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    "slug": "ennead-5",
    "name": "Ennead V — On the Intellectual-Principle"
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      "slug": "plotinus-enneads",
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  "chapter": {
    "num": 1,
    "slug": "1-the-three-initial-hypostases",
    "title": "V.1 — The Three Initial Hypostases",
    "of": 9,
    "words": 5510,
    "text": "## FIRST TRACTATE\n\n\n#### FIRST TRACTATE.\n\nTHE THREE INITIAL HYPOSTASES.\n\n\n## Section 1\n\n\n##### Section 1\n\n1. What can it be that has brought the souls to forget\nthe father,\nGod, and, though members of the Divine and entirely of that world,\nto ignore at once themselves and It?\n\nThe evil that has overtaken them has its source in self-will, in\nthe entry into the sphere of process, and in the primal\ndifferentiation with the desire for self ownership. They conceived a\npleasure in this freedom and largely indulged their own motion; thus\nthey were hurried down the wrong path, and in the end, drifting\nfurther and further, they came to lose even the thought of their\norigin in the Divine. A child wrenched young from home and brought\nup during many years at a distance will fail in knowledge of its\nfather and of itself: the souls, in the same way, no longer discern\neither the divinity or their own nature; ignorance of their rank\nbrings self-depreciation; they misplace their respect, honouring\neverything more than themselves; all their awe and admiration is for\nthe alien, and, clinging to this, they have broken apart, as far as\na soul may, and they make light of what they have deserted; their\nregard for the mundane and their disregard of themselves bring about\ntheir utter ignoring of the divine.\n\nAdmiring pursuit of the external is a confession of inferiority;\nand nothing thus holding itself inferior to things that rise and\nperish, nothing counting itself less honourable and less\nenduring than\nall else it admires could ever form any notion of either the\nnature or\nthe power of God.\n\nA double discipline must be applied if human beings in this pass\nare to be reclaimed, and brought back to their origins, lifted once\nmore towards the Supreme and One and First.\n\nThere is the method, which we amply exhibit elsewhere, declaring\nthe dishonour of the objects which the Soul holds here in honour;\nthe second teaches or recalls to the soul its race and worth; this\nlatter is the leading truth, and, clearly brought out, is\nthe evidence\nof the other.\n\nIt must occupy us now for it bears closely upon our enquiry to\nwhich it is the natural preliminary: the seeker is soul and it must\nstart from a true notion of the nature and quality by which soul may\nundertake the search; it must study itself in order to learn whether\nit has the faculty for the enquiry, the eye for the object proposed,\nwhether in fact we ought to seek; for if the object is alien the\nsearch must be futile, while if there is relationship the solution\nof our problem is at once desirable and possible.\n\n\n## Section 2\n\n\n##### Section 2\n\n2. Let every soul recall, then, at the outset the truth that\nsoul is the author of all living things, that it has\nbreathed the life\ninto them all, whatever is nourished by earth and sea, all the\ncreatures of the air, the divine stars in the sky; it is the maker\nof the sun; itself formed and ordered this vast heaven and conducts\nall that rhythmic motion; and it is a principle distinct from all\nthese to which it gives law and movement and life, and it must of\nnecessity be more honourable than they, for they gather or\ndissolve as\nsoul brings them life or abandons them, but soul, since it never can\nabandon itself, is of eternal being.\n\nHow life was purveyed to the universe of things and to the\nseparate beings in it may be thus conceived:\n\nThat great soul must stand pictured before another soul, one not\nmean, a soul that has become worthy to look, emancipate from\nthe lure,\nfrom all that binds its fellows in bewitchment, holding itself in\nquietude. Let not merely the enveloping body be at peace, body's\nturmoil stilled, but all that lies around, earth at peace, and sea\nat peace, and air and the very heavens. Into that heaven,\nall at rest,\nlet the great soul be conceived to roll inward at every point,\npenetrating, permeating, from all sides pouring in its light. As the\nrays of the sun throwing their brilliance upon a lowering cloud make\nit gleam all gold, so the soul entering the material expanse of the\nheavens has given life, has given immortality: what was abject it\nhas lifted up; and the heavenly system, moved now in endless\nmotion by\nthe soul that leads it in wisdom, has become a living and a blessed\nthing; the soul domiciled within, it takes worth where, before the\nsoul, it was stark body- clay and water- or, rather, the blankness\nof Matter, the absence of Being, and, as an author says, \"the\nexecration of the Gods.