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  "work": {
    "slug": "ennead-5",
    "name": "Ennead V — On the Intellectual-Principle"
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      "name": "Enneads",
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  "chapter": {
    "num": 4,
    "slug": "4-how-the-secondaries-rise-from-the-first",
    "title": "V.4 — How the Secondaries Rise From the First; and on the One",
    "of": 9,
    "words": 1278,
    "text": "## FOURTH TRACTATE\n\n\n#### FOURTH TRACTATE.\n\nHOW THE SECONDARIES RISE FROM THE FIRST:\n\nAND ON THE ONE.\n\n\n## Section 1\n\n\n##### Section 1\n\n1. Anything existing after The First must necessarily arise from\nthat First, whether immediately or as tracing back to it through\nintervenients; there must be an order of secondaries and tertiaries,\nin which any second is to be referred to The First, any third to the\nsecond.\n\nStanding before all things, there must exist a Simplex,\ndiffering from all its sequel, self-gathered not inter-blended with\nthe forms that rise from it, and yet able in some mode of its own to\nbe present to those others: it must be authentically a unity, not\nmerely something elaborated into unity and so in reality no more\nthan unity's counterfeit; it will debar all telling and\nknowing except\nthat it may be described as transcending Being- for if there were\nnothing outside all alliance and compromise, nothing authentically\none, there would be no Source. Untouched by multiplicity, it will be\nwholly self-sufficing, an absolute First, whereas any not-first\ndemands its earlier, and any non-simplex needs the\nsimplicities within\nitself as the very foundations of its composite existence.\n\nThere can be only one such being: if there were another, the two\n[as indiscernible] would resolve into one, for we are not\ndealing with\ntwo corporal entities.\n\nOur One-First is not a body: a body is not simplex and,\nas a thing\nof process cannot be a First, the Source cannot be a thing of\ngeneration: only a principle outside of body, and utterly\nuntouched by\nmultiplicity, could be The First.\n\nAny unity, then, later than The First must be no longer simplex;\nit can be no more than a unity in diversity.\n\nWhence must such a sequent arise?\n\nIt must be an offspring of The First; for suppose it the product\nof chance, that First ceases to be the Principle of All.\n\nBut how does it arise from The First?\n\nIf The First is perfect, utterly perfect above all, and is the\nbeginning of all power, it must be the most powerful of all that is,\nand all other powers must act in some partial imitation of it. Now\nother beings, coming to perfection, are observed to\ngenerate; they are\nunable to remain self-closed; they produce: and this is true not\nmerely of beings endowed with will, but of growing things where\nthere is no will; even lifeless objects impart something of\nthemselves, as far as they may; fire warms, snow chills, drugs have\ntheir own outgoing efficacy; all things to the utmost of their power\nimitate the Source in some operation tending to eternity and to\nservice.\n\nHow then could the most perfect remain self-set- the First Good,\nthe Power towards all, how could it grudge or be powerless to give\nof itself, and how at that would it still be the Source?\n\nIf things other than itself are to exist, things\ndependent upon it\nfor their reality, it must produce since there is no other\nsource. And\nfurther this engendering principle must be the very highest in\nworth; and its immediate offspring, its secondary, must be\nthe best of\nall that follows.\n\n\n## Section 2\n\n\n##### Section 2\n\n2. If the Intellectual-Principle were the engendering\nSource, then\nthe engendered secondary, while less perfect than the\nIntellectual-Principle, would be close to it and similar to it: but\nsince the engendering Source is above the Intellectual-Principle,\nthe secondary can only be that principle.\n\nBut why is the Intellectual-Principle not the generating source?\n\nBecause [it is not a self-sufficing simplex]: the Act of the\nIntellectual-Principle is intellection, which means that, seeing the\nintellectual object towards which it has turned, it is\nconsummated, so\nto speak, by that object, being in itself indeterminate like sight\n[a vague readiness for any and every vision] and determined by the\nintellectual object. This is why it has been said that \"out of the\nindeterminate dyad and The One arise the Ideas and the numbers\": for\nthe dyad is the Intellectual-Principle.\n\nThus it is not a simplex; it is manifold; it exhibits a certain\ncomposite quality- within the Intellectual or divine order,\nof course-\nas the principle that sees the manifold. It is, further, itself\nsimultaneously object and agent of intellection and is on that count\nalso a duality: and it possesses besides another object of\nintellection in the Order following upon itself.\n\nBut how can the Intellectual-Principle be a product of the\nIntellectual Object?\n\nIn this way: the intellectual object is self-gathered\n[self-compact] and is not deficient as the seeing and knowing\nprinciple must be- deficient, mean, as needing an object- it is\ntherefore no unconscious thing: all its content and accompaniment\nare its possession; it is self-distinguishing throughout; it is the\nseat of life as of all things; it is, itself, that self-intellection\nwhich takes place in eternal repose, that is to say, in a mode other\nthan that of the Intellectual-Principle.\n\nBut if something comes to being within an entity which in no way\nlooks outside itself- and especially within a being which is the sum\nof being- that entity must be the source of the new thing: stable in\nits own identity, it produces; but the product is that of an\nunchanged\nbeing: the producer is unchangeably the intellectual object, the\nproduct is produced as the Intellectual Act, an Act taking\nintellection of its source- the only object that exists for\nit- and so\nbecoming Intellectual-Principle, that is to say, becoming another\nintellectual being, resembling its source, a reproduction\nand image of\nthat.\n\nBut how from amid perfect rest can an Act arise?\n\nThere is in everything the Act of the Essence and the Act going\nout from the Essence: the first Act is the thing itself in its\nrealized identity, the second Act is an inevitably following outgo\nfrom the first, an emanation distinct from the thing itself.\n\nThus even in fire there is the warmth comported by its essential\nnature and there is the warmth going instantaneously outward\nfrom that\ncharacterizing heat by the fact that the fire, remaining\nunchangeably fire, utters the Act native to its essential reality.\n\nSo it is in the divine also: or rather we have there the earlier\nform of the double act: the divine remains in its own unchanging\nbeing, but from its perfection and from the Act included in\nits nature\nthere emanates the secondary or issuing Act which- as the output of\na mighty power, the mightiest there is- attains to Real Being as\nsecond to that which stands above all Being. That\ntranscendent was the\npotentiality of the All; this secondary is the All made actual.\n\nAnd if this is all things, that must be above and outside of\nall, so, must transcend real being. And again, if that secondary is\nall things, and if above its multiplicity there is a unity\nnot ranking\namong those things, once more this unity transcends Real Being and\ntherefore transcends the Intellectual-Principle as well.\nThere is thus\nsomething transcending Intellectual-Principle, for we must remember\nthat real being is no corpse, the negation of life and of\nintellection, but is in fact identical with the\nIntellectual-Principle. The Intellectual-Principle is not something\ntaking cognisance of things as sensation deals with sense objects\nexisting independently of sense: on the contrary, it actually is the\nthings it knows: the ideas constituting them it has not borrowed:\nwhence could it have taken them? No: it exists here together with\nthe things of the universe, identical with them, making a unity with\nthem; and the collective knowledge [in the divine mind] of the\nimmaterial is the universe of things.",
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