding principle would be-\nsoul.\n\nBody- not merely because it is a composite, but even were it\nsimplex- could not exist unless there were soul in the universe, for\nbody owes its being to the entrance of a Reason-Principle\ninto Matter,\nand only from soul can a Reason-Principle come.\n\n\n## Section 3\n\n\n##### Section 3\n\n3. Anyone who rejects this view, and holds that either atoms or\nsome entities void of part coming together produce soul, is\nrefuted by\nthe very unity of soul and by the prevailing sympathy as much as by\nthe very coherence of the constituents. Bodily materials, in nature\nrepugnant to unification and to sensation, could never produce unity\nor self-sensitiveness, and soul is self-sensitive. And, again,\nconstituents void of part could never produce body or bulk.\n\nPerhaps we will be asked to consider body as a simple entity\n[disregarding the question of any constituent elements]: they will\ntell us, then, that no doubt, as purely material, it cannot have a\nself-springing life- since matter is without quality- but\nthat life is\nintroduced by the fact that the Matter is brought to order under\nForming-Idea. But if by this Forming-Idea they mean an essential, a\nreal being, then it is not the conjoint of body and idea that\nconstitutes soul: it must be one of the two items and that one,\nbeing [by hypothesis] outside of the Matter, cannot be body: to make\nit body would simply force us to repeat our former analysis.\n\nIf on the contrary they do not mean by this Forming-Idea a real\nbeing, but some condition or modification of the Matter, they must\ntell us how and whence this modification, with resultant life, can\nhave found the way into the Matter: for very certainly\nMatter does not\nmould itself to pattern or bring itself to life.\n\nIt becomes clear that since neither Matter nor body in any mode\nhas this power, life must be brought upon the stage by some\ndirecting principle external and transcendent to all that is\ncorporeal.\n\nIn fact, body itself could not exist in any form if\nsoul-power did\nnot: body passes; dissolution is in its very nature; all would\ndisappear in a twinkling if all were body. It is no help to\nerect some\none mode of body into soul; made of the same Matter as the rest,\nthis soul body would fall under the same fate: of course it could\nnever really exist: the universe of things would halt at the\nmaterial,\nfailing something to bring Matter to shape.\n\nNay more: Matter itself could not exist: the totality of\nthings in\nthis sphere is dissolved if it be made to depend upon the\ncoherence of\na body which, though elevated to the nominal rank of \"soul,\" remains\nair, fleeting breath [the Stoic pneuma, rarefied matter, \"spirit\" in\nthe lower sense], whose very unity is not drawn from itself.\n\nAll bodies are in ceaseless process of dissolution; how can the\nkosmos be made over to any one of them without being turned into a\nsenseless haphazard drift? This pneuma- orderless except under soul-\nhow can it contain order, reason, intelligence? But: given soul, all\nthese material things become its collaborators towards the coherence\nof the kosmos and of every living being, all the qualities of all\nthe separate objects converging to the purposes of the universe:\nfailing soul in the things of the universe, they could not\neven exist,\nmuch less play their ordered parts.\n\n\n## Section 4\n\n\n##### Section 4\n\n4. Our opponents themselves are driven by stress of fact to\nadmit the necessity of a prior to body, a higher thing, some phase\nor form of soul; their \"pneuma\" [finer-body or spirit] is\nintelligent,\nand they speak of an \"intellectual fire\"; this \"fire\" and \"spirit\"\nthey imagine to be necessary to the existence of the higher order\nwhich they conceive as demanding some base, though the real\ndifficulty, under their theory, is to find a base for material\nthings whose only possible base is, precisely, the powers of soul.\n\nBesides, if they make life and soul no more than this \"pneuma,\"\nwhat is the import of that repeated qualification of theirs \"in a\ncertain state,\" their refuge when they are compelled to\nrecognize some\nacting principle apart from body? If not every pneuma is a soul, but\nthousands of them soulless, and only the pneuma in this \"certain\nstate\" is soul, what follows? Either this \"certain state,\" this\nshaping or configuration of things, is a real being or it is nothing.\n\nIf it is nothing, only the pneuma exists, the \"certain state\"\nbeing no more than a word; this leads imperatively to the assertion\nthat Matter alone exists, Soul and God mere words, the lowest alone\nis.\n\nIf on the contrary this \"configuration\" is really existent-\nsomething distinct from the underlie or Matter, something residing\nin Matter but itself immaterial as not constructed out of\nMatter, then\nit must be a Reason-Principle, incorporeal, a separate Nature.\n\nThere are other equally cogent proofs that the soul cannot be\nany form of body.\n\nBody is either warm or cold, hard or soft, liquid or solid,\nblack or white, and so on through all the qualities by which one is\ndifferent from another; and, again, if a body is warm it\ndiffuses only\nwarmth, if cold it can only chill, if light its presence\ntells against\nthe total weight which if heavy it increases; black, it darkens;\nwhite, it lightens; fire has not the property of chilling or a cold\nbody that of warming.