Great Throughts Treasury

"For at this point one would arrive at the act of thinking of it (evil) as if to be disproportion in regards to proportion, and limitlessness in regards to limit, formlessness in regards to the one-shaping-the-forms, always wanting in self-sufficiency, always indefinite, nowhere having a place to situate itself, wholly passive, insatiable absolute poverty; and these things above have not been corresponding to it, but as if the true essential being of it is these things, and what is it but all these things."

"For it is as was said of old: ?Temperance, courage, every virtue ? even prudence itself ? are purifications.? ? For what is temperance, rightly so called, but to abstain from the pleasures of the body, to reject them rather as unclean and unworthy of the clean? What else is courage but being unafraid of death, that mere parting of soul from body, an event no one can fear whose happiness lies in being his own unmingled self? What is magnanimity except scorn of earthly things? What is prudence but the kind of thinking that bends the soul away from earthly things and draws it on high? ?"

"For it is the greatest of all things? And it must be understood as infinite not because its size and number cannot be measured or counted but because its power cannot be comprehended. For when you think of him as Intellect or God, he is more; and when you unify him in your thought, here also the degree of unity by which he transcends your thought is more than you imagined it to be; for he is by himself without any incidental attributes."

"For it is the part of the soul that is in the body that sleeps; but the true awakening is a true getting up from the body, not with the body. Getting up with the body is only getting out of one sleep into another, like getting out of one bed into another; but the true rising is a rising altogether away from bodies."

"For that [principle] would be true in this way, if all things were tending to unity and were a unity, and the desire were of this [unity]. On the one hand, this unity in going forth to other [unities], as far as it is possible for it to advance, would appear and even in a way be many."

"For that which generates is always simpler than that which is generated. If this, then, generated Intellect, it must be simpler than Intellect. But if anyone should think that the One itself is also all things, then either it will be each one taken separately or all of them together. If, then, it is all of them collected together, it will be posterior to all things; but if it is prior to all things, all things will be other than it, and it will be other than all things, but if it and all things are simultaneous, then it will not be an origin. But it must be an origin, and exist before all things, in order that all things, too, may exist after it. But as for its being each one taken separately, first, any one of them will be the same as any other, then all will be confounded together and there will be no distinction [between them]. And so it is not one of all things, but is before all things."

"He that has the strength, let him arise and withdraw into himself, foregoing all that is known by the eyes, turning away forever from the material beauty that once made his joy. When he perceives those shapes of grace that show in body, let him not pursue: he must know them for copies, vestiges, shadows, and hasten away towards That they tell of. For if anyone follow what is like a beautiful shape playing over water ? is there not a myth telling in symbol of such a dupe, how he sank into the depths of the current and was swept away to nothingness? So too, one that is held by material beauty and will not break free shall be precipitated, not in body but in Soul, down to the dark depths loathed of the Intellective-Being, where, blind even in the Lower-World, he shall have commerce only with shadows, there as here."

"How can one see the beauty of a good soul? Withdraw into yourself and look. If you do not as yet see beauty within you, do as does the sculptor of a statue that is to be beautified: he cuts away here, he smoothes it there, he makes this line lighter, this other one purer, until he disengages beautiful lineaments in the marble. Do you this, too. Cut away all that is excessive, straighten all that is crooked, bring light to all that is overcast, labor to make all one radiance of beauty. Never cease ?working at the statue? until there shines out upon you from it the divine sheen of virtue, until you see perfect ?goodness firmly established in stainless shrine.? Have you become like this? Do you see yourself, abiding within yourself, in pure solitude? Does nothing now remain to shatter that interior unity, nor anything external cling to your authentic self? Are you entirely that sole true light which is not contained by space, not confined to any circumscribed form, not diffused as something without term, but ever unmeasurable as something greater than all measure and something more than all quantity? Do you see yourself in this state? Then you have become vision itself. Be of good heart. Remaining here you have ascended aloft. You need a guide no longer. Strain and see."

