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Translated by Stephen MacKenna and B. S. Page.
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» Contents of this Ennead
129 pages - You are on Page 96
26. Their knowledge of our prayers is due to what we may call an enlinking, a determined relation of things fitted into a system; so, too, the fulfillment of the petitions; in the art of magic all looks to this enlinkment: prayer and its answer, magic and its success, depend upon the sympathy of enchained forces.
This seems to oblige us to accord sense-perception to the earth.
But what perception?
Why not, to begin with, that of contact-feeling, the apprehension of part by part, the apprehension of fire by the rest of the entire mass in a sensation transmitted upwards to the earth’s leading principle? A corporeal mass [such as that of the earth] may be sluggish but is not utterly inert. Such perceptions, of course, would not be of trifles, but of the graver movement of things.
But why even of them?
Because those gravest movements could not possibly remain unknown where there is an immanent soul.
And there is nothing against the idea that sensation in the earth exists for the sake of the human interests furthered by the earth. They would be served by means of the sympathy that has been mentioned; petitioners would be heard and their prayers met, though in a way not ours. And the earth, both in its own interest and in that of beings distinct from itself, might have the experiences of the other senses also — for example, smell and taste where, perhaps, the scent of juices or sap might enter into its care for animal life, as in the constructing or restoring of their bodily part.
Reference address : https://ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/ancient-Greece/plotinus/enneads-4.asp?pg=96
