Numbering intellect

Like Aristotle before him, Plotinus placed observation above action. Yet, with Plotinus observation was not completely passive, but rather more active than normal action. For instance, Plotinus noted, nature does not act in the sense of mechanically moving things around and does not even consider how to achieve some end, but merely observes its own perfection and at the same time projects energy, which makes physical world move. The movements and activities of the physical world are then less active than this free letting of energy by nature, but it is the best that this world can do.

This nature was in Plotinus' hierarchy something proceeding from the level of the soul, or energy projected by the world soul. On the level of souls, the hierarchy of observation and action was also present. Thus, Plotinus noted, people who are not capable of observing things in their mind and thus engaging in abstract sciences have to perform manual labour. Furthermore, even when people performed things physically and endeavoured after some end, this end was always some type of observation (for instance, we produce something because we want to see it before our eyes). Hence, the priority of observation was evident in Plotinus’ eyes.

While observation was the highest soul could achieve, it was the very essence of intellect in Plotinus’ hierarchy to observe itself and everything within itself. Of course, Plotinus noted that this wasn’t still the highest point in the hierarchy, because the primordial unity wouldn’t even need observation to be perfect - indeed, to be perfect it couldn’t have any multiplicity required even by self-observation and in no way it could contain all that exists, like the self-observation of intellect, although this primordial unity was the final source of everything.

Although the level of self-perceiving intellect and its ideas wasn’t the highest pinnacle in Plotinus’ hierarchy, it was the pinnacle of beauty. Indeed, he noted, an artist does not make beautiful works by choosing the appropriate matter e.g. for sculpture, but by imprinting a beautiful shape, existing already in her mind, to the material of the sculpture. Similarly, Plotinus thought, nature does not make beautiful things by choosing suitable material, but by projecting a beautiful shape on the material - what material does at most is to hinder the projection and lessen the beauty.

The self-thinking intellect then contains all these beautiful prototypes in a single act of self-thinking, thus being the pinnacle of all beauty. This shows us something important about the level of intellect in Plotinus’ hierarchy. The thinking of the intellect is not what we usually call thinking, that is, silent speaking of thoughts in our mind or an argument moving from premises to conclusion, which inevitably takes some time to occur. Instead, it is more like a momentary vision revealing all that is important in a single glance. Hence, intellect does not need to think all the beautiful prototypes one by one, but it at once has them all in front of mind’s eye. Furthermore, Plotinus thought that intellect also viewed these prototypes truly. Indeed, since they were not anything truly separate from the intellect, but merely aspects of the self-observation of intellect, there could be no room for false or incorrect observation of them.

Because of its beauty and truth, Plotinus called self-thinking intellect a god. Indeed, he compared it with Chronus, who held the middle place between his son Zeus (soul) and his father Uranus (primordial unity). According to Plotinus, this middle position made intellect unique and different from both soul and unity in the sense that only intellect found its complete perfection in observation. For “Zeus” or soul mere observation wasn’t enough, but it also regulated the world around it, while “Uranus” or primordial unity did not really need this observation for being perfect.

This primordial unity was something that defied all human characterisations. It had no limits, but it was equally wrong to call it infinitely large. It wasn’t contained in anything, although it in a sense potentially contained everything that ever was actually. One clear characteristic of this unity was its perfection or goodness, which was then something higher than mere beauty. In fact, Plotinus remarked, everything in the world strives for goodness, even when they sleep, while beauty interests only those who can observe things.

Three levels above corporeal world was enough for Plotinus: primordial unity, self-thinking intellect and soul. He was especially against gnostic teaching, where the number of entities was expanded beyond any need. For instance, beyond intellect one did not need any further entity conscious of intellect, because this role in the hierarchy was filled already by intellect itself, which could observe itself.

Gnosticism was to be rejected for other reasons also, although Plotinus noted that many of his friends had been lured by the ideas of gnostics. He was especially against the idea that corporeal world had been created through a mistake and that it was clearly evil in comparison with the spiritual world. Indeed, Plotinus noted that corporeal world was the best possible image of the best possible prototype, necessarily proceeding from the energy of this prototype.

Furthermore, while gnostics regarded the souls of gnostics as the only element of goodness in the corporeal world, Plotinus stated that many things were good and beautiful in it. For instance, stars and planets were in Plotinus’ eyes divinities, which were unencumbered by their bodies and could thus always observe the spiritual prototypes of the world. Even the unconscious nature was full of purpose and goodness and was guided by soul-like unconscious activity of nature.

Plotinus finally noted that gnostic ideas gave no guidelines how a person could improve herself - one was just born as spiritual or as corporeal and there was no escape from one’s fate. Indeed, gnostic could not care less about the fate of the body his soul inhabited, because it was a prison for the soul. Plotinus himself, on the other hand, did not regard embodiment of soul in such a low esteem, but as a necessary step in the development of the soul. Thus, by living with the body soul was meant to learn indifference toward material objects and thus rise to the level of stars.

Gnostics weren’t the only school of thought Plotinus engaged with. He was also quite interested of the Pythagorean question of the status of numbers in the hierarchy of existence. Plotinus noted that one could not simply identify numbers with other things, which we would do, for instance, if we placed existent things in an order and called first thing “one”, second “two” and so on. Such an identification would fail because number like “three” could be used of many things, not just of the third thing in that ontological order. Indeed, numbers had to precede all of these existent things, because one had to have e.g. a prototype of ten that could be applied to all combinations of ten things.

If Plotinus thought numbers were independent of things, he also though they were independent of any acts of calculation. Indeed, this was just a particular application of a general principle that something was in Plotinus’ opinion always prior to thinking of this something - e.g. the existence of movement was prior to thinking about the movement. This was even true of the self-thinking intellect, which contained all ideal prototypes within its act of self-thinking. Indeed, one could distinguish within this act various levels - the self-thinking intellect was e.g. living, but more essentially it was thinking and even more essentially existing. Numbers, then, Plotinus concluded, belonged to the level of existence of intellect. In fact, while primordial unity was for Plotinus something preceding in a sense existence, numbers preceded, according to him, the multiplicity of existents - one could say that while primordial unity had created all existence, numbers divided existence into separate entities.

A problem for this Plotinian understanding was provided by the seeming endlessness of all numbers. Because the ideal world of prototypes included in the act of self-thinking intellect contained numbers, there would have to be some perfect number containing all the existent prototypes of the ideal world. How could such a number exist if the number of numbers themselves couldn’t be pinned down? Plotinus appeared to suggest that such an imperfection concerned only souls in the material world. When we counted things, we could always find further and further numbers and no proper ending in the series. Similarly, while prototype of a line would have definite boundaries, lines in the corporeal world could apparently be extended as long as one liked.

Plotinus also noted that unlike in the intellectual level, where the numbers and quantities properly belonged, in the corporeal world things might often be numbered or quantified only accidentally. For instance, while a tree or an animal is naturally a unity, something like an army is a unity only accidentally, because the persons making up the army have no intrinsic connection to one another.

