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    "slug": "ennead-5",
    "name": "Ennead V — On the Intellectual-Principle"
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  "chapter": {
    "num": 8,
    "slug": "8-on-the-intellectual-beauty",
    "title": "V.8 — On the Intellectual Beauty",
    "of": 9,
    "words": 6396,
    "text": "## EIGHTH TRACTATE\n\n\n#### EIGHTH TRACTATE.\n\nON THE INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY.\n\n\n## Section 1\n\n\n##### Section 1\n\n1. It is a principle with us that one who has attained to the\nvision of the Intellectual Beauty and grasped the beauty of the\nAuthentic Intellect will be able also to come to understand\nthe Father\nand Transcendent of that Divine Being. It concerns us, then,\nto try to\nsee and say, for ourselves and as far as such matters may be\ntold, how\nthe Beauty of the divine Intellect and of the Intellectual Kosmos\nmay be revealed to contemplation.\n\nLet us go to the realm of magnitudes: Suppose two blocks of\nstone lying side by side: one is unpatterned, quite untouched by\nart; the other has been minutely wrought by the craftsman's\nhands into\nsome statue of god or man, a Grace or a Muse, or if a human\nbeing, not\na portrait but a creation in which the sculptor's art has\nconcentrated\nall loveliness.\n\nNow it must be seen that the stone thus brought under\nthe artist's\nhand to the beauty of form is beautiful not as stone- for so\nthe crude\nblock would be as pleasant- but in virtue of the form or idea\nintroduced by the art. This form is not in the material; it is in\nthe designer before ever it enters the stone; and the artificer\nholds it not by his equipment of eyes and hands but by his\nparticipation in his art. The beauty, therefore, exists in a far\nhigher state in the art; for it does not come over\nintegrally into the\nwork; that original beauty is not transferred; what comes over is a\nderivative and a minor: and even that shows itself upon the\nstatue not\nintegrally and with entire realization of intention but only\nin so far\nas it has subdued the resistance of the material.\n\nArt, then, creating in the image of its own nature and content,\nand working by the Idea or Reason-Principle of the beautiful\nobject it\nis to produce, must itself be beautiful in a far higher and purer\ndegree since it is the seat and source of that beauty, indwelling in\nthe art, which must naturally be more complete than any comeliness\nof the external. In the degree in which the beauty is diffused by\nentering into matter, it is so much the weaker than that\nconcentrated in unity; everything that reaches outwards is the less\nfor it, strength less strong, heat less hot, every power less\npotent, and so beauty less beautiful.\n\nThen again every prime cause must be, within itself,\nmore powerful\nthan its effect can be: the musical does not derive from an\nunmusical source but from music; and so the art exhibited in the\nmaterial work derives from an art yet higher.\n\nStill the arts are not to be slighted on the ground that they\ncreate by imitation of natural objects; for, to begin with, these\nnatural objects are themselves imitations; then, we must recognise\nthat they give no bare reproduction of the thing seen but go back to\nthe Ideas from which Nature itself derives, and, furthermore, that\nmuch of their work is all their own; they are holders of beauty and\nadd where nature is lacking. Thus Pheidias wrought the Zeus upon no\nmodel among things of sense but by apprehending what form Zeus must\ntake if he chose to become manifest to sight.\n\n\n## Section 2\n\n\n##### Section 2\n\n2. But let us leave the arts and consider those works produced\nby Nature and admitted to be naturally beautiful which the creations\nof art are charged with imitating, all reasoning life and\nunreasoning things alike, but especially the consummate among them,\nwhere the moulder and maker has subdued the material and given the\nform he desired. Now what is the beauty here? It has nothing to do\nwith the blood or the menstrual process: either there is\nalso a colour\nand form apart from all this, or there is nothing unless sheer\nugliness or a bare recipient, as it were the mere Matter of beauty.\n\nWhence shone forth the beauty of Helen, battle-sought; or of all\nthose women like in loveliness to Aphrodite; or of Aphrodite\nherself; or of any human being that has been perfect in beauty; or\nof any of these gods manifest to sight, or unseen but carrying what\nwould be beauty if we saw?