\n\nSoul, on the contrary, operates diversely in different living\nbeings, and has quite contrary effects in any one: its productions\ncontain the solid and the soft, the dense and the sparse, bright and\ndark, heavy and light. If it were material, its quality- and the\ncolour it must have- would produce one invariable effect and not the\nvariety actually observed.\n\n\n## Section 5\n\n\n##### Section 5\n\n5. Again, there is movement: all bodily movement is uniform;\nfailing an incorporeal soul, how account for diversity of movement?\nPredilections, reasons, they will say; that is all very well, but\nthese already contain that variety and therefore cannot\nbelong to body\nwhich is one and simplex, and, besides, is not participant in\nreason- that is, not in the sense here meant, but only as it is\ninfluenced by some principle which confers upon it the qualities of,\nfor instance, being warm or cold.\n\nThen there is growth under a time-law, and within a definite\nlimit: how can this belong strictly to body? Body can indeed be\nbrought to growth, but does not itself grow except in the sense that\nin the material mass a capacity for growing is included as an\naccessory to some principle whose action upon the body causes growth.\n\nSupposing the soul to be at once a body and the cause of growth,\nthen, if it is to keep pace with the substance it augments, it too\nmust grow; that means it must add to itself a similar bodily\nmaterial.\nFor the added material must be either soul or soulless body: if\nsoul, whence and how does it enter, and by what process is\nit adjoined\n[to the soul which by hypothesis is body]; if soulless, how does\nsuch an addition become soul, falling into accord with its\nprecedent, making one thing with it, sharing the stored impressions\nand notions of that initial soul instead, rather, of remaining an\nalien ignoring all the knowledge laid up before?\n\nWould not such a soulless addition be subject to just such loss\nand gain of substance, in fact to the non-identity, which marks the\nrest of our material mass?\n\nAnd, if this were so, how explain our memories or our\nrecognition of familiar things when we have no stably identical soul?\n\nAssume soul to be a body: now in the nature of body,\ncharacteristically divisible, no one of the parts can be identical\nwith the entire being; soul, then, is a thing of defined size, and\nif curtailed must cease to be what it is; in the nature of a\nquantitative entity this must be so, for, if a thing of magnitude on\ndiminution retains its identity in virtue of its quality,\nthis is only\nsaying that bodily and quantitatively it is different even if its\nidentity consists in a quality quite independent of quantity.\n\nWhat answer can be made by those declaring soul to be corporeal?\nIs every part of the soul, in any one body, soul entire, soul\nperfectly true to its essential being? and may the same be said of\nevery part of the part? If so, the magnitude makes no contribution\nto the soul's essential nature, as it must if soul [as\ncorporeal] were\na definite magnitude: it is, as body cannot be, an\n\"all-everywhere,\" a\ncomplete identity present at each and every point, the part all that\nthe whole is.\n\nTo deny that every part is soul is to make soul a compound from\nsoulless elements. Further, if a definite magnitude, the double\nlimit of larger or smaller, is to be imposed upon each separate\nsoul, then anything outside those limits is no soul.\n\nNow, a single coition and a single sperm suffice to a twin\nbirth or in the animal order to a litter; there is a splitting and\ndiverging of the seed, every diverging part being obviously a whole:\nsurely no honest mind can fail to gather that a thing in\nwhich part is\nidentical with whole has a nature which transcends quantity, and\nmust of necessity be without quantity: only so could it remain\nidentical when quantity is filched from it, only by being\nindifferent to amount or extension, by being in essence something\napart. Thus the Soul and the Reason-Principles are without quantity.\n\n\n## Section 6\n\n\n##### Section 6\n\n6. It is easy to show that if the Soul were a corporeal entity,\nthere could be no sense-perception, no mental act, no knowledge, no\nmoral excellence, nothing of all that is noble.\n\nThere can be no perception without a unitary percipient whose\nidentity enables it to grasp an object as an entirety.\n\nThe several senses will each be the entrance point of\nmany diverse\nperceptions; in any one object there may be many characteristics;\nany one organ may be the channel of a group of objects, as for\ninstance a face is known not by a special sense for separate\nfeatures,\nnose, eyes; etc., but by one sense observing all in one act.\n\nWhen sight and hearing gather their varying information, there\nmust be some central unity to which both report. How could there be\nany statement of difference unless all sense-impressions appeared\nbefore a common identity able to take the sum of all?\n\nThis there must be, as there is a centre to a circle; the\nsense-impressions converging from every point of occurrence\nwill be as\nlines striking from a circumference to what will be a true centre of\nperception as being a veritable unity.