This possibility of an accidental quantification provided Plotinus with a possible answer for a question important in ancient philosophy: why do things far away from us seem smaller? Plotinus suggested as one alternative solution that from a distance we can gain information only of the essence of a visible object - in other words, its colour - while more accidental information, like the proper size of the object, are not properly transmitted to us.

Another topic, in which Plotinus noted the accidentality of quantity, was happiness. If we are happy now, this happiness is not diminished if it lasted only for a day. Indeed, even if we were happy for all eternity, the intensity of this happiness would not change in any manner. Otherwise, eternally happy entities, like stars, would never be completely happy, because they would be always becoming more and more happy.

Because quantities were part of the intellectual world, matter as such could not be quantitative, Plotinus concluded. This could even be empirically verified when a piece of papyrus was moistened by water - the whole papyrus became mixed with water, but the moist papyrus still took as much space as before. Plotinus explained this through the idea of featureless matter being formed by basic forces deriving from the intellectual level, such as forces making matter into watery or paper-like. The most central of these forces was the one involved in quantifying a piece of matter and giving it a certain volume. It was only this quantifying force that divided matter into individual bodies.

The intellectual level contained then numbers, but did it contain anything resembling corporeal entities? For instance, we know that Plotinus admitted the existence of a prototype of human beings, but would such a prototypical human sense anything? Yes, indeed, Plotinus would have answered, since even in the prototypical word of intellect one could perceive what the world is like, even if this perception was completely different from perception in corporeal world. Indeed, perception was not even the lowest activity at the intellectual level. Self-thinking intellect would think all types of beings in its self-thinking - even animals and plants - although these ideas of animals and plants would differ from corporeal animals and plants by being more prototypical and harmonious, both in themselves and in their mutual relations.

The prototypical nature of intellectual ideas requires some metaphorical light to be seen, Plotinus noted. This light, giving being to self-thinking intellect itself, derived of course from the primordial unity, which was then also the ultimate source of goodness. It was higher than mere intellect and it thus required something quite different from regular thinking to see it. Indeed, all it takes, Plotinus noted, is to immediately observe the unity, without thinking about it, but more like being swallowed by this unity. Indeed, Plotinus noted, since the primordial unity does not think, it cannot even consider things like “this is good”. Thus, one could just name this primordial unity good, reflecting the actual simplicity of primordial unity.

Matter and soul

One of the most perplexing problems in Plotinus’ worldview was the relation of unity and multiplicity in the levels between the primordial unity and the material world. Corporeal world and all the bodies in it are divisible into multiple parts, still, a soul governing either an individual body or the whole world should be indivisible. Furthermore, individual souls should be somehow separate, yet, they also form a unity. In addition to soul, the intellectual level of Plotinus’ hierarchy showed a similar dilemma. Its prototypes - such as the highest prototype of being itself - has many individual instances, yet, being remains a unity in itself, even though there are many beings. Finally, the intellectual level has many prototypes and still forms a unity.

The multiplicity of souls and ideal prototypes was the least worry for Plotinus. The unity of souls, for instance, does not cancel their multiplicity, because it means more that all individual souls are modifications of one force of living and can even experience their connection with other souls. Similarly, in intellect all the different prototypes are contained in the one act of self-aware intellection.

It was thus the relationship of material world to both soul and ideal prototypes (being as such) that seemed most problematic in Plotinus’ eyes. His first solution was to present an analogy with light. A single ray could enlighten a whole transparent ball and still remain undispersed, because its power consisted of making the matter around it more lighted. Similarly, soul could instill life to all parts of body, even though it wasn’t divided by this process of making something alive. The only thing wrong with this analogy, Plotinus said, was that light can still be said to occupy a place within the transparent ball, while soul shouldn’t even be situated in space.

In a further explanation Plotinus answered how such a non-corporeal, non-divisible and non-spatial entity like soul could interact with corporeal, divisible and spatial matter. Plotinus noted that the simplest solution is to deny that soul would somehow be incorporated into a body, as we might think the connection happens - soul is not any “astral body” occupying the same place as the corporeal body. Instead, soul is this immaterial source of of energy, of which the body in a sense takes part. That is, when body becomes alive, it contacts soul and becomes alive through its continued interaction with the soul. The soul retains thus some independence of the body, although we can in a sense say that there is a “second soul”, that is, the life energy produced by the original soul in the body. While soul is connected to a body, it feels this bond as a bondage or as a loss of its own energy, and when the bond is broken, this energy produced by or the image of the original soul is returned to the unified soul.

Just like soul did not occupy body and was thus not divided into different parts of body, according to Plotinus, similarly the intellectual prototypes did not occupy the beings they characterise. For instance, being as such was for him not some passive material divided up among different beings, but more like a place, which gives existence to all things within it - or like an activity of thinking mind, giving existence to all the things that happen to enter its consciousness. Similarly, all the prototypes were activities, which mold individual things into their likeness - i.e. prototype of human would be such that makes individuals into humans, without losing its own identity in the process. Plotinus especially did not want to make the impression that intellectual level would be like a realm completely removed from the corporeal world and only reflected in it. Instead, he insisted that intellectual level had an active role in shaping the material world, although it still remained completely independent of the material world.

Despite its multiplicity, Plotinus thus said, everything in existence formed a unity, because of the common source of their existence, namely, the self-thinking intellect. All existent things formed a unity even in a stronger sense than just by being existent, because there was a common force or life going through everything and shaping effects of all intellectual prototypes into a unified whole. This unity was for Plotinus something humans could become aware of, just as long as they could regard things in their correct light and not be deceived by their apparent distinctness.

Although self-thinking intellect unified then in a sense the whole existence in his eyes, Plotinus had still not forgotten the primordial unity, which was above even the intellect. Despite all its unity, intellect still had multiplicity in it - for instance, although it thought of itself, we could still distinguish between it as the thinker and it as the object of thought. Multiplicity, on the other hand, was always dependent on unity, according to Plotinus. Thus, there had to be some ultimate unity, which then didn’t think at all. Now Plotinus even emphasised that the original unity couldn’t have any sort of consciousness and it certainly required nothing outside itself. On the contrary, it was the ultimate goal of everything, which all entities tried to emulate, even if they appeared to have various distinct goals. Indeed, Plotinus even suggested that the level just below the one - the self-thinking intellect - was in a sense awakened to existence by its desire to become like the ultimate unity.

Of earlier philosophers, Plotinus respected Plato most, but he was willing to borrow terminology from Aristotle also. Thus, he used the concepts of potential and actual and incorporated them to his hierarchy of levels, so that in the hierarchy, up to the level of self-thinking intellect, the higher levels were more actual in the sense of being more active, while lower levels were potential and required instigation of energy from the higher levels. Thus, at the level of self-thinking intellect everything was eternally actual. At the level of individual souls, there was already more room for mere potentiality - a person could become a scientist, but she still required years of training to become one, and even then she wouldn’t be constantly in the role of scientist.

