§6.7.1. When the god or a god1 sent the souls to come to be, he put ‘light-bearing eyes’2 in their faces, and gave them the other sense organs, foreseeing that like this they would be preserved, if they looked ahead, and heard beforehand and, having touched things, could pursue5 one and avoid another.
How could the god actually foresee these things? For it was certainly not because other things had previously come to be, then perished for want of perceptive capacities, that he then gave these to human beings and other animals, which would be preserved in this way from suffering by them.
In fact, someone might say that he knew that the living being would10 be amidst hot and cold and the other affections of bodies,3 and that, knowing this, he gave living beings sense-perception and the organs for these so that their bodies might not easily perish; and through these organs the sense-perceptions are actualized. But he gave them either the organs when they already had the capacities or he gave them both at once. But if he gave them the senses as well, then although they were15 souls beforehand, they did not have the potency for sense-perception.
If they already had the potency for sense-perception when they became souls, and if they became souls so that they might enter the realm of becoming, then it would be natural for them to do so. Therefore, being apart from the realm of becoming, that is, being in the intelligible world, would then be contrary to their nature. And in that case, they would have been produced so as to belong to another thing, and to be amidst evil. And providence would see to it that they might be preserved amidst this evil; and this would be the calculation of20 god, that is, comprehensive calculation.
What are the principles of these calculations? For even if they come from previous calculations, they must aim at something prior to the calculation, or at some things in any case. So what are the principles? They must [belong] either to sense-perception or intellect. But sense-perception did not yet exist; therefore, intellect. But if the premises [belong to] intellect, then the conclusion must be scientific knowledge.25 It does not, therefore, concern anything sensible. For since that of which the starting point is in the intelligible reaches its conclusion in the intelligible, too, how is it possible that this disposition4 should arrive at discursive thinking regarding the sensible? Given that this is so, neither providence for the living being, nor indeed for this universe, could come about on the basis of calculation since there is no calculation in the intelligible world; one speaks of calculation5 only to indicate30 that things are arranged as though they were the consequences of calculation; and of foresight, because they are as a wise man would have foreseen.6 For in things which do not come to be without prior calculation, calculation is useful because of an absence of the power before the calculation, and foresight is useful because the human being who foresees does not possess the power which would mean that he35 would have no need of foresight.
For foresight is so that this and not that occurs; and it fears, in a way, that such and such does not occur. But it is not foresight, where only this is the case. For calculation also takes one thing instead of another; for what could one calculate if only one of the alternatives is the case? How can what is alone, one, and simple contain, in a developed state, ‘this, so40 that this does not happen’, or ‘this had to be, if not that’, ‘this appeared useful, and this was preservative when it came about’? He who says these things, therefore, foresaw something and, therefore, calculated it beforehand, certainly in the case we started from, too;7 the god bestowed the senses, even if this gift is most puzzling. Nonetheless, if45 no activity can be incomplete,8 and if it is not lawful to think that anything belonging to god is other than whole and total, then everything must be present in anything that belongs to him.
So, anything that is going to be exists already. There is certainly nothing which only occurs later in the intelligible world; rather, something50 that is already present in the intelligible world comes to be later in something else.9 If, then, what is to be is already present, it must be present in such a way that it has been thought in advance for the later event; that is, because it requires nothing then, that is, there is no deficiency. All things, therefore, already were and were always, and were in such a way that one later says this is after that. For when something is55 extended and, in a way, developed, then it can display this after that, though while it is together, it is all this.10 This is what it means [for something] to contain its explanation in itself.
§6.7.2. For this reason, one can even discover in the sensible world the nature of Intellect, which we see better than we do other things; still, we do not see the dimensions of the need for Intellect; we grant that it contains the ‘that’, but not yet the ‘why’.11 Or, if we were to grant it the ‘why’, then it is only as something separate. We see a human being or an5 eye, as it may be, like a statue or as belonging to a statue. In the intelligible world, there is the ‘that’ of human being,12 and the ‘why’ there is human being, if indeed human being in the intelligible world has to be intellectual; so, too, with the eye and its ‘why’. For it would not be at all, were there no ‘why’. In the sensible world, just as each of its parts is separate, so, too, is the ‘why’. In the intelligible world, all are in one,10 with the result that the thing [the ‘that’] and the ‘why’ of the thing are identical.
Often in the sensible world, too, the thing and its ‘why’ are identical, for example, in answer to the question what is an eclipse?13 What, then, prevents each thing being a ‘why’ in the other cases, too, and this being the substantiality of each thing? Rather, this is necessary. And for anyone trying to grasp the ‘what it was to be’,14 this is the right approach.15 For what each thing is is why it is. I do not mean that the Form is the explanation for each thing’s existence,15 although that is true, but that if you unravel each Form in itself, you will find the ‘why’ in it. Anything inactive and without life quite simply does not have the ‘why’ in it;20 whereas for something that is Form and belongs to Intellect, where else is it meant to take the ‘why’ from? If someone says that it gets it from Intellect, then the Form is not separate from it, if indeed it is Intellect. If, then, the thing must have no deficiency in anything, then neither does it have a deficiency in the ‘why’.
This is how Intellect has the ‘why’ of each of the things in it. It is25 each of those things in it, so that each of them has no need of ‘why’ it came to be; all at once it comes to be and possesses the explanation for its real existence. Since it has not come to be by chance, it cannot be missing any of the ‘why’; instead, since it possesses everything it also possesses the beautiful togetherness of its explanation. And it bestows this in such a way on the things that partake of it, so that they possess30 the ‘why’.
Further, just as in this universe here, which consists of many things, all things are strung together, and each ‘why’ also depends on the being of all – just as the part in each case is seen as relating to the whole – it is not the case then when this has come to be, then that comes to be after35 this; rather, explanation and explanandum are together, standing in relation to one another. So, too, in fact, even more so in the intelligible world must all things stand in relation to the whole, and each thing in relation to itself.
If, then, the real existence16 of all things hangs together, and is not a matter of chance and if they must not be separated, the explananda would have the explanations in themselves; and each thing is such that it40 has its explanation in a non-explanatory fashion.
If, then, they do not have an explanation for their existence, they are self-sufficient, and bereft of explanation; they must have the explanation in themselves, and with themselves. For indeed if nothing in the intelligible world is in vain, and many things are in each thing, you should be able to say why each thing contains all the things it does contain.45 The ‘why’ is prior, and existed together with the other things in the intelligible world, without being ‘why’, but just being the ‘that’.17 It would be better to say that both of these are one. For what would [an intelligible] have above and beyond Intellect, such that a thought of Intellect is not just that, a perfect product?
If, then, it is perfect, it is not possible to say where it is deficient, nor that it is not present because of such and such a reason. You can, therefore, say it is present because it is present. The ‘why’, therefore,50 is in its real existence [the ‘that’]. So, in each thought and in the result of each act, in a way, the whole of human being appeared, human being bringing all of itself with it, possessing altogether all it has possessed from the start, and altogether available.
Next, if it is not everything, if, that is, one needs to add something to it, then it belongs to the product of a coming to be. But it is always; so it55 is everything, whereas the human being that has come to be is generated.
§6.7.3. What, then, prevents god from deliberating in advance about the generated human being?
In fact, he must correspond to that human being in Intellect, so one may not take any part away or add it:18 deliberation and calculation occur because of the hypothesis; for Plato hypothesized things as having come to be. Thus, deliberation and calculation [are found in5 the dialogue]. But in indicating that ‘these things always come to be’,19 Plato cancelled out the calculation. For there is no calculation in eternity. For calculation belongs to someone forgetful of how things were beforehand. Then, if it is better afterwards, it must have been worse beforehand. And if they were beautiful beforehand, then they are similarly beautiful now. They are beautiful together with their explanation.20
Even in the sensible world, too, something is beautiful because it10 contains all that belong to it21 – for a form also contains everything belonging to it – and because it dominates the matter, and it dominates matter if nothing is left unshaped. And it leaves it unshaped if some shape is missing, an eye or some such. So, when giving the explanation, you will recount all these things. Why, then, are there eyes? So that everything may be there. And why eyebrows? So that15 everything may be there. And were you to say, ‘for the sake of protecting the eyes’,22 you would be saying there is something safeguarding the substantiality present in it, that is, that it contributes to the substantiality. The substantiality, therefore, was before this, and therefore the explanation is part of the substantiality. So, there is something else belonging to the substantiality, namely, what it is. So, all things are for one another; and the whole and complete20 substance, in total, as well as its being beautiful comes with the explanation and lies in the explanation: the substantiality, or the ‘what it was to be’, and the ‘why’ are one.
So, if having the faculty of sense-perception, and being able to perceive in this way is included in the Form, on the grounds of eternal necessity and the perfection of Intellect, which possesses the explanations in itself, if indeed it is perfect, such that we only25 see afterwards that things are right this way – for in the intelligible world, the explanation is one and complete, and the human being in the intelligible world is not just intellect23 with the faculty of sense-perception added when he was sent to birth – how could that intellect not incline to things in the sensible world? For what would the faculty of sense-perception be other than the grasping30 of sensibles? How would it not be strange if the faculty of sense-perception is in the intelligible world from eternity, whereas actual sense-perception is in the sensible world, that is, for the actualization of the potency in the intelligible world to be fulfilled in the sensible world just at the time when the soul becomes worse?
§6.7.4. In view of this puzzle, then, we must return to the question of what that human being in the intelligible world is. Presumably, we should say first just what the human being in the sensible world is, so that we do not investigate that one, as though we had him in5 our possession, whereas we do not know him accurately at all. Perhaps it would seem to some that this human being and that one are identical.
The enquiry begins from this point: is the human being [in the sensible world] an expressed principle other than the soul which produces this human being, providing him with life and reasoning? Or is such and such a soul the human being? Or the soul using a body of such10 a kind?24 But if human being is a rational animal,25 and an animal consists of body and soul, then this expressed principle would not be identical with the soul. But if the expressed principle of human being consisted of rational soul and body, how could it be an eternal real existent, if this kind of expressed principle of human being only comes15 into being when body and soul come together? For then this expressed principle will reveal the future human being, but not such a one as we call the human being itself; it will be more like a definition indeed like the kind which does not make the ‘what it was to be’ clear.26 For it does not make the enmattered form clear, but the form–matter complex,20 which is already. If this is the case, then the [intelligible] human being has not yet been discovered. For it was the one corresponding to the expressed principle.27
If someone were to say, the expressed principle of such things must be [of] a complex, a ‘this in a this’,28 he does not think it worthwhile to mention that according to which each thing is. But one has to say this, for even if it is necessary to say that the expressed principles belong to25 the enmattered forms, and are themselves with matter, one must grasp as far as possible the expressed principle itself which has produced, for example, a human being; this is especially so for anyone who thinks that in each case the ‘what it was to be’ has to be defined, when you define properly.29
What, then, is it to be a human being?30 Is this the inherent factor which has made this human being, and which is not separable? This30 expressed principle itself, then, will be a rational living being. Or is the complex the rational animal, while the expressed principle itself is productive of the rational living being? What, then, is it itself? Or does ‘living being’ take the place of ‘rational life’ in the definition?31 So, the human being is rational life. Is the human being, then, life without soul?
In fact, soul provides rational life; and the human being will then be35 the activity of soul, and not a substance; or else the soul will be the human being. But if the rational soul is to be the human being, then how is it not a human being when it enters another animal?
§6.7.5. So, the human being must be an expressed principle other than soul.32 What prevents the human being from being some complex: a soul in such an expressed principle, given that the expressed principle is, in a way, such and such an activity, and given that the activity cannot exist without the agent?33 This is the way the expressed principles are in5 seeds. For they are neither without souls nor just souls. The expressed principles that produce them are not inanimate, and there is nothing surprising if these kinds of substances are expressed principles.
The expressed principles, then, which actually produce the human being are the activities of what kind of soul? Of the soul responsible for10 growth?
In fact, they are of the soul which produces the living being, a clearer soul,34 and hence more alive.
A soul of this kind, when it has come to be in such and such matter, inasmuch as it is this, that is, being disposed this way, and without the body, is the human being; when in itself shaped in the body, it made another image of human being such as the body can take on, just as the15 painter will produce a human being lesser even than this one;35 it has the shape, the principles or characters, the dispositions, the capacities, but they are all faint because this human being is not the primary one. Moreover, this soul has other senses which are held to be clear, but20 are fainter relative to those prior to them and images.
But the human being above this one belongs to a more divine soul, containing a better human being and clearer senses. This must be the human being Plato defines when he adds that the soul ‘uses a body’;36 it supervenes on that soul which primarily uses a body, and the soul which25 uses body at one remove is more divine. Once a human being with a faculty of sense-perception had come to be, this soul followed and bestowed a clearer life on the human being. It would be better to say, not that it followed, but that it added itself, in a way. For it does not step outside the intelligible world, but, bound together with the lower soul, it holds the lower soul depending on it itself, having mixed itself, an30 expressed principle, with an expressed principle. Hence, this human being, although he is murky, becomes clear by illumination.
§6.7.6. How, then, is there the faculty of sense-perception in the better soul?
In fact, it is a potency for sense-perception of the sensibles in the intelligible world as they exist there. For this reason, it also perceives the sensible harmony in this way,37 whereas the human being [in the sensible world] has a receptive perceptual potency, and is attuned to the last5 degree to the harmony in the intelligible world, for example, when the fire in the sensible world is attuned to the Fire in the intelligible world, the sense-perception of this fire belongs to that soul corresponding to the nature of Fire there.
Insofar as there are these bodies in the intelligible world, there would be acts of sense-perception and acts of apprehension of them by the soul. And the human being in the intelligible world, the soul of such and10 such a kind, would be capable of apprehending them. This is why the posterior human being, the imitation, contains their expressed principles in an imitative form. The human being in the Intellect is the human being prior to all human beings.
