readoldthings

 Welcome back! Last time we worked through the 10th section of the first tractate of the first of Plotinus's Enneads. Today we'll move on to Section 11. 

Let's jump right back in.

In childhood the main activity is in the Couplement and there is but little irradiation from the higher principles of our being: but when these higher principles act but feebly or rarely upon us their action is directed towards the Supreme; they work upon us only when they stand at the mid-point.

Last time, we saw that, for Plotinus, the Soul is not identical with the experiencing self. The Soul is an eternal principle, beyond material incarnation. The total person-- the human system, if you like-- is like a series of beads on a string. The highest bead is the Soul. The lowest represents the faculties of generation. Our experience is able to range up and down the string, connected to this bead or that bead according to circumstances.

Here, Plotinus is telling us that, in the early part of our life, most of our experience is centered here below, in the life of the body. I think that this is something anyone would agree with, and it certainly fits my own experience of childhood through roughly age 30.

The last section appears to be another victim of this garbled and half-comprehensible translation. We are told that "when these higher principles act but feebly or rarely upon us their action is directed towards the Supreme" and also that "they work upon us only when they stand at the mid-point." 

But does not the We include that phase of our being which stands above the mid-point?

(The word "We" in this sentence is missing in the link I provided.)

Okay, this clarifies the previous sentence a bit. It appears that he means that the higher principles of our being are acting above the mid-point. When we ourselves are experiencing life below that mid-point-- the mean between Soul and Body-- we are unaware of them. And here he responds to the objection, but isn't that higher part of us, well, part of us? 

It does, but on the condition that we lay hold of it: our entire nature is not ours at all times but only as we direct the mid-point upwards or downwards, or lead some particular phase of our nature from potentiality or native character into act.

Are you following this? This is, it seems to me, a critical idea. Parts of us only exist in potential, and parts of us are beyond manifestation in the material world. They are, indeed, part of us. But our talents are only real insofar as we manifest them as skills. And our higher spirit is only a part of us insofar as we turn our attention towards it, and unite ourselves to it, through spiritual practice, rather than to our lower self, through obeying our bodily urges, passions and impulses. 

This next part is neat:

And the animals, in what way or degree do they possess the Animate?

If there be in them, as the opinion goes, human Souls that have sinned, then the Animating-Principle in its separable phase does not enter directly into the brute; it is there but not there to them; they are aware only of the image of the Soul [only of the lower Soul] and of that only by being aware of the body organised and determined by that image.

If there be no human Soul in them, the Animate is constituted for them by a radiation from the All-Soul.

In the Timaeus, Plato has it that we are first born into the bodies of men. If we mess up, we're reborn as women. If we mess up a second time, we are reborn as animals. 

This idea is clearly reflective of the prejudices of its age, and is unacceptable to the modern reader. (In the same way, many of our prejudices will not be revealed as such for 1, 2, 5 or 10 centuries; then they will appear cruel and nonsensical in just the same way.) However, it is interesting to note that, for Plotinus, only those animals who were previously human beings have individualized souls-- with which they are unable to make contact in this life. For the rest, their soul is actually a group soul-- the Universal Soul. 

To my mind, it makes more sense to view animals as possessing individual souls as do we, though they are far more removed from them than we are. Some animals would indeed be human beings that have failed to make it at the human level, and were sent back a grade, so to speak. Others would be our younger brothers and sisters, on the journey with us.

It's also fun to consider that at least some animals are at the same level we are. This may be incorrect, but I like to think that dolphins and whales, and also parrots or crows, are at the same level as human beings. This allows for there to People of the Earth, Sea and Sky. 

Now, it's also worth taking a minute to view the world the way Plotinus would have, on his own terms. What would it mean to think of animals as participants in the Universal Soul? What would it mean to think of ourselves the way that he does?