In the corporeal world, the potentiality went even further. A person could not become another person, but she would always retain her identity, even if she gained some new talents or engaged in some new activities. In the corporeal level, on the other hand, Plotinus thought that a piece of stone could undergo a process, in which it would lose its nature of stoneness and become, say, a watery substance. Something remained throughout all corporeal processes, but this material substance was for Plotinus a mere shadow of existence - mere potentiality that would turn into actual entities only through some external energy.

Since matter was mere potentiality, Plotinus concluded that it was completely free of all foreign influences. In other words, only actual corporeal objects could affect one another - for instance, fire could warm water and water could quench fire. Indeed, such influences worked through opposites, Plotinus said, hotness eradicating coldness and vice versa. Matter, on the other hand, had no such opposites and indeed was without any qualities, so it would always remain as it was. Matter was for Plotinus just a canvas, on which the primordial forces projected images (the corporeal objects) - whatever happened to the images, the canvas remained unaffected.

Just like matter, soul was also free of corporeal influences, Plotinus said, but for a completely different reason - souls were some of the forces producing corporeal objects. This was somewhat difficult viewpoint from the standpoint of ethics, since in the contemporary discussion bodily influences on human personality were regarded as a possibility, and indeed, as something to be avoided in perfect human life. Plotinus noted that what was actually affected in strong emotional states was human body or the projection of human soul into the material plane. Furthermore, when one was advised to avoid affections caused by corporeal objects, what was really suggested, according to Plotinus, was that one should avoid material realm altogether.

The further Plotinus thought about the soul, the more he became convinced that individual souls were not just parts of the soul giving life to the whole corporeal universe. Instead, both the world soul and all the individual souls were modifications of one primordial prototype of soul, which could never have any direct relation to corporeal world, unlike world soul. World soul was still higher in the hierarchy of things than other individual souls, since other souls governed merely parts of the universe. World soul, on the other hand, was like a ball of energy, which eternally projected its effects on the canvas of matter, thus in a sense creating the corporeal world.

The world soul regulated the processes of the corporeal world and made it run in a never-ending and ever-returning cycle. During these immeasurable cycles, some bodies - stars and planets - existed eternally and required for their movement guidance from some souls. At times, the process of the world gave rise to individual bodies on the more material parts of the world that would require souls to govern them. At the same time as the need for a soul governing a body arose, some individual soul would have an innate urge to take control of this very body, entering in a sense the material world and lowering itself to the heavens or even to Earth. This urge was not expressed consciously, like embodied souls would do, using a kind of internal speech, but it would be just felt in a pre-linguistic manner, in which disembodied souls experienced everything.

After the life of the body ends, soul feels again an urge to continue its journey, either toward its original disembodied state or toward another body. Plotinus also suggested that this new urge was in harmony with the way in which soul had lived its previous life. Thus, one could regard the new life of a soul as a reward or punishment for the previous life.

An individual embodied human soul has then various functions governing different parts of the body, Plotinus said, yet, its primary function or thinking remains untouched by body, because corporeal world would only hinder it. Since this primary function regulates all the other functions, individual soul remains unified, although in another sense embodied soul can be divided into various faculties. As we have already seen, Plotinus did not think that a complete individual soul was located in the body. Still, its various faculties could have localised effects - e.g. perceptions occurred through brain and nerves, while more animal impulses and emotions happened through heart, liver and veins.

Between the disembodied thinking and clearly embodied perceptions, emotions and animal impulses, Plotinus conceived an intermediary level of conceiving, in which memories both from the immaterial and material world could interact. His reason for supposing the existence of such an intermediate level was that memories come to embodied souls from both directions, but they could occur neither in perceptions/impulses/emotions nor in pure thinking. Pure, disembodied thinking as such would have no memories, since it understood everything timelessly - on the other hand, memory of a perception could not be perception of a perception, but something different.

Since this intermediary level of phantasms or memories had two sources, it could be divided into two parts, depending on whether the memories concerned the higher or the lower parts of the soul. Concerning the first type, memory of the thinking of ideas or even of primordial unity is not thinking as such, Plotinus said. In higher form of thinking we essentially forget ourselves and completely immerse ourselves in the object of our thinking, as it were, becoming this object. Only when we return from this state of mystical immersion into an object, we become aware of ourselves and at most remember that we thought of e.g. primordial unity.

The second type of memory, Plotinus thought, could occur, just as long as a human soul was connected to some body. Thus, if after its death human soul acquired a new heavenly, spherical body, its memories of its former life might fade, especially if they concerned bad actions. Then again, this soul could recognise friends from its former life in their new heavenly bodies by their characters.

Now, memory of any sort is required only by souls who change their state. Souls governing stars and world soul, on the other hand, do not need memories, Plotinus emphasised. Indeed, like self-thinking intellect, these higher souls conceived everything timelessly and had no need to remember past things nor to plan for future. In other words, their own life was timeless, although they controlled and even created a temporal world. This corporeal world or nature is then in a sense image of this timeless conceiving of soul in the sense that it has no memories nor does it plan for the future, but everything in it happens effortlessly and without consideration - then again, nature is, of course, not soul and does not conceive in any sense. Human souls, at least when embodied, then, are in a sense between celestial souls and nature. They conceive of things, but temporally and therefore need memories and have to plan for the future.

When a soul takes control over a human or animal body, it in a sense projects itself on the body and so becomes aware of what happens to that body. In a sense, then, these things do not touch the soul. For instance, when a body is cut, this is something that happens to the body and the pain, which can be localised somewhere in the body, belongs to the body itself. Soul then merely has the awareness of that pain, Plotinus suggested, without itself being affected by the cutting. Of course, we still could say that the animal as the combination of soul and body has and is aware of pain.

Just like experience of pain arises only from combination soul and body, in Plotinus’ philosophy, this is true also of desires. Body as such has drives toward certain materials it requires for sustaining itself, say, toward something moist. Soul then becomes aware of such a drive as a bodily desire. Because desires are then ultimately just perceptions of some bodily conditions, these desires can change depending on the nature of the body - for instance, when a body becomes old, the sexual desires become less urgent.

While desires all derive from body, emotions, like anger, are a more complex case, because a person can be angered also e.g. by evil actions. Now, while a person is angered by bodily influences, this anger causes some disturbance in her body - perhaps in blood, Plotinus suggested - and the soul perceives this disturbance. Then again, when a person is angered by evil actions, the state of her soul projects a similar effect on blood as in the case of bodily induced anger, which the soul then perceives as a similar state.

Plotinus had come to the conclusion that plants probably would not have individual souls, but they were governed by the soul of the Earth. Yes, Earth itself was a living entity in Plotinus’ eyes and could perceive what happened on its surface, just like all celestial bodies. Thus, Earth could know what happened to its denizens and take care of them. And like celestial bodies, it wouldn’t have any memories nor would it plan for the future, but it would perceive everything timelessly.