\n\nIn all these is it not the Idea, something of that realm but\ncommunicated to the produced from within the producer just\nas in works\nof art, we held, it is communicated from the arts to their\ncreations? Now we can surely not believe that, while the made thing\nand the Idea thus impressed upon Matter are beautiful, yet the Idea\nnot so alloyed but resting still with the creator- the Idea primal,\nimmaterial, firmly a unity- is not Beauty.\n\nIf material extension were in itself the ground of beauty, then\nthe creating principle, being without extension, could not be\nbeautiful: but beauty cannot be made to depend upon magnitude since,\nwhether in a large object or a small, the one Idea equally moves and\nforms the mind by its inherent power. A further indication is that\nas long as the object remains outside us we know nothing of it; it\naffects us by entry; but only as an Idea can it enter\nthrough the eyes\nwhich are not of scope to take an extended mass: we are, no doubt,\nsimultaneously possessed of the magnitude which, however, we take in\nnot as mass but by an elaboration upon the presented form.\n\nThen again the principle producing the beauty must be, itself,\nugly, neutral or beautiful: ugly, it could not produce the opposite;\nneutral, why should its product be the one rather than the other?\nThe Nature, then, which creates things so lovely must be itself of a\nfar earlier beauty; we, undisciplined in discernment of the inward,\nknowing nothing of it, run after the outer, never understanding that\nit is the inner which stirs us; we are in the case of one\nwho sees his\nown reflection but not realizing whence it comes goes in pursuit of\nit.\n\nBut that the thing we are pursuing is something\ndifferent and that\nthe beauty is not in the concrete object is manifest from the beauty\nthere is in matters of study, in conduct and custom; briefly in soul\nor mind. And it is precisely here that the greater beauty lies,\nperceived whenever you look to the wisdom in a man and delight in\nit, not wasting attention on the face, which may be hideous, but\npassing all appearance by and catching only at the inner comeliness,\nthe truly personal; if you are still unmoved and cannot acknowledge\nbeauty under such conditions, then looking to your own inner\nbeing you\nwill find no beauty to delight you and it will be futile in\nthat state\nto seek the greater vision, for you will be questing it through the\nugly and impure.\n\nThis is why such matters are not spoken of to everyone; you, if\nyou are conscious of beauty within, remember.\n\n\n## Section 3\n\n\n##### Section 3\n\n3. Thus there is in the Nature-Principle itself an Ideal\narchetype\nof the beauty that is found in material forms and, of that archetype\nagain, the still more beautiful archetype in Soul, source of that in\nNature. In the proficient soul this is brighter and of more advanced\nloveliness: adorning the soul and bringing to it a light from that\ngreater light which is beauty primally, its immediate presence sets\nthe soul reflecting upon the quality of this prior, the archetype\nwhich has no such entries, and is present nowhere but remains in\nitself alone, and thus is not even to be called a\nReason-Principle but\nis the creative source of the very first Reason-Principle\nwhich is the\nBeauty to which Soul serves as Matter.\n\nThis prior, then, is the Intellectual-Principle, the veritable,\nabiding and not fluctuant since not taking intellectual quality from\noutside itself. By what image thus, can we represent it? We have\nnowhere to go but to what is less. Only from itself can we take an\nimage of it; that is, there can be no representation of it, except\nin the sense that we represent gold by some portion of gold-\npurified,\neither actually or mentally, if it be impure- insisting at the same\ntime that this is not the total thing-gold, but merely the\nparticular gold of a particular parcel. In the same way we learn in\nthis matter from the purified Intellect in ourselves or, if you\nlike, from the Gods and the glory of the Intellect in them.\n\nFor assuredly all the Gods are august and beautiful in a beauty\nbeyond our speech. And what makes them so? Intellect; and especially\nIntellect operating within them [the divine sun and stars] to\nvisibility. It is not through the loveliness of their\ncorporeal forms:\neven those that have body are not gods by that beauty; it is\nin virtue\nof Intellect that they, too, are gods, and as gods beautiful. They\ndo not veer between wisdom and folly: in the immunity of Intellect\nunmoving and pure, they are wise always, all-knowing, taking\ncognisance not of the human but of their own being and of all that\nlies within the contemplation of Intellect. Those of them whose\ndwelling is in the heavens, are ever in this meditation- what task\nprevents them?