\n\nIf this centre were to break into separate points- so that the\nsense-impressions fell upon the two ends of a line- then, either it\nmust reknit itself to unity and identity, perhaps at the mid-point\nof the line, or all remains unrelated, every end receiving the\nreport of its particular field exactly as you and I have our\ndistinct sense experiences.\n\nSuppose the sense-object be such a unity as a face: all\nthe points\nof observation must be brought together in one visual total, as is\nobvious since there could be no panorama of great expanses unless\nthe detail were compressed to the capacity of the pupils.\n\nMuch more must this be true in the case of thoughts, partless\nentities as they are, impinging upon the centre of\nconsciousness which\n[to receive them] must itself be void of part.\n\nEither this or, supposing the centre of consciousness to be a\nthing of quantity and extension, the sensible object will coincide\nwith it point by point of their co-expansion so that any given point\nin the faculty will perceive solely what coincides with it in the\nobject: and thus nothing in us could perceive any thing as a whole.\n\nThis cannot be: the faculty entire must be a unity; no such\ndividing is possible; this is no matter in which we can\nthink of equal\nsections coinciding; the centre of consciousness has no such\nrelation of equality with any sensible object. The only\npossible ratio\nof divisibility would be that of the number of diverse\nelements in the\nimpinging sensation: are we then to suppose that each part of the\nsoul, and every part of each part, will have perception? Or will the\npart of the parts have none? That is impossible: every part,\nthen, has\nperception; the [hypothetical] magnitude, of soul and each part of\nsoul, is infinitely divisible; there will therefore be in\neach part an\ninfinite number of perceptions of the object, and therefore an\ninfinitude of representations of it at our centre of consciousness.\n\nIf the sentient be a material entity sensation could only be of\nthe order of seal-impressions struck by a ring on wax, in\nthis case by\nsensible objects on the blood or on the intervenient air.\n\nIf, at this, the impression is like one made in liquids- as\nwould be reasonable- it will be confused and wavering as upon water,\nand there can be no memory. If the impressions are permanent, then\neither no fresh ones can be stamped upon the occupied ground- and\nthere can be no change of sensations- or, others being made, the\nformer will be obliterated; and all record of the past is done away\nwith.\n\nIf memory implies fresh sensations imposed upon former ones, the\nearlier not barring their way, the soul cannot be a material entity.\n\n\n## Section 7\n\n\n##### Section 7\n\n7. We come to the same result by examining the sense of pain. We\nsay there is pain in the finger: the trouble is doubtless in the\nfinger, but our opponents must admit that the sensation of\nthe pain is\nin the centre of consciousness. The suffering member is one\nthing, the\nsense of suffering is another: how does this happen?\n\nBy transmission, they will say: the psychic pneuma [= the\nsemi-material principle of life] stationed at the finger suffers\nfirst; and stage by stage the trouble is passed on until at last it\nreaches the centre of consciousness.\n\nBut on this theory, there must be a sensation in the spot first\nsuffering pain, and another sensation at a second point of\nthe line of\ntransmission, another in the third and so on; many\nsensations, in fact\nan unlimited series, to deal with one pain; and at the last\nmoment the\ncentre of consciousness has the sensation of all these sensations\nand of its own sensation to boot. Or to be exact, these serial\nsensations will not be of the pain in the finger: the sensation next\nin succession to the suffering finger will be of pain at the joint,\na third will tell of a pain still higher up: there will be a\nseries of\nseparate pains: The centre of consciousness will not feel the pain\nseated at the finger, but only that impinging upon itself: it will\nknow this alone, ignore the rest and so have no notion that\nthe finger\nis in pain.\n\nThus: Transmission would not give sensation of the actual\ncondition at the affected spot: it is not in the nature of body that\nwhere one part suffers there should be knowledge in another part;\nfor body is a magnitude, and the parts of every magnitude\nare distinct\nparts; therefore we need, as the sentient, something of a\nnature to be\nidentical to itself at any and every spot; this property can belong\nonly to some other form of being than body.\n\n\n## Section 8\n\n\n##### Section 8\n\n8. It can be shown also that the intellectual act would\nsimilarly be impossible if the soul were any form of body.\n\nIf sensation is apprehension by means of the soul's employment\nof the body, intellection cannot be a similar use of the body or it\nwould be identical with sensation. If then intellection is\napprehension apart from body, much more must there be a distinction\nbetween the body and the intellective principle: sensation\nfor objects\nof sense, intellection for the intellectual object. And even if this\nbe rejected, it must still be admitted that there do exist\nintellections of intellectual objects and perceptions of objects not\npossessing magnitude: how, we may then ask, can a thing of magnitude\nknow a thing that has no magnitude, or how can the partless be known\nby means of what has parts? We will be told \"By some partless part.