THE WISDOM OF PLOTINUS 
THE WISDOM OF PLOTINUS 
A METAPHYSICAL STUDY
By 
CHARLES J. WHITBY 

 
THE temerity of this attempt at the re-statement 
I will not say the resuscitation, for they have 
never died of the doctrines of the most uncom 
promisingly-esoteric of idealists, in an age whose 
dominant conceptions are apparently so antithetic 
to those they embody, is by no means unrealised 
by its perpetrator. The task, however, was initiated, 
not deliberately, nor aggressively and by way of 
challenge to the confident agnosticism of contem 
porary opinion. In a sense, it can hardly be said 
to have been voluntarily undertaken at all. Casually 
introduced to the notice of the writer, at an age 
when his mind must have been peculiarly susceptible 
to their significance, the Enneads of PJotinus, as 
presented in the excellent French version of Bouillet, 1 
took such a grip upon his imagination that for 
many months they seemed to have translated him 
bodily to the shining sphere of supersensual experience 

1 To which and its voluminous commentary I hereby 
acknowledge my debt. 
6 PREFACE 

Of this absorption, or withdrawal, the present 
monograph represents now, after the lapse of some 
years, to its author, not the coolly-conceived and 
methodically-executed record, but, as it were, the 
talisman, which, awakening, he found in his hand. 
For him, at least, the aspect it reveals is not that 
of a manufactured article, a fragment of research ; 
it has, with all its defects, the qualities, too, of its 
mode of origin, the inevitableness of a piece of actual 
experience, something that has been lived out, and 
whose validity is therefore a permanently-established 
fact. If the work were to do again, it would, no 
doubt, be done differently, with more of academic 
method and a fuller reference to accredited author 
ities, but in these respects it hardly admits of any 
modification short of actual re-writing. And the 
change would not be entirely an advantage to the 
reader. Meanwhile, it may be claimed for this 
reconstruction of the doctrine of Plotinus, that it 
is based upon an analysis of the system as a whole ; 
and inasmuch as he was an eclectic, deeply imbued 
with the lore of the great classic philosophers, having 
at his finger-tips the assimilated wisdom of Plato, 
Aristotle, Pythagoras, Epicurus, and the Stoics, 
it may even be affirmed that in possessing a know 
ledge ol the Neoplatonist system we virtually 
possess a skeleton key to the appreciation of both 



PREFACE 7 

ancient and modern metaphysic. Of ancient meta- 
physic, for the reason already stated ; of modern, 
because, though, in the Science of Being, vast 
progress has doubtless been made since the days 
when Plotinus lived and taught at Rome and Alex 
andria, yet, upon the whole, it has been a progress 
which, leaving unmarred the grand outlines of the 
primitive scheme, has perforce contented itself with 
broadening and strengthening its logical foundations 
and enriching its bare and abstract austerity with 
all the fulness of concrete experience. To Plotinus 
thinkers so great, yet so diverse, as Hegel, Coleridge 
and Emerson have been proud to acknowledge 
their debt. Had it remained unacknowledged it 
might easily have been inferred by the student of 
their respective works. The modern theory of the 
Absolute, as represented in the masterly speculations 
of our own Dr. Bradley, amounts in fact to a rein 
statement of the Plotinian theory of the Noumenal 
Universe. With a difference, no doubt ; for, at 
first sight, the sensuous factors of experience, which 
Bradley includes, would in the Neoplatonist system 
appear to be excluded from the definition of Reality. 
But they are not really so excluded, only conceived 
as divested of the element of illusion which char 
acterises them on the phenomenal plane. For 
PJetinus expressly states that, in the sphere of 



8 PREFACE 

true existence " thought " may equally be described 
as " clear sensation," just as, on the phenomenal 
plane, " sensation " is definable as " obscure 
thought." Symptoms have of late not been wanting 
of a revival of interest in the works of Plotinus 
and his Neoplatonist disciples, but with the excep 
tion of Dr. Bigg s volume on the subject, a work 
written from a theological rather than a free philoso 
phical standpoint, I am not aware of the existence 
of any methodical exposition of the system. But 
if there be any truth in the assertion of Plotinus, 
that the contemplative faculty of individuals and 
of the race rises by a natural progression from the 
sensuous to the psychical, from the psychical to the 
spiritual plane, the appearance of this little work 
may prove not inopportune. Speculation has ever 
been the advance-guard of inductive science, and 
now that the latter has attained to the very verge 
of the material world, now that the elements them 
selves are being resolved into the semblance of 
unsubstantial accretions of the omnipresent etherial 
or electrical medium, it would seem that the day is 
not far distant when the perennial controversy of 
materialism versus idealism shall have passed into 
the limbo of obsolete and meaningless things. 

C. J. W. 
BATH, 1908. 



PREFACE TO THE SECOND 
EDITION 

SINCE this little book was published, and still more 
since I began to write it a good many years before 
that, a remarkable change in the attitude of public 
opinion towards transcendental speculations of this 
kind has come about. In the heyday of " agnosti 
cism," to take seriously the doctrines of Neoplatonic 
idealism, to have faith in the possibility of a general 
revival of interest in such other-worldly points of 
view, argued an almost presumptuous audacity. 
So much so, indeed, that in writing the book I 
remember to have been oppressed by an atmosphere 
of coldly hostile opinion from which it was necessary 
to isolate myself by a constant effort of will. All 
the more gratifying is it therefore to find that my 
faith has been fully justified, not only by the kindly 
reception of my own modest work, but by other 
unmistakable signs of identical purport. It would 
no doubt be an exaggeration to claim that the philo- 



lo PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 

sophy of Plotinus has become popular as yet ; but 
that, at least in the higher levels of the intellectual 
life of to-day, his name and his doctrines are " in 
the air " is, I think, incontestable. Only the other 
day, apropos, I believe, of Mr. McKenna s new 
translation of the Enneads, the Daily Chronicle gave 
a column to the subject. This is only one instance 
of many that are available, but what is more impor 
tant is the change in the general relations of the 
two hostile camps of opinion those who are in 
Disraeli s phrase on the side of or against " the 
angels." The former have, in military parlance, 
stolen the initiative ; it is the latter who are now 
on the defensive. It is a change of immense import, 
one altogether favourable to the appreciation of 
such a thinker as Plotinus. 

C. J. W 

BATH, 1919. 



Plotinus 

To thee the solid universe appeared 

A veil translucent to the strenuous gaze 
Of Wisdom, pierced by coruscating rays 

From some far source in dazzling light ensphered. 

Thou wert as one who, when the mists had cleared, 
Saw oversea the snow-clad mountains raise 
Their peaks with dawn s effulgent hues ablaze, 

And knew at once the land for which he steered. 

Beyond that veil celestial shapes were seen 
On works of awe and mystery intent, 

Holding their course, majestic and serene, 
Archetypes of Beauty and the eternal Mind 

Which in supernal rapture soared, and leant 

On Love supreme, and thence their task divined. 



15 



The Wisdom of Plotinus 

A METAPHYSICAL STUDY 

Life of I - The philosopher whose gift to 
Plotinus. posterity forms the sub j ect of this 

monograph was born (possibly at Lycopolis, in 
Egypt) in the year 205 or 206 A.D. in the reign of 
the Emperor Severus. The details of his origin 
are enveloped in mystery, but the fact that Eunapius 
and Suidas assert that he was of Egyptian parent 
age is worthy of recollection in view of his undoubted 
interest in, and familiarity with, Oriental Philosophy. 
It is, however, as the direct intellectual heir of 
Plato and Socrates, and as the apostle par excellence 
of the Platonic ideal of life and thought, that he 
stands out above all his contemporaries ; and 
whatever his parentage, his genius was essentially 
Hellenic. At the age of twenty-seven he became 
a student of philosophy at Alexandria. The master 
whom he finally selected (after having expressed 



17 



i8 THE WISDOM OF PLOTINUS 

dissatisfaction with the doctrines of several other 

professors) was Ammonius Saccas, a 

Platonist lecturer of great and probably 

deserved reputation, whose powers would seem to 

have been devoted entirely to the task of oral 

instruction, for he has left no literary traces. 

The genius of Ammonius may, however, be 
inferred not only from the recorded approbation 
of his illustrious pupil, but also from the fact that 
having begun life as a porter on the quays he ended 
it as the most famous lecturer of his time. It is 
a noteworthy fact that he had at one time been a 
professed Christian, but had renounced that creed 
before Plotinus came under his instruction. 

Plotinus remained at Alexandria (and remained 
a pupil of Ammonius) for eleven years ; at the 
end of which time he joined the expedition of 
Gordian against the Persians, with a view, it is 
asserted, to acquiring familiarity with the wisdom 
of Persia and Hindustan. At the age of forty 
he settled in Rome, where he remained for twenty- 
six years, and where his active life, first as a lecturer, 
and, ten years later, when he was fifty years old, 
as an author commenced. His sole literary pro- 
The duction is the philosophical treatise known 

Enneads. as ^ e E nnea ds/ a name derived 
from the fact that its six component fasciculi 



A METAPHYSICAL STUDY 19 

a ro each subdivided into nine lesser parts or books. 
These Enneads, which were written down by Plotinus 
at irregular intervals during the last sixteen years 
of his life and entrusted to his friend, disciple and 
biographer, Porphyry, present in a highly unsys 
tematic form the details of a philosophy which is 
nothing if not systematic, and were probably in 
great part an almost verbatim transcript of his 
own lectures. The friends of Plotinus at Rome 
were numerous, and included the Emperor Gallienus 
and his wife Salonina ; and we are told that such 
was his repute for wisdom and probity that many 
boys and girls were (in the anticipation of their 
own death) committed to his care, as to a holy and 
divine guardian, by their parents. Moreover, it 
would seem that Plotinus proved himself worthy 
of the sacred trust thus reposed in him, and that 
he spared himself no pains in the matter, inasmuch 
as, although naturally averse to such practical 
interests, he endured even to go through the accounts 
of his wards possessions, and was most accurate 
and business-like, saying that until they became 
philosophers their property and revenues ought 
to be kept intact and secure. 

Plotinus died of some affection of the throat at 
the age of sixty-five or sixty-six in the year 269-70 
A.D. Several miraculous attestations of the divine 



20 THE WISDOM OF PLOTINUS 

favour enjoyed by Plotinus are alleged by his 
biographer, and he is said to have attained to 
beatific vision (of the One) four times during the 
six years (262-68) when Porphyry was with him at 
Rome. 

2. The reader of to-day who would 

Ancient and 

Modem profit by the study of Plotinus must 

Methods. 

renounce for a time that sceptical habit 

of mind which, having become well-nigh universal, 
may safely be trusted to re-assert itself in due 
season, and boldly confide himself to the genius of 
his author. In Philosophy as in Physical Science 
a great gulf divides the methods of our day from 
those of antiquity. To engage, therefore, in a 
rigid investigation of the so-called proofs adduced 
by Plotinus in favour of each successive proposition 
advanced in the Enneads would be an arduous and 
fruitless undertaking. The fundamental doctrines 
of Neoplatonism, as expounded by this philosopher, 
may be true or false in the main, or a mixture of 
truth and falsehood in about equal proportion, 
but the utmost that can be positively claimed on 
their behalf (and it is no despicable claim, assuredly) 
is that the lapse of more than sixteen centuries 
has failed to deprive them of genuine significance, 
or to produce an entirely-opposed but equally 
complete and coherent body of metaphysic. 



A METAPHYSICAL STUDY 21 

Perhaps this undoubted fact of peren- 
Principal ma l significance is not altogether so 



t sur P ris i n g as at first sight (in view of the 
gigantic achievements of destructive 
criticism which divide us from the great free 
thinkers of antiquity) might be supposed. It may 
safely be assumed that in each successive epoch 
of intellectual development special facilities and 
special difficulties, inseparable from the sum of 
conditions under which it was taken in hand, have 
attended the investigation of the master-problems 
of Philosophy, and that, consequently, the particular 
method adopted at any particular period by a mind 
of the first order in approaching and grappling 
Their w ^ n these problems will necessarily have 
Necessity, fo een [ n g rea t part determined (consciously 
or otherwise) by the circumstances of the time. 
Thus the central stream of human thought stands 
recorded in the writings of the great philosophers 
of all the historic ages, whose systems, viewed 
Logical apart from the accident of the names of 
Sequence, f-} ie j r authors, are found to succeed one 
another not arbitrarily, but (as Hegel l demon 
strates) in an order predetermined and necess 
itated by the logical evolution of one central 

1 Logic of Hegel, ch. i, sees. 13, 14, 15 (Wallace). 



22 THE WISDOM OF PLOTINUS 

idea. No system of thought which has once been 
recognised as the production of a genuine philo 
sopher, and assigned a place in the central stream 
And Per- f intellectual development, can ever 
durability. b ecome entirely obsolete, for the simple 
reason (among others) that the mental growth 
of the individual being (broadly speaking) an 
abstract and summary of that of the race, there 
will always be found in a community virtual 
representatives of each one of the principal grades 
of intellectual progress. 

Neoplaton- 3- The fundamental thought in the 
ism. system of Plotinus is that of the demon 
strable existence of an Ideal Universe, at the same 
time to be regarded as in the fullest sense of the 
word, an actuality, 1 constituting, moreover, the 
archetype or paradigm of the phenomenal order 
with which we are best acquainted. 2 This intel 
ligible world, although absolutely withdrawn from 
all merely-sensuous observation, is nevertheless 
(as its name sufficiently indicates) considered in 
some degree subject to human investigation, and 
may, even in this life, be directly envisaged by 
those who have sufficiently developed the latent, 
but normal, powers of their spiritual being. The 

1 Enn. IT, Lib. v, sec. 3. 
8 Enn. V, Lib. viii, sec. 8. 



A METAPHYSICAL STUDY 23 

Intelligence or Intelligible World (for knowledge 
on this plane is to be regarded as identity of knowing 
subject with known object, 1 and it is therefore 
merely a matter of convenience which denomination 
we employ) is the second in dignity of three essential 
principles, known as the three Divine 
56S Hypostases, which together constitute 
the sum of supra-sensuous existence. 2 It is an 
axiom with Plotinus that every Being tends neces 
sarily to produce an image of itself 3 and the second 
and third of these three Divine Principles are 
accordingly to be viewed as manifestations of the 
power of the first and second respectively. 

The first Divine Hypostasis is the prime source 
and principle of all being whatsoever and is desig 
nated indifferently the One or the Good. It. is 
The One or poetically likened by Plotinus to a stream 

the Good. w hi c h is its own source, 4 whose derivative 
waves flow centrifugally in all directions, but which 
continues, nevertheless, to subsist immutably in 
and for itself. The first Divine Hypostasis trans 
cends all known attributes, transcends even the 

idea of existence, and is known by its first image, 
The the sphere of absolute reality or essence, 

Intelligence. ^6 Intelligible Universe or the Universal 

i Enn. II, Lib. ix, sec. i. 2 Enn. II, Lib. ix, sec. i. 
Enn. IV, Lib. v, sec. 7. 4 Enn. III. Lib. viii, sec. g. 



24 THE WISDOM OF PLOTINUS 

Intelligence. The forms of this Divine Universe 
are a manifestation of the creative power of the 
One, and the perfect harmony of their infinite variety 
is the seal of its presence among them. 1 

The third in order of dignity of the Divine Hypos- 

tases of Plotinus is the Universal Soul, which is 

The the image of the second, as that is the 

Universal image of the first, but which differs 
Soul. 

from its principle (the Intelligence) in 

that its life is not perfectly impassive and (in a 
sense) immobile, but that it perpetually revolves 
about and within the sphere of Intelligence, 2 and 
hence aspires to and attains the Supreme Good 
not immediately, but (as it were) through the 
medium of the Beautiful. 3 

To illustrate (however imperfectly) his conception 

of the mutual relations of these three principles, 

Their PIotinus bids "s imagine one circle 

Mutual enclosed by another and larger but 

Relation. 

concentric, circle which revolves con 
tinually about it. 4 

The common centre of both represents the One, 
the motionless inner circle the Intelligence, and 

1 Enn. Ill, Lib. viii, sec. to. 

3 En u. II, Lib. be, sees, i, 2. 

3 Run. IV, Lib. iv, sec. 16. 

4 Enn. IV, Lib. iv, sec. 16. 



A METAPHYSICAL STUDY 25 

the uniformly revolving outer circle the Universal 
Soul. This illustration, although not without a 
certain metaphorical value, must not by any means 
be absolutely and literally interpreted, for in the 
first place the words external and internal have 
obviously here no definite validity, and in the second 
place it is, of the two, truer to speak of a superior 
principle as transcending and so including within 
itself its inferior principles, than conversely. For 
example it is truer (although true even then in a 
proximate and figurative sense only) to speak of 
the body as within the soul than the soul as within 
the body. 1 Moreover, the self-containedness and 
impassivity of the Intelligence (figured in the above 
illustration as immobility) is, as will subsequently 
be explained, not incompatible with intrinsic or 
essential movement. 

Plotinus exhorts us to reverence our 

The 

Human own personalities as " temples of the 

Microcosm. /-.,,, 

Gods, for in every individual microcosm 
all these three Divine principles are, he asserts, 
in some sort present ; present, however, each one 
of them, in by no means the same degree of actualisa- 
tion. The third, or lowest, principle only is com 
monly evolved within us in such measure that we 
can be truly said to possess it (manifesting itself 
1 Enn. IV, Lib. iii, sec. 22. Cf. Plato Tim. pp. 33, 34. 



26 THE WISDOM OF PLOTINUS 

as the distinctively-human faculty of discursive 
reason or understanding) : the Divine Intelligence 
may with greater accuracy be regarded as possessing 
or overshadowing us, and it is only in exceptional 
individuals and under favourable circumstances 
that our minds are irradiated by its effulgence. 
As regards the first Divine Hypostasis (or supreme 
principle) its presence in our souls is to be regarded 
as constituting in the case of almost all of us through 
out our terrestrial existence and in the most favoured 
cases for by far the greater part of it, a mere poten 
tiality. Thus much of the doctrine of Plotinus 
with reference to these highest matters of inquiry 
it seemed necessary to explain at the outset. The 
reader is now prepared for a more detailed account 
of his system in the development of which, as would 
appear to be the method most conformable with 
the Neoplatonist idea, we shall commence (so to 
speak) at the base, and proceed towards the apex. 

