An ontological night descends as the curtain rises over the pantomime of the cosmic world. In the twilight of the moribund, pre-cosmic phase of the procession, first, the hypostasis soul, rapt in its eternal contemplation of Intellect, particularizes its species souls. Unique in Plotinus cosmology for its inclusion of the polupragmatic soul, it is a complex drama that calls for the subtlest philosophical archeology to unearth the manifold buried scenes lurking beneath the facade. The hypostasis soul undergoes a tolmatic 'restlessly active nature' that incites the desire for autonomy and the recalcitrant motion of soul typical of such a restless or busy nature. The World Soul squanders its unity, unravels itself to a weaker extension and copies noetic motion as it makes time and a mimetic world of sense, immersing this world in time. Seismic echoes of buried scenes of Plotinus' higher ontology, soul, self, nature, matter and the apostate gestures of tolma resound through the blithe front of III.