The first illuminates the second, and the second the third. The last human being contains all of them in a certain sense, not by becoming them but because it is close to them. One of us acts according to the last15 human being, another has something of the one before the last one, and yet another has his activity from the third [the human being in Intellect]. Each of them is the human being according to which he is active; and yet each both does and does not contain them all. Given that the third life, that is, the third human being, is separated from the body, if20 the second38 continues to be connected with the body, it would be connected while not separated from things above, where it and the [first] are said to belong.
When it [the second soul] takes hold of a beast’s body, one is filled with wonder, as to how the expressed principle of this is the expressed principle of a human being.
In fact, it is everything, and it acts at different times in accordance with different things; and before it has gone bad, it wants to be the25 human being and is a human being. For this is more beautiful, and it produces what is more beautiful. It produces also the prior daemons,39 which have the same form as human beings. And the human being before this soul is even more of a daemon, or better, a god, for the daemon that depends on god, as the human being does on the daemon, is an imitation of god.
What the human being depends on in fact is not called a god. For30 there is a distinction, namely, the one that souls have towards one another, even if they belong to the identical rank. One should also call ‘daemons’ the kind of daemon which Plato calls ‘intelligences’.40 But when the soul connected to the daemon it had when it was human being follows a soul that chose ‘the nature of a beast’,41 it gives the expressed principle that it had in itself to the animal. For this contains it, and this is an inferior activity for it.
§6.7.7. But if the soul only informs a bestial nature on going to the bad, and being degraded, there was not anything originally in it which would have produced an ox or a horse. Thus, the expressed principle of horse, that is, the horse, would have been contrary to nature.
In fact, it is something lesser, not really contrary to nature; that which produced them was in some way originally a horse or a dog. And if the5 soul contains the means, then it produces something better, and if not, then it produces what it can, which at any rate was what it was preordained to produce. It is like creators who know how to produce many forms, and then either produce these, or what they were ordered to, or what the matter was suited to.
For what prevents the power of the soul of the universe from producing10 a sketch beforehand, inasmuch as it is the expressed principle of everything, even before the psychical powers deriving from it? And what prevents the sketch produced beforehand from being like illuminations anticipating matter, and soul from carrying out the work, following these traces, articulating traces part for part?42 Each soul becomes15 then what it draws near, shaping itself, just as the dancer fits himself to the role assigned to him.
We have reached this point by following one continuous line of thought. Our argument was how the faculty of sense-perception belongs to the [intelligible] human being, and how those things [sensibles] in the intelligible world do not look in the direction of generation. And it seemed to us, and the argument showed, that those things in20 the intelligible world do not look in the direction of things [sensibles] in the sensible world, but these things here are dependent upon those things there, and imitate them. And this human being has its powers from that human being, in relation to those things [sensibles]: the sensibles in the sensible world are coupled with this human being, and the sensibles in the intelligible world are coupled with that human being.
We called the latter ‘sensibles’43 because, though they are incorporeal,25 they are apprehended in a different way44 – and in the sensible world we called it ‘sense-perception’ because it is of bodies, though this apprehension is fainter than that in the intelligible world, where, because it is of incorporeals,45 it was said to be clearer. Because of this, the human being in the sensible world has a faculty of sense-perception, too, because he has a lesser apprehension of lesser images30 than those in the intelligible world. The upshot is that these acts of sense-perception are faint acts of intellection, whereas the acts of intellection in the intelligible world are clear acts of sense-perception.
§6.7.8. So much for the faculty of sense-perception. But how are horse and each of the animals in the intelligible world really there in the intelligible world? And how did the [Demiurge] not want to look at the things in the sensible world when he produced the animals?46 But what if it were the case that, in order that a horse or another animal may come to be in the sensible world, he invented the thought of a horse? Still, how was it possible, when wanting to produce a horse, to think it5 up? For clearly the thought of a horse was there already, if indeed he wanted to produce a horse.
The upshot is that it is not possible to have the thought, in order that he can produce the horse; instead, the Horse that does not come to be exists in the intelligible world before the one that will exist after that. If, then, the horse in the intelligible world existed before the generation [of the other one], and was not thought so that the horse in the sensible world could come to be, then he who possesses in himself the horse in the intelligible world does not possess it with a view to the horses here.10 Nor did he possess the horse – and other [intelligibles] – so that he could produce the horses in the sensible world; rather, they were in the intelligible world, and the ones in the sensible world followed them of necessity.47 For it was not possible for things to stop with the things in the intelligible world. For who could have stopped a power that could both remain and proceed?
But why are the animals [in the sensible world] in the intelligible15 world?48 What are they in god? Rational animals are there, so be it. But the vast number of non-rational animals – what is holy about them? And why not the opposite? Because it is clear that the One-Being also has to be many, since it is posterior to that which is absolutely One.49 Otherwise it would not be posterior to the One, but would be the One itself. And since it is posterior to that, it was not possible for it to exceed20 that One in unity; it had to fall short of it. Since the best was the One, it had to be more than one. For multiplicity lies in deficiency.
So what prevents it from being a Dyad?
In fact, it was not possible for either of the two parts in the Dyad to be absolutely one; rather they had to be at least two, and so, too, their parts25 in turn.50
Next, there was Motion and Stability in the primary Dyad, there was Intellect and Life in it – that is, perfect Intellect and perfect Life.51 So, it was not as one Intellect, but as all Intellect, that is Intellect containing all the individual intellects; Intellect as many as these are, and more. And it was alive not as one soul, but as all souls, containing more power to30 produce the individual souls. And it was a ‘complete Living Being’,52 containing not only the human being in itself; otherwise, human being would be only in the sensible world.
§6.7.9. Let us admit, someone may say, the more honourable animals, but what about the lower animals and the non-rational ones? Their lowness comes from their being non-rational, clearly, if honour belongs to that which is rational. And if animals are honourable due to their intellectual quality, they are the opposite by their lack of it. Yet how can something without thought53 or non-rational belong to that Intellect in5 which each thing exists or from which they came?
Before we actually approach these questions, let us grasp that the human being in the sensible world is not such as the one in the intelligible world; so, then, other animals are not in the intelligible world as they are in the sensible world – they have to be understood in a superior sense.
Next, neither is there rationality there. The human being is presumably10 rational in the sensible world; in the intelligible world, he is prior to calculative reasoning.54 Why, then, would the human being calculate in the intelligible world, and not the other animals?
In fact, since thinking in the intelligible world is different in human beings and in other animals, then so, too, is calculating different. Many products of discursive thinking are in other animals as well; why, then, are they not equally rational? And why are not human beings among15 themselves equally rational?
One should bear in mind that the many lives are, in a way, motions, and the many acts of intellection need not be the same: both lives and acts of intellection are different. The distinctions differ in luminosity and clarity, first, second, and third, depending on the proximity to the20 first principles. This is why some of these acts of intellection are gods, others a second kind, which has here the designation ‘rational’, and the one coming after that is called ‘non-rational’. In the intelligible world, what is called here ‘non-rational’ is an expressed principle, and what is without Intellect is Intellect; for it is Intellect that is thinking Horse – and the intellection of Horse is Intellect.25
But if it was intellection alone, there would be nothing absurd in it being the intellection of that which is without thought. But, as it is, if intellection is identical with the thing, then, how can there be intellection, with the thing being without thought?55 For in that way, Intellect would make itself be without thought.
In fact, then, it is not without thought, but Intellect with such and such a nature; for it has such and such a life.56
For just as such and such a life does not cease to be life, Intellect does30 not cease to be Intellect; since the intellect in any living being, including a human being, does not cease to be the Intellect of all things, if indeed each and every part is a part of the Intellect of all things, each, presumably, in a different sense.57 In actuality it is that one thing, but it has the potency for everything. We grasp what is actualized in the particular.35 And what is actualized is the last thing, for example, the last thing of [the actuality of] Intellect is being horse: it is a horse insofar as it ceases proceeding to ever inferior life forms, and another form if it ceases lower down.
As the powers unfold, they always leave something above. In proceeding, they lose something at each step, and different powers,40 by losing different things because of the inadequacy of the animal which appears, find different additions coming out of the deficiency, for example, because the animal no longer had what was sufficient for living, nails appeared, claws, with fitting teeth, or horns. The result is that wherever Intellect has descended to, it bounces back because of the self-sufficiency in its nature; its finds in itself the cure for the deficiency.
§6.7.10. But how did it come to be deficient in the intelligible world? Why are there horns for defence in the intelligible world?
In fact, for the self-sufficiency and completeness of the Living Being. For as Living Being it must be complete, and as Intellect, it must be complete, and so, too, as Life. The result is that if it is not this, well, then it is that.58 And the differentia comes from this [property] being substituted5 for that, so that from all things there may ensue the most complete Living Being, complete Intellect, and the most complete Life: each thing is perfect as the thing it is.
Further, if the Living Being consists of many things, it must still be one; in fact, it is not possible that it consist of many things and that these are all identical.
In fact, it would then be a self-sufficient unity. So, it must consist of things that are specifically different, like any composite, and where10 each thing, that is, the shapes59 and definitions of the ingredients, are preserved. For the shapes, for example, of a human being, come from such differences, and yet there is one that stands over all. And they are better and worse than one another, eye, and finger, but they all belong to the one thing. But the universe is not worse; indeed, it is better that15 it is this way. The expressed principle is living being, plus something else [the differentiating property] which is not identical with living being. And ‘virtue’ refers to what is common [the genus] and to what is unique [the differentiating property]; and what is beautiful is the whole [genus plus differentiating property], while what is common is indifferent [neither beautiful nor ugly].
§6.7.11. But it is said that heaven itself does not disdain the nature of all animals – and many animals do actually appear in it – since the universe contains them all. Where, then, does it have them from? Are there all things such as are in the sensible world also in the intelligible world?
In fact, it has all those that are produced by an expressed principle and in accordance with form. But when60 it contains fire, then it contains5 earth, too; and, in any case, it contains plants. And how are there plants in the intelligible world? And how does fire live there? And earth? Indeed, either it lives or it is like a corpse in the intelligible world; then, the result would be that not everything in the intelligible world is alive.
And, generally, what are these things in the intelligible world?
In fact, plants can be fitted into the argument since even in the10 sensible world, a plant is an expressed principle based in life. If the enmattered expressed principle of the plant, in accordance to which the plant is, is indeed such and such a life, and a kind of soul, and the expressed principle is some one thing, then this expressed principle is either the primary plant or it is not; and in the latter case, the primary plant [the Form of the Plant] is before it, that is, the one this plant derives from. And that primary plant is one, whereas these ones here are many, and necessarily derive from one. And if this is indeed so, then the15 primary one must live more and be itself a plant; and in derivation from this, the others live secondarily and at a third remove, following in its footsteps.
And what about earth? And what is it for earth to exist? And what is the earth in the intelligible world in possession of life? Or, first, what is earth in the sensible world, that is, what is it to be earth? Certainly, it must, even in the sensible world, have some shape and an expressed20 principle. And in the case of the plant in the intelligible world it was alive, as its expressed principle is alive in the sensible world. So, too, for this earth in the sensible world?
In fact, if we grasp whatever has most become earthen and been shaped in it, then we would find the nature of earth.
So, consider the growth and formation of stones, the inner shaping of25 growing mountains. In these cases, we are bound to think of these coming from an animate expressed principle which creates them inwardly and gives them form. And this is the productive form of earth, just as in trees their so-called nature,61 and so-called earth is analogous to the wood in the tree; and when a stone is cut off it is thus30 like when one cuts a bit from the tree; but if this does not happen to it, it is still fitted together, like something not cut from the living plant.
When we have indeed discovered nature creating as a creator situated in earth, a life in an expressed principle, we will believe all the more that earth in the intelligible world is much more alive, the expressed principle35 of life, earth itself, primary earth, from which earth in the sensible world originates.
If fire, too, is an expressed principle in matter, as with the other things like this, it is not spontaneously fire; for then where does it come from? Not from rubbing as one might think. For rubbing is of the bodies being rubbed together which already contain fire, and there is40 already fire in the universe.62 Nor is the matter fire in potency in such a way that it is in it, if, that is, the productive factor actually has to work according to an expressed principle, as it gives shape to the product. So what would this be other than the soul that is able to produce fire? This is life and an expressed principle, both being one and identical in both.
For this reason, Plato says that soul is in each of the elements,6345 actually producing the sensible fire. So, what produces fire in the sensible world is also a kind of fiery life, quite veritable fire. And fire in the intelligible world, being more fire, must be more alive. The fire, therefore, itself lives as well.
The identical argument applies to the others, that is, to water and air.50 But why are these not ensouled like the earth? It is anyway clear that these elements are in the whole Living Being, that is, that they are parts of a Living Being. But life does not appear in these elements any more than it does in earth. However, it was possible to deduce its presence in the intelligible world64 from the things which come to be in it. Still, living beings come to be in fire, too, and most clearly in water. And the 55composition of some living beings is airy.65
Each fire, in coming to be and in being extinguished quickly, passes by the soul in all fire, and has not come to be a persisting mass, such that it would manifest its soul. Similarly with air and water, for if they did naturally coagulate, they would manifest it, but since they needed to be flowing, they do not manifest the soul they have.60
It is, presumably, the same with the fluids in us such as blood. For flesh, and anything that becomes flesh, is held to have soul from the blood,66 while blood, not providing sense-perception,67 does not seem to have soul; but there is necessarily soul in it, too. Without anything violent happening to it, it is ready to separate itself from the soul present65 in it. This is just as one has to conceive of it in the case of the three elements; for the living beings consisting above all of air do not perceive what they undergo.68 Like air passing by intense and steady light, as long as it persists,69 this is how air both passes by its soul in a circle and does not pass by. And likewise for the other elements.
