V.3 On the Knowing Hypostases and What Is Beyond

We must, then, posit that what is simple also grasps itself in thought, and consider how, if it is possible; or else give up the view that anything really thinks itself. It is hardly possible to give up this view, since many absurdities follow. For even if we were not to grant this to soul, (on the ground that it is) quite absurd, it is utterly absurd not to grant it even to the nature of Intellect—if Intellect has knowledge of other things but will not come to have knowledge and science of itself. For external things will be apprehended by perception, not by intellect—and, if you like, by discursive thought and opinion. Whether intellect has knowledge of these, we should examine. But intelligible things, clearly, intellect will know. Will it know only them, then, or also itself, the one who will know them?

And will it know itself only in the sense that it knows these things, without knowing who it is? Will it know that it knows what is its own, but no longer who it is that knows? Or will it know both what is its own and itself? And we must consider in what way it knows, and how far.

The reasoning part in soul makes its judgment on the basis of the images that perception sets before it, combining and dividing them. Or it also looks upon what comes from intellect—the impressions, so to speak—and has the same power over these too. It also gains understanding, as though recognizing the new impressions that have just arrived and fitting them to those it has long had within it. This is what we would call the soul’s recollections. And is the intellect that belongs to soul one whose power stops here? Or does it also turn toward itself and know itself? Or must this be referred back to Intellect?

For if we grant knowledge of itself to this part, we will say it is intellect, and we will inquire how it differs from the one above. If we do not grant it, we will come to that one as the argument proceeds, and consider what this self-thinking is. And if we grant it here too, in the lower part, we will consider how its self-thinking differs; for if there is no difference, this is already unmixed Intellect. Does this discursive part of soul, then, also turn back toward itself? Or no: it has understanding of the impressions it receives from either side. And how it has understanding we must inquire first.

Why, then, is this not intellect, and the rest soul, starting from the perceptive part? Or rather: because soul has to be in reasonings, and all these are works of a reasoning power. But why don’t we grant self-thinking to this part and be done with it? Because we assigned it the task of examining what is outside and busying itself with it, whereas we think it right that Intellect should have what is its own and examine what is in itself. But if someone says, “What prevents this part from examining what is its own by another power?” he is not looking for the discursive or reasoning part, but is taking pure intellect.

Or rather: it is we ourselves who reason, and we ourselves who think the thoughts in discursive thought—for this is what we are. The activities of Intellect come from above, just as those from perception come from below. We are this, the chief part of soul, in the middle between a twofold power, a worse and a better: the worse is perception, the better is Intellect. But perception is agreed to be always ours, for we are always perceiving. Intellect is disputed, both because we do not always use it and because it is separate. It is separate in that it does not incline toward us; rather, we look up toward it. Perception is our messenger, but that is our king.

Does the discursive part, then, not know that it is discursive? Does it not know that it gains understanding of things outside, and that it judges what it judges by the standards within it, which it has from Intellect, and that there is something better than it, [which] it does not seek but surely has, altogether? But does it then not know what it itself is, while knowing what kind of thing it is and what its works are like? Suppose, then, it says that it comes from Intellect, is second after Intellect, and is an image of Intellect, having all things in itself as though written, while the one who writes and has written them is There. Will one who knows himself in this way stop here? Shall we, using another power, behold Intellect knowing itself? Or, sharing in it—since it too is ours and we are its—shall we in this way know Intellect and ourselves?

Or rather, this is necessary if we are to know what the self-thinking in Intellect is. One has really become intellect oneself when one lets go of everything else that is one’s own and looks at this by this, and at oneself by oneself. So it is as intellect, then, that one sees oneself.

Or else it will think, knowing itself in this way as contemplated but not as contemplating. So it will not know itself entirely or as a whole. For what it saw, it saw as contemplated, not as contemplating; and in this way it will have seen something else, not itself. Or else it will add, from itself, the one who has contemplated as well, so that it may have thought itself completely. But if it adds the one who has contemplated, it adds the things seen along with it. If, then, the things contemplated are present in the contemplation: if they are impressions of them, it does not have the things themselves; but if it has the things themselves, it does not have them by seeing them as a result of dividing itself. It was both contemplating and having them before it divided itself.

If so, contemplation must be the same as what is contemplated, and intellect the same as the intelligible. For if they are not the same, there will be no truth: whoever has the things that are will have an impression different from the things that are, and that is not truth. Truth, then, must not be of something other than itself; it must be what it says. So in this way intellect, the intelligible, and being are one, and this is the first being. And indeed it is the first Intellect, having the things that are—or rather being the same as the things that are.