- and from afar they look, too, into that\nfurther heaven\nby a lifting of the head. The Gods belonging to that higher Heaven\nitself, they whose station is upon it and in it, see and know in\nvirtue of their omnipresence to it. For all There is heaven; earth\nis heaven, and sea heaven; and animal and plant and man; all is the\nheavenly content of that heaven: and the Gods in it,\ndespising neither\nmen nor anything else that is there where all is of the heavenly\norder, traverse all that country and all space in peace.\n\n\n## Section 4\n\n\n##### Section 4\n\n4. To \"live at ease\" is There; and, to these divine\nbeings, verity\nis mother and nurse, existence and sustenance; all that is not of\nprocess but of authentic being they see, and themselves in all: for\nall is transparent, nothing dark, nothing resistant; every being is\nlucid to every other, in breadth and depth; light runs through\nlight. And each of them contains all within itself, and at the same\ntime sees all in every other, so that everywhere there is\nall, and all\nis all and each all, and infinite the glory. Each of them is great;\nthe small is great; the sun, There, is all the stars; and every\nstar, again, is all the stars and sun. While some one manner of\nbeing is dominant in each, all are mirrored in every other.\n\nMovement There is pure [as self-caused] for the moving principle\nis not a separate thing to complicate it as it speeds.\n\nSo, too, Repose is not troubled, for there is no admixture of\nthe unstable; and the Beauty is all beauty since it is not merely\nresident [as an attribute or addition] in some beautiful object.\nEach There walks upon no alien soil; its place is its essential\nself; and, as each moves, so to speak, towards what is Above, it is\nattended by the very ground from which it starts: there is no\ndistinguishing between the Being and the Place; all is Intellect,\nthe Principle and the ground on which it stands, alike. Thus we\nmight think that our visible sky [the ground or place of the stars],\nlit, as it is, produces the light which reaches us from it, though\nof course this is really produced by the stars [as it were, by the\nPrinciples of light alone, not also by the ground as the\nanalogy would\nrequire].\n\nIn our realm all is part rising from part and nothing can be\nmore than partial; but There each being is an eternal product of a\nwhole and is at once a whole and an individual manifesting as part\nbut, to the keen vision There, known for the whole it is.\n\nThe myth of Lynceus seeing into the very deeps of the earth\ntells us of those eyes in the divine. No weariness overtakes this\nvision, which yet brings no such satiety as would call for\nits ending;\nfor there never was a void to be filled so that, with the fulness\nand the attainment of purpose, the sense of sufficiency be induced:\nnor is there any such incongruity within the divine that one Being\nthere could be repulsive to another: and of course all There are\nunchangeable. This absence of satisfaction means only a satisfaction\nleading to no distaste for that which produces it; to see is to look\nthe more, since for them to continue in the contemplation of an\ninfinite self and of infinite objects is but to acquiesce in the\nbidding of their nature.\n\nLife, pure, is never a burden; how then could there be weariness\nThere where the living is most noble? That very life is wisdom, not\na wisdom built up by reasonings but complete from the beginning,\nsuffering no lack which could set it enquiring, a wisdom primal,\nunborrowed, not something added to the Being, but its very\nessence. No\nwisdom, thus, is greater; this is the authentic knowing, assessor to\nthe divine Intellect as projected into manifestation simultaneously\nwith it; thus, in the symbolic saying, Justice is assessor to Zeus.\n\n[Perfect wisdom] for all the Principles of this order, dwelling\nThere, are as it were visible images protected from themselves, so\nthat all becomes an object of contemplation to contemplators\nimmeasurably blessed. The greatness and power of the wisdom There we\nmay know from this, that is embraces all the real Beings,\nand has made\nall, and all follow it, and yet that it is itself those beings,\nwhich sprang into being with it, so that all is one, and the essence\nThere is wisdom. If we have failed to understand, it is that we have\nthought of knowledge as a mass of theorems and an accumulation of\npropositions, though that is false even for our sciences of the\nsense-realm. But in case this should be questioned, we may leave our\nown sciences for the present, and deal with the knowing in\nthe Supreme\nat which Plato glances where he speaks of \"that knowledge\nwhich is not\na stranger in something strange to it\"- though in what sense, he\nleaves us to examine and declare, if we boast ourselves worthy of\nthe discussion. This is probably our best starting-point.