This treatise forms part of a longer work [‘the Grossschrift’] (which includes 5.8, 5.5, and 2.9) which Porphyry split up in his edition. It is his most ambitious discussion of the vital role of contemplation and of all its different forms and intensities at every level of reality. Although he is primarily concerned with the structure of reality itself, the activity of individual human contemplation surfaces frequently throughout.
§1. Let us suppose in a playful way that all things contemplate.
§2. At the lowest level nature, like a craftsman, works on matter by means of its contemplation and the expressed principle.
§3. Nature’s contemplation produces without being itself affected.
§4. Nature would say that its product flows from its contemplation, just as it flowed from its producer. Its contemplation is only an image of a higher form of contemplation and its product a by-product.
§5. Contemplation at the level of soul.
§6. Action also leads to contemplation.
§7. Contemplation at the level of Being produces active contemplative expressed principles which give form at every level. Failure is due to the progressive weakening of contemplation.
§8. In Intellect contemplation is identical with the object of contemplation. It is the primary life and all life at every level is contemplative.
§10. The One is not everything but is the productive power and source of everything.
§11. Intellect needs the Good, but the Good is not in need of anything.