§6.7.12. However, let us say the following: since we assert that this universe stands in relation to that one [the intelligible world] as to what is, in a way, its model, the whole Living Being must exist prior in the intelligible world, too, and if its existence is to be complete,70 then it must be all living beings. And the sky must actually be a living being in the intelligible world, too, not of course a sky empty of stars, as we call5 them in the sensible world; that is what being sky is. And clearly the earth is not empty in the intelligible world either, but much more alive than in the sensible world: all animals are in it – those that we call footed and land animals in the sensible world, and, clearly, plants settled in life. And there is sea in the intelligible world, and all water in flux and10 persisting life; and all the living beings in water. And air is part of the universe in the intelligible world, and the airy animals are in it analogous to the air itself. How can things in what is living [the Living Being] not be living, as they actually are even in the sensible world?71
How, then, could not all living beings be in the intelligible world of necessity? As each of the great parts of the cosmos are in the intelligible15 world, so, too, there is necessarily the nature of living beings in them. In the manner, then, in which heaven is in the intelligible world, so, too, all the living beings in heaven are in the intelligible world; it is not possible for them not to be. Otherwise, the great parts would not be in the intelligible world either.72
Who, then, enquires where living beings come from, enquires where heaven in the intelligible world comes from. This is to enquire where20 the Living Being comes from, and this is identical to enquiring where life, that is, universal Life, soul, that is, universal Soul, and intellect, that is, universal Intellect come from, because there is no poverty or lack in the intelligible world; instead, everything is filled with life, and in a way seething.73 There is, in a way, a flowing of all things from one spring,25 not as from a single breath or heat, but as though there were one quality which contains all qualities in itself, and preserves them, sweetness with sweet-odour, a vinous quality, the powers of all tastes, the sights of all colours, all that touch can know, all that hearing can hear, all tunes and all rhythms.
§6.7.13. For neither Intellect, nor the Soul arising from it is something simple, but they are all74 variegated according to their simplicity, that is, according to their lack of composition, and insofar as they are principles and activities. At the bottom end, the activity is simple because it is where things come to a stop; and all the activities of the first are simple. Intellect in motion is moved [always] in the same manner, that is, in 5identical respects, and always [as] the same things, since it is not one identical thing in particular, but all things.75 For even the one particular is not one thing but unlimited when it is divided.76
Where should we assert it starts from, and where does it finally end? Is all that lies in between like a line, or like another uniform and10 unvariegated body? But what would be so august about that? For if there is no radical alteration in it, if no Difference wakes it into life, then it would not be activity.77 For a condition like that would be no different from non-activity. And if the Intellect’s motion were like this, then its life would not be multifarious, but monotonous. But it must live15 entirely, and in every aspect everywhere, and nothing of it may not live. It must, then, move itself in all directions, or rather to have moved itself in all directions.
Indeed, if it were to move itself simply, it would only contain that one motion. And either it is itself, and has not proceeded to anything further, or if it has proceeded, some other [part] of it remained. The result is, then, that it is two. And if this is identical with that [part], it remains one, and has not proceeded; and if this is different20 from that, it proceeded with difference, and produced a third one from that which is identical and different.78 Since it has indeed come to be from Identity and Difference, the thing that comes to be has the nature of Identity and Difference. But it is another something, another whole. For that which is identical is the whole of that which is identical. Since it is the whole of Identity and the whole of Difference, it leaves out none of25 the different things. It, therefore, has the nature to be made wholly different.
If then all the different Beings are prior to it, it would have already undergone motion under their influence. If they are not, then this Intellect generated all things, or indeed, better, was all of them. It is not possible, therefore, for Beings to be if Intellect does not activate them, and it activates one thing after another, and in a way wandering all wanderings, wandering in itself, just as it is the nature of true Intellect to30 wander79 in itself. It naturally wanders among Substances, as the Substances run along its wanderings with it. Intellect is everywhere itself. It, then, has a constant wandering. Its wandering is on ‘the plane of truth’,80 which it does not leave.35
It has taken it all into its possession, and has made it in a way a place for its motion; the place is identical with that of which it is the place. This plain is variegated, so that it may traverse it. Were it not in every respect and always variegated, it would come to a standstill insofar as it is not variegated. If it comes to a standstill, it does not think. The result is that if it ever came to a standstill, then it was not thinking. And if so, then40 it does not exist. It is, then, intellection.81
All motion fulfils all Substance, and all Substance is all intellection, embracing all Life, one thing after another. And whatever belonging to Intellect is identical with and also different from it; it makes another thing always appear for anyone who analyses the Intellect. The path goes through life, and past all living beings, just as for someone going45 over the earth all he passes is earth, even if the earth has differences.
And the Life in the intelligible world, through which the path leads is identical, but because it is always different, it is not identical. For the Intellect always has the identical traversal running through things that are not identical, because it does not swap one thing for another, but is with the other things in the same way and in the identical respects. If the same way and the identical respects did not apply to other things, the50 Intellect would be entirely idle; being active and activity would be nowhere.82 For the Intellect itself is the other things, too, such that it is itself all. If indeed it is itself, it is all; if it were not, then it would not be itself. If it is itself all, and it is all because it is all things, and there is nothing which does not contribute to the completion of all things, then there is nothing belonging to Intellect which is not another thing, so55 that it may by being another thing also complete this thing. For if it is not another thing, but identical with another thing, it will diminish its own substantiality by not providing for the completion of its nature.
§6.7.14. It is possible by the use of intellectual models to know what manner of thing Intellect is, that is, how it does not stand not being other than it is, in the fashion of a unit. You would not want to take the expressed principle of plant or animal as a model. For if it was some one being, and not a variegated one, then it would not be an expressed 5principle; rather, the thing that has come to be would be matter, since the expressed principle would not have become it all, by entering in everywhere in the matter and letting none of it be itself.
For example a face83 is not one mass; it is also nostrils and eyes, and the nose is not merely one thing, but there are several parts of it, if it is to10 be a nose. For if it were one simple being, then it would be merely a mass. In the same way, the unlimited is also one in the Intellect, in the sense of a ‘one-many’,84 not in the way a mass is one, but as an expressed principle in it which is multiple; in one figure of the Intellect, like an outline, it contains outlines inside, and configurations inside also, and powers and acts of intellection, not according to a linear division, but15 eternally inwards, like that of the whole Living Being into the natures of living beings it embraces, and again a division into fairly small living beings, and into the weaker power, where it finally comes to a stop at the individual form.85
But the division lying in Intellect is not a jumble, even if it is of Beings that are one; rather, this is, in the universe, what is called ‘Love in the universe’,86 not of course the love in the sensible universe, in that this is20 an imitation of being friendly arising out of disparate things. True love is for all things to be one and never dispersed. Empedocles does, however, claim that it is dispersed within our universe.87
§6.7.15. Who, then, would not delight in this life, if he saw it – plentiful, whole, of the first order and one, and disdain all other life? For the other lives are in darkness, the lives down below, that are small and faint, cheap, not pure, and dirtying the pure lives. And if you should look5 towards these lives, then you will no longer see the pure lives, nor will you live all those lives all together in which there is nothing which does not live, and in which one lives purely without any evil. For evils are in the sensible world, because here is just a trace of Life and a trace of Intellect.
In the intelligible world, Plato says, the archetype is Good-like,88 because it contains the Good in the Forms. On the one hand, there is the10 Good, and on the other Intellect is good because its life consists in contemplation. It contemplates the objects of contemplation themselves which are Good-like, and which it obtained when it contemplated the nature of the Good.89 They came to it, not as they were there [i.e., in the Good], but as Intellect itself came to possess them. For that [the Good] is the principle, and from that the Forms come to be in Intellect;15 this Intellect is what produced these things from that Good. For it was not licit for Intellect, in looking towards the Good, either to think nothing or to think them in the Good. For in that case, Intellect would not have generated them.
For the Intellect acquired the power to generate from the Good, and to be filled with its offspring, because the Good granted them, which it itself did not have. But out of one thing many come about for this20 Intellect. For it broke up the power which it was unable to contain, and made many out of the one power, so that it could bear it part by part. Whatever it generated came from the power of the Good and was Good-like, and Intellect itself was good from the things Good-like – a variegated good.
For this reason, if someone were to liken the Good to a living25 variegated sphere,90 and either imagine it a thing that is all face, radiant with living faces, or as all pure souls congregated together without lack having all that belongs to them, with the whole Intellect settled on their tops, so as to illuminate the place with intellectual light – if you imagine it like this, then you would be seeing it from outside as one looking at another; but one should become that itself, and make oneself the vision.91
§6.7.16. But it is necessary not always to rest in this multiple beauty; one must make the transition, rushing upwards, leaving this [Intellect], too, behind, not starting from this heaven, but from that one,92 filled with wonderment at who engendered it and how.
Each thing, then, is a Form, and each is, in a way, a unique impression.5 Since they are Good-like,93 they all contain in common the thing that runs through them all; so they all have in them Being, they all have the Living Being, since a life in common is present in all; and, presumably, other things, too.
But what can they be good in accordance with and because of? Actually, for this kind of enquiry it is probably helpful to start as follows:10 did Intellect, when it was looking towards the Good, conceive of that One as a many and, being one itself, conceive of the Good as a many, in portioning up the Good, because it was not capable of thinking it whole all together?
But looking at the Good it was not yet Intellect; it looked non-intellectually.
In fact, we should assert that Intellect was never seeing the Good;15 rather, it was living relative to it; it was dependent on it, and was turned towards it. The motion itself was actually fulfilled by being motion in the intelligible world, and it was fulfilled in relation to the Good itself; it was no longer mere motion, but satiated and full motion. Intellect next became all things and knew this in its self-awareness;94 and now it was20 Intellect, having been fulfilled, so that it possessed what it saw; it looks on them with light, since it is provided both with them and the light by the bestower of them.
Because of this the Good is said95 to be the cause not only of the Substance but also of the substance being seen; just as the sun, in being25 the cause of sensible things being seen and coming to be, and so of seeing in a way, too – and so it is neither seeing nor the things coming to be – so, too, the nature of the Good, being the cause of Substance and Intellect is light, according to the analogy, for the visible things in the intelligible world and the seeing things there, although it is neither Beings not Intellect, but is the cause of them, and, with its30 light, makes possible thinking and being thought for Beings and Intellect. Intellect came into being by being fulfilled, and fulfilled it was, and brought all things to completion together and saw it. Its principle was before Intellect was fulfilled; it is another principle which, in a way, from outside fulfilled it, and which stamped it with its mark in fulfilling it.
§6.7.17. But how are the Forms in Intellect, and how are they identical with it, although they are not there in the Good which fulfils it, nor in the Intellect as it is being fulfilled?
For when it was not yet fulfilled, it did not contain them.
In fact, it is not really necessary for something that gives something to possess what it gives, but in such cases the giver is to be considered as5 greater, and what is given is lesser than the giver.96 Such is coming to be in Beings. For first there has to be something in actuality,97 whereas the later stages are potentially what came before them. That is, the primary transcends the secondary, and the giver transcends the given.98 For it is better.
If, then, anything is prior to actuality, then it transcends actuality;10 and thus transcends Life, too. If Life is in Intellect, then the giver gave Life, and is itself beautiful and more honourable than Life. So, Intellect had Life, and was in no need of a variegated giver. Life was a kind of trace of the Good, not the Life of the Good.
Life, then, while it was looking to the Good, was indefinite, but once15 it had looked, it was bounded in the intelligible world, although the Good has no boundary. For straightaway on having looked towards something one it is bounded by it, and has in itself boundary, limit, and form. And the form is in the thing shaped, while the thing that shapes is without shape. The boundary was not external, as though it had been set around a magnitude, but was a boundary belonging to all that life, which20 was itself multiple and unlimited, because it shines out of such a great nature. And it was not life of just something, for then it would have been, as belonging to an individual, bounded already. But, nonetheless, bounded it was; it was, therefore, the bounded life of a ‘one-many’ – and indeed each of the many was also bounded99 – and while it was bounded as many, because of the multitude of its life, it was still one25 because of its boundary.
What, then, does it mean to say ‘life was bounded as one’? That it is Intellect, for bounded Life is Intellect. And what are these many things? Many intellects. All things, then, are intellects; the whole is Intellect, and each is an intellect.
Does the whole Intellect, including each intellect, include each as identical to it? If it did, then it would include only one.100 And if they are many intellects, there must be some differentiation101 among them.30 Again, then, how does each intellect acquire some differentiation?
In fact, it possessed a difference by becoming entirely one. For the totality of Intellect is not identical with any one intellect.
The Life of Intellect, then, was all power, whereas the seeing coming from the Good was the potentiality for being all things. And the Intellect that came to be appeared as all things themselves. The Good is enthroned over them, not so that it has a foundation, but so that it may35 found the Form of the primary Forms,102 while remaining formless itself.
Intellect comes to be in relation to Soul as light for it, just as that Good is for Intellect. And when Intellect bounds Soul, it makes it rational by giving it a trace of what it acquired. Intellect, then, is also a trace of the Good. Since Intellect is also Form, both in extent and40 multiplicity, that Good is shapeless and formless: for it produces Forms in this way.
If that Good were Form, then Intellect would be an expressed principle. But that which is first may not be multiple in any way; its multiplicity would again depend on another prior to it.