\n\n\n## Section 5\n\n\n##### Section 5\n\n5. All that comes to be, work of nature or of craft, some wisdom\nhas made: everywhere a wisdom presides at a making.\n\nNo doubt the wisdom of the artist may be the guide of\nthe work; it\nis sufficient explanation of the wisdom exhibited in the\narts; but the\nartist himself goes back, after all, to that wisdom in\nNature which is\nembodied in himself; and this is not a wisdom built up of\ntheorems but\none totality, not a wisdom consisting of manifold detail\nco-ordinated into a unity but rather a unity working out into detail.\n\nNow, if we could think of this as the primal wisdom, we need\nlook no further, since, at that, we have discovered a principle\nwhich is neither a derivative nor a \"stranger in something strange\nto it.\" But if we are told that, while this Reason-Principle is in\nNature, yet Nature itself is its source, we ask how Nature came to\npossess it; and, if Nature derived it from some other source, we ask\nwhat that other source may be; if, on the contrary, the principle is\nself-sprung, we need look no further: but if we are referred to the\nIntellectual-Principle we must make clear whether the\nIntellectual-Principle engendered the wisdom: if we learn\nthat it did,\nwe ask whence: if from itself, then inevitably, it is itself Wisdom.\n\nThe true Wisdom, then [found to be identical with the\nIntellectual-Principle] is Real Being; and Real Being is\nWisdom; it is\nwisdom that gives value to Real Being; and Being is Real in virtue\nof its origin in wisdom. It follows that all forms of existence not\npossessing wisdom are, indeed, Beings in right of the wisdom which\nwent to their forming but, as not in themselves possessing\nit, are not\nReal Beings.\n\nWe cannot therefore think that the divine Beings of that sphere,\nor the other supremely blessed There, need look to our apparatus of\nscience: all of that realm, all is noble image, such images as we\nmay conceive to lie within the soul of the wise- but There not as\ninscription but as authentic existence. The ancients had this in\nmind when they declared the Ideas to be Beings, Essentials.\n\n\n## Section 6\n\n\n##### Section 6\n\n6. Similarly, as it seems to me, the wise of Egypt- whether in\nprecise knowledge or by a prompting of nature- indicated the truth\nwhere, in their effort towards philosophical statement, they left\naside the writing-forms that take in the detail of words and\nsentences- those characters that represent sounds and convey the\npropositions of reasoning- and drew pictures instead,\nengraving in the\ntemple- inscriptions a separate image for every separate item: thus\nthey exhibited the mode in which the Supreme goes forth.\n\nFor each manifestation of knowledge and wisdom is a distinct\nimage, an object in itself, an immediate unity, not as aggregate of\ndiscursive reasoning and detailed willing. Later from this wisdom in\nunity there appears, in another form of being, an image, already\nless compact, which announces the original in an outward stage and\nseeks the causes by which things are such that the wonder rises how\na generated world can be so excellent.\n\nFor, one who knows must declare his wonder that this\nWisdom, while\nnot itself containing the causes by which Being exists and takes\nsuch excellence, yet imparts them to the entities produced in\nBeing's realm. This excellence whose necessity is scarcely or not at\nall manifest to search, exists, if we could but find it out, before\nall searching and reasoning.\n\nWhat I say may be considered in one chief thing, and thence\napplied to all the particular entities:\n\n\n## Section 7\n\n\n##### Section 7\n\n7. Consider the universe: we are agreed that its\nexistence and its\nnature come to it from beyond itself; are we, now, to\nimagine that its\nmaker first thought it out in detail- the earth, and its necessary\nsituation in the middle; water and, again, its position as lying\nupon the earth; all the other elements and objects up to the sky in\ndue place and order; living beings with their appropriate forms as\nwe know them, their inner organs and their outer limbs- and that\nhaving thus appointed every item beforehand, he then set about the\nexecution?