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    "slug": "ennead-5",
    "name": "Ennead V — On the Intellectual-Principle"
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  "chapter": {
    "num": 9,
    "slug": "9-the-intellectual-principle-the-ideas-and",
    "title": "V.9 — The Intellectual-Principle, the Ideas, and the Authentic Existence",
    "of": 9,
    "words": 4400,
    "text": "## NINTH TRACTATE\n\n\n#### NINTH TRACTATE.\n\nTHE INTELLECTUAL-PRINCIPLE, THE IDEAS, AND\n\nTHE AUTHENTIC EXISTENCE.\n\n\n## Section 1\n\n\n##### Section 1\n\n1. All human beings from birth onward live to the realm of sense\nmore than to the Intellectual.\n\nForced of necessity to attend first to the material, some of\nthem elect to abide by that order and, their life\nthroughout, make its\nconcerns their first and their last; the sweet and the\nbitter of sense\nare their good and evil; they feel they have done all if they live\nalong pursuing the one and barring the doors to the other. And those\nof them that pretend to reasoning have adopted this as their\nphilosophy; they are like the heavier birds which have incorporated\nmuch from the earth and are so weighted down that they\ncannot fly high\nfor all the wings Nature has given them.\n\nOthers do indeed lift themselves a little above the earth; the\nbetter in their soul urges them from the pleasant to the nobler, but\nthey are not of power to see the highest and so, in despair of any\nsurer ground, they fall back in virtue's name, upon those actions\nand options of the lower from which they sought to escape.\n\nBut there is a third order- those godlike men who, in their\nmightier power, in the keenness of their sight, have clear vision of\nthe splendour above and rise to it from among the cloud and fog of\nearth and hold firmly to that other world, looking beyond all here,\ndelighted in the place of reality, their native land, like a man\nreturning after long wanderings to the pleasant ways of his own\ncountry.\n\n\n## Section 2\n\n\n##### Section 2\n\n2. What is this other place and how it is accessible?\n\nIt is to be reached by those who, born with the nature of the\nlover, are also authentically philosophic by inherent temper; in\npain of love towards beauty but not held by material loveliness,\ntaking refuge from that in things whose beauty is of the soul- such\nthings as virtue, knowledge, institutions, law and custom-\nand thence,\nrising still a step, reach to the source of this loveliness of the\nSoul, thence to whatever be above that again, until the uttermost is\nreached. The First, the Principle whose beauty is\nself-springing: this\nattained, there is an end to the pain inassuageable before.\n\nBut how is the ascent to be begun? Whence comes the\npower? In what\nthought is this love to find its guide?\n\nThe guiding thought is this: that the beauty perceived\non material\nthings is borrowed.\n\nThe pattern giving beauty to the corporeal rests upon it as Idea\nto its Matter and the substrate may change and from being pleasant\nbecome distasteful, a sign, in all reason, that the beauty comes by\nparticipation.\n\nNow, what is this that gives grace to the corporeal?\n\nTwo causes in their degree; the participation in beauty and the\npower of Soul, the maker, which has imprinted that form.\n\nWe ask then is soul, of itself, a thing of beauty: we find it is\nnot since differences are manifest, one Soul wise and lovely,\nanother foolish and ugly: soul-beauty is constituted by wisdom.\n\nThe question thus becomes, \"What principle is the giver of\nwisdom to the soul? and the only answer is \"The\nIntellectual-Principle,\" the veritably intellectual, wise without\nintermission and therefore beautiful of itself.\n\nBut does even this suffice for our First?\n\nNo; we must look still inward beyond the Intellectual,\nwhich, from\nour point of approach, stands before the Supreme Beginning, in whose\nforecourt, as it were, it announces in its own being the entire\ncontent of the Good, that prior of all, locked in unity, of\nwhich this\nis the expression already touched by multiplicity.\n\n\n## Section 3\n\n\n##### Section 3\n\n3. We will have to examine this Nature, the Intellectual, which\nour reasoning identifies as the authentically existent and the\nveritable essential: but first we must take another path and make\ncertain that such a principle does necessarily exist.