"If a man has been immersed in filth or daubed with mud his native comeliness disappears and all that is seen is the foul stuff besmearing him: his ugly condition is due to alien matter that has encrusted him, and if he is to win back his grace it must be his business to scour and purify himself and make himself what he was."

"If evil exist at all, it must be situate in the realm of non-being. By this non-being we are not to understand something that simply does not exist, but only something of an utterly different order from Authentic Being. Some conception of it would be reached by thinking of measurelessness as opposed to measure, the unshaped against a shaping principle, the ever-needy against the self-sufficing; while whatever participates in in and resembles it becomes evil, though not to the point of being evil absolute."

"If someone is able to turn around? he will see God and himself and the All; at first he will not see4 as the All but then, when he has nowhere to set himself and determine how far he himself goes, he will stop making himself off from all being and will come to the All without going anywhere, but remaining there where the All is set firm."

"If someone is immersed in mire or daubed with mud, his native comeliness disappears; all one sees is the mire and mud with which he is covered. Ugliness is due to the alien matter that encrusts him. If he would be attractive once more, he has to wash himself, get clean again, make himself what he was before. Thus we would be right in saying that ugliness of soul comes from its mingling with, fusion with, collapse into the bodily and material: the soul is ugly when it is not purely itself. It is the same as with gold that is mixed with earthy particles. If they are worked out, the gold is left and it is beautiful; separated from all that is foreign to it, it is gold with gold alone. So also the soul. Separated from the desires that come to it from the body with which it has all too close a union, cleansed of the passions, washed clean of all that embodiment has daubed it with, withdrawn into itself again ? at that moment the ugliness, which is foreign to the soul, vanishes."

"In this way the good is correctly said to be one?s own: therefore it is not necessary to seek it outside. For where would it be, having fallen outside of being? Or how could one discover it in non being?"

"Ineffability: [The One] will debar all telling and knowing except that it may be described as transcending Being ? for if there were nothing outside all alliance and compromise, nothing authentically one, there would be no Source. Untouched by multiplicity, it will be wholly self-sufficing, an absolute First."

"It is a fine thing? for Intellect, because it?s being is the same as thinking, and thinking made it; therefore this Intellect needs to keep company with thinking and to be always getting an intimate understandings of itself, that this is this, because the two are one; but if it was only one it would have sufficed to itself and would not have needed to get understanding."

"It is by participation of species that we call every sensible object beautiful. Thus, since everything void of form is by nature fitted for its reception, as far as it is destitute of reason and form it is base and separate from the divine reason, the great fountain of forms; and whatever is entirely remote from this immortal source is perfectly base and deformed. And such is matter, which by its nature is ever averse from the supervening irradiations of form. Whenever, therefore, form accedes, it conciliates in amicable unity the parts which are about to compose a whole; for being itself one it is not wonderful that the subject of its power should tend to unity, as far as the nature of a compound will admit. Hence beauty is established in multitude when the many is reduced into one, and in this case it communicates itself both to the parts and to the whole. But when a particular one, composed from similar parts, is received it gives itself to the whole, without departing from the sameness and integrity of its nature. Thus at one and the same time it communicates itself to the whole building and its several parts; and at another time confines itself to a single stone, and then the first participation arises from the operations of art, but the second from the formation of nature. And hence body becomes beautiful through the communion supernally proceeding from divinity."

"It is in virtue of unity that beings are beings."

"It is the soul that accepts unmeasure, excess and shortcoming which bring forth licentiousness, cowardice and all other flaws of the soul, all the states, foreigh to the true nature, which set up false judgments, so that the soul comes to name evil or good those things which it respectively flees or pursues (rather than to test them by their true value). Such a soul is not purely itself; it is shut out from the Forming Idea that orders and brings to measure, and this because it is merged in a body made of matter. Then if the reasoning faculty too has taken hurt, the soul's seeing is balked by the passions and by the darkening that matter brings to it, by its attention no longer to essence but to process whose principle or source is matter. Wholly without part in Good, the negation of Good, unmingled lack, this matter-kind makes over to its own likeness whatsoever comes in touch with it. But the soul wrought to perfection, addressed towards Divine Mind, is steadfastly pure; it has turned away from matter; all that is undetermined, that is outside of measure, that is evil, it neither sees nor draws near; it endures in its purity wholly determined by Divine Mind."