§6.7.18. But on account of what are the things in Intellect Good-like? Is it that each is a Form or insofar as each is beautiful or what? Indeed, if all that comes from the Good possesses a trace or impression of it, or a trace of that which derives from it, just as what comes from fire is the trace of fire or what comes from the sweet is a trace of sweetness, and if Life, too, has come from the Good to Intellect – for it comes to really5 exist from the activity from the Good – 103 and if Intellect really exists on account of that, and that is where the beauty of the Forms comes from, then everything is Good-like, both Life, and Intellect and Idea.
But what did they have in common? For being derived from the Good does not actually suffice for their identity. For a common feature must be in them. For things that are not identical may come to be out of10 one identical thing, or something given in the same way may become other in the things receiving it. Since it is one thing that pertains to primary activity, another that is given by the primary activity, that which comes from these is at once, thereby, another.
In fact, nothing prevents each [Intellect, Idea, Life] being Good-like though rather differently in each case. What, then, is it especially that15 makes them identical?
First, we have to consider this: is Life a good, as such, Life viewed as bare and entirely stripped?
In fact, Life is a good when considered as coming from the Good. Is this ‘from the Good’ not just a qualification? What, then, is this Life with this qualification? Is it the life of the Good?104 It was not its life, but20 Life that comes from the Good.105 But if true Life flows from the Good into the Life in the intelligible world, and nothing dishonourable comes from it, and if it should be called good insofar as it is Life, then about true Intellect, that primary one, one should say, too, that it is good.
And clearly each Form is good and Good-like, in that it thus possesses25 a good, either a good in common, or with one thing having it more than another, or with one having it primarily and another in succession and secondarily.106
Since we have grasped that each Form already has a good in its Substance,107 and is good because of this – for even if Life was not simply good, but good because it was said to be true Life, and because it30 derives from the Good, whereas Intellect is truly good – something identical has to be seen in all of them. Since they are different, when the identical thing is predicated of them, nothing prevents this being in their substantiality, though it is still possible to grasp this identical thing apart from the account, just as animal belongs to both human being and horse, and hot belongs to water and fire, the first as the genus,35 the second as the primary holder of the predicate as opposed to the secondary holder of the predicate. Otherwise, either one member of these pairs would be said to be good equivocally, or each thing would be homonymously good.
So is the Good in their substantiality?
In fact, each is a whole good, and Good is not applied just with respect to one thing. How does it, then, apply? As parts? But the Good is without parts.40
In fact, it is one itself, but one thing is good in one way, and another thing in another. For the primary activity [of Intellect] is a good, and that which is bounded by that is good, and indeed both of them together are good; the primary activity is good because it comes to be under the influence of the Good, the good bounded by activity is good because its order comes from the Good; and both of them together are good for both reasons.
They, then, come from the Good, yet they are not identical, just as45 voice, walking, and anything else coming from the identical source, are all good because correctly accomplished.
In fact, in the sensible world this is because of order and rhythm; and what about in the intelligible world?
In fact, you might say that in the sensible world the factors come from outside to make up the beautiful state of something, and they differ, whereas in the intelligible world they are identical. But how are they identical? We should not just trust in the fact that they come from the Good and leave it at that. For we have to agree that they are honourable50 because they come from the Good; but reason longs to grasp just how they are good.
§6.7.19. Shall we, then, hand over the judgement to desire, that is, to the soul, and because we trust in its affection, will we assert that what is desirable to the soul is good, and not bother to enquire why it desires it? Are we going to provide demonstrations of what each thing is, but in this case, just hand over the good to desire?5
Many absurdities appear to follow from this. First, the good would become a relative.
Next, there are many desired things, and different things are desired by different beings. How, then, will we judge by the one desiring if what is desired is better than something else? Presumably, we would not know the better if we do not know that which is good.
Will we define the good according to the excellence108 of each thing?10 Of course, if we referred this to the Form and the account of it, we would be proceeding correctly. But when we arrive at the intelligible world, what will we say when we investigate why these Forms themselves are good? For, quite reasonably, we recognize such a nature when it is in inferior things, even if it is there not in a pure state, since it is not15 primarily there, but only by conjunction with inferior things. But where nothing is bad, and the good things are themselves in themselves, we will be at a loss. Is the problem, then, since reason is seeking the ‘why’ for things that are in themselves, it is puzzled that, in this case, the ‘why’ is the ‘that’?109 Even if we claim that the explanation is something else, namely, god,110 still the problem is the same, since reason has not yet attained that [explanation].
We should not leave off the enquiry,111 to see if there is not another way we can go so that a solution appears to us.
§6.7.20. Since, then, we put no faith at present112 in our desires as determining what something is or what kind of thing it is, is it necessary that we have recourse to the judgements and to the oppositions between things such as order–disorder, symmetry–asymmetry, health–disease, form–shapelessness, substantiality–destruction, and5 in general, constitution–obliteration?113
Who could doubt that the first of each of these pairs is in the form of good?114 If this is the case, then we should rank the things that produce them in the ‘portion of good’.115 And indeed virtue, and intellect, life and soul, at least a rational soul, lie within the form of good. And thus,10 too, anything the rational life116 desires.
But, then, someone will say, why do we not stop at Intellect and postulate this as the Good? For both soul and life are traces of Intellect, and soul desires it. Soul judges and thereby desires Intellect, judging justice better than injustice, and putting every form of excellence before15 every form of vice, and it honours the identical things it chooses. But if it desires only Intellect, it would presumably need more argument to show that Intellect is not the ultimate thing; and while not everything desires Intellect, everything desires the Good.117
And even among things without intellect, not all try to come to possess it, and those who do have it do not stop there, but go on to20 look for the Good; they look for Intellect on the basis of calculative reasoning, whereas they look for the Good prior to reason as well.118 But if they desire life and eternal existence and activity, then the object desired is not desired as Intellect, but as Good, as deriving from the Good and leading to the Good; for that is the way life is.
§6.7.21. What, then, is that one factor in all these things that makes each thing good? Let us venture to say that Intellect and its life are Good-like, and that desire is for these, insofar as they are Good-like. I call them ‘Good-like’ insofar as Life is the activity of the Good, or5 rather the activity from the Good, an activity which is bounded.119 They [Intellect and Life] are full of radiance, and are pursued by the soul, since it comes from them and relates back to them.
So, does it pursue them as belonging to the soul, and not as good?120
In fact, even if they are just Good-like, they are not to be cast aside for this reason. For what belongs to them, even if it were not good, can be avoided, even if it does belong. For things which are distant and inferior10 can also move the soul.
Intense love for them [Intellect and Life] comes about not when they are what they are but when they are what they are and, in addition, acquire something from the Good. Just as with bodies, even when they have their own light mixed with them, still they need a light from elsewhere, so that the light makes the colour in them appear, so, too,15 although they have much light, they need a better light, so they can be seen by themselves and by another.121
§6.7.22. Then, when someone sees this light, he is indeed at that moment moved towards these things, and he is greedily delighted by the light which accompanies them; just as in the case of bodies in the sensible world love is not for the material substrates, but for the beauty5 which appears in them. Each thing is what it is in itself, but it becomes desired when the Good itself colours it, because this gives it grace and love in the eyes of those desiring it. So, the soul, when it takes in the ‘outpouring from the intelligible world’,122 is moved and dances, and is pricked by desire, it becomes love.10
Prior to this, it is not moved towards Intellect, even if it is beautiful. For its beauty is inactive until it grasps the light of the Good, and the soul ‘falls backwards’123 in itself, and is inactive in every respect, and despite the presence of the Intellect, remains blind to it. But when the Intellect gets to it, a sort of warming from the intelligible world, it gains15 strength, is wakened and truly becomes winged.124 Although it is struck by things close by, it is lifted more towards something else greater by, in a way, a sort of memory.125 And it is raised by the giver of love naturally upward. It can go beyond even Intellect, on the one hand, but it cannot20 go beyond the Good, since there is nothing lying beyond it. If it stays within Intellect, it contemplates beautiful and holy things – and still does not have all it seeks. It approaches it like a beautiful face, but one which is unable to activate sight, since that grace is not in it which accompanies beauty.
For this reason, here beauty is that which shines from symmetry,25 rather than the symmetry itself; this is what is lovable. For why is there more light of beauty in a living face, and just its trace in a dead face, even if the face has not decayed in its flesh and symmetry? And living beings30 are more beautiful than statues, even if the latter are more symmetrical. And is not an uglier living being more beautiful than the beautiful living being in the statue?
In fact, it is because the living being is more desirable, and this because it has a soul, and this because it is more Good-like, and this because it is coloured by the light of the Good in some way. And because it is coloured, it has been awakened and lifted up, and has lifted up what it possesses – and makes it good and wakes it up, as far as is in its power.
§6.7.23. Actually, in the intelligible world, what the soul pursues is also what provides light to the Intellect, and when it enters, it leaves a trace of itself. And there is no need to wonder why it has such power that it drags the soul to itself, and calls the soul back from all its wandering,126 so it can come to rest with it. For if all things come from something, then5 there is nothing more powerful than that; everything else is inferior. In what way is the Good not the best of Beings?127
Further, if the nature of the Good has to be the most self-sufficient, and in need of nothing else whatever, what else apart from this nature could one discover that was what it was before all else, when there was10 no vice at all? If there were evils posterior to the Good, in things which had no part in it at all, that is, in the very uttermost things, than which there is nothing worse, evils would relate to it contrarily without having a middle in their contrariety.
This, therefore, would be the Good. For either there is no Good at15 all, or else, if there has to be, it must be this and nothing else. If someone says the Good does not exist, then there is no evil either. In that case, things would be by nature indifferent as a basis for our choice.128 But this is impossible. They call other things good with reference to this, but the Good is related to nothing.129
What, then, does it produce by being of this kind?
In fact, it produced Intellect, Life, and souls from this, and all other20 things which partake of reason, Intellect, or Life. As for the actual source or principle130 of these things: who could say how good and great it is?
But what does it now produce?
In fact, it now preserves these things,131 and makes thinking things think, living beings live, filling intellect and life with breath, and if something is incapable of life, at least it makes it exist.
§6.7.24. And what does it produce for us?
In fact, let us return to the light, and say what light it is that Intellect shines with, and that soul shares in. Or better, let us put that off to later132 and get to grips with these puzzles instead: is the Good good, and said to5 be good because it is desirable to something else, and, whereas if it were desirable for some particular thing it would be good for that thing, it is because it is desirable for all things that we call it the Good?
In fact, while one should take this as evidence that the Good exists, at least the object of itself has to have such a nature that it would be just to call it this. And does what desires desire because it receives something10 from it, or because of the joy itself?133 And if it receives something, then what?134 But if it desires because of the joy it takes in it, then why joy in this and not something else?135 Does the Good actually lie in something of one’s own, or in something else?136
Moreover, does the Good belong entirely to another thing, or is the Good good for itself?15
In fact, is whatever is good not good for itself but necessarily the good of something else?137 And by what nature is it good? Is there any nature for which nothing is good?
We should not ignore the objection that a troublesome man could make.138 He could say: ‘Why are you actually so high and mighty with your terminology as to call Life good, here, there and everywhere, and20 to call Intellect good, and what transcends that? Why should Intellect be good, too? What good could someone thinking the Forms have in his possession by considering each of the Forms? If he is deceived and takes pleasure in them, then he might say this is a good, and that life is pleasurable. But if he is positioned in an unpleasant state, why should25 he say they are goods? Because of the fact that he exists? But why should he benefit at all from existing? What is the difference between existing and not existing at all – unless the reason for this lies in friendship for oneself? The reason would then be this deception, which is natural, and the fear of destruction which accounts for believing in the positing of goods.’139
§6.7.25. Plato, then, mixes pleasure with the end, and does not assume the good to be simple or only in the intellect, as is written in the Philebus;140 presumably, because he perceived this difficulty, he was not moved to assume that the good coincides entirely with the pleasant –5 and rightly so – nor did he think that one should assume intellect without pleasure is good, since he saw no motivation in it. Presumably, not for this reason alone but because he also thought that the good had such a nature in itself that it must of necessity be full of charm, and that what is desired contains joy141 for those who get it or10 who have got it. The result is that there is no good for anyone without joy. So, if joy belongs to the one desiring, then it does not belong to the first thing of all. And so neither does the good.
And this is not absurd. For Plato himself was not looking here for the primary Good; he was looking for our good. And since this is entirely different, there exists another Good for Plato, since the human good is15 defective, and presumably composite.142 Hence, he says that the ‘solitary and lonely’143 possesses no good, but exists in another and grander way. The Good, then, must be such as to be desired,144 not so that it becomes good by being desired, but rather by being good it becomes desired.
Should we not, then, assert that for the last of beings, its good is what precedes it? And in each case, the ascent renders what is above each20 thing into the good for whatever is below it, if, that is, the ascent never goes beyond the proportionate relation, but always moves towards the superior? It will, then, come to a halt at the last thing, after which one can grasp nothing higher. This will be the primary Good, what is truly good, and most authoritatively good; and is the explanation for other goods.
For form is the good for matter – for if matter acquired awareness,14525 it would welcome it – soul for the body, for it would not be nor be preserved otherwise, and virtue for the soul. But higher still, there is Intellect, and above this the nature we indeed assert is primary.
Moreover, we assert that each of these produces something relative to those things of which they are the goods: the one arrangement and order, the other life, the others good sense and living well.146 And for30 Intellect, it is the Good which we say comes to it, both because the Intellect has its activity coming from the Good, and because the Good provides something called ‘light’. Just what it actually is, will be discussed later.147
§6.7.26. Certainly, something which has by nature received the ability to be aware148 from Intellect, is also able to know and say whether it is the Good that is approaching it. What, then, happens if it is deceived? There must, therefore, be some kind of sameness [in relation to the Good], due to which it is deceived. But if this is so, then that [the Good] would have been the good for it, since when the Good comes, one turns5 away from that by which he was deceived. And each thing’s desiring, and birth pains, testify that there is a good of each thing. The Good is granted to inanimate things by something else; desiring effects the pursuit of the Good in things which have a soul, just as for corpses10 care and preparation come from the living, whereas the living provide for themselves. One believes that one has hit on the Good when something becomes better, and there are no regrets, and there is fulfilment; and it remains with it, and does not look for anything else.
