Select Works of Plotinus · 6 of 752 · tr. Thomas Taylor
Select Works, Section 10
Section 6 6. It may seem reasonable to lay down as a law that when any powers are contained by a recipient, every action or state expressive of them must be the action or state of that recipient, they themselves remaining unaffected as merely furnishing efficiency. But if this were so, then, since the Animate is the recipient of the Causing-Principle [i.e., the Soul] which brings life to the Couplement, this Cause must itself remain unaffected, all the experiences and expressive activities of the life being vested in the recipient, the Animate. But this would mean that life itself belongs not to the Soul but to the Couplement; or at least the life of the Couplement would not be the life of the Soul; Sense-Perception would belong not to the Sensitive-Faculty but to the container of the faculty. But if sensation is a movement traversing the body and culminating in Soul, how the soul lack sensation? The very presence of the Sensitive-Faculty must assure sensation to the Soul. Once again, where is Sense-Perception seated? In the Couplement. Yet how can the Couplement have sensation independently of action in the Sensitive-Faculty, the Soul left out of count and the Soul-Faculty?
Related passages · 2 parallels
◆christian_mysticism|Pseudo-Dionysius: The Divine Names|Chapter 7, Section 1b
“(2) Wisdom as a whole = Wisdom embodied in the universe as a whole.
(3) Wisdom in each individual instance = Wisdom as shown in the structure of some particular plant or animal, or part of a plant or animal.
(1) Is an Emanation; (2) and (…”
Both passages discuss the relationship between higher principles (Soul in Plotinus, Divine Wisdom in the second passage) and their manifestations in lower realms (Animate, Sense-Perception in Plotinus; created wisdom, sense-perceptions in the second passage). They explore how the higher principles interact with and influence the lower realms, showing a genuine conceptual parallel.
◆christian_mysticism|Pseudo-Dionysius: The Divine Names|Chapter 8, Section 1b
“From this Source come the Godlike Powers of the Angelic Orders; from this Source they immutably possess their being and all the ceaseless and immortal motions of their spiritual life; and their very stability and unfailing desire for the Go…”
Both passages discuss the relationship between a higher principle (Soul in Passage A, God in Passage B) and its effects on lower entities (Animate/Couplement in Passage A, various beings and elements in Passage B). They explore the nature of how the higher principle interacts with and influences the lower entities without being affected itself.