Emanation Hierarchy

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter III

“In the first place, therefore, you say, “ it must be granted that there are Gods .” Thus to speak, however, is not right on this subject. For an innate knowledge of the Gods is coexistent with our very essence; and this knowledge is superio…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter IVa

“With respect to your inquiry, “ what the peculiarities are in each of the more excellent genera, by which they are separated from each other? ” if you understand by peculiarities the specific differences under the same genus, which are dis…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter IVb

“This, therefore, subsists contrarily to what you suppose, for the purpose of discovering the peculiarity which you now investigate. In short, whether you think that there is one genus of the Gods, one of dæmons, and in a similar manner of…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter Va

“In the next place, let us direct our attention to the solution of your inquiries. There is, therefore, the good itself which is beyond essence, and there is that good which subsists according to essence; I mean the essence which is most an…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter Vb

“Again, however, according to another mode of considering the subject, it is necessary to ascribe to the Gods the whole of that which is united, of whatever kind it may be; that which is firmly established in itself, and which is the cause o…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter VI

“What, therefore, shall we say concerning the media? I think, indeed, that from what has been before said, they will be manifest to every one; for these give completion to the indivisible connexion of the extremes. Nevertheless, it is necess…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter VII

“Of the extremes, therefore, one is supreme, transcendent, and perfect; but the other is last in dignity, deficient, and more imperfect. And the former, indeed, is capable of accomplishing all things at once, uniformly in an instant; but the…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter VIIIa

“But neither must we admit that cause of the distinction of these genera which you subjoin, viz. “ that it is an arrangement with reference to different bodies; as, for instance, 39 of Gods to etherial bodies, but of dæmons to aerial bodies…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter VIIIb

“Hence, through these things such a corporeal-formed division as you introduce, is demonstrated to be false. It is, indeed, especially necessary not to propose any thing of this kind; but if this should appear to you to be requisite, yet yo…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter IXa

“I consider you, therefore, as asking, for it is your inquiry, “ Why, since the Gods dwell in the heavens alone, there are invocations by theurgists of terrestrial and subterranean Gods? ” For 45 what you assert in the beginning is not true…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter IXb

“For in things which are of a kindred nature, according to essence and power, or which are, in a certain respect, of the same species, or homogeneous, a certain comprehension, or conservation, may be discovered. But in such things as are en…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter Xb

“This, therefore, rather pertains to some other genus, than to that which always exists, and is suspended from the Gods, and which, in conjunction with them, observes the same order, and accomplishes the same period. Hence dæmons are impass…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter XVa

“After this, you pass on to another division into contraries, viz. the division of Gods with reference to dæmons. For you say, “ that the Gods are pure intellects ;” but you propose this opinion as an hypothesis, or you narrate it as a dog…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter XVb

“Or what passion can accede to a thing of this kind, the purity of which the most worthy human manners cannot easily equal? You say, however, “ that the things which are offered in supplications are offered as to sensitive and psychical nat…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter XVII

“We will exchange, therefore, this division for the doubt which may be adduced by you against the present opinion. “ For ,” it may be said by you, “ how, conformably to what we assert, can the sun and moon, and the visible natures in the hea…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter XVIIIa

“Your next inquiry doubts, “ how some of the Gods are beneficent, but others malefic .” This opinion, therefore, is assumed from the predictors of nativities. It is, however, entirely remote from the truth. For all the Gods are good, and i…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter XIXa

“In the next place, therefore, we shall answer your question, “ What it is which conjoins the Gods that have a body in the heavens with the incorporeal Gods. ” What this is, therefore, is evident from what has been before said. For 72 if t…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter XIXb

“And secondary genera, indeed, remain with invariable sameness in the one of such as are primary; but the primary impart from themselves union to the secondary genera, and all of them possess in each other the communion of an indissoluble co…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter XX

“After this, you again resume the same inquiries, of which what has been already said may be considered as a sufficient solution. Since, however, it is necessary, according to the proverb, frequently to speak of and consider things that are…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter XXI

“The division, however, of the passive from the impassive , which you adopt, may perhaps be rejected by some one, as not adapted to either of the more excellent genera, through the causes which we have before enumerated; and it also deserves…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter I

“It is also necessary to demonstrate to you, in what dæmons, heroes, and souls differ from each other, and whether this difference is according to essence, or according to power, or according to energy. I say, therefore, that dæmons are prod…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter II

“It follows, therefore, that in the next place we should define the energies of them. And those of dæmons, indeed, must be surveyed as occupied about the world, and more widely extended in their effects; but those of heroes as less extended,…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter IIIa

“Let us, however, now proceed to the appearances of the Gods and their perpetual attendants, and show what the difference is in their appearance. For you inquire, “ by what indication the presence of a God, or an angel, or an archangel, or…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter IIIb

“In addition also to these peculiarities, divine beauty, indeed, shines with an immense splendour as it were, fixes the spectators in astonishment, imparts a divine joy, presents itself to the view with ineffable symmetry, and is exempt from…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter IVa

“Proceeding, therefore, to other peculiarities of them, we say, that with the Gods, indeed, there is acuteness and rapidity in the energies, which shine forth with greater celerity than those of intellect itself, though in themselves they ar…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter IVb

“And, with respect to archons, the light of those that have the government of the world is more pure; but of those that preside over matter, exhibits itself mingled from things of a dissimilar and contrary nature. And the light of souls man…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter V

“Moreover, that which purifies souls is perfect in the Gods; but in archangels it is anagogic. Angels alone dissolve the bond of generation. Dæmons draw souls down into nature; but heroes lead them to a providential attention to sensible wor…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter VI

“Moreover, the gifts arising from the manifestations are not all of them equal, nor have the same fruits. But the presence [44] of the Gods, indeed, imparts to us health of body, virtue of soul, purity of intellect, and in one word elevates…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter VII

“Moreover, in the manifestations there is an indication of the order which the powers that are seen possess. For the Gods are surrounded by either Gods or angels; but archangels have angels either preceding or coarranged with them, or follow…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter VIII

