Enneads VI.2: The Categories of Plotinos
Intelligence as a Composite Is Posterior to the Categories
Now, we have above posited certain premises. Intelligence, and even every intelligence, includes within itself all (essences). We ranked (Essence or Being) above all species that are parts thereof. Essence is not yet Intelligence. From these it results that already developed Intelligence is already something posterior. We shall therefore make use of this study to achieve the goal we had set ourselves (namely, to determine the relation of the genus to its contained species). We shall therefore make use of Intelligence as an example to extend our knowledge of this subject.
KNOWLEDGE IS THE ACTUALIZATION OF THE NOTIONS WHICH ARE POTENTIAL SCIENCE.
20. Let us, therefore, suppose that Intelligence was in a state in which it did not yet attach itself to anything in particular, so that it had not yet become an individual intelligence. Let us conceive it similar to knowledge considered by itself before the notions of the particular species, or to the knowledge of a species taken before the notions of the contained parts. Universal Knowledge, without (in actualization) being any particular notion, potentially lies within all notions, and reciprocally, each particular notion is one single thing in actualization, but all things in potentiality; likewise with universal Knowledge. The notions which thus refer to a species exist potentially in universal Knowledge, because, while applying itself to a species, they potentially are also universal Knowledge. Universal Knowledge is predicated of each particular notion, without the particular notion being predicated of universal Knowledge; but universal Knowledge must none the less subsist in itself without blending (with anything else).
INTELLIGENCE IS THE POTENTIALITY OF THE INTELLIGENCES WHICH ARE ITS ACTUALIZATIONS.
The case is similar with Intelligence. There is a kind of existence of universal Intelligence, which is located above the particular actualized intelligences, and is different from that of the particular intelligences. These are filled with universal notions: universal Intelligence furnishes to the particular intelligences the notions they possess. It is the potentiality of these intelligences all of which it contains in its universality; on their side, these, in their particularity, contain universal Intelligence just as a particular science implies universal science. The great Intelligence exists in itself, and the particular intelligences also exist in themselves; they are implied in universal Intelligence, just as this one is implied in the particular intelligences. Each one of the particular intelligences exists simultaneously in itself, and in something else (in the universal Intelligence), just as universal Intelligence exists simultaneously in itself and in all the others. In universal Intelligence, which exists in itself, all particular intelligences exist potentially, because it actually is all the intelligences, and potentially each of them separately. On the contrary, these are actualizations of the particular intelligences, and potentially universal Intelligence. Indeed, so far as they are what is predicated of them, they are actualizations of what is predicated; so far as they exist in the genus that contains them, they are this genus potentially. Genus, as such, is potentially all the species it embraces; it is none of them in actuality; but all are implied therein. So far as genus is in actualization what exists before the species, it is the actualization of the things which are not particular. As occurs in the species, these particular things achieve such actualization only by the actualization which emanates from the genus, and which, with regard to them, acts as cause.