\"\n\nThe Soul's nature and power will be brought out more\nclearly, more\nbrilliantly, if we consider next how it envelops the heavenly system\nand guides all to its purposes: for it has bestowed itself upon all\nthat huge expanse so that every interval, small and great alike, all\nhas been ensouled.\n\nThe material body is made up of parts, each holding its\nown place,\nsome in mutual opposition and others variously interdependent; the\nsoul is in no such condition; it is not whittled down so that life\ntells of a part of the soul and springs where some such separate\nportion impinges; each separate life lives by the soul entire,\nomnipresent in the likeness of the engendering father,\nentire in unity\nand entire in diffused variety. By the power of the soul the\nmanifold and diverse heavenly system is a unit: through soul this\nuniverse is a God: and the sun is a God because it is\nensouled; so too\nthe stars: and whatsoever we ourselves may be, it is all in virtue\nof soul; for \"dead is viler than dung.\"\n\nThis, by which the gods are divine, must be the oldest\nGod of them\nall: and our own soul is of that same Ideal nature, so that to\nconsider it, purified, freed from all accruement, is to recognise in\nourselves that same value which we have found soul to be, honourable\nabove all that is bodily. For what is body but earth, and,\ntaking fire\nitself, what [but soul] is its burning power? So it is with all the\ncompounds of earth and fire, even with water and air added to them?\n\nIf, then, it is the presence of soul that brings worth, how can\na man slight himself and run after other things? You honour the Soul\nelsewhere; honour then yourself.\n\n\n## Section 3\n\n\n##### Section 3\n\n3. The Soul once seen to be thus precious, thus divine, you may\nhold the faith that by its possession you are already nearing God:\nin the strength of this power make upwards towards Him: at no great\ndistance you must attain: there is not much between.\n\nBut over this divine, there is still a diviner: grasp the upward\nneighbour of the soul, its prior and source.\n\nSoul, for all the worth we have shown to belong to it, is yet a\nsecondary, an image of the Intellectual-Principle: reason uttered is\nan image of the reason stored within the soul, and in the same way\nsoul is an utterance of the Intellectual-Principle: it is even the\ntotal of its activity, the entire stream of life sent forth by that\nPrinciple to the production of further being; it is the forthgoing\nheat of a fire which has also heat essentially inherent. But within\nthe Supreme we must see energy not as an overflow but in the double\naspect of integral inherence with the establishment of a new being.\nSprung, in other words, from the Intellectual-Principle, Soul is\nintellective, but with an intellection operation by the method of\nreasonings: for its perfecting it must look to that Divine\nMind, which\nmay be thought of as a father watching over the development of his\nchild born imperfect in comparison with himself.\n\nThus its substantial existence comes from the\nIntellectual-Principle; and the Reason within it becomes Act\nin virtue\nof its contemplation of that prior; for its thought and act are its\nown intimate possession when it looks to the Supreme Intelligence;\nthose only are soul-acts which are of this intellective\nnature and are\ndetermined by its own character; all that is less noble is foreign\n[traceable to Matter] and is accidental to the soul in the course of\nits peculiar task.\n\nIn two ways, then, the Intellectual-Principle enhances the\ndivine quality of the soul, as father and as immanent presence;\nnothing separates them but the fact that they are not one and the\nsame, that there is succession, that over against a recipient there\nstands the ideal-form received; but this recipient, Matter to the\nSupreme Intelligence, is also noble as being at once informed by\ndivine intellect and uncompounded.\n\nWhat the Intellectual-Principle must be is carried in the single\nword that Soul, itself so great, is still inferior.\n\n\n## Section 4\n\n\n##### Section 4\n\n4. But there is yet another way to this knowledge:\n\nAdmiring the world of sense as we look out upon its vastness and\nbeauty and the order of its eternal march, thinking of the\ngods within\nit, seen and hidden, and the celestial spirits and all the life of\nanimal and plant, let us mount to its archetype, to the yet more\nauthentic sphere: there we are to contemplate all things as\nmembers of\nthe Intellectual- eternal in their own right, vested with a\nself-springing consciousness and life- and, presiding over all\nthese, the unsoiled Intelligence and the unapproachable wisdom.