4. Accordingly we have first to explain 
Matter. 

what this philosopher teaches concerning 

the material of which this phenomenal order is 
constructed, concerning the fundamental nature 
of matter. To speak of the qualities of matter 
would be a contradiction in terms, for in the view 
of Plotinus the distinguishing characteristic of 
matter is precisely to be devoid of all specific quality 



A METAPHYSICAL STUDY 27 

and form. 1 Potentially, matter is the infinite sum 
of derivative being, but in act it is absolute nonentity 
the infinite, the indefinite, the formless abstractly 
conceivable only in virtue of a mental process 
which implies the suspension of true intellection 
and by Plotinus is characterised as inverted or 
"bastard" reasoning. 2 

Matter is capable of receiving a semblance of 
determinate existence by reflecting the forms 
derived by the universal soul from the intelligible 
universe, but in itself it remains unchanged and 
unchangeable. It is likened by Plotinus to a 
mirror in which we behold not objects themselves 
but merely the images or reflections of objects, 
the mirror meanwhile being unaffected by their 
presence. 3 Further he explains that as the mirror 
in question though omnipresent is invisible (for it is 
just as truly nullipresent), we are naturally led to 
attribute reality to the illusive images we behold in 
it, that is to the fleeting phenomena of the sensible 
universe, which universe, in itself and regarded as 
a totality, holds an intermediate position between 
reality and negation. From the eternal incapacity 

of matter to acquire or even to participate 
The 

Source of in real existence follow as natural con 
sequences the imperfections of the 

Enn. II, Lib. iv, sec. 13. 2 Enn. II, Lib. iv, sec. 12. 
8 Enn. Ill, Lib. vi, sec. 7. 



28 THE WISDOM OF PLOTINUS 

material universe, its inability to conform perfectly 
to the ideal or intelligible order. Hence in the 
system of Plotinus, which assigns to evil a merely- 
negative existence, matter, as the indigence of 
all positive qualities, that is of all good, is identified 
with evil. 1 On this view the possibility in general 
of the knowledge of evil (that is to say of subjection 
to fate or necessity) is alone attributable to the 
Deity, its actual experience by each one of us being 
ultimately due to a voluntary determination of 
the individual consciousness towards the material 
or sensuous plane a a subject to which we shall 
presently return. 

The 5- PJotinus taught that the material 

universe has been created only in the 
sense that it is to be regarded as the permanent 
act or image of the universal soul ; that it has 
never had a beginning and will never come to an 
end, 3 but exists perpetually as an organism of 
infinite complexity and grandeur, whose remotest 
parts are allied by an intimate bond of vital sym 
pathy, or (as Kant in adopting the same truth 
has expressed it) are in thorough reciprocity of 
action. 4 

1 Enn. II, Lb. iv, sec. 16. Enn. Ill, Lib. ii, sec. 7. 
* Enn. II, Lib. ix, sec. 3. 

4 Critick of Pure Reason (F. Hay wood), bk. ii, chap, ii, 
sec. 3. Principle of Co-existence. 



A METAPHYSICAL STUDY 29 

The Relation of the third Divine Hypostasis to 

the material universe next demands our attention. 

The existence of the Universal Soul is 

Its 

Spiritual essentially an active and eternal con 
templation of the One as revealed in the 
sphere of Intelligence. 1 In virtue of this act of 
contemplation the Universal Soul may be said to 
inhabit the highest region of the sphere of Intelli 
gence (or Spirit), and in virtue of its presence there 
and its assimilation of the perfect forms of the 
intelligible order, it partakes of the creative power 
of Intelligence. Now the Universal Soul is of the 
nature of Reason (X^/o?), 2 that is to say, an indi 
visible, non-corporeal essence, whose property is to 
be present as a whole in each one of its parts or 
faculties. 3 It is, in fact, the last reason of the 
intelligible and the first of the material order. 4 
When, therefore, Plotinus (speaking figuratively 
of course) asserts that the Universal Soul has two 
parts, a principal part which inhabits the sphere 
of Intelligence and an inferior part which proceeds 
towards the sensible world, 6 what he intends to 
convey is that although the essential life oi this 

1 Enn. IT, T.ib. i\ , sec. i. 

2 Enn. IV, Lib. iii, sec. 9. 

3 Enn. IV, Lib. ix, sec. 8. 

4 Enn. IV. Lib. vi, sec. 3. 

6 Enn. Ill, Lib. viii sec. 2, 



30 THE WISDOM OF PLOTINUS 

great Being is a contemplation and desire of a 
superior principle, and an attainment of that per 
fection exactly proportioned to the strength of 
its aspiration, still its powers are not exhausted 
by this effort, but rather are eternally replenished 
thereby, and spontaneously overflowing and becom 
ing in their turn creative, are accordingly manifested 
in the wondrous beauty and infinite variety of 
the Material Universe. 

The Natural or Generative Power which (thus 
Nature & eneratecl ) proceeds from the essence of 
the Universal Soul is often personified as 
Nature, and is in fact an image or act of the Principal 
Power, and, as such, an inferior principle. The life of 
Nature, like that of the Universal Soul itself, is essen 
tially contemplative, 1 but with this difference, that 
the objects of Nature s contemplation are ideas not 
as such, not as independent and self-created, but 
as forms derived by the (principal power of the) 
Universal Soul from the bosom of the Divine 
Intelligence. 2 But these derivative forms, as mani 
festations of the " procession " of the Universal 
Soul, are in fact identical with its Natural or Genera 
tive Power that is with Nature. In other words 
the direct object of the contemplation of Nature 

1 Enn. Ill, Lib. viii, sec. 2. 
* Enn. Ill, Lib. viii, sec. 3, 



A METAPHYSICAL STUDY 31 

is not the Divine Intelligence but Nature herself. 1 
Hence the inferior creative power of Nature, and 
hence in part the imperfections of the Material 
Universe. The Universal Soul as such (its Principal 
Power or Essential Being) does not, however, incline 
towards the material plane, but subsisting impas 
sively in the bosom of the Divine Intelligence 
creates, upholds, and beautifies the world through 
the medium of Nature. 

Germinal ^ ie ^ mmatei "i a ^ germs (Plotinus calls 
Reasons or them spermatic or germinal reasons 2 ) 
of all possible created beings, past, 
present and future, subsist then harmoniously and 
simultaneously in the unity of Nature. As reasons 
they cannot be ascribed actual (spatial) extension, 
but they have different degrees of potential magni 
tude in virtue of which they impose upon matter 
(which, as we have seen, is the privation of all specific 
quality) images of that degree of extension which 
is -analogically appropriate. 3 In the same way 
the sequence of events is determined in accordance 

Evolution. With causal and lo S ical Propriety. To 

the Neoplatonist the modern doctrine 

of evolution would have presented few difficulties ; 

1 Enn. Ill, Lib. viii, sec. 2.. 
* Xdyot 0-TTfpiJi.aTiKol rj yevvrjTiKoi. 

Enn. III. Lib. vi, sees. 16, 17, \S, 



32 THE WISDOM OF PLOTINUS 

he would have defined it perhaps as the orderly 
manifestation under temporal and spatial conditions 
of eternal and universal principles. Professor 
Huxley, in an essay on the " Progress of Science," 
has in fact expressly characterised as " forms of 
evolution " (i.e. phases of the evolutionary idea) 
the emanistic theories which have played so great 
a part in Neoplatonic philosophy and in Gnostic 

theology. 

The phenomenal world has then been created only 

in the sense that it owes its perpetual existence 

to that of a superior Being. Its creation 

^oTthe* 7 results not fr m a voluntary determina- 

Sensibie t j on a deliberate purposive act, on the 
Universe. 

part of the Demiurge l but in virtue 

of the law which ordains that every real existence 
is manifested in part by the appearance of an image 
or copy of inferior substantiality. 2 For all things 
inferior to the First exist always in successive and 
immutable dependency. They have not been 
engendered at a determinate instant, and will 
never come to an end. 3 The character of the material 
universe is due to the irradiation of matter (or 

1 The Universal Soul, often personified by Plotinus 
under the name of Jupiter. 

8 Enn. IV, Lib. v, sec. 7, " Every Being has an act 
which is its image." 

* Enn. II, Lib. ix, sec. 3. 



A METAPHYSICAL STUDY 33 

chaos) by the complex unity of forms or reasons 
derived by the Universal Soul from its contemplation 
of the sphere of essential reality and absolute 
perfection. By reason of the inability of matter 
to participate fully in the real (positive) qualities 
of existence it follows that the perfection of the 
Material Universe is inferior to that of the Universal 
Soul, and still more so to that of the Intelligible 
Universe. 1 Nevertheless it has that degree of 
perfection which is appropriate to a product of 
the concourse of liberty (reason) and necessity 
(or matter), and since its disposition serves to reveal 
the grandeur of the intelligible nature, it must 
not be lightly condemned or irreverently criticised. 2 
Its It is particularly to be remembered 

Essential that the Soul which creates, upholds 

Divinity. 

and administers the universe which we 
inhabit is not allied to it in the same way as, for 
example, a human soul to a human body as the 
result, that is, of a voluntary inclination, 3 and 
remains therefore, in itself, quite untrammelled 
by the bonds of necessity, to which individual 
souls have all by their own act in greater or less 
degree submitted. 4 And since the universe as 

1 Enn. Ill, Lib. ii, sees, i, 2. 
8 Enn. II, Lib. ix, sec. 8. 

3 Enn. II, Lib. ix, sec. 4. * Enn. IT, Lib. ix, pec. 7. 

c 



34 THE WISDOM OF PLOTINUS 

an organised Being (Nature) lives in and by the 
Universal Soul, it follows that the life in question, 
of the world considered as a totality, is essentially 
Divine and impassive. 1 By reason of the per 
fection of their movements, that is their conformity 
to the intelligible order, Plotinus even attributes 
immortality and a species of Divinity to the sun, 
the stars and (in a lesser degree) to the earth and 
the planets, and accredits] them with the power of 
modifying human destiny in sub-conscious 
v5al response to incantations or prayers. 2 
Unity For each of the celestial bodies is con 
ceived not merely as constituting a passive element 
of the uniformity of Nature, but also as possessing 
an individual soul, which, like the Universal Soul 
of which it is a member, essentially pertains to 
and contemplates the intelligible order, but by 
its lower irrational or strictly natural soul (in virtue 
of which it has potential sensitivity) is in immediate 
vital or sympathetic relation with the rest of the 
material universe. 3 

1 Enn. II, Lib. iii, sec. 9. 

Enn. II, Lib. i, sec. 4 ; Enn. IV, Lib. iv, sec. 16. 

Enn. II, Lib. iii, sec. 7, Everything is co-ordinated 
in the universe (rivratis pia). Enn. IV, Lib. iv, sec. 32, 
It is necessary to concede that this universe is a single 
animal (&ov ev) which includes within itself all animals, 
and which has In it a single soul (+VM /**<) which is com- 



A METAPHYSICAL STUDY 35 



Individuality. Nvith tllC 

ments by means of which Plotinus justi 
fies the acquiescence of Divine Providence in the 
temporary existence of misery and injustice, it 
will be necessary to explain briefly his view of 
what constitutes individuality for animals and for 
men. It has already been stated that each of the 
three Divine Hypostases (the One, the Intelligence, 
and the Soul) is, in varying degrees of immanence 
and actuality, represented in the constitution of each 
particular microcosm, and this applies not merely 
j B . to Humanity but to all things whatsoever. 

But the faculty which essentially charac 
terises an individual, a species, or a kind, is that 
which is present not merely as a latent possibility 
but in active and supreme reality, which, therefore, 
however much or little it may on occasion be 
modified by the influence of higher or lower faculties, 
is manifested more or less clearly in every action 
of the individual, or in the actions of every member 
of the species or kind. Needless to say, it is the 
possession of the reasoning faculty (or judgment) 

which thus characterises Humanity 

In Man, 

Animals, the faculty of sensibility which consti- 

Plants. 

tutes the animal, and the nutritive or 

municated to all its parts, that is to all those beings which 
are parts of the universe. 



36 THE WISDOM OF PLOTINUS 

vegetative principle which is par excellence the 
distinctive feature of the life of plants. 1 Accord 
ing, therefore, as the principal activity of a particular 
intelligence is manifesting itself in one or other of 
these three modes, will be the form in which we 
envisage its individuality upon the phenomenal 
plane of existence. 

But the reasoning faculty, judgment 
Discursive or understanding (Plotinus calls it dis- 

Reason 

versus cursive reason) of man must be carefully 
Intelligence, distinguished from the pure reason which 
(in a fashion analogous to, but not identi 
cal with that in which the supreme Intelligence 
is related to the Soul of the Universe) illuminates 
and regulates its activity, and is actually pos 
sessed at all times by no merely-human indivi 
dual and only occasionally by those who devote 
themselves to the intellectual life who habitually 
contemplate the Idea. 2 Discursive reason is the 
faculty by means of which we formally consider 
and combine the diversity presented by sensation 
and imagination, thus forming concepts and judg 
ments, which latter are or should be in their turn 
subjected to the regulative action of intelligence 

1 Erin. I, Lib. i, sec. 7. 

s Enn. IV, Lib. iii, sec. 30 ; Enn. IV, Lib. iii, sec. 18 ; 
Enn. V, Lib. iii, sec. 3. 



A METAPHYSICAL STUDY 37 

or pure reason. 1 By the use of this generic, dis- 

The Goal tinctively-human faculty of discursive 

of Reason. reason (even in supposed independence 

of any higher principle) a certain degree of harmony 

is established among the chaos of sensations and 

images which present themselves in the course of 

our ordinary experience ; but in order to attain 

to true wisdom, the objective truth 

Philosophy. 

which is the goal of the philosopher, 

we must not be content to allow our merely-formal 
judgments to be passively moulded by an immanent 
intelligence ; but by a supreme effort of contem 
plation must emancipate our consciousness from 
the trammels of subjectivity and emerge in the 
realm of the Absolute, the sphere of Concrete 
Reality, where thought and the thinker are one. 2 
In the same proportion as we devote 
ourselves to this high endeavour, we 
shall alienate our consciousness from that merely- 
sensitive and nutritive activity in virtue of which 
we are allied to the animal and vegetable kingdoms, 
and subject, like them, to the laws of external neces 
sity ; and in proportion to the success of this en 
deavour our life will be rational and self-determined. 

1 Enn. V, Lib. iii, sees. 2, 4. 

a Enn. I, Lib. ii, sec. 4 ; Enn. VI, Lib. il, sec. 21. 



38 THE WISDOM OF PLOTINUS 

No accident can deprive the philosopher 

Liberty, 

Serenity, of the serene Contemplation of Intel- 
Security. , , ,, 

Icctual Beauty, nor are its inestimable 
privileges incompatible with an adequate discharge 
of the common duties of life, since, presumably, 
an actual economy of effort is in the long run 
effected in virtue of that superior enlightenment 
which distinguishes the true sage from those merely- 
sagacious individuals whose actions are regulated 
by more or less worldly and fallible maxims derived 
Irom the use of the understanding or unconverted 
reason. 

For the philosopher, then, it is obviously 

The c 

Pi)iio:ophor a m ^tter of no great import whether 
lo ExSs! 01 not the tward circumstances of 
his life be such as would be considered 
fortunate or otherwise by the vulgar, for he knows 
that poverty, sickness and the like are not sub 
stantial, but only apparent and ephemeral evils, 
and that, moreover, by patience and fortitude they 
can be transformed into solid advantages, can be 
made conducive to the soul s prosperity and edifi 
cation. 1 It will be contended, doubtless (and with 
at least a show of justice), that for many, the vast 
majority of mankind, the consolations of philosophy, 
however highly they may be esteemed by their 
1 Enn. II, Lib. ix, sec. 9. 



A METAPHYSICAL STUDY 39 

possessors, are practically unattainable, and that 
for them at least the existence of moral and physical 
evil are facts sufficiently real, involving an incal 
culable sum of anguish and misery. Doubtless 
the rational solution of the problem suggested by 
the surveyal of this anguish and misery is a task 
of immense difficulty, perhaps (as Plotinus himself 
admits) of inherent impossibility, 1 but, nevertheless 
and for obvious reasons, it must not be shirked 
by the philosopher who would justify his very 
existence or the claims of that faculty of insight 
upon which all philosophies are ultimately based. 
It has frequently been asserted (and not without 
reason) that metaphysical assumptions underlie 
the dogmata of materialism no less than those of 
the purest idealism, for, to quote a phrase, or rather 
a definition of Schopenhauer s, man is essentially 
a metaphysical animal. Certainly the problem 
of the nature and source of evil must have its true 
and rational solution, which presumably must be 
capable of at least approximate formulation in 
terms that shall be intelligible to the normal indi- 
1 " Our quaint metaphysical opinions in an hour of 
anguish are like playthings by the bedside of a child deadly 
sick." Anima Poetae. From the ".Unpublished Note Books 
of Samuel Taylor Coleridge." How true and touching, 
and, coming from so ardent a metaphysician, how signifi 
cant an admission is this. 



40 THE WISDOM OF PLOTINUS 

vidual. The solution implied or indicated by the 
utterances of Plotinus in reference to this matter 
may be interpreted somewhat as follows. 