\"\nBut, at this, the intellective will not be body: for contact does\nnot need a whole; one point suffices. If then it be conceded- and it\ncannot be denied- that the primal intellections deal with objects\ncompletely incorporeal, the principle of intellection itself\nmust know\nby virtue of being, or becoming, free from body. Even if they hold\nthat all intellection deals with the ideal forms in Matter, still it\nalways takes place by abstraction from the bodies [in which these\nforms appear] and the separating agent is the\nIntellectual-Principle. For assuredly the process by which\nwe abstract\ncircle, triangle, line or point, is not carried through by the aid\nof flesh or Matter of any kind; in all such acts the soul or\nmind must\nseparate itself from the material: at once we see that it cannot be\nitself material. Similarly it will be agreed that, as beauty and\njustice are things without magnitude, so must be the intellective\nact that grasps them.\n\nWhen such non-magnitudes come before the soul, it\nreceives them by\nmeans of its partless phase and they will take position there in\npartless wise.\n\nAgain: if the Soul is a body, how can we account for its\nvirtues- moral excellence [Sophrosyne], justice, courage and\nso forth?\nAll these could be only some kind of rarefied body [pneuma], or\nblood in some form; or we might see courage as a certain resisting\npower in that pneuma; moral quality would be its happy blending;\nbeauty would lie wholly in the agreeable form of impressions\nreceived,\nsuch comeliness as leads us to describe people as attractive and\nbeautiful from their bodily appearance. No doubt strength\nand grace of\nform go well enough with the idea of rarefied body; but what can\nthis rarefied body want with moral excellence? On the contrary its\ninterest would lie in being comfortable in its environments and\ncontacts, in being warmed or pleasantly cool, in bringing everything\nsmooth and caressing and soft around it: what could it care about a\njust distribution?\n\nThen consider the objects of the soul's contemplation, virtue\nand the other Intellectual forms with which it is occupied; are\nthese eternal or are we to think that virtue rises here or there,\nhelps, then perishes? These things must have an author and a source\nand there, again, we are confronted by something perdurable: the\nsoul's contemplation, then, must be of the eternal and unchanging,\nlike the concepts of geometry: if eternal and unchanging, these\nobjects are not bodies: and that which is to receive them must be of\nequivalent nature: it cannot therefore be body, since all\nbody-nature lacks permanence, is a thing of flux.\n\n\n## Section 8\n\n\n##### Section 8\n\n8. A. [sometimes appearing as 9] There are those who\ninsist on the\nactivities observed in bodies- warming, chilling, thrusting,\npressing-\nand class soul with body, as it were to assure its efficacy. This\nignores the double fact that the very bodies themselves exercise\nsuch efficiency by means of the incorporeal powers operating in\nthem, and that these are not the powers we attribute to soul:\nintellection, perception, reasoning, desire, wise and\neffective action\nin all regards, these point to a very different form of being.\n\nIn transferring to bodies the powers of the unembodied, this\nschool leaves nothing to that higher order. And yet that it is\nprecisely in virtue of bodiless powers that bodies possess their\nefficiency is clear from certain reflections:\n\nIt will be admitted that quality and quantity are two different\nthings, that body is always a thing of quantity but not\nalways a thing\nof quality: matter is not qualified. This admitted, it will not be\ndenied that quality, being a different thing from quantity, is a\ndifferent thing from body. Obviously quality could not be\nbody when it\nhas not quantity as all body must; and, again, as we have said,\nbody, any thing of mass, on being reduced to fragments, ceases to be\nwhat it was, but the quality it possessed remains intact in every\nparticle- for instance the sweetness of honey is still sweetness in\neach speck- this shows that sweetness and all other qualities are\nnot body.\n\nFurther: if the powers in question were bodies, then necessarily\nthe stronger powers would be large masses and those less efficient\nsmall masses: but if there are large masses with small while\nnot a few\nof the smaller masses manifest great powers, then the efficiency\nmust be vested in something other than magnitude; efficacy, thus,\nbelongs to non-magnitude. Again; Matter, they tell us, remains\nunchanged as long as it is body, but produces variety upon accepting\nqualities; is not this proof enough that the entrants [with whose\narrival the changes happen] are Reason-Principles and not of the\nbodily order?\n\nThey must not remind us that when pneuma and blood are no longer\npresent, animals die: these are necessary no doubt to life,\nbut so are\nmany other things of which none could possibly be soul: and neither\npneuma nor blood is present throughout the entire being; but soul is.