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object:ENNEAD 03.06 - Of the Impassibility of Incorporeal Things.
book class:Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04
author class:Plotinus
subject class:Philosophy
subject class:Christianity
class:chapter

OF THE INCORPOREAL (3).

5. The name "incorporeal" does not designate one and the same genus, as does the word "body."1222 Incorporeal entities derive their name from the fact that they are conceived of by abstraction from the body. Consequently, some of them (like intelligence and discursive reason) are genuine beings, existing as well without as within the body, subsisting by themselves, by themselves being actualizations and lives; other beings (such as matter, sense-form without matter, place, time, and so forth), do not constitute real beings, but are united to the body, and depend therefrom, live through others, possess only a relative life, and exist only through certain actualizations. Indeed, when we apply to them the name of incorporeal entities (it is merely a negative designation), indicating only what they are not, but not what they are.
OF THE IMPASSIBILITY OF THE SOUL.

6. (1) The soul is a "being" or essence, without extension, immaterial and incorruptible; her nature consists in a life which is life in itself.

7. (3, end) When the existence of some being is life itself, and when the passions are lives, its death consists in a life of a certain nature, and not in entire privation of life; for the "passion" experienced by this "being" or essence, does not force it into complete loss of life.

8. (2, 3) There is a difference between the affections of the bodies, and those of incorporeal things. The affection of bodies consists in change. On the contrary, the affections and experiences characteristic of the soul are actualizations that have nothing in common with the cooling or heating up of the bodies. Consequently if, for bodies, an affection ever implies a change, we may say that all incorporeal (beings) are impassible. Indeed, immaterial and incorporeal beings are always identical in their actualization; but those that impinge on matter and bodies, though in1223 themselves impassible, allow the subjects in which they reside to be affected. So when an animal feels, the soul resembles a harmony separated from its instrument, which itself causes the vibration of the strings that have been tuned to unison herewith; while the body resembles a harmony inseparable from the strings. The reason why the soul moves the living being is that the latter is animated. We, therefore, find an analogy between the soul and the musician who causes his instrument to produce sounds because he himself contains a harmonic power. The body, struck by a sense-impression, resembles strings tuned in unison. In the production of sound, it is not the harmony itself but the string that is affected. The musician causes it to resound because he contains a harmonic power. Nevertheless, in spite of the will of the musician, the instrument would produce no harmonies that conformed to the laws of music, unless harmony itself dictated them.

9. (5) The soul binds herself to the body by a conversion toward the affections experienced by the body. She detaches herself from the body by "apathy," (turning away from the body's affections.)
OF THE IMPASSIBILITY OF MATTER.

10. (7) According to the ancient (sages) such are the properties of matter. "Matter is incorporeal because it differs from bodies. Matter is not lifeless, because it is neither intelligence, nor soul, nor anything that lives by itself. It is formless, variable, infinite, impotent; consequently, matter cannot be existence, but nonentity. Of course it is not nonentity in the same way that movement is nonentity; matter is nonentity really. It is an image and a phantom of extension, because it is the primary substrate of extension. It is impotence, and the desire for existence.1224 The only reason that it persists is not rest (but change); it always seems to contain contraries, the great and small, the less and more, lack and excess. It is always "becoming," without ever persisting in its condition, or being able to come out of it. Matter is the lack of all existence; and, consequently, what matter seems to be is a deception. If, for instance, matter seems to be large, it really is small; like a mere phantom, it escapes and evanesces into nonentity, not by any change of place, but by its lack of reality. Consequently, the substrate of the images in matter consists of a lower image. That in which objects present appearances that differ according to their positions is a mirror, a mirror that seems crowded, though it possesses nothing, and which yet seems to be everything."
OF THE PASSIBILITY OF THE BODY (819).

11. Passions (or, affections) refer to something destructible; for it is passion that leads to destruction; it is the same sort of being that can be affected, and can be destroyed. Incorporeal entities, however, are not subject to destruction; they either exist or not; in either case they are non-affectible. That which can be affected need not have this impassible nature, but must be subject to alteration or destruction by the qualities of things that enter into it and affect it; for that which in it subsists is not altered by the first chance entity. Consequently, matter is impassible, as by itself it possesses no quality. The forms that enter into and issue from matter (as a substrate) are equally impassible. That which is affected is the composite of form and matter, whose existence consists in the union of these two elements; for it is evidently subject to the action of contrary powers, and of the qualities of things which enter into it, and affect it. That is why the beings that derive their existence from something1225 else, instead of possessing it by themselves, can likewise by virtue of their passivity, either live or not. On the contrary, the beings whose existence consists in an impassible life necessarily live permanently; likewise the things that do not live are equally impassible inasmuch as they do not live. Consequently, being changed and being affected refer only to the composite of form and matter, to the body, and not to matter. Likewise, to receive life and to lose it, to feel passions that are its consequence, can refer only to the composite of soul and body. Nothing similar could happen to the soul; for she is not something compounded out of life and lifelessness; she is life itself, because her "being" or nature is simple, and is automatic.


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