250 AD

                                THE SIX ENNEADS

                                  by Plotinus

                 translated by Stephen MacKenna and B. S. Page

                        THE FIRST ENNEAD.

                         FIRST TRACTATE.

                     THE ANIMATE AND THE MAN.

    1. Pleasure and distress, fear and courage, desire and aversion,
where have these affections and experiences their seat?

    Clearly, either in the Soul alone, or in the Soul as employing the
body, or in some third entity deriving from both. And for this third
entity, again, there are two possible modes: it might be either a
blend or a distinct form due to the blending.

    And what applies to the affections applies also to whatsoever
acts, physical or mental, spring from them.

    We have, therefore, to examine discursive-reason and the
ordinary mental action upon objects of sense, and enquire whether
these have the one seat with the affections and experiences, or
perhaps sometimes the one seat, sometimes another.

    And we must consider also our acts of Intellection, their mode and
their seat.

    And this very examining principle, which investigates and
decides in these matters, must be brought to light.

    Firstly, what is the seat of Sense-Perception? This is the obvious
beginning since the affections and experiences either are sensations
of some kind or at least never occur apart from sensation.

    2. This first enquiry obliges us to consider at the outset the
nature of the Soul- that is whether a distinction is to be made
between Soul and Essential Soul [between an individual Soul and the
Soul-Kind in itself]. *

    * All matter shown in brackets is added by the translator for
clearness' sake and, therefore, is not canonical. S.M.

    If such a distinction holds, then the Soul [in man] is some sort
of a composite and at once we may agree that it is a recipient and- if
only reason allows- that all the affections and experiences really
have their seat in the Soul, and with the affections every state and
mood, good and bad alike.

    But if Soul [in man] and Essential Soul are one and the same, then
the Soul will be an Ideal-Form unreceptive of all those activities
which it imparts to another Kind but possessing within itself that
native Act of its own which Reason manifests.

    If this be so, then, indeed, we may think of the Soul as an
immortal- if the immortal, the imperishable, must be impassive, giving
out something of itself but itself taking nothing from without
except for what it receives from the Existents prior to itself from
which Existents, in that they are the nobler, it cannot be sundered.

    Now what could bring fear to a nature thus unreceptive of all
the outer? Fear demands feeling. Nor is there place for courage:
courage implies the presence of danger. And such desires as are
satisfied by the filling or voiding of the body, must be proper to
something very different from the Soul, to that only which admits of
replenishment and voidance.

    And how could the Soul lend itself to any admixture? An
essential is not mixed. Or of the intrusion of anything alien? If it
did, it would be seeking the destruction of its own nature. Pain
must be equally far from it. And Grief- how or for what could it
grieve? Whatever possesses Existence is supremely free, dwelling,
unchangeable, within its own peculiar nature. And can any increase
bring joy, where nothing, not even anything good, can accrue? What
such an Existent is, it is unchangeably.

    Thus assuredly Sense-Perception, Discursive-Reasoning; and all our
ordinary mentation are foreign to the Soul: for sensation is a
receiving- whether of an Ideal-Form or of an impassive body- and
reasoning and all ordinary mental action deal with sensation.

    The question still remains to be examined in the matter of the
intellections- whether these are to be assigned to the Soul- and as to
Pure-Pleasure, whether this belongs to the Soul in its solitary state.

    3. We may treat of the Soul as in the body- whether it be set
above it or actually within it- since the association of the two
constitutes the one thing called the living organism, the Animate.

    Now from this relation, from the Soul using the body as an
instrument, it does not follow that the Soul must share the body's
experiences: a man does not himself feel all the experiences of the
tools with which he is working.

    It may be objected that the Soul must however, have