The ^ In tlle ^ irst P lace vve are called 

Problem upon, in obedience no less to the dictates 

of Evil. 

ot reason than the consensus (or common- 
sense) of Humanity, to recognise as universal two 
contrasted modes or aspects of Being the order 

Freedom f Providcnce or freedom, and the order 

of Necessity or limitation. To both 
Necessity. 

of these orders we are each of us con 
sciously allied and in separate relation to either 
our particular thoughts, words, actions, and experi 
ences may be considered, and in the one case (as 
unconditioned) justified or condemned, in the other 
(as externally or internally determined) logically 
or causally explained. But although there is a sense 
in which, on the one hand, our individual freedom 
and responsibility and on the other our subjection 
to law may with approximate validity be interpreted 
as absolute (for this is clearly implied, although 
not, I think, explicitly stated, by Plotinus in the 
Enneads), still it is usual, and practically more con 
venient, in considering, for instance, the terrestrial 
existence of a particular individual, to regard his 
thoughts alone as essentially unconditioned (and 
these only in so far as they are in the truest sense 



A METAPHYSICAL STUDY 41 

of the word intelligent), his physical experiences 
as partly fortuitous, and upon the whole subject 
to strict limitation, and his actions as alternating 
between freedom and necessity, limited as regards 
their execution, but morally free in so far as they 
are in conscious accordance with truly rational 
principles. From the common human standpoint 
the spontaneity of thought is more conspicuous 
than its regulation by and evolution in accordance 
with an internal and self-imposed necessity (the 
law " whose service is perfect freedom "), while the 
converse is true with regard to the external universe, 
whose essential Divinity is effectually concealed 
by the rigid uniformity of its phenomenal investi 
ture. In the intelligible universe there is an abso 
lute reconciliation of these- two extremes 

Their 

ideal of Law and Freedom : everything is 

Unity. 

as it must be, and at the same time every 
thing is as we would choose to have it. Every 
individual is in some sort the whole intelligible 
universe, but in entering upon material existence 
we so rupture the unity of our being and narrow 
the scope of its consciousness that the universal 
order to which we are allied and which is even in 
a sense our own creation, confronts our freedom 
in the aspect of an external Necessity, 
blind, invincible, relentless. 1 But this 
1 Enn. Ill, Lib. iv, sec. 3 ; Enn, IV, Lib. vi, sec. 3, 



42 THE WISDOM OF PLOTINUS 

external Necessity, although possessing for us as 
inhabitants of the material universe actual tem 
porary validity, is nevertheless a manifestation 
of that intrinsic law which, no less than freedom, 
is the truth of our own existence, and is therefore 
in essence, not external, not hostile, not evil (as 
we name it) but rather a part of ourselves. 

If this view of the nature and origin 

Illusion. 

of external Necessity be accepted, it 
follows that, in despite of all that the senses may 
argue and loudly assert to the contrary, the suffer 
ings which we endure ourselves or witness in the 
lives of those about us owe what they have of sub 
stantiality to the occult will of the very person 
who endures them and that regarded merely as 
evils, fortuitous and supererogatory evils, they are 
illusory and unreal. Hence, too, it follows that 
such words as torture, desolation, injustice, ruin 
are not sterling coins impressed with the stamp 
of authentic Reason, but comparable rather to 
specimens of a paper currency hurriedly issued to 
meet the exigencies of a temporary emergency, 
words whose recognition and use is, for the philoso 
pher at least, a merely provisional concession to the 
dictates of mundane expediency, or, which is the 
same thing, to the claims of sensibility and illusion. 
The mental attitude of Plotinus has certainly 



A METAPHYSICAL STUDY 43 

very little in common on this point with that of 
modern pessimism, but simply and crudely to have 
characterised his system as an optimistic one would 
practically have amounted to a gross misrepre 
sentation. Plotinus docs not deny or ignore the 
existence of suffering and evil any more than he 
denies the limitation of human faculty and human 
wisdom : he simply denies the ultimate reality 
of such evil, the transcendental validity of such 
limitation. 

Granted that the order which obtains 
injustice in thc material universe is such that, 
,. the . apparently quite undeserved suffering 

Exception. J 

must frequently befall its conscious 

inhabitants in the course of a particular abstractly- 
contemplated existence, it still remains true that 
even from this point of view a certain rude justice 
justice is tne mle - For consider in detail the 
the Rule. factg of any particular isolated existence, 
and, conceding to the full its liability to become 
the victim of any of those accidents which are 
inevitable in an imperfect world, regulated with 
a view to universal rather than particular interests, 

it will, nevertheless, be found that a 
Accident. ,. f 

substantial Reason (in the guise ol a 

moral or physical weakness or delinquency) can 
usually be assigned for the occurrence of such or 



44 THE WISDOM OF PLOTINUS 

such a misfortune to the individual in ques 
tion. 

Moreover (argues Plotinus) it is to 

Further 

Considera- be remembered in the first place that 
every sensitive inhabitant of the material 
plane has by its own act entered upon the state 
of sensitivity with all the liabilities involved, 1 
and, secondly, that appearances notwithstanding, 
there is in the long run justice and nothing but Jus 
tice, inasmuch as every individual monad in the 
course of an infinite cycle of successive incarna 
tions receives exact compensation for the good or 
bad qualities it displays. 2 

As for those who consider the existence 

The 

Dignity of evil and suffering, even as the outcome 

of Life. 

of laws of an unimpeachable integrity, 
incompatible with belief in the benignity of Divine 
Providence, Plotinus has very little sympathy 
with their scruples. The conception of a creation 
so framed and ordered as to preclude for its inhabi 
tants all possibility of acquiring the dignity insepar 
able from tragic experience is profoundly repugnant 
to the robust sanity, the austere but dominant 
aesthetic sense of this philosopher. His general 
attitude in regard to this tremendous, this crucial 

1 Enn. Ill, Lib. ii, sec. 7. 
* Enn. Ill, Lib. ii, sec. 13. 



A METAPHYSICAL STUDY 45 

problem of the justification or explication ol evil, 
may best be indicated, however, by quoting from 
the Enneads a few of the pregnant sentences which 
bear upon the subject. Tims, after asserting that 
in cases where the moderately virtuous are ill- 
used by the vicious, it is usually because the former 
are in some respect the inferiors of their oppressors, 
he exclaims that " God is not called upon to fight 
for cowards, for the law wills that in war one s life 
should be saved by valour, not by prayers." x Nor 
are we justly entitled to complain that the wicked 
have a richer crop if they cultivate the soil better 
than we who are virtuous. 2 We must not, he 
warns us, extend our demands upon the action of 
Providence to the extent of annihilating the need 
for our own. 3 
Variety ^ is true that rogues and fools are at 

in Unity. all times p ] entiful) but Qne does not 

condemn a tragedy because one sees other characters 

than heroes appear in it, a slave for instance, a person 

who speaks badly : it would be to destroy the beauty 

of the- composition were we to cut out these inferior 

persons and all the passages in which they figure." * 

Metem- Then, too, in estimating the -justice of 

psychosis. Divinity, account must be taken not 

1 Knn. Ill, Lib. ii, sec. 8. * Ibid. 

8 Enn. Ill, Lib. ii, sec. 9. * Enn. Ill, Lib. 11, KCC.TM 



46 THE WISDOM OF PLOTINUS 

merely of the present but also of the past and 
future, for Destiny makes those slaves who have 
b.?en masters in a former life if they have abused 
their powers, and this change is beneficial to them. 
"She renders poor tJwse who have ill employed their 
riches, for poverty is of service even to the virtuous." 1 
The good things of the soul which are the only 
substantial benefits are invariably apportioned in 
accordance with our merits. 

" The combats, too, in which men, those 
Calamity. Aortal beings, engage between themselves 

with an appearance of regularity resembling 
that of the Pyrrhic dances prove clearly that these 
matters, considered so momentous, are but as the 
games of children, and that death is no just ground 
for terror." 2 

8. Readers of the journal of Marie 

and the Bashkirtseff may recall a psychological 

Detachment observation of the writer s, to the effect 

that she distinguishes a part of her 
nature (moi spcctateur, she calls it) which impassively 
surveys, as it were from above, the actions, incidents 
and emotions of her daily life, criticising them in 
a quite impersonal way with reference to their 
poetic or dramatic rather than their ethical or con- 

1 Enn. Ill, Lib. ii, sec. 13. 

2 Enn. Ill, Lib. ii, sec. 15. 



A METAPHYSICAL STUDY 47 

ventional fitness, and absolutely indifferent at all 
times to the suffering on the part of the lower 
consciousness involved by the satisfaction of its 
peremptory demand for the spectacle of an intense 
and varied experience. " An intellectual man," 
says Emerson (revealing the same idea as the 
property of a saner and less emotional tempera 
ment) " can see himself as a third person ; there 
fore his faults and delusions interest him equally 
with his successes. Though he wishes to prosper 
in affairs he wishes more to know the history 
and destiny of man ; whilst the cloud of egotists 
drifting about him are only interested in a low suc 
cess." And the same fundamental thought may 
be recognised in the frequent comparison of life 
by Plotinus to an immense drama in which the 
soul itself (its higher faculty) does not, or should 
not take part, but only its image or shadow. 1 
The Drama This drama has been composed and 
of Life. j s conducted by the Divine art which 
governs and supports the universe and the various 
parts in it, good, bad and indifferent, allotted 
to individuals whose free and voluntary disposition 
renders them suitable to perform them, are by the 
said art so regulated and combined as to result in 
a glorious harmony. 2 As spiritual beings we are 

1 Enn. Ill, Lib. ii, sec. 15. a Enn. Ill, Lib. ii, sec. 17. 



4$ THE WISDOM OF PLOTINUS 

free to choose our own roles in the masque of the 
universe, but the exercise of that freedom does 
Predestina- not enable us to transcend the scope of 
Divine Providence, and is therefore com 
patible with pre-ordained necessity. 1 For, as 
Cacciaguida in Paradise explains to the poet- 
Contingency, unfolded not to view 
Upon the tablet of your mortal mould, 
Is all depictured in the eternal sight ; 
But hence derive th not necessity, 
M,,re than the tall ship, hurried down the flood, 
Doth from the vision that reflects the scene. 2 

Providence in its relation to the wicked is com 
pared by Plotinus to a commandcr-in-chicf who 
provides for the actions of the enemy, but is not 
accountable for them. 3 As human beings here 
Choice on earth we are frce onl Y by virtue of, 
Freewill. and in P r P rtion to OUT possession and 
employment of the reasoning faculty, 
and its enlightenment by the pure intellect which is 
source; free in proportion to our conformity 
to the dictates of the particular genius or demon 
which we recognise as the governing principle of 
our career. The freedom of the will as manifested 
1 Enn. Ill, Lib. iii, sec. 3. 

Divine Comedy of Dante (Gary). Paradise, Canto xvii 
37 el seq. 

3 Enn. Ill, Lib. iii, sec. 2. 



A METAPHYSICAL STUDY 49 

during actual terrestrial existence is not, however, 
to be formally conceived as a capacity to choose 
arbitrarily between diverse particular alternatives 
as they arise, but simply as the general ability to 
devote ourselves to rational and universal ends. 
Choice, or freewill, is in fact expressly characterised 
by Plotinus as an allegorical designation of the 
bias or general disposition which results from the 
act of the soul before generation. 1 Nevertheless, 
the life of the true idealist is in the long run recog 
nised even by the vulgar and unenlightened as 
essentially divine and unconditioned. On the other 
hand, the lives of each one of us are under the sway 
of Destiny in exact proportion to our surrender 
to the demands of appetite and the capricious 
guidance of the merely-sensuous imagination. 

9. Plotinus teaches that the soul of 

amTthe cac ^ human being is the abode of a 

Facut" C demon or familiar spirit, representing the 

dominant motive of the individual career, 

the idea to whose realisation the soul in question is 

voluntarily devoted. 2 This theory was undoubtedly 

derived from Plato and is entitled to the credit of 

his authority. 3 Plotinus explains that the demon 

1 Enn. Ill, Lib. iv, sec. 5. 

2 Enn. Ill, Lib. iv, sec. 3. 

8 Cf. The Banquet. Cf. also Matt, xviil. 10, a text which 

D 



5 o THE WISDOM OF PLOTINUS 

(or genius, as we should say) of a particu- 
G Sd US lar career is practically identical with 
Talent the faculty immediately superior to that 
which is habitually exercised by the soul of the 
individual in question (his leading talent), and 
that, presiding over our employment of such and 
all other faculties, this demon refuses to allow us 
to sink much below that plane of action which we 
have chosen to renounce the pursuit of our ideal. 
That which acts, then, is the principle inferior 
to the demon (or genius) [oi our life, which can 
neither evade ;his influence, nor equal his example. 
If we live the sensuous life we have reason for our 
demon (that is our ideal will be a life of practical 
mundane sagacity), if the rational, an intelligence, 
if the intellectual, Divinity. 1 Doubtless, however, 
these three primary grades may be subdivided 
ad libitum. From this theory it of course [follows 
that in a certain limited sense what we call genius 
or inspiration may be predicated of all human 
beings ; but genius of that higher kind to which 
the word is now commonly restricted remains the 
prerogative of those whose demonic faculty is at 
least on the intelligible plane. One is tempted to 

was the basis of the doctrine of guardian angels as formu 
lated by the Fathers of the Church. 
1 Enn. Ill, Lib. iv, sec. 3, 



A METAPHYSICAL STUDY 51 

quote here from the "/Table Talk/ of the poet 
Coleridge an aphorism to the effect that genius is 
invariably metaphysical. 1 

Plotinus holds that the soul on leaving the body 
becomes identified with the faculty to whose 
manifestation her terrestrial activity has been 
mainly devoted, and that even before the dissolution 
of the body the lower faculties of discursive reason, 
sensuous imagination and sensibility may be so 
spiritualised by their employment in the service 
of the Ideal as to become in a measure " separated " 
from the material organism and reinstated in the 
Pursuit of sphere of Intelligence a spiritual emanci- 

ideals. p a tion which is at once completed by 
death. 2 Thus the mere fact of devotion to an 
ideal, properly so-called (despite the fact that its 
normal result, so far as contemporary appearances 
are concerned, is downright failure, or at most 
partial and broken success) is nevertheless from 
the spiritual standpoint an absolute guarantee of 
its full and actual attainment. 

It is evident that in the passages just expounded 
Plotinus used the word demon in a 

Demons. 

sense quite different from that in which 

1 " All genius is metaphysical ; because the ultimate 
end of genius is ideal, however it may be actualised by 
incidental and accidental circumstances." Loc. cit. S.T.C. 

2 Enn. Ill, Lib. iv, sec. 4. 



52 THE WISDOM OF PLOTINUS 

it is commonly employed at the present day, to 
indicate the existence of latent powers within the 
sphere of human personality, anticipating thus the 
modern theory of the sub-conscious. There is no 
true mythological system to be found in the works 
of this philosopher who (unlike some of 

Mythology 

in the his disciples of the Alexandrian school) 

Enneads. 

seldom alludes at all to the ancient 
stories, and when he does so is careful to indicate 
an allegorical signification. He appears neverthe 
less to have believed in the existence of a super 
human order of beings of ethereal rather than 
immaterial essence, inhabiting celestial regions, 
and intermediate in nature and function between 
the denizens of the purely-intelligible order on 
the one hand, and those of the terrestrial plane on 
the other. 1 To these beings also he assigns the 
name of demons, but whether he considered them 
identical with the demons mentioned above who 
presided over particular human destinies, or 
that these latter constituted only one species of 
the order, or were, again, of a quite distinct nature, 
is not altogether clear. It may perhaps be inferred 
that he uses the word somewhat loosely to indicate 
a certain plane of moral and psychical dignity, 
for in speaking of Love as the motive of human 
1 Enn. Ill, Lib. v, sec. 5. 



A METAPHYSICAL STUDY 53 

aspiration and spiritual ascension, he distinguishes 
three grades of the affection, the first or supreme 
of which degrees he personifies as a God, and the 
second as a Demon, while the third, or predomi 
nantly-sensuous, he denominates a passion of the 
soul. 1 

10. Plotinus defines Love as the desire 
Concerning to be united with a beautiful object, and 

and the thereby to produce or create beauty. 
Emotions. herse if j or the soul o f the 



universe, that soul of which Nature is 
the express manifestation, creates in virtue of the 
contemplation (spiritual union with) celestial or 
intelligible beauty. Those human beings who 
loving beauty in the sensible world have not the 
reminiscence or intuition of intellectual or ideal 
beauty, still owe their love of the former to the 
fact that it is an image of the latter. Love is 
always the result of an affinity, conscious or other 
wise, between the soul of the lover and the object 
of his passion. Our desire to produce is a direct 
outcome of the instinctive craving for immortality, 
for the essence which is immortal is none other 
than Beauty itself. Those and those only who 
love beautiful bodies without the craving to be 

1 Enn. Ill, Lib. v, sec. i, et seq. 



54 THE WISDOM OF PLOTINUS 

united with them, love them for their 
Pure Love. 

ideal beauty alone. 

From the attention with which the celestial soul 
applies itself to contemplate the Divine Life which 
is its object, the supreme Love is born an eye 
full of the object which it beholds, a vision made 
one with the image which it forms. Below the 
celestial soul, exists Nature the Soul of the World 
as such and of its contemplation and desire the 
Love which is its eye and which presides over 
earthly marriages is born. In this aspect the 
terrestrial soul may be identified with Aphrodite, 
or Venus, and the Love born of her with the Eros 
or Cupid of mythology, just as the universal soul 
conceived as Demiurge or governor of the universe 
may be identified with Jupiter or Zeus. 1 In so 
far as this human love experiences or begets in 
its subjects a desire of the intelligible it is capable 
of converting towards the intelligible plane the 
souls of the young. The love inherent 

the V Geni S us m an( ^ P r P er to tne sou l * eacn individual 
or Demon j s ^g d emon which presides over his 

of a Life. 

life a statement which, so far as it 
goes, corroborates the explanation already offered 
of the word demon, in many of the passages in 
which it occurs in the Enneads, as an allegorical 

1 Enn. Ill, Lib. v, sec. 4. 



A METAPHYSICAL STUDY 55 

or poetical designation of a psychological fact. 
Love in itself is always good, but often by reason 
of ignorance (the vice of intelligent beings) the 
desire of the good leads us to fall into evil, and 
pure love is replaced by the cravings of lustful 
appetite. These unnatural cravings are 
Uty> bora of the faults of the soul, not of its 
pure essence. 1 In the view of Plotinus passion, af 
fectability, sensation, are functions not of the soul, 
which, properly speaking, even in contemplation 
is always active, nor of matter, which, as already 
explained, is in itself immutable and unimpres 
sionable, but of the " living body "that which is 
neither spiritual nor corporeal, but a composite 
entity partaking equally and imperfectly of both 
kinds. Thus when the living organism is affected 
with pleasure or pain, the soul, itself impassive, 
observes and remembers the impression ; and 
similarly, for the soul properly so called, the emotion 
of shame, for example, consists merely in the 
opinion that such or such an act, purposed or 
performed, is ignoble. Similarly in the 

Shame, . . . , j j 

Fear, act of external vision, the eye indeed 

is the recipient of an impression is 

more or less passive, but it is the soul or mind which 

really perceives. Plotinus argues that if the soul 

1 Enn. Ill, Lib. v, sec. 7. 



56 THE WISDOM OF PLOTINUS 

as such were liable to receive impressions, to suffer, 
for example, such an emotion as fear, the part of 
the soul so affected would not perform its function, 
and the appropriate bodily reaction would not 
occur. 1 In brief the doctrine of Plotinus is that 
we can only attribute to the soul " passions without 
passivity," that is to say, that we must regard these 
terms thus applied as metaphors derived from the 
nature of the body. 2 Even memory, which might 
Memor ^ e adduced as an obvious instance of 
not a mental impression, properly so called, is, 

Passively 

Retained however, says Plotinus, to be regarded 

Impression. 

as the active retention of a form created 
by, rather than imprinted on, the soul. 3 That 
this is so might indeed be suspected from the fact 
(mentioned also in the Enneads) that the duration 
and intensity of a particular recollection is pro 
portional not so much to the intensity or magnitude 
of the bodily impressions or disturbances with 
which it originated, as to the degree of attention 
on the part of the mind or soul which created it. i 
Vice and Plotinus recognises the existence in 
nce - every human being of a reasoning faculty 
the soul properly so called, and an unreasoning 

Enn. Ill, Lib. vi, sec. 4. 
a Enn. Ill, Lib. vi, sec. i. 
Enn. Ill, Lib. vi, sec. 3. 