\n\nPerhaps it is ridiculous to set out enquiring whether an\nIntellectual-Principle has place in the total of being: but there\nmay be some to hesitate even as to this and certainly there will be\nthe question whether it is as we describe it, whether it is\na separate\nexistence, whether it actually is the real beings, whether it is the\nseat of the Ideas; to this we now address ourselves.\n\nAll that we see, and describe as having existence, we know to be\ncompound; hand-wrought or compacted by nature, nothing is\nsimplex. Now\nthe hand-wrought, with its metal or stone or wood, is not\nrealized out\nof these materials until the appropriate craft has produced statue,\nhouse or bed, by imparting the particular idea from its own content.\nSimilarly with natural forms of being; those including several\nconstituents, compound bodies as we call them, may be analysed into\nthe materials and the Idea imposed upon the total; the human being,\nfor example, into soul and body; and the human body into the four\nelements. Finding everything to be a compound of Matter and shaping\nprinciple- since the Matter of the elements is of itself shapeless-\nyou will enquire whence this forming idea comes; and you will ask\nwhether in the soul we recognise a simplex or whether this also has\nconstituents, something representing Matter and something else- the\nIntellectual-Principle in it- representing Idea, the one\ncorresponding\nto the shape actually on the statue, the other to the artist giving\nthe shape.\n\nApplying the same method to the total of things, here too we\ndiscover the Intellectual-Principle and this we set down as\nveritably the maker and creator of the All. The underly has adopted,\nwe see, certain shapes by which it becomes fire, water, air, earth;\nand these shapes have been imposed upon it by something else. This\nother is Soul which, hovering over the Four [the elements], imparts\nthe pattern of the Kosmos, the Ideas for which it has itself\nreceived from the Intellectual-Principle as the soul or mind of the\ncraftsman draws upon his craft for the plan of his work.\n\nThe Intellectual-Principle is in one phase the Form of the soul,\nits shape; in another phase it is the giver of the shape- the\nsculptor, possessing inherently what is given- imparting to soul\nnearly the authentic reality while what body receives is but\nimage and\nimitation.\n\n\n## Section 4\n\n\n##### Section 4\n\n4. But, soul reached, why need we look higher; why not make this\nThe First?\n\nA main reason is that the Intellectual-Principle is at once\nsomething other and something more powerful than Soul and that the\nmore powerful is in the nature of things the prior. For it is\ncertainly not true, as people imagine, that the soul, brought to\nperfection, produces Intellect. How could that potentiality come to\nactuality unless there be, first, an effective principle to\ninduce the\nactualization which, left to chance, might never occur?\n\nThe Firsts must be supposed to exist in actuality, looking to\nnothing else, self-complete. Anything incomplete must be sequent\nupon these, and take its completion from the principles\nengendering it\nwhich, like fathers, labour in the improvement of an offspring born\nimperfect: the produced is a Matter to the producing principle and\nis worked over by it into a shapely perfection.\n\nAnd if, further, soul is passible while something\nimpassible there\nmust be or by the mere passage of time all wears away, here\ntoo we are\nled to something above soul.\n\nAgain there must be something prior to Soul because Soul\nis in the\nworld and there must be something outside a world in which, all\nbeing corporeal and material, nothing has enduring reality: failing\nsuch a prior, neither man nor the Ideas would be eternal or have\ntrue identity.\n\nThese and many other considerations establish the necessary\nexistence of an Intellectual-Principle prior to Soul.\n\n\n## Section 5\n\n\n##### Section 5\n\n5. This Intellectual-Principle, if the term is to convey the\ntruth, must be understood to be not a principle merely potential and\nnot one maturing from unintelligence to intelligence- that would\nsimply send us seeking, once more, a necessary prior- but a\nprinciple which is intelligence in actuality and in eternity.\n\nNow a principle whose wisdom is not borrowed must derive from\nitself any intellection it may make; and anything it may possess\nwithin itself it can hold only from itself: it follows that,\nintellective by its own resource and upon its own content, it is\nitself the very things on which its intellection acts.