\n\nThat archetypal world is the true Golden Age, age of Kronos, who\nis the Intellectual-Principle as being the offspring or exuberance\nof God. For here is contained all that is immortal: nothing here but\nis Divine Mind; all is God; this is the place of every soul. Here is\nrest unbroken: for how can that seek change, in which all is well;\nwhat need that reach to, which holds all within itself; what\nincrease can that desire, which stands utterly achieved? All its\ncontent, thus, is perfect, that itself may be perfect throughout, as\nholding nothing that is less than the divine, nothing that is less\nthan intellective. Its knowing is not by search but by\npossession, its\nblessedness inherent, not acquired; for all belongs to it eternally\nand it holds the authentic Eternity imitated by Time which, circling\nround the Soul, makes towards the new thing and passes by the old.\nSoul deals with thing after thing- now Socrates; now a horse: always\nsome one entity from among beings- but the Intellectual-Principle is\nall and therefore its entire content is simultaneously\npresent in that\nidentity: this is pure being in eternal actuality; nowhere is there\nany future, for every then is a now; nor is there any past, for\nnothing there has ever ceased to be; everything has taken its stand\nfor ever, an identity well pleased, we might say, to be as it is;\nand everything, in that entire content, is Intellectual-Principle\nand Authentic Existence; and the total of all is\nIntellectual-Principle entire and Being entire.\nIntellectual-Principle\nby its intellective act establishes Being, which in turn, as the\nobject of intellection, becomes the cause of intellection and of\nexistence to the Intellectual-Principle- though, of course, there is\nanother cause of intellection which is also a cause to Being, both\nrising in a source distinct from either.\n\nNow while these two are coalescents, having their existence in\ncommon, and are never apart, still the unity they form is two-sided;\nthere is Intellectual-Principle as against Being, the intellectual\nagent as against the object of intellection; we consider the\nintellective act and we have the Intellectual-Principle; we think of\nthe object of that act and we have Being.\n\nSuch difference there must be if there is to be any\nintellection; but similarly there must also be identity [since, in\nperfect knowing, subject and object are identical.]\n\nThus the Primals [the first \"Categories\"] are seen to be:\nIntellectual-Principle; Existence; Difference; Identity: we must\ninclude also Motion and Rest: Motion provides for the intellectual\nact, Rest preserves identity as Difference gives at once a Knower\nand a Known, for, failing this, all is one, and silent.\n\nSo too the objects of intellection [the ideal content of the\nDivine Mind]- identical in virtue of the self-concentration of the\nprinciple which is their common ground- must still be distinct each\nfrom another; this distinction constitutes Difference.\n\nThe Intellectual Kosmos thus a manifold, Number and Quantity\narise: Quality is the specific character of each of these ideas\nwhich stand as the principles from which all else derives.\n\n\n## Section 5\n\n\n##### Section 5\n\n5. As a manifold, then, this God, the Intellectual-Principle,\nexists within the Soul here, the Soul which once for all\nstands linked\na member of the divine, unless by a deliberate apostasy.\n\nBringing itself close to the divine Intellect, becoming, as it\nwere, one with this, it seeks still further: What Being, now, has\nengendered this God, what is the Simplex preceding this\nmultiple; what\nthe cause at once of its existence and of its existing as a\nmanifold; what the source of this Number, this Quantity?\n\nNumber, Quantity, is not primal: obviously before even duality,\nthere must stand the unity.\n\nThe Dyad is a secondary; deriving from unity, it finds in unity\nthe determinant needed by its native indetermination: once there is\nany determination, there is Number, in the sense, of course, of the\nreal [the archetypal] Number. And the soul is such a number or\nquantity. For the Primals are not masses or magnitudes; all of that\ngross order is later, real only to the sense-thought; even\nin seed the\neffective reality is not the moist substance but the unseen- that is\nto say Number [as the determinant of individual being] and the\nReason-Principle [of the product to be].