“Moreover, with respect to the tenuity and subtilty of light, the Gods extend a light so subtle that corporeal eyes cannot sustain it, 100 but are affected in the same manner as fishes, when they are drawn upward from turbid and thick water…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter IX

“In the last place, the dispositions of the soul of those that invoke the Gods to appear receive, when they become visible, a liberation from the passions, a transcendent perfection, and an energy entirely more excellent, and participate of…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter I

“In the first place, therefore, you ask me to explain to you distinctly, “ what that is which is effected in the foreknowledge of future events? ” Immediately, however, that which you endeavour to learn is impossible. For, according to the m…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter V

“There are, therefore, many species of divine possession, and divine inspiration is multifariously excited; whence, also, the signs of it are many and different. For either the Gods are different, by whom we are inspired, and thus produce a…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter XII

“It appears, therefore, that the divination of oracles accords with all the hypotheses which we have before adduced concerning prediction. For if a power of this kind was inseparable from the nature of places, and of the bodies which are the…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter XIV

“Concerning another kind of divination, also, you say as follows: “ Others who are conscious what they are doing in other respects, are divinely inspired according to the phantastic part, some indeed receiving darkness for a cooperator, othe…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter XVI

“Descending, however, to particulars, the soul of animals, the dæmon who presides over them, the air, the motion of the air, and the circulation of the heavens, variously change the viscera, [74] 156 conformably to the will of the Gods. But…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter XVIIa

“In the next place you inquire “ concerning the mode of divination, what it is, and what the quality is by which it is distinguished ,” which we have already explained, both generally and particularly. But you, in the first place, represent…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter XVIII

“Another contest, however, awaits us, not less than that in which we have been before engaged, and which you immediately announce, concerning the causes of divination, “ whether a God, an angel, or a dæmon, or some other power, is present in…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter XIX

“But neither does the cause [of the energies] of more excellent natures subsist as a certain middle instrument, [77] nor does he who invokes operate through him who prophesies; for to assert these things is impious. And it is much more true…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter XXI

“Is, therefore, what you add in the third place more true; viz. “ that there is a certain mixed form of hypostasis, consisting of our soul and divine inspiration externally derived ?” Consider this then more accurately, lest we should be dec…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter I

“Let us then, in the next place, consider the opposing arguments, what they are, and what reason they possess. And if we should discuss some things a little more abundantly, in consequence of speaking freely and at leisure, it is requisite t…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter II

“But we sometimes see that take place which is now proposed to be considered. For it happens that spirits are commanded [to do this or that] who do not use a reason of their own, and have not the principle of judgment. Nor does this occur ir…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter II

“The hostile opposition, therefore, in the things that are now proposed, may be easily dissolved by demonstrating the dignity of wholes with 226 respect to parts, and by recalling to your recollection the exempt transcendency of the Gods abo…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter VII

“The discussion therefore requires that we should show what it is through which sacrifices are effective of things, and are suspended from the Gods, the precedaneous causes of 234 effects. If then we say that the communion of similar powers,…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter IX

“It is better, therefore, to assign as the cause of the efficacy of sacrifices friendship and familiarity, and a habitude which binds fabricators to the things fabricated, and generators to the 241 things generated. Hence when, this common p…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter Xa

“We, however, admit all these assertions; physical essences, indeed, being coexcited as in one animal, according to aptitude or sympathy, as in another respect being subjects, and following and being subservient to the cause of the efficacy…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter XVII

“What, therefore, shall we derive from the Gods who are entirely exempt from all human generation, with respect to sterility, or abundance or any thing else pertaining to [the mortal] life? Nothing whatever. For it is not the province of tho…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter XVIII

“According to another division, therefore, the numerous herd [or the great mass] of men is arranged under nature, is governed by physical powers, looks downward to the works of nature, gives completion to the administration of Fate, and to t…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter XIX

“On this subject, however, there is also the following division. Of divine essences and powers some have [a genesiurgic] soul and nature subject and ministrant to their fabrications, whenever they wish to use them. But others are entirely se…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter XXI

“I think, therefore, that all who are lovers of the contemplation of theurgic truth will acknowledge this, that the piety which pertains to divine natures ought not to be exercised towards them partially or imperfectly. Hence, since prior to…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter XXII

“What then [it may be said], does not the summit of the sacrific art recur to the most principal one of the whole multitude of Gods, and at one and the same time worship the many essences and principles that are [rooted and concentred] in it…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter XXIII

“The various mode, therefore, of sanctity in sacred operations partly purifies and partly perfects some one of the things that are in us or about us. And some things, indeed, it restores to symmetry and order; but others it liberates from mo…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter XXVIa

“Since, however, prayers are not the smallest [but on the contrary a very great] part of sacrifices, especially give completion to them, and through these the whole operation of them is corroborated and effected; and since, besides 271 this,…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter II

“Hear, therefore, the intellectual interpretation of symbols, according to the conceptions of the Egyptians; at the same time removing from your imagination and your ears the image of things symbolical, but elevating yourself to intellectual…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter III

“Since, however, every part of the heavens, every sign of the zodiac, [123] all the motion of the heavens, every period of time according to which the world is moved, and all things contained in the wholes of the universe, receive the powers…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter I

“Leaving, therefore, these particulars, you wish in the next place that I would unfold to you “ What the Egyptians conceive the first cause to be; whether intellect, or above intellect; whether alone, or subsisting with some other or others;…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter II

“Prior to truly existing beings and total principles [or principles that rank as wholes], there is one God, prior to [that deity who is generally believed to be] the first God and king, [133] immoveable, and abiding in the solitude of his ow…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter III

“According to another order, however, he arranges the God Emeph [134] prior to, and as the leader of, the celestial Gods. And he says that this God is an intellect, itself intellectually perceiving itself, and converting intellections to its…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter IV

“These things, therefore, having been accurately discussed, the solution of the doubts which you have met with in certain books will be manifest. For the books which are circulated under the name of Hermes contain Hermaic opinions, though th…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter VI

“You say, therefore, “ that according to many of the Egyptians, that which is in our power depends on the motion of the stars .” What the truth, however, is respecting this, it is necessary to unfold to you from the Hermaic conceptions. For…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter VII