"Knowing demands the organ fitted to the object."

"Knowledge of The Good or contact with it, is the all-important: this ? we read ? is the grand learning, the learning we are to understand, not of looking towards it but attaining, first, some knowledge of it. We come to this learning by analogies, by abstractions, by our understanding of its subsequents, of all that is derived from The Good, by the upward steps towards it. Purification has The Good for goal; so the virtues, all right ordering, ascent within the Intellectual, settlement therein, banqueting upon the divine ? by these methods one becomes, to self and to all else, at once seen and seer; identical with Being and Intellectual-Principle and the entire living all, we no longer see the Supreme as an external; we are near now, the next is That and it is close at hand, radiant above the Intellectual. Here, we put aside all the learning; disciplined to this pitch, established in beauty, the quester holds knowledge still of the ground he rests on but, suddenly, swept beyond it all by the very crest of the wave of Intellect surging beneath, he is lifted and sees, never knowing how; the vision floods the eyes with light, but it is not a light showing some other object, the light is itself the vision. No longer is there thing seen and light to show it, no longer Intellect and object of Intellection; this is the very radiance that brought both Intellect and Intellectual object into being for the later use and allowed them to occupy the quester?s mind. With This he himself becomes identical, with that radiance whose Act is to engender Intellectual-Principle, not losing in that engendering but for ever unchanged, the engendered coming to be simply because that Supreme exists. If there were no such principle above change, no derivative could rise."

"Let us define the nature of the Good as far as our immediate purpose demands. The Good is that on which all depends, towards which all existences aspire as to their source and need, while Itself is without need, the measure and term of all, giving out from Itself Divine Mind and Being and Soul and Life and all intellective act."

"Life is the flight of the alone to the alone."

"Matter is... no limit or bound, for it is mere indetermination; it is not a power, for what does it produce? ... it is no more than the image and phantasm of Mass, a bare aspiration towards substantial existence; it is stationary but not in the sense of having position, it is in itself invisible, eluding all effort to observe it, present where no one can look, unseen for all our gazing, ceaselessly presenting contraries in the things based upon it, it is large and small, more and less, deficient and excessive; a phantasm unabiding and yet unable to withdraw."

"Men have forgotten that to which from the beginning onwards their longing and effort are pointed; for all that exists desires and aspires towards the Supreme by a compulsion of nature, as if divining by instinct that they cannot exist without it."

"Never stop working on your statue until the divine glory of virtue shines out on you, until you see self-mastery enthroned upon its holy seat."

"Newly awakened it is all too feeble to bear the ultimate splendor. Therefore the Soul must be trained ? to the habit of remarking, first, all noble pursuits, then the works of beauty produced not by the labor of the arts but by the virtue of men known for their goodness: lastly, you must search the souls of those that have shaped these beautiful forms. But how are you to see into a virtuous soul and know its loveliness? Withdraw into yourself and look. And if you do not find yourself beautiful yet, act as does the creator of a statue that is to be made beautiful: he cuts away here, he smoothes there, he makes this line lighter, this other purer, until a lovely face has grown upon his work. So do you also: cut away all that is excessive, straighten all that is crooked, bring light to all that is overcast, labor to make all one glow of beauty and never cease chiseling your statue, until there shall shine out on you from it the godlike splendor of virtue, until you shall see the perfect goodness surely established in the stainless shrine. When you know that you have become this perfect work, when you are self-gathered in the purity of your being, nothing now remaining that can shatter that inner unity, nothing from without clinging to the authentic man, when you find yourself wholly true to your essential nature, wholly that only veritable Light which is not measured by space, not narrowed to any circumscribed form nor again diffused as a thing void of term, but ever unmeasurable as something greater than all measure and more than all quantity ? when you perceive that you have grown to this, you are now become very vision: now call up all your confidence, strike forward yet a step ? you need a guide no longer ? strain, and see."

