登陆注册
19466800000164

第164章 THE FOURTH ENNEAD(50)

Moreover if the soul is an Entelechy, there is an end to the resistance offered by reason to the desires; the total [of body and Entelechy-Soul] must have one-uniform experience throughout, and be aware of no internal contradiction.Sense-perception might occur;but intellection would be impossible.The very upholders of the Entelechy are thus compelled to introduce another soul, the Intellect, to which they ascribe immortality.The reasoning soul, then, must be an Entelechy- if the word is to be used at all- in some other mode.

Even the sense-perceiving soul, in its possession of the impressions of absent objects, must hold these without aid from the body; for otherwise the impression must be present in it like shape and images, and that would mean that it could not take in fresh impressions; the perceptive soul, then, cannot be described as this Entelechy inseparable from the body.Similarly the desiring principle, dealing not only with food and drink but with things quite apart from body; this also is no inseparable Entelechy.

There remains the vegetal principle which might seem to suggest the possibility that, in this phase, the soul may be the inseparable Entelechy of the doctrine.But it is not so.The principle of every growth lies at the root; in many plants the new springing takes place at the root or just above it: it is clear that the life-principle, the vegetal soul, has abandoned the upper portions to concentrate itself at that one spot: it was therefore not present in the whole as an inseparable Entelechy.Again, before the plant's development the life-principle is situated in that small beginning:

if, thus, it passes from large growth to small and from the small to the entire growth, why should it not pass outside altogether?

An Entelechy is not a thing of parts; how then could it be present partwise in the partible body?

An identical soul is now the soul of one living being now of another: how could the soul of the first become the soul of the latter if soul were the Entelechy of one particular being? Yet that this transference does occur is evident from the facts of animal metasomatosis.

The substantial existence of the soul, then, does not depend upon serving as Form to anything: it is an Essence which does not come into being by finding a seat in body; it exists before it becomes also the soul of some particular, for example, of a living being, whose body would by this doctrine be the author of its soul.

What, then, is the soul's Being? If it is neither body nor a state or experience of body, but is act and creation: if it holds much and gives much, and is an existence outside of body; of what order and character must it be? Clearly it is what we describe as Veritable Essence.The other order, the entire corporeal Kind, is process; it appears and it perishes; in reality it never possesses Being, but is merely protected, in so far as it has the capacity, by participating in what authentically is.

9.(14) Over against that body, stands the principle which is self-caused, which is all that neither enters into being nor passes away, the principle whose dissolution would mean the end of all things never to be restored if once this had ceased to be, the sustaining principle of things individually, and of this kosmos, which owes its maintenance and its ordered system to the soul.

This is the starting point of motion and becomes the leader and provider of motion to all else: it moves by its own quality, and every living material form owes life to this principle, which of itself lives in a life that, being essentially innate, can never fail.

Not all things can have a life merely at second hand; this would give an infinite series: there must be some nature which, having life primally, shall be of necessity indestructible, immortal, as the source of life to all else that lives.This is the point at which all that is divine and blessed must be situated, living and having being of itself, possessing primal being and primal life, and in its own essence rejecting all change, neither coming to be nor passing away.

Whence could such a being arise or into what could it disappear:

the very word, strictly used, means that the thing is perdurable.

Similarly white, the colour, cannot be now white and now not white: if this "white" were a real being it would be eternal as well as being white: the colour is merely white but whatsoever possesses being, indwelling by nature and primal, will possess also eternal duration.

In such an entity this primal and eternal Being cannot be dead like stone or plank: it must be alive, and that with a life unalloyed as long as it remains self-gathered: when the primal Being blends with an inferior principle, it is hampered in its relation to the highest, but without suffering the loss of its own nature since it can always recover its earliest state by turning its tendency back to its own.

10.(15) That the soul is of the family of the diviner nature, the eternal, is clear from our demonstration that it is not material:

besides it has neither shape or colour nor is it tangible.But there are other proofs.

Assuming that the divine and the authentically existent possesses a life beneficent and wise, we take the next step and begin with working out the nature of our own soul.