If, then, it is activity, and its being is activity, it would be one and the same with its activity. And being and the intelligible are one with activity. [So] all will be one together: Intellect, thinking, the intelligible. If, then, its thinking is the intelligible, and the intelligible is itself, it will itself think itself. For it will think by thinking, which was itself, and it will think the intelligible, which was itself. So in both respects it will think itself: insofar as thinking was itself, and insofar as the intelligible was itself—the intelligible it thought by thinking, which was itself.

For as long as we were up there, in the nature of Intellect, we were content: we thought, and we saw, gathering all things into one. For it was Intellect that thought and spoke about itself, and soul kept still, yielding to the activity of Intellect. But since we have come to be here again, and in soul, we look for some persuasion to arise, as if we wished to contemplate the archetype in an image. Perhaps, then, we should teach our soul how Intellect contemplates itself. We should teach this to the part of soul that is in a way intellectual, calling it the discursive part, and indicating by the name that it is a kind of intellect, or that it has its power through Intellect and from Intellect.note

Let us carry the image over, then, to the true Intellect, which we said was the same as the things it thinks: the true things, the things that really are, the first things. Let us carry over too the point that such an Intellect cannot possibly be outside itself. So if it is in itself and with itself, and what it is is Intellect—and an intellect that does not think could never exist—then knowledge of itself must accompany it. It must know that it is in itself, and that its work and its being are nothing other than simply being Intellect. For it is certainly not a practical intellect. A practical intellect looks outward and does not remain in itself. It might have some knowledge of outer things, but if it were wholly practical, there would be no necessity for it to know itself.

Where there is no action, though—and pure Intellect does not even have desire for something absent—its turning back to itself shows that self-knowledge is not merely reasonable but necessary. For what would its life even be, freed from action and living in intellect?

But for Intellect, stillness is not a departure from intellect. The stillness of Intellect is activity at leisure from other things. For other things too, when they are at rest from other things, are left with their own proper activity—especially those whose being is not potential but actual. Its being, then, is activity, and there is nothing toward which the activity is directed; so it is directed to itself. In thinking itself, then, it has its activity in this way toward itself and into itself. And if anything comes from it, that is because it is in itself, directed toward itself. For it had first to be [in] itself, and then also toward something else, or for something else to come from it, made like it—just as fire, being first fire in itself and having the activity of fire, is thus able to produce a trace of itself in something else.

And again: Intellect is activity in itself, while soul has one part, the part turned toward Intellect, which is, as it were, inside, and another, outside Intellect, turned toward what is outside. By the one it has been made like its source; by the other, though it has become unlike, it is nonetheless made like it here too, whether it acts or makes. For even when it acts it still contemplates, and when it makes it makes forms, like thoughts brought to completion. So all things are traces of thinking and of Intellect, proceeding according to the archetype and imitating it—the things near it more closely, while the last preserve only a dim image.

For it did not generate them itself either; it too, like the rational principles, is an image. That from which it came is what is clear, true and primary, and is therefore its own and for itself. This image, though, unless it belongs to something else and is in something else, does not even remain; for an image, which is of something else, must come to be in something else, unless it hangs from its original. That is why it does not see: it does not have enough light. And even if it does see, it sees something other, completed in something other, and not itself. But none of this is the case There. There, vision and its object are together; the object is like the vision and the vision like the object. Who, then, will say what it is like? The one who has seen. And it is Intellect that sees.

Here too, sight, being light—or rather united with light—sees light, since it sees colors. But There it sees not through something else but through itself, because there is nothing outside. So it sees one light by another light, not through something else. Light, then, sees another light: so it sees itself.

The life and activity in Intellect is the first light, shining first of all for itself, a radiance turned toward itself, at once shining and shone upon. It is the truly intelligible, both thinking and thought, seen by itself and needing nothing else in order to see, sufficient to itself for seeing—for what it sees is itself. It is known even by us through that very thing, so that even for us the knowledge of it comes about through it. Otherwise, how could we have come to speak about it?

