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    "name": "Ennead IV — On the Soul"
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  "chapter": {
    "num": 8,
    "slug": "8-the-soul-s-descent-into-body",
    "title": "IV.8 — The Soul's Descent Into Body",
    "of": 9,
    "words": 3834,
    "text": "## EIGHTH TRACTATE\n\n\n#### EIGHTH TRACTATE.\n\nTHE SOUL'S DESCENT INTO BODY.\n\n\n## Section 1\n\n\n##### Section 1\n\n1. Many times it has happened: Lifted out of the body\ninto myself;\nbecoming external to all other things and self-encentered;\nbeholding a\nmarvellous beauty; then, more than ever, assured of\ncommunity with the\nloftiest order; enacting the noblest life, acquiring\nidentity with the\ndivine; stationing within It by having attained that activity;\npoised above whatsoever within the Intellectual is less than the\nSupreme: yet, there comes the moment of descent from intellection to\nreasoning, and after that sojourn in the divine, I ask myself how it\nhappens that I can now be descending, and how did the soul ever\nenter into my body, the soul which, even within the body, is the\nhigh thing it has shown itself to be.\n\nHeraclitus, who urges the examination of this matter, tells of\ncompulsory alternation from contrary to contrary, speaks of\nascent and\ndescent, says that \"change reposes,\" and that \"it is\nweariness to keep\ntoiling at the same things and always beginning again\"; but he seems\nto teach by metaphor, not concerning himself about making\nhis doctrine\nclear to us, probably with the idea that it is for us to seek within\nourselves as he sought for himself and found.\n\nEmpedocles- where he says that it is law for faulty souls to\ndescend to this sphere, and that he himself was here because\nhe turned\na deserter, wandered from God, in slavery to a raving\ndiscord- reveals\nneither more nor less than Pythagoras and his school seem to me to\nconvey on this as on many other matters; but in his case,\nversification has some part in the obscurity.\n\nWe have to fall back on the illustrious Plato, who uttered many\nnoble sayings about the soul, and has in many places dwelt upon its\nentry into body so that we may well hope to get some light from him.\n\nWhat do we learn from this philosopher?\n\nWe will not find him so consistent throughout that it is easy to\ndiscover his mind.\n\nEverywhere, no doubt, he expresses contempt for all that is of\nsense, blames the commerce of the soul with body as an\nenchainment, an\nentombment, and upholds as a great truth the saying of the Mysteries\nthat the soul is here a prisoner. In the Cavern of Plato and in the\nCave of Empedocles, I discern this universe, where the\nbreaking of the\nfetters and the ascent from the depths are figures of the wayfaring\ntoward the Intellectual Realm.\n\nIn the Phaedrus he makes a failing of the wings the cause of the\nentry to this realm: and there are Periods which send back the soul\nafter it has risen; there are judgements and lots and fates and\nnecessities driving other souls down to this order.\n\nIn all these explanations, he finds guilt in the arrival of the\nsoul at body, But treating, in the Timaeus, of our universe he\nexalts the kosmos and entitles it a blessed god, and holds that the\nsoul was given by the goodness of the creator to the end that the\ntotal of things might be possessed of intellect, for thus\nintellectual\nit was planned to be, and thus it cannot be except through\nsoul. There\nis a reason, then, why the soul of this All should be sent into it\nfrom God: in the same way the soul of each single one of us is sent,\nthat the universe may be complete; it was necessary that all\nbeings of\nthe Intellectual should be tallied by just so many forms of living\ncreatures here in the realm of sense.\n\n\n## Section 2\n\n\n##### Section 2\n\n2. Enquiring, then, of Plato as to our own soul, we find\nourselves\nforced to enquire into the nature of soul in general- to\ndiscover what\nthere can be in its character to bring it into partnership with\nbody, and, again, what this kosmos must be in which, willing\nunwilling\nor in any way at all, soul has its activity.\n\nWe have to face also the question as to whether the Creator has\nplanned well or ill...... like our souls, which it may be, are such\nthat governing their inferior, the body, they must sink deeper and\ndeeper into it if they are to control it.