\n\nSuch designing was not even possible; how could the plan for a\nuniverse come to one that had never looked outward? Nor could he\nwork on material gathered from elsewhere as our craftsmen do, using\nhands and tools; feet and hands are of the later order.\n\nOne way, only, remains: all things must exist in something else;\nof that prior- since there is no obstacle, all being\ncontinuous within\nthe realm of reality- there has suddenly appeared a sign, an image,\nwhether given forth directly or through the ministry of soul or of\nsome phase of soul, matters nothing for the moment: thus the entire\naggregate of existence springs from the divine world, in greater\nbeauty There because There unmingled but mingled here.\n\nFrom the beginning to end all is gripped by the Forms of the\nIntellectual Realm: Matter itself is held by the Ideas of\nthe elements\nand to these Ideas are added other Ideas and others again, so that\nit is hard to work down to crude Matter beneath all that sheathing\nof Idea. Indeed since Matter itself is in its degree, an Idea- the\nlowest- all this universe is Idea and there is nothing that is not\nIdea as the archetype was. And all is made silently, since\nnothing had\npart in the making but Being and Idea further reason why\ncreation went\nwithout toil. The Exemplar was the Idea of an All, and so an All\nmust come into being.\n\nThus nothing stood in the way of the Idea, and even now it\ndominates, despite all the clash of things: the creation is not\nhindered on its way even now; it stands firm in virtue of being All.\nTo me, moreover, it seems that if we ourselves were\narchetypes, Ideas,\nveritable Being, and the Idea with which we construct here were our\nveritable Essence, then our creative power too would\ntoillessly effect\nits purpose: as man now stands, he does not produce in his\nwork a true\nimage of himself: become man, he has ceased to be the All: ceasing\nto be man- we read- \"he soars aloft and administers the Kosmos\nentire\"; restored to the All he is maker of the All.\n\nBut- to our immediate purpose- it is possible to give a\nreason why\nthe earth is set in the midst and why it is round and why\nthe ecliptic\nruns precisely as it does, but, looking to the creating principle,\nwe cannot say that because this was the way therefore things were so\nplanned: we can say only that because the All is what it is,\ntherefore\nthere is a total of good; the causing principle, we might put it,\nreached the conclusion before all formal reasoning and not from any\npremises, not by sequence or plan but before either, since\nall of that\norder is later, all reason, demonstration, persuasion.\n\nSince there is a Source, all the created must spring from it and\nin accordance with it; and we are rightly told not to go seeking the\ncauses impelling a Source to produce, especially when this is the\nperfectly sufficient Source and identical with the Term: a Source\nwhich is Source and Term must be the All-Unity, complete in itself.\n\n\n## Section 8\n\n\n##### Section 8\n\n8. This then is Beauty primally: it is entire and omnipresent as\nan entirety; and therefore in none of its parts or members lacking\nin beauty; beautiful thus beyond denial. Certainly it cannot be\nanything [be, for example, Beauty] without being wholly that\nthing; it\ncan be nothing which it is to possess partially or in which\nit utterly\nfails [and therefore it must entirely be Beauty entire].\n\nIf this principle were not beautiful, what other could be? Its\nprior does not deign to be beautiful; that which is the first to\nmanifest itself- Form and object of vision to the intellect- cannot\nbut be lovely to see. It is to indicate this that Plato, drawing on\nsomething well within our observation, represents the Creator as\napproving the work he has achieved: the intention is to make us feel\nthe lovable beauty of the autotype and of the Divine Idea; for to\nadmire a representation is to admire the original upon which it was\nmade.\n\nIt is not surprising if we fail to recognise what is passing\nwithin us: lovers, and those in general that admire beauty here, do\nnot stay to reflect that it is to be traced, as of course it must\nbe, to the Beauty There. That the admiration of the Demiurge is to\nbe referred to the Ideal Exemplar is deliberately made evident by\nthe rest of the passage: \"He admired; and determined to\nbring the work\ninto still closer likeness with the Exemplar\": he makes us feel the\nmagnificent beauty of the Exemplar by telling us that the Beauty\nsprung from this world is, itself, a copy from That.