It is such that it grasps itself more clearly, while we grasp it through it. And through reasonings like these our soul too is led up to it, positing itself as an image of it, so that its own life is a reflection and likeness of that one, and when it thinks it becomes godlike and Intellect-like. And if someone asks it what that perfect and complete Intellect is like, the one that knows itself primarily, it must first come to be in Intellect, or yield its activity to Intellect, and then, having in itself the very things of which it retained the memory, show itself—so that through it, since it is an image, one can in some way see that Intellect: through the soul that has been made more exactly like it, as far as any part of soul can come into likeness with Intellect.

Now no one would grant that the sun’s light is around the sun by itself, having set out from it and remained around it, with one part always proceeding from another, the one before it, until it reaches us and the earth. Rather, he will place all of it, even the part around the sun, in something else, so as not to allow an interval after the sun empty of body. But soul, which has come from Intellect as a kind of light around it, is attached to it; it is not in anything else, but around Intellect, and it has no place, for neither does Intellect.

If not even that, let him take perception, which conveys the forms in a more spread-out way—perception on its own, with the powers it has, and already among the forms. And if he likes, let him go down to the generative soul too, as far as the things it makes. Then let him climb up again from there, from the last forms to the forms that are last in the other direction—or rather, to the first.

We must say again, then, that this Intellect needed to see itself—or rather, that it has the seeing of itself—first because it is many, then because it belongs to something else, and is of necessity capable of seeing, and of seeing that other, and its very being is seeing. For if there is something other, there must be seeing; if there is not, seeing is pointless. There must, then, be more than one for there to be seeing, and the seeing must coincide with the seen, and what it sees must be a multiplicity, [not] one in every way. For what is one in every way has nothing toward which it could be active; alone and solitary, it will stand completely still. For insofar as anything is active, there is one thing and another. And if there were not one thing and another, what will it even do? Or where will it advance to?

That is why what is active must either be active in relation to something else, or itself be something many, if it is to be active within itself. If it is not going to go out to anything else, it will stand still; and when it is entirely at rest, it will not think. What thinks, then, must be in two when it thinks, and either one of the two is outside or both are in the same thing; and thinking must always be in otherness, and of necessity in sameness too. And the things that are thought in the proper sense must be, in relation to Intellect, both the same and other.

Or rather: then there must already be many. For there is already their being other, and the way in which they are other, and number, and many other things. What thinks, then, must grasp one thing and another, and what is thought, as it is being thought through, must be complex. Otherwise there will be no thinking of it, but only a touching and, as it were, an inexpressible and unthinking contact, prior to thinking, since Intellect has not yet come to be and what touches does not think. And what thinks must not itself remain simple either, especially insofar as it thinks itself. For it will split itself in two, even if it makes its understanding a silent one. Then again, it will not need, as it were, to busy itself about itself: for what will it learn by thinking? It already is what it is to itself before Intellect thinks. And again, knowledge is a kind of longing, and as it were a finding by one who has searched.

So what is wholly without difference remains itself in relation to itself and seeks nothing about itself; but what unfolds itself would be many.

This Intellect, then, applied itself to that, and in grasping it became Intellect, always settling it within itself and becoming Intellect and being and thinking—when it thought. For before this it was not thinking, since it did not have the intelligible, nor was it yet Intellect, since it had not yet thought. What is before these is their principle, but not as present within them; for the source things come from is not present in them—their constituents are. What each thing comes from is not each thing, but other than all of them. It is not, then, one of all things, but before all things, and so before Intellect too; for again, all things are within Intellect. So in this way too it is before Intellect; and if the things after it hold the rank of all things, in this way too it is before all things.

What something is prior to, then, it must not be one of; and you will not call it Intellect either. Nor, then, the Good, if “the Good” signifies one of all things—(not that either); but if it signifies what is before all things, let it be so named. If, then, Intellect is what it is because it is many, and its thinking—something that, as it were, comes in besides, even if it comes from itself—makes it many, then what is entirely simple and first of all must be beyond Intellect. For if it thinks, it will not be beyond Intellect but will be Intellect; and if it is Intellect, it too will be a multiplicity.

“But that,” they say, “is how it is with number, since the numbers that follow are compositions. With beings, what necessity is there here too for there to be some one from which the many come?” Or rather: the many will be torn apart from one another, each coming to the composition from somewhere else, by chance. “But,” they will say, “the activities proceeded from Intellect as from one, since it is simple.” Well, then they are already positing something simple before the activities. Next they will make the activities permanent, and hypostases. But if they are hypostases, they will be other than that from which they come: that remains simple, while what comes from it is a multiplicity in its own right, and depends on it.