For this reason, pleasure is not self-sufficient,149 for it does not want15 the identical thing, that is, whatever pleasure is pleased with is not identical with what it is pleased with the next time.150 For it is always something else one takes pleasure in. Hence, the good that someone chooses cannot actually be a state that someone is in. For this reason, anyone who considers this state to be the good remains empty, since they only possess the state which someone might acquire from the good. For this reason, one cannot be content with a state relating to something20 one does not possess, for example, take pleasure in the presence of a boy, when he is not there. Nor do I think those who see the good in corporeal satisfaction would be pleased as though they were eating when actually they were not, or as though they were enjoying sex, when the person they wanted to have intercourse with was absent, or generally without doing anything.
§6.7.27. But what must occur to each thing so that it possesses what is fitting for it?
In fact, we will say that it is a form; for matter, form is the good, and for the soul virtue is the form. But is this form the good for each thing by belonging to it; and isn’t desiring directed towards what belongs to the5 thing concerned?
In fact, it is not, because what belongs to something is what is the same as it, and if it wishes for that and delights in what is the same, it still will not possess the good.151
But will we not say that it belongs when we say it is good?
In fact, we should say that what belongs must be discerned by something more powerful and better than the thing itself, which it relates to potentially. For it is potentially it in relation to what it is, and so it is in need of it, and what it is in need of is more powerful than it is, and so it is10 its good. Matter is most lacking of all, and the final form borders on matter; for it comes after matter on the way up.
But even if something is actually its own good, then it would be rather its own completeness which is its good, and its form, what is more15 powerful than it – both through its own nature and because it makes the thing good.
But why will anything be good for itself? Is it because it belongs to itself most of all?
In fact, no, but rather because it has a share of the Good.152 For this reason, appropriation153 occurs to a greater extent with the pure and the20 better.
It is indeed absurd to investigate why something good is good for itself, since it would have to leave its own nature behind in respect of itself, and not be pleased with itself as good.154 But in the case of something simple, we must look and see if when there is not in it several parts, there is appropriation in relation to itself, and if it is good in relation to itself.
Now, if these assertions are correct, the ascent attains the good25 situated in a determinate nature, and desire does not produce the good, but there is desire because there is a good, and those who possess it have something, and there is pleasure in the possession, then we should investigate Aristotle’s saying: ‘even if pleasure does not accompany it, the good still should be chosen’.155
§6.7.28. Now we should see what follows from the argument. If what comes to be attributed to something anywhere as its good is a form, and form, as a unity, is the good for matter,156 would then matter want to become form alone, if indeed wanting were within its power?157 If it did,5 then it would want to be destroyed; yet everything seeks what is good for it. Presumably, it does not want to be matter, it wants to exist; and by possessing this, it wants to get rid of its evil. But how can the evil have a desire for the Good?
In fact, we did not posit matter as something with desire.158 Rather, the argument, by granting it awareness,159 made an assumption, if10 indeed it were possible to grant it this, while preserving it as matter. And when form comes along, like a dream of the Good, we posit matter coming to be in a higher rank.
If, then, matter is evil, enough has been said. But if it is something else, such as vice, should its essence acquire awareness, would it, then, belong to it to tend towards the better, that is, the Good?
In fact, it is not vice that chooses, but the thing that has been made15 vicious. If being and evil were identical, how could evil choose the good?
In fact, then, should that which is evil acquire awareness, would it love itself? And how can something not lovable160 be lovable? For we certainly did not posit the Good as belonging to what is appropriate.16120 So much for this subject.
If form is everywhere the good, and the higher one gets the more form there is – for soul is more form than is the form of body, and some soul is more form than others, and others yet more so; and intellect is more form than is soul – the Good would approach the contrary of matter, that is, something purified, and what has laid aside matter as far25 as possible, and most of all what has laid aside matter entirely. Moreover, the nature of the Good, since it shuns all matter, or better, never comes near it, would flee up to the formless nature, from which the primary form is derived. More of this later.162
§6.7.29. But if pleasure were not to accompany the Good, and if something were to occur before the pleasure, because of which there is then also pleasure, why would the Good not be welcomed with joy?163
In fact, in saying welcomed with joy, we already mentioned pleasure. But if it exists in the pleasure, is it not possible for its existence there not to be welcomed with joy? But if this is possible, the thing in possession5 of the Good, if it has awareness164 of it, will not know that it has the Good!
In fact, what prevents one from knowing it, and not being moved other than one was when one possesses it? This would rather be characteristic of the fairly self-controlled human being, and of someone who is in need of nothing. For this reason, it is not characteristic of the primary Good, not merely because it is simple, but because the pleasant is the acquisition of something one needs.16510
This will be perfectly clear once we have cleaned up the remaining points and mounted resistance to the stubborn argument already mentioned.166 This is the one raised by someone who is puzzled by how someone in his right mind can benefit in regard to the portion of the Good. He is unmoved by hearing of these things. Either he comprehends15 nothing about them, or he hears just words, or he grasps something else entirely; or he looks for something sensible, or posits the good in money, or some such thing.
We should say to this kind of man that when he dishonours these things, he agrees that he himself is positing a good, although he is at a loss as to how he fits what we say to the notion of the good he has. For20 it is not possible to say ‘it is not that’, if one is entirely without experience or a notion of what ‘it’ is. But perhaps he will venture a guess about what is beyond Intellect.167
Next, if in concentrating on the Good or on what is near it, one does not know it, then let him proceed from the opposites to some notion of it. Or does he not posit a lack of understanding as evil?168 Indeed, everyone chooses to think, and prides themselves on thinking.25 Acts of sense-perception bear witness to this in wanting to be knowledge.169
If intellect is indeed something honourable and beautiful, most of all primary Intellect, how would one imagine, if one could, its progenitor and father?170 In disparaging being and living, he gives evidence against himself, and all his states. If someone is disgusted with that kind of living30 in which there is an admixture of death, then he is disgusted merely with this life, not with true living.
§6.7.30. But now, in closing in on the Good, it is appropriate to look to see if pleasure must be mixed with the good,171 and so if a life of contemplating divine entities, and above all their principle, is not perfect. To think, then, that the good consists of intellect as its5 substrate, together with the affection of the soul172 which comes from being wise, is not the view of someone who posits this complex to be the end or the good;173 rather, he is saying that intellect is the good, and that we have joy by possessing the good. This would be one opinion about good.174
There is another opinion beside this one,175 which posits the good to10 be one substrate made of both, by mixing pleasure with intellect, so that we possess the good by acquiring intellect or even just seeing it. For what is ‘isolated and alone’176 cannot come to be nor can it be chosen as a good.
How, then, can one mix intellect and pleasure into one complete15 nature? It is at any rate quite clear to everyone that one cannot suppose pleasure of the body to be mixed with intellect;177 but nor can non-rational joys of the soul.178
However, since there must be something that follows or accompanies all activity, disposition, and life – on the one hand, insofar as it is20 a hindrance to this life proceeding naturally, since something of the contrary is mixed with it, which does not allow its life to be, whereas, on the other hand, the act179 in the other life is ‘pure and clean’;180 and life shines out in its disposition – those181 who, having claimed that the state we have been discussing, which belongs to intellect, and is most worthy of being welcomed with joy, and most worthy of being chosen, say that25 intellect is mixed with pleasure; they do this due to a lack of a proper designation. This is what they do, when they use metaphorically other phrases we love: ‘drunk with nectar’,182 ‘to the feast and to the banquet’,183 and what the poets say, ‘the father smiled’,184 and countless other phrases like these.
For what is in truth to be welcomed with joy is in the intelligible30 world, the most pleasurable and most desirable, which is not something coming to be or in motion, and which is the cause colouring these things,185 illuminating them, and making them shine out. For this reason, Plato186 adds truth also to the mix, and puts the thing that measures prior to the mix. He asserts that proportion and beauty come from that, and come to beauty in the mix. The result is that,35 thanks to this mixture, we would also have a portion of the Good.
In another way, what we desire in truth is ourselves,187 when we lead ourselves for ourselves towards the best in us; and this is indeed proportion, beauty, a composite188 form, a life that is clear, intellectual, and beautiful.
§6.7.31. But after all things had been made beautiful by that which is prior to them, and had got possession of light – intellect acquired the light of intellectual activity, by which it illuminates nature, and soul the power to live, when a greater life came to it – intellect was raised up to5 the intelligible world and remained joyful at being near the Good, and that soul which was capable of it, when it knew and saw, had joy in the spectacle, and was awestruck and shaken insofar as it was able to see.189 It saw, and was shaken awestruck, in a way by perceiving that it has in itself something of the Good, and came to be in a state of desire, like those who are moved by an image of their loved one and want to come to10 see the beloved itself.
Just as in the sensible world all those who love fashion themselves into a likeness of the person they love, making their bodies more comely, and their souls close to this likeness, in that as far as possible they do not want to fall behind the self-control of the loved one or any15 other virtue – otherwise, they would be rejected by loved ones with these qualities – and these are those who are able to have intercourse;190 in this way, soul loves the Good, because it was moved to love from the beginning.
And the soul which has this love at hand does not wait to be reminded by the beautiful things in the sensible world; because it possesses love,20 even if it does not know that it possesses it, it is always searching. Because it wants to be carried towards the Good, it despises things in the sensible world, and even though it sees beautiful things in this universe, it despises them, because it sees that they are in flesh191 and bodies, and defiled by their present habitation, divided by their25 extension, and so not the beautiful beings themselves. For those would not dare, being such as they are, to enter the filth192 of the body, defile themselves, and so obliterate themselves. And when the soul sees the beautiful things just floating by, it knows perfectly well that they have the shine diffused on them from elsewhere.
The soul, then, is carried up to the intelligible world, since it is keen to find what it loves; it does not cease until it has got hold of it, unless30 someone were to take away the love itself. The soul is actually strengthened193 by being filled with the Life of Being. It becomes in truth Being, and in truth acquires comprehension, when it perceives itself to be close to the thing it has long been seeking.
§6.7.32. Where, then, is the producer of such beauty, such life, the progenitor of substance? You see beauty over all the Forms which are variegated. It is, on the one hand, beautiful to remain here, but on the other, one must, when among the beautiful Beings, get a sight of where they and their being beautiful come from. This must not be just one of5 the Forms, for then it would just be something, a part of them. It is, then, not such and such a shape, nor a power, nor all of the powers which have come to be and are in the sensible world. No, it must be above all powers, and above all shapes.
The formless is a principle,194 not something in need of a shape, but10 the origin of all intellectual shape. For anything that came to be, if indeed it came to be, had to become something, and acquire its own form. But as for something that no one produced, who could have made it a determinate something? This, then, is not one of these Beings and it is all of them; it is not one of them, because the Beings are posterior, and it is all because they all come from it. How could something with the power to produce all things have a magnitude?15
In fact, it is unlimited,195 and if it is unlimited it has no magnitude; for magnitude is a property of the lowest level of things. And if it produces magnitude, it must not have it itself.
The greatness belonging to Substance is not quantitative; if it were, then there would also be something [straight] after the Good with magnitude. By contrast, the greatness of the Good lies in nothing being more powerful than it or being capable of being equal to it. For20 how can something which shares nothing with the Good in itself arrive at equality with it in anything? The Good’s being ‘forever’ and ‘for all beings’ bestows no measure on it, and not unmeasuredness either. For how could it measure other things?196 So, it is not a figure either.197
Further, if there is something desirable which you can grasp neither25 figure nor shape of, then it would be the most desirable and lovable thing;198 and the love is immeasurable. For love here is not limited, because neither is the beloved; the love of it is without limit, such that its beauty is beautiful in a different way, and is beauty beyond beauty.199 For being, as it is, nothing, what beauty can it have? It is by being the30 object of desire that it is productive of beauty.
The productive power of everything,200 then, is the flower of beauty, a beauty that produces beauty. For that is what it engenders, and makes more beautiful through the presence of beauty itself, so that it is the principle of beauty and the limit of beauty. Since the Good is the principle of that beauty, it produces that beautiful thing of which it is35 the principle; it makes it beautiful but not in shape. The beauty produced is shapeless, although it is in a different sense in a shape.201 For the shape is so called only when it is the shape in another thing, and is in itself shapeless. Whatever, then, participates in beauty is shaped, not the beauty itself.
§6.7.33. For this reason, when beauty is spoken of, one should really avoid assuming such a shape, and not [try to] place it before one’s eyes, in order that you don’t leave behind Beauty itself in favour of what is called beautiful due to its dim participation. The shapeless Form is beautiful – since it is a Form – to the extent that you have stripped5 away all [physical] shape, such as is done in the account, by which we say one thing differs from another, as for example Justice and Self-Control are different one from the other, although they are both beautiful.