\n\nAnd indeed if the divine did not exist, the transcendently\nbeautiful, in a beauty beyond all thought, what could be\nlovelier than\nthe things we see? Certainly no reproach can rightly be brought\nagainst this world save only that it is not That.\n\n\n## Section 9\n\n\n##### Section 9\n\n9. Let us, then, make a mental picture of our universe: each\nmember shall remain what it is, distinctly apart; yet all is to\nform, as far as possible, a complete unity so that whatever\ncomes into\nview shall show as if it were the surface of the orb over all,\nbringing immediately with it the vision, on the one plane, of the\nsun and of all the stars with earth and sea and all living things as\nif exhibited upon a transparent globe.\n\nBring this vision actually before your sight, so that there\nshall be in your mind the gleaming representation of a sphere, a\npicture holding sprung, themselves, of that universe and repose or\nsome at rest, some in motion. Keep this sphere before you,\nand from it\nimagine another, a sphere stripped of magnitude and of spatial\ndifferences; cast out your inborn sense of Matter, taking care not\nmerely to attenuate it: call on God, maker of the sphere whose image\nyou now hold, and pray Him to enter. And may He come bringing His\nown Universe with all the Gods that dwell in it- He who is\nthe one God\nand all the gods, where each is all, blending into a unity, distinct\nin powers but all one god in virtue of that one divine power of many\nfacets.\n\nMore truly, this is the one God who is all the gods; for, in the\ncoming to be of all those, this, the one, has suffered no\ndiminishing.\nHe and all have one existence while each again is distinct. It is\ndistinction by state without interval: there is no outward\nform to set\none here and another there and to prevent any from being an entire\nidentity; yet there is no sharing of parts from one to\nanother. Nor is\neach of those divine wholes a power in fragment, a power totalling\nto the sum of the measurable segments: the divine is one all-power,\nreaching out to infinity, powerful to infinity; and so great is God\nthat his very members are infinites. What place can be named to\nwhich He does not reach?\n\nGreat, too, is this firmament of ours and all the powers\nconstellated within it, but it would be greater still, unspeakably,\nbut that there is inbound in it something of the petty power of\nbody; no doubt the powers of fire and other bodily substances might\nthemselves be thought very great, but in fact, it is through their\nfailure in the true power that we see them burning, destroying,\nwearing things away, and slaving towards the production of life;\nthey destroy because they are themselves in process of destruction,\nand they produce because they belong to the realm of the produced.\n\nThe power in that other world has merely Being and Beauty of\nBeing. Beauty without Being could not be, nor Being voided of\nBeauty: abandoned of Beauty, Being loses something of its essence.\nBeing is desirable because it is identical with Beauty; and Beauty\nis loved because it is Being. How then can we debate which is the\ncause of the other, where the nature is one? The very\nfigment of Being\nneeds some imposed image of Beauty to make it passable and even to\nensure its existence; it exists to the degree in which it has taken\nsome share in the beauty of Idea; and the more deeply it has drawn\non this, the less imperfect it is, precisely because the nature\nwhich is essentially the beautiful has entered into it the more\nintimately.\n\n\n## Section 10\n\n\n##### Section 10\n\n10. This is why Zeus, although the oldest of the gods and their\nsovereign, advances first [in the Phaidros myth] towards that\nvision, followed by gods and demigods and such souls as are of\nstrength to see. That Being appears before them from some\nunseen place\nand rising loftily over them pours its light upon all things, so\nthat all gleams in its radiance; it upholds some beings, and\nthey see;\nthe lower are dazzled and turn away, unfit to gaze upon that sun,\nthe trouble falling the more heavily on those most remote.\n\nOf those looking upon that Being and its content, and\nable to see,\nall take something but not all the same vision always: intently\ngazing, one sees the fount and principle of Justice, another\nis filled\nwith the sight of Moral Wisdom, the original of that quality\nas found,\nsometimes at least, among men, copied by them in their\ndegree from the\ndivine virtue which, covering all the expanse, so to speak, of the\nIntellectual Realm is seen, last attainment of all, by those who\nhave known already many splendid visions.