But all this may be made more evident by a clearer recognition of the twofold principle at work wherever there is intellection:
When we affirm the reality of the Real Beings and their individual identity of being and declare that these Real Beings exist in the Intellectual Realm, we do not mean merely that they remain unchangeably self-identical by their very essence, as contrasted with the fluidity and instability of the sense-realm; the sense-realm itself may contain the enduring.No; we mean rather that these principles possess, as by their own virtue, the consummate fulness of being.The Essence described as the primally existent cannot be a shadow cast by Being, but must possess Being entire; and Being is entire when it holds the form and idea of intellection and of life.In a Being, then, the existence, the intellection, the life are present as an aggregate.When a thing is a Being, it is also an Intellectual-Principle, when it is an Intellectual-Principle it is a Being; intellection and Being are co-existents.Therefore intellection is a multiple not a unitary and that which does not belong to this order can have no Intellection.And if we turn to the partial and particular, there is the Intellectual form of man, and there is man, there is the Intellectual form of horse and there is horse, the Intellectual form of Justice, and Justice.
Thus all is dual: the unit is a duality and yet again the dual reverts to unity.
That, however, which stands outside all this category can be neither an individual unity nor an aggregate of all the duals or in any way a duality.How the duals rose from The One is treated elsewhere.
What stands above Being stands above intellection: it is no weakness in it not to know itself, since as pure unity it contains nothing which it needs to explore.But it need not even spend any knowing upon things outside itself: this which was always the Good of all gives them something greater and better than its knowledge of them in giving them in their own identity to cling, in whatever measure be possible, to a principle thus lofty.
SEVENTH TRACTATE.
IS THERE AN IDEAL ARCHETYPE OF
PARTICULAR BEINGS?
1.We have to examine the question whether there exists an ideal archetype of individuals, in other words whether I and every other human being go back to the Intellectual, every [living] thing having origin and principle There.
If Socrates, Socrates' soul, is external then the Authentic Socrates- to adapt the term- must be There; that is to say, the individual soul has an existence in the Supreme as well as in this world.If there is no such permanent endurance and what was Socrates may with change of time become another soul and be Pythagoras or someone else- then the individual Socrates has not that existence in the Divine.
But if the Soul of the individual contains the Reason-Principles of all that it traverses, once more all men have their [archetypic]
existence There: and it is our doctrine that every soul contains all the Reason-Principles that exist in the Kosmos: since then the Kosmos contains the Reason-Principles not merely of man, but also of all individual living things, so must the Soul.Its content of Reason-Principles, then, must be limitless, unless there be a periodical renovation bounding the boundlessness by the return of a former series.
But if [in virtue of this periodic return] each archetype may be reproduced by numerous existents, what need is there that there be distinct Reason-Principles and archetypes for each existent in any one period? Might not one [archetypal] man suffice for all, and similarly a limited number of souls produce a limitless number of men?
No: one Reason-Principle cannot account for distinct and differing individuals: one human being does not suffice as the exemplar for many distinct each from the other not merely in material constituents but by innumerable variations of ideal type: this is no question of various pictures or images reproducing an original Socrates; the beings produced differ so greatly as to demand distinct Reason-Principles.The entire soul-period conveys with it all the requisite Reason-Principles, and so too the same existents appear once more under their action.
There is no need to baulk at this limitlessness in the Intellectual; it is an infinitude having nothing to do with number or part; what we may think of it as its outgoing is no other than its characteristic Act.
2.But individuals are brought into being by the union of the Reason-Principles of the parents, male and female: this seems to do away with a definite Reason-Principle for each of the offspring: one of the parents- the male let us say- is the source; and the offspring is determined not by Reason-Principles differing from child to child but by one only, the father's or that of the father's father.
No: a distinct Reason-Principle may be the determinant for the child since the parent contains all: they would become effective at different times.
And so of the differences among children of the same parents: it is a matter of varying dominance: either the offspring- whether it so appears or not- has been mainly determined by, now, the male, now, the female or, while each principle has given itself entire and lies there within, yet it effectively moulds one portion of the bodily substance rather than another.
And how [by the theory of a divine archetype of each individual]
are the differences caused by place to be explained?
Is the differentiating element to be found in the varying resistance of the material of the body?
No: if this were so, all men with the exception of one only would be untrue to nature.
Difference everywhere is a good, and so there must be differing archetypes, though only to evil could be attribute any power in Matter to thwart nature by overmastering the perfect Reason-Principles, hidden but given, all.