When intellect thinks some property of something, then it is diminished. This is the case both if it grasps all things together,202 such as are in the intelligible world, and if it grasps an individual intelligible. In the latter case, it has one intelligible shape, and in the former case it has one10 variegated shape, in a way; and it is still in need, namely, of considering the Being beyond, the entirely beautiful, variegated and not variegated, which the soul desires without saying why it longs for this, whereas reason says this is the true Being, if indeed the nature of the best and most lovely thing lies in complete formlessness.203
For this reason, whatever you show to the soul by going back to that15 thing’s Form, soul searches for something else which shapes that thing. Indeed, reason says that what has shape, shape itself, and Form are all measured. But this is not self-sufficient204 and does not have its beauty from itself; rather, it is mixed. So, the measured things are beautiful, whereas true beauty, the super-beautiful,205 is not measured. And if it is20 that, then neither is it shaped nor is it a Form. The primary and what is primarily beautiful, therefore, is formless; and Beauty206 is just that: the nature of the Good.207
Testimony to this is provided by the state lovers are in. There is no love as long as this affection is in someone having [merely] a sensible impression. When someone himself engenders in himself a non-sensible25 impression derived from the sensible impression, in his indivisible soul, then love grows. He desires to catch a glimpse of the loved one, so that the latter may irrigate him as he is withering.208 But if he comes to comprehend that one has to move towards something with less shape, that is what he would then desire. For what he underwent initially was love of a great light derived from a dim gleam.30
For shape is a trace of the shapeless; this then generates shape, not the other way round; and it generates shape when matter approaches. Matter is necessarily the thing furthest away, since it does not even have in itself one of the last shapes. If, then, that which is love is not matter, but something formed by Form, and if the form in matter comes35 from soul, and if soul is more form and more lovely than matter, and intellect is more form and even more lovely than soul, then we must posit209 the primary nature of Beauty to be formless.210
§6.7.34. We will not marvel at the production of such mighty longings,211 if it is removed even from all intelligible shape, since the soul, when it comes to have an intense love for it, sheds any shape it may have, indeed any shape of an intelligible there may be in it. For it is not5 possible for something that is in possession of something else, or is active in respect of something else, either to see [Beauty] or to be harmonized with it. No, the soul should have nothing good or evil to hand, so that, alone, it may take in [Beauty] alone.212
When the soul is so fortunate as to meet with [Beauty], and it comes to the soul, or rather appears by being present, when the soul turns away from the things present, and prepares itself to be as beautiful as may be,10 and arrives at a likeness to [Beauty] – the mode of preparation213 and ordering are somehow clear to those who prepare themselves – the soul sees it appear suddenly,214 for there is nothing in between, nor are they two things; both are then one, for you cannot distinguish them, as long as it is present – in imitation of this lovers and their beloved ones here15 want to mingle with one another – and the soul no longer perceives even that it is in the body, nor does it say that it itself is something else, not a human being, not an animal, not a being, nothing at all. For consideration of itself in these capacities would disturb the soul. Nor does the soul have the leisure for them, nor does it want to. Rather, since the soul sought [Beauty], it encounters it when it is present, and looks at it,20 instead of looking at itself. It has no leisure to look to see who it is that looks.
There, it would exchange nothing in place of [Beauty], not even if someone were to offer the whole universe, on the grounds that nothing is preferable or better. For it cannot ascend higher, and all other things, even those up there, are a descent for it. The result is that it can then25 very well judge and recognize that it was [Beauty] that it desired, and to assert that there is nothing better than it. For in the intelligible world, there is no deception.
In fact, where could one find anything truer than the truth? What the soul, then, says of it is: it is that, and later it says so, too; even when it is silent that is what it says, and in its feeling content, it is not deceived30 about its feeling content.215 It does not say this because of its body being stimulated216 but because it has become that which it was when it prospered.
But all the other things it used to take pleasure in – offices, powers, riches, beauties, and sciences – the soul says it looks down on them, something which it would not say, had it not met with things better than35 these. Nor does the soul fear to suffer anything while it is with that, not seeing anything else at all. Even if the other things round the soul were destroyed, this is what the soul would wish for, so it could be alone with [Beauty]. So great is the contentment it has arrived at.
§6.7.35. The soul, then, is so disposed that it even disdains thinking – which it delights in at other times – because thinking is a motion, and the soul does not want to be motion. And the soul asserts that that which it sees does not think, despite the fact that soul has then become intellect5 and contemplates, because it has become intellectualized, that is, has come to be ‘in the intelligible world’.217
When the soul comes to be there, and relates to Intellect, it then thinks the intelligible, but when it sees that god,218 it dismisses everything, as, for example, when someone enters a brightly decorated house, and considers each of the beautiful decorations inside, and marvels at them, before seeing the master of the house. But when one sees him, and10 admires him in a way going beyond the nature of the statues in his house, as worthy of true contemplation, then, dismissing the other things, one just has eyes for him. Then, looking and not removing one’s eye from him, one only looks at him for the rest of the time, so that in the continuous time of looking one no longer sees a spectacle, but rather the sight of him becomes mixed with the spectacle with the result15 that something previously to be seen becomes a seeing; all other sights are forgotten. Indeed, the image would preserve the analogy, if the overseer of the viewer of the house were not a human being, but some god, and if he did not appear visibly but filled the soul of the contemplator.
So, Intellect has one power to think insofar as it regards what is in20 itself, and another insofar as it regards what transcends itself, with a kind of apprehension and receptivity.219 It is in accordance with the second power that it first sees, and then later while still seeing both comes to be intellect220 and a unity. And the former is the contemplation of a wise intellect, whereas this latter is intellect loving, when it becomes senseless,25 ‘drunk with nectar’.221 It, then, turns into a loving intellect when it has been made contented by satiety. And it is better for it to be drunk with this intoxication than to be sober.222
Does then that intellect see different things in turn at different times?
In fact, no, for it is merely our reasoned account, in teaching us, that makes things come to be, whereas it possesses thinking always, but it also possesses not-thinking, that is, regarding the Good in another way.30 For seeing that, it comes to have offspring; it is aware of them both as they are born and as they are in themselves. When it sees them it is said to think; but when it sees the Good, then it does so by the power due to which it will come to think. The soul in a way muddles up and obliterates the intellect that remains in it. Or, better, the intellect sees first the35 soul, and vision comes to the soul, and the two of them become one.
The Good is spread over them, and, by being harmonized in the coherence of them both, running over and unifying both of them, is present to them, bestowing blessed perception or vision223 on them. It raises them so high that they are not in a place, nor in another thing, where one thing is in another. The Good itself is not anywhere.40 The intelligible world224 is in it, it is not in anything else.
For this reason, the soul is not moved then, since neither is that. So, it is not soul, in that the Good is not alive; it is beyond living. Nor is the soul intellect, because it does not think; it must become assimilated to the Good. It does not even think that it is not thinking.45
§6.7.36. The other points are now clear; and we have said at least something about this last point. Still, we should talk about it a little further, taking our starting point from there, but progressing by reasoned arguments.
For the cognition or touching of the Good is the most important thing. Plato says it is the greatest subject of learning,225 because he5 means by subject of learning not the seeing of the Good, but learning something about it beforehand. For analogies, negations, and knowledge of things derived from it, teach us about the Good; and also by certain ‘means of ascent’.226 But purifications, virtues, and orderings227 set us on the way to it, the ‘rungs of the ladder’228 towards the intelligible, settling in it, and feasting on it.10
Whoever has become both a spectator and spectacle, himself of himself, and of the others there, and has become Substance, Intellect, ‘a complete Living Being’229 no longer regards it from outside: once he has become all this he is close, and what follows next is the Good; it is close, shining on all that which is intelligible.15
Someone actually leaving all learning,230 up to then having been educated by instruction,231 settles in Beauty. Up to then he thinks, carried along in a way by the wave of the intellect, and in a way raised on high by it, puffed up in a way, he sees suddenly232 without seeing how. The spectacle fills his eyes with light, not making him see something20 else through it. The seeing was the light itself. For in the Good there is not one thing which is seen, and another thing that is its light; nor is there intellect and object of intellect, but the radiance, engendering these things later, lets them be beside itself. It itself is only the radiance engendering Intellect, without being extinguished in the act of generation, but remaining identical. Intellect comes about because25 the Good is. If the Good were not such, then Intellect would not have been made to exist.
§6.7.37. Those thinkers, then, who attribute intellection to the Good in their account233 did not attribute to it intellection of the lesser things, or of what is derived from it. Some234 say, however, that it is absurd if it does not know other things.
The first group, then, finding nothing more worthy than it, attribute5 to it the intellection of itself, as though it would be made more beautiful by intellection, as though intellection is better than being the Good in itself, and it was not it that made thinking beautiful.
From what will it acquire its honourable state?235 From thinking or from itself? If from thinking, then in itself it is not honourable, or less so. But if it is honourable in itself, then it is perfect before thinking, and is10 not perfected by thinking.
If it is has to think because it is actuality, and not potency,236 then if it is a substance that always thinks,237 and they say that it is thereby actuality, then they are saying that two things are together, Substance and intellection; and they are not saying it is simple – they add something else to it, like adding the actual seeing to eyes, even if they always see. But if they say that it is in actuality because it is both activity and15 intellection,238 then it would not think due to its being intellection,239 just as motion does not move. So, then, what shall we say?
Do you240 not say yourselves that the intelligibles are Substances and actuality? But we agree that these are many and different from one another, whereas the first thing is simple, and we grant intellection to what derives from something else, and [we grant] in a way the investigation20 of its own substantiality and what produces it, and assert that it is in turning inwards in contemplation and recognizing itself that it is now Intellect in the proper sense.
But in the case of something that does not come to be nor has anything prior to itself, but is always what it is, what explanation will there be for its thinking? It is for this reason that Plato is right to say that25 it is beyond thinking.241
Now Intellect that does not think is without thought.242 For in the case of something whose nature includes thinking, if it were not to do this, it would be without thought. But in the case of that which has no function, how could anyone give it a function, and then predicate the privation of this in it, because it does not perform its function? It is as though someone were to label the Good ‘devoid of medical science’.
The fact is that no function belongs to it, in that nothing is ordained for it to do. For it is sufficient to itself. One should not look for anything30 besides, since it is above all Beings. For it is enough for itself and other things in being what it itself is.
§6.7.38. There is no ‘is’ either in it, for it has no need of this.243 For neither can you say of it that it is good. You can say this only of something of which you can say ‘is’. ‘Is’ is not said as one thing of another, but as meaning what something is.
We use the words ‘the Good’ of it, not intending to say its name or5 predicating ‘good’ as belonging to it, but because it is the Good itself.244
Next, we do not think it right to say ‘it is good’, nor even to add ‘the’ to it – we are unable to make ourselves clear, if someone were to take it away entirely – so that in order not to make it one thing and then another, and so not to have need of ‘is’, we say ‘the Good’.245
But who will accept a nature which does perceive or know itself?10 What would it know about itself? ‘I am’? But it is not! Why, then, will it not say ‘I am good’?
In fact, again, the ‘is’ is predicated of it. Or it will say only ‘good’, adding something – for one can think ‘good’ without ‘is’ as long as it is15 not predicated of something else.
That which thinks of itself that it is good will always be thinking ‘I am that which is good’. If not, it will think ‘good’, but it will not be present to it to think that it is this. There must, then, be the thinking ‘I am good’. But if the thinking itself is the Good, then the thinking is not of itself,246 but thinking of the Good; and the Good will not be20 itself, but the thinking. And if the thinking of the Good is other than the Good, then there is the Good before the thinking of it. If the Good is self-sufficient before the thinking, since it is in itself self-sufficient for being good, it would need no thinking of itself. The upshot is: as25 good, it does not think itself.247
§6.7.39. But then, as what does it think itself?
In fact, nothing else is present to it and it will have a simple act of apprehension in regard to itself. Since there is nothing such as distance or difference in respect of itself, what else would this act of apprehension be except itself? For this reason, Plato rightly understands difference where5 there is Intellect and Substance.248 For Intellect must always grasp difference and identity if it is indeed going to think. It cannot distinguish itself from the intelligible by the relation of difference it has to that, nor will it contemplate all things, unless difference comes about, such that all things can exist. Otherwise, there would not even be two things.
Next, if indeed the Good does think, it will never, I suppose, think10 only itself, if it is going to think at all. For why will it not think all things? Or is it because it is incapable of doing so? Generally speaking, it will not be simple, if it thinks itself; the thinking of itself has to be something different, if anything can think itself at all. But we said249 that there is no thinking by the Good, even if it wants to see itself as something else. For in thinking itself it becomes many – intelligible, thinking, moved, and all15 else it befits Intellect to be.
In addition, it befits us to see, as has been said elsewhere already,250 that each act of thinking, if indeed it is going to qualify as thinking, has to be something variegated,251 whereas the simple and entirely itself – in a way like motion if it were like an act of contact252 – will contain20 nothing intellectual.
What, then? Will the Good know neither other things nor itself? The other things are posterior to it; it was what it was before them, and its thinking of them would be something acquired, and in that case, it would not always be identical, nor would its thinking be of stable things.
Even if it did think of things that are stable, it would be many. For it will certainly not be possible that the posterior things will have25 their substantiality along with the thinking while the acts of thinking by the Good will be only empty contemplation. Providence is sufficiently guaranteed by its being itself, from which all things come to be.
How does it stand in relation to itself, if it does not [know]253 itself? It rests ‘in majestic immobility’. Plato said,254 on the subject of Substance, that it will think but will not rest majestically, on the grounds30 that Substance thinks, while the thing that does not think will rest ‘in majestic immobility’; he says that it rests because he could not put it any other way, and because he considers that which surpasses thinking to be more majestic, or truly majestic.
§6.7.40. Those who have had any contact of this sort will know that there can be no question of thinking in connection with it. But we should add some words of encouragement to what has been said, to the extent it is possible for argument to make such a thing clear. For persuasion must be mixed with the necessity of proof.2555
So, anyone who is aiming to acquire scientific understanding must realize that thinking originates from something and is of something. And one type of thinking, which is together with that from which it originates, has as a substrate that of which there is thinking, and is itself superimposed on the object of thinking because it is its actuality; it fulfils what was potentially, but without engendering it. For it is the thinking of the thing it is of, only in the10 sense of being its completion.