Now, Plotinus had already considered the problem of astrology, but at this stage of his thought he returned to this question with new insights. He was convinced that astrology could work, but he didn’t want to say that celestial bodies directly affected humans. Instead, Plotinus noted that everything in the world formed a harmony and therefore the movements of the celestial bodies could correspond to certain stages in human life. Through this universal sympathy of all things could one also magically control other beings. Yet, Plotinus noted, the more a person lived in the intellectual level, the more one was separate from the corporeal world and the less one could be influenced by such magic.

Plotinus even suggested that at least seeing and perhaps even hearing was based more on the harmony between worldly objects than on mechanical use of air as a medium. True, he admitted, soul always requires a body for sensations, but air is at most just a space through which energy of light moves toward the eye and at worst hinders this movement. In order that a vision reaches us, there is no need for light to affect air, as can be seen in dark nights, when we can clearly see stars, even if the surrounding air is not lighted, Plotinus argued. Since an essential ingredient in this act of seeing was the sympathy between an object seen and the seeing soul, Plotinus suggested that anyone living outside the world could not see the world or anything it, just because this sympathy would not exist.

Traveling soul

Certain persons in philosophy of history are sort of hinge figures. After them, philosophy gets a completely different flavour and direction and their influence can be seen long after their actual lives. Plotinus is one of such hinge figures, whose effect will be felt in several different strands of philosophical history - in Christian, Islamic and Jewish philosophy.

The starting point of Plotinus’ thinking lied in another hinge figure, Plato. In his earliest treatise Plotinus began with quite a Platonic question: what makes things beautiful? Plotinus tried to avoid the notion that the experience of beauty would have something to do with the mere material constituents of a thing or their structure. Thus, symmetry of parts of a thing could not be the only beautiful aspect in things, because firstly, some beautiful things, like coloured surfaces, have no separable parts. Furthermore, a symmetrical thing made out of ugly parts would not be beautiful.

If beauty lies then not in the material parts or their structure, Plotinus said, it must be found somewhere else, for instance, in a divine force, which configures material parts into something beautiful. In case of such simple things as colours, this divine force occurred in Plotinus’ opinion in a concrete natural phenomenon of light, which made things visible to everyone.

Just like Plato, Plotinus thought that true beauty was not to be found in material things, but more in actions of human beings. Indeed, a beautiful action, Plotinus said, is beautiful just when it is done independently of material considerations. In consequence, a person is more beautiful, depending on how well she has managed to purify herself from all bodily influences.

Yet, even human activities and personality behind them are not the highest example of beauty for Plotinus. High above them lies what makes even beautiful personalities beautiful - that is, the mystical source of all that is good and beautiful. Like all talents, seeing this source of beauty requires practice, and ordinary human beings would probably not understand why it is called beautiful - indeed, they couldn’t even understand why an action of a person can be beautiful. It is just this purification of oneself from material influences - making oneself beautiful - which makes one resemble the divine source of goodness and thus able to view the source.

Because the true beauty of human things lied in Plotinus’ opinion not in matter, it is just to be expected that he would hold the essence of humanity to be found in something else than body. This something else was that which made human being alive, which gave it the power to perceive and the ability to think. This something could not be material, since no matter as such was alive - matter couldn’t even shape itself into different forms without an external force, so how could it move itself? Furthermore, mere material body could not perceive anything - perception required not just copying likenesses of things, but also combining various features perceived into a single unity, which was impossible to matter that was always divisible and never a true unity. Finally, thinking was especially something mere matter couldn’t achieve, since many things we think, such as beauty as such, were not material.

Even if this something - soul - wasn’t just matter, one might suppose that it still is something connected to matter. Thus, Plotinus considered the Pythagorean idea of soul as harmony and the Aristotelian idea of soul as an internal activity of living, perceiving and thinking humans and found them both wanting. Harmony as such could not be soul, because soul was more of an instigator and creator of harmony. Then again, it could not be just a peculiar activity in a body, because then sleep would instantly kill a human being.

If matter and all things pertaining to it were divisible and thus destructible, soul, on the contrary, was for early Plotinus indivisible and indestructible. Indeed, as the source of all life, soul could never truly be dead. Plotinus even described soul as divine and hence immortal. An individual soul had had a desire to control things and it had thus attached itself to a body, but still some aspect of this soul remained unattached to body.

In a quite Platonian manner, Plotinus divided the realm of existence into two different parts. First was the unchanging, immaterial world, in which everything depended on a unifying principle, which in turn depended on nothing else. Second was the ever-changing, material world. In the world of change, things also appeared to depend on other things, for instance, human beings depended on their parents, who had produced them.

Plotinus noted that many philosophers had tried to find the ultimate things, on which all the beings of the world of change depended on, but they had often hit on incorrect candidates. Epicurean atoms could not be behind it all, because Epicurean idea of random movements of atoms would mean that future could not be predicted - something Plotinus was convinced we surely could do. Furthermore, if all was just movement of lifeless atoms, we couldn’t be said to even live, let alone decide things for ourselves. For the latter reason, Plotinus wouldn’t also accept that the faith of all things in the material world would be decided by a world soul, using individuals as mere puppets of its great plan.

Since predictability of future events and especially the possibility to read them from e.g. movements of stars was something Plotinus accepted, one might think that he would have endorsed the idea of stars determining the events of the material world. Indeed, he did think that stars were at least signs of certain cosmological influences - season and climate had their say on how things in the world went. Yet, if one wanted to accept the idea of personal choices - and Plotinus surely wanted - he could not accept that stars, or indeed any causal factors, would completely determine the actions of human beings. Instead, Plotinus said, the human soul - this immaterial aspect of human life - was in part free to decide what to do. Indeed, like we have seen, the better a soul, the more independent it was of material influences.

Soul then lied somewhere between the world of change and the eternal world, and it was Plotinus’s next task to determine its exact position in relation to them. His suggestion was to describe it in terms of divisibility/multiplicity and indivisibility/unity. Material things were, Plotinus said, inherently divisible and multiple - nothing intrinsic kept a mere lump of matter together. Eternal world, on the other hand, depended on something indivisible and inherently unified, which could not be divided in any sense.

Soul lied in a sense between these two extremes. Yet, it wasn’t the only thing to do so. One could also say that a colour like whiteness was a unity - whiteness is whiteness, whether it is in snow or sugar. Still, despite this unity of being the same colour wherever it occurred, whiteness did not make white things into a unity, but snow and sugar remained different substances. Soul was also in a sense both multiple and unified, but it differed in Plotinus’ eyes from colours in that soul actually unified things in which it dwelled to a peculiar combination. This could be seen in the aforementioned ability of soul to unify perceptions occurring in different parts of the body into a coherent whole.