\n\nThus by what we call the Number and the Dyad of that\nhigher realm,\nwe mean Reason Principles and the Intellectual-Principle: but while\nthe Dyad is, as regards that sphere, undetermined-\nrepresenting, as it\nwere, the underly [or Matter] of The One- the later Number [or\nQuantity]- that which rises from the Dyad\n[Intellectual-Principle] and\nThe One- is not Matter to the later existents but is their\nforming-Idea, for all of them take shape, so to speak, from the\nideas rising within this. The determination of the Dyad is brought\nabout partly from its object- The One- and partly from itself, as is\nthe case with all vision in the act of sight: intellection\n[the Act of\nthe Dyad] is vision occupied upon The One.\n\n\n## Section 6\n\n\n##### Section 6\n\n6. But how and what does the Intellectual-Principle see and,\nespecially, how has it sprung from that which is to become the\nobject of its vision?\n\nThe mind demands the existence of these Beings, but it\nis still in\ntrouble over the problem endlessly debated by the most ancient\nphilosophers: from such a unity as we have declared The One\nto be, how\ndoes anything at all come into substantial existence, any\nmultiplicity, dyad, or number? Why has the Primal not remained\nself-gathered so that there be none of this profusion of the\nmanifold which we observe in existence and yet are compelled to\ntrace to that absolute unity?\n\nIn venturing an answer, we first invoke God Himself, not in loud\nword but in that way of prayer which is always within our power,\nleaning in soul towards Him by aspiration, alone towards the alone.\nBut if we seek the vision of that great Being within the Inner\nSanctuary- self-gathered, tranquilly remote above all else- we begin\nby considering the images stationed at the outer precincts, or, more\nexactly to the moment, the first image that appears. How the Divine\nMind comes into being must be explained:\n\nEverything moving has necessarily an object towards which it\nadvances; but since the Supreme can have no such object, we may not\nascribe motion to it: anything that comes into being after it can be\nproduced only as a consequence of its unfailing self-intention; and,\nof course, we dare not talk of generation in time, dealing as we are\nwith eternal Beings: where we speak of origin in such\nreference, it is\nin the sense, merely, of cause and subordination: origin from the\nSupreme must not be taken to imply any movement in it: that\nwould make\nthe Being resulting from the movement not a second principle but a\nthird: the Movement would be the second hypostasis.\n\nGiven this immobility in the Supreme, it can neither have\nyielded assent nor uttered decree nor stirred in any way towards the\nexistence of a secondary.\n\nWhat happened then? What are we to conceive as rising in the\nneighbourhood of that immobility?\n\nIt must be a circumradiation- produced from the Supreme but from\nthe Supreme unaltering- and may be compared to the brilliant light\nencircling the sun and ceaselessly generated from that unchanging\nsubstance.\n\nAll existences, as long as they retain their character, produce-\nabout themselves, from their essence, in virtue of the power which\nmust be in them- some necessary, outward-facing hypostasis\ncontinuously attached to them and representing in image the\nengendering archetypes: thus fire gives out its heat; snow\nis cold not\nmerely to itself; fragrant substances are a notable instance; for,\nas long as they last, something is diffused from them and perceived\nwherever they are present.\n\nAgain, all that is fully achieved engenders: therefore the\neternally achieved engenders eternally an eternal being. At the same\ntime, the offspring is always minor: what then are we to think of\nthe All-Perfect but that it can produce nothing less than the very\ngreatest that is later than itself. The greatest, later than the\ndivine unity, must be the Divine Mind, and it must be the second of\nall existence, for it is that which sees The One on which alone it\nleans while the First has no need whatever of it. The\noffspring of the\nprior to Divine Mind can be no other than that Mind itself\nand thus is\nthe loftiest being in the universe, all else following upon it- the\nsoul, for example, being an utterance and act of the\nIntellectual-Principle as that is an utterance and act of\nThe One. But\nin soul the utterance is obscured, for soul is an image and must\nlook to its own original: that Principle, on the contrary, looks to\nthe First without mediation- thus becoming what it is- and has that\nvision not as from a distance but as the immediate next with nothing\nintervening, close to the One as Soul to it.