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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 26
9. But we must examine how soul comes to inhabit the body — the manner and the process — a question certainly of no minor interest.
The entry of soul into body takes place under two forms.
Firstly, there is the entry — metensomatosis — of a soul present in body by change from one [wholly material] frame to another or the entry — not known as metensomatosis, since the nature of the earlier habitacle is not certainly definable — of a soul leaving an aerial or fiery body for one of earth.
Secondly, there is the entry from the wholly bodiless into any kind of body; this is the earliest form of any dealing between body and soul, and this entry especially demands investigation.
What then can be thought to have happened when soul, utterly clean from body, first comes into commerce with the bodily nature?
It is reasonable, necessary even, to begin with the Soul of the All. Notice that if we are to explain and to be clear, we are obliged to use such words as “entry” and “ensoulment,” though never was this All unensouled, never did body subsist with soul away, never was there Matter unelaborate; we separate, the better to understand; there is nothing illegitimate in the verbal and mental sundering of things which must in fact be co-existent.
The true doctrine may be stated as follows:
Reference address : https://ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/ancient-greece/plotinus/enneads-4.asp?pg=26
