The Six Enneads

 Table of Contents

 The First Ennead.

 First Tractate. The Animate and the Man.

 Second Tractate. On Virtue.

 Third Tractate. On Dialectic [The Upward Way].

 Fourth Tractate. On True Happiness.

 Fifth Tractate. Happiness and Extension of Time.

 Sixth Tractate. Beauty.

 Seventh Tractate. On the Primal Good and Secondary Forms of Good

 Eighth Tractate. On the Nature and Source of Evil.

 Ninth Tractate. The Reasoned Dismissal.

 The Second Ennead.

 First Tractate. On the Kosmos or on the Heavenly System.

 Second Tractate. The Heavenly Circuit.

 Third Tractate. Are the Stars Causes?

 Fourth Tractate. Matter in its Two Kinds.

 Fifth Tractate. On Potentiality and Actuality.

 Sixth Tractate. Quality and Form-Idea.

 Seventh Tractate. On Complete Transfusion.

 Eighth Tractate. Why Distant Objects Appear Small.

 Ninth Tractate. Against those that Affirm the Creator of the Kosmos and the Kosmos Itself to Be Evil [Generally quoted as Against the Gnostics].

 The Third Ennead.

 First Tractate. Fate.

 Second Tractate. On Providence (1).

 Third Tractate. On Providence (2).

 Fourth Tractate. Our Tutelary Spirit.

 Fifth Tractate. On Love.

 Sixth Tractate. The Impassivity of the Unembodied.

 Seventh Tractate. Time and Eternity.

 Eighth Tractate. Nature Contemplation and the One.

 Ninth Tractate. Detached Considerations.

 The Fourth Ennead.

 First Tractate. On the Essence of the Soul (1).

 Second Tractate. On the Essence of the Soul (2).

 Third Tractate. Problems of the Soul (1).

 Fourth Tractate. Problems of the Soul (2).

 Fifth Tractate. Problems of the Soul (3).

 Sixth Tractate. Perception and Memory.

 Seventh Tractate. The Immortality of the Soul.

 Eighth Tractate. The Soul's Descent into Body.

 Ninth Tractate. Are All Souls One?.

 The Fifth Ennead.

 First Tractate. The Three Initial Hypostases.

 Second Tractate. The Origin and Order of the Beings.

 Third Tractate. The Knowing Hypostases and the Transcendent.

 Fourth Tractate. How the Secondaries Rise from the First: and on the One.

 Fifth Tractate. That the Intellectual Beings are Not Outside the Intellectual-Principle: And on the Nature of the Good.

 Sixth Tractate. That the Principle Transcending Being has no Intellectual Act. What Being has Intellection Primally and what Being has it Secondarily.

 Seventh Tractate. Is There an Ideal Archetype of Particular Beings?

 Eighth Tractate. On the Intellectual Beauty.

 Ninth Tractate. The Intellectual-Principle, the Ideas, and the Authentic Existence.

 The Sixth Ennead.

 First Tractate. On the Kinds of Being (1).

 Second Tractate. On the Kinds of Being (2).

 Third Tractate. On the Kinds of Being (3).

 Fourth Tractate. On the Integral Omnipresence of the Authentic Existent (1).

 Fifth Tractate On the Integral Omnipresence of the Authentic Existent (2).

 Sixth Tractate. On Numbers.

 Seventh Tractate. How the Multiplicity of the Ideal-Forms came into Being: and Upon the Good.

 Eighth Tractate. On Free-Will and the Will of the One.

 Ninth Tractate. On the Good, or the One.

First Tractate.

On the Essence of the Soul (1).

1. In the Intellectual Kosmos dwells Authentic Essence, with the Intellectual-Principle [Divine Mind] as the noblest of its content, but containing also souls, since every soul in this lower sphere has come thence: that is the world of unembodied spirits while to our world belong those that have entered body and undergone bodily division.

There the Intellectual-Principle is a concentrated all - nothing of it distinguished or divided - and in that kosmos of unity all souls are concentrated also, with no spatial discrimination.

But there is a difference:

The Intellectual-Principle is for ever repugnant to distinction and to partition. Soul, there without distinction and partition, has yet a nature lending itself to divisional existence: its division is secession, entry into body.

In view of this seceding and the ensuing partition we may legitimately speak of it as a partible thing.

But if so, how can it still be described as indivisible?

In that the secession is not of the soul entire; something of it holds its ground, that in it which recoils from separate existence.

The entity, therefore, described as "consisting of the undivided soul and of the soul divided among bodies," contains a soul which is at once above and below, attached to the Supreme and yet reaching down to this sphere, like a radius from a centre.

Thus it is that, entering this realm, it possesses still the vision inherent to that superior phase in virtue of which it unchangingly maintains its integral nature. Even here it is not exclusively the partible soul: it is still the impartible as well: what in it knows partition is parted without partibility; undivided as giving itself to the entire body, a whole to a whole, it is divided as being effective in every part.