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    "slug": "ennead-5",
    "name": "Ennead V — On the Intellectual-Principle"
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  "chapter": {
    "num": 6,
    "slug": "6-that-the-principle-transcending-being-has",
    "title": "V.6 — That the Principle Transcending Being Has No Intellectual Act",
    "of": 9,
    "words": 2226,
    "text": "## SIXTH TRACTATE\n\n\n#### SIXTH TRACTATE.\n\nTHAT THE PRINCIPLE TRANSCENDING BEING HAS\n\nNO INTELLECTUAL ACT. WHAT BEING HAS\n\nINTELLECTION PRIMALLY AND WHAT\n\nBEING HAS IT SECONDARILY.\n\n\n## Section 1\n\n\n##### Section 1\n\n1. There is a principle having intellection of the external and\nanother having self-intellection and thus further removed from\nduality.\n\nEven the first mentioned is not without an effort\ntowards the pure\nunity of which it is not so capable: it does actually contain its\nobject, though as something other than itself.\n\nIn the self-intellective, there is not even this distinction of\nbeing: self-conversing, the subject is its own object, and thus\ntakes the double form while remaining essentially a unity. The\nintellection is the more profound for this internal possession of\nthe object.\n\nThis principle is the primally intellective since there can be\nno intellection without duality in unity. If there is no unity,\nperceiving principle and perceived object will be different, and the\nintellection, therefore, not primal: a principle concerned with\nsomething external cannot be the primally intellective since it does\nnot possess the object as integrally its own or as itself; if it\ndoes possess the object as itself- the condition of true\nintellection-\nthe two are one. Thus [in order to primal intellection] there must\nbe a unity in duality, while a pure unity with no counterbalancing\nduality can have no object for its intellection and ceases to be\nintellective: in other words the primally intellective must\nbe at once\nsimplex and something else.\n\nBut the surest way of realizing that its nature demands this\ncombination of unity and duality is to proceed upwards from the\nSoul, where the distinction can be made more dearly since the\nduality is exhibited more obviously.\n\nWe can imagine the Soul as a double light, a lesser\ncorresponding to the soul proper, a purer representing its\nintellective phase; if now we suppose this intellective\nlight equal to\nthe light which is to be its object, we no longer distinguish\nbetween them; the two are recognised as one: we know, indeed, that\nthere are two, but as we see them they have become one: this gives\nus the relation between the intellective subject and the object of\nintellection [in the duality and unity required by that primal\nintellection]: in our thought we have made the two into one; but on\nthe other hand the one thing has become two, making itself into a\nduality at the moment of intellection, or, to be more exact, being\ndual by the fact of intellection and single by the fact that its\nintellectual object is itself.\n\n\n## Section 2\n\n\n##### Section 2\n\n2. Thus there is the primally intellective and there is that in\nwhich intellection has taken another mode; but this indicates that\nwhat transcends the primarily intellective has no intellection; for,\nto have intellection, it must become an Intellectual-Principle, and,\nif it is to become that, it must possess an intellectual object and,\nas primarily intellective, it must possess that intellectual\nobject as\nsomething within itself.\n\nBut it is not inevitable that every intellectual object should\nboth possess the intellective principle in itself and exercise\nintellection: at that, it would be not merely object but subject as\nwell and, besides, being thus dual, could not be primal: further,\nthe intellectual principle that is to possess the intellectual\nobject could not cohere unless there existed an essence purely\nintellectual, something which, while standing as intellectual object\nto the intellectual principle, is in its own essence neither an\nagent nor an object of intellection. The intellectual object\npoints to\nsomething beyond itself [to a percipient]; and the intellectual\nagent has its intellection in vain unless by seizing and holding an\nobject- since, failing that, it can have no intellection but is\nconsummated only when it possesses itself of its natural term.\n\nThere must have been something standing consummate independently\nof any intellectual act, something perfect in its own essence: thus\nthat in which this completion is inherent must exist before\nintellection; in other words it has no need of intellection, having\nbeen always self-sufficing: this, then, will have no\nintellectual act.