A METAPHYSICAL STUDY 57 

principle the natural soul, which under the immedi 
ate guidance of universal reason, the laws of nature, 
presides over bodily functions, growth, nutrition/ 
reproduction. Vice is a state of discord between 
the individual reason on the one hand and those 
faculties which pertain to the unreasoning or natu 
ral soul on the other. 1 The proper function of 
the soul is spiritual vision, culminating in wisdom 
or speculative insight, and hence the supreme vice 
of Man as an essentially reasonable being, and the 
most fruitful source of moral delinquencies and 
perversities of every kind and degree, is that state 
of blindness and ignorance which inevitably results 
from refusal, failure or neglect to cultivate the 
faculty in question. Greed, lust, anger and the 
like, although in particular instances they may 
be directly traceable either to mental apathy 
pure and simple or to that state of imperfect rational 
control which results from bodily affections or 
defects, are invariably symptomatic of ignorance. 
That is to say that ignorance is always a cause, 
even if not necessarily the sole cause, of immoral 
behaviour. The natural or animal soul of a human 
body in guarding the welfare and asserting the 
instincts and desires of the material organism as 
such, and Nature herself in regulating those pro- 
1 Enn. Ill, Lib. vi, sec. 2. 



5 8 THE WISDOM OF PLOTINUS 

cesses which characterise the inorganic plane of 
existence, allow no regard for particular interests 
or spiritual exigencies unrecognised and unenforced 
by the individual intelligence and will to rupture 
the uniformity or limit the universality of their 
respective operations. Hence the danger of neglect 
ing the voice of conscience and attending 

C " * 4- 1 

Ochlocracy, exclusively to the bodily sensations, for in 
(Mob-Rule). theuproar of a crowde d assembly it is not 
the wisest counsellor whose word prevails, it is rather 
the noisiest and most factious ; and the tumult 
these create compels the representative of wisdom 
to remain seated, powerless, and overborne by 
the din. In the perverse man it is the animal 
which reigns. 1 

ii. The doctrine of Plotinus with 
Substance reference to the genesis of the pheno- 
Corporeal mena i universe has already been indi- 

Essence. 

cated. 

It was explained that, for the Neoplatonist 
philosopher, matter as such, although it plays an 
important part in the system as a whole, is no 
positive entity possessing specific qualities capable 
of clear conception and logical definition, but 
that as an objective metaphysical abstraction it 
is to be regarded as the nurse and receptacle of 
1 Enn. IV, Lib. iv, sec. 18. 



A METAPHYSICAL STUDY 59 

generation, anterior therefore, not temporally, but 
ontologically, to generation, and as the privation 
of all positive qualities, that is of all goodness, it 
may be identified with evil. It may be thought 
or speculatively envisaged by a process which 
Plotinus calls bastard reasoning, the inverse of 
that process by which we apprehend the essence 
of the intelligible world. It is poetically or sym 
bolically described as aspiring eternally to real 
existence, but as capable of appropriating only an 
imperfect image or shadow of the Universal Soul, 
thus constituting the order which appears to us 
in the guise of an external universe, a universe 
which, despite the large element of illusion which 
pertains to its composition, is by most of us accredited 
with genuine and unimpeachable reality. The 
life and essence of the Universal Soul (which is 
Reason) is external to matter, not in the ordinary 
sense of the word, but as being of a totally contrary 
and irreconcilable nature. 1 Matter participates 
in goodness without ceasing to be evil, but the 
phenomenal or sensible universe is intermediate 
between good and evil, form and matter, reason 
and fatality, order and chaos. 2 The creative 
power of Universal Reason (or of any reasonable 

1 Enn. Ill, Lib. vi, sec. 15. 

Enn. Ill, Lib. vi, sec. n ; Enn. Ill, Lib. vi, sec. 17. 



6o THE WISDOM OF PLOTINUS 

principle) is manifested by its conferring upon the 
indeterminate a form resembling, though inferior 
to, its own, itself subsisting meanwhile impassively 
apart. 1 Hence, in the consideration of beings 
which occupy the sensuous plane of existence, the 
soul is to be excluded, just as in enumerating the 
inhabitants of a town one might leave out of account 
the foreigners who were sojourning within it. 2 
The factors of existence on the pheno- 
Factors of nienal or sensible plane may be sub- 
ExSence sume d under the following categories : 
(i) Substance, (2) Quantity and quality, 
(3) Place and time, (4) Movement, (5) Relation. 3 
The name of substance (u^: , a), or corporeal essence, 
may be applied with equal propriety to the material 
substratum of a given object, its form, or the 
tertium quid which results from their identification 
for each is the object itself. 4 That which only 
exists in the object of which it is affirmed (e.g. 
qualities, as whiteness, etc.), is not substance, 
which as being itself subject (viroiceipevov), and 
possessing independent existence, cannot properly 
be affirmed of any other subject. Thus to assert 

1 Enn. Ill, Lib. viii, sec. 2. 

8 Enn. VI, Lib. iii, sec. i. 

* Enn. VI, Lib. iii, sec. 3. 

* Enn. VI, Lib. iii, sec. 4. 



A METAPHYSICAL STUDY 61 

that Socrates is a man is tantamount to saying that 

a particular man is a man, and is therefore merely 

an identical proposition, not a genuine specification. 1 

The fundamental characteristic of the 

f e e mfs material order which falls within the 

Becoming. ^^ Qi the categories mentioned above 

is generation or becoming, not existence at all in 
the higher sense of the word, but perpetual acquisi 
tion of an existence that must ever be incomplete. 2 
In other words, the life of Nature, although an 
image of the life which is complete, universal and 
everlasting, belongs rather to time than eternity. 
But we who in virtue of intelligence (or spirituality) 
may be said to dwell both in time and eternity are 
capable of acquiring direct and primary knowledge 
of both spheres knowledge which, so far as it 
goes, is absolute and irrefutable. 3 
Time and I2 - Eternity relates to that which 
Eternity. ex i s t s> Time to that which becomes. The 
constitutive property of eternity is perpetuity, not 
repose merely, for it is compatible with move 
ment, though not with generation or decay. It 
is identifiable, identical, in fact, with the Life which 
is infinite, immutable and complete, the Life which 

1 Enn. VI, Lib. iii, sec. 5. 
J Enn. Ill, Lib. vii, sec. 10. 
3 Enn. Ill, Lib. vii, sec. 6. 



6s THE WISDOM OF PLOTINUS 

enters and emerges from the One, yet which never 
leaves Him, but exists around and within and by 
Him. 1 

Time has been identified by some philosophers 
with movement, 2 but this is obviously false, for 
movement can cease but time cannot. Nor is it 
(asserts Plotinus) identical with the measure of 
movement in general, the number of the extension 
which follows movement (as Aristotle says), nor 
a mere consequence or accident of movement (as 
Epicurus pretends). Time, says the Platonist, is 
the Life of the (Universal) Soul, considered in the 
movement by which it passes from one act to an 
other. Its continuous course is composed of equal 
uniform, and insensible changes. The universe exists 
in Time, and therefore in the Soul. Thus time, 
which is one only by continuity, presents an image 
of the unity of the Eternal, and may be itself con 
ceived as the duration of the Life pertaining to 
the Universal Soul. It is engendered by the first 
movement (that of the divine Intelligence) and 
includes all other movements. 3 

If this be a correct account of the matter, it 
follows that the abstraction we call Time is essen 
tially objective, and that so far from its being a 

1 Enn. Ill, Lib. vii, sees. 4, 5. * The Stoics. 
* Enn. Ill, Lib. vii, sees. 10-11. 



A METAPHYSICAL STUDY 63 

mere subjective standard for the measurement 
of events, it were truer to assert that we measure 
time by movements than movements by time. It 
was born with the universe (as Plato has alleged), 
and hence precedes all other movements and pre 
scribes their quantity. It is not, therefore, engen 
dered, but merely indicated, by the revolutions of 
the celestial bodies. As a property of the Soul 
it is one and the same throughout the universe. 1 

Doctrine of T 3- O ne of the most vital elements of 

the Soul. t ] ie S y S tem of Plotinus is that portion 
of it which may be summarily denominated the 
Doctrine of the Soul, comprising his views con 
cerning the following important topics (i) The 
Nature of the Soul of the Universe, (2) that of 
individual souls of every degree, and especially 
those of human beings, (3) the mutual relations 
of individual souls with one another and with the 
soul of the universe, and (4) the precise manner 
and degree in which particular souls may be said 
to belong to or be present on. the phenomenal or 
intelligible planes of existence. His doctrines con 
cerning all these points will, it is hoped, be in some 
measure, incidentally or directly, elucidated in 
this essay, but a separate detailed account and 

Enn. Ill, Lib. vii, sec. 12. 



64 THE WISDOM OF PLOTINUS 

exhaustive criticism of each is quite beyond the 
scope of its intention. 

The Life The external, material or phenomenal 
of Nature. Universe was conceived by Plotinus not 
as a mere inert mass, devoid of real unity and 
congruity an edifice adorned with stocks and 
stones, nor even as a lifeless machine, but as a 
mighty Organism, animated throughout with one 
purposive energy the life of Nature, that is to say, 
her Soul. On the other hand not only does every 
minutest part of its contents participate in greater 
or less degree (potentially or actually) in the life 
of the whole in universality, but conversely every 
such part is not merely and simply a part of the 
universe, but has also a degree of potential or 
actual independence a soul of its own. 1 This 
independence potential merely in the unorganised 
elements of Nature and even in those living creatures 
which participate only in the lower unreasoning 
faculties of the universal soul, and whose vital 
activities are, therefore, absorbed in the functions 
of nutrition and reproduction, is manifested at its 
highest (so far as mere temporal existence is con 
cerned) in Man, and especially in the truly rational 
career of the Sages men who, like wise servants, 
as distinguished from unenlightened slaves, are 
1 Enn. IV, Lib. iv, sees. 26-7. 



A METAPHYSICAL STUDY 65 

able at the same time to obey their master s orders 
(that is to submit to the decrees of Necessity) and 
preserve their essential freedom. 1 

The Plotinus asserts that the Soul is the 

Umversal raison d etre of all things, the supreme 
reason of the phenomenal world, the 
lowest reason of the intelligible world. 2 In Hegelian 
dialectic the different phases of thought, as repre 
sented by the great philosophies, are regarded as 
a series of definitions of the Absolute 3 and that 
phase of the logical idea which corresponds to the 
Universal Soul 4 implies the complete comprehen 
sion and explanation of Nature as a system of 
cause and effect, but is capable of only a prelimin 
ary exposition of the sphere of essential reality 
and ideal perfection. 

In the first place the Universal Soul is to be 
regarded as inhabiting the highest region of the 
intelligible world, and its life is in essence an active, 
impassive and eternal contemplation of the one 
true Being. 5 But the essential or constitutive act 

1 Enn. IV, Lib. iv, sec. 34. 

* Enn. IV, Lib. vi, sec. 3, C, ncerning Memory. 

8 The Logic of Hegel (Wallace), chap, ix, 160, p. 288. 

4 The phase of discursive reason or abstract understand 
ing. Pre- Kantian Metaphysic. Cf. Logic of Hegel (Wal 
lace), chap, iii, p. 60. 

6 Enn. Ill, Lib. viii, sec. 44 

E 



66 THE WISDOM OF PLOTINUS 

of such a being as the Universal Soul is to be care 
fully distinguished from the act which proceeds 
or emanates from it. The first is the essence or 
being itself, the second is its reflex or image, and 
the image of the Universal Soul is the inferior 
but still divine (because universal) principle called 
Nature. 1 In other words the Universal Soul has a 
twofold life and action, in virtue of one of which 
it contemplates and assimilates the ideas of abso 
lute wisdom, while by the other, which contem 
plates its own ideas, thus conceiving the generic 
principles of Nature, it simultaneously regulates 
the corporeal universe, conferring upon matter 
a form resembling, though inferior to, its own. 2 
Individual souls (our own for example) have also 
the potentiality of this twofold manifestation, but 
with them, for reasons presently to be explained, 
the contemplative and regulative functions cannot 
co-exist in perfection, but predominate alternately 
in successive periods of time. Nature is to the 
Universal Soul what the formative, nutritive, 
generative and sensitive faculties of the human soul 
are to the soul proper or human reason, but the 
Universal Soul, as such, although necessarily 

1 Enn. IV, Lib. iv, sec. 13. 
Enn. Ill, Lib. viii, sec. 4. 



A METAPHYSICAL STUDY 67 

cognisant of all the events of past, present and 
future time, owes no part of this knowledge to 
impressions from without, and cannot therefore 
be accredited with sensitivity in the sense in which 
we ourselves possess it. The sensitivity of Nature, 
or that power which is analogous in the material 
universe to the faculty so-called in ourselves, is 
manifested as a vital nexus in virtue of which (as 
Plotinus believed and taught) every minutest 
and remotest part of the universe is intimately 
correlated and sympathetically united to the rest. 1 
The universe as a whole, although thus endowed 
with a potential sensitivity, may nevertheless be 
considered as impassive, because the Soul which 
animates and pervades it has no need of sensations 
for its own enlightenment, and does not, in fact, 
regard them. Nevertheless, and for the simple 
reason that Nature is a living organism, sympathetic 
throughout, individual parts of the universe have 
a quasi-sensitivity, and respond to impressions 
The Basis from without. When, for example, the 
Maglc> stars, in answer to human invocations, 
confer benefits upon men, they do so (says Plotinus) 
not by a voluntary action, but because their natural 
or unreasoning psychical faculties are unconsciously 
affected. 2 Similarly, demons may be charmed 
1 Enn. IV, Lib. iv, sec. 37. Enn. IV, Lib. iv, sec. 42 



68 THE WISDOM OF PLOTINUS 

by spells or prayers acting upon the unreasoning 
part of their nature. 1 

Thus much is conceded to the views of those 
who confide in the efficacy of magical incantations, 
but Plotinus is careful to add that the true philo 
sopher is not only superior to the temptation or 
need to indulge in such practices on his own account, 
but also beyond the reach of injury by those who 
would employ them against him. To pursue that 
which is not, as if it were indeed the true Good, is the 
only possible form of surrender to the charm of 
magical incantations which has any real terrors 
for such as him. 2 

The stars and planets, which on ac- 
The Stars . 

and count of the perfection of their move 
ments and the supposed perpetuity of 
their existence were regarded by Plotinus and 
other philosophers of antiquity as direct mani 
festations of celestial or semi-divine Intelligence, 
are said then to respond to external impressions, 
only unconsciously and incidentally ; and an absolute 
independence of knowledge derived a posteriori, 
by means of impressions as such, is in like manner 
alleged of Nature as a whole. In fact, Nature as 

i Enn. IV, Lib. iv. sec. 43. 
1 Fnn. IV, Lib. iv, sec. 44. 



A METAPHYSICAL STUDY 69 

the reflex or image of the Universal Soul upon 
matter, and as distinguished from that 

Nature an 

Unconscious Soul of whose wisdom it is the passive 

Agent. 

expression, is an unconscious entity. Its 
parts are correlated by a faculty analogous to 
sensibility, but the Soul of the Universe pays no 
heed to these sensations, being already endowed 
with complete and comprehensive knowledge. 1 

The earth itself is in like manner animated by 
an individual soul and intelligence (respectively 
known to mythology as Ceres and Vesta) and, 
as in the case of the stars, the consciousness of 
the Earth-Soul is not necessarily involved in the 
sensitivity by means of which its body is related 
to the universe as a whole. The vegetation which 
clothes the planet is, however, a manifestation 
of the power of the vegetative principle of the 
Earth-Soul, and is fancifully compared by Plotinus 
to the living flesh of an animal body. 2 

Individu- I 4- Something must now be said with 
ality. r egard to the relation of individual souls 

1 Enn. IV, Lib. iv, sec. 13 ; Enn. IV, Lib. iii, sec. 10. 
A common property of all being is to render other beings 
like to itself. Hence the Universal Reason living in and 
by Reason impresses the material universe with q, like 
reasonable nature. 

2 Enn. IV, Lib. iv, sec. 27. 



70 THE WISDOM OF PLOTINUS 

to that Universal Soul of which \ve have just been 
speaking. In the Platonic and Neoplatonic sys 
tems every atom is not merely an atom, but also 
a potential universe, every individual intelligence 
is in like manner, that is, implicitly, a universal 
Mind the so-called intelligible universe. 1 For the 
basis of individuality (which includes 

Its Basis. 

atomicity) is in every case an eternal 
idea, subsisting immutably in the universal mind, 
partaking therefore of the Divine universality, 
but constituting meanwhile the particular intelli 
gence which dominates a given terrestrial career. 2 
But individual souls are also in another aspect 

mere constituent factors of the Universal 

Individuality 

as a Soul which generates and includes them, 

Function . ... 

of the just as, on the material plane, organs 
Universal. an( j mem b ers are a p ar t O f the bodies 

to which they belong, while our bodies are the 
offspring of other bodies, and subject like them 
to the laws which condition matter in general. 3 
Or to use another comparison, just as the distinc 
tion between the formative, sensitive and reason 
ing faculties is compatible with the unity of the 
soul which comprises them, so the existence and 

1 Enn. IV, Lib. iv, sec. 8 ; Enn. IV, Lib. vi. sec. }. 
8 Enn. V, Lib. vii, sec. I. 
8 Eiin. IV, Lib. ix, sec. 4. 



A METAPHYSICAL STUDY 71 

even the independence of individuals is compatible 
with the unity of the Universal Soul. Individual 
souls are therefore distinct without being separate 
from one another and from the soul of the universe. 1 

Plotinus appears to have believed that 
Losmic 
Periods. in the course of ages the general cycl 

of evolution is from time to time interrupted by 
the termination of a great cosmic period. The 
number of creatures of every degree destined to 
be born during one such period is finite, and is 
predetermined by the number of germinal reasons 2 
engendered by the Universal Soul through contem 
plation of the Divine Intelligence and developed 
in sequence of time by the power of Nature. Not 
only is the whole number in question (of germinal 
reasons or forms) embraced by the Universal Soul, 
but every individual soul, being also in a sense 
the whole intelligible universe, comprises within 
itself the potentialities of every living creature 
destined to be born in the period to which a par 
ticular existence of its own belongs. Thus the 
completion of a cosmic period will be determined 
by the due appearance on the material plane of 
the whole series of individuals predestined to be 
born. 3 

i Eim. IV, Lib. ix, sec. i. 2 Psychical germs, monads. 