\n\nThe offspring must seek and love the begetter; and especially so\nwhen begetter and begotten are alone in their sphere; when, in\naddition, the begetter is the highest good, the offspring\n[inevitably seeking its Good] is attached by a bond of sheer\nnecessity, separated only in being distinct.\n\n\n## Section 7\n\n\n##### Section 7\n\n7. We must be more explicit:\n\nThe Intellectual-Principle stands as the image of The\nOne, firstly\nbecause there is a certain necessity that the first should have its\noffspring, carrying onward much of its quality, in other words that\nthere be something in its likeness as the sun's rays tell of the\nsun. Yet The One is not an Intellectual-Principle; how then does it\nengender an Intellectual-Principle?\n\nSimply by the fact that in its self-quest it has vision:\nthis very\nseeing is the Intellectual-Principle. Any perception of the external\nindicates either sensation or intellection, sensation symbolized by\na line, intellection by a circle... [corrupt passage].\n\nOf course the divisibility belonging to the circle does not\napply to the Intellectual-Principle; all, there too, is a unity,\nthough a unity which is the potentiality of all existence.\n\nThe items of this potentiality the divine intellection\nbrings out,\nso to speak, from the unity and knows them in detail, as it\nmust if it\nis to be an intellectual principle.\n\nIt has besides a consciousness, as it were, within itself of\nthis same potentiality; it knows that it can of itself beget an\nhypostasis and can determine its own Being by the virtue emanating\nfrom its prior; it knows that its nature is in some sense a definite\npart of the content of that First; that it thence derives\nits essence,\nthat its strength lies there and that its Being takes perfection as\na derivative and a recipient from the First. It sees that,\nas a member\nof the realm of division and part, it receives life and intellection\nand all else it has and is, from the undivided and partless, since\nthat First is no member of existence, but can be the source of all\non condition only of being held down by no one distinctive shape but\nremaining the undeflected unity.\n\n[(CORRUPT)- Thus it would be the entire universe but that...]\n\nAnd so the First is not a thing among the things contained by\nthe Intellectual-Principle though the source of all. In\nvirtue of this\nsource, things of the later order are essential beings; for from\nthat fact there is determination; each has its form: what has being\ncannot be envisaged as outside of limit; the nature must be held\nfast by boundary and fixity; though to the Intellectual Beings this\nfixity is no more than determination and form, the foundations of\ntheir substantial existence.\n\nA being of this quality, like the Intellectual-Principle, must\nbe felt to be worthy of the all-pure: it could not derive from any\nother than from the first principle of all; as it comes into\nexistence, all other beings must be simultaneously\nengendered- all the\nbeauty of the Ideas, all the Gods of the Intellectual realm. And it\nstill remains pregnant with this offspring; for it has, so to speak,\ndrawn all within itself again, holding them lest they fall away\ntowards Matter to be \"brought up in the House of Rhea\" [in the realm\nof flux]. This is the meaning hidden in the Mysteries, and in the\nMyths of the gods: Kronos, as the wisest, exists before Zeus; he\nmust absorb his offspring that, full within himself, he may\nbe also an\nIntellectual-Principle manifest in some product of his plenty;\nafterwards, the myth proceeds, Kronos engenders Zeus, who already\nexists as the [necessary and eternal] outcome of the plenty there;\nin other words the offspring of the Divine Intellect, perfect within\nitself, is Soul [the life-principle carrying forward the Ideas in\nthe Divine Mind].\n\nNow, even in the Divine the engendered could not be the very\nhighest; it must be a lesser, an image; it will be undetermined, as\nthe Divine is, but will receive determination, and, so to speak, its\nshaping idea, from the progenitor.\n\nYet any offspring of the Intellectual-Principle must be a\nReason-Principle; the thought of the Divine Mind must be a\nsubstantial\nexistence: such then is that [Soul] which circles about the Divine\nMind, its light, its image inseparably attached to it: on the upper\nlevel united with it, filled from it, enjoying it, participant in\nits nature, intellective with it, but on the lower level in contact\nwith the realm beneath itself, or, rather, generating in turn an\noffspring which must lie beneath; of this lower we will treat later;\nso far we deal still with the Divine.\n\n\n## Section 8\n\n\n##### Section 8\n\n8. This is the explanation of Plato's Triplicity, in the passage\nwhere he names as the Primals the Beings gathered about the King of\nAll, and establishes a Secondary containing the Secondaries, and a\nThird containing the Tertiaries.