Although soul was higher than material world, Plotinus also thought that it wasn’t the highest possible thing. While souls had a tendency to meddle with the material world, there had to be something completely immaterial, which could be seen as the source of the souls. This source Plotinus called nous or intellect - it should be some type of thinking. In a quite Aristotelian manner, Plotinus said that this intellect could not be dependent on something beyond itself and could not thus think of something foreign to itself. Thus, it had to think just itself.

Plotinus did not mean that intellect could not think anything other than itself. Instead, this intellect contained in itself, like a seed, kernel or essence of everything that existed. The restriction to intellect itself, excluded only certain non-essential or imperfect features of things from the purview of intellect. Hence, it could think of stable characteristics of the world, such a geometric shapes, but not any haphazard event, and activity of soul in so far as it was harmonious and not ruled by bodily impulses, but not its disturbance by these impulses. In other words, intellect thought in Plotinus’ view the ideal prototypes of worldly things and souls. Thus, he at least in his early phase concluded, intellect could not think of individuals. Intellect didn’t so much create these prototypes by thinking them, but they were more like eternally contained in a state of intellect knowing them. Furthermore, the prototypes were prototypes of actual world and actual souls and not of any possible and non-actual world or souls.

Plotinus quite quickly came to the conclusion that the travel of soul from that immaterial world of ideal prototypes to material and less than ideal world was not just negative. Indeed, it was in a sense just a necessary process, in which ideal prototypes of the ideal world became materialised. Many souls, such as the world soul governing the movement of the whole world and the souls regulating the movement of stars, ruled their portion of the matter with complete freedom and thus their contact with matter could not break their contact with the ideal prototypes - they could think these without any effort. Human souls were in a more lowly state, because they had isolated themselves from the communion with other souls and the ideal prototypes and required then more effort to return back to their origin. Yet, this cycle of apparent fall and gradual rising was also a necessary process. Souls could learn to see even the material world as an image of the ideal world, while the experience of the uglier parts of the material world would make them appreciate the ideal prototypes even more.

Although the ideal world - or better, the intellectual process of thinking various prototypes of embodied world - was more fundamental than the material world and souls governing it, it still wasn’t the ultimate source of everything in Plotinus’ view. Thinking is still dependent, Plotinus said, because there can be no thinking without something to think. This first source of everything would then be no thinking, but at least in this phase of Plotinus’ development, pure awareness containing potentially everything, which thinking contained actually. This pure awareness or potentiality was still not completely passive, but it had a tendency to produce something, and what it produced was the act of thinking itself, which formed the ideal world of prototypes. Since only at the stage of thinking itself we can speak of things existing, the primordial pure awareness cannot be described even as existing, but only as a source of all existence.

The primordial source of everything was thus a unity without any multiplicity, while everything derived from it was also in a sense a multiplicity. Intellect thinking itself contained already many ideal prototypes in itself, while souls became pluralised in their contact with the material universe. Interestingly, Plotinus said that these many souls formed still in a sense a unity. Indeed, one could say that all individual souls were only one soul taking on different shapes, just like one seed divides into various parts of a plant and one science develops into different branches. This did not mean that all souls would e.g. have the exact same feelings, although one could experience their underlying unity, for instance, in a feeling of compassion towards other living things.

Quite quickly Plotinus started emphasising how utterly removed the original unity was from everything else, which in addition to unity always contained some multiplicity. Indeed, while existing things usually were unities made out of something multiple or at least one out of many existent things, the original unity could not be called existent. Indeed, this unity defied all description: you couldn’t measure it in any sense or place it in space or time, you couldn’t say it was good for something, because it existed for sake of nothing else and was thus beyond mere goodness, and even words like “one” were just inadequate pointers toward it.

Despite is seeming transcendence, the original unity was in Plotinus’ opinion always quite close to everyone, because it in fact was the original unity making everything what it was.The trick in getting closer to the unity was not to try to view the unity as something differing from oneself. Indeed, Plotinus advised one to return to oneself and to free oneself from all external disturbances in order to get to a state of mind in which one was completely one with itself. In this divine state of self-peace, a human being found the soul underlying all souls and in a sort of analogy experienced how great the even more undisturbed and non-multiple original unity was.

At this stage the basic levels of Plotinus’s metaphysics were clear. Above everything corporeal lies, firstly, soul, which governs the material world and the movement of bodies, combining them into a unified cosmos. Soul is already divine, because of its power over matter. Still, soul experiences everything in time, and in a sense, it is just energy flowing from a higher plane of existence to the temporal world.

This higher plane is the timeless intellect, which thinks itself eternally. In this self-thinking, intellect does at the same time many different acts. It recognises itself as an active thinker and as a passive object of thinking; it separates these two aspects, but also identifies them as aspects of same intellect; it sees itself as active, because it thinks, but still as peaceful, because it never changes to something else; it counts the number of different aspects of itself and knows their distinct qualities.

Intellect has then many sides and is therefore dependent on the highest plane of existence, the primordial unity. Plotinus had become increasingly confident that the unity was not conscious of anything, not even of itself, because such consciousness would imply multiplicity.. Although the primordial unity might be said to contain potentially everything that exists in itself, it is not the sum of everything, but everything in general and intellect in particular is more like generated out of the unity. Still, the unity has not created intellect in the Christian sense of the word, because as the ultimate perfection it has no need to do anything. Intellect is then again like uncontrollable flowing of the energy of unity, just like soul was flowing of the energy of intellect.

Plotinus tried to express this necessary flowing of unity into an intellect in a more detailed manner. This flowing of energy of unity is like an act of unity becoming conscious of and thinking itself. In other words, one could say that intellect is the original unity, when it has started to think itself. One just has to remember that temporal phrases are here inappropriate. Act of self-thinking is more like an eternal manifestation of the original unity or a state of awareness of an original power.

This aware or conscious state then, in a sense, shapes its original power into various forms or different possible existents. Although intellect is not a complete unity without any multiplicity, it still resembles the unity in necessarily dissipating its own energy to a further level of existence. The power that this eternal thinking of possibilities holds is then manifested in world soul’s temporal power over embodied existents.

The world soul produces finally all the individual souls, and while the world soul is non-spatial, individual souls can exist in space. Following Aristotle, Plotinus said that in addition to humans also animals and plants are souls, that is, living entities controlling material bodies. In animals, souls attain a level of awareness, but human beings reflect even the higher echelons of existence. That is, a human being can on occasion rise completely above its bodily frame and just think all the same perfect thoughts as the self-thinking intellect does. Finally, every human being is not just thinking, but also the object of such a perfect thinking or one modification of the primordial power.

One important element of Plotinus’ cosmology was still left untouched, namely, matter. Or actually, Plotinus said, there are two types of matter. In the intellectual level there is multiplicity of different thoughts, such as thinking, being thought, being same, being different, being multiple and being of some kind. In general, the intellectual level should contain several perfect prototypes of the corporeal world. All of these prototypes could then be seen as modifications of one matter. This intellectual matter is not, Plotinus clarified, the primordial unity, but something in the intellectual level under this unity - while original unity should be beyond everything, intellectual matter is more like something which intellect uses in producing its various thoughts. Intellectual matter is also something dependent on the original unity - it is the inexplicable capacity to differentiate various thoughts and is in a sense generated in the eternal act of self-thinking. In one intriguing passage Plotinus suggested that this intellectual matter might be nothing else than the soul, which looked upon intellect and was molded into different shapes by its activity.