For if these came into existence because that was somehow active, there will be multiplicity there too. But if these are the first activities, and they produced the second while letting what is prior to these activities remain by itself, then they ceded the activities to the second, which was constituted from them. For it is one thing, and the activities that come from it another, since they did not arise from its being active.

Or rather, we shall reasonably posit the activity that, as it were, flows from it, like [light] from the sun. We shall posit, then, the whole intelligible nature as a kind of light, and the One, standing at the summit of the intelligible, as reigning over it, not having thrust away from itself what shone out from it. Or we shall make it another light before the light, always shining while remaining above the intelligible. For what comes from it is not cut off from it, nor again the same as it, nor such that it is not being, nor again something blind, as it were; it sees and knows itself, and is the first to know. But that, just as it is beyond Intellect, is also beyond knowing: just as it needs nothing, so it does not need knowing either. Knowing belongs to a second nature.

For knowing too is one something; but that is one without the “something.” For if it were one something, it would not be one itself; for the “itself” comes before the “something.”

For it looks as if thinking, in general, is a self-awareness of the whole when many things come together into the same—when something thinks itself, which is thinking in the proper sense. But each single thing is just itself, something, and seeks nothing. If the thinking is of what is outside, it will be deficient and not thinking in the proper sense. What is entirely simple and truly self-sufficient needs nothing. But what is self-sufficient in a secondary way, and needs itself, needs to think itself. And being deficient in relation to itself, it has achieved self-sufficiency by being a whole, having become sufficient out of all its parts, being with itself and thinking toward itself.

Or rather: if you want to take it solitary and alone, you will not think it. Being itself is many within itself, and whatever else you name, it has being. If so, then if there is something that is simplest of all, it will have no thinking of itself; for if it has, it will have being many. So it neither thinks itself, nor is there thinking of it.

Think of those who are inspired and possessed: they may know this much, that they have something greater within them, even if they do not know what; and from what has moved them and what they say, they get some perception of what moved them, though these things are other than what moved them. In the same way we too, it seems, stand in relation to that, when we have pure intellect and use it: we sense that this is the intellect within, the one that gave being and the other things of this order, but that it is itself such as not to be these, but something better than what we call being—indeed more, and greater, than what we call being—because it is itself greater than reason and intellect and perception, having provided these, not being them itself.

For everything that is not one is preserved by the one, and is what it is by it. If it has not become one, even if it is made of many parts, one could not yet say “it is.” And if one can say of each thing what it is, one says it because each of them is one, and by that very same thing. But what does not have many within itself is one not by participation in one; it is one itself, not as said of something else, but because it is this, from which the other things too, in a way, are one—some by being near, others by being far.

For what comes next makes plain both its sameness and the fact that it comes after it, by its multiplicity being one throughout. For though it is a multiplicity, it is still in the same, and you could not separate it out, because all things are together. Indeed, each of the things that come from it, as long as it shares in life, is one-many; for it cannot show itself as one-all.

How, then, does it make what it does not have? For it does not make at random, nor by reflecting on what it will make; and yet it will make. Now it has been said that if anything comes from the One, it must be other than it; and being other, it is not one, for that was the One. And if not one but two, there must already be multiplicity too: for there is already other and same and quality and the rest. That what comes from that is not one, then, may be taken as shown. But that it is a multiplicity, and a multiplicity of the kind we observe in what comes after it, is worth puzzling over; and the necessity of what comes after it still has to be investigated.

For many does not come from many; this many comes from what is not many. For if that too were many, it would not be the principle, but something else would be before it. There must, then, be a gathering into what is really one, outside all multiplicity and any simplicity whatsoever, if it is really simple. But how is what came from it a rational principle, many and complete, when that was obviously not a rational principle? And if it was not, how then does a rational principle come from what is not a rational principle? And how does what is good-like come from the Good? For what does it have of it, to be called good-like? Is it that it stays the same, in the same way? And what does that have to do with the good? For we want things to stay the same only if they are good.

But if this is the Good, there would be nothing beyond these. And if the Good is that, then clearly its life is directed toward that, depends on that, has its existence from that, and lives toward that; for that is its principle. That, then, must be greater than life and intellect. For in this way it will turn back toward that both the life in itself, an imitation of what is in that, by which it lives, and the intellect in itself, an imitation of what is in that, whatever this may be.

Is it enough, then, to say this and be done?