“Hence that of which you are dubious is not true, “ that all things are bound with the indissoluble bonds of Necessity ,” which we call Fate. For the soul has a proper principle of circumduction to the intelligible, and of a separation from…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter VIII

“What then, is it not possible for a man to liberate himself [from fate] through the Gods that revolve in the heavens, and to consider the same as the leaders of fate, and yet as 311 those that bind our lives with indissoluble bonds? Perhaps…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter I

“Let us now, therefore, to the utmost of our power, endeavour to discuss the manifold doubt concerning the peculiar dæmon, and which also is subject to various objections. Since, however, to speak summarily, the consideration of the peculiar…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter VII

“From these things, therefore, it is easy to answer your next question. For the peculiar dæmon does not rule over one of the parts in us, but, in short, over all the parts at once, and extends to every principle within us, in the same manner…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter IX

“After this, therefore, you also mention another disquisition concerning the peculiar dæmon, which represents “ some as worshiping two, but others three, dæmons of this kind .” The whole of this, however, is erroneous. For it is a false mode…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter X

“And this order is adapted to dæmons; one part of it being allied to those that are invoked; another being derived from more ancient causes; and the third part effecting a common completion from both the others. Do not, therefore, assimilate…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter V

“But why am I prolix about these particulars? For I have abundantly shown, in what has been before said, the transcendency of divine above human divination. It is better, therefore, in compliance with your request, “ to point out to you the…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter VI

“Moreover, after it has conjoined the soul to the several parts of the universe, and to the total divine powers which pass through it; then it leads the soul to, and deposits it in, the whole Demiurgus, and causes it to be independent of all…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter VIIIa

“And thus we have answered, to the utmost of our ability, your inquiries concerning divination and theurgy. It remains, therefore, at the end of this discussion, that I should beseech the Gods to afford me an immutable guard of true concept…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter VIIIb

“Or we say that the good which subsists in us may be considered as a habit, in consequence of subsisting in a subject; the next to this ranks as essence, and a part of essence, I mean the good which ranks among forms; and the good which is b…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter VIIIc

“The fifth according to body, which is called corporeal-formed. And the sixth according to matter, and this is denominated material.” Olympiodorus adds, “or after another manner it may be said, that some of these are celestial, others ether…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter VIIId

“For it is necessary that every form in the universe should be never failing, in order that the universe may be perfect, and that, being generated from an immoveable cause, it may be immoveable in its essence. But every wholeness is a form,…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter VIIIf

“Thus they recognised things supreme in such as are subordinate, and the subordinate in the supreme: in the celestial regions, terrene properties subsisting in a causal and celestial manner; and in earth celestial properties, but according t…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter VIIIg

“So that all things are full of divine natures; terrestrial natures receiving the plenitude of such as are celestial, but celestial of supercelestial essences; [153] while every order of things proceeds gradually, in a beautiful descent, fro…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter VIIIi

“This, however, our philanthropic lord and father Jupiter understanding, that we might not be entirely deprived of communion with the Gods, has given us observation through sacred arts , by which we have at hand sufficient assistance.” For t…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter VIIIj

“the connective, perfective, demiurgic, assimilative, and such others as are celebrated posterior to these; so that all are in all, and yet each is at the same time separate and distinct. “Indeed we obtain this knowledge of their union and…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter VIIIk

“the musical, the telestic, the prophetic, and the amatory, previous to the discussion of each, we must first speak about enthusiasm, and show to what part of the soul the enthusiastic energy pertains; whether each part of it possesses this…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter VIIIl

“Opinion, likewise, and the phantasy, are said thus to energize when they discover arts, and accomplish admirable works, such, for instance, as Phidias effected in the formation of statues, and another in another art, as also Homer says [157…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter VIIIm

“Thus, for instance, if the allotment of the soul was as far as to philosophy, the soul would be able, though it should not choose a philosophic but some other life, to energize in that life somewhat philosophically. There are also said to…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter VIIIn

“As, therefore, it is possible for the tyrannic life, when suddenly changed, to become aristocratic, through employing strenuous promptitude and a divine allotment, but the gradual ascent is from a tyrannic to a democratic, and from this to…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter VIIIo

“In the next place, departing from intellect, and descending into reasoning and dianoia, it no longer apprehended real beings by simple intuitions, but syllogistically and transitively, proceeding from one thing to another, from propositions…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter VIIIp

“It causes us, therefore, to pass through life in an irreprehensible manner; just as the internal prophetic mania contracts and elevates all the multiplied and many powers and lives of the soul to the one , in order that it may in a greater…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter VIIIq

“On the contrary, divinely-inspired poets, as Hermeas well observes, knock, as it were, at the gates of the Muses, and thus being filled from thence exclaim, Εσπετε νυν μοι Μουσαι And, Μηνιν αειδε θεα— And, Ανδρα μοι εννεπε Μουσα . For bein…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter VIIIr

“But there are a certain few who by employing a certain supernatural power of intellect, are removed from nature , &c. The class to which these few belong is beautifully unfolded, as follows, by Plotinus, in the beginning of his Treatise on…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter VIIIv

“Hence some of them preside over men, others over lions or other animals, and others over plants; and still more partially, some are the inspective guardians of the eye, others of the heart, and others of the liver.” He adds, “all things, ho…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter VIIIw

“Cathartic virtue, therefore, alone must be called the salvation of souls; since this cuts off, and vehemently obliterates, material natures, and the passions which adhere to us from generation; separates the soul and leads it to intellect;…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter VIII|

“Between souls that always abide on high with purity, such as the souls of essential heroes, and those that descend into the regions of mortality, and are defiled with vice, such as the souls of the greater part of mankind, the class of unde…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter VIII}

“The nature of the one , as it is all-receptive , and all-productive ( πανδεχης και παντοφυης ) exhibits in itself a certain representation and indication of multitude; for it is all things prior to all. 40 . For the Gods are essentialized…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter VIII

“Ταις ενεργειαις της μελῳδιας συμπασχειν ημων αντικρυς τας ψυχας, την συγγενειαν ωσπερ επιγινωσκουσας ——et, ποτε μεν εις ησυχιαν και κατασολην τρεπεσθαι, ποτε δε εις οἱσρον και ενθυσιασμον. And, in the last place, see Plato in his Io, and A…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter VIII…