\n\nThe gods see, each singly and all as one. So, too, the\nsouls; they\nsee all There in right of being sprung, themselves, of that universe\nand therefore including all from beginning to end and having their\nexistence There if only by that phase which belongs inherently to\nthe Divine, though often too they are There entire, those of\nthem that\nhave not incurred separation.\n\nThis vision Zeus takes, and it is for such of us, also, as share\nhis love and appropriate our part in the Beauty There, the final\nobject of all seeing, the entire beauty upon all things; for\nall There\nsheds radiance, and floods those that have found their way thither\nso that they too become beautiful; thus it will often happen that\nmen climbing heights where the soil has taken a yellow glow will\nthemselves appear so, borrowing colour from the place on which they\nmove. The colour flowering on that other height we speak of\nis Beauty;\nor rather all There is light and beauty, through and through, for\nthe beauty is no mere bloom upon the surface.\n\nTo those that do not see entire, the immediate\nimpression is alone\ntaken into account; but those drunken with this wine, filled with\nthe nectar, all their soul penetrated by this beauty, cannot remain\nmere gazers: no longer is there a spectator outside gazing on an\noutside spectacle; the clear-eyed hold the vision within themselves,\nthough, for the most part, they have no idea that it is within but\nlook towards it as to something beyond them and see it as an\nobject of\nvision caught by a direction of the will.\n\nAll that one sees as a spectacle is still external; one\nmust bring\nthe vision within and see no longer in that mode of separation but\nas we know ourselves; thus a man filled with a god- possessed by\nApollo or by one of the Muses- need no longer look outside for his\nvision of the divine being; it is but finding the strength to see\ndivinity within.\n\n\n## Section 11\n\n\n##### Section 11\n\n11. Similarly any one, unable to see himself, but possessed by\nthat God, has but to bring that divine- within before his\nconsciousness and at once he sees an image of himself, himself\nlifted to a better beauty: now let him ignore that image, lovely\nthough it is, and sink into a perfect self-identity, no such\nseparation remaining; at once he forms a multiple unity with the God\nsilently present; in the degree of his power and will, the two\nbecome one; should he turn back to the former duality, still he is\npure and remains very near to the God; he has but to look again and\nthe same presence is there.\n\nThis conversion brings gain: at the first stage, that of\nseparation, a man is aware of self; but, retreating inwards, he\nbecomes possessor of all; he puts sense away behind him in dread of\nthe separated life and becomes one in the Divine; if he plans to see\nin separation, he sets himself outside.\n\nThe novice must hold himself constantly under some image of the\nDivine Being and seek in the light of a clear conception; knowing\nthus, in a deep conviction, whither he is going- into what a\nsublimity\nhe penetrates- he must give himself forthwith to the inner and,\nradiant with the Divine Intellections [with which he is now one], be\nno longer the seer but, as that place has made him, the seen.\n\nStill, we will be told, one cannot be in beauty and yet fail to\nsee it. The very contrary: to see the divine as something external\nis to be outside of it; to become it is to be most truly in beauty:\nsince sight deals with the external, there can here be no vision\nunless in the sense of identification with the object.\n\nAnd this identification amounts to a self-knowing, a\nself-consciousness, guarded by the fear of losing the self in the\ndesire of a too wide awareness.\n\nIt must be remembered that sensations of the ugly and\nevil impress\nus more violently than those of what is agreeable and yet leave less\nknowledge as the residue of the shock: sickness makes the rougher\nmark, but health, tranquilly present, explains itself\nbetter; it takes\nthe first place, it is the natural thing, it belongs to our being;\nillness is alien, unnatural and thus makes itself felt by its very\nincongruity, while the other conditions are native and we take no\nnotice. Such being our nature, we are most completely aware of\nourselves when we are most completely identified with the object of\nour knowledge.