\n\nHe teaches, also, that there is an author of the Cause,\nthat is of\nthe Intellectual-Principle, which to him is the Creator who made the\nSoul, as he tells us, in the famous mixing bowl. This author of the\ncausing principle, of the divine mind, is to him the Good, that\nwhich transcends the Intellectual-Principle and transcends Being:\noften too he uses the term \"The Idea\" to indicate Being and\nthe Divine\nMind. Thus Plato knows the order of generation- from the Good, the\nIntellectual-Principle; from the Intellectual-Principle, the Soul.\nThese teachings are, therefore, no novelties, no inventions of\ntoday, but long since stated, if not stressed; our doctrine here is\nthe explanation of an earlier and can show the antiquity of these\nopinions on the testimony of Plato himself.\n\nEarlier, Parmenides made some approach to the doctrine in\nidentifying Being with Intellectual-Principle while separating Real\nBeing from the realm of sense.\n\n\"Knowing and Being are one thing he says, and this unity\nis to him\nmotionless in spite of the intellection he attributes to it: to\npreserve its unchanging identity he excludes all bodily movement\nfrom it; and he compares it to a huge sphere in that it holds and\nenvelops all existence and that its intellection is not an outgoing\nact but internal. Still, with all his affirmation of unity, his own\nwritings lay him open to the reproach that his unity turns\nout to be a\nmultiplicity.\n\nThe Platonic Parmenides is more exact; the distinction is made\nbetween the Primal One, a strictly pure Unity, and a secondary One\nwhich is a One-Many and a third which is a One-and-many; thus he too\nis in accordance with our thesis of the Three Kinds.\n\n\n## Section 9\n\n\n##### Section 9\n\n9. Anaxagoras, again, in his assertion of a Mind pure\nand unmixed,\naffirms a simplex First and a sundered One, though writing\nlong ago he\nfailed in precision.\n\nHeraclitus, with his sense of bodily forms as things of\nceaseless process and passage, knows the One as eternal and\nintellectual.\n\nIn Empedocles, similarly, we have a dividing principle,\n\"Strife,\" set against \"Friendship\"- which is The One and is to him\nbodiless, while the elements represent Matter.\n\nLater there is Aristotle; he begins by making the First\ntranscendent and intellective but cancels that primacy by\nsupposing it\nto have self-intellection. Further he affirms a multitude of other\nintellective beings- as many indeed as there are orbs in the\nheavens; one such principle as in- over to every orb- and thus his\naccount of the Intellectual Realm differs from Plato's and, failing\nreason, he brings in necessity; though whatever reasons he\nhad alleged\nthere would always have been the objection that it would be more\nreasonable that all the spheres, as contributory to one\nsystem, should\nlook to a unity, to the First.\n\nWe are obliged also to ask whether to Aristotle's mind all\nIntellectual Beings spring from one, and that one their First; or\nwhether the Principles in the Intellectual are many.\n\nIf from one, then clearly the Intellectual system will be\nanalogous to that of the universe of sense-sphere encircling sphere,\nwith one, the outermost, dominating all- the First [in the\nIntellectual] will envelop the entire scheme and will be an\nIntellectual [or Archetypal] Kosmos; and as in our universe the\nspheres are not empty but the first sphere is thick with stars and\nnone without them, so, in the Intellectual Kosmos, those\nprinciples of\nMovement will envelop a multitude of Beings, and that world will be\nthe realm of the greater reality.\n\nIf on the contrary each is a principle, then the effective\npowers become a matter of chance; under what compulsion are they to\nhold together and act with one mind towards that work of unity, the\nharmony of the entire heavenly system? Again what can make it\nnecessary that the material bodies of the heavenly system be equal\nin number to the Intellectual moving principles, and how can these\nincorporeal Beings be numerically many when there is no Matter to\nserve as the basis of difference?\n\nFor these reasons the ancient philosophers that ranged\nthemselves most closely to the school of Pythagoras and of his later\nfollowers and to that of Pherekudes, have insisted upon this Nature,\nsome developing the subject in their writings while others treated\nof it merely in unwritten discourses, some no doubt ignoring it\nentirely.