\n\nNo doubt the individual body- though in all cases appropriately\nplaced within the universe- is of itself in a state of dissolution,\nalways on the way to its natural terminus, demanding much irksome\nforethought to save it from every kind of outside assailant, always\ngripped by need, requiring every help against constant\ndifficulty: but\nthe body inhabited by the World-Soul- complete, competent,\nself-sufficing, exposed to nothing contrary to its nature- this\nneeds no more than a brief word of command, while the governing soul\nis undeviatingly what its nature makes it wish to be, and, amenable\nneither to loss nor to addition, knows neither desire nor distress.\n\nThis is how we come to read that our soul, entering into\nassociation with that complete soul and itself thus made perfect,\nwalks the lofty ranges, administering the entire kosmos, and that as\nlong as it does not secede and is neither inbound to body nor held\nin any sort of servitude, so long it tranquilly bears its part in\nthe governance of the All, exactly like the world-soul itself; for\nin fact it suffers no hurt whatever by furnishing body with the\npower to existence, since not every form of care for the\ninferior need\nwrest the providing soul from its own sure standing in the highest.\n\nThe soul's care for the universe takes two forms: there is the\nsupervising of the entire system, brought to order by\ndeedless command\nin a kindly presidence, and there is that over the individual,\nimplying direct action, the hand to the task, one might say, in\nimmediate contact: in the second kind of care the agent absorbs much\nof the nature of its object.\n\nNow in its comprehensive government of the heavenly system, the\nsoul's method is that of an unbroken transcendence in its highest\nphases, with penetration by its lower power: at this, God can no\nlonger be charged with lowering the All-Soul, which has not been\ndeprived of its natural standing and from eternity possesses and\nwill unchangeably possess that rank and habit which could never have\nbeen intruded upon it against the course of nature but must be its\ncharacteristic quality, neither failing ever nor ever beginning.\n\nWhere we read that the souls or stars stand to their bodily\nforms as the All to the material forms within it- for these starry\nbodies are declared to be members of the soul's circuit- we are\ngiven to understand that the star-souls also enjoy the blissful\ncondition of transcendence and immunity that becomes them.\n\nAnd so we might expect: commerce with the body is repudiated for\ntwo only reasons, as hindering the soul's intellective act and as\nfilling with pleasure, desire, pain; but neither of these\nmisfortunes can befall a soul which has never deeply penetrated into\nthe body, is not a slave but a sovereign ruling a body of such an\norder as to have no need and no shortcoming and therefore to give\nground for neither desire nor fear.\n\nThere is no reason why it should be expectant of evil with\nregard to such a body nor is there any such preoccupied concern,\nbringing about a veritable descent, as to withdraw it from\nits noblest\nand most blessed vision; it remains always intent upon the Supreme,\nand its governance of this universe is effected by a power\nnot calling\nupon act.\n\n\n## Section 3\n\n\n##### Section 3\n\n3. The Human Soul, next;\n\nEverywhere we hear of it as in bitter and miserable durance in\nbody, a victim to troubles and desires and fears and all forms of\nevil, the body its prison or its tomb, the kosmos its cave or cavern.\n\nNow this does not clash with the first theory [that of the\nimpassivity of soul as in the All]; for the descent of the human\nSoul has not been due to the same causes [as that of the All-Soul.]\n\nAll that is Intellectual-Principle has its being- whole and all-\nin the place of Intellection, what we call the Intellectual Kosmos:\nbut there exist, too, the intellective powers included in its being,\nand the separate intelligences- for the Intellectual-Principle is\nnot merely one; it is one and many. In the same way there\nmust be both\nmany souls and one, the one being the source of the differing many\njust as from one genus there rise various species, better and worse,\nsome of the more intellectual order, others less effectively so.\n\nIn the Intellectual-Principle a distinction is to be made: there\nis the Intellectual-Principle itself, which like some huge living\norganism contains potentially all the other forms; and there are the\nforms thus potentially included now realized as individuals. We may\nthink of it as a city which itself has soul and life, and includes,\nalso, other forms of life; the living city is the more perfect and\npowerful, but those lesser forms, in spite of all, share in the one\nsame living quality: or, another illustration, from fire, the\nuniversal, proceed both the great fire and the minor fires; yet all\nhave the one common essence, that of fire the universal, or, more\nexactly, participate in that from which the essence of the universal\nfire proceeds.