\n\nThis is why in that other sphere, when we are deepest in that\nknowledge by intellection, we are aware of none; we are\nexpecting some\nimpression on sense, which has nothing to report since it has seen\nnothing and never could in that order see anything. The unbelieving\nelement is sense; it is the other, the Intellectual-Principle, that\nsees; and if this too doubted, it could not even credit its own\nexistence, for it can never stand away and with bodily eyes\napprehend itself as a visible object.\n\n\n## Section 12\n\n\n##### Section 12\n\n12. We have told how this vision is to be procured,\nwhether by the\nmode of separation or in identity: now, seen in either way, what\ndoes it give to report?\n\nThe vision has been of God in travail of a beautiful offspring,\nGod engendering a universe within himself in a painless labour and-\nrejoiced in what he has brought into being, proud of his children-\nkeeping all closely by Him, for pleasure He has in his\nradiance and in\ntheirs.\n\nOf this offspring- all beautiful, but most beautiful those that\nhave remained within- only one has become manifest without; from him\n[Zeus, sovereign over the visible universe] the youngest born, we\nmay gather, as from some image, the greatness of the Father\nand of the\nBrothers that remain within the Father's house.\n\nStill the manifested God cannot think that he has come forth in\nvain from the father; for through him another universe has arisen,\nbeautiful as the image of beauty, and it could not be' lawful that\nBeauty and Being should fail of a beautiful image.\n\nThis second Kosmos at every point copies the archetype: it has\nlife and being in copy, and has beauty as springing from that\ndiviner world. In its character of image it holds, too, that divine\nperpetuity without which it would only at times be truly\nrepresentative and sometimes fail like a construction of art; for\nevery image whose existence lies in the nature of things must stand\nduring the entire existence of the archetype.\n\nHence it is false to put an end to the visible sphere as long as\nthe Intellectual endures, or to found it upon a decision taken by\nits maker at some given moment.\n\nThat teaching shirks the penetration of such a making as is here\ninvolved: it fails to see that as long as the Supreme is\nradiant there\ncan be no failing of its sequel but, that existing, all exists. And-\nsince the necessity of conveying our meaning compels such terms- the\nSupreme has existed for ever and for ever will exist.\n\n\n## Section 13\n\n\n##### Section 13\n\n13. The God fettered [as in the Kronos Myth] to an unchanging\nidentity leaves the ordering of this universe to his son (to Zeus),\nfor it could not be in his character to neglect his rule within the\ndivine sphere, and, as though sated with the Authentic-Beauty, seek\na lordship too recent and too poor for his might. Ignoring this\nlower world, Kronos [Intellectual-Principle] claims for his\nown father\n[Ouranoo, the Absolute, or One] with all the upward-tending between\nthem: and he counts all that tends to the inferior,\nbeginning from his\nson [Zeus, the All-Soul], as ranking beneath him. Thus he holds a\nmid position determined on the one side by the\ndifferentiation implied\nin the severance from the very highest and, on the other, by that\nwhich keeps him apart from the link between himself and the lower:\nhe stands between a greater father and an inferior son. But\nsince that\nfather is too lofty to be thought of under the name of Beauty, the\nsecond God remains the primally beautiful.\n\nSoul also has beauty, but is less beautiful than Intellect as\nbeing its image and therefore, though beautiful in nature, taking\nincrease of beauty by looking to that original. Since then the\nAll-Soul- to use the more familiar term- since Aphrodite\nherself is so\nbeautiful, what name can we give to that other? If Soul is so lovely\nin its own right, of what quality must that prior be? And since its\nbeing is derived, what must that power be from which the Soul takes\nthe double beauty, the borrowed and the inherent?\n\nWe ourselves possess beauty when we are true to our own\nbeing; our\nugliness is in going over to another order; our self-knowledge, that\nis to say, is our beauty; in self-ignorance we are ugly.\n\nThus beauty is of the Divine and comes Thence only.\n\nDo these considerations suffice to a clear understanding of the\nIntellectual Sphere, or must we make yet another attempt by another\nroad?",
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