Select Works of Plotinus · 411 of 752 · tr. Thomas Taylor
Select Works, Section 388
Section 8 8. A. [sometimes appearing as 9] There are those who insist on the activities observed in bodies- warming, chilling, thrusting, pressing- and class soul with body, as it were to assure its efficacy. This ignores the double fact that the very bodies themselves exercise such efficiency by means of the incorporeal powers operating in them, and that these are not the powers we attribute to soul: intellection, perception, reasoning, desire, wise and effective action in all regards, these point to a very different form of being. In transferring to bodies the powers of the unembodied, this school leaves nothing to that higher order. And yet that it is precisely in virtue of bodiless powers that bodies possess their efficiency is clear from certain reflections: It will be admitted that quality and quantity are two different things, that body is always a thing of quantity but not always a thing of quality: matter is not qualified. This admitted, it will not be denied that quality, being a different thing from quantity, is a different thing from body. Obviously quality could not be body when it has not quantity as all body must; and, again, as we have said, body, any thing of mass, on being reduced to fragments, ceases to be what it was, but the quality it possessed remains intact in every particle- for instance the sweetness of honey is still sweetness in each speck- this shows that sweetness and all other qualities are not body. Further: if the powers in question were bodies, then necessarily the stronger powers would be large masses and those less efficient small masses: but if there are large masses with small while not a few of the smaller masses manifest great powers, then the efficiency must be vested in something other than magnitude; efficacy, thus, belongs to non-magnitude. Again; Matter, they tell us, remains unchanged as long as it is body, but produces variety upon accepting qualities; is not this proof enough that the entrants [with whose arrival the changes happen] are Reason-Principles and not of the bodily order? They must not remind us that when pneuma and blood are no longer present, animals die: these are necessary no doubt to life, but so are many other things of which none could possibly be soul: and neither pneuma nor blood is present throughout the entire being; but soul is.
Themes
◆Apophatic Theologytheology
Describing the divine only by negation—God transcends all positive categories and concepts; the via negativa.
The Reason-Principle is defined by negation of bodily qualities (incorporeal, not constructed out of Matter) rather than positive attributes.
The material body viewed as a prison, tomb, or source of error that hinders spiritual knowledge and return.
The text argues that the material body cannot be the base of soul because bodily qualities produce invariable effects, unlike the diverse operations of the soul.
The dissolution of binary oppositions (male/female, inner/outer, above/below) as a mark of spiritual completion.
The passage demonstrates that the soul transcends material opposites by producing contrary effects (solid/soft, dense/sparse) unlike a body which is limited to one quality.
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.
[auto] The passage argues for the necessity of a 'prior to body' and a 'higher thing,' establishing a hierarchical order where soul precedes matter.