Plotinus: Enneads - AwardSpace

see the self as external is the negation of intellection. That act
requires a manifold­agent, object, movement and all the other
conditions of a thinking principle. Further we must remember
what has been indicated elsewhere that, since every intellectual
act in order to be what it must be requires variety, every
movement simple and the same throughout, though it may
comport some form of contact, is devoid of the intellective.
It follows that the Supreme will know neither itself nor
anything else but will hold an august repose. All the rest is
later; before them all, This was what This was; any awareness
of that other would be acquired, the shifting knowledge of the
instable. Even in knowing the stable he would be manifold, for
it is not possible that, while in the act of knowing the laters
possess themselves of their object, the Supreme should know
only in some unpossessing observation.
As regards Providence, that is sufficiently saved by the fact
that This is the source from which all proceeds; the dependent
he cannot know when he has no knowledge of himself but
keeps that august repose. Plato dealing with essential Being
allows it intellection but not this august repose: intellection
then belongs to Essential Being; this august repose to the
Principle in which there is no intellection. Repose, of course, is
used here for want of a fitter word; we are to understand that
the most august, the truly so, is That which transcends [the
movement of] Intellection.
40. That there can be no intellection in the First will be patent
to those that have had such contact; but some further
confirmation is desirable, if indeed words can carry the matter;
we need overwhelming persuasion.
It must be borne in mind that all intellection rises in some
principle and takes cognisance of an object. But a distinction is
to be made:
There is the intellection that remains within its place of origin;
it has that source as substratum but becomes a sort of addition
to it in that it is an activity of that source perfecting the
potentiality there, not by producing anything but as being a
completing power to the principle in which it inheres. There is
also the intellection inbound with Being­ Being's very author­
and this could not remain confined to the source since there it
could produce nothing; it is a power to production; it produces
therefore of its own motion and its act is Real­Being and there
it has its dwelling. In this mode the intellection is identical
with Being; even in its self­intellection no distinction is made
save the logical distinction of thinker and thought with, as we
have often observed, the implication of plurality.