Opening The Fourth Ennead — Plotinus in Plato Scroll…
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Plotinus · Stephen MacKenna
On the Essence of the Soul (1). In the Intellectual Kosmos dwells Authentic Essence, with the Intellectual-Principle [Divine Mind] as the noblest of its content, but containing also souls, since every soul in this lower sphere has come thence: that is the world of unembodied spirits while to our world belong those that have entered body and undergone bodily division. There the Intellectual-Principle is a concentrated all — nothing of it distinguished or divided — and in that kosmos of unity all souls are concentrated also, with no spatial discrimination. But there is a difference: The Intellectual-Principle is for ever repugnant to distinction and to partition. Soul, there without distinction and partition, has yet a nature lending itself to divisional existence: its division is secession, entry into body. In view of this seceding and the ensuing partition we may legitimately speak of …
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