\n\n\n## Section 8\n\n\n##### Section 8\n\n8. B. (10) If the soul is body and permeates the entire\nbody-mass,\nstill even in this entire permeation the blending must be in accord\nwith what occurs in all cases of bodily admixing.\n\nNow: if in the admixing of bodies neither constituent can retain\nits efficacy, the soul too could no longer be effective within the\nbodies; it could but be latent; it will have lost that by which it\nis soul, just as in an admixture of sweet and bitter the sweet\ndisappears: we have, thus, no soul.\n\nTwo bodies [i.e., by hypothesis, the soul and the human body]\nare blended, each entire through the entirety of the other; where\nthe one is, the other is also; each occupies an equal extension and\neach the whole extension; no increase of size has been caused by the\njuncture: the one body thus inblended can have left in the other\nnothing undivided. This is no case of mixing in the sense of\nconsiderable portions alternating; that would be described as\ncollocation; no; the incoming entity goes through the other to the\nvery minutest point- an impossibility, of course; the less becoming\nequal to the greater; still, all is traversed throughout and divided\nthroughout. Now if, thus, the inblending is to occur point by point,\nleaving no undivided material anywhere, the division of the body\nconcerned must have been a division into (geometrical) points: an\nimpossibility. The division is an infinite series- any material\nparticle may be cut in two- and the infinities are not merely\npotential, they are actual.\n\nTherefore body cannot traverse anything as a whole traversing a\nwhole. But soul does this. It is therefore incorporeal.\n\n\n## Section 8\n\n\n##### Section 8\n\n8. C. (11) We come to the theory that this pneuma is an earlier\nform, one which on entering the cold and being tempered by\nit develops\ninto soul by growing finer under that new condition. This is\nabsurd at\nthe start, since many living beings rise in warmth and have a soul\nthat has been tempered by cold: still that is the theory-\nthe soul has\nan earlier form, and develops its true nature by force of external\naccidents. Thus these teachers make the inferior precede the higher,\nand before that inferior they put something still lower, their\n\"Habitude.\" It is obvious that the Intellectual-Principle is last\nand has sprung from the soul, for, if it were first of all, the\norder of the series must be, second the soul, then the\nnature-principle, and always the later inferior, as the system\nactually stands.\n\nIf they treat God as they do the Intellectual-Principle-\nas later,\nengendered and deriving intellection from without- soul and\nintellect and God may prove to have no existence: this would\nfollow if\na potentiality could not come to existence, or does not\nbecome actual,\nunless the corresponding actuality exists. And what could lead it\nonward if there were no separate being in previous actuality? Even\non the absurd supposition that the potentially existent brings\nitself to actuality, it must be looking to some Term, and\nthat must be\nno potentiality but actual.\n\nNo doubt the eternally self-identical may have\npotentiality and be\nself-led to self-realization, but even in this case the being\nconsidered as actualized is of higher order than the being\nconsidered as merely capable of actualization and moving towards a\ndesired Term.\n\nThus the higher is the earlier, and it has a nature other than\nbody, and it exists always in actuality: Intellectual-Principle and\nSoul precede Nature: thus, Soul does not stand at the level of\npneuma or of body.\n\nThese arguments are sufficient in themselves, though many others\nhave been framed, to show that the soul is not to be thought of as a\nbody.\n\n\n## Section 8\n\n\n##### Section 8\n\n8. D. (12) Soul belongs, then, to another Nature: What\nis this? Is\nit something which, while distinct from body, still belongs\nto it, for\nexample a harmony or accord?\n\nThe Pythagorean school holds this view thinking that the soul\nis, with some difference, comparable to the accord in the\nstrings of a\nlyre. When the lyre is strung a certain condition is\nproduced upon the\nstrings, and this is known as accord: in the same way our body is\nformed of distinct constituents brought together, and the blend\nproduces at once life and that soul which is the condition existing\nupon the bodily total.\n\nThat this opinion is untenable has already been shown at length.\nThe soul is a prior [to body], the accord is a secondary to the\nlyre. Soul rules, guides and often combats the body; as an accord of\nbody it could not do these things. Soul is a real being, accord is\nnot. That due blending [or accord] of the corporeal materials which\nconstitute our frame would be simply health. Each separate\npart of the\nbody, entering as a distinct entity into the total, would require a\ndistinct soul [its own accord or note], so that there would be many\nsouls to each person. Weightiest of all; before this soul there\nwould have to be another soul to bring about the accord as, in the\ncase of the musical instrument, there is the musician who\nproduces the\naccord upon the strings by his own possession of the principle on\nwhich he tunes them: neither musical strings nor human bodies could\nput themselves in tune.