"Nous: The Platonic Parmenides is more exact; the distinction is made between the Primal One, a strictly pure Unity, and a secondary One which is a One-Many and a third which is a One-and-many; thus he too is in accordance with our thesis of the Three Kinds."

"On the other hand, the ancient nature and the desire of the good, the very thing which is of itself, really leads to unity, and every nature tends to this [unity], to itself. For this is the good for this one nature, to be of itself and to be itself: but this is to be one."

"One is cause of the cause. He is then in a greater degree something like the most causative and truest of causes, possessing all together the intellectual causes which are going to be from him and generative of what is not as it chanced but as he himself willed."

"Only the mind?s eye can contemplate this mighty beauty. But if it comes to contemplation purblind with vice, impure, weak, without the strength to look upon brilliant objects, it then sees nothing even if it is placed in the presence of an object that can be seen. ? Let each one therefore become godlike and beautiful who would contemplate the divine and beautiful."

"Our individual bodies need a great deal of troublesome thought? and they are continually in the grip of poverty? [and with the soul's fellowship with it the body] fills the soul with pleasures, desires and griefs."

"Philosophy and Dialectic: What, then, is Philosophy? Philosophy is the supremely precious. Is Dialectic, then, the same as Philosophy? It is the precious part of Philosophy. We must not think of it as the mere tool of the metaphysician: Dialectic does not consist of bare theories and rules: it deals with verities; Existences are, as it were, Matter to it, or at least it proceeds methodically towards Existences, and possesses itself, at the one step, of the notions and of the realities. Untruth and sophism it knows, not directly, not of its own nature, but merely as something produced outside itself, something which it recognizes to be foreign to the verities laid up in itself; in the falsity presented to it, it perceives a clash with its own canon of truth. Dialectic, that is to say, has no knowledge of propositions ? collections of words ? but it knows the truth, and, in that knowledge, knows what the schools call their propositions: it knows above all, the operation of the soul, and, by virtue of this knowing, it knows, too, what is affirmed and what is denied, whether the denial is of what was asserted or of something. These brackets and contents are mine, added for clarity, and replace ?it.? Else, and whether propositions agree or differ; all that is submitted to it, it attacks with the directness of sense-perception and it leaves petty precisions of process to what other science may care for such exercises."

"Rarity: you must close the eyes and call instead upon another vision which is to be waked within you, a vision, the birth-right of all, which few turn to use."

"Recollection and the Forms: At any time when we have not been in direct vision of that sphere, memory is the source of its activity within us; when we have possessed that vision, its presence is due to the principle by which we enjoyed it: this principle awakens where it wakens; and it alone has vision in that order; for this is no matter to be brought to us by way of analogy, or by the syllogistic reasoning whose grounds lie elsewhere; the power which, even here, we possess of discoursing upon the Intellectual Beings is vested, as we show, in that principle which alone is capable of their contemplation. That, we must awaken, so to speak, and thus attain the vision of the Supreme, as one, standing on some lofty height and lifting his eyes, sees what to those that have not mounted with him is invisible."

"Since your soul is so exalted a power, so divine, be confident that in virtue of its possession you are close to God. Begin therefore with the help of this principle to make your way to Him. You have not far to go: there is not much between. Lay hold of that which is more divine than this god-like thing; lay hold of that apex of the soul which borders on the Supreme (Nous), from which the soul immediately derives."

"So we are concerned with its pains and pleasures, more in proportion as we are weaker and do not separate ourselves, but consider the body the most honorable part of ourselves and the real man, and, so to speak, sink ourselves in it."

