Plotinus

“ And is it conceivable that the Soul, valid to sustain for a certain space of time, could not so sustain for ever? This would be to assume that it holds things together by violence; that there is a ‘natural course’ at variance with what actually exists in the nature of the universe and in these exquisitely ordered beings; and that there is some power able to storm the established system and destroy its ordered coherence, some kingdom or dominion that may shatter the order founded by the Soul. ”

“ In the universe as a whole there must necessarily be such a degree of solidity, that is to say, of resistance, as will ensure that the earth, set in the centre, be a sure footing and support to the living beings moving over it, and inevitably communicate something of its own destiny to them: the earth will possess coherence by its own unaided quality, but visibility by the presence of fire: it will contain water against the dryness which would prevent the cohesion of its particles; it will hold air to lighten its bulky matters ”

“ Thus we are told that earth cannot have concrete existence without the help of some moist element—the moisture in water being the necessary adhesive—but admitting that we so find it, there is still a contradiction in pretending that any one element has a being of its own and in the same breath denying its self-coherence, making its subsistence depend upon others, and so, in reality, reducing the specific element to nothing. ”

“ This borrowing, however, does not mean that the one things taking-up from the other enters into a composition, becoming an element in a total of both: it is simply a consequence of the cosmic fellowship; the participant retains its own being and takes over not the thing itself but some property of the thing, not air but air’s yielding softness, not fire but fire’s incandescence: mixing is another process, a complete surrender with a resultant compound, not, as in the case, earth—remaining earth, the solidity and density we know—with something of fire’s qualities superadded. ”

“ Hardness is another matter, a property confined to earth-stuff. Remember that gold—which is water—becomes dense by the accession not of earth but of denseness or consolidation: in the same way fire, with Soul present within it, may consolidate itself upon the power of the Soul; and there are living beings of fire among the Celestials.
But, in sum, do we abandon the teaching that all the elements enter into the composition of every living thing? ”

“ Anyone that dreads its falling may take heart: the circuit of the Soul provides against any declination, embracing, sustaining; and since fire has of itself no downward tendency it accepts that guiding without resistance. The partial elements constituting our persons do not suffice for their own cohesion; once they are brought to human shape, they must borrow elsewhere if the organism is to be maintained: but in the upper spheres since there can be no loss by flux no such replenishment is needed. ”

“ The heavens, on the contrary, must have persistence as a whole, and this entails the persistence of the parts, of the stars they contain: we could not imagine that whole to endure with the parts in flux—though, of course, we must distinguish things sub-celestial from the heavens themselves whose region does not in fact extend below the moon. ”

“ Why should there be in the future a change that has not yet occurred? The elements there are not worn away like beams and rafters: they hold sound for ever, and so the All holds sound. And even supposing these elements to be in ceaseless transmutation, yet the All persists: the ground of all the change must itself be changeless. ”

“ But the case is different when one holds that body is, of itself, perishable and that Soul is the principle of permanence: this view obliges us to the proof that the character of body is not in itself fatal either to the coherence or to the lasting stability which are imperative: it must be shown that the two elements of the union envisaged are not inevitably hostile, but that on the contrary (in the heavens) even Matter must conduce to the scheme of the standing result. ”

“ In other words, the celestial Soul—and our souls with it—springs directly next from the Creator, while the animal life of this earth is produced by an image which goes forth from that celestial Soul and may be said to flow downwards from it.
A Soul, then, of the minor degree—reproducing, indeed, that of the Divine sphere but lacking in power inasmuch as it must exercise its creative act upon inferior stuff in an inferior region—the substances taken up into the fabric being of themselves repugnant to duration ”

“ Every living thing is a combination of Soul and body-kind: the celestial sphere, therefore, if it is to be everlasting as an individual entity must be so in virtue either of both these constituents or of one of them, by the combination of Soul and body or by Soul only or by body only.
Of course anyone that holds body to be incorruptible secures the desired permanence at once; no need, then, to call on a Soul or on any perdurable conjunction to account for the continued maintenance of a living being. ”

“ Again, fire acts by imparting heat: now it cannot be the source of heat to what is already hot by nature; and anything it is to destroy must as a first condition be heated by it, must be brought to a pitch of heat fatal to the nature concerned.
In sum, then, no outside body is necessary to the heavens to ensure their permanence—or to produce their circular movement, for it has never been shown that their natural path would be the straight line; on the contrary the heavens, by their nature, will either be motionless or move by circle; all other movement indicates outside compulsion. ”

“ No: but higher is not possible; lower is repugnant to its Kind; all that remains for it is to be tractable and, answering to a need of its nature, to be drawn by the Soul to the activity of life, and so to move—to move in a glorious place, in the Soul. ”

“ But if we are obliged to allow individual persistence to any definite entity within the Cosmos, then, firstly, we must show that the Divine Will is adequate to make it so; secondly, we have to face the question, What accounts for some things having individual persistence and others only the persistence of type? and thirdly, we ask how the partial entities of the celestial system hold a real duration which would thus appear possible to all partial things. ”

“ How can we talk of the existence of the definite Kind, earth—earth essential—if there exists no single particle of earth which actually is earth without any need of water to secure its self-cohesion? What has such an adhesive to act upon if there is absolutely no given magnitude of real earth to which it may bind particle after particle in its business of producing the continuous mass? ”

“ But to those who reject Aristotle’s Quintessence and hold the material mass of the heavens to consist of the elements underlying the living things of this sphere, how is individual permanence possible? ”

“ None the less we will take it that the coherence of extremes is produced by virtue of each possessing all the intermediaries. It is still not proven that fire is necessary to the visibility of earth and earth to the solidity of fire. ”

“ Of these material elements—for example—fire, the keen and swift, co-operates by its upward tendency as earth by its lingering below; for we must not imagine that the fire, once it finds itself at the point where its ascent must stop, settles down as in its appropriate place, no longer seeking, like all the rest, to expand in both directions. ”

“ But all this does not assure us that the earth to be visible must contain fire: light is sufficient: snow, for example, and other extremely cold substances gleam without the presence of fire—though of course it might be said that fire was once there and communicated colour before disappearing. ”

“ Moreover, as it carries an earthly element on its upward path, it is weighed downwards and cannot reach those loftier regions. It comes to a stand somewhere below the moon—making the air at that point subtler—and its flame, if any flame can persist, is subdued and softened, and no longer retains its first intensity, but gives out only what radiance it reflects from the light above. ”

“ Timaeus pronounced the material frame of the All to consist primarily of earth and fire—fire for visibility, earth for solidity—and deduced that the stars must be mainly composed of fire, but not solely since there is no doubt they are solid. ”

“ This would apply even to the entire ordered universe itself. For it is very possible that this too, though not in process of destruction from outside, might have only formal duration; its parts may be so wearing each other down as to keep it in a continuous decay while, amid the ceaseless flux of the Kind constituting its base, an outside power ceaselessly restores the form: in this way the living All may lie under the same conditions as man and horse and the rest—man and horse persisting but not the individual of the type. ”