\n\nBriefly, the soulless is treated as ensouled, the unordered\nbecomes orderly by accident, and instead of order being due to soul,\nsoul itself owes its substantial existence to order- which is\nself-caused. Neither in the sphere of the partial, nor in that of\nWholes could this be true. The soul, therefore, is not a harmony or\naccord.\n\n\n## Section 8\n\n\n##### Section 8\n\n8. E. (13) We come to the doctrine of the Entelechy, and must\nenquire how it is applied to soul.\n\nIt is thought that in the Conjoint of body and soul the\nsoul holds\nthe rank of Form to the Matter which here is the ensouled body- not,\nthen, Form to every example of body or to body as merely such, but\nto a natural organic body having the potentiality of life.\n\nNow; if the soul has been so injected as to be assimilated into\nthe body as the design of a statue is worked into the bronze, it\nwill follow that, upon any dividing of the body, the soul is divided\nwith it, and if any part of the body is cut away a fragment of soul\nmust go with it. Since an Entelechy must be inseparable from the\nbeing of which it is the accomplished actuality, the\nwithdrawal of the\nsoul in sleep cannot occur; in fact sleep itself cannot occur.\nMoreover if the soul is an Entelechy, there is an end to the\nresistance offered by reason to the desires; the total [of body and\nEntelechy-Soul] must have one-uniform experience throughout, and be\naware of no internal contradiction. Sense-perception might occur;\nbut intellection would be impossible. The very upholders of the\nEntelechy are thus compelled to introduce another soul, the\nIntellect, to which they ascribe immortality. The reasoning soul,\nthen, must be an Entelechy- if the word is to be used at all- in some\nother mode.\n\nEven the sense-perceiving soul, in its possession of the\nimpressions of absent objects, must hold these without aid from the\nbody; for otherwise the impression must be present in it like shape\nand images, and that would mean that it could not take in fresh\nimpressions; the perceptive soul, then, cannot be described as this\nEntelechy inseparable from the body. Similarly the desiring\nprinciple, dealing not only with food and drink but with things\nquite apart from body; this also is no inseparable Entelechy.\n\nThere remains the vegetal principle which might seem to suggest\nthe possibility that, in this phase, the soul may be the inseparable\nEntelechy of the doctrine. But it is not so. The principle of every\ngrowth lies at the root; in many plants the new springing takes\nplace at the root or just above it: it is clear that the\nlife-principle, the vegetal soul, has abandoned the upper portions\nto concentrate itself at that one spot: it was therefore not present\nin the whole as an inseparable Entelechy. Again, before the plant's\ndevelopment the life-principle is situated in that small beginning:\nif, thus, it passes from large growth to small and from the small to\nthe entire growth, why should it not pass outside altogether?\n\nAn Entelechy is not a thing of parts; how then could it be\npresent partwise in the partible body?\n\nAn identical soul is now the soul of one living being now of\nanother: how could the soul of the first become the soul of\nthe latter\nif soul were the Entelechy of one particular being? Yet that this\ntransference does occur is evident from the facts of animal\nmetasomatosis.\n\nThe substantial existence of the soul, then, does not depend\nupon serving as Form to anything: it is an Essence which\ndoes not come\ninto being by finding a seat in body; it exists before it\nbecomes also\nthe soul of some particular, for example, of a living being, whose\nbody would by this doctrine be the author of its soul.\n\nWhat, then, is the soul's Being? If it is neither body\nnor a state\nor experience of body, but is act and creation: if it holds much and\ngives much, and is an existence outside of body; of what order and\ncharacter must it be? Clearly it is what we describe as Veritable\nEssence. The other order, the entire corporeal Kind, is process; it\nappears and it perishes; in reality it never possesses Being, but is\nmerely protected, in so far as it has the capacity, by participating\nin what authentically is.\n\n\n## Section 9\n\n\n##### Section 9\n\n9. (14) Over against that body, stands the principle which is\nself-caused, which is all that neither enters into being nor passes\naway, the principle whose dissolution would mean the end of\nall things\nnever to be restored if once this had ceased to be, the sustaining\nprinciple of things individually, and of this kosmos, which owes its\nmaintenance and its ordered system to the soul.\n\nThis is the starting point of motion and becomes the leader and\nprovider of motion to all else: it moves by its own quality,\nand every\nliving material form owes life to this principle, which of itself\nlives in a life that, being essentially innate, can never fail.\n\nNot all things can have a life merely at second hand; this would\ngive an infinite series: there must be some nature which, having\nlife primally, shall be of necessity indestructible, immortal, as\nthe source of life to all else that lives. This is the point at\nwhich all that is divine and blessed must be situated, living and\nhaving being of itself, possessing primal being and primal life, and\nin its own essence rejecting all change, neither coming to be nor\npassing away.