\n\nThus we arrive at: a principle having no intellection, a\nprinciple\nhaving intellection primarily, a principle having it secondarily.\n\nIt may be added that, supposing The First to be intellective, it\nthereby possesses something [some object, some attribute]: at once\nit ceases to be a first; it is a secondary, and not even a unity; it\nis a many; it is all of which it takes intellectual possession; even\nthough its intellection fell solely upon its own content, it must\nstill be a manifold.\n\n\n## Section 3\n\n\n##### Section 3\n\n3. We may be told that nothing prevents an identity being thus\nmultiple. But there must be a unity underlying the aggregate: a\nmanifold is impossible without a unity for its source or\nground, or at\nleast, failing some unity, related or unrelated. This unity must be\nnumbered as first before all and can be apprehended only as solitary\nand self-existent.\n\nWhen we recognize it, resident among the mass of things, our\nbusiness is to see it for what it is- present to the items but\nessentially distinguished from them- and, while not denying it\nthere, to seek this underly of all no longer as it appears in those\nother things but as it stands in its pure identity by itself. The\nidentity resident in the rest of things is no doubt close to\nauthentic\nidentity but cannot be it; and, if the identity of unity is to be\ndisplayed beyond itself, it must also exist within itself alone.\n\nIt may be suggested that its existence takes substantial\nform only\nby its being resident among outside things: but, at this, it\nis itself\nno longer simplex nor could any coherence of manifolds occur. On the\none hand things could take substantial existence only if they were\nin their own virtue simplex. On the other hand, failing a\nsimplex, the\naggregate of multiples is itself impossible: for the simplex\nindividual thing could not exist if there were no simplex unity\nindependent of the individual, [a principle of identity] and, not\nexisting, much less could it enter into composition with any other\nsuch: it becomes impossible then for the compound universe, the\naggregate of all, to exist; it would be the coming together of\nthings that are not, things not merely lacking an identity of their\nown but utterly non-existent.\n\nOnce there is any manifold, there must be a precedent\nunity: since\nany intellection implies multiplicity in the intellective\nsubject, the\nnon-multiple must be without intellection; that non-multiple will be\nthe First: intellection and the Intellectual-Principle must be\ncharacteristic of beings coming later.\n\n\n## Section 4\n\n\n##### Section 4\n\n4. Another consideration is that if The Good [and First] is\nsimplex and without need, it can neither need the\nintellective act nor\npossess what it does not need: it will therefore not have\nintellection. (Interpolation or corruption: It is without\nintellection\nbecause, also, it contains no duality.)\n\nAgain; an Intellectual-Principle is distinct from The Good and\ntakes a certain goodness only by its intellection of The Good.\n\nYet again: In any dual object there is the unity [the\nprinciple of\nidentity] side by side with the rest of the thing; an associated\nmember cannot be the unity of the two and there must be a\nself-standing unity [within the duality] before this unity of\nmembers can exist: by the same reasoning there must be also the\nsupreme unity entering into no association whatever, something which\nis unity-simplex by its very being, utterly devoid of all\nthat belongs\nto the thing capable of association.\n\nHow could anything be present in anything else unless in\nvirtue of\na source existing independently of association? The simplex [or\nabsolute] requires no derivation; but any manifold, or any dual,\nmust be dependent.\n\nWe may use the figure of, first, light; then, following it, the\nsun; as a third, the orb of the moon taking its light from the sun:\nSoul carries the Intellectual-Principle as something imparted and\nlending the light which makes it essentially intellective;\nIntellectual-Principle carries the light as its own though it is not\npurely the light but is the being into whose very essence the light\nhas been received; highest is That which, giving forth the light to\nits sequent, is no other than the pure light itself by whose\npower the\nIntellectual-Principle takes character.\n\nHow can this highest have need of any other? It is not to be\nidentified with any of the things that enter into association; the\nself-standing is of a very different order.