THE SIX ENNEADS [168]
every organ has its distinct function, and is competent only upon its own material, and must interpret each several experience in its own fashion; the judgement upon these impressions must, then, be vested in some one principle, a judge informed upon all that is said and done. But again: "Everywhere, Unity": in the variety of functions if each "part of the soul" were as distinct as are the entrant sensations, none of those parts could have knowledge; awareness would belong only to that judging faculty- or, if local, every such act of awareness would stand quite unrelated to any other. But since the soul is a rational soul, by the very same title by which it is an All-Soul, and is called the rational soul, in the sense of being a whole [and so not merely "reasoning locally"], then what is thought of as a part must in reality be no part but the identity of an unparted thing. 4. But if this is the true account of the unity of soul, we must be able to meet the problems that ensue: firstly, the difficulty of one thing being present at the same moment in all things; and, secondly, the difficulty of soul in body as against soul not embodied. We might be led to think that all soul must always inhabit body; this would seem especially plausible in the case of the soul of the universe, not thought of as ever leaving its body as the human soul does: there exists, no doubt, an opinion that even the human soul, while it must leave the body, cannot become an utterly disembodied thing; but assuming its complete disembodiment, how comes it that the human soul can go free of the body but the All-Soul not, though they are one and the same? There is no such difficulty in the case of the Intellectual-Principle; by the primal differentiation, this separates, no doubt, into partial things of widely varying nature, but eternal unity is secured by virtue of the eternal identity of that Essence: it is not so easy to explain how, in the case of the soul described as separate among bodies, such differentiated souls can remain one thing. A possible solution may be offered: The unit soul holds aloof, not actually falling into body; the differentiated souls- the All-Soul, with the others- issue from the unity while still constituting, within certain limits, an association. They are one soul by the fact that they do not belong unreservedly to any particular being; they meet, so to speak, fringe to fringe; they strike out here and there, but are held together at the source much as light is a divided thing upon earth, shining in this house, and that, and yet remains uninterruptedly one identical substance. The All-Soul would always remain above, since essentially it has nothing to do with descent or with the lower, or with any tendency towards this sphere: the other souls would become ours [become "partial," individual in us] because their lot is cast for this sphere, and because they are solicited by a thing [the body] which invites their care. The one- the lowest soul in the to the All-Soul- would correspond to that in some great growth, silently, unlaboriously conducting the whole; our own lowest soul might be compared to the insect life in some rotted part of the growth- for this is the ratio of the animated body to the universe- while the other soul in us, of one ideal nature with the higher parts of the All-Soul, may be imaged as the gardener concerned about the insects lodged in the tree and anxiously working to amend what is wrong; or we may contrast a healthy man living with the healthy and, by his thought or by his act, lending himself to the service of those about him, with, on the other side, a sick man intent upon his own care and cure, and so living for the body, body-bound. 5. But what place is left for the particular souls, yours and mine and another's? May we suppose the Soul to be appropriated on the lower ranges to some individual, but to belong on the higher to that other sphere? At this there would be a Socrates as long as Socrates' soul remained in body; but Socrates ceases to exist, precisely