\n\nNo doubt the task of the soul, in its more emphatically\nreasoning phase, is intellection: but it must have another\nas well, or\nit would be undistinguishable from the Intellectual-Principle. To\nits quality of being intellective it adds the quality by which it\nattains its particular manner of being: remaining, therefore, an\nIntellectual-Principle, it has thenceforth its own task too, as\neverything must that exists among real beings.\n\nIt looks towards its higher and has intellection; towards itself\nand conserves its peculiar being; towards its lower and orders,\nadministers, governs.\n\nThe total of things could not have remained stationary in the\nIntellectual Kosmos, once there was the possibility of continuous\nvariety, of beings inferior but as necessarily existent as their\nsuperiors.\n\n\n## Section 4\n\n\n##### Section 4\n\n4. So it is with the individual souls; the appetite for\nthe divine\nIntellect urges them to return to their source, but they have, too,\na power apt to administration in this lower sphere; they may be\ncompared to the light attached upwards to the sun, but not grudging\nits presidency to what lies beneath it. In the Intellectual, then,\nthey remain with soul-entire, and are immune from care and\ntrouble; in\nthe heavenly sphere, absorbed in the soul-entire, they are\nadministrators with it just as kings, associated with the supreme\nruler and governing with him, do not descend from their kingly\nstations: the souls indeed [as distinguished from the\nkosmos] are thus\nfar in the one place with their overlord; but there comes a stage at\nwhich they descend from the universal to become partial and\nself-centred; in a weary desire of standing apart they find\ntheir way,\neach to a place of its very own. This state long maintained, the\nsoul is a deserter from the All; its differentiation has severed it;\nits vision is no longer set in the Intellectual; it is a partial\nthing, isolated, weakened, full of care, intent upon the fragment;\nsevered from the whole, it nestles in one form of being; for this,\nit abandons all else, entering into and caring for only the\none, for a\nthing buffeted about by a worldful of things: thus it has\ndrifted away\nfrom the universal and, by an actual presence, it administers the\nparticular; it is caught into contact now, and tends to the outer to\nwhich it has become present and into whose inner depths it\nhenceforth sinks far.\n\nWith this comes what is known as the casting of the wings, the\nenchaining in body: the soul has lost that innocency of\nconducting the\nhigher which it knew when it stood with the All-Soul, that earlier\nstate to which all its interest would bid it hasten back.\n\nIt has fallen: it is at the chain: debarred from\nexpressing itself\nnow through its intellectual phase, it operates through\nsense, it is a\ncaptive; this is the burial, the encavernment, of the Soul.\n\nBut in spite of all it has, for ever, something\ntranscendent: by a\nconversion towards the intellective act, it is loosed from the\nshackles and soars- when only it makes its memories the\nstarting point\nof a new vision of essential being. Souls that take this way have\nplace in both spheres, living of necessity the life there\nand the life\nhere by turns, the upper life reigning in those able to consort more\ncontinuously with the divine Intellect, the lower dominant where\ncharacter or circumstances are less favourable.\n\nAll this is indicated by Plato, without emphasis, where he\ndistinguishes those of the second mixing-bowl, describes them as\n\"parts,\" and goes on to say that, having in this way become partial,\nthey must of necessity experience birth.\n\nOf course, where he speaks of God sowing them, he is to be\nunderstood as when he tells of God speaking and delivering orations;\nwhat is rooted in the nature of the All is figuratively treated as\ncoming into being by generation and creation: stage and sequence are\ntransferred, for clarity of exposition, to things whose being and\ndefinite form are eternal.