Let us consider a soul, not one that has appropriated the unreasoned desires and impulses of the bodily life, or any other such emotion and experience, but one that has cast all this aside, and as far as possible has no commerce with the bodily.Such a soul demonstrates that all evil is accretion, alien, and that in the purged soul the noble things are immanent, wisdom and all else that is good, as its native store.

If this is the soul once it has returned to its self, how deny that it is the nature we have identified with all the divine and eternal? Wisdom and authentic virtue are divine, and could not be found in the chattel mean and mortal: what possesses these must be divine by its very capacity of the divine, the token of kinship and of identical substance.

同类推荐
热门推荐
  • 永恒国度

    永恒国度

    数千年后经历了一场大灾变,异能者的崛起,规则的变化。使得每个人要生存下去,不得不佩戴上沉重的枷锁-生命表。这个表代表了你生存下去的每一秒,当手表归零的时候,你将停止心脏的最后一次跳动。时间点,是所有人的追寻,强者的勋章......
  • 无尽冰封

    无尽冰封

    这里有丧尸横行的空间,百鬼夜行的国度,魔兽纵横的世界,机械发达的文明,希腊神话的领域……一个个迥异的世界,一条条独特的强化道路,究竟是谁,能够把握最终的归宿?
  • 城市基础设施投资与管理

    城市基础设施投资与管理

    城市化进程离不开城市基础设施的建设,本书共分八章论述了城市基础设施建设的历史演进状况和发展态势、城市基础设施的理论、城市经营和城市基础设施投资管理、城市基础设施建设体制的新环境、城市基础设施建设中的政府和国有资本、城市基础设施建设中的投融资改革、项目管理以及城市基础设施中的部分国资公司典型案例研究。本书是一本关于城市基础设施建设理论分析和模式创新的著作。
  • 绝品狂兵

    绝品狂兵

    厌倦杀戮生活,想回归平淡的乐天低调回到滨江市,奈何浅水藏不住蛟龙,不平凡的人总归不平凡。跳梁小丑喜欢叫嚣,只能用拳头来碾压;各路美女要投怀送抱,那只能屈身接受了……
  • 异界最强玩家

    异界最强玩家

    主人公吴华穿越到了一座拥有雄伟地下迷宫的游戏世界。灯光阴暗的房间里,一位少女正在等待着他的醒来。“你就是响应召唤的人吗?”“请通关这个游戏,记住!生命只有一次,请不要作死!”
  • 升仙

    升仙

    意外穿越,让萧展白展开了一个不一样的人生。踏碎奸人头颅,修炼最强功法,在异界中孤身崛起!
  • 枯骨生花

    枯骨生花

    【前世】她是年华七万岁的上仙,凡尘历练相遇于人间,我们是世界上最美好最幸福的一家人,她爱他,他也同样爱着她,但是谁都不想打破沉默。因情犯戒,诛仙台一下后悔当初没有打破沉默:“若是在进一步,应该……应该很美好的,对吧?”【来世】骨心花种子,赐予她千年后重生的机会,他寻了她七世,于她相遇七次,却都是擦肩而过。她不记得她,可他记得她。第八世,凛凤愿付出生命来唤醒自己的妹妹,让她于他再续前缘……“姐姐,你好傻,为什么为我这样做?不值得,真的不值得。”“因为……因为他真的很爱你。”
  • 武道无极

    武道无极

    比武?形意拳开山掌八卦阵各种熟练。玩枪?十八种武器三十六国枪法样样精通。泡妞?玉女淑女熟女仙女投怀送抱。华夏大地孕育了中华五千年的文明,也孕育了无数的传奇!宇宙之大何其渺,万物虽小,何其茫!看主角一步一步去揭开,世间万法,武道无极!
  • Awakening & Selected Short Stories

    Awakening & Selected Short Stories

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。
  • 守望麦田

    守望麦田

    本书以一对青梅竹马的恋人为视角,围绕房子讲述了一连串的故事。为了房子,两小无猜的米勒和青美不得不分开;为了房子,青美选择了和拥有四套房子的镇长的傻儿子结婚;为了房子,大蛇不惜利用自己的妻子和镇长交换;为了房子,镇长最后深陷囹圄;为了房子,玉梅雇凶杀人……作品以小见大,以当前的社会热点问题作为切入点,带出一份沉重的思考和警醒。