\n\nFor supposing its essence to be separable from its intellection\nand the objects of its intellection to be not itself, then\nits essence\nwould be unintellectual; and it would be intellectual not\nactually but\npotentially. The intellection and its object must then be\ninseparable-\nhowever the habit induced by our conditions may tempt us to\ndistinguish, There too, the thinker from the thought.\n\nWhat then is its characteristic Act and what the intellection\nwhich makes knower and known here identical?\n\nClearly, as authentic Intellection, it has authentic\nintellection of the authentically existent, and establishes their\nexistence. Therefore it is the Authentic Beings.\n\nConsider: It must perceive them either somewhere else or within\nitself as its very self: the somewhere else is impossible-\nwhere could\nthat be?- they are therefore itself and the content of itself.\n\nIts objects certainly cannot be the things of sense, as people\nthink; no First could be of the sense-known order; for in things of\nsense the Idea is but an image of the authentic, and every Idea thus\nderivative and exiled traces back to that original and is no\nmore than\nan image of it.\n\nFurther, if the Intellectual-Principle is to be the maker of\nthis All, it cannot make by looking outside itself to what does not\nyet exist. The Authentic Beings must, then, exist before this All,\nno copies made on a model but themselves archetypes, primals, and\nthe essence of the Intellectual-Principle.\n\nWe may be told that Reason-Principles suffice [to the\nsubsistence of the All]: but then these, clearly, must be\neternal; and\nif eternal, if immune, then they must exist in an\nIntellectual-Principle such as we have indicated, a principle\nearlier than condition, than nature, than soul, than anything whose\nexistence is potential for contingent].\n\nThe Intellectual-Principle, therefore, is itself the authentic\nexistences, not a knower knowing them in some sphere foreign to it.\nThe Authentic Beings, thus, exist neither before nor after it: it is\nthe primal legislator to Being or, rather, is itself the law\nof Being.\nThus it is true that \"Intellectual and Being are identical\"; in the\nimmaterial the knowledge of the thing is the thing. And this is the\nmeaning of the dictum \"I sought myself,\" namely as one of the\nBeings: it also bears on reminiscence.\n\nFor none of the Beings is outside the\nIntellectual-Principle or in\nspace; they remain for ever in themselves, accepting no change, no\ndecay, and by that are the authentically existent. Things that arise\nand fall away draw on real being as something to borrow\nfrom; they are\nnot of the real; the true being is that on which they draw.\n\nIt is by participation that the sense-known has the being we\nascribe to it; the underlying nature has taken its shape from\nelsewhere; thus bronze and wood are shaped into what we see by means\nof an image introduced by sculpture or carpentry; the craft\npermeates the materials while remaining integrally apart from the\nmaterial and containing in itself the reality of statue or couch.\nAnd it is so, of course, with all corporeal things.\n\nThis universe, characteristically participant in images,\nshows how\nthe image differs from the authentic beings: against the variability\nof the one order, there stands the unchanging quality of the other,\nself-situate, not needing space because having no magnitude, holding\nan existent intellective and self-sufficing. The body-kind seeks its\nendurance in another kind; the Intellectual-Principle, sustaining by\nits marvellous Being, the things which of themselves must fall, does\nnot itself need to look for a staying ground.\n\n\n## Section 6\n\n\n##### Section 6\n\n6. We take it, then, that the Intellectual-Principle is the\nauthentic existences and contains them all- not as in a place but as\npossessing itself and being one thing with this its content. All are\none there and yet are distinct: similarly the mind holds\nmany branches\nand items of knowledge simultaneously, yet none of them merged into\nany other, each acting its own part at call quite\nindependently, every\nconception coming out from the inner total and working singly. It is\nafter this way, though in a closer unity, that the\nIntellectual-Principle is all Being in one total- and yet not in\none, since each of these beings is a distinct power which, however,\nthe total Intellectual-Principle includes as the species in a genus,\nas the parts in a whole. This relation may be illustrated by the\npowers in seed; all lies