Plotinus: Enneads - AwardSpace

this entire range of production is to be referred, not to each
such single cause, but to the nature of the thing produced [i.e.,
to a certain natural tendency in the product to exist with its
own quality].
All that forwards life or some other useful purpose is to be
ascribed to the transmission characteristic of the All; it is
something flowing from the major of an integral to its minor.
Where we think we see the transmission of some force
unfavourable to the production of living beings, the flaw must
be found in the inability of the subject to take in what would
serve it: for what happens does not happen upon a void; there
is always specific form and quality; anything that could be
affected must have an underlying nature definite and
characterized. The inevitable blendings, further, have their
constructive effect, every element adding something
contributory to the life. Then again some influence may come
into play at the time when the forces of a beneficent nature are
not acting: the co­ordination of the entire system of things does
not always allow to each several entity everything that it needs:
and further we ourselves add a great deal to what is transmitted
to us.
None the less all entwines into a unity: and there is something
wonderful in the agreement holding among these various
things of varied source, even of sources frankly opposite; the
secret lies in a variety within a unity. When by the standard of
the better kind among things of process anything falls short­
the reluctance of its material substratum having prevented its
perfect shaping under idea­ it may be thought of as being
deficient in that noble element whose absence brings to shame:
the thing is a blend, something due to the high beings, an alloy
from the underlying nature, something added by the self.
Because all is ever being knit, all brought to culmination in
unity, therefore all events are indicated; but this does not make
virtue a matter of compulsion; its spontaneity is equally
inwoven into the ordered system by the general law that the
things of this sphere are pendant from the higher, that the
content of our universe lies in the hands of the diviner beings
in whom our world is participant.
39. We cannot, then, refer all that exists to Reason­Principles
inherent in the seed of things [Spermatic Reasons]; the
universe is to be traced further back, to the more primal forces,
to the principles by which that seed itself takes shape. Such
spermatic principles cannot be the containers of things which
arise independently of them, such as what enters from Matter
[the reasonless] into membership of the All, or what is due to
the mere interaction of existences.