' It must study itself '...

It must occupy us now, for it bears closely upon our inquiry and is its natural preliminary:

the seeker is soul and it must start from a true notion of the nature and quality by which soul may undertake the search;

it must study itself in order to learn whether it has the faculty for the inquiry, the eye for the object proposed, whether in fact we ought to seek;

for if the object is alien the search must be futile, while if there is relationship the solution of our problem is at once desirable and possible.



-- Ennead V.1.1.
Plotinus