§5.2.1. The One is all things and is not one thing.1 For it is the principle of all things,2 but is not those things, though all things are like it, for they did, in a way, find their way back to the intelligible world, or rather they are not there yet but will be.
How, then, do they arise out of a simple One, given that there is 5neither apparent variegation nor any doubleness whatsoever in that which is self-identical?3
In fact, it is because there was nothing in it that all things came from it; and, in order that Being should exist, it is itself not Being, but the generator of it. Indeed, this is, in a way, the first act of generation. Since it is perfect, due to its neither seeking anything, nor having anything, nor needing anything, it in a way overflows and its superabundance has made something else.4 That which was generated reverted to it and was 10filled up and became what it is by looking at it, and this is Intellect. The positioning of it in relation to the One produced Being; its gazing upon the One produced Intellect. Since, then, it positions itself in relation to the One in order that it may see, it becomes Intellect and Being at the same time. Intellect, then, being in a way the One5 and pouring forth abundant power, produces things that are the same as it –15 Intellect is, after all, an image of the One – just as that which is prior to it in turn pours forth.
And this activity, arising from the substantiality of Intellect, belongs to Soul, which becomes this while Intellect remains still. For Intellect also came to be while that which was before it remained still.6 But Soul does not remain still when it produces; rather, being moved, it generated a reflection of itself. It looked to the intelligible world from where it came to be, it was filled up, and it proceeded to another and contrary 20motion, generating a reflection of itself, namely, sense-perception and nature as it is found in plants.7 Nothing of what is before it is separated or cut off. For this reason, the Soul from above also seems to extend down to plants, for Soul does, after all, extend down in a definite manner, since there is life in plants. Of course, not all of Soul is in 25plants, but it comes to be in them because of the way it is; it advanced all the way down to them, producing another real existent by its procession and its desire for what is inferior to it.8 And since the part of Soul prior to this was dependent on Intellect, it leaves Intellect alone to remain by itself.
§5.2.2. There is a procession, then, from the beginning to the end, in which each thing is left in its own place for eternity, and each thing that is generated takes a new inferior rank.9 And yet each one becomes identical with that upon which it follows, so long as it connects itself with it. Whenever, then, Soul comes to be in a plant, it is like another 5part of it, a part that is most audacious and unintelligent, having proceeded such a long way. And, then, whenever Soul comes to be in a non-rational animal, the power of sense-perception becomes dominant and brings it there. But whenever Soul comes to be in a human being, Soul’s motion is either entirely in the faculty of calculative reasoning, or it comes from Intellect, since an individual soul has its own intellect and 10a will of its own to think or, generally, to move itself.
Let us actually look into the matter more closely. Whenever someone cuts off the shoots or the tops of plants, where has the soul of the plant gone? Where did it come from? For it has not separated itself spatially. It is, then, in its source. But if you were to cut off or burn the root, where would the soul in the root go? In the soul, for it has not 15changed place. It could be in the identical place or in another, if it ran back to its source. Otherwise, it is in another plant, for it is not constrained to a place. If it were to go back to its source, it would go back to the power preceding it. But where is that power? In the power preceding it. That takes us back to Intellect, not to a place, for Soul was not in place. And Intellect is even more not in place than Soul, which is not in 20place either. It is, then, nowhere but in that which is nowhere, and at the same time it is also everywhere. If it proceeded in this way to the upper region, it would pause in the middle before arriving altogether at the highest, and it has a life in a middle position and has rested in that part of itself.
These things are and are not the One; they are the One, because they 25are from it; they are not the One, because it endowed them with what they have while remaining in itself. It is, then, in a way like a long life stretched far out, each of its parts different from those that come next, though it makes a continuous whole. The parts are distinguished by being different one from the other, not because the first is destroyed with the appearance of the second. What, then, is the soul that comes to be in plants? Does it generate nothing?30
In fact, it generates in that in which it is. We should examine how by taking another starting point.10
1 Cf. 3.8.9.39–54; 3.9.4.3–9; 5.3.11.14–21, 13.2–3; 5.4.2.39–42. See Pl., Parm. 160B2–3.
2 Cf. 6.8.8.8–9.
3 Cf. 5.1.6.3–8; 5.4.1.23–28.
4 See Pl., Rep. 508B6–7.
5 Cf. 6.4.11.16; 6.7.3; 6.7.17.41–42.
6 Cf. 5.1.6.40–46, 7.9–17.
7 Soul generates all psychical functions in living beings other than the higher function of discursive thinking. Cf. 3.4.1.1–3; 4.4.13.1–8; 5.9.6.20.
8 Here, the use of the term ὑπόστασις (‘real existent’) for nature is indicative of the fact that Plotinus does not limit the term to the three principal hypostases, One, Intellect, and Soul.
9 Cf. 3.8.10.4–19; 4.8.6.10. See Pl., Tim. 42E5–6.
10 Cf. 3.4.1–2; 4.4.22.