Just like the existence of many thoughts required Plotinus to suppose an intellectual matter, similarly the perpetual change of corporeal things required the supposition of another type of matter, of which corporeal things were modifications. Since this corporeal matter was a basis, from which corporeal things were formed, it itself could not be a corporeal thing. Indeed, it had no distinguishing characteristics, not even shape nor size. Just like intellectual matter, corporeal matter is also just an endless capacity to form different things - here, different corporeal things. Plotinus noted that one could not really think of corporeal matter, because there was nothing to think about it - one could just picture everything determined taken away from a corporeal thing, and still something hazy would be left behind. In fact, the essence of corporeal matter was to be just such a lack of all characteristics and limits, which doesn’t even really exist, except in comparison with the intellectual prototypes which shape the matter into various forms.

The main points of Plotinus’ worldview were thus in place, but some points were still unclear. For instance, how could world soul at the same time be non-spatial and still cause movement of the whole material world? To this problem Plotinus suggested that the movement caused by the world soul - the circular movement of world around its center - was in a sense no movement at all, since it continuously returned to its point of origin. Indeed, it was the attempt of the material world to emulate the ability of the world soul to be everywhere at the same time - this does not mean that world would have intentions of emulating the soul, but more like it had to do so by its nature. Just like world soul, also souls governing stars caused their bodies to rotate around their centre point. Still, this was not true of all souls, since e.g. human souls were also moved by external impulses.

Just like there was a downward flow of energy starting from the primordial unity and leading through intellect to soul, Plotinus thought this flow continued within the level of soul - reasoning soul guiding humans at their best gave energy to perceiving soul common to animals, which in turn gave energy to the lowest type of soul, present even in plants, which controlled processes of nutrition and reproduction. And, Plotinus continued, this flow of energy did not end there, because plants finally gave energy to the inorganic objects of Earth.

This downward flow of energy, Plotinus said, was embodied as a concrete shape in the phenomenon familiar from the life story of Socrates, that is, in the idea of being from a higher level of existence guiding one’s life. The higher the person herself in the hierarchy of existence, the higher also this spiritual guide. True philosophers would be guided by their acquaintance with intelligence or even with the primordial unity.

Part of the Platonic legacy of Plotinus’ philosophy was the idea that we could journey through different levels of this hierarchy in several lives. If a person was guided by sensual desires, she would be born as an animal or even as a mere plant in next life. Then again, people practicing good life and acquainting themselves with the higher forms of existence could become souls guiding stars or even become completely unified with the harmonious community of souls forming the world soul.

Even though death does then hold a possibility of a person moving to a higher state of existence, Plotinus was far from suggesting that people should take their lives. Indeed, he insisted, if a soul is to truly become disentangled from bodily needs, the separation of soul and body should happen naturally.

Plotinus was also interested of the place of sensible qualities in his hierarchical system - what made, say, warmth of fire different from all the prototypical characteristics of the intellectual level? His suggestion was that there are actually many different types of qualities. The lowest type are the mere effects of things on other things, such as the sensation of warmth we get when we go close to a fire. Such qualities are ephemeral and vanish as soon as the arbitrary interaction stops. These accidental qualities are then based on more substantial properties of things, namely, their activities by which they cause such ephemeral qualities - for instance, warmth as an activity of fire, which produces the sensation of warmth. These activities are not accidental, but instead belong to the very essence of things, that is, they make the thing what it is. These activities, in their turn, are then just embodiment of the prototypical characteristics of the intellectual level, which should also be then described as activities.

Plotinus did not add just prototypes of substantial properties to the intellectual level of the hierarchy. In his engagement with the souls, he had become certain that all individual souls must have an intellectual prototype. This was a novel idea compared to the usual Platonic doctrine that only species, like humans in general, had ideal prototypes. Plotinus was convinced that different persons had so diverse and still so beautiful capacities and characteristics that these couldn’t be explained just by the difference in their matter, which could explain only decadent characteristics falling short of the prototype. Thus, all souls had to have ideal prototypes, Plotinus concluded. To the objection that intellectual world would then be populated by innumerably many new entities Plotinus answered, firstly, that all the multiple prototypes were contained in the single self-thinking intellect, just like we’ve seen intellect containing prototypes of various characteristics in one act. Furthermore, Plotinus noted that time of the physical cosmos moved around in a circle and thus there would be only a finite number of types of personalities arising time and again in the course of the cycles.

The inclusion of prototypes of human souls in intellect suggested the problem whether such marks of good living in a society like just behaviour toward fellow citizens and moderate following of one’s superiors could be characteristics of the self-thinking intellect. A simple answer would seem to be that such characteristics could not belong to intellect, which did not live in any society. Problem was that Plato had seemingly said that such characteristics made humans move toward higher echelons of existence and become like gods. Plotinus’ solution was that Plato had spoken of characteristics similar to these virtues of society, but of a higher nature - for instance, harmonious justice within society was analogical to harmony within human soul, so that while wise people were meant to rule other classes, soul and wisdom were meant to rule bodily impulses. These higher virtues were essentially virtues of an individual and could be followed without the society of other persons - they were habits for purging oneself of everything chaining oneself to the material world. By becoming less held back by corporeal needs, the more one resembled self-thinking intellect. Yet, a certain gap always remained, since souls always had a tendency to fall toward matter and they thus had to resist the demands of the body, while intellect was eternally in possession of perfection.

The road toward this perfection could thus be described anew. Humans were usually not forced to start their journey towards intellect from a completely clean slate, because their experiences were of some use in ascending. People who appreciated music knew already harmonies, and now they had to just hear harmonies in an intellectual level. Similarly, lovers had to learn to see beauty also somewhere beyond physical level. But the best equipped for the journey was a person acquainted with philosophy, because she was already on her way to higher echelons. All she had to do was to learn mathematics and Platonic dialectics, which give human being a map away from sensuousness and a map within world of ideas.

The role of dialectics appears to be especially important for Plotinus. For him, it is not just logic or methodology of reasoning, but more like an ontological study of the basic concepts and their ideal prototypes - it is a study by which one knows what truly exists and what is really good - and furthermore, also a study of the intellect as a thinker of these categories. It even implies that some mysterious unity lies behind the intellect. With the aid of mathematics, it can describe the general contours of physical world, and when applied to human affairs, it can be used to show how we should live. Thus, dialectics implicitly contains all the parts of philosophy in itself, Plotinus said.

Soul thus had a road away from the level of separate personalities to an intellectual level where souls are intrinsically connected. A next problem to be explained was then how all the separate souls could also form a unity and how such a unity could appear in the form of distinct souls.