The other type of thinking, which is accompanied by Substantiality, and which makes Substantiality really exist, cannot be in that from which it came to be.256 For it would not have engendered anything, had it been in that. But since this thinking is a power of engendering, it engendered in itself; its actuality is Substantiality, and is in15 Substantiality also.257 Thinking and Substantiality itself are not different. Insofar as its nature thinks itself, thinking and that which is thought are not different, except in definition, while being a multiplicity, as has been often shown.258 This thinking is the primary actuality, in making Substantiality really exist: it is the image of something else so great that20 this image became Substantiality.
If thinking belonged to the Good, rather than deriving from it, then thinking would not have been different from it, and would not have had real existence in itself. For indeed in being primary actuality and primary thinking, it would have neither actuality nor thinking prior to it.
So, then, when someone moves beyond this substantiality and thinking,25 he would reach neither substantiality nor thinking; he reaches what ‘transcends’ Substantiality259 and thinking, ‘something wonderful’,260 which has neither substantiality nor thinking in itself, which is ‘alone’,261 in itself, and in no way needing any of the things originating in it. For it is not by being active beforehand that it produced actuality.30 For, then, there would have to be actuality before it was engendered. And it is not by thinking that it produced intellection, for it would already have been thinking before thinking came to be.
For generally, if thinking is of the Good, then it is inferior to the Good. So, thinking cannot belong to the Good. I say that it does not belong to the Good, but I do not mean one cannot think the Good – let us assume that is possible – but that there is no thinking in the Good35 itself. If that were the case, the Good and what is inferior to it – that is, its thinking – would be one. If thinking is inferior to the Good, it is thinking and being that are together. If thinking were better than substantiality, then the intelligible would be inferior.
So thinking is actually not in the Good, but because thinking is inferior and gains value through the Good itself, it must be in40 a different place, leaving the Good unmixed with thinking and all else. The Good is unmixed with thinking and is purely what it is, unimpeded by the presence of thinking from being pure and one.
But if someone were to make the Good at once thinking and object of thinking, as well as Substance and thinking conjoined with Substance –45 wanting in this way to make it self-thinking – then the Good would be in need of something prior to it, if the actuality, that is, thinking, is either the perfection of another substrate or the co-production of its own real existence, and so itself has another nature prior to it by which thinking happens as it should.
For it has something to think of because something is before it. And50 when thinking thinks itself, then it is as though it recognizes what it acquired from the vision of other things in itself. As for anything which has nothing prior to it, or is not mixed with anything taken from elsewhere, why and how could it think itself? What would it look for or desire? Or would it seek to know how great its power is, since it comes from outside itself, to the extent which it conceives of it? I mean, if it55 were one power that it gets to know, and another by which it gets to know it. If it were one power, what is it seeking?
§6.7.41. As it happens, thinking was bestowed on the more divine natures, which are nonetheless inferior to the Good, as a means of preservation, in a way like an eye for the blind. But why would an eye need to see being, since it is itself light? And anything that does need to do this, because it has darkness in itself, looks for light using the eye.5 If thinking is light, and light does not look for light, then that splendour, in not looking for light, would not look to think either, nor to add thinking to itself. For why would it do that? And why would it add it to itself, when Intellect itself is also in need, so that it may think?
So, the Good does not perceive itself – it has no need to – nor is it10 two, or rather many – it and its intellection – for it itself is actually not its thinking – so what is thought of must be a third thing. If Intellect, thinking and intelligible are identical, by becoming one they would make themselves disappear in themselves. If they are distinguished by being other than each other, then they are not the Good either.
So, leave all else entirely out of the best nature, since it needs no 15assistance. For whatever you add will diminish by its addition the nature that needs nothing. For us, thinking is beautiful, because the soul needs to have intellect, and also for Intellect, since Being is identical with it,262 and thinking has produced Intellect.263
Intellect, then, must be together with thinking, and always attain20 a comprehension of itself, that this is this, and that these two are one. If they were only one, then it would have been self-sufficient and there would be no need for it to grasp itself. For ‘know thyself’ is directed at those who because of their inner multiplicity have a job to count their parts, and to understand that they do not know, either entirely or at all,25 how many parts and what kinds of parts they have, nor what rules over them, or in what respect they are themselves.
If the Good were something for itself,264 then that would be in a way superior to knowledge, thinking, and self-awareness. But it is not anything for itself, for it takes in nothing; ‘it’ suffices for it. It, then, is not good for itself, but for other things. For they are in need of it, and it is30 not in need of itself; that would be ridiculous. For then it would indeed be lacking itself, too. Nor does it actually see itself; for it would have to be something and to become something in looking.
It has left all these beings to the beings posterior to itself; and as it happens, nothing that is present with other Beings is present with the Good, not even Substantiality.265 So, neither is it thinking, if indeed that35 is where Substantiality is, and, taken together, primary thinking, thinking in a strict sense, and Existence. For this reason, it is neither ‘reason, nor sense-perception nor scientific understanding’,266 because it is not possible to predicate anything of it as present in it.
§6.7.42. But when you are puzzled at such a point and so investigate where one should posit these things, once reason has brought you to them, place those things you consider venerable in the second rank267 – neither add things of the second rank to the first, nor things of the third rank to the second. Place the second rank around the first, and the third round the second.268 In this way, you will allow each to relate to the others as they do. You will be making the last things depend on the superior ones: the last things encircle the superior ones, which remain in themselves.
For this reason, it is why it is said, and quite rightly, too, that all Beings encircle the king of all and all Beings are for the sake of him.26910 Plato means Beings by ‘all things’, and he adds ‘for his sake’, in that he is the cause of their existence: they in a way desire him, since he is different from all Beings, and possesses nothing that is present in them.
In fact, they would not be all Beings, if anything of what comes after him belonged to him. If, then, Intellect, too, is one of all Beings, then15 Intellect does not belong to the king of all things.
In saying he is the cause of all beautiful things, Plato is obviously positing the Beauty among Forms, and positing the Good above all Beauty.
In actually positing these Forms as Beings of second rank, he asserts that the beings which come from them are suspended as beings of the third rank. And in positing that around the beings of third rank there are20 beings engendered by beings of third rank, he asserts that this cosmos depends on Soul. Since Soul is suspended from Intellect, and Intellect from the Good, in this way all beings relate to the Good through intermediaries, some nearer, some neighbours to the near ones. These last are sensible things suspended from Soul at the greatest distance from it.270
1 See Pl., Tim. 44E5: it is the younger gods made by the Demiurge who make the human body.
2 See Pl., Phd. 113A4–5; Tim. 34BC, 41DE.
3 As Plato does, Tim. 33A.
4 I.e., the disposition (ἕξις) of Intellect which is exclusively for intellection.
5 See Pl., Tim. 34A8.
6 Cf. 6.2.21.32–35.
7 Cf. supra ll. 1–17.
8 See Ar., Meta. 9.6.1048b34–35.
9 Cf. 3.7.3.28.
10 Cf. 5.3.15.21; 5.8.9.3; 5.9.6.3–8. See Anaxagoras, fr. 59 B 1 DK.
11 For the distinction between the ‘that’ something is the case, and the ‘why’ it is the case, see Ar., AP 1.13. The ‘why’ here is the explanation of 1.57 supra, and in 2.4–9.
12 Or: ‘Human Being’ indicating the Form. Throughout this chapter and the following Plotinus does not distinguish between the Form of Human Being which is identical with Intellect and the individual undescended intellect. The ambiguity is preserved using lowercase throughout.
13 See Ar., Meta. 8.4.1044b14; AP 2.2.90a15.
14 Τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι, the Aristotelian technical term for the essence of something.
15 I.e., its existence as the kind of thing it is. See Pl., Phd. 99D4ff. on the Form as αἰτία.
16 Cf. infra 40.48.
17 Cf. supra 2.3–4, and l. 40.
18 See Theognis, 809–810.
19 See Pl., Tim. 27D6–28A1.
20 The word is αἰτία which can also be translated ‘cause’. The translation ‘cause’ seems better when speaking about Intellect or the One, and ‘explanation’ when speaking about the Forms or intelligibles generally.
21 Cf. 6.5.10. See Pl., Rep. 4.420C–421B; Tim. 87D.
22 See Ar., PA 4.9.685b14.
23 I.e., the undescended intellect. Cf. infra 5.26–29, 17.26–27; 3.4.3.24; 4.3.5.6, 12.3–4; 4.8.8; 6.8.6.41–43.
24 See Pl. [?], Alc. 1 129E–130A; Phd. 79C2–3.
25 See Ar., Pol. 1.2.1253a9; fr. 192 Rose3 (= Ross, p. 132).
26 See Ar., AP 2.3.90b30, 10.94a11.
27 Cf. infra 5.1–6, 23–31.
28 See Ar., Meta. 7.5.1030b18.
29 See Ar., Meta. 7.4.1029b14.
30 Cf. 1.1.
31 Adding a question mark to the sentence.
32 This is an exceptionally clear use of the core meaning of λόγος for a Form contained in Intellect and ‘expressed’ in souls. The composite human being cannot be soul alone.
33 I.e., the soul.
34 ‘Clearer’ means higher in the intelligible hierarchy. Cf. 3.8.8.18; 6.3.7.22; 6.6.18.16.
35 See Pl., Rep. 10.595A–598C.
36 I.e., the intellect. See Pl. [?], Alc. 1 129E11; Phd. 79C2–3.
37 The ‘sensible harmony’ is the mathematical proportions of the elements.
38 Reading ἡ δευτέρα with the mss.
39 Cf. 3.5.6.37.
40 See Pl., Symp. 202D13–E1; Tim. 90A2–4. At Crat. 398B, Plato says that δαίμονες (‘daemons’) are δαήμονες (‘intelligences’). Accordingly, we follow Harder in reading δαημόνων. This is accepted by HS1 but not by HS2.
41 See Pl., Tim. 42C3–4.
42 Cf. 4.3.6.13–15.
43 Cf. supra 6.2, 8.
44 The logic of this troubled text, as translated, suggests that the ‘sensibles’ in the intelligible world are apprehended in a way differently from the apprehension of those intelligibles that do not have sensible imitations. Alternatively, with a slightly different text, Plotinus is making the predictable claim that all intelligibles are apprehended differently from the way sensibles are apprehended.
45 Reading αἴσθησιν ὅτι <ἀ>σωμάτων with Hadot.
46 Following Hadot, we read ὅλως with the mss and adding a question mark in the first sentence and then adding <πῶς> at the beginning of the second sentence. Cf. supra 7.18–20.
47 Cf. 5.9.7–8.
48 Cf. 5.5.1–3; 5.9.7–8.
49 Cf. 5.1.8; 6.9.1–4. See Pl., Parm. 145A2.
50 See Pl., Parm. 142E3–143A1.
51 Cf. 5.9.10.10–15; 6.9.2.24–25. See Pl., Soph. 249A–C on the μέγιστα γένη (‘greatest genera’), including Motion and Stability. These are discussed in 6.2.
52 See Pl., Tim. 31B1.
53 The word is ἀνόητον (‘without thought’), which would normally be translated as ‘non-intelligible’ but is here used to mean ‘non-intellectual’ since the hypothetical Greek word for the latter, ἀνόερος, does not seem to exist.
54 The words λογικός (‘rational’) and λογίζεσθαι (‘calculating’) are quite close. Plotinus is thinking of rationality as discursive as opposed to intellection (νόησις) which is not.
55 See Ar., Meta. 12.9.1075a1–5.
56 Here employing the ambiguity of ἀνόητον as ‘without thought’ or ‘non-intelligible’. Intellect is not without thought because its life is actively thinking, and so identical with, all that is intelligible.
57 Each individual intellect and each intelligible thing is a part of Intellect.
58 I.e., a putatively deficient A is really a complete or perfect B.
59 The μορφαί (‘shapes’) are the sensible counterparts of the intelligible Forms.
60 ‘When’ in the sense of ‘if’.
61 Cf. 5.9.6.20. This is the Stoic use of the term φύσις. See e.g., SVF 2.743 (= Galen, De foet. form. 4.699).
62 See Ar., DC 2.7.289a20.
63 See Pl. [?], Epin. 981B–C, 984B–C.
64 Cf. supra ll. 21–36.
65 I.e., daemons. Cf. infra ll. 67–68; 4.5.7.26–27. See Pl. [?], Epin. 984E5; Apuleius, The Daemon of Socrates, 12.144.
66 See Pl., Tim. 80D–81B; Ar., PA 2.3.650a34.
67 Because, whereas we perceive our flesh being touched, we do not perceive our blood being touched. See Ar., PA 2.3.650b5.
68 These are δαίμονες. Cf. 3.5.6.31.
69 For what happens when a current of air passes through a ray of light, cf. 4.3.22.4–8.
70 See Pl., Tim. 31B1.
71 Cf. 5.9.9.8–14.
72 Cf. 5.8.4.4–11.
73 See Ar., DA 1.2.405a28 for the conjectured etymological connection between ζεῖν (‘boiling’) and ζῆν (‘living’).
74 Including intellects that partake of Intellect and souls that partake of Soul.
75 Cf. infra l. 50.
76 See Pl., Parm. 144B1–E7; Soph. 248A12.
77 See Ar., Meta. 12.9.1074b17–18.
78 See Pl., Tim., 35A3–5. In this passage, the ‘third one’ refers to the soul of the cosmos. Here, Plotinus uses ‘third one’ to refer to Intellect in its identity with all intelligibles. The ‘first one’ is the One; the second, Intellect in its initial phase as generated by the One.