“To this, also, what every where occurs about prediction from the laurel pertains. For if the leaves of the laurel when committed to the fire made a noise, it was considered as a good omen, but if they made none, a bad one. 77 . Gale, in…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter VIIIŠ

“Η γοητεια δε εστι τεχνη τις περι τους ενυλους και χθονιους δαιμονας φαντασιοσκοπουσα τοις εποπταις τα τουτων ειδωλα. και τους μεν ωσπερ εξ αδου αναγουσα, τους δε υψοθεν καταγουσα, και τουτους κακωτικους. και ειδωλα αττα υφιστησι φαντασματ…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter VIIIŒ

“It must also be observed, that this MS. of Psellus On Dæmons forms no part of his treatise On the Energy of Dæmons , published by Gaulminus; for it never was published. 94 . Hence Iamblichus (apud Stob. Eclog. Phys. p. 114), says, Ου…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter VIIIŽ

“But the Egyptians honoured the asp, the weasel, and the beetle, in consequence of observing in them certain dark resemblances of the power of the Gods, like that of the sun in drops of water. For at present, many believe and assert that th…”

◆Iamblichus: On the Mysteries | Chapter VIII

“It is well observed by Ficinus, in lib. i. Eunead. ii. Plotin. “that the fire which is enkindled by us is more similar to the heavens than other terrestrial substances. Hence it participates of light, which is something incorporeal, i…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 22

“Section 4 4. We come, so, to the question whether Purification is the whole of this human quality, virtue, or merely the forerunner upon which virtue follows? Does virtue imply the achieved state of purification or does the mere process suf…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 35 (part 1)

“Section 2 2. Those that deny the happy life to the plants on the ground that they lack sensation are really denying it to all living things. By sensation can be meant only perception of state, and the state of well-being must be Good in i…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 36

“Section 3 3. Now if we draw no distinction as to kinds of life, everything that lives will be capable of happiness, and those will be effectively happy who possess that one common gift of which every living thing is by nature receptive. We…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 57

“Section 7 7. But if we are to consider only the present and may not call in the past to make the total, why do we not reckon so in the case of time itself, where, in fact, we do not hesitate to add the past to the present and call the total…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 63

“Section 2 2. Let us, then, go back to the source, and indicate at once the Principle that bestows beauty on material things. Undoubtedly this Principle exists; it is something that is perceived at the first glance, something which the soul…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 66 (part 1)

“Section 5 5. These Lovers, then, lovers of the beauty outside of sense, must be made to declare themselves. What do you feel in presence of the grace you discern in actions, in manners, in sound morality, in all the works and fruits of vi…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 77

“Section 2 2. For the moment let us define the nature of the Good as far as the immediate purpose demands. The Good is that on which all else depends, towards which all Existences aspire as to their source and their need, while Itself is wit…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 81 (part 1)

“Section 6 6. If this be so, how do we explain the teaching that evils can never pass away but "exist of necessity," that "while evil has no place in the divine order, it haunts mortal nature and this place for ever"? Does this mean that h…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 81 (part 2)

“In the case of fire and water we would admit contrariety if it were not for their common element, the Matter, about which are gathered the warmth and dryness of one and the dampness and cold of the other: if there were only present what con…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 85 (part 2)

“We teach that Virtue is not the Absolute Good and Beauty, because we know that These are earlier than Virtue and transcend it, and that it is good and beautiful by some participation in them. Now as, going upward from virtue, we come to th…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 92

“Section 2 2. Supposing we accept this view and hold that, while things below the moon's orb have merely type-persistence, the celestial realm and all its several members possess individual eternity; it remains to show how this strict perman…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 97

“Section 7 7. We can scarcely do better, in fine, than follow Plato. Thus: In the universe as a whole there must necessarily be such a degree of solidity, that is to say, of resistance, as will ensure that the earth, set in the centre, be a…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 98

“Section 8 8. Now: given a light of this degree, remaining in the upper sphere at its appointed station, pure light in purest place, what mode of outflow from it can be conceived possible? Such a Kind is not so constituted as to flow downwar…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 101

“Section 2 2. And what of lower things? [Why have they not this motion?] [Their case is very different]: the single thing here is not an all but a part and limited to a given segment of space; that other realm is all, is space, so to speak,…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 106

“Section 3 3. Possibly, however, they act not by choice but under stress of their several positions and collective figures? But if position and figure determined their action each several one would necessarily cause identical effects with ev…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 109

“Section 6 6. But that this same Mars, or Aphrodite, in certain aspects should cause adulteries- as if they could thus, through the agency of human incontinence, satisfy their own mutual desires- is not such a notion the height of unreason?…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 111

“Section 8 8. Soul, then, in the same way, is intent upon a task of its own; alike in its direct course and in its divagation it is the cause of all by its possession of the Thought of the First Principle: thus a Law of Justice goes with all…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 112 (part 1)

“Section 9 9. This brings us to the Spindle-destiny, spun according to the ancients by the Fates. To Plato the Spindle represents the co-operation of the moving and the stable elements of the kosmic circuit: the Fates with Necessity, Mothe…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 115

“Section 12 12. All that thus proceeds from the supernal combines into a unity and every existing entity takes something from this blended infusion so that the result is the thing itself plus some quality. The effluence does not make the hor…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 128

“Section 6 6. We are led thus to the question of receptivity in things of body. An additional proof that bodies must have some substratum different from themselves is found in the changing of the basic-constituents into one another. Notice t…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 130

“Section 8 8. What, then, is this Kind, this Matter, described as one stuff, continuous and without quality? Clearly since it is without quality it is incorporeal; bodiliness would be quality. It must be the basic stuff of all the entities o…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 133

“Section 11 11. "But, given Magnitude and the properties we know, what else can be necessary to the existence of body?" Some base to be the container of all the rest. "A certain mass then; and if mass, then Magnitude? Obviously if your Base…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 134

“Section 12 12. It is the corporeal, then, that demands magnitude: the Ideal-Forms of body are Ideas installed in Mass. But these Ideas enter, not into Magnitude itself but into some subject that has been brought to Magnitude. For to suppose…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 142