\n\n\n## Section 5\n\n\n##### Section 5\n\n5. It is possible to reconcile all these apparent\ncontradictions- the divine sowing to birth, as opposed to a\nvoluntary descent aiming at the completion of the universe; the\njudgement and the cave; necessity and free choice- in fact the\nnecessity includes the choice-embodiment as an evil; the Empedoclean\nteaching of a flight from God, a wandering away, a sin bringing its\npunishment; the \"solace by flight\" of Heraclitus; in a word a\nvoluntary descent which is also voluntary.\n\nAll degeneration is no doubt involuntary, yet when it has been\nbrought about by an inherent tendency, that submission to\nthe inferior\nmay be described as the penalty of an act.\n\nOn the other hand these experiences and actions are determined\nby an external law of nature, and they are due to the movement of a\nbeing which in abandoning its superior is running out to serve the\nneeds of another: hence there is no inconsistency or untruth\nin saying\nthat the soul is sent down by God; final results are always to be\nreferred to the starting point even across many intervening stages.\n\nStill there is a twofold flaw: the first lies in the\nmotive of the\nSoul's descent [its audacity, its Tolma], and the second in the evil\nit does when actually here: the first is punished by what\nthe soul has\nsuffered by its descent: for the faults committed here, the lesser\npenalty is to enter into body after body- and soon to return- by\njudgement according to desert, the word judgement indicating a\ndivine ordinance; but any outrageous form of ill-doing incurs a\nproportionately greater punishment administered under the\nsurveillance\nof chastising daimons.\n\nThus, in sum, the soul, a divine being and a dweller in the\nloftier realms, has entered body; it is a god, a later phase of the\ndivine: but, under stress of its powers and of its tendency to bring\norder to its next lower, it penetrates to this sphere in a voluntary\nplunge: if it turns back quickly, all is well; it will have taken no\nhurt by acquiring the knowledge of evil and coming to understand\nwhat sin is, by bringing its forces into manifest play, by\nexhibiting those activities and productions which, remaining merely\npotential in the unembodied, might as well never have been\neven there,\nif destined never to come into actuality, so that the soul itself\nwould never have known that suppressed and inhibited total.\n\nThe act reveals the power, a power hidden, and we might\nalmost say\nobliterated or nonexistent, unless at some moment it became\neffective:\nin the world as it is, the richness of the outer stirs us all to the\nwonder of the inner whose greatness is displayed in acts so splendid.\n\n\n## Section 6\n\n\n##### Section 6\n\n6. Something besides a unity there must be or all would be\nindiscernibly buried, shapeless within that unbroken whole: none of\nthe real beings [of the Intellectual Kosmos] would exist if\nthat unity\nremained at halt within itself: the plurality of these beings,\noffspring of the unity, could not exist without their own nexts\ntaking the outward path; these are the beings holding the rank of\nsouls.\n\nIn the same way the outgoing process could not end with\nthe souls,\ntheir issue stifled: every Kind must produce its next; it must\nunfold from some concentrated central principle as from a\nseed, and so\nadvance to its term in the varied forms of sense. The prior in its\nbeing will remain unalterably in the native seat; but there is the\nlower phase, begotten to it by an ineffable faculty of its being,\nnative to soul as it exists in the Supreme.\n\nTo this power we cannot impute any halt, any limit of jealous\ngrudging; it must move for ever outward until the universe stands\naccomplished to the ultimate possibility. All, thus, is\nproduced by an\ninexhaustible power giving its gift to the universe, no part of\nwhich it can endure to see without some share in its being.\n\nThere is, besides, no principle that can prevent anything from\npartaking, to the extent of its own individual receptivity in the\nNature of Good. If therefore Matter has always existed, that\nexistence\nis enough to ensure its participation in the being which,\naccording to\neach receptivity, communicates the supreme good universally:\nif on the\ncontrary, Matter has come into being as a necessary sequence of the\ncauses preceding it, that origin would similarly prevent it standing\napart from the scheme as though it were out of reach of the\nprinciple to whose grace it owes its existence.\n\nIn sum: The loveliness that is in the sense-realm is an index of\nthe nobleness of the Intellectual sphere, displaying its\npower and its\ngoodness alike: and all things are for ever linked; the one order\nIntellectual in its being, the other of sense; one self-existent,\nthe other eternally taking its being by participation in that first,\nand to the full of its power reproducing the Intellectual nature.