Plotinus: Enneads - AwardSpace

ourselves, for we are There among them. Since not only
ourselves but all other things also are those Beings, we all are
they; we are they while we are also one with all: therefore we
and all things are one.
When we look outside of that on which we depend we ignore
our unity; looking outward we see many faces; look inward
and all is the one head. If man could but be turned about by his
own motion or by the happy pull of Athene­ he would see at
once God and himself and the All. At first no doubt all will not
be seen as one whole, but when we find no stop at which to
declare a limit to our being we cease to rule ourselves out from
the total of reality; we reach to the All as a unity­ and this not
by any stepping forward, but by the fact of being and abiding
there where the All has its being.
8. For my part I am satisfied that anyone considering the mode
in which Matter participates in the Ideas will be ready enough
to accept this tenet of omnipresence in identity, no longer
rejecting it as incredible or even difficult. This because it
seems reasonable and imperative to dismiss any notion of the
Ideas lying apart with Matter illumined from them as from
somewhere above­ a meaningless conception, for what have
distance and separation to do here?
This participation cannot be thought of as elusive or very
perplexing; on the contrary, it is obvious, accessible in many
examples.
Note, however, that when we sometimes speak of the Ideas
illuminating Matter this is not to suggest the mode in which
material light pours down on a material object; we use the
phrase in the sense only that, the material being image while
the Ideas are archetypes, the two orders are distinguished
somewhat in the manner of illuminant and illuminated. But it is
time to be more exact.
We do not mean that the Idea, locally separate, shows itself in
Matter like a reflection in water; the Matter touches the Idea at
every point, though not in a physical contact, and, by dint of
neighbourhood­ nothing to keep them apart­ is able to absorb
thence all that lies within its capacity, the Idea itself not
penetrating, not approaching, the Matter, but remaining selflocked.
We take it, then, that the Idea, say of Fire­ for we had best deal
with Matter as underlying the elements­ is not in the Matter.
The Ideal Fire, then, remaining apart, produces the form of fire
throughout the entire enfired mass. Now let us suppose­ and
the same method will apply to all the so­called elements­ that