\n\nWhence could such a being arise or into what could it disappear:\nthe very word, strictly used, means that the thing is perdurable.\nSimilarly white, the colour, cannot be now white and now not\nwhite: if\nthis \"white\" were a real being it would be eternal as well as being\nwhite: the colour is merely white but whatsoever possesses being,\nindwelling by nature and primal, will possess also eternal duration.\nIn such an entity this primal and eternal Being cannot be dead like\nstone or plank: it must be alive, and that with a life unalloyed as\nlong as it remains self-gathered: when the primal Being\nblends with an\ninferior principle, it is hampered in its relation to the\nhighest, but\nwithout suffering the loss of its own nature since it can always\nrecover its earliest state by turning its tendency back to its own.\n\n\n## Section 10\n\n\n##### Section 10\n\n10. (15) That the soul is of the family of the diviner\nnature, the\neternal, is clear from our demonstration that it is not material:\nbesides it has neither shape or colour nor is it tangible. But there\nare other proofs.\n\nAssuming that the divine and the authentically existent\npossesses a life beneficent and wise, we take the next step and\nbegin with working out the nature of our own soul.\n\nLet us consider a soul, not one that has appropriated the\nunreasoned desires and impulses of the bodily life, or any other\nsuch emotion and experience, but one that has cast all this\naside, and\nas far as possible has no commerce with the bodily. Such a soul\ndemonstrates that all evil is accretion, alien, and that in\nthe purged\nsoul the noble things are immanent, wisdom and all else that is\ngood, as its native store.\n\nIf this is the soul once it has returned to its self, how deny\nthat it is the nature we have identified with all the divine and\neternal? Wisdom and authentic virtue are divine, and could not be\nfound in the chattel mean and mortal: what possesses these must be\ndivine by its very capacity of the divine, the token of\nkinship and of\nidentical substance.\n\nHence, too, any one of us that exhibits these qualities will\ndiffer but little as far as soul is concerned from the Supernals; he\nwill be less than they only to the extent in which the soul is, in\nhim, associated with body.\n\nThis is so true that, if every human being were at that stage,\nor if a great number lived by a soul of that degree, no one would be\nso incredulous as to doubt that the soul in man is immortal. It is\nbecause we see everywhere the spoiled souls of the great mass that\nit becomes difficult to recognize their divinity and immortality.\n\nTo know the nature of a thing we must observe it in its\nunalloyed state, since any addition obscures the reality. Clear,\nthen look: or, rather, let a man first purify himself and then\nobserve: he will not doubt his immortality when he sees himself thus\nentered into the pure, the Intellectual. For, what he sees is an\nIntellectual-Principle looking on nothing of sense, nothing of this\nmortality, but by its own eternity having intellection of\nthe eternal:\nhe will see all things in this Intellectual substance, himself\nhaving become an Intellectual Kosmos and all lightsome,\nilluminated by\nthe truth streaming from The Good, which radiates truth upon all\nthat stands within that realm of the divine.\n\nThus he will often feel the beauty of that word\n\"Farewell: I am to\nyou an immortal God,\" for he has ascended to the Supreme, and is all\none strain to enter into likeness with it.\n\nIf the purification puts the human into knowledge of the\nhighest, then, too, the science latent within becomes manifest, the\nonly authentic knowing. For it is not by running hither and thither\noutside of itself that the soul understands morality and right\nconduct: it learns them of its own nature, in its contact\nwith itself,\nin its intellectual grasp of itself, seeing deeply impressed upon it\nthe images of its primal state; what was one mass of rust from long\nneglect it has restored to purity.\n\nImagine living gold: it files away all that is earthy about it,\nall that kept it in self-ignorance preventing it from knowing itself\nas gold; seen now unalloyed it is at once filled with admiration of\nits worth and knows that it has no need of any other glory than its\nown, triumphant if only it be allowed to remain purely to itself.\n\n\n## Section 11\n\n\n##### Section 11\n\n11. (16) What intelligent mind can doubt the immortality\nof such a\nvalue, one in which there is a life self-springing and therefore not\nto be destroyed?\n\nThis is at any rate a life not imported from without, not\npresent in the mode of the heat in fire- for if heat is\ncharacteristic\nof the fire proper, it certainly is adventitious to the Matter\nunderlying the fire; or fire, too, would be everlasting- it is not\nin any such mode that the soul has life: this is no case of a Matter\nunderlying and a life brought into that Matter and making it\ninto soul\n[as heat comes into matter and makes it fire].\n\nEither life is Essential Reality, and therefore self-living- the\nvery thing we have been seeking- and undeniably immortal: or it,\ntoo, is a compound and must be traced back through all the\nconstituents until an immortal substance is reached, something\nderiving movement from itself, and therefore debarred from accepting\ndeath.