"So 'we' is used in two senses, either including the beast or referring to that which even in our present life transcends it. The beast is the body which has been given life. But the true man is different, clear of these affections."

"Suppose the soul to have attained: the highest has come to her, or rather has revealed its presence; she has turned away from all about her and made herself apt, beautiful to the utmost, brought into likeness with the divine by those preparings and adornings which come unbidden to those growing ready for the vision ? she has seen that presence suddenly manifesting within her, for there is nothing between: here is no longer a duality but a two in one; for, so long as the presence holds, all distinction fades: it is as lover and beloved here, in a copy of that union, long to blend; the soul has now no further awareness of being in body and will give herself no foreign name, not ?man,? not ?living being,? not ?being,? not ?all?; any observation of such things falls away; the soul has neither time nor taste for them; This she sought and This she has found and on This she looks and not upon herself; and who she is that looks she has not leisure to know. Once There she will barter for This nothing the universe holds; not though one would make over the heavens entire to her; than This there is nothing higher, nothing of more good; above This there is no passing; all the rest, however lofty, lies on the down going path: she is of perfect judgment and knows that This was her quest, that nothing higher is. Here can be no deceit; where could she come upon truer than the truth? and the truth she affirms, that she is, herself; but all the affirmation is later and is silent. In this happiness she knows beyond delusion that she is happy; for this is no affirmation of an excited body but of a soul become again what she was in the time of her early joy. All that she had welcomed of old-office, power, wealth, beauty, knowledge of all she tells her scorn as she never could had she not found their better; linked to This she can fear no disaster nor even know it; let all about her fall to pieces, so she would have it that she may be wholly with This, so huge the happiness she has won to."

"Take away thinking and being in union and thought of itself and of others; for we must not put him on the level of thinker but rather on the level of thought. But thought does not think but is a cause of thought to another; and the cause is not the same as what is caused. But the cause of things is none of them."

"Take, then, an ugly soul. It is dissolute, unjust, teeming with lusts, torn by inner discord, beset by craven fears and petty envies. It thinks indeed. But it thinks only of the perishable and the base. In everything perverse, friend to filthy pleasures, it lives a life abandoned to bodily sensation and enjoys its depravity. Ought we not say that this ugliness has come to it as an evil from without, soiling it, rendering it filthy, ?encumbering it? with turpitude of every sort, so that it no longer has an activity or a sensation that is clean? For the life it leads is dark with evil, sunk in manifold death. It sees no longer what the soul should see. It can no longer rest within itself but is forever being dragged towards the external, the lower, the dark. It is a filthy thing, I say, borne every which way by the allurement of objects of sense, branded by the bodily, always immersed in matter and sucking matter into itself. In its trafficking with the unworthy it has bartered its Idea for a nature foreign to itself."

"The effects of the One are not poured out from him with the result that they diminish him; for there is no bulk; otherwise the things generated from him would be perishable. But as it is they are eternal, because their principle remains the same, not divided up into them but abiding as a whole. So they also abide; just as the light abides if the sun abides,"

"The evil that has overtaken them has its source in self-will, in the entry into birth, in the desire for self ownership. They conceived a pleasure in this freedom and largely indulged their own motion; thus they were hurried down the wrong path, and drifting further and further, came to lose even the thought of their origin in the Divine. Children wrenched young from home and brought up at a distance will fail in knowledge of their parents and themselves; in the same way the souls no longer discern either the Divinity or their own nature; ignorance of their rank brings self-depreciation; all their awe and admiration is for the alien, and clinging to this they have broken away as far as a soul may; their regard for the mundane and their disregard of themselves bring about their utter ignoring of the Divine."

