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Translated by Stephen MacKenna and B. S. Page.
» Contents of this Ennead
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If, on the other hand, the Kosmic circuit is due to the Soul, we are not to think of a painful driving [wearing it down at last]; the soul does not use violence or in any way thwart nature, for “Nature” is no other than the custom the All-Soul has established. Omnipresent in its entirety, incapable of division, the Soul of the universe communicates that quality of universal presence to the heavens, too, in their degree, the degree, that is, of pursuing universality and advancing towards it.
If the Soul halted anywhere, there the Kosmos, too, brought so far, would halt: but the Soul encompasses all, and so the Kosmos moves, seeking everything.
Yet never to attain?
On the contrary this very motion is its eternal attainment.
Or, better; the Soul is ceaselessly leading the Kosmos towards itself: the continuous attraction communicates a continuous movement — not to some outside space but towards the Soul and in the one sphere with it, not in the straight line [which would ultimately bring the moving body outside and below the Soul], but in the curving course in which the moving body at every stage possesses the Soul that is attracting it and bestowing itself upon it.
If the soul were stationary, that is if [instead of presiding over a Kosmos] it dwelt wholly and solely in the realm in which every member is at rest, motion would be unknown; but, since the Soul is not fixed in some one station There, the Kosmos must travel to every point in quest of it, and never outside it: in a circle, therefore.
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