\n\n\n## Section 7\n\n\n##### Section 7\n\n7. The Kind, then, with which we are dealing is twofold, the\nIntellectual against the sensible: better for the soul to\ndwell in the\nIntellectual, but, given its proper nature, it is under compulsion\nto participate in the sense-realm also. There is no grievance in its\nnot being, through and through, the highest; it holds mid-rank among\nthe authentic existences, being of divine station but at the lowest\nextreme of the Intellectual and skirting the sense-known\nnature; thus,\nwhile it communicates to this realm something of its own store, it\nabsorbs in turn whenever- instead of employing in its government\nonly its safeguarded phase- it plunges in an excessive zeal to the\nvery midst of its chosen sphere; then it abandons its status as\nwhole soul with whole soul, though even thus it is always able to\nrecover itself by turning to account the experience of what it has\nseen and suffered here, learning, so, the greatness of rest in the\nSupreme, and more clearly discerning the finer things by comparison\nwith what is almost their direct antithesis. Where the faculty is\nincapable of knowing without contact, the experience of evil brings\nthe dearer perception of Good.\n\nThe outgoing that takes place in the Intellectual-Principle is a\ndescent to its own downward ultimate: it cannot be a movement to the\ntranscendent; operating necessarily outwards from itself, wherein it\nmay not stay inclosed, the need and law of Nature bring it to its\nextreme term, to soul- to which it entrusts all the later stages of\nbeing while itself turns back on its course.\n\nThe soul's operation is similar: its next lower act is this\nuniverse: its immediate higher is the contemplation of the Authentic\nExistences. To individual souls such divine operation takes\nplace only\nat one of their phases and by a temporal process when from the lower\nin which they reside they turn towards the noblest; but that soul,\nwhich we know as the All-Soul, has never entered the lower activity,\nbut, immune from evil, has the property of knowing its lower by\ninspection, while it still cleaves continuously to the beings above\nitself; thus its double task becomes possible; it takes thence and,\nsince as soul it cannot escape touching this sphere, it gives hither.\n\n\n## Section 8\n\n\n##### Section 8\n\n8. And- if it is desirable to venture the more definite\nstatement of a personal conviction clashing with the general view-\neven our human soul has not sunk entire; something of it is\ncontinuously in the Intellectual Realm, though if that part, which\nis in this sphere of sense, hold the mastery, or rather be mastered\nhere and troubled, it keeps us blind to what the upper phase holds\nin contemplation.\n\nThe object of the Intellectual Act comes within our ken only\nwhen it reaches downward to the level of sensation: for not all that\noccurs at any part of the soul is immediately known to us; a thing\nmust, for that knowledge, be present to the total soul; thus desire\nlocked up within the desiring faculty remains unknown except when we\nmake it fully ours by the central faculty of perception, or by the\nindividual choice or by both at once. Once more, every soul has\nsomething of the lower on the body side and something of the\nhigher on\nthe side of the Intellectual-Principle.\n\nThe Soul of the All, as an entirety, governs the universe\nthrough that part of it which leans to the body side, but since it\ndoes not exercise a will based on calculation as we do- but proceeds\nby purely intellectual act as in the execution of an artistic\nconception- its ministrance is that of a labourless overpoising,\nonly its lowest phase being active upon the universe it embellishes.\n\nThe souls that have gone into division and become appropriated\nto some thing partial have also their transcendent phase, but are\npreoccupied by sensation, and in the mere fact of exercising\nperception they take in much that clashes with their nature\nand brings\ndistress and trouble since the object of their concern is partial,\ndeficient, exposed to many alien influences, filled with desires of\nits own and taking its pleasure, that pleasure which is its lure.\n\nBut there is always the other, that which finds no savour in\npassing pleasure, but holds its own even way.",
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