"The Good is beyond beautiful, beyond the Highest, holding kingly state in that Intellectual Cosmos of which the Principle is wholly unlike what is known as intelligence in us. Our intelligence works by reasonings, examines links of demonstration, and comes to know the world of Being also by the steps of logical process, having no prior grasp of Reality, but remaining empty, all intelligence though it be, until it has put itself to school. But the Divine Mind is not of such a kind. It possesses all, It is all. It has all by other means than having, for what It possesses is still Itself. And the First Act is the Act of Good stationary within Itself; but there is also an Act directed towards It, that of the Divine Mind which, as it were lives about It. And Soul circles around Divine Mind and by gazing upon It, seeing into the depths of It, through It sees God. Such is the untroubled, blissful life of divine Beings, and evil has no place in it."

"The individual souls, certainly, have an intelligent desire consisting in the impulse to return to itself springing from the principle from which they came into being."

"The more intellective it is, the more beautiful it [i.e. the soul] is. Intellection, and all that comes from intellection, is for the soul a beauty that is its own and not another?s because then it is that the soul is truly soul. ? A divine entity and a part, as it were, of Beauty, The Soul renders beautiful to the fullness of their capacity all things it touches or controls. ?"

"The nature of the Soul, then, is twofold, being of divine station but skirting the sense-known nature; thus, while it communicates to this realm something of its own store, it absorbs in turn whenever it plunges in an excessive zeal to the very midst of this sphere; though even thus it is always able to recover itself by turning to account the experience of what it has seen and suffered here, learning so the greatness of existence in the Supreme and more clearly discerning the finer things by contrast with their opposites. The experience of evil brings the clearer perception of good."

"The One does not aspire to us, to move around us; we aspire to it, to move around it."

"The One, the Good and Beauty: That One, therefore, since it has no otherness is always present and we are present to it when we have no otherness; and the One does not desire us, so as to be around us, but we desire it, so that we are around it. And we are always around it but do not always look to it; it is like a choral dance: in the order of its singing the choir keeps round its conductor but may sometimes turn away, so that he is out of their sight, but when it turns back to him it sings beautifully and is truly with him; so we too are always around him ? and if we were not, we should be totally dissolved and no longer exist ? but not always turned to him; but when we do look to him, then we are at our goal and at rest and do not sing out of tune as we truly dance our god-inspired dance around him."

"The One?s so to speak, existence is his, as it were, activity."

"The perception of Beauty and the awe and the stirring of passion towards it are for those already in some degree knowing and awakened: but the Good, as possessed long since and setting up a natural tendency, is inherently present to even those asleep and brings them no wonder when some day they see it, since it is no occasional reminiscence but is always with them though in their drowse they are not aware of it: the love of Beauty on the contrary sets up pain when it appears, for those that have seen it must pursue. This love of Beauty then is later than the love of Good and comes with a more sophisticated understanding; hence we know that Beauty is a secondary: the more primal appetition, not patent to sense, our movement towards our good, gives witness that The Good is the earlier, the prior. Again; all that have possessed themselves of The Good feel it sufficient: they have attained the end: but Beauty not all have known and those that have judge it to exist for itself and not for them, as in the charm of this world the beauty belongs only to its possessor. Then, too, it is thought enough to appear loveable whether one is so or not: but no one wants his Good in semblance only. All are seeking The First as something ranking before aught else, but they struggle venomously for beauty as something secondary like themselves: thus some minor personage may perhaps challenge equal honor with the King?s right-hand man on pretext of similar dependence, forgetting that, while both owe their standing to the monarch, the other holds the higher rank. The source of the error is that while both The Good and The Beautiful participate in the common source, The One precedes both; and that, in the Supreme also, The Good has no need of The Beautiful, while the Beautiful does need The Good. The Good is gentle and friendly and tender, and we have it present when we but will. Beauty is all violence and stupefaction; its pleasure is spoiled with pain, and it even draws the thoughtless away from The Good as some attraction will lure the child from the father?s side: these things tell of youth. The Good is the older ? not in time but by degree of reality ? and it has the higher and earlier power, all power in fact, for the sequent holds only a power subordinate and delegated of which the prior remains sovereign."