Origin of Christian metaphysics

Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian symbolised in a sense two possible roads that Christian philosophy could have taken. Former related positively to pagan philosophy and thought it a possible source for the enlightenment of Christians. He was a clear Platonist, who accepted the idea of an immaterial soul. Latter, on the other hand, was not convinced of pagan philosophy, thinking more about the charismatic experiences of pure believers. If any philosophy was near to his heart, it was Stoicism, where he appropriated the idea of a material soul and a material divinity. In the end, it was the road of Clement of Alexandria which was chosen, while Tertullian’s rigoristic and materialistic thought was left out of the official creed of the church.

Like many early Christian thinkers, Origen made considerable efforts to understand what Bible was saying. Indeed, he considered exegesis of scripture as more worthy of scholarly attention than philosophical research. While thinkers like Tertullian had been very literal in their readings of the Bible, Origen followed the example of Philo of Alexandria and saw biblical stories more as a metaphor. Tales of Old Testament implied in his eyes truths revealed more openly in the New Testament. Thus, the tale of Isaac being saved from a sacrificial death by the appearance of a lamb showed for Origen that even early Israelites were convinced that human death would one day be vanquished by the seeming death of Logos.

Origen also thought that these stories were parables about proper human life. Thus, the story of Abraham fooling a king by introducing his wife, Sarah, as his sister, showed according to Origen that a righteous person (Abraham) can share virtuous life (Sarah) with other people. Similarly, the story of Egyptians selling their land voluntarily to Pharaoh at the time of famine was in Origen’s eyes a warning about weak persons willingly debasing themselves under the yoke of Devil.

The allegorical method of reading Bible pertained not just to stories, but also to laws about the Jewish rituals - for instance, the various sacrificial commands were signs of the sacrifice of Jesus. Indeed, the story how Moses could not enter the promised land, while his follower Joshua - or Jesus, as it was written in the translations of Old Testament at the time - did, was in Origen’s eyes a proof that Jewish law in its literal sense was not enough for salvation, unlike Christianity.

Not just the Old Testament, but also New Testament was not to be read too literally, according to Origen. For instance, Origen thought that the story of Jesus discoursing with Moses and Elijah and afterwards reproaching Peter for suggesting the construction of separate huts for the three was a parable about not separating Jewish law and prophets from gospels.

Although Origen’s interpretation of Jewish rituals as mere symbols of more spiritual events was quite in line with the ideas of first Christians, few of his spiritual readings obscured some tendencies of gospels. For instance, when gospels presented Jesus preaching that one should give money to the poor and not to those who already had riches, Origen suggested that this saying actually meant that we should teach especially those who were spiritually poor, that is, had misconceptions about God and his relation to humans.

With this rather imaginative way to read the Bible, Origen quickly found reasons to appreciate the philosophical tradition. When the Bible told of the skirmishes of Abraham with a king and his two companions and the final signing of peace treaty, this was for Origen a clear sign that the kingly discipline of logic with its two companions, physics and ethics, had battled with Christianity, but would finally find their peace with it. Indeed, one might even find some morsels of wisdom from texts of philosophers, just like Moses could learn something from his father-in-law who served another god.

Although Origen thus appreciated philosophy, he was quite adamant that church was of a much higher nature than any philosophical school. Indeed, although pagans might ridicule Christians for accepting things on faith, no philosophical school had managed to show that the others were wrong and their followers had to simply believe in their teachings. In addition, although Christianity was criticised for being based on mysteries, Origen thought that these mysteries were still much more common knowledge than esoteric teachings of philosophical schools, and indeed, they were mysteries only because understanding them required more effort.

Furthermore, despite the worth of other philosophical treatises, Bible contained in Origen’s opinion the core of philosophy in the form of Salomonic treatises. Salomon’s Proverbs indicated the ways of good life and the corrects method for using reason, thus covering ethics and logic. The essentials of physics, Origen said, were described in Ecclesiastes, which described the futility of all worldly things. Finally, the Song of Songs was to Origen a model for Platonic metaphysics, in which earthly love of a lover toward her beloved served as a symbol for the love leading a person toward the ultimate source of everything, or in religious terms, God.

This God should, according to Origen, be called the God, because to it the word “god” is most properly applied. Indeed, what names to be given for God was quite an important for Origen. Although pagan philosophers were happy to identify e.g. Zeus of Greek mythology with the creator of the universe, Origen thought that Zeus was at most some lesser entity trying to present itself as the highest being in the universe.

Against Tertullian, Origen noted that God must be immaterial, because all material objects need sustenance and cannot be eternal. Thus, whenever Bible ascribed a body to God or spoke of him as being made of some type of matter (e.g. pneuma or breath/spirit), this was just a metaphor. God is the ground of all life and it is figuratively called light, because it is devoid of any touch of impurity, and just like we never see the true light or Sun, but only its emissions, similarly, Origen suggests, we can be aware only of the effects of God’s power. Despite God being the most powerful being, Origen still thought that God’s powers had limits, because he thought all things must have their limits.

Because of its purity and goodness, Origen points out, God is only source of positive things, while he cannot be source of any negations. Thus, lack of goodness - in other words, evil - is not based on God. This still does not mean, Origen clarifies, that material world would not be work of God - even corporeal things have their own perfection. Indeed, God had made the world into an organic unity, in which all things were connected and eventually served the needs of rational beings.

God as such would be beyond human mind, but something called Logos could lead humans to the knowledge of God. Sometimes Origen seems to go even so far as to suggest that Logos is nothing else, but a name for the general capacity to know God - whatever this capacity or Reason is, it is for Origen definitely something higher than ordinary perception of earthly realities. When looked from another viewpoinr, Logos would be just the revelation or “word” of God about God itself and about the relation of other beings to God, since without the help of God humans could not truly know God. Still, at other places Origen makes it clear that Logos is a separate being - it is like a smaller model, through which the vastness of God can be represented.

This Logos, says Origen, has existed always, but is still dependent on God - Logos is like an image of God and always connected to its source. Although God and Logos are distinct, Origen says, they still are unified, just like a married couple is unified and still retain their individuality. Because of its close connection to God, Logos could also be called a God, although Logos certainly isn’t the God. Indeed, following the Gospel by John, Origen said that God has created everything else through Logos. Just like the God, Logos can also be called light, but it is not completely pure, but more like a spark emitted by the true source of light and a ray shining in darkness. That is, Logos can enter a state containing impurities - it can become embodied.

The purpose of the embodiment of Logos was, according to Bible, to perfect the work of God. This statement was somewhat problematic for Origen, since all works of God should be perfect. Origen’s solution was that due to some voluntary transgression a number of other entities had turned themselves away from God and thus become imperfect. The persons who now existed in the fallen state had originally existed in a different place - perhaps in immaterial fashion or perhaps in some more perfect region, with more perfect bodies, made out of the same substance as stars. Then, because of having become tainted by sin, they had been, as it were, thrown down to the earthly human existence. This falling could also be described figuratively as opening of their eyes, since it meant the beginning of sensory perception to these persons. Thus, they required Logos to perfect them, to cleanse them from earthly impurities and to return them to their original state.