\n\nEven supposing life could be described as a condition\nimposed upon\nMatter, still the source from which this condition entered the\nMatter must necessarily be admitted to be immortal simply by being\nunable to take into itself the opposite of the life which it conveys.\n\nOf course, life is no such mere condition, but an independent\nprinciple, effectively living.\n\n\n## Section 12\n\n\n##### Section 12\n\n12. (17) A further consideration is that if every soul is to be\nheld dissoluble the universe must long since have ceased to be: if\nit is pretended that one kind of soul, our own for example,\nis mortal,\nand another, that of the All, let us suppose, is immortal, we demand\nto know the reason of the difference alleged.\n\nEach is a principle of motion, each is self-living, each touches\nthe same sphere by the same tentacles, each has intellection of the\ncelestial order and of the super-celestial, each is seeking to win\nto what has essential being, each is moving upwards to the primal\nsource.\n\nAgain: the soul's understanding of the Absolute Forms by means\nof the visions stored up in it is effected within itself; such\nperception is reminiscence; the soul then must have its being before\nembodiment, and drawing on an eternal science, must itself\nbe eternal.\n\nEvery dissoluble entity, that has come to be by way of\ngroupment, must in the nature of things be broken apart by that very\nmode which brought it together: but the soul is one and simplex,\nliving not in the sense of potential reception of life but by its\nown energy; and this can be no cause of dissolution.\n\nBut, we will be told, it tends to destruction by having been\ndivided (in the body) and so becoming fragmentary.\n\nNo: the soul, as we have shown, is not a mass, not a quantity.\n\nMay not it change and so come to destruction?\n\nNo: the change that destroys annuls the form but leaves the\nunderlying substance: and that could not happen to anything except a\ncompound.\n\nIf it can be destroyed in no such ways, it is necessarily\nindestructible.\n\n\n## Section 13\n\n\n##### Section 13\n\n13. (18) But how does the soul enter into body from the\naloofness of the Intellectual?\n\nThere is the Intellectual-Principle which remains among the\nintellectual beings, living the purely intellective life; and this,\nknowing no impulse or appetite, is for ever stationary in that\nRealm. But immediately following upon it, there is that which has\nacquired appetite and, by this accruement, has already taken a great\nstep outward; it has the desire of elaborating order on the model of\nwhat it has seen in the Intellectual-Principle: pregnant by those\nBeings, and in pain to the birth, it is eager to make, to create. In\nthis new zest it strains towards the realm of sense: thus, while\nthis primal soul in union with the Soul of the All transcends the\nsphere administered, it is inevitably turned outward, and has added\nthe universe to its concern: yet in choosing to administer\nthe partial\nand exiling itself to enter the place in which it finds its\nappropriate task, it still is not wholly and exclusively\nheld by body:\nit is still in possession of the unembodied; and the\nIntellectual-Principle in it remains immune. As a whole it is partly\nin body, partly outside: it has plunged from among the primals and\nentered this sphere of tertiaries: the process has been an\nactivity of\nthe Intellectual-Principle, which thus, while itself remaining in\nits identity, operates throughout the soul to flood the universe\nwith beauty and penetrant order- immortal mind, eternal in its\nunfailing energy, acting through immortal soul.\n\n\n## Section 14\n\n\n##### Section 14\n\n14. (19) As for the souls of the other living beings, fallen to\nthe degree of entering brute bodies, these too must be immortal. And\nif there is in the animal world any other phase of soul, its only\npossible origin, since it is the life-giver, is, still, that one\nprinciple of life: so too with the soul in the vegetal order.\n\nAll have sprung from one source, all have life as their own, all\nare incorporeal, indivisible, all are real-beings.\n\nIf we are told that man's soul being tripartite must as\na compound\nentity be dissolved, our answer shall be that pure souls upon their\nemancipation will put away all that has fastened to them at\nbirth, all\nthat increment which the others will long retain.\n\nBut even that inferior phase thus laid aside will not be\ndestroyed\nas long as its source continues to exist, for nothing from the realm\nof real being shall pass away.\n\n\n## Section 15\n\n\n##### Section 15\n\n15. (20) Thus far we have offered the considerations appropriate\nto those asking for demonstration: those whose need is conviction by\nevidence of the more material order are best met from the abundant\nrecords relevant to the subject: there are also the oracles of the\nGods ordering the appeasing of wronged souls and the honouring of\nthe dead as still sentient, a practice common to all mankind: and\nagain, not a few souls, once among men, have continued to serve them\nafter quitting the body and by revelations, practically helpful,\nmake clear, as well, that the other souls, too, have not\nceased to be.",
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