Plotinus ENNEADS - THE FOURTH ENNEAD Complete

Translated by Stephen MacKenna and B. S. Page.

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» Contents of this Ennead

THE FOURTH ENNEAD:   1) ON THE ESSENCE OF THE SOUL,   2) ON THE ESSENCE OF THE SOUL II,   3) PROBLEMS OF THE SOUL,   4) PROBLEMS OF THE SOUL II,   5) PROBLEMS OF THE SOUL III - “ON SIGHT”,   6) PERCEPTION AND MEMORY,   7) THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL,   8) THE SOUL’S DESCENT INTO BODY,   9) ARE ALL SOULS ONE?

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The answer might be that there is an even greater difference among these souls, the one never having fallen away from the All-Soul, but dwelling within it and assuming body therein, while the others received their allotted spheres when the body was already in existence, when their sister soul was already in rule and, as it were, had already prepared habitations for them. Again, the reason may be that the one [the creative All-Soul] looks towards the universal Intellectual-Principle [the exemplar of all that can be], while the others are more occupied with the Intellectual within themselves, that which is already of the sphere of part; perhaps, too, these also could have created, but that they were anticipated by that originator — the work accomplished before them — an impediment inevitable whichsoever of the souls were first to operate.

But it is safer to account for the creative act by nearer connection with the over-world; the souls whose tendency is exercised within the Supreme have the greater power; immune in that pure seat they create securely; for the greater power takes the least hurt from the material within which it operates; and this power remains enduringly attached to the over-world: it creates, therefore, self gathered and the created things gather round it; the other souls, on the contrary, themselves go forth; that can mean only that they have deserted towards the abyss; a main phase in them is drawn downward and pulls them with it in the desire towards the lower.

The “secondary and tertiary souls,” of which we hear, must be understood in the sense of closer or remoter position: it is much as in ourselves the relation to the Supreme is not identical from soul to soul; some of us are capable of becoming Uniate, others of striving and almost attaining, while a third rank is much less apt; it is a matter of the degree or powers of the soul by which our expression is determined — the first degree dominant in the one person, the second, the third [the merely animal life] in others while, still, all of us contain all the powers.

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