8 Enn. V, Lib. vii, sec. 3. 



72 THE WISDOM OF PLOTINUS 

The existence of the Divine Intelli- 
Umty and 

Multiplicity gence in virtue of an absolute co-inte- 

of the 

Universal gration of infinite variety with essential 
Soul. 

oneness, is properly described as con 
stituting a multiple Unity, while that of the Universal 
Soul, possessing unity in virtue of its eternal parti 
cipation in the one Divine Being and also as con 
ditioning the existence of a system of individual 
souls, and multiplicity by reason of its presence 
entire in each of these (in the same way as, for 
example, the universal notion is present by implica 
tion in every proposition of science) is truly char- 
acterisable either as a unity or a multiplicity, as 
both One and Many. Or to express the same truth 
in terms of mythology, we may assert with Plotinus 
that in cognising the infinity of his life Jupiter 
(the Demiurge or governor of the world) simulta 
neously observes that his action upon the universe 
is one. 1 

Incarnation I 5- If now w e transfer our attention 
or . to the chief problems connected with 

Descension. 

the existence of individual souls as such, 
a thought which inevitably occurs to us is that, 
being of one substance with the reasonable essence 
which constitutes the governing principle of the 
universe, they must be entitled to some share in 
1 Enn. IV, Lib. iv, sees. 10, n ; Enn. IV, Lib. ii, sec. 2. 



A METAPHYSICAL STUDY 73 

its divine prerogatives. In the case of human 
souls, the constitutive essence or principal power 
of which is not mere sensibility but the compara 
tively-divine faculty of discursive reason or under 
standing, this prima facie claim will naturally 
appear stronger than in that of souls pertaining 
to lower orders of conscious existence. 

The individual soul belongs in virtue of its reason 
able nature to the Reason- World or intelligible order, 
and in so far as it participates in this nature it may 
be said, like the Universal Soul of which it is in 
one sense a part, to inhabit the intelligible universe, 
and to share in the creative and administrative 
powers of the Divine Being. 1 But the individual 
soul is not (even in the case of humanity) a homo 
geneous entity is not merely and entirely reason 
able. As in the Universal Soul we distinguished 
between a principal power whose life was bound up 
with that of the Divine Intelligence and an inferior 
power, called Nature, which was the immediate 
principle and source of natural phenomena and 
even included a sort of impassive quasi-sensitivity, 
so in the case of the human individual we distin 
guish between the constitutive faculty of reason 
properly so called and the natural or unreasoning 

1 Enn. IV, Lib. vii, sec. 3 ; Enn. IV, Lib. viii, sec. 4. 



74 THE WISDOM OF PLOTINUS 

soul which is the formative and. regulative principle 

of the human body, and in virtue of which 
The Natural, 
or Vestigial that body is endowed with sensibility, 

""irritability, and the power of reproduc 
tion in short with animal life. 1 

That element of the human personality which 
alone of its nature belongs immutably and entirely 
to the intelligible order, is not then the constitutive 
or distinctively-human faculty of understanding, 
but the individual mind or intellect, which is the 
principle and source of the reasoning faculty, and 
which, inasmuch as it is of one substance with the 
Universal Mind, and superior, therefore, in essence 
aven to the Universal Soul, were more appropriately 
denominated spirit or essence than soul. But the 
oul, being, not only in virtue of the limitation 
implied by individuality, but also in itself, imper 
fectly reasonable, is necessarily unable 
The Soul 
Imperfectly to maintain itself eternally in the exalted 

Rational. , , . . 

sphere of absolute intelligence. As an 
inhabitant of the intelligible world the soul is only 
^potentially material, but this potentiality of incar 
nation being the unreasonable part of the soul 
litself, a result of its inherent heterogeneity, is bound 
to declare itself, and must be fully actualised, if 
only in order that the power of contemplation 
1 Enn. I, Lib. i, sec. 7, et seq. 



A METAPHYSICAL STUDY 75 

which constitutes its life and the life of all intel 
ligent beings may be exhaustively realised : for 
action itself is, according to Plotinus, merely an 
inferior form of contemplation its end being 
knowledge with possession. Hence arises the neces 
sity of descension, that is the voluntary concentra 
tion by the soul of its powers on the formation 
and regulation of an individual bodily organism 
which is the manifestation of its own inherent 
potentialities, the result of such concentration 
being a partial obliteration of the individual con 
sciousness of affinity with and participation in the 
intelligible order. 1 In other words to express the 
same thought more concretely, and figuratively 
when an individual soul, weary of sharing in the 
administration of the universe, concentrates her 
attention upon herself, she is weakened by this 
isolation, loses her wings, descends from her throne 
and becomes imprisoned in the sphere of necessity. 
For when of this act of self-contemplation the 
desire to belong to herself exclusively is born, an 
image of herself (to wit, the body) is caused to 
appear, and by regarding this image she confers a 

1 Enn. IV, Lib. iii, sees. 13, 15. In descending from 
the intelligible world souls first enter the sky, and then 
assume an aerial body by which they are joined to their 
earthly body. 



76 THE WISDOM OF PLOTINUS 

definite form upon it, and charmed by this form 
enters it, and a living inhabitant of the material 
universe is the result. 1 

This descent into generation on the part of the 
individual soul is at the same time necessary and 
voluntary, or rather, perhaps, instinctive, for it is 
not only a fall from a high estate into a compara 
tively humble and degraded one, but also an example 
of the universal law which ordains that in every 
case the potential shall be fully actualised ; and 
being, so far as individual souls are concerned, 
the only conceivable means by which this law 
could be fulfilled, it may in a certain sense be re 
garded not as a fall but as a normal development. 2 
The Universal Soul, in virtue of its universality, 

is privileged without descension or volun- 
Descension 
the Logical tar Y inclination towards the material 

InSualit y .P lane (consequently without forfeiting 
in any degree the prerogative of Divine 
contemplation) but rather by an act of condescen 
sion or procession to create, uphold and regulate the 
external universe which is its body. 3 But the 



1 Enn. IV, Lib. viii, sec. 4 ; Enn. Ill, Lib. ix, sec. 2. 

a Enn. IV, Lib. viii, sec. 4, cf. also sec. 2. 

8 Enn. II, Lib. ix, sec. 7. It is important to notice 
that individual souls also differ from the Universal Soul, 
In that the bodies which they enter and subsequently 



A METAPHYSICAL STUDY 77 

individual body in order to live safely in a world 
governed with reference not so much to the imme 
diate welfare of individuals as to the justice and 
harmony of the system which comprises them, 
requires a more intimate alliance with the reasonable 
principle to which it owes its being : and hence 
it follows that the individual soul is called upon to 
renounce in a measure the supreme privilege of 
celestial contemplation when by its fall into genera 
tion it voluntarily and legitimately undertakes the 
administration of a particular terrestrial career. 1 
But the individual soul as being essentially 

asonable that is as beill not nl y 

Result of enlightened by the wisdom of an indivi- 
Intelhgence. 

dual intelligence, but even through that 
related to the one celestial wisdom which is its 
ultimate source and goal, has an ineradicable 
tendency towards, and an inalienable privilege 
of returning in due time to, its original state of 
blessedness and repose. So it is that when we 
speak of a soul s conversion we simply imply that 
a fundamentally reasonable principle has begun 
to re-emancipate itself from the bonds of necessity 
and to re-enter its native sphere of liberty and 

control have previously been organised by Nature, the 
express agent of the Universal Soul. 
1 Enn. IV, Lib. viii, sec. 2. 



78 THE WISDOM OF PLOTINUS 

reason. 1 And further, in the case at least of human 
ity, it is even possible to pass through earthly 
life without ever forfeiting entirely the privilege 
in question, for the true philosopher does not 
allow his tranquility to be disturbed by the vicissi 
tudes of earthly existence, estimating at their true 
value, that is as of no essential value, alike the choicest 
gifts and the direst reverses of fortune. It is not 
then absolutely an evil, but in some sense also an 
advantage for the soul, to bestow upon the body 
form and life, because the providential care thus 
accorded to an inferior nature does not prevent 
the being which accords it from itself remaining 
in (or at the worst from ultimately regaining) a 
state of perfection. 2 

Briefly summarised, then, the doctrine of Plotinus 
as to this important point is that our souls descend 
into bodies and become bound to them because 
these require more intimate direction and guardian 
ship than the body of the universe, which is com 
plete and immortal. In so far as this necessary 
fall or descent into " generation," this inclination 
of reason towards the plane of sensibility, is to 
be counted as a fault or sin, it finds its adequate 
and appropriate punishment in the state of limita- 

1 Enn. IV, Lib. viii, sec. 4. 
* Enn. IV, Lib. viii, sec. 2. 



A METAPHYSICAL STUDY 79 

tion which it involves, and in that alone. Plotinus 
recognises, however, the possibility of absolute or 
spiritual wickedness (sin properly so called), which 
he places in a different category and for which 
he hints that full retribution at the hands of demons 
is ultimately exacted. 1 Generally speaking the 
acts committed in each particular existence will 
determine the good or ill fortune experienced by 
Reincar- ^ ne sam e individual soul in the course 
nation. Q f subsequent incarnations. The ad 
herence of Plotinus to the doctrine of metempsy 
chosis, so far as that implies a belief in the alter 
nation of longer or shorter states of spiritual repose 
with successive terms of terrestrial existence, as 
the normal if not inevitable destiny of individual 
souls, is clear and definite. Thus he asserts that 
"it is a universally accepted belief that the soul com 
mits errors, that it expiates them, that it submits to 
punishment in the infernal regions, and that it passes 
into new bodies."* Also he declares that "the gods 
bestow upon each the destiny which pertains to him, 
and which harmonises with his antecedents in his 
successive existences" (Kara d/j,oi/3d<; filwv). " Every one 
who is not aware of this is grossly ignorant of divine 
matters." * With respect to that part of the doctrine, 

1 Enn. IV, Lib. viii, sec. 5. 

Enn. I, Lib. i, sec. 12. 8 Enn. II, Lib. ix, sec. 9, 



8o THE WISDOM OF PLOTINUS 

however, which affirms the possible degradation 
of human souls to the guardianship of animal 
bodies, his tone is more doubtful and his statements 
are less explicit. Thus in one passage he writes, 
if it be true, as they say, that the bodies of animals 
imprison fallen human souls, the part of those 
souls which is separable does not strictly pertain 
St to those bodies. 1 Saint Augustine, an 
Augustine s avowed student and admirer of the 

view of 

Metem- Platonists, and especially of Plotinus 

psychosis. 

much ot whose teaching he has been 
the means of incorporating into Catholic theology, 
takes serious exception to the whole doctrine of 
metempsychosis, asserting that the soul once 
restored to celestial existence is restored for ever. 
The belief of Plotinus would seem to have been 
that while such complete and permanent restora 
tion, if conceivable, is at any rate very exceptional, 
the normal course of events is that by every sojourn 
on the intelligible plane the individual is perma 
nently raised to a higher grade of spirituality, so 
that upon the occasion of each successive descent 
into generation there is a considerable improve 
ment upon the conditions of the last. It is curious 
Reticence that Plotinus, who was born more than 

3.S tO 

Christianity, two centuries after Christ, whose revered 
1 Enn. II, Lib. lx, sec. 8. 



A METAPHYSICAL STUDY 81 

master Ammonius had at one time been a 
professed believer, and who must during the 
long terms of his residence at Rome and Alexandria 
have taken part in many discussions and conver 
sations concerning the new religion, has not in his 
Enneads a single unequivocal reference to Christi 
anity. His only known contribution to religious 
controversy of any kind is the ninth book of the 
second Ennead, which is devoted to the refutation 
of the tenets of Gnosticism, a hybrid product of 
Christianity and Zoroastrianism which would assur 
edly be repudiated with scorn (and justly so) l by 
the rational adherents of either. 

16. Returning now to the considera- 

The World- ,. , J 

Soul as tlon ot the material universe, we will 
Movement, con clude what is to be said of its relation 
to the immaterial principle to which 
it owes its existence. In the first place it is to be 
noted that its vital harmony and unity are an 
image (imperfect for reasons already stated) of 
the essential unity of the universal being. Our 
own world, everywhere approaching the universal 
being, finds it everywhere present and everywhere 
greater than itself. Hence, according to Plotinus, 
the tendency to a "circular" movement on the part 

1 In the main, but there were many kinds and degrees of 
Gnosticism. 



82 THE WISDOM OF PLOTINUS 

of the heavenly bodies, such movement being 

regarded as an expression of aspiration to the 

universal. Hence, too (may we not add), those 

analogous movements in time which 

Development appear ^ ^ phenomena of growth 

and development and the ever-broadening and 
ascending spirals of cosmic and organic evolution. 
This omnipresent and inexhaustibly-active Soul 
is then the immediate ontological basis on which 
the material world reposes, and includes the said 
world in virtue not of spatial magnitude but of 
universality. Without occupying any determinate 
locality it is nevertheless present in equal degree 
(that is, as a whole) in every locality, and every 
individual being partakes of its power, unity and 
universality in greater or less degree. The Uni 
versal Soul being infinitely greater in power and 
splendour than the universe itself, imparts but 
little of itself to that universe, but imparts, never 
theless, all that the latter is capable of receiving. 1 
This principle of unity, in advancing (so far as it 
can be said to advance) towards other things, 
appears to become multiple, and in fact does be 
come so in certain respects. Nevertheless the 
Universal Being is so constituted that it can never 
be separated from absolute unity, which is vir 
tually present wherever it manifests its activity, 
1 Enn. VI, Lib. iv, sec. 5. 



A METAPHYSICAL STUDY 83 

and which is the ultimate source and goal of all 
that exists, for all that exists is One. Thus the 
corporeal mass of the universe possesses, poten- 
tially or by implication, the whole omnipresent 
Being in every one of its component parts. 1 
And Life. When * P arti cular body acquires life, 
the soul which, as an organ of the uni 
versal, is destined to animate it, does not actually 
descend into or become identified with it, but 
rather the body comes within the sphere of its in 
fluence and thus attains to the world of life* Life 
is metaphorically described as a sort of heat or light 
emanating from the soul and engendering in the 
body appetites, pleasures and pains. Thus the body, 
as representative of the comparatively - formless 
and indefinite, makes its voice heard in that part 
of the animal nature which is, as it were, common 
to itself and the soul, just as a confused crowd, 
impelled by hunger or some other passion, might 
besiege a deliberative assembly seeking for guidance 
and control. This guidance and control is, in 
fact, conceded by the One Reason to the body of the 
universe and by individual souls to particular 
bodies. But the individual soul in listening to 
this appeal and consenting to undertake this re 
sponsibility, enters into commerce with, and, as 

1 Enn. VI, Lib. iv, sees. 8-9. 

2 Enn. VI, Lib. iv, sec. 16. 



84 THE WISDOM OF PLOTINUS 

it were, borrows something from nonentity ; and 
ceasing, therefore, in some degree to be consciously 
at one with the universal, becomes a limited or 
determinate being. 1 

Plotinus warns us that we are not 

M Sp?ritSS? crudely to picture to ourselves the. world 

locally Q jd eas as ex i s ting on the one hand 

separated. 

separate from the world of matter, and 
matter on the other as located apart from it ; 
and then to imagine an irradiation from the one 
above to the other below. Such a conception, 
literally interpreted, would in fact be meaningless. 
This irradiation is not strictly comparable, for 
example, to the reflection of a flame in water; 
nor again is matter locally separated from those 
ideas which are the archetypes of the transient 
forms which it assumes. On the contrary, the 
matter is rather to be conceived as surrounding 
the idea on all sides, impinging upon it, so to 
speak, without contact, and receiving from it all 
that in virtue of its vicinity it is capable of receiving, 
without intermediation, but also without com 
plete permeation by the idea, which latter con 
tinues meanwhile to subsist in and for itself. 2 

1 Enn. VI, Lib. iv, sees. 15-16. 

2 Enn. VI, Lib. v, sec. 8. N.B. The modern scientific 
hypothesis of a space of four (or more) dimensions, and 
of a four-dimensioned order of existence, concealed from 



A METAPHYSICAL STUDY 85 

17. By a natural and inevitable pro- 
intelligence, , ,. 
and the gression the act of contemplation which 

"world* 16 cons titutes in essence the life of every 
individual, and indeed that of Humanity 
as a whole, rises by degrees from Nature to Soul, 
from Soul to Intelligence. 1 Following the same 
order we pass now to the consideration of that 
sphere of divine reality, yet ideal perfection, which 
is partially and temporarily veiled from our ken 
by the self-imposed limitations of terrestrial exis 
tence. The human soul (as understanding) in its 
acts of judgment adapts to perceived or remem 
bered sensuous presentations the principles which 
it possesses ; in conformity with these principles 
all its judgments are made, and to them the truth 
and universality of such judgments (in so far as 
they prove to be true and universal) is directly 
attributable. 2 It is obvious, asserts Plotinus, that 

The ideal wuen we declare that such or such a 
Basis picture is beautiful, such or such an 

ol the 

Judgment, action virtuous or the reverse, and 
when, moreover, our confident expectation that 



us, and yet in close propinquity to our own, would seem 
to be based upon much the same conception as that which 
Plotinus here endeavours to express. 