The embodied or incarnate state is necessary for Logos to first reach human beings. And just like Logos is only an image of the God, the body of Logos - the person called Jesus - is just an image of the Logos, although for the majority of humankind Jesus is the closest they can come to the real Logos. At first, this Jesus was still something distinct from Logos, and like all rational entities, lived in a state of perfection, before arriving to the material world. Yet, unlike other rational entities, Jesus was supposedly in constant connection with Logos. After becoming materialised, Jesus lived a perfect life and suffered for others, thus becoming completely identified with Logos. In fact, when Origen appears to equate Logos with reason in general or with revelation of the God, then this identification of Jesus with Logos becomes a simple statement about Jesus being intimately aware of the God - and in this sense every human being who could share in this awareness is united with the God.

Logos could be called God, because it still was quite close to God. Some people think of forces of nature as gods, which is a step further from the proper use of the word. Still, Origen noted, these worshipers of natural forces can still recognise traces of true divinity in them. For instance, many animals show traces of acting in quite rational manner, although they do not have a reason of their own, because God has made them. It even makes some sense, according to Origen, to worship Sun, Moon and planets, because they are, as many philosophers of the day said, living and rational beings, moving freely through the heavens. Of course, Origen noted, if we asked the planets themselves, they would tell us to worship their creator - they are more perfect than earthly beings, but still far from the God. Indeed, stars had probably also sinned, although not as badly as human beings. In their current state they helped humans by giving them light and warmth.

The final and the most incorrect step away from the truth is to call mere human built images gods, which is complete folly. Indeed, Origen noted, from time to time some maleficent beings occupied such idols, in order to lure humans away from the knowledge of true God. These maleficent beings or demons were, as some Platonists of the time supposed, gaseous entities. They had also fallen from the immaterial or heavenly realm, because of turning away from the God, but their fate was bleaker than that of humans, who in their fleshly state could at least strive for moral perfection, while demons did not have even the will to redemption. Origen suggested that the demons might require incense and sacrificial fumes for their sustenance and that through some unknown natural mechanism they were perhaps linked to names of pagan gods, arriving whenever someone mentioned them. Despite being opponents of the God, Origen supposed demons would still get their chance to perfect themselves.

Analogically with the hierarchy of what to mean by god, Origen offers a similar hierarchy of what one should mean by Logos or reason. We already saw Origen’s notion of people taking embodied Jesus as Logos, although he was only an image of Logos - thus, what Logos was to God, Jesus was to Logos. One step further are proper philosophers, who follow what is commonly called reason, which then should be analogically a creation of Logos, just like forces of nature are creation of the God. Finally, there are people who follow their own fabrication of what reason should be (Origen especially mentions Epicureans), which is then as erroneous form of behaviour as worship of idols.

The route to perfection for human beings lies then, Origen said, in following Logos and through it finding knowledge of God. Against gnostics, Origen noted that there was nothing in the essence of people who followed this route that distinguished them from other human beings. In other words, all human beings could in principle still find perfection, which was then more a matter of choice than birth. Human being had two forces or tendencies drawing them to opposite directions, toward animal life and toward heavenly life, and human being had to make a choice, which path to take. Following Paul, Origen noted that all one needed for salvation was faith in Logos, which would cleanse human being of all imperfection. Even after finding faith one still had to live a decent life, lest one not fall back into a state of sin. This decent life meant going against the way of the world, which often held as profitable what was really something that one should not do.

In comparison to Logos, Origen speaks very little of the role of the so-called Holy Spirit. If the God had power over all existing things and if Logos was meant to speak to all rational beings, Spirit was, according to Origen, supposed to come in contact with people who behaved perfectly in accordance with the guidance of Logos. Spirit thus gave these holy persons, for instance, visions of life in the immaterial realm. In a sense, then, Spirit provided an access to Logos, because it gave people even more perfect wisdom, just like Logos provided an access to the God and so made people even more perfect beings, although being as such had already been granted to them by the God.

In addition to Spirit, a number of lesser entities or angels helped people to find the proper life. Angels, just like demons, Origen supposed, had material, gaseous or starlike bodies. Just like all other things below Logos and spirit, Origen suggested, angels were not without their faults, although they had managed to retain a position higher than humans. Angels and their evil counterparts - the demons - tried to entice humans to follow one of the forces inherent to human personality, angels guiding humans toward perfection and demons toward imperfection.

Origen took it for granted that human beings and indeed all living entities had a power to direct themselves and were not just moved by mere external forces, like mere material, non-living objects. As rational entities humans also have, according to Origen, a power to decide what they would do. Thus, he said, rational entities are accountable for their actions. He was also sure that this capacity for free choice did not contradict God’s power to know all events beforehand - God just has used his pre-knowledge to fashion the events so that free entities will get their just deserts for all their choices. For instance, Origen noted, God knew from the beginning of the world that a certain person would pray for him and organised the events so that this prayer was to be heard. Of course, a precondition for this was that the person in question should pray for the right things, for example, for a salvation from the imperfect, earthly realm or for a help in finding true wisdom.

Somewhat revolutionary in Christian teachers was their willingness to share their teachings with anyone, even if they were not learned or had not lived a perfect life, because, as Origen noted, Logos became flesh for everyone’s sake. Yet, Origen also defended Christianity that it was not meant merely for sinners or weak-minded, but that its teachings should also be heard by wise and virtuous. Indeed, Origen was of the opinion that all believers were not on the same level, but that there were distinctions in their understanding of the truths shared by Logos. Some could only consume easily graspable statements from the Bible, just like some could only eat milk and vegetables. The proper meat or the mysteries hidden behind the allegories were to be revealed only to those with the capacity to handle them. Even these wise people should not brag about their skills of understanding, since in comparison with Logos, Origen noted, all reason was wanting.

Origen even suggested that the truths now shared by Logos were not the most important ones, but only those that were useful for the fallen state of human. Once a human being had completed the proverbial Passover - transition from the earthly state of sin to the perfect state - she was instructed to burn away the means by which she had carried herself over to the other side.

Although the persons in the immaterial or heavenly realm were thus wiser than persons in the material or earthly realm, they still retained the capacity of free choice and might choose to turn away from the God and fall again - this relapse was something that could happen even to angels. This meant, Origen noted, that after this material world had fulfilled its purpose of serving rational entities during their fallen state, another material world might have to be created. Indeed, Origen speculated, a whole series of material worlds might have existed before this one, because God certainly had not been idle before the creation of this world. Origen wasn’t sure whether this cycle of new worlds would continue indefinitely long or whether after uncountable ages a state would be reached, in which all rational entities would follow God’s plan perfectly. Yet, this state of God being found in everything was the ultimate goal of all creation - the end towards which everyone strove.