Philosophy

HUMANITIES 441 remains the only creator we can see. As for a specifically Canadian concept of society, it is prophetic and yet to appear, like Blake's Jerusalem in England's green and pleasant land. This masque of Reason is so superbly played that we are barely aware of misgivings crowding the wings. But nOW they emerge. Must art attack the whole structure of society and seek to bring it down? If intellectuals and artists promote deliberate anarchy, to the discredit of every institutional form, who will provide even for the continuity of technological advance? Who will take care of National defence? Who will administer and finance the thousand services on which we depend? If our democratic mythology need present no stable element but only shifting possibilities of belief, what continuity of loyalties can we count on? And if the mind, even when engaged in scientific investigation, is not in fact perceiving signs of an existing cosmic order, what reaSOn have we for believing the world to be anything beyond hallucination? In the face of such queries, conviction grows that our total myth, by which we guide our poor lives, must prepare to transcend even "clair de lune intellectuel ," that "little feather Fluttering far down the gulf." But Northrop Frye is in a full spate of creation, and the curtain will go up again to show us other masques of beauty, love, and majesty. Doubtless these misgivings, bucolic anti-masquers, will next time be effectively subdued and driven back into the wings. (RoY DANIELLS) PHILOSOPHY John N. Deck's Nature, Contemplation, and the One: A Study in the Philosophy of Plotinus (University of Toronto Press, xiv, 131, $5.) is a solid rev;sion of a doctoral thesis and a welcome addition to the rapidly growing literature on Plotinus. The title of the book is that of Ennead III. 8, and this would indicate concern with the theme of the production of sensible things through Nature's contemplation. However, on the dustjacket we read that we have here a "reappraisal of Plotinus' thought." It would seem rather that Deck gives a very careful and, to this reviewer at any rate, correct exposition of Plotinus' thought on contemplationproduction based on wide knowledge and, at times, minute scrutiny of the relevant texts. But the claim that this is a fresh, a "new," view of Plotinus' teachings is probably exaggerated. In his introduction Deck says that he will deal with two issues: whether Plotinus' doctrine is consistent, i.e., whether he thinks that the 442 LETTERS IN CANAD.A HUMANITIES 443 trine of contemplative producing bears no similarity to the world as we see it: "He seems, at best, to have got everything upside down" (81). Deck handles this sort of objection fairly well and ends by rightly stressing Plotinus' monism: The Nous is the being of the world; it is not a heaven of ideas, it is "right here" (91, Ill). His treatment of the related objection-"Does he (Plotinus) live exclusively in a world of dreams or ideas, in which thought is spontaneously productive?" (93)-is somewhat less successful. He cites examples of production through knowledge or contemplation: the engineer, the artist. But he realizes that this will not do. Soul and Nature contemplate and thereby produce the sensible things. Clearly there can be nO familiar paradigm for this sort of "production." Perhaps the most suitable analogy to the making of sensible realities by the Nous is the mirror image. The image is caused by the original without effort, loss of energy, etc. But surely this analogy too breaks down, because for one thing the status of matter as a possible mirror is anything but clear. Nevertheless, Deck concludes that Plotinian poiesis is "genuine making," "real making," "analogous to ordinary making" (l09). Much of what Deck says in these two chapters is helpful in removing shallow objections and misinterpretations. He does interpret correctly, and he defends convincingly. But if we seek a more basic understanding, the real "sense" of all these abstractions, metaphors, and contradictions, we will be disappointed. And I cannot help suspecting that ti,e main reason for the failure is his deliberate omission of all the rich background of...