1 Enn. Ill, Lib. viii, sec. 7, 

2 Enn. Ill, Lib. viii, sec. 4. 



86 THE WISDOM OF PLOTINUS 

this verdict of ours will be universally confirmed 
proves well-founded, we demonstrate the exist 
ence within ourselves of some absolute and in 
controvertible authority, an oracle whose pro 
nouncements we may misconceive or misinterpret 
but which cannot in themselves be otherwise than 
authoritative and true. 1 Nor can it fairly be con 
tended that the standard in question is furnished 
by terrestrial experience, for to which of us has life 
here below ever afforded the spectacle of actual 
moral or even physical perfection ? The standard 
is one of desire, of unrealised aspiration, and the 
great point is that upon the whole the standard 
of each (as evidenced by the appre- 
<^ ation or display of approximations to it) 
Criteria. p roves to ^ e the standard of all. Despite 
the flaw of imperfection which characterises all 
terrestrial experiences, there are but few mortals 
who do not believe themselves capable of recog 
nising perfection, given the opportunity, few even 
who are not, more or less consciously, more or less 
arduously and persistently, endeavouring to adapt 
their own lives, in some one way at least, to the 
universal standard. 

When in moments of doubt and perplexity, the 
still small voice of the oracle is heard, its accents 

1 Enn. V, Lib. i, sec. n. 



A METAPHYSICAL STUDY 87 

are by most of us instinctively recognised as divine, 
and its decrees therefore spontaneously adopted 
by the understanding and promulgated in terms 
of speech or action ; but it is only the elect who 
deliberately set themselves to penetrate the shrine, 
and standing at length face to face with the in 
dwelling deity, discover in its features a trans 
figuration of their own. 

Very clearly, and withal beautifully 
Ascension. 

has Saint Augustine, in a passage which 

was probably inspired by the study of Plotinus, 
indicated the phases of this ascension from the 
world of seeming to the world of Truth. "For 
examining " (he writes) " what caused me to 
admire the beauty of bodies celestial or terrestrial ; 
and what was of service to me in judging soundly 
on things changeable, and pronouncing This 
ought to be thus, this not ; examining, I say, 
what was the cause of my so judging, seeing I 
did so judge, I had found the unchangeable and 
true Eternity of Truth, above my changeable 
mind. And thus by degrees I passed from bodies 
to the soul, which perceives through the senses 
of the body ; and thence to its inward faculty, 
to which the bodily senses communicate external 
things ; and so far, even beasts possess it ; and 
thence further to the reasoning faculty, to which 



88 THE WISDOM OF PLOTINUS 

is referred, for the exercise of judgment upon it, 
whatsoever is received from the bodily senses. 
"That And when this found itself in me also to 
Which is." b e a changeable thing, it raised itself 
up to its own understanding, and diverted my 
thought from habit, withdrawing itself from those 
troops of contradictory phantasms : that so it 
might discover what that light was, by which it 
was bedewed, when without any doubtfulness 
it cried out That the unchangeable must be 
preferred to the changeable ; whence also it 
knew the unchangeable itself, without some know 
ledge of which it could not with certainty have 
preferred it to the changeable. And thus with 
the flash of one trembling glance it arrived at 
THAT WHICH is. And then saw I Thy invisible 
things understood by the things which are made 
(Rom. i. 20)." l 

Abstract ^ w ^ be remembered that in speaking 
Intelligence. of the \Vorld-Soul we distinguished be 
tween a principal activity in virtue of which it 
contemplates the Divinity, and an inferior faculty 
called Nature, which simultaneously regulates the 
material universe. Every individual soul has also 

1 The Confessions of S. Augustine (Revised Trans.), 
bk. vii, chap, xvii, p. 128. 



A METAPHYSICAL STUDY 89 

an inferior part directed towards the body and the 
external environment, and a superior faculty directed 
towards the individual intelligence and related 
thus to the intelligible world as a whole. But, in 
this life, the still higher faculty, intellect or pure 
reason, is actualisable, as a part of the normal 
consciousness, only in the case of humanity (the 
reasoning animal), and, in the supreme degree, 
only in exceptionally favoured individuals and 
under specially favourable circumstances, even 
in man. In order to envisage the Reason World, 
the intelligence itself has, in the first place, simply 
to be thought (for, according to the Platonist, specu 
lative thought is actual vision), 1 and, to this end, 
Plotinus directs us, in examining as factors of 
consciousness the several determinate modes of 
our own existence, to make abstraction of the 
formative, nutritive, sensitive, and even of the 
reasoning faculties, and to contemplate by means 
of the intellectual imagination, alluded to above, 
that reflex of the informing light or essence which 
remains. 2 But this light enters the soul in an 
indivisible form, and ordinarily reveals itself to 
consciousness, only indirectly, by illuminating the 
multiple presentations of the sensuous imagination. 

1 Enn. V, Lib. i, sec. 5. a "Enn. V, Lib. iii, sec. 9. 



9 o THE WISDOM OF PLOTINUS 

In other words, the ideas of pure reason can only 
be figuratively conceived or expressed in terms 
of the common understanding. Nevertheless, by 
every such influx of pure light the soul is intellec- 
tualised and raised to a higher plane of consciousness, 
u itil, at last, its activities may be merged in those 
of the intelligence itself, which it then beholds not 
as an image or irradiation, but as actually present, 
or even as one with itself. To the view of such 
an emancipated consciousness the whole perfection 
of the intelligible universe is unfolded, and con 
stitutes the sum of reality, all that which to a super- 
ficial scrutiny appears evil and fortuitous in the 
nature of things either ceasing to exist or appearing 
once for all in its true and necessary relations. 1 

The The Universal Soul, regarded as the 

Intelligible principle of Nature, is, as we have already 

World is a * 

Multiple explained, both one and many : it 
reconciles, or seeks to reconcile, the 
extremes of integrity and aloofness, of universality 
and individualisation. In the Divine Intelligence 
this reconciliation of opposites, which appears in 
Nature as a perpetual but never-accomplished 
tendency, is absolute and eternal. Nature, then, 
is unity and multiplicity, but the archetype of 

1 Enn. IV, Lib. iii, sec. 30 ; Enn. V, Lib. iii, sec. 5. 



91 

Nature (the Reason World) is a multiple unity, 
a unity-totality. 1 

In this and all other respects, the constitution 
of the intelligible world is precisely that which 
would meet the requirements of a flawless logic, 
but, nevertheless, the form of belief or conviction, 
which arises from the use of the common under 
standing, is here superseded by the form of truth 
or apodictical necessity, and the reasoning process, 
as such, is in like manner superseded by direct and 
actual knowledge. 2 

The life and being of the Divine Intelli- 
are absolutely free and self- 



T . OI ?i- th Ki determined and, nevertheless (for the 
Intelligible 

Plane statements are in fact identical), the 
are one. 

structure and order of the Reason World 

are absolutely necessitated. Liberty is, in essence, 
freedom from extraneous compulsion, and the 
Divine Intelligence is that which it is, because, 
being such as it is, and so alone, it conforms in all 
respects to the perfect law which is its own being. 3 
But the Intelligible Universe, or, as we should say, 
the Spiritual World, is by no means to be regarded 

1 Enn. V, Lib. 1, sec. 8. This doctrine is here attributed 
by Plotinus to Parmenides. 
1 Enn. VI, Lib. ii, sec. 21. 
Enn. VI, Lib. viii, sec. 6. 



92 THE WISDOM OF PLOTINUS 

as a mere figment of subjective, imagination. On 
the contrary, not only has it actual and substantial 
existence, but it constitutes the one, supreme and 
comprehensive actuality, contrasted with which 
the substance and even the forms of the phenomenal 
order are mere phantasmal hallucinations. It is 
objective truth, concrete reality, the divine source 
of all wisdom, virtue and beauty. How else 
account for the simplest facts of evolution ? for 
Evolution tllat which, in any department, we recog- 
nise as the latent S crm of a possible 
improvement on previous conditions, 
could never realise itself, if there did 
not exist anteriorly an active superior principle, 
of which superior principle the new development, 
in its mature state, is to be the direct and outward 
manifestation. 1 

Before we proceed with our attempt to exhibit 
the Plotinian idea of an intelligible order, the reader 
should be reminded that in the Neoplatonist system 
the Universal Intelligence itself ranks but as the 
second in power and dignity, the supremacy being 
assigned to that ineffable principle to which we 
have already referred as the first Divine Hypostasis, 
the Good, or the One. We have said that the 

1 Enn. IV, Lib. vii, sec. 8, 14. In opposition to the 
materialistic developmental hypothesis of the Stoics. 



A METAPHYSICAL STUDY 93 

Intelligence was to be regarded as the supreme 
actuality, and this remains true ; for the nature 
of the One is superior to thought, being, actuality ; 
superior, therefore, to the Divine Intelligence itself ; 
which latter remains, nevertheless, the Absolute 
Reason, the first thinking essence, and the One 
Being, par excellence, spoken of by Plato and Plotinus 
as the Animal That Is, and, more simply, by Saint 
Augustine as That Which Is. 

There is distinction without separa- 

Intelhgence 

as active tion between the Intelligence and the 

Contempla- ~ 

tion of the One ; for the latter, although in a 
sense unknowable (for the nature of 
the First Divine Hypostasis can only be negatively 
determined by human reason) is not so to the 
Universal Intelligence. The life of the Divine 
Intelligence is essentially an active contemplation 
of, aspiration to, and attainment of, the nature 
of the One ; and although it is doubtless true that 
the being and life of the Intelligence are absolutely 
self-determined, it is, nevertheless, and in equal 
degree, the fact that the Intelligence receives it s 
life and being from the One. The life and being 
of the Intelligence are self-derived and self-deter 
mined, because the contemplation in question (of 
the One by the Intelligence) is an eternal act, not 
something which had a beginning and comes to an 



94 

end in time, and not the merely passive receipt 
of an impression. 1 

But, although the Divine Intelligence aspires 
to, and even assimilates, the nature of the Good, 
it receives that nature not in its own simplicity 
and formless unity, nor, on the other hand, so dis 
persed and broken as to forfeit the seal of its divine 
origin, but differentiated in such a way as to exhibit 
|a single Universal Being of infinite grandeur and com 
plexity. In other words, the Intelligence becomes 
a multiple unity in the act of thinking and realising 
fie principle superior to itself. In attempting to 
apprehend the simplicity of the One it withdraws 
from that very simplicity, and in thus emerging 
from the One, bearing with it as the multiple object 
of its thought an impression of the nature of the 
One, it becomes essence, consciousness, life, thought 
in short, the intelligible universe. 2 

Primal l8 - If now we steadfastly examine 
or Ekments the conc eption of an absolute and self- 

Noti on sustained Bein S which results from the 

foregoing considerations, we necessarily 

become aware of certain generic ideas which are 

common to every phase of intelligible existence, 

which, therefore, are associated in the Plotinian 

1 Enn. VI, Lib. vii, sec. 17. 

2 Enn. VI, Lib. vii, sec. 15 ; Enn. V, Lib. iii, sec. n. 



A METAPHYSICAL STUDY 95 

system as prime categories or elements of the notion. 
The first step in the direction of this free and neces- 1 
sary development is taken when the reason dis 
tinguishes between itself as thinking subject and 
the idea which (although permanently and essen 
tially identical with itself) is its object. If, next, 
we proceed to exhibit the several component ideas 
implied by the first step of our analysis (thus carry 
ing this preliminary process to its logical termi 
nation, and returning to the point from which we 
set out), we obtain, first, essence or true being (the 
substance of the intelligible universe), then thought 
(i) as permanent idea, or stability, (2) as movement, 
or life, and, finally, we recognise both (i) the differ 
ence and (2) the identity of the several terms of 
the whole conception. 1 

Essence. 

Movement. Difference. 

Stability. Identity. 

These categories, or genera, are common to every 
phase, or species, of the universal Notion. 

In other words, the sum of reality, essence, or, 
as we should say, Spirituality, may with equal 
truth be conceived as (i) a process ; (2) a scheme 
or order ; (3) subjective or intelligent, (4) objective 

1 Enn. VI, Lib. ii, sec. 8. 



96 THE WISDOM OF PLOTINUS 

or intelligible ; the complete demonstration of any 
one of these modes or aspects being tantamount 
to the exposition of them all. 
Universal T 9- ^ n contemplating the Good, the 
um er. j)j vme Intelligence conceives, creates, 
contemplates and comprehends (not as they subsist 
in the Good, but so as it can receive them) the 
spiritual entities whose form is an image of the 
nature of the Good. In order that the multiplicity 
which thus arises may be itself an image of the 
unity which is its principle, it must have, as it 
were, a unity of its own, and, at the same time, in 
order to constitute itself, like that principle, a 
measure of all things, it must be complete and 
comprehensive, finite-infinite, or, in one word, 
universal. 1 Doubtless this conception of a uni 
versal number constituting the fundamental law 
of intelligible existence, is, in common with all 
universals, from the point of view of the empirical 
understanding an impossible one. We cannot 
mathematically (or spatially) represent to ourselves 
a number which shall combine the cate- 

Hegel on 

Universals gories of finitude and infinity, or, rather, 

as Laws. 

which shall be itself the common prin 
ciple whence both conceptions arise. But, as 
Hegel has pointed out, even in the domain of 

1 Enn. VI, Lib. vi, sec. 9 ; ibid. sec. 18. 



A METAPHYSICAL STUDY 97 

physical science, the existence of universals, that 
is, of laws, cannot be apprehended or even repre 
sented by the senses. "The kind, as kind, cannot 
be perceived : the laws of the celestial motions 
are not written on the sky. The universal is 
neither seen nor heard, its existence is only for the 
mind." Similarly, in the matter of conduct, 
where duties and rights hold the rank of laws, an 
action is True when it conforms to those universa 
formulae. But we cannot give any adequate 
representation of such notions as these of right 
and duty, which nevertheless are available to us all. 
It was by the use of the speculative reason or 
intellectual imagination that Plotinus was led to 
conclude the necessary and even (in opposition to 
Aristotelian doctrine) the substantial existence of 
universals ; and it is only when he proceeds to 
endeavour to express the result in terms of the 
understanding that he finds it necessary to modify 
every statement by an, at first sight, contradictory 
one, suggesting rather than logically expressing 
his fundamental thought, and finally leaving the 
whole in this necessarily imperfect form to be 
assimilated and re-intellectualised by the mind of 
the reader. 

This universal and essential number, whose 
existence is implied by that of Universal Reason, 

G 



q8 THE WISDOM OF PLOTINUS 

is the principle by movement in accordance with 
which that Reason (retaining meanwhile its uni 
versality) becomes differentiated and individualised 
throughout. In the Divine Intelligence, as such, 
it is identified by Plotinus with the acts which 
appear in the life of that Intelligence, namely, 
justice, wisdom, science, and the like. In other 
words, it exists as eveloped in the Being, as deve 
loped in the Beings, of the intelligible world. The 
unity of the Intelligence is thus, as it were, con 
tinuous, that is, it engenders by its own essential 
movement or life the multiplicity which it com 
prises. 1 

Number 20. The participation of beings and 
llty objects in unity on the one hand, and 
multiplicity on the other, is, according to Plotinus, 
a part of the subject of their participation in intel 
ligible forms, or ideas. For unity, as found in the 
several parts of the material universe, however 
advantageous, is in a sense accidental, but as it 
exists in intelligible beings, and especially in the 
One Being par excellence, it is essential and self- 
subsistent. And as universal number is the measure 
of the life of the universal Being, so every individual 
intelligence, every idea, has its constitutive number 

1 Enn. VI, Lib. vi, sec. 15. 



A METAPHYSICAL STUDY 99 

or measure, in harmony with which it abides and 
is manifested. 

These essential numbers, and the ideas 

Essential or 

Constitutive to which they correspond likewise, as 

Number . 

of the a l so the universal number itself, are 

Individual. , ,, ,. , 

implicitly or immediately present in the 
background (so to speak) of every human con 
sciousness, but it is only when they are mediated 
by the recognition of their manifestation in other 
beings and objects that they become truly our own. 
Thus, the explicit number which we recognise in a 
particular object, and which becomes related to us 
(becomes our own) in the act of numeration, is itself 
a manifestation of essential number, not therefore 
merely a product of our own subjective activity. 1 
Every human intelligence possesses, moreover, 
a constitutive number or essential harmony special 
to itself, and immediately related to the universal 
number. The soul and the body (severally or in 
vital unison) may also be regarded as numbers, 
but the participation of the latter in unity proper 
is at best precarious and incomplete. 

21. Plotinus teaches that on the intel- 
Time and 

Space in ligible plane time is replaced or super- 
Eternity. 

seded by eternity, and space by the 

propriety which determines that certain intelli- 
1 Enn. VI, Lib. vi, sec. 16. 



TOO THE WISDOM OF PLOTINUS 

gibles shall contain, or be contained by others. 1 
Taken as they stand these statements afford 
but little assistance in the task of reconstructing 
for ourselves his notion of an intelligible uni 
verse. 

Fortunately, however, the careful study of the 
Enneads will enable us in several important par 
ticulars to supplement the poverty and eluci 
date the obscurity of these preliminary proposi 
tions. 

A fundamental factor in the system of Plotinus 

is unwavering belief in the validity of 

Sy Tnthe m an all ~und symbolic interpretation of 

System of N a ^- ure< ^.3 concrete Nature is a symbol 

Plotinus. 

of the absolute and universal, so, in like 
manner, individual abstractions from the formal 
factors of ordinary reflective consciousness are 
symbols of the corresponding ideas of pure intelli 
gence. Thus time is a symbol of eternity, and 
space an image of the ideal unity of the apparently- 
opposed principles of universality and individuality, 
difference and identity. Hence the possibility of 
idealising our conceptions of time and space and 
thereby attaining to real knowledge of the corre 
sponding modes of intelligible existence. 

1 Enn. V, Lib. ix, sec. 10. 



A METAPHYSICAL STUDY 101 

This, of course, is precisely what is 
view of controverted by the critical philosophy 
"space" * Immanuel Kant, who, denying to 
time and space any objective existence, 
and regarding them as mere subjective (though 
pure and a priori) forms of, respectively, internal 
and external sensibility, asserts that their sole use 
as modes of actual cognition is to enable the under 
standing to arrive at conceptions of, and judgments 
concerning the data of common experience. Any 
conclusions with regard to supra-sensuous existence, 
based upon argument in terms of space and time, 
he utterly and even scornfully repudiates, even 
where (as in the case of Plotinus) such argument 
consistently proceeds on the supposition, not of 
the identity, but of the analogy of the two modes 
of thought and existence. 1 

We will not presume to enter here 
Hegel on the 
Subjective upon any serious examination of the 

oMfcmt Kantian position. The publication of 

the/ Critique of Pure Reason " constitutes, 

doubtless, an important epoch in the history of 

Philosophy, but it is doubtful whether Kant has 

succeeded in anything like the degree he supposed 

1 Critique of Pure Reason (Immanuel Kant), First Part 
of the Transcendental Doctrine of Elements : Space and Time. 
pp. 21-47. F. Haywood s tr. ed. of 1848. 