undistinguished in the unit, the formative\nideas gathered as in one kernel; yet in that unit there is\neye-principle, and there is hand-principle, each of which is\nrevealed as a separate power by its distinct material product. Thus\neach of the powers in the seed is a Reason-Principle one and\ncomplete yet including all the parts over which it presides: there\nwill be something bodily, the liquid, for example, carrying mere\nMatter; but the principle itself is Idea and nothing else, idea\nidentical with the generative idea belonging to the lower soul,\nimage of a higher. This power is sometimes designated as\nNature in the\nseed-life; its origin is in the divine; and, outgoing from its\npriors as light from fire, it converts and shapes the matter of\nthings, not by push and pull and the lever work of which we hear so\nmuch, but by bestowal of the Ideas.\n\n\n## Section 7\n\n\n##### Section 7\n\n7. Knowledge in the reasoning soul is on the one side concerned\nwith objects of sense, though indeed this can scarcely be called\nknowledge and is better indicated as opinion or\nsurface-knowing; it is\nof later origin than the objects since it is a reflection from them:\nbut on the other hand there is the knowledge handling the\nintellectual\nobjects and this is the authentic knowledge; it enters the reasoning\nsoul from the Intellectual-Principle and has no dealing with\nanything in sense. Being true knowledge it actually is everything of\nwhich it takes cognisance; it carries as its own content the\nintellectual act and the intellectual object since it carries the\nIntellectual-Principle which actually is the primals and is always\nself-present and is in its nature an Act, never by any want forced\nto seek, never acquiring or traversing the remote- for all such\nexperience belongs to soul- but always self-gathered, the very Being\nof the collective total, not an extern creating things by the act of\nknowing them.\n\nNot by its thinking God does God come to be; not by its thinking\nMovement does Movement arise. Hence it is an error to call the Ideas\nintellections in the sense that, upon an intellectual act in this\nPrinciple, one such Idea or another is made to exist or exists. No:\nthe object of this intellection must exist before the\nintellective act\n[must be the very content not the creation of the\nIntellectual-Principle]. How else could that Principle come to know\nit: certainly not [as an external] by luck or by haphazard search.\n\n\n## Section 8\n\n\n##### Section 8\n\n8. If, then, the Intellection is an act upon the inner\ncontent [of\na perfect unity], that content is at once the Idea [as object:\neidos] and the Idea itself [as concept: idea].\n\nWhat, then, is that content?\n\nAn Intellectual-Principle and an Intellective Essence, no\nconcept distinguishable from the Intellectual-Principle,\neach actually\nbeing that Principle. The Intellectual-Principle entire is the total\nof the Ideas, and each of them is the [entire]\nIntellectual-Principle in a special form. Thus a science\nentire is the\ntotal of the relevant considerations each of which, again,\nis a member\nof the entire science, a member not distinct in space yet having its\nindividual efficacy in a total.\n\nThis Intellectual-Principle, therefore, is a unity while by that\npossession of itself it is, tranquilly, the eternal abundance.\n\nIf the Intellectual-Principle were envisaged as preceding Being,\nit would at once become a principle whose expression, its\nintellectual\nAct, achieves and engenders the Beings: but, since we are\ncompelled to\nthink of existence as preceding that which knows it, we can but\nthink that the Beings are the actual content of the knowing\nprinciple and that the very act, the intellection, is inherent to\nthe Beings, as fire stands equipped from the beginning with\nfire-act; in this conception, the Beings contain the\nIntellectual-Principle as one and the same with themselves, as their\nown activity. Thus, Being is itself an activity: there is one\nactivity, then, in both or, rather, both are one thing.\n\nBeing, therefore, and the Intellectual-Principle are one Nature:\nthe Beings, and the Act of that which is, and the\nIntellectual-Principle thus constituted, all are one: and the\nresultant Intellections are the Idea of Being and its shape and its\nact.\n\nIt is our separating habit that sets the one order before the\nother: for there is a separating intellect, of another order than\nthe true, distinct from the intellect, inseparable and unseparating,\nwhich is Being and the universe of things.