“Section 3 3. We come now to the purpose of all this discussion; to make clear in what sense or to what degree Actualization is predicable in the Intellectual Realm and whether all is in Actualization there, each and every member of that rea…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 146 (part 1)

“Section 1 1. Are not Being and Reality (to on and he ousia) distinct; must we not envisage Being as the substance stripped of all else, while Reality is this same thing, Being, accompanied by the others- Movement, Rest, Identity, Differenc…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 150 (part 1)

“Section 1 1. Some enquiry must be made into what is known as the complete transfusion of material substances. Is it possible that fluid be blended with fluid in such a way that each penetrate the other through and through? or- a differen…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 158

“Section 2 2. Therefore we must affirm no more than these three Primals: we are not to introduce superfluous distinctions which their nature rejects. We are to proclaim one Intellectual-Principle unchangeably the same, in no way subject to d…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 159

“Section 3 3. Ever illuminated, receiving light unfailing, the All-Soul imparts it to the entire series of later Being which by this light is sustained and fostered and endowed with the fullest measure of life that each can absorb. It may be…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 168 (part 1)

“Section 12 12. And how does this image set to its task immediately after it comes into being? By memory of what it has seen? But it was utterly non-existent, it could have no vision, either it or the Mother they bestow upon it. Another…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 170

“Section 14 14. In yet another way they infringe still more gravely upon the inviolability of the Supreme. In the sacred formulas they inscribe, purporting to address the Supernal Beings- not merely the Soul but even the Transcendents- they…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 179

“Section 3 3. "Atoms" or "elements"- it is in either case an absurdity, an impossibility, to hand over the universe and its contents to material entities, and out of the disorderly swirl thus occasioned to call order, reasoning, and the gove…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 180

“Section 4 4. Another theory: The Universe is permeated by one Soul, Cause of all things and events; every separate phenomenon as a member of a whole moves in its place with the general movement; all the various causes spring into action fro…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 181 (part 1)

“Section 5 5. But perhaps the explanation of every particular act or event is rather that they are determined by the spheric movement- the Phora- and by the changing position of the heavenly bodies as these stand at setting or rising or in…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 181 (part 2)

“And notice further that physical likeness to the parents- the Astrologers hold- is of purely domestic origin: this implies that ugliness and beauty are so caused and not by astral movements. Again, there must at one and the same time be a…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 185

“Section 9 9. We admit, then, a Necessity in all that is brought about by this compromise between evil and accidental circumstance: what room was there for anything else than the thing that is? Given all the causes, all must happen beyond ay…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 190

“Section 3 3. Nor would it be sound to condemn this Kosmos as less than beautiful, as less than the noblest possible in the corporeal; and neither can any charge be laid against its source. The world, we must reflect, is a product of Necessi…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 194

“Section 7 7. A preliminary observation: in looking for excellence in this thing of mixture, the Kosmos, we cannot require all that is implied in the excellence of the unmingled; it is folly to ask for Firsts in the Secondary, and since this…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 195 (part 1)

“Section 8 8. Thus we come to our enquiry as to the degree of excellence found in things of this Sphere, and how far they belong to an ordered system or in what degree they are, at least, not evil. Now in every living being the upper parts…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 199

“Section 12 12. Suppose this Universe were the direct creation of the Reason-Principle applying itself, quite unchanged, to Matter, retaining, that is, the hostility to partition which it derives from its Prior, the Intellectual Principle- t…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 204 (part 2)

“But these actors, Souls, hold a peculiar dignity: they act in a vaster place than any stage: the Author has made them masters of all this world; they have a wide choice of place; they themselves determine the honour or discredit in which th…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 222 (part 1)

“Section 1 1. What is Love? A God, a Celestial Spirit, a state of mind? Or is it, perhaps, sometimes to be thought of as a God or Spirit and sometimes merely as an experience? And what is it essentially in each of these respects? These…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 236 (part 1)

“Section 4 4. We have, however, still to examine what is called the affective phase of the Soul. This has, no doubt, been touched upon above where we dealt with the passions in general as grouped about the initiative phase of the Soul and…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 244 (part 2)

“This reasoning would force the destructibility of Matter upon us: "the body is dissolved; then the Matter is dissolved." We would have to allow Matter to be a thing of quantity, a magnitude. But since it is not a magnitude it could not hav…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 246

“Section 14 14. But would this mean that if there were no Matter nothing would exist? Precisely as in the absence of a mirror, or something of similar power, there would be no reflection. A thing whose very nature is to be lodged in somethin…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 249

“Section 17 17. Nor can we, on the other hand, think that matter is simply Absolute Magnitude. Magnitude is not, like Matter, a receptacle; it is an Ideal-Principle: it is a thing standing apart to itself, not some definite Mass. The fact is…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 250 (part 1)

“Section 18 18. The Ideal Principle possessing the Intellection [= Idea, Noesis] of Magnitude- assuming that this Intellection is of such power as not merely to subsist within itself but to be urged outward as it were by the intensity of it…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 255

“Section 3 3. What, then, can this be, this something in virtue of which we declare the entire divine Realm to be Eternal, everlasting? We must come to some understanding of this perpetuity with which Eternity is either identical or in confo…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 256

“Section 4 4. We must, however, avoid thinking of it as an accidental from outside grafted upon that Nature: it is native to it, integral to it. It is discerned as present essentially in that Nature like everything else that we can predicate…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 257

“Section 5 5. This Ever-Being is realized when upon examination of an object I am able to say- or rather, to know- that in its very Nature it is incapable of increment or change; anything that fails by that test is no Ever-Existent or, at le…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 258 (part 1)

“Section 6 6. Now the Principle this stated, all good and beauty, and everlasting, is centred in The One, sprung from It, and pointed towards It, never straying from It, but ever holding about It and in It and living by Its law; and it is i…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 260 (part 1)

“Section 8 8. Movement Time cannot be- whether a definite act of moving is meant or a united total made up of all such acts- since movement, in either sense, takes place in Time. And, of course, if there is any movement not in Time, the id…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 260 (part 2)

“That definite Quantity is merely something occurring within Time, for, otherwise Time is not everywhere but is something belonging to Movement which thus would be its substratum or basic-stuff: once more, then, we would be making Time ident…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 267