102 THE WISDOM OF PLOTINUS 

in determining the possibilities of speculative 
science. Hegel said, long ago, " People in the 
present day have got over Kant and his philosophy : 
everybody wants to get further." There are many 
who believe that Hegel himself got further ; but 
at any rate the remark was a true one, based on a 
sound faith in the invincible aspiration of human 
reason towards the Absolute. To deny to cognition 
the characteristics of universality and necessity, or, 
in other words, to deny that the truth is essentially 
knowable, is to controvert a belief so instinctive 
and fundamental that we (as inheritors and trustees 
of the wisdom of antiquity) may well hesitate long 
and consider deeply before, by acquiescence, we 
commit ourselves to the implied renunciation. 
It may nevertheless be expedient that, for the 
present, metaphysical ability should be devoted 
not so much to the construction of original systems, 
as to the examination of those of acknowledged 
masters. 

When Plotinus denies that the forms 

Eternal 

Truth not of intelligential existence may be ade- 

Unknowable. 

quately expressed in terms of time and 
space, he does not by any means intend to convey 
the impression that the attempt so to conceive or 
express them is altogether barren and futile, or 
that the ideal as such is essentially unknowable. 



A METAPHYSICAL STUDY 103 

On the contrary, he asserts that in the sphere of 
intelligence every object is essentially the cognition 
of itself by absolute and universal Reason. 1 Inas 
much, therefore, as we dwell at once in time and 
eternity, and that, even as inhabitants of the 
sensible universe, we all participate in the Reason 
that is one and indivisible, we cannot but participate 
in the knowledge of its ideal content. But the 
conceptions which by ordinary cognition we form 
of the objects of the sensible universe do not corre 
spond exactly with those objects themselves, that 
is, have not the form of true knowledge, but of 
more or less enlightened opinion. For these pri 
mary concepts or judgments result from the action 
of the understanding upon the plurality of sensible 
impressions or of empirical perceptions, whereby 
that plurality, being co-ordinated in terms of time 
or space, receives, not absolute, but relative and 
proximate unity. If the said unification were 
perfectly effected, the nature of the objects them 
selves would be perfectly known, and they would, 
from the first, appear to us not merely as objects 
of the phenomenal universe, but sub specie aeterni- 
tatis. In so far as the said unification is in fact by 
each one of us accomplished, the forms of time and 
space, which were the means of co-integrating the 
1 Enn. VI, Lib. vi, sec. 6. 



104 THE WISDOM OF PLOTINUS 

sensuous plurality and the ideal unity, are superseded 

and we become cognisant of essential 
Science. 

verity. Thus the universe of absolute 

science and the ideal or intelligible universe are ulti 
mately identical, and it is only as limitations to the 
free development of reason, only, that is, in their 
immediate and empirical origin, that objective 
thoughts or experiences need partake of the nature 
of illusion. 

Of course to the consistent idealist (and such 
was Plotinus) the apparently accidental circum 
stances which determine our bodily sensations, or 
other " external " experiences, are, in fact, for 
the most part, not accidental at all, but are vitally 
related to, and in a measure determined by, the 
spontaneous growth of consciousness, or develop 
ment of the soul. This correspondence between 
the nature of the individual mind and the facts of 
individual experience is, however, on the material 
plane, very imperfect, and to a superficial observer 
appears even more so ; but on the spiritual plane 
it is absolute, so much so that it becomes a matter 
of indifference whether we regard the factors of 
conscious existence as thoughts or sensations. 
Hence an aphorism of Plotinus to the effect that 
while the sensations of terrestrial existence may be 
regarded as obscure thoughts, the thoughts of intel- 



A METAPHYSICAL STUDY 105 

ligential existence are equivalent to clear sensations. 
In other words, time and space in the ideal universe 
exist not as limitations but as freely-adopted forms 
of the spontaneous activity of conscious essence 
or spirit. 1 

22. The account given of Paradise by 
Functions Dante in his "Divine Comedy," based as 
.^ was in P art on tne study of Aristotle, 
Plat0 and other heathen philosophers, 
and in part on theological researches, 
may, with certain important reservations, be re 
garded as the attempt of a magnificent intellect 
to give concrete form to this very conception of 
an intelligible or spiritual and ideal universe. It 
is interesting therefore to note that the conclusions 
just arrived at, as to the role of time and space as 
forms of intelligible existence, are confirmed by 
the poem in question. Thus, when the attention 
of Dante in Paradise is directed by St. Bernard to 
where, far above them, Beatrice sits enthroned 
on the third tier from the highest of those radiant 
spirits who conform the beauty of the heavenly 
rose, the poet first narrates how 

" Answering not, mine eyes I raised 
And saw her, where aloof she sat, her brow 
A wreath reflecting of eternal beams." 

1 Enn. VI, Lib. vii, sec. 7. 



106 THE WISDOM OF PLOTINUS 

And then, as if in astonishment, continues 

" Not from the centre of the sea so far 
Unto the region of the highest thunder, 
As was my ken from hers ; and yet the form 
Came through that medium down, unmixed and pure." 

In other words, the perception and the creation 
of beauty in Paradise are one ; for Dante s ascent 
from height to height of glory has been the logical 
manifestation of his own growth in grace, the 
normal expression, and visible aspect, of inward 
and spiritual change. 

This harmony or, at least, analogy between the 
teaching of Plotinus on the one hand and the 

Time in iniagery of Dante on the other holds 

Eternity. g OQ( j ^.j^ n ,g lir( j to the ideal function 
not of space only, but also of time. For example, 
in the tenth canto of the " Paradise," Beatrice is 
referred to as 

" She who passeth on 
So suddenly from good to better, time 
Counts not the act." 

But the points of correspondence of poet and 
philosopher on this subject do not end here. Ploti 
nus asserts that in the intelligible universe no one 
substance presents, by reason of impenetrability, 

1 Dante s Divine Comedy (Gary). Paradise, Canto xxxi, 
64, et seq. 



A METAPHYSICAL STUDY 107 

an obstacle to the movements of another, any 
more than different notions in a single mind are 
mutually exclusive. 1 So when Dante is approach 
ing the lowest or lunar paradise, its substantiality 
is first of all clearly indicated, or rather insisted 
upon 

" Meseemed as if a cloud had covered iis, 
Translucent, solid, firm, and polished bright, 
Like adamant which the sun s beam had smit." 

But, nevertheless, and this in despite of the fact 
that Dante was still " of corporeal frame," not, 
like his conductor, an emancipated intelligence 

Within itself the ever-during pearl 
Received us, as the wave a ray of light 
Receives, and rests unbroken." * 

What is this but a sublime illustration of the ideal 
function of space as implied by the doctrine of 
Plotinus ? 

The same principle affords a guide to the inter 
pretation of a statement of Plotinus to the effect 
that every point of the intelligible universe is also 
the actual centre of that universe. " There exist 
in the intelligible world a multitude of beings which 
occupy respectively the first, second or third rank of 
dignity, but as all are, so to speak, suspended alike 

1 Enn. VI, Lib. v, sec. 10. 

2 Dante s Divine Comedy (Gary), Canto ii, 31, et seq. 



io8 THE WISDOM OF PLOTINUS 

from the one omnipresent point of Divinity, and 
there find themselves united without barrier or interval, 
it follows that those beings which occupy the first 
or second rank are equally present among those which 
occupy the third rank. " 1 Now, according to the 
system of Dante, there are no less than ten heavens, 
located in, or rather symbolised by the seven 
planets ; the eighth sphere comprising (i) the fixed 
stars, (2) the primum mobile, and (3) the empy 
rean. 

But when in the heart of Dante doubts perforce 
arise with respect to the justice of the decree in 
accordance with which certain spirits are (as he 
at first crudely and falsely supposes) absolutely 
confined to the lowest or lunar paradise, he is in 
part reassured by the expressions of bliss and 
tranquil contentment made by the individuals 
in question, and exclaims 

" Then saw I clearly how each spot in heaven 
Is Paradise, though with like gracious dew 
The supreme virtue show r not over all." * 

And subsequently his remaining doubts and mis 
givings are dispelled by Beatrice herself, who 
assures him that 

1 Enn. VI, Lib. v, sec. 4. 

2 Paradise, Canto iii, 88, et seq. 



A METAPHYSICAL STUDY 109 

" Of seraphim he who is most ensky d, 
Moses and Samuel, and either John, 
Choose which thou wilt, nor even Mary s self, 
Have not in any other heav n their seats, 
Than have those spirits which so late thou saw st, 
Nor more or fewer years exist." l 

But, she explains 

" Here were they shown thee, not that fate assigns 
This for their sphere, but for a sign to thee 
Of that celestial furthest from the height." * 

Certain features in Dante s description of Paradise 
in these and other passages of his work are obviously 
inspired by theological and doctrinal rather than 
by philosophical considerations, and in applying 
the poet s ideas to the elucidation of the Plotinian 
conception of an intelligible order all such features 
must of course be rejected. 

Universal 2 ^ Objectively regarded the intelligible 
Differentia- order may then be defined as universal 

tion. 

spatml differentiation, characterised in 
every phase by absolute formal perfection and ideal 
unity. It is coincident with, and in fact constitutes 
the entire field of Truth, and contains within its 
bosom a sort of figure or scheme whereby its poten 
tialities or constituent ideas are indicated and 
circumscribed. Subjectively regarded, that is as 

1 Ibid., Canto iv, 28. Ibid., Canto iv, 37. 



no THE WISDOM OF PLOTINUS 

the Divine or Universal Intelligence, it is an eternal 
process of combined spiritual evolution 

Involution 

and and involution, characterised through- 
Evolution. 

out by absolute wisdom and prescience, 

which traverses completely the said field of verity, 
exhibiting thus a schematism of time, analogous 
to, and in fact identical with the spatial schematism 
of form. 1 

With respect to the beings which inhabit 

Intelligible 

Units as tin 1 intelligible sphere, it may be stated 
Types. 

at once that all creatures whatsoever, 

even those which we (as we know them) are accus 
tomed to contemn as vile and worthless, exist 
there also. For nothing exists in any degree save 
as the more or less perfect manifestation of a flaw 
less conception of divine wisdom. These ideas 
or individual forms (iiSa aro^a) are the types or 
intelligible units (monads) which, conceived in 
accordance with the principle of universal number 
(or harmony), are the actual denizens of the intel 
ligible universe, and as such are in every case 
participators to the full degree required by their 
respective natures in the divine perfection to 
which they contribute. 2 

1 Enn. VI, Lib. vii, sees. 13-14. 
a Enn. VI, Lib. vii, sees. 8-9. 



A METAPHYSICAL STUDY in 

In the " Prometheus Unbound " of Shelley 

The 

Idealism there occurs an exquisitely imagined 
of Shelley 

and passage in which the Spirit of the Earth 

describes to her mother a wondrous 
change which, ushered in by loud and long yet 
sweet and mysterious music, breaking the stillness 
of a summer night, has transformed to a state of 
ideal perfection her planet and all its inhabitants. 
While the music sounds, the Earth Spirit, in likeness 
of a moonbeam, lies hidden within a fountain in 
the public square of a city ; for the citizens had 
gathered in the streets, and in awe and wonder 
stood gazing up to heaven. Thus concealed, the 
Earth Spirit watches while 

" Those ugly human shapes and visages 
Of which I spoke as having wrought me pain, 
Past floating in the air, and fading still 
Into the winds that scattered them ; and those 
From whom they past seemed mild and lovely forms 
After some foul disguise had fallen, and all 
Were somewhat changed, and after brief surprise 
And greetings of delighted wonder, all 
Went to their sleep again : and when the dawn 
Came, wouldst thou think that toads, and snakes, and efts, 
Could e er be beautiful ? Yet so they were, 
And that with little change of shape or hue : 
All things had put their evil nature off." 1 

Here, in a work penned some sixteen centuries 
1 Op. cit. 



ii2 THE WISDOM OF PLOTINUS 

later, we find again in fairer, because less abstract, 
form, but in undying youth and activity, the pure 
idealism of Plotinus. 

Universality Wh&t then * ma > be asked - S6ein 
implies the that every individual intelligence exhibits 
Individual. . 

divine perfection, constitutes rank in 
the intelligible sphere ? The answer supplied by 
Plotinus to this important question is direct and 
simple. In the intelligible world, he asserts, the 
actuality of that which occupies the first rank is 
universal, and its potentiality simple or individual, 
while the actuality of that which occupies the 
lowest rank is individual, and its potentiality 
universal. 1 In other words, the kind or genus, 
individuality P ossessin g and retaining its own specifi- 
impiiesthe cations and prerogatives as universal, 

Universal. 

implies also individuality and the exist 
ence of individuals, and might be said to generate 
them by a process of negative self-relation or 
involution, but that these latter, conversely, retain 
ing in like manner their own particular characteristics 
as individuals, imply, and may even be said, collec 
tively and severally, to generate the universal. 
An important consequence which flows directly from 
this doctrine is that on the intelligible plane the indi- 

1 Enn. VI, Lib. vii, sec. 13. 



A METAPHYSICAL STUDY 113 

viduals of a given kind, qua individuals, are equal. 1 
But the above-mentioned antithesis 

The , 

Absolute between universality on the one hand 
rra Bo S th. ndS and individuality on the other is manifest 
only when we contemplate essence or 
spirit in its subjective aspect as an eternal creative 
process or conscious and purposive Act. Objectively, 
spirit appears as the intelligible universe (noumenon), 
Alpolute Idea, or Ideal, or, in other words, as the 
eternally realised consummation or end of the 
said creative and purposive Act. From this stand 
point the apparently-opposed principles of indivi 
duality and universality are seen to be merged, 
reconciled, and finally superseded in the ultimate 
reality of their common source and principle, the 
One. Meanwhile, as distinguishable actualities, 
both terms of the antithesis may be regarded as 
complete and self-subsistent entities (although 
each is in a sense, for all that, the complement of 
the other), but the universal qua universal is infinitely 
superior to any particular individual. 

As a matter of fact we find that in 

Universality ,.,. 

as the politics, art, religion, this test-question 

fatness! of the universal as distinguished from 

the parochial and ephemeral significance 

1 Plotinus docs not assert this, nor am I now convinced 
of its logical necessity. 



T i,j. THE WISDOM OF PLOTINUS 

of their operations is precisely the criterion which 
in the long run determines the degree of honour 
and reverence in which individuals are held. Where 
universal functions have been assigned to individuals 
by the accident of birth, or in other ways without 
respect of their essential fitness for the office, we 
find that the actual personality soon comes to be 
regarded as a mere eidolon or symbol of the reality 
for which it stands. In that section of his " Philosophy 
of History " which deals with the Lamaistic develop 
ment of Buddhism, Hegel writes to similar effect- 
The idea of a man being worshipped as God espe 
cially a living man has in it something 
Universality paradoxical and revolting, but the follow- 
ing considerations must be examined before 
we pronounce judgment respecting it. The con 
ception of Spirit involves its being regarded as 
inherently, intrinsically universal. This condition 
must be particularly observed, and it must be 
discovered how in the systems adopted by various 
peoples this universality is kept in view. It is 
not the individuality of the subject that is revered, 
but that which is universal in him ; and which, among 
the Thibetans, Hindoos, and Asiatics generally, 
is regarded as the essence pervading all things. 
This substantial Unity of spirit is realised in the 
Lama, who is nothing but the form in which Spirit 



manifests itself ; and who does not hold this Spiritual 
Essence as his peculiar property, but is regarded 
as partaking in it only in order to exhibit it to 
others, that they may attain a conception of 
Spirituality, and be led to piety and blessedness. 
The Lama s personality as such his particular 
individualityis therefore subordinate to that 
substantial essence which it embodies." x 
Intelligence 2 + Returning now to the point at 
and the One. w hich this digression was made, we 
resume the task of reconstructing in outline the 
thought-scheme of Plotinus. It is all important 
to bear in mind that the fundamental cravings 
of the soul can never be satisfied by the contempla 
tion of, or even (what is in fact the same thing) 
identification with, intellectual beauty (the intel 
ligible order) merely as such. Intellectuality is 
only aspired to in virtue of our possession of reason, 
whereas the need of the Good is instinctive and 
universal. The contemplation of ideal formal per 
fection, so long as this is mistakenly regarded as 
an end-in-itself, as the ultimate goal of spiritual 
ascension, has an exciting and disturbing effect 
on the mind of the beholder. 2 The universal 

1 Lectures on the Phil, of Hist. By G. W. F. Hegel. 
Tr. by Sibree, ed. of 1890, pp. 178-9. 

2 Enn. V, Lib. v, sec. 12. 



n6 THE WISDOM OF PLOTINUS 

intelligence is actuality and life, but the Good as 

their common principle is infinitely superior 

to both. It is the cause of causality 

The Good is 

Superior to and freedom, the absolute, the infinite ; 

Intelligence. . 

in itself unknowable, not as we say 

that abstract matter is unknowable, but in a pre 
cisely opposite sense, because it transcends all 
conceivable attributes of positive existence. Form 
less itself, it is the principle and source of all formal 
perfection ; which latter is accordingly desirable 
solely on this account, and, if otherwise regarded 
than as a necessarily imperfect reflex of an ineffable 
perfection, awakens no transport in the soul, but 
becomes comparable (and is then compared by 
Plotinus) to a formally-beautiful face, lacking that 
inward and higher grace of expression which alone 
contents us. For every intelligible being, although 
it is by its own right that which it is, only becomes 
truly desirable when the light of the Good illuminates 
and, so to speak, transfuses and colours it. In 
other words, the mind can only be satisfied by that 
which simultaneously and in a higher degree appeals 
to and satisfies the heart also. Then the soul, 
which before experienced no rapture, renouncing 
Ecstas ^ s at titude of coldly-admiring impar. 
tiality, awakens invigorated, and expand 
ing its wings under the sweet influence of Love, 



