Select Works of Plotinus · 183 of 752 · tr. Thomas Taylor
Select Works, Section 189
Section 2 2. By derivation from that Authentic Kosmos, one within itself, there subsists this lower kosmos, no longer a true unity. It is multiple, divided into various elements, thing standing apart from thing in a new estrangement. No longer is there concord unbroken; hostility, too, has entered as the result of difference and distance; imperfection has inevitably introduced discord; for a part is not self-sufficient, it must pursue something outside itself for its fulfillment, and so it becomes the enemy to what it needs. This Kosmos of parts has come into being not as the result of a judgement establishing its desirability, but by the sheer necessity of a secondary Kind. The Intellectual Realm was not of a nature to be the ultimate of existents. It was the First and it held great power, all there is of power; this means that it is productive without seeking to produce; for if effort and search were incumbent upon it, the Act would not be its own, would not spring from its essential nature; it would be, like a craftsman, producing by a power not inherent but acquired, mastered by dint of study. The Intellectual Principle, then, in its unperturbed serenity has brought the universe into being, by communicating from its own store to Matter: and this gift is the Reason-Form flowing from it. For the Emanation of the Intellectual Principle is Reason, an emanation unfailing as long as the Intellectual Principle continues to have place among beings. The Reason-Principle within a seed contains all the parts and qualities concentrated in identity; there is no distinction, no jarring, no internal hindering; then there comes a pushing out into bulk, part rises in distinction with part, and at once the members of the organism stand in each other's way and begin to wear each other down. So from this, the One Intellectual Principle, and the Reason-Form emanating from it, our Universe rises and develops part, and inevitably are formed groups concordant and helpful in contrast with groups discordant and combative; sometimes of choice and sometimes incidentally, the parts maltreat each other; engendering proceeds by destruction. Yet: Amid all that they effect and accept, the divine Realm imposes the one harmonious act; each utters its own voice, but all is brought into accord, into an ordered system, for the universal purpose, by the ruling Reason-Principle. This Universe is not Intelligence and Reason, like the Supernal, but participant in Intelligence and Reason: it stands in need of the harmonizing because it is the meeting ground of Necessity and divine Reason-Necessity pulling towards the lower, towards the unreason which is its own characteristic, while yet the Intellectual Principle remains sovereign over it. The Intellectual Sphere [the Divine] alone is Reason, and there can never be another Sphere that is Reason and nothing else; so that, given some other system, it cannot be as noble as that first; it cannot be Reason: yet since such a system cannot be merely Matter, which is the utterly unordered, it must be a mixed thing. Its two extremes are Matter and the Divine Reason; its governing principle is Soul, presiding over the conjunction of the two, and to be thought of not as labouring in the task but as administering serenely by little more than an act of presence.
Narratives or doctrines of cosmic origin — how heaven, earth, and the primordial deities first came into being. The Kojiki's deities born alone on the Plain of High Heaven, Voluspo's Ginnungagap, Genesis's tohu wa-bohu, the Timaeus's Demiurge fashioning the Receptacle, the Hesiodic Theogony, the Kalevala's egg-cosmogony, Egyptian Nun-and-Atum. Distinct from emanation_hierarchy (structural-ontological cascade), letters_of_creation (mechanism of creation), and apocatastasis/frashokereti (end-state restoration); cosmogony is temporally-narrative beginning.
The passage narrates how the lower kosmos came into being by the sheer necessity of a secondary Kind, describing the pushing out into bulk and the formation of the universe from the Reason-Form.
Pronoia — the doctrine that the divine actively orders the unfolding of the cosmos and human affairs toward intelligible ends, against pure chance or blind necessity.
The passage describes the divine Realm imposing 'the one harmonious act' and the ruling Reason-Principle bringing all into accord for the universal purpose, which is a clear expression of pronoia as active ordering of the cosmos.
A chain of divine beings or principles flowing downward from a single transcendent source (the One or the Father), each level less perfect than the one above.
The passage is fundamentally structured as a cascade from the One through the Intellectual Realm, the Reason-Form, Soul, and down to Matter, each level less perfect and more multiple than the one above.
Augustinian and Plotinian doctrine that evil has no positive being of its own but is a lack, distortion, or absence of the good — denying ontological dualism while preserving moral seriousness.
Imperfection, discord, and hostility are described as entering 'as the result of difference and distance' and as inevitable consequences of multiplicity, not as positive ontological forces but as absences of the unity and concord of the higher realm.
The doctrine that the cosmos unfolds as a structured descent of spirit into matter — a directional process traced stage by stage from an unconditioned principle down through successive planes to full materialization — complemented by its own eventual return ('evolution'). Distinct from emanation_hierarchy (the static structure of the resulting levels of the cascade) and cosmogony (a single originating event rather than an ongoing staged process) in naming the directional cosmic PROCESS of descent itself, paired with its own complementary ascent.
The passage traces the directional process of descent from the undivided Intellectual Principle through the Reason-Form into bulk and material differentiation, describing the structured unfolding of spirit into matter.
The divine reason, word, or ordering principle through which the universe was created; mediates between the transcendent God and the material world.
The Reason-Form (Logos) is the central mediating principle of the passage: it flows from the Intellectual Principle into the cosmos, contains all parts in identity within the seed, and serves as the harmonizing ordering force of the universe.
The absolutely simple, undivided first principle from which all multiplicity and existence flows.
The passage opens by deriving the lower kosmos from 'that Authentic Kosmos, one within itself,' referencing the absolutely simple, undivided first principle from which all multiplicity flows.
The Hermetic doctrine that apparent opposites are identical in nature but differ in degree — two extremes of the same scale (hot/cold, love/hate) — such that one pole can be shifted toward its opposite by a change of degree ('mental transmutation'). Distinct from opposites_transcended (a completion-state marking the path's end, not this doctrine's active technique) and magical_equilibrium (balance held BETWEEN two forces, not identity-by-degree of what looks like two forces).
The cosmos is explicitly structured as a mixed thing between two extremes—Matter (the utterly unordered) and Divine Reason—with Soul presiding over the conjunction of the two poles.