\n\n\n## Section 10\n\n\n##### Section 10\n\n10. We have shown the inevitability of certain convictions as to\nthe scheme of things:\n\nThere exists a Principle which transcends Being; this is The\nOne, whose nature we have sought to establish in so far as such\nmatters lend themselves to proof. Upon The One follows\nimmediately the\nPrinciple which is at once Being and the\nIntellectual-Principle. Third\ncomes the Principle, Soul.\n\nNow just as these three exist for the system of Nature, so, we\nmust hold, they exist for ourselves. I am not speaking of\nthe material\norder- all that is separable- but of what lies beyond the sense realm\nin the same way as the Primals are beyond all the heavens; I mean the\ncorresponding aspect of man, what Plato calls the Interior Man.\n\nThus our soul, too, is a divine thing, belonging to another\norder than sense; such is all that holds the rank of soul, but\n[above the life-principle] there is the soul perfected as containing\nIntellectual-Principle with its double phase, reasoning and\ngiving the\npower to reason. The reasoning phase of the soul, needing no bodily\norgan for its thinking but maintaining, in purity, its\ndistinctive Act\nthat its thought may be uncontaminated- this we cannot err\nin placing,\nseparate and not mingled into body, within the first Intellectual.\nWe may not seek any point of space in which to seat it; it\nmust be set\noutside of all space: its distinct quality, its separateness, its\nimmateriality, demand that it be a thing alone, untouched by all of\nthe bodily order. This is why we read of the universe that the\nDemiurge cast the soul around it from without- understand that phase\nof soul which is permanently seated in the Intellectual- and of\nourselves that the charioteer's head reaches upwards towards the\nheights.\n\nThe admonition to sever soul from body is not, of course, to be\nunderstood spatially- that separation stands made in Nature- the\nreference is to holding our rank, to use of our thinking, to an\nattitude of alienation from the body in the effort to lead up and\nattach to the over-world, equally with the other, that phase of soul\nseated here and, alone, having to do with body, creating, moulding,\nspending its care upon it.\n\n\n## Section 11\n\n\n##### Section 11\n\n11. Since there is a Soul which reasons upon the right and good-\nfor reasoning is an enquiry into the rightness and goodness of this\nrather than that- there must exist some permanent Right, the source\nand foundation of this reasoning in our soul; how, else, could any\nsuch discussion be held? Further, since the soul's attention to\nthese matters is intermittent, there must be within us an\nIntellectual-Principle acquainted with that Right not by\nmomentary act\nbut in permanent possession. Similarly there must be also the\nprinciple of this principle, its cause, God. This Highest cannot be\ndivided and allotted, must remain intangible but not bound to space,\nit may be present at many points, wheresoever there is anything\ncapable of accepting one of its manifestations; thus a centre is an\nindependent unity; everything within the circle has its term at the\ncentre; and to the centre the radii bring each their own. Within our\nnature is such a centre by which we grasp and are linked and\nheld; and\nthose of us are firmly in the Supreme whose collective tendency is\nThere.\n\n\n## Section 12\n\n\n##### Section 12\n\n12. Possessed of such powers, how does it happen that we do not\nlay hold of them, but for the most part, let these high activities\ngo idle- some, even, of us never bringing them in any degree to\neffect?\n\nThe answer is that all the Divine Beings are unceasingly about\ntheir own act, the Intellectual-Principle and its Prior always\nself-intent; and so, too, the soul maintains its unfailing movement;\nfor not all that passes in the soul is, by that fact, perceptible;\nwe know just as much as impinges upon the faculty of sense. Any\nactivity not transmitted to the sensitive faculty has not traversed\nthe entire soul: we remain unaware because the human being includes\nsense-perception; man is not merely a part [the higher part] of the\nsoul but the total.\n\nNone the less every being of the order of soul is in continuous\nactivity as long as life holds, continuously executing to itself its\ncharacteristic act: knowledge of the act depends upon\ntransmission and\nperception. If there is to be perception of what is thus present, we\nmust turn the perceptive faculty inward and hold it to attention\nthere. Hoping to hear a desired voice, we let all others pass and\nare alert for the coming at last of that most welcome of sounds: so\nhere, we must let the hearings of sense go by, save for sheer\nnecessity, and keep the soul's perception bright and quick to the\nsounds from above.",
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