A METAPHYSICAL STUDY 117 

soars by the aid of reminiscence to a higher principle 
than the object of its immediate contemplation. 1 
And this ecstatic reunion with the Good, since it 
leaves the soul permanently beautified and en 
lightened, is the true object of art and religion, 
and, indeed, since life itself is likewise in essence 
a contemplative act, of all existence. We say 
Virtue advisedly that the soul is beautified by 
Form. Suc j 1 ecs t a ti c elevation, because being it 
self of the intelligible or formal nature, its particular 
good (as distinguished from that which alone is 
absolutely good in itself) is of the nature of a 
form the basis or vehicle of beauty. The primary 
good of a human soul is, in fact, virtue, conformity, 
that is, to the moral idea which constitutes 
good citizenship ; and this in itself confers a certain 
beauty and dignity upon the life of its exponent. 
But Plotinus points out that just as the form of 
intelligence is higher than that of the 

Liberty 

the Law of soul which is its reflex or image, so the 
form of liberty is higher than the form 

of convention, and the life which is freely devoted 
to the conscious pursuit of the absolute 

Liberty 

versus ideal takes precedence of the life which 

Convention. . 

aims merely at the acquisition and display 
of ordinary virtue. 2 To this distinction no excep- 
1 Enn. VI, Lib. vii, sees. 20-22. * Ibid., sees. 27-28, 36. 



n8 THE WISDOM OF PLOTINUS 

tion need be taken on prudential grounds, provided 
always that it be carefully borne in mind that of 
the two standards the higher must prove itself 
not less but more exacting than the lower. This 
is not the same thing, however, as demanding that 
Genius and upon questions of conduct they shall 
[orals, invariably coincide, although doubtless 
they will so coincide much oftener than is commonly 
imagined. Immorality is, in short, no proof of 
genius, much rather it affords a presumption to the 
contrary effect ; but, on the other hand, it is un 
doubtedly the case that genius is, within the bounds 
of its own sphere and range, a law unto itself, and 
cannot be brought to book by the current maxims 
of ethical convention. For genius is fundamentally 
a manifestation of love through intellect, and what 
limitation shall we venture to impose upon the 
freedom of so august a confederacy ? 
Grades of The degrees of spiritual ascension recog 
nised by Plotinus may be indicated by 
the following somewhat arbitrary, but not mean 
ingless distinctions : (i) Purification, or the regu 
lation and subdual of gross carnal desires and 
appetites ; (2) Virtues which adorn the soul ; no 
mere passive abstention from vice, but an active 
conformity with the requirements of good citizen 
ship ; (3) Conversion towards, and contemplation 



A METAPHYSICAL STUDY 119 

of abstract Intelligence ; (4) edification in the 
intelligible order issuing in a life of rational free 
dom ; (5) ecstasy, the Banquet of the Gods ; the 
life of absolute faith and pure enthusiasm, inspired 
by draughts of " the true the blushful Hippocrene," 
and mystical permeation of the Highest. 1 Of 
Mystic this last degree of elevation identifi- 
Reunion. ca ti on with the principle of infinite 
and transcendent beauty which we call God 
Plotinus asserts that the soul, in so far as it tastes 
thereof, cannot be mistaken in asserting its pos 
session and enjoyment of the supreme good. In 
so far as the soul enjoys the presence of God it is 
indistinguishable from Him. Rank, wealth, power, 
science, beauty, as we ordinarily understand and 
value these things, appear contemptible to the 
soul which has attained to this ineffable certitude- 
Fear is likewise impossible to such an initiate, 
who has in sober verity regained his original state 
of beatitude, and, as the possessor of intuitive 
knowledge of all truth, is in a sense superior to 
the need of thought itself. 2 

2S The principle of the soul s ascen- 

The Cause 

of Beauty. sion f rom the sphere of intelligence to 
ecstatic reunion with the Good is thus explained 

1 Enn. VI, Lib. vii, sec. 36. 
* Ibid., sec. 35. 



120 THE WISDOM OF PLOTINUS 

by Plotinus. He says that whenever a beautiful 
object is presented to the consciousness we strive 
always, while reducing that object to a form (appre 
hending it, that is, as an idea) to discover beyond 
and identify ourselves with the formative principle. 
This principle, which is superior to all determinate 
form, and hence to all ideas (being itself the one 
absolute and supernal ideal) is essential or trans 
cendent beauty, the first Divine Hypostasis shall 
we venture to name it universal Love ? l 

Every intelligence has, then, two powers, an 
inferior, which thinks, comprehending thus its 
own intelligible content, and a superior, which 
by a sort of intuition apprehends that which is 
above it, and, in so far as it is pure intelligence 
(and as such superior to reason), is transported 
with love, and thereby identified with its object. 
This spiritual contact with the Good has been 
already characterised as the ultimate goal of aspira 
tion the beatific vision of the Saint, the summum 
bonum of the philosopher. 2 

Strictly speaking, the Good cannot be 
th e U One dinctly thought or perceived, only felt in 



thc ecstatic reunion described above, where 
an ide^i that conforms to and expresses 
the Good is the object of direct contemplation. 

1 Enn. VI, Lib. vii, sec. 33. * Ibid., sec. 35. 



A METAPHYSICAL STUDY 121 

Hence Plotinus forbids us to affirm categorically 
that God is good, or even that He exists, holding 
that the One is superior to all positive attributes, 
superior even to our notion of existence, and only 
to be described by negations. So, too, his master 
Plato asserts that God cannot be named 

superior, 

therefore, to or known. " We refuse," says Plotinus, " to 

all Conceiv 
able Attri- attribute being to the One, in order to avoid 
butes. 

establishing a relation between Him and 
derivative beings." 1 Consequently, "when you have 
had an intuition of the Supreme, do not assert 
that He is this or that ; otherwise you virtually 
reduce Him to the category of determinate beings." 
In God we are to seek all that is posterior to 
Him, but we are not to attempt by scientific 
analysis to penetrate the depth of His own being 
still less to pass beyond it. 2 For God is 
The the outside (TO efa>), the absolute and 

M o?aT comprehensive measure of all things. 

Things. He is also the within, the infinite depth 
or profoundly, the occult wellspring of reality, 
the infinite Ideal. That which approaches Him 
the nearest, and, as it were, circularly impinges 
upon Him, is universal Reason or Intelligence, 
which in virtue of this aspiration towards, and 



1 Enn. VI, Lib. viii, sec. 8. * Ibid., sec. 9. 



122 THE WISDOM OF PLOTINUS 

attainment of the Good, is itself one and perfect. 
Hence, the universal Reason (Logos) is symbolically 
designated a ccntriform circle. 1 Be it noted that the 
form of the universal Being, although absolutely 
perfect and therefore absolutely accordant with 
the will of the One, is such by its own act and not 
merely in passive obedience to an impulse from 
without and above. Otherwise it were impossible 
to say, as Plotinus does say, that God is the Author 
of Liberty. And, nevertheless, God, as superior to 
Reason, essence or Spirit, has engendered it, and 
constitutes its principle and raison d etre. 

26. \Ylicn finally we pass on, as des 
pite of all that has been said to the con 
trary, we inevitably do pass to the contemplation 
of the One as existing in and for Itself, we leave 
Reason behind us and rise upon the wings of ecstasy 
into a rarer and more exalted the most exalted 
region of consciousness. What we say of the Good 
is not to be regarded as an attempt to 

Inadequacy 

of Science, define its nature, for the ineffable can 
not be formally and impassively scrutinised, nor 
the absolutely indivisible analysed and explained. 2 
For whereas mere science, as the act of discursive 
reason, involves multiplicity, its inherent tendency 

1 Enn. VI, Lib. viii, sec. 18. 
1 Enn. VI, Lib. ix, sec. 4. 



A METAPHYSICAL STUDY 123 

is to separate us from God, but the act of Divinity 
is an eternal super-intellection, and such knowledge 
as we have of this transcendent Activity is due to 
its actual presence in contact with and illumination 
of the soul of the beholder, which becomes for the 
time being indistinguishable from Itself. As we 
may imagine the master of a glorious palace, whose 
own beauty surpasses that of the formally perfect 
but comparatively lifeless statues which adorn it, 
so the beauty of the Good surpasses that of mere 
intelligible essence. Yet the One does not at first 
reveal Itself visibly and separately, but, as has 
just been explained, penetrates and becomes identi 
fied with the soul of the worshipper. 1 We discuss 
the Divine Nature, says Plotinus, not in the hope 
of defining or comprehending it (for such hope were 
baseless and irrational) but in order to awaken and 
stimulate the soul, and thus rekindle its innate desire 
of this Divine, this ultimate experience. " I am try 
ing," said Plotinus on his deathbed to Porphyrius, 
"to bring back the Divine that is in me to the 
Divine that is in the All." That, indeed, behoves 
us ; and, further, the need of this reunion is not 
confined to ourselves but is instinctive and uni 
versal. For 

" As flame ascends, 

As vapours to the earth in showers return, 
1 Enn. VI. Lib. vii, sec. 35. 



124 THE WISDOM OF PLOTINUS 

As the pois d ocean toward th attracting moon 
Swells, and the ever list ning planets, charm d 
By the sun s call, their onward pace incline, 
So all things which have life aspire to God, 
Exhaustless fount of intellectual day, 
Centre of souls." x 



Every living soul yearns after the Good as a virgin 
for her destined spouse, but may and often does 
forget this heavenly love and plunge for awhile into 
adulterous excesses. Nevertheless, the sole object 
of existence for all is contact with and direct con 
templation of the Good, in virtue of which contact 
the centre of our own being may become coincident 
with that of the universe, and the purport of our 
otherwise trivial and meaningless existence, in sober 
verity, Divine. Exalted thus, and in virtue of this 
spiritual contact, the soul becomes clear, subtle and 
luminous, full of the light of intellect, conscious, 
moreover, of its own perfection, and may be likened 
to a resplendent flame. 2 Even yet, supposing its 
previous detachment from sensuous allurements 
to have been incomplete, it may fall again into com 
parative obscurity, but by every such ecstatic 
ascension and beatific reunion it is permanently 
beautified and exalted, and its ultimate return and 

1 Akenside, Pleasures of Imagination, bk. ii, 264. 
1 Enn. VI, Lib. ix, sec. 9. 



A METAPHYSICAL STUDY 125 

reabsorption are inevitable ; for when the soul 
lias once beheld God, a virtue or image remains 
with it, which serves to guide it back to Him, 
manifesting its presence by the light which we 
call intelligence and the love which creates wis 
dom. 
Potential 27. With reference to this doctrine of 

Import of ,, . , _ . . TT 

the Doctrine tne ^irst Divine Hypostasis many ques 
tions will suggest themselves to the 
student which find in the Enneads of Plotinus 
no very clear or satisfactory answer. For in 
stance, it may be asked, is the Good a personal 
or an impersonal Being, is this principle the philo 
sophical equivalent of the First Person in the 
Triune God of Theology, or, peradventure, of the 
Third ? It must be admitted that, at first sight, 
there is something extremely unsatisfying in the 
account given of the One by Plotinus ; but allowance 
must be made for the enormous difficulty of the 
task, no less than that of describing the indescribable 
and of defining that which is beyond all comprehen 
sion. If, however, in completing this brief study 
of the lifework of a great thinker, we would be 
faithful to his own spirit of free and fearless inquiry, 
we must not shrink from the endeavour to solve 
this supreme problem of the nature of the One, 
not merely as it was interpreted by Plotinus him- 



ia6 THE WISDOM OF PLOTINUS 

self, but also in respect of its true potential import. 
The One as In the first place it is to be noted that, 
Abstraction. in common with the secon d and third 

Divine Hypostases (literally substances) the One 
is arrived at by a process of abstraction, and accord 
ingly presents itself at first to the mind as a mere 
formless residuum, void of all real content, or 
genuine significance. But this was equally the 
case with the Divine Intelligence, which, 

Intelligence . 

as an although similarly apprehended in the 

n first place, by the abstraction of all lower 

forms of consciousness, as a mere informing light 

or essence, ultimately proved itself capable of 

embracing all that pertains to the notion of positive 

existence. The case of the First Divine Hypostasis, 

to which, as lias been stated, cannot be ascribed 

a genuine existence, is no doubt different in many 

Psycholo- respects from that of the two inferior 

gl of the 5 5 principles ; but it lias at least this in 

Soul, the common with them both, that the infer- 

Intelhgence, 

and the One. ence of its existence (in so far as it can 
be said to exist) rests like theirs in part on a 
psychological basis. For, as was pointed out 
in the beginning of this essay, each of the three 
grades of spirituality corresponding respectively 
to the third, second and first Divine Hypostasis, 
is in some degree of immanence or actuality repre- 



A METAPHYSICAL STUDY 127 

sentect in every individual human or other micro 
cosm. Plotinus asserts, in fact, that sensations 
aspire to become thoughts, and thoughts to merge 
in wisdom or intelligence, and similarly, from the 
psychological standpoint we may say that the First 
_, Q Divine Hypostasis is simply the human 
Potence of or other consciousness carried to its 

the Soul. 

supreme potentiality and there merged 
and, so far as reason is concerned, lost to view. 
Can we not, at all events, give a name to this high 
est, ineffable power of consciousness, a name which, 
without controverting in one single detail the 
account given of it by Plotinus, but rather coinciding 
in a remarkable way with every indication of its 
mysterious nature, may yet serve to redeem the 
conception once for all from the charge of barren 
and empty formalism ? 

The First Divine Hypostasis is superior, indeed 
it is infinitely superior, to^thought and existence. 
It does not think, or even will, but has merely a 
simple intuition of itself. It is the transcendent 
principle of all beauty, the ultimate source of all 
emancipation, yet in itself neither free nor subject 

Matter to necess ity- It is the measureless mea- 
and the One. sure o f a u things, the rule of wisdom or 
intelligence, and as the absolutely formless and 
(hence) impersonal, yet creative and self-deter- 



[28 THE WISDOM OF PLOTIXUS 

mined Good is the complement of the ide<i of matter 

the absolutely chaotic, inert and indeterminate evil. 

Matter and the Good may also be con- 

The two 

Infinites, trasted as the two infinites, the first, 

indefinite nonentity, the second infinite ideality 



and this antithesis is, in fact, complete, for whereas 
the Good resembles matter in that neither form, will 
nor intelligence may be posited of either, the first 
is immeasurably above, the second as absolutely 
beneath the possibility of such determinate exist 
ence. 1 The One is likened by Plotinus to the root 
of an immense tree, whose trunk is Reason. It 
is that principle to which all things, created and 
uncreated, aspire, and in virtue of their more or 
less perfect possession of which they aspire, and 
in virtue of which they are one. It is therefore 

Infinite ^ 1C sourco an d g oa l f a ^ things, the 
Love. principle of evolution and involution, 
the expulsive energy and the attractive force, 
the " dialectic " of Hegelian philosophy, the divine 
grace of Christian theology, the circle which closes 
with itself. In one word, it is Love. 

It in nowise affects the validity of the 
The 
Doctrine above interpretation to assert that Ploti- 

of Unity . . r 

not peculiar n us himself was not the originator oi 

to Plotinus. this doctrine Q f unit y 4 but that he appro- 



1 Cf. Hegel s antithesis of the "true" and the "false" 
Infinites. 



A METAPHYSICAL STUDY 129 

priated it from the system of Pythagoras. Nor 
are we concerned to prove (as might well be im 
possible) that Plotinus himself had any clear per 
ception of the real identity of his notion of the 
Good with love, abstract and universal. We may 
recall the recollection of the reader to his compari 
son of the beauty of mere intelligence, unenlight 
ened by the Good, to a formally perfect face, lack- 
Love the in & ^ e mwar d grace of expression. It 
principle of j s certain, too, that he teaches that love 

Ascension 

and is the sole principle of ascension, and 

Descension. 

there is also a passage, in which he 

asserts that souls which have contemplated the 

One may return to reveal to others the secret of 

celestial rapture, which seems to justify the con- 

The Soul cmsion tnat love is, or at least should 

.t sL ^ ve i s be > tne principle of descension. 1 But the 

the Good. 

soul in union with, and contemplation 
of the One, is a homogeneous entity, indistinguish 
able from that which it beholds. The circle is 
thus complete. 

Love not ^ may P erna P s be objected that love 
a mere is an emotion, and that in the Neoplatonic 

Affection. 

scheme the first condition of the im 
prisoned soul s return to God, of salvation in fact, 
is the renunciation of all natural appetites and 
1 Enn. VI, Lib. ix, sec. 7. 

I 



130 THE WISDOM OF PLOTINUS 

desires. Such an objection, however plausible, 
would be founded on a total misconception of the 
doctrines of Plotinus and, indeed, of the nature and 
aims of all philosophy. The one supreme and 
comprehensive science would upon this supposition 
be no science at all but a mere sentimental exercise 
or indulgence. Philosophy, as the ideal expression 
of the love-of-wisdom, is not only based on emotion 
but is even itself in essence emotional. Appetites 
and desires as the result of that law of the members 
which wars against the law of the spirit, and only 
in so far as they so contend, constitute 

TV\ A 

Material for Plotinus, as for St. Paul, those " feel- 
as thereat ings " which at the bidding of Celestial 
of Feelings. Wisdom> i nvo ked and revealed by Love, 
are to be " crucified," or at the least controlled by 
the converted will of the aspirant. Their seat 
moreover, is neither the body as such, nor the soul, 
but that composite product of Nature and the 
irrational or vestigial soul of the individual, which 
Plotinus calls the living body. To the soul itself 
we can properly attribute neither sensa- 

Emotions ^ nor a other mere feelings, but 

compatible 

with " passions without passivity," that is, 

Freedom 

belong to emotions compatible with freedom, or, 

in other words, the desire of that which 

is good, or ultimately of the Good itself. When 



A METAPHYSICAL STUDY 131 

the soul seems to will that which is evil it is (appear 
ances notwithstanding), according to Plotinus, at 
worst, the victim of ignorance : for (as Meredith 
beautifully says) " the light of every soul burns 
upwards," and the aim of a rational entity cannot 
in the long run be otherwise than good. And the 
reason of this is that the love which impels the 
individual soul and intellect knows no rest until 
it has completed its circuit and returned to the 
source whence it was derived. Regarded as an 
impersonal abstract entity, we may say, indeed, that 
it has never really left that source, but regarded 
as a mere potentiality of any particular human 
consciousness, its ultimate return is, at all events, 
inevitable. 

We are now, therefore, in a position more fully 
to appreciate the latent significance of the above- 
quoted words of the dying philosopher: "/ am try 
ing to bring back the Divine that is in me to the 
Divine that is in the All."