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Translated by Stephen MacKenna and B. S. Page.
Plotinus Resources OnLine and in Print
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» Contents of this Ennead
129 pages - You are on Page 12
2. To this our first answer is that to place certain things under one identical class — by admitting an identical range of operation — is to make them of one common species, and puts an end to all mention of part; the reasonable conclusion would be, on the contrary, that there is one identical soul, every separate manifestation being that soul complete.
Our opponents after first admitting the unity go on to make our soul dependent on something else, something in which we have no longer the soul of this or that, even of the universe, but a soul of nowhere, a soul belonging neither to the kosmos, nor to anything else, and yet vested with all the function inherent to the kosmic soul and to that of every ensouled thing.
The soul considered as an entirety cannot be a soul of any one given thing — since it is an Essence [a divine Real-Being] — or, at least, there must be a soul which is not exclusively the soul of any particular thing, and those attached to particulars must so belong merely in some mode of accident.
In such questions as this it is important to clarify the significance of “part.”
Part, as understood of body — uniform or varied — need not detain us; it is enough to indicate that, when part is mentioned in respect of things whose members are alike, it refers to mass and not to ideal-form [specific idea]: take for example, whiteness: the whiteness in a portion of milk is not a part of the whiteness of milk in general: we have the whiteness of a portion not a portion of whiteness; for whiteness is utterly without magnitude; has nothing whatever to do with quantity.
Reference address : https://ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/ancient-Greece/plotinus/enneads-4.asp?pg=12