“Section 1 1. Supposing we played a little before entering upon our serious concern and maintained that all things are striving after Contemplation, looking to Vision as their one end- and this, not merely beings endowed with reason but even…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 270

“Section 4 4. And Nature, asked why it brings forth its works, might answer if it cared to listen and to speak: "It would have been more becoming to put no question but to learn in silence just as I myself am silent and make no habit of talk…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 286 (part 2)

“In the case of things not endowed with intelligence, the "leading-principle" is their mere unity- a lower reproduction of the soul's efficiency. This is the deeper meaning of the profound passage [in the Timaeus], where we read "By blendin…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 293

“Section 6 6. But how comes it that while the All-Soul has produced a kosmos, the soul of the particular has not, though it is of the one ideal Kind and contains, it too, all things in itself? We have indicated that a thing may enter and dwe…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 297

“Section 10 10. In view of all this we must now work back from the items to the unit, and consider the entire scheme as one enduring thing. We ascend from air, light, sun- or, moon and light and sun- in detail, to these things as constitutin…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 308

“Section 21 21. What does all this come to? What answer do we give to him who, with no opinion of his own to assert, asks us to explain this presence? And what do we say to the question whether there is one only mode of presence of the entir…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 312

“Section 25 25. Now comes the question, equally calling for an answer, whether those souls that have quitted the places of earth retain memory of their lives- all souls or some, of all things, or of some things, and, again, for ever or merel…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 313 (part 1)

“Section 26 26. Now if sensations of the active order depend upon the Couplement of soul and body, sensation must be of that double nature. Hence it is classed as one of the shared acts: the soul, in the feeling, may be compared to the wor…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 313 (part 2)

“This being admitted, aspiration will belong to soul, and so, as a consequence, will that memory of the aspiration and of its attainment or frustration, without which the soul's nature would fall into the category of the unstable [that is to…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 324

“Section 4 4. In that realm it has also vision, through the Intellectual-Principle, of The Good which does not so hold to itself as not to reach the soul; what intervenes between them is not body and therefore is no hindrance- and, indeed, w…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 331

“Section 11 11. The administration of the kosmos is to be thought of as that of a living unit: there is the action determined by what is external, and has to do with the parts, and there is that determined by the internal and by the principl…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 332

“Section 12 12. It may be urged that all the multiplicity and development are the work of Nature, but that, since there is wisdom within the All, there must be also, by the side of such natural operation, acts of reasoning and of memory. But…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 335

“Section 15 15. But there is a difficulty affecting this entire settlement: Eternity is characteristic of the Intellectual-Principle, time of the soul- for we hold that time has its substantial being in the activity of the soul, and springs…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 341

“Section 21 21. That this is the phase of the human being in which desire takes its origin is shown by observation of the different stages of life; in childhood, youth, maturity, the bodily desires differ; health or sickness also may change…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 343 (part 1)

“Section 23 23. A first principle is that the knowing of sensible objects is an act of the soul, or of the living conjoint, becoming aware of the quality of certain corporeal entities, and appropriating the ideas present in them. This appr…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 348 (part 2)

“Thus anger has two phases; there is firstly that which, rising apart from all process of reasoning, draws reason to itself by the medium of the imaging faculty, and secondly that which, rising in reason, touches finally upon the specific pr…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 349 (part 2)

“Here we have to enquire into the nature and being of that vestige of the soul actually present in the living body: if there is truly a soul, then, as a thing never cut off from its total, it will go with soul as soul must: if it is rather t…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 353

“Section 33 33. The Circuit does not go by chance but under the Reason-Principle of the living whole; therefore there must be a harmony between cause and caused; there must be some order ranging things to each other's purpose, or in due rela…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 354

“Section 34 34. For ourselves, while whatever in us belongs to the body of the All should be yielded to its action, we ought to make sure that we submit only within limits, realizing that the entire man is not thus bound to it: intelligent s…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 355 (part 1)

“Section 35 35. But we must give some explanation of these powers. The matter requires a more definite handling. How can there be a difference of power between one triangular configuration and another? How can there be the exercise of po…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 355 (part 2)

“Why else do certain groupments, in contradistinction to others, terrify at sight though there has been no previous experience of evil from them? If some men are alarmed by a particular groupment and others by quite a different one, the rea…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 358

“Section 38 38. Whatever springs automatically from the All out of that distinctive life of its own, and, in addition to that self-moving activity, whatever is due to some specific agency- for example, to prayers, simple or taking the form o…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 361

“Section 41 41. The prayer is answered by the mere fact that part and other part are wrought to one tone like a musical string which, plucked at one end, vibrates at the other also. Often, too, the sounding of one string awakens what might p…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 364

“Section 44 44. Contemplation alone stands untouched by magic; no man self-gathered falls to a spell; for he is one, and that unity is all he perceives, so that his reason is not beguiled but holds the due course, fashioning its own career a…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 368 (part 1)

“Section 2 2. If sight depends upon the linking of the light of vision with the light leading progressively to the illumined object, then, by the very hypothesis, one intervening substance, the light, is indispensable: but if the illuminate…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 370 (part 1)

“Section 4 4. But there is the question of the linked light that must relate the visual organ to its object. Now, firstly: since the intervening air is not necessary- unless in the purely accidental sense that air may be necessary to light…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 381

“Section 2 2. But of what nature is this sovereign principle? If material, then definitely it must fall apart; for every material entity, at least, is something put together. If it is not material but belongs to some other Kind, that new sub…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 386

“Section 7 7. We come to the same result by examining the sense of pain. We say there is pain in the finger: the trouble is doubtless in the finger, but our opponents must admit that the sensation of the pain is in the centre of consciousnes…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 387

“Section 8 8. It can be shown also that the intellectual act would similarly be impossible if the soul were any form of body. If sensation is apprehension by means of the soul's employment of the body, intellection cannot be a similar use of…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 395

“Section 11 11. (16) What intelligent mind can doubt the immortality of such a value, one in which there is a life self-springing and therefore not to be destroyed? This is at any rate a life not imported from without, not present in the mod…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 401