\n\n\n## Section 9\n\n\n##### Section 9\n\n9. What, then, is the content- inevitably separated by our\nminds- of this one Intellectual-Principle? For there is no resource\nbut to represent the items in accessible form just as we study the\nvarious articles constituting one science.\n\nThis universe is a living thing capable of including\nevery form of\nlife; but its Being and its modes are derived from elsewhere; that\nsource is traced back to the Intellectual-Principle: it follows that\nthe all-embracing archetype is in the Intellectual-Principle, which,\ntherefore, must be an intellectual Kosmos, that indicated by Plato\nin the phrase \"The living existent.\"\n\nGiven the Reason-Principle [the outgoing divine Idea] of\na certain\nliving thing and the Matter to harbour this seed-principle,\nthe living\nthing must come into being: in the same way once there exists- an\nintellective Nature, all powerful, and with nothing to check\nit- since\nnothing intervenes between it and that which is of a nature\nto receive\nit- inevitably the higher imprints form and the lower\naccepts, it. The\nrecipient holds the Idea in division, here man, there sun, while in\nthe giver all remains in unity.\n\n\n## Section 10\n\n\n##### Section 10\n\n10. All, then, that is present in the sense realm as Idea comes\nfrom the Supreme. But what is not present as Idea, does not. Thus of\nthings conflicting with nature, none is There: the inartistic is not\ncontained in the arts; lameness is not in the seed; for a lame leg\nis either inborn through some thwarting of the Reason-principle or\nis a marring of the achieved form by accident. To that Intellectual\nKosmos belong qualities, accordant with Nature, and\nquantities; number\nand mass; origins and conditions; all actions and experiences not\nagainst nature; movement and repose, both the universals and the\nparticulars: but There time is replaced by eternity and space by its\nintellectual equivalent, mutual inclusiveness.\n\nIn that Intellectual Kosmos, where all is one total, every\nentity that can be singled out is an intellective essence and a\nparticipant in life: thus, identity and difference, movement and\nrest with the object resting or moving, essence and quality, all\nhave essential existence. For every real being must be in actuality\nnot merely in potentiality and therefore the nature of each\nessence is\ninherent in it.\n\nThis suggests the question whether the Intellectual Kosmos\ncontains the forms only of the things of sense or of other existents\nas well. But first we will consider how it stands with artistic\ncreations: there is no question of an ideal archetype of evil: the\nevil of this world is begotten of need, privation, deficiency, and\nis a condition peculiar to Matter distressed and to what has\ncome into\nlikeness with Matter.\n\n\n## Section 11\n\n\n##### Section 11\n\n11. Now as to the arts and crafts and their productions:\n\nThe imitative arts- painting, sculpture, dancing, pantomimic\ngesturing- are, largely, earth-based; on an earthly base; they\nfollow models found in sense, since they copy forms and movements\nand reproduce seen symmetries; they cannot therefore be referred to\nthat higher sphere except indirectly, through the Reason-Principle\nin humanity.\n\nOn the other hand any skill which, beginning with the\nobservation of the symmetry of living things, grows to the\nsymmetry of\nall life, will be a portion of the Power There which observes and\nmeditates the symmetry reigning among all beings in the Intellectual\nKosmos. Thus all music- since its thought is upon melody and rhythm-\nmust be the earthly representation of the music there is in\nthe rhythm\nof the Ideal Realm.\n\nThe crafts, such as building and carpentry which give us\nMatter in\nwrought forms, may be said, in that they draw on pattern, to take\ntheir principles from that realm and from the thinking There: but in\nthat they bring these down into contact with the\nsense-order, they are\nnot wholly in the Intellectual: they are founded in man. So\nagriculture, dealing with material growths: so medicine watching\nover physical health; so the art which aims at corporeal strength\nand well-being: power and well-being mean something else There, the\nfearlessness and self-sufficing quality of all that lives.\n\nOratory and generalship, administration and sovereignty-\nunder any\nforms in which their activities are associated with Good and\nwhen they\nlook to that- possess something derived thence and building up their\nknowledge from the knowledge There.