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46
PLOTINUS

Reality. Since, thus, bodies take their rise from unity, but not "unity" in the sense of the complete unity or Unity-Absolute—for this could never yield discrete plurality—it remains that they be derived from a unity pluralised. But the creative principle (in bodies) is Soul: Soul therefore is a pluralised unity.

We then ask whether the plurality here consists of the Reason-Principles of the things of process. Or is this unity not something different from the mere sum of these Principles? Certainly Soul itself is one Reason-Principle, the chief of the Reason-Principles, and these are its Act as it functions in accordance with its essential being; this essential being, on the other hand, is the potentiality of the Reason-Principles. This is the mode in which this unity is a plurality, its plurality being revealed by the effect it has upon the external.

But, to leave the region of its effect, suppose we take it at the higher non-effecting part of Soul; is not plurality of powers to be found in this part also? The existence of this higher part will, we may presume, be at once conceded.

But is this existence to be taken as identical with that of the stone? Surely not. Being in the case of the stone is not Being pure and simple, but stone-being: so here; Soul's being denotes not merely Being but Soul-being.

Is then that "being" distinct from what else goes to complete the essence (or substance) of Soul? Is it to be identified with Being (the Absolute), while to some differentia of Being is ascribed the production of Soul? No doubt Soul is in a sense Being, and this not as a man "is" white, but from the fact of its being purely an essence: in other words, the being it possesses it holds from no source external to its own essence.

6.

But must it not draw on some source external to its essence, if it is to be conditioned, not only by Being, but by being an entity of a particular character? But if it is conditioned by a particular character, and this character is external to its essence, its essence does not comprise

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