“Section 1 1. Many times it has happened: Lifted out of the body into myself; becoming external to all other things and self-encentered; beholding a marvellous beauty; then, more than ever, assured of community with the loftiest order; enact…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 418

“Section 2 2. Let every soul recall, then, at the outset the truth that soul is the author of all living things, that it has breathed the life into them all, whatever is nourished by earth and sea, all the creatures of the air, the divine st…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 419

“Section 3 3. The Soul once seen to be thus precious, thus divine, you may hold the faith that by its possession you are already nearing God: in the strength of this power make upwards towards Him: at no great distance you must attain: there…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 439

“Section 7 7. The contemplating of God, we might answer. But to admit its knowing God is to be compelled to admit its self-knowing. It will know what it holds from God, what God has given forth or may; with this knowledge, it knows itself at…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 447 (part 2)

“We may take it as proved that the emanation of the Transcendent must be a Not-One something other than pure unity, but that it is a multiplicity, and especially that it is such a multiplicity as is exhibited in the sequent universe, this is…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 460

“Section 7 7. Consider the act of ocular vision: There are two elements here; there is the form perceptible to the sense and there is the medium by which the eye sees that form. This medium is itself perceptible to the eye, distinct from the…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 461

“Section 8 8. So that we are left wondering whence it came, from within or without; and when it has gone, we say, "It was here. Yet no; it was beyond!" But we ought not to question whence; there is no whence, no coming or going in place; now…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 462

“Section 9 9. Everything brought into being under some principle not itself is contained either within its maker or, if there is any intermediate, within that: having a prior essential to its being, it needs that prior always, otherwise it w…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 471

“Section 4 4. Another consideration is that if The Good [and First] is simplex and without need, it can neither need the intellective act nor possess what it does not need: it will therefore not have intellection. (Interpolation or corruptio…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 473

“Section 6 6. If this reasoning is valid, The Good has no scope whatever for intellection which demands something attractive from outside. The Good, then, is without Act. What Act indeed, could be vested in Activity's self? No activity has y…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 482 (part 2)

“The greatness and power of the wisdom There we may know from this, that is embraces all the real Beings, and has made all, and all follow it, and yet that it is itself those beings, which sprang into being with it, so that all is one, and t…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 483

“Section 5 5. All that comes to be, work of nature or of craft, some wisdom has made: everywhere a wisdom presides at a making. No doubt the wisdom of the artist may be the guide of the work; it is sufficient explanation of the wisdom exhibi…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 488

“Section 10 10. This is why Zeus, although the oldest of the gods and their sovereign, advances first [in the Phaidros myth] towards that vision, followed by gods and demigods and such souls as are of strength to see. That Being appears befo…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 501

“Section 9 9. What, then, is the content- inevitably separated by our minds- of this one Intellectual-Principle? For there is no resource but to represent the items in accessible form just as we study the various articles constituting one sc…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 503

“Section 11 11. Now as to the arts and crafts and their productions: The imitative arts- painting, sculpture, dancing, pantomimic gesturing- are, largely, earth-based; on an earthly base; they follow models found in sense, since they copy fo…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 509

“Section 1 1. Philosophy at a very early stage investigated the number and character of the Existents. Various theories resulted: some declared for one Existent, others for a finite number, others again for an infinite number, while as regar…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 515

“Section 8 8. But we are digressing: we must resume our enquiry into the cause of dissimilarity among relations. Yet we must first be informed what reality, common to all cases, is possessed by this Existence derived from mutual conditions.…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 523

“Section 16 16. If it be urged that Motion is but imperfect Act, there would be no objection to giving priority to Act and subordinating to it Motion with its imperfection as a species: Act would thus be predicated of Motion, but with the qu…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 526

“Section 19 19. We have to ask ourselves whether there are not certain Acts which without the addition of a time-element will be thought of as imperfect and therefore classed with motions. Take for instance living and life. The life of a def…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 530

“Section 23 23. As for Possession, if the term is used comprehensively, why are not all its modes to be brought under one category? Possession, thus, would include the quantum as possessing magnitude, the quale as possessing colour; it would…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 539

“Section 1 1. We have examined the proposed "ten genera": we have discussed also the theory which gathers the total of things into one genus and to this subordinates what may be thought of as its four species. The next step is, naturally, to…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 547 (part 1)

“Section 9 9. The above considerations- to which others, doubtless, might be added- suffice to show that these five are primary genera. But that they are the only primary genera, that there are no others, how can we be confident of this?…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 549 (part 1)

“Section 11 11. We are bound however to enquire under what mode unity is contained in Being. How is what is termed the "dividing" effected- especially the dividing of the genera Being and unity? Is it the same division, or is it different…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 552

“Section 14 14. Why is Quality, again, not included among the Primaries? Because like Quantity it is a posterior, subsequent to Substance. Primary Substance must necessarily contain Quantity and Quality as its consequents; it cannot owe its…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 554

“Section 16 16. As for Relation, manifestly an offshoot, how can it be included among primaries? Relation is of thing ranged against thing; it is not self-pivoted, but looks outward. Place and Date are still more remote from Being. Place den…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 556

“Section 18 18. To pass to the consideration of beauty: If by beauty we mean the primary Beauty, the same or similar arguments will apply here as to goodness: and if the beauty in the Ideal-Form is, as it were, an effulgence [from that prima…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 557

“Section 19 19. Having established our four primary genera, it remains for us to enquire whether each of them of itself alone produces species. And especially, can Being be divided independently, that is without drawing upon the other genera…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 559 (part 1)

“Section 21 21. How then does the universal Intellect produce the particulars while, in virtue of its Reason-Principle, remaining a unity? In other words, how do the various grades of Being, as we call them, arise from the four primaries?…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 566

“Section 5 5. These are incontrovertible facts in regard to the pseudo-substance of the Sensible realm: if they apply also in some degree to the True Substance of the Intellectual, the coincidence is, doubtless, to be attributed to analogy a…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 570

“Section 9 9. So much for one of the genera- the "Substance," so called, of the Sensible realm. But what are we to posit as its species? how divide this genus? The genus as a whole must be identified with body. Bodies may be divided into the…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 573

“Section 12 12. It follows that we must allow contrariety to Quantity: whenever we speak of great and small, our notions acknowledge this contrariety by evolving opposite images, as also when we refer to many and few; indeed, "few" and "many…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 575