79 See Pl., Parm. 136E2; Lg. 683A.
80 See Pl., Phdr. 248B6.
81 See Ar., Meta. 12.9.1074b33–35.
82 See Pl., Soph. 248A12.
83 Cf. 6.4.1.24.
84 On Intellect as one-many cf. 4.8.3.10; 5.1.8.26; 5.3.15.11, 22; 6.2.15.14–15, etc. See Pl., Parm. 144E5.
85 See Ar., Top. 3.6.120a35; Phys. 5.4.227b7.
86 Love or Friendship, in Empedocles one of the ordering principles. See fr. 31 B 17.7, 26.5 DK. In ll. 22–23 where Empedocles’ theory is also mentioned, he is not named.
87 The word here is οὐρανός, usually translated as ‘heaven’ but evidently referring to all that is under the ‘dome’ of heaven, that is, the sensible cosmos. See Empedocles, 31 A 52 DK (= Simplicius, In DC 293.22–23; In Phys. 31.23).
88 Cf. 3.8.11.16–17; 6.8.18.27, where the Good is the archetype. See Pl., Rep. 509A3.
89 See Pl., Phil. 60B10.
90 Cf. 6.5.4.22. See Pl., Phd. 110B7.
91 Cf. 1.6.9.22; 5.8.10.40, 11.20–21; 6.9.10.19–21, 11.43.
92 The intelligible heaven. Cf. supra 15.20–22.
93 Cf. infra 18.1.
94 Cf. 5.3.13.13, 21. See Ar., EE 7.12.1244b26, 1245b24.
95 See Pl., Rep. 509B2–8; 509A1, B2, B4.
96 Cf. 6.9.6.54–55.
97 See Ar., Meta. 9.8.1049b5.
98 See Pl., Rep. 509B3.
99 Cf. infra l. 26. See Pl., Parm. 145A2.
100 Cf. 6.2.22.10–11.
101 The word is διαφορά, which can refer to a differentia among species within a genus or to a difference among individuals within a species. The translation ‘differentiation’ is neutral between the two.
102 See Ar., DA 3.8.432a2 where Aristotle identifies intellect as ‘form of forms’.
103 The ‘external’ activity of the Good distinct from the ‘internal’ activity. Cf. infra 21.4–6, 40.21–24; 2.9.8.22–25; 4.5.7.15–17, 51–55; 5.1.6.34; 5.3.7.23–24; 5.4.2.27–33; 5.9.8.13–15; 6.2.22.24–29.
104 Taking the words ἢ ἀγαθοῦ as a question raised by an interlocutor.
105 Cf. 1.6.7.11–12; 3.8.10.1–4; 5.3.16.35–38.
106 The alternatives refer to the ways in which the Forms, Intellect and Life may be said to be good or Good-like.
107 Cf. supra ll. 20–25.
108 See Ar., EN 1.6.1098a15–16.
109 Cf. supra 2.2.
110 See Pl., Rep. 379C2–3.
111 Cf. supra 18.50.
112 Cf. infra 24.4–5.
113 See Ar., Meta. 1.7.986a23, 12.1072a31; Stob. Ecl. 4.15.20–21.
114 The words ἐν ἀγαθοῦ εἴδει (‘in the form of good’) can also indicate ‘Good-like’ as above. Plotinus is no doubt taking advantage of the ambiguity.
115 See Pl., Phil. 54C10; also, 20D1, 60B4.
116 See Pl., Rep. 521A4.
117 See Pl., Rep. 505D5–9; Phil. 20D8; Ar., EN 1.1.1094a3.
118 See Pl., Symp. 206A12.
119 The two types of activity ‘of a principle’ and ‘from a principle’. Cf. supra 18.5–6; infra 40.21–24. Since the Good is uniquely unbounded, whatever comes from the Good is, thereby, bounded.
120 Making the sentence into a question with Hadot.
121 I.e., the soul.
122 See Pl., Phdr. 251B2.
123 See Pl., Phdr. 254B8.
124 See Pl., Phdr. 251B2–3.
125 See Pl., Phdr. 251D6.
126 See Pl., Phd. 81A6.
127 The words το’ ἄριστον τῶν ὄντων (‘the best of Beings’) is a strong affirmation that, although the Good is above the οὐσία (‘Substantiality’) and εἶναι (‘Existence’) of all composite Beings, it itself exists. Cf. infra 32.10–14. See Pl., Rep. 518C9, 526E3–4; Phil. 20E6, 60B10–C4.
128 See SVF 3.117 (= D.L., 7.102).
129 Cf. 6.8.8.22, 11.32, 17.27–28.
130 See Pl., Phdr. 245C9.
131 Cf. 5.3.15.28.
132 Cf. infra 32–end of treatise.
133 Cf. infra 28.32.
134 Cf. infra 26.14–24.
135 Cf. infra 27.3–19.
136 Cf. infra 27.19–22.
137 Cf. infra 28.1–19.
138 Cf. infra 29.21–22.
139 Cf. infra 29.10–31. See Epicurus, Ep. En. (= D.L., 10.124–126).
140 See Pl., Phil. 21D9–22A3, 61B5–D2. As we see in l. 12 infra, Plotinus realizes that Plato is in Philebus not speaking about the Idea of the Good, but about the specific good for human beings.
141 See Pl., Phil. 11B4.
142 This Form of the Good, distinct from the superordinate Idea of the Good, is referred to frequently in the dialogues. See Phd. 65D4–7, 75C10–D2, 76D7–9; Tht. 186A8; Parm. 130B7–9; Rep. 507B4–6, 608E6–609A4; Pl. [?], Epin. 978B3–4.
143 See Pl., Phil. 63B7–8.
144 Cf. supra 24.4–25.6. See Pl., Crat. 400C7.
145 The sense of αἴσθησις here.
146 Cf. supra 24.10–11.
147 Cf. infra 32ff.; 5.5.7.18.
148 Cf. supra 25.25.
149 See Pl., Phil. 67A7.
150 Cf. supra 24.11–12.
151 Cf. 6.9.8.29–30, 11.31–32.
152 See Pl., Phil. 20D1, 54C10, 60B4.
153 Οἰκείωσις, a Stoic (and Peripatetic) term for nature making things such that they can acquire what belongs to (οἰκεῖον) them, i.e., their good and proper functioning. See, e.g., Cicero, De fin. 3.16ff.
154 Cf. supra 24.13–15.
155 Cf. infra 29. See EN 10.3.1174a6–8.
156 Cf. supra 7.24.13–15.
157 See Ar., Phys. 1.9.192a19–20.
158 Cf. supra 7.28.3–4.
159 Cf. supra 25.25.
160 Reading μὴ ἀγαπητὸν with the mss and HS1.
161 Cf. supra 27.1–19.
162 Cf. infra 32.9–33.38.
163 See Pl., Phil. 32D1.
164 Cf. supra 25.25.
165 See Pl., Phil. 20E6, 60C3.
166 Cf. supra 24.18.
167 See Pl., Rep. 505E1; Soph. 250C1–2.
168 Making the sentence into a question with Armstrong.
169 Cf. supra 6.7.30, 3.6.1.2.
170 Cf. supra 6.16.3; infra 32.1–2.
171 See Pl., Phlb. 20D1, 54C10, 60B4; Ar., EN 7.14.1153b12–15.
172 I.e., joy or pleasure.
173 The complex of pleasure plus the good. Cf. 6.9.8.43–9.21.
174 This is the view expressed by Socrates at the beginning of Phil. 12B. This view is later rejected in favour of the next view canvassed here, namely, that the good for a human being is intellect in a certain mixture with pleasure.
175 See Pl., Phil. 61D1–2; Ar., EN 10.7.1177a20–25.
176 See Pl., Phil. 63B7–8.
177 See Pl., Phil. 63D–64A.
178 See Pl., Phil. 63E.
179 Or result of its activity. Cf. 6.8.16.17.
180 See Pl., Phil. 52D6–7.
181 Plato in Philebus.
182 See Pl., Symp. 203B5.
183 See Pl., Phdr. 247A8.
184 See Homer, Il. 5.426, 15.47.
185 See Pl., Phil. 64D4.
186 See Pl., Phil. 64B2, 64E5–65A5.
187 Cf. 1.6.5.7.
188 Reading σύνθετον with the mss and Igal and Hadot.
189 See Pl., Phdr. 250A6.
190 See Pl., Symp. 212A2; Phdr. 252B–253C.
191 See Pl., Symp. 211E2.
192 See Pl., Phd. 69C6.
193 See Pl., Symp. 210D6.
194 Cf. supra 17.40, 28.28; infra 33.21; 5.5.6.4; 6.9.3.4.
195 See Pl., Parm. 137D7.
196 See Pl., Lg. 716C where god is a measure of all things.
197 See Pl., Parm. 137D8.
198 See Pl., Phdr. 250E1; Rep. 402D6.
199 See Pl., Rep. 509A7.
200 Cf. 2.6.9.14–24; 2.9.8.22–25; 4.5.7.51–55; 5.1.6.34; 5.3.7.23–25; 5.4.2.28–39.
201 Cf. 6.6.17.24–27.
202 See Anaxagoras, fr. 59 B 1 DK.
203 Cf. supra 28.28, 30.35; infra 33.37. See Pl., Phil. 64E.
204 See Pl., Phil. 67A7.
205 I.e., Beauty itself, which is beyond the beautiful things.
206 ἡ καλλονή who appears as a goddess in Pl., Symp. 206D.
207 See Pl., Phil. 60B10.
208 See Pl., Phdr. 251B1–4.
209 Cf. supra 21.12.
210 Cf. supra 28.28, 30.35, 33.13. See Pl., Phil. 64E6.
211 See Pl., Phdr. 250D4–5.
212 Cf. 6.9.11.51.
213 Cf. infra 36.8–10.
214 Cf. infra 36.19. See Pl., Symp. 210E4.
215 εὐπαθεῖν (‘feeling content’), a Stoic term. See SVF 3.431 (= D.L., 7.116).
216 See Pl., Phdr. 251C5.
217 I.e., the soul identifies with its undescended intellect and is thereby identified with Intellect. See Pl., Rep. 508C1, 517B5.
218 I.e., the Good.
219 As intellects, we share in the distinct powers of Intellect: (a) desire for the Good and (b) fulfilling that desire by contemplating all that is intelligible. Cf. infra 39.2; 3.8.9.29–32; 5.3.11.4–12; 5.4.2.4–7.
220 Τὸν νοῦν ἔχειν means to be wise, but also, more literally and less idiomatically, to possess intellect.
221 See Pl., Symp. 203B5.
222 See Pl., Phdr. 244D4.
223 See Pl., Phdr. 250B6–7.
224 See Pl., Rep. 508C1, 517B5.
225 See Pl., Rep. 505A2.
226 See Pl., Symp. 211C3.
227 See Pl., Gorg. 504D.
228 See Pl., Rep. 511B6.
229 Cf. supra 8.31. See Pl., Tim. 31B1.
230 See Pl., Rep. 505A2.
231 See Homer, Od. 5.393; Pl., Symp. 210E3.
232 See Pl., Symp. 210E4.
233 See Ar., Meta. 12.9.1074b17–35.
234 The Stoics, with their theory of providence. Cf. 5.6.6.31.
235 See Ar., Meta. 12.9.1074b21.
236 See Ar., Meta. 12.6.1071b20, 7.1072b28, 9.1074b20.
237 See Ar., Meta. 12.7.1073a4, 9.1074b20.
238 See Ar., Meta. 12.7.1072b28.
239 Cf. 6.9.6.53.
240 The Peripatetic is speaking to the Platonist.
241 See Pl., Rep. 509A7, B9.
242 Cf. supra 9.26–29.
243 See Pl., Parm. 141E9–11.
244 See Pl., Soph. 244B–C.
245 In Greek, the definite article and the nominalized adjective ‘good’ here are joined together to make a single word, thus avoiding the appearance that the definite article is something other than the Good itself.
246 See the Aristotelian formulation ‘the thinking of thinking’, referred to supra 7.37.1.
247 Cf. 5.3.12.47–52.
248 See Pl., Soph. 254E5–255A1; Parm. 146A–D.
249 Cf. supra 38.21–24.
250 Cf. supra 13.2.37, 14.5, 15.24, 17.13, 32.3, 33.10, 35.8.
251 Cf. 5.3.10.30, 41; 6.9.2.44. See Alex. Aphr., De an. 85.23.
252 Cf. 5.3.10.42.
253 Cf. supra l. 21 following Hadot.
254 See Pl., Soph. 249A1–2.
255 Cf. 1.2.1.52; 5.3.6.9–10; 6.5.11.5–7. See Pl., Lg. 903B1.
256 I.e., the Good.
257 Cf. 5.3.7.18; 6.8.4.26–28.
258 Cf. supra 17.39–40; 3.8.9.3–4; 3.9.1.13; 6.9.5.16.
259 Pl., Rep. 509B9.
260 Pl., Symp. 210E5.
261 Pl., Phil. 63B8.
262 Cf. 1.4.10.6; 3.8.8.8; 5.1.8.17–18; 5.6.6.22–23; 5.9.5.29–30. See Parmenides, fr. 28 B 3 DK.
263 I.e., thinking is of intelligibles and Intellect is identical with intelligibles.
264 Reading αὐτᾦ with ms X, Theiler and Hadot.
265 See Pl., Parm. 141E9.
266 Cf. 5.6.2. See Pl., Parm. 142A3–4.
267 See Ar., Meta. 12.9.1074b18.
268 See Pl. [?], 2nd Ep. 312E3–4.
269 See Pl. [?], 2nd Ep. 312E1–2. Plotinus now shifts to the metaphorical representation of the Good.
270 Cf. 5.4.1.1–4.