\n\n\n## Section 5\n\n\n##### Section 5\n\n5. And again: the multiple must be always seeking its identity,\ndesiring self-accord and self-awareness: but what scope is there\nwithin what is an absolute unity in which to move towards\nits identity\nor at what term may it hope for self-knowing? It holds its\nidentity in\nits very essence and is above consciousness and all intellective\nact. Intellection is not a primal either in the fact of being or in\nthe value of being; it is secondary and derived: for there exists\nThe Good; and this moves towards itself while its sequent is\nmoved and\nby that movement has its characteristic vision. The intellective act\nmay be defined as a movement towards The Good in some being that\naspires towards it; the effort produces the fact; the two are\ncoincident; to see is to have desired to see: hence again the\nAuthentic Good has no need of intellection since itself and nothing\nelse is its good.\n\nThe intellective act is a movement towards the unmoved Good:\nthus the self-intellection in all save the Absolute Good is the\nworking of the imaged Good within them: the intellectual principle\nrecognises the likeness, sees itself as a good to itself, an\nobject of\nattraction: it grasps at that manifestation of The Good and, in\nholding that, holds self-vision: if the state of goodness is\nconstant,\nit remains constantly self-attractive and self-intellective. The\nself-intellection is not deliberate: it sees itself as an incident\nin its contemplation of The Good; for it sees itself in virtue of\nits Act; and, in all that exists, the Act is towards The Good.\n\n\n## Section 6\n\n\n##### Section 6\n\n6. If this reasoning is valid, The Good has no scope whatever\nfor intellection which demands something attractive from outside.\nThe Good, then, is without Act. What Act indeed, could be vested in\nActivity's self? No activity has yet again an activity; and whatever\nwe may add to such Activities as depend from something else, at\nleast we must leave the first Activity of them all, that from which\nall depend, as an uncontaminated identity, one to which no such\naddition can be made.\n\nThat primal Activity, then, is not an intellection, for there is\nnothing upon which it could Exercise intellection since it is The\nFirst; besides, intellection itself does not exercise the\nintellective\nact; this belongs to some principle in which intellection is vested.\nThere is, we repeat, duality in any thinking being; and the First is\nwholly above the dual.\n\nBut all this may be made more evident by a clearer recognition\nof the twofold principle at work wherever there is intellection:\n\nWhen we affirm the reality of the Real Beings and their\nindividual\nidentity of being and declare that these Real Beings exist in the\nIntellectual Realm, we do not mean merely that they remain\nunchangeably self-identical by their very essence, as contrasted\nwith the fluidity and instability of the sense-realm; the\nsense-realm itself may contain the enduring. No; we mean rather that\nthese principles possess, as by their own virtue, the consummate\nfulness of being. The Essence described as the primally existent\ncannot be a shadow cast by Being, but must possess Being entire; and\nBeing is entire when it holds the form and idea of\nintellection and of\nlife. In a Being, then, the existence, the intellection, the life\nare present as an aggregate. When a thing is a Being, it is also an\nIntellectual-Principle, when it is an Intellectual-Principle it is a\nBeing; intellection and Being are co-existents. Therefore\nintellection\nis a multiple not a unitary and that which does not belong to this\norder can have no Intellection. And if we turn to the partial and\nparticular, there is the Intellectual form of man, and there is man,\nthere is the Intellectual form of horse and there is horse, the\nIntellectual form of Justice, and Justice.\n\nThus all is dual: the unit is a duality and yet again the dual\nreverts to unity.\n\nThat, however, which stands outside all this category can be\nneither an individual unity nor an aggregate of all the duals or in\nany way a duality. How the duals rose from The One is treated\nelsewhere.\n\nWhat stands above Being stands above intellection: it is no\nweakness in it not to know itself, since as pure unity it contains\nnothing which it needs to explore. But it need not even spend any\nknowing upon things outside itself: this which was always the Good\nof all gives them something greater and better than its knowledge of\nthem in giving them in their own identity to cling, in whatever\nmeasure be possible, to a principle thus lofty.",
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