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Translated by Stephen MacKenna and B. S. Page.
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» Contents of this Ennead
128 pages - You are on Page 66
3. That Love is a Hypostasis [a “Person”] a Real-Being sprung from a Real-Being — lower than the parent but authentically existent — is beyond doubt.
For the parent-Soul was a Real-Being sprung directly from the Act of the Hypostasis that ranks before it: it had life; it was a constituent in the Real-Being of all that authentically is — in the Real-Being which looks, rapt, towards the very Highest. That was the first object of its vision; it looked towards it as towards its good, and it rejoiced in the looking; and the quality of what it saw was such that the contemplation could not be void of effect; in virtue of that rapture, of its position in regard to its object, of the intensity of its gaze, the Soul conceived and brought forth an offspring worthy of itself and of the vision. Thus; there is a strenuous activity of contemplation in the Soul; there is an emanation towards it from the object contemplated; and Eros is born, the Love which is an eye filled with its vision, a seeing that bears its image with it; Eros taking its name, probably, from the fact that its essential being is due to this horasis, this seeing. Of course Love, as an emotion, will take its name from Love, the Person, since a Real-Being cannot but be prior to what lacks this reality. The mental state will be designated as Love, like the Hypostasis, though it is no more than a particular act directed towards a particular object; but it must not be confused with the Absolute Love, the Divine Being. The Eros that belongs to the supernal Soul must be of one temper with it; it must itself look aloft as being of the household of that Soul, dependent upon that Soul, its very offspring; and therefore caring for nothing but the contemplation of the Gods.
Once that Soul which is the primal source of light to the heavens is recognized as an Hypostasis standing distinct and aloof it must be admitted that Love too is distinct and aloof though not, perhaps, so loftily celestial a being as the Soul. Our own best we conceive as inside ourselves and yet something apart; so, we must think of this Love — as essentially resident where the unmingling Soul inhabits.
But besides this purest Soul, there must be also a Soul of the All: at once there is another Love — the eye with which this second Soul looks upwards — like the supernal Eros engendered by force of desire. This Aphrodite, the secondary Soul, is of this Universe — not Soul unmingled alone, not Soul, the Absolute, giving birth, therefore, to the Love concerned with the universal life; no, this is the Love presiding over marriages; but it, also, has its touch of the upward desire; and, in the degree of that striving, it stirs and leads upwards the Souls of the young and every Soul with which it is incorporated in so far as there is a natural tendency to remembrance of the divine. For every Soul is striving towards The Good, even the mingling Soul and that of particular beings, for each holds directly from the divine Soul, and is its offspring.
Reference address : https://ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/ancient-greece/plotinus/enneads-3.asp?pg=66
