Plotinus ENNEADS - THE FIFTH ENNEAD Complete

Translated by Stephen MacKenna and B. S. Page.

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THE FIFTH ENNEAD:   1) THE THREE INITIAL HYPOSTASES,   2) THE ORIGIN AND ORDER OF THE BEINGS. FOLLOWING ON THE FIRST.,   3) THE KNOWING HYPOSTASES AND THE TRANSCENDENT,   4) HOW THE SECONDARIES RISE FROM THE FIRST: AND ON THE ONE.,   5) THAT THE INTELLECTUAL BEINGS ARE NOT OUTSIDE THE INTELLECTUAL-PRINCIPLE: AND ON THE NATURE OF THE GOOD.,   6) THAT THE PRINCIPLE TRANSCENDING BEING HAS NO INTELLECTUAL ACT. WHAT BEING HAS INTELLECTION PRIMALLY AND WHAT BEING HAS IT SECONDARILY,   7) IS THERE AN IDEAL ARCHETYPE OF PARTICULAR BEINGS?,   8) ON THE INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY,   9) THE INTELLECTUAL PRINCIPLE, THE IDEAS, AND THE AUTHENTIC EXISTENCE

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2. If the Intellectual-Principle were the engendering Source, then the engendered secondary, while less perfect than the Intellectual-Principle, would be close to it and similar to it: but since the engendering Source is above the Intellectual-Principle, the secondary can only be that principle.

But why is the Intellectual-Principle not the generating source?

Because [it is not a self-sufficing simplex]: the Act of the Intellectual-Principle is intellection, which means that, seeing the intellectual object towards which it has turned, it is consummated, so to speak, by that object, being in itself indeterminate like sight [a vague readiness for any and every vision] and determined by the intellectual object. This is why it has been said that “out of the indeterminate dyad and The One arise the Ideas and the numbers”: for the dyad is the Intellectual-Principle.

Thus it is not a simplex; it is manifold; it exhibits a certain composite quality — within the Intellectual or divine order, of course — as the principle that sees the manifold. It is, further, itself simultaneously object and agent of intellection and is on that count also a duality: and it possesses besides another object of intellection in the Order following upon itself.

But how can the Intellectual-Principle be a product of the Intellectual Object?

In this way: the intellectual object is self-gathered [self-compact] and is not deficient as the seeing and knowing principle must be — deficient, mean, as needing an object — it is therefore no unconscious thing: all its content and accompaniment are its possession; it is self-distinguishing throughout; it is the seat of life as of all things; it is, itself, that self-intellection which takes place in eternal repose, that is to say, in a mode other than that of the Intellectual-Principle.

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