\n\nGeometry, the science of the Intellectual entities, holds place\nThere: so, too, philosophy, whose high concern is Being.\n\nFor the arts and products of art, these observations may suffice.\n\n\n## Section 12\n\n\n##### Section 12\n\n12. It should however be added that if the Idea of man exists in\nthe Supreme, there must exist the Idea of reasoning man and of man\nwith his arts and crafts; such arts as are the offspring of\nintellect Must be There.\n\nIt must be observed that the Ideas will be of universals; not of\nSocrates but of Man: though as to man we may enquire whether the\nindividual may not also have place There. Under the heading of\nindividuality there is to be considered the repetition of the same\nfeature from man to man, the simian type, for example, and the\naquiline: the aquiline and the simian must be taken to be\ndifferences in the Idea of Man as there are different types of the\nanimal: but Matter also has its effect in bringing about the\ndegree of\naquilinity. Similarly with difference of complexion,\ndetermined partly\nby the Reason-Principle, partly by Matter and by diversity of place.\n\n\n## Section 13\n\n\n##### Section 13\n\n13. It remains to decide whether only what is known in sense\nexists There or whether, on the contrary, as Absolute-Man\ndiffers from\nindividual man, so there is in the Supreme an Absolute-Soul\ndiffering from Soul and an Absolute-Intellect differing from\nIntellectual-Principle.\n\nIt must be stated at the outset that we cannot take all that is\nhere to be image of archetype, or Soul to be an image of\nAbsolute-Soul: one soul, doubtless, ranks higher than another, but\nhere too, though perhaps not as identified with this realm, is the\nAbsolute-Soul.\n\nEvery soul, authentically a soul, has some form of rightness and\nmoral wisdom; in the souls within ourselves there is true\nknowing: and\nthese attributes are no images or copies from the Supreme, as in the\nsense-world, but actually are those very originals in a mode\npeculiar to this sphere. For those Beings are not set apart in some\ndefined place; wherever there is a soul that has risen from body,\nthere too these are: the world of sense is one- where, the\nIntellectual Kosmos is everywhere. Whatever the freed soul attains\nto here, that it is There.\n\nThus, if by the content of the sense-world we mean simply the\nvisible objects, then the Supreme contains not only what is in the\nrealm of sense but more: if in the content of the kosmos we mean to\ninclude Soul and the Soul-things, then all is here that is There.\n\n\n## Section 14\n\n\n##### Section 14\n\n14. There is, thus, a Nature comprehending in the\nIntellectual all\nthat exists, and this Principle must be the source of all. But how,\nseeing that the veritable source must be a unity, simplex utterly?\n\nThe mode by which from the unity arises the multiple,\nhow all this\nuniverse comes to be, why the Intellectual-Principle is all\nand whence\nit springs, these matters demand another approach.\n\nBut on the question as to whether the repulsive and the products\nof putridity have also their Idea- whether there is an Idea of filth\nand mud- it is to be observed that all that the\nIntellectual-Principle\nderived from The First is of the noblest; in those Ideas the base is\nnot included: these repulsive things point not to the\nIntellectual-Principle but to the Soul which, drawing upon the\nIntellectual-Principle, takes from Matter certain other things, and\namong them these.\n\nBut all this will be more clearly brought out, when we\nturn to the\nproblem of the production of multiplicity from unity. Compounds, we\nshall see- as owing existence to hazard and not to the\nIntellectual-Principle, having been fused into objects of sense by\ntheir own impulse- are not to be included under Ideas.\n\nThe products of putrefaction are to be traced to the Soul's\ninability to bring some other thing to being- something in the order\nof nature, which, else, it would- but producing where it may. In the\nmatter of the arts and crafts, all that are to be traced to the\nneeds of human nature are laid up in the Absolute Man.\n\nAnd before the particular Soul there is another Soul, a\nuniversal,\nand, before that, an Absolute-Soul, which is the Life existing in\nthe Intellectual-Principle before Soul came to be and therefore\nrightly called [as the Life in the Divine] the Absolute-Soul.",
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