“Section 14 14. How are we to classify the straight line? Shall we deny that it is a magnitude? The suggestion may be made that it is a qualified magnitude. May we not, then, consider straightness as a differentia of "line"? We at any rate d…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 576

“Section 15 15. How far is it true that equality and inequality are characteristic of Quantity? Triangles, it is significant, are said to be similar rather than equal. But we also refer to magnitudes as similar, and the accepted connotation…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 577 (part 1)

“Section 16 16. When each of the entities bound up with the pseudo-substance is taken apart from the rest, the name of Quality is given to that one among them, by which without pointing to essence or quantity or motion we signify the distin…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 578

“Section 17 17. This procedure, if approved, will entail a distinction between psychic and bodily qualities, the latter belonging specifically to body. If we decide to refer all souls to the higher, we are still at liberty to perform for Sen…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 580

“Section 19 19. With Quality we have undertaken to group the dependent qualia, in so far as Quality is bound up with them; we shall not however introduce into this category the qualified objects [qua objects], that we may not be dealing with…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 582 (part 1)

“Section 21 21. The claim of Motion to be established as a genus will depend upon three conditions: first, that it cannot rightly be referred to any other genus; second, that nothing higher than itself can be predicated of it in respect of…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 582 (part 2)

“Even rejecting this distinction, we must accept as types of Motion knowledge and musical performance- in short, changes of condition: thus, alteration will come to be regarded as a species of Motion- namely, motion displacing.…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 584

“Section 23 23. The Motion which acts upon Sensible objects enters from without, and so shakes, drives, rouses and thrusts its participants that they may neither rest nor preserve their identity- and all to the end that they may be caught in…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 594

“Section 4 4. But how explain beings by the side of Being, and the variety of intelligences and of souls, when Being has the unity of omnipresent identity and not merely that of a species, and when intellect and soul are likewise numerically…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 605

“Section 15 15. But how did this intruder find entrance? It had a certain aptitude and it grasped at that to which it was apt. In its nature it was capable of soul: but what is unfitted to receive soul entire- present entire but not for it-…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 608

“Section 1 1. The integral omnipresence of a unity numerically identical is in fact universally received; for all men instinctively affirm the god in each of us to be one, the same in all. It would be taken as certain if no one asked How or…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 612

“Section 5 5. Often for the purpose of exposition- as a help towards stating the nature of the produced multiplicity- we use the example of many lines radiating from one centre; but, while we provide for individualization, we must carefully…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 613

“Section 6 6. The Intellectual Beings, thus, are multiple and one; in virtue of their infinite nature their unity is a multiplicity, many in one and one over many, a unit-plurality. They act as entire upon entire; even upon the partial thing…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 619

“Section 12 12. To return: How is that Power present to the universe? As a One Life. Consider the life in any living thing; it does not reach only to some fixed point, unable to permeate the entire being; it is omnipresent. If on this again…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 621

“Section 1 1. It is suggested that multiplicity is a falling away from The Unity, infinity being the complete departure, an innumerable multiplicity, and that this is why unlimit is an evil and we evil at the stage of multiplicity. A thing,…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 624

“Section 4 4. We have to enquire into the existence of the Numbers in the Intellectual. Are they Ideas added to the other Ideas? Or are they no more than necessary concomitants to the Ideas? In the latter case, Being, as the first [in the In…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 625

“Section 5 5. What then is the veritable nature of Number? Is it an accompaniment upon each substance, something seen in the things as in a man we see one man, in a being one being and in the total of presentations the total of number? But h…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 627

“Section 7 7. It is inevitably necessary to think of all as contained within one nature; one nature must hold and encompass all; there cannot be as in the realm of sense thing apart from thing, here a sun and elsewhere something else; all mu…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 628

“Section 8 8. As then there is a Life-Form primal- which therefore is the Life-Form Absolute- and there is Intellectual-Principle or Being, Authentic Being, these, we affirm, contain all living things and all Number, and Absolute Justice and…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 632

“Section 12 12. We may be told that unity and monad have no real existence, that the only unity is some definite object that is one thing, so that all comes to an attitude of the mind towards things considered singly. But, to begin with, why…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 633 (part 1)

“Section 13 13. It cannot reasonably be thought that the notion of unity is derived from the object since this is physical- man, animal, even stone, a presentation of that order is something very different from unity [which must be a thing…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 634

“Section 14 14. To the argument touching relation we have an answer surely legitimate: The Unity is not of a nature to lose its own manner of being only because something else stands in a state which it does not itself share; to stray from i…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 640 (part 2)

“If then the future is present, it must be present as having been foreconceived for later coming to be; at that divine stage therefore it lacks nothing and therefore can never lack; all existed, eternally and in such a way that at the later…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 643

“Section 4 4. To meet the difficulty we must make a close examination of the nature of Man in the Intellectual; perhaps, though, it is better to begin with the man of this plane lest we be reasoning to Man There from a misconception of Man h…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 645

“Section 6 6. But how can that higher soul have sense-perception? It is the perception of what falls under perception There, sensation in the mode of that realm: it is the source of the soul's perception of the sense-realm in its corresponde…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 646

“Section 7 7. But if it is by becoming evil and inferior that the soul produces the animal nature, the making of ox or horse was not at the outset in its character; the reason-principle of the animal, and the animal itself, must lie outside…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 651

“Section 12 12. Or take it another way: Since in our view this universe stands to that as copy to original, the living total must exist There beforehand; that is the realm of complete Being and everything must exist There. The sky There must…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 661

“Section 22 22. That light known, then indeed we are stirred towards those Beings in longing and rejoicing over the radiance about them, just as earthly love is not for the material form but for the Beauty manifested upon it. Every one of th…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 662

“Section 23 23. That which soul must quest, that which sheds its light upon Intellectual-Principle, leaving its mark wherever it falls, surely we need not wonder that it be of power to draw to itself, calling back from every wandering to res…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 675

“Section 36 36. We need not carry this matter further; we turn to a question already touched but demanding still some brief consideration. Knowledge of The Good or contact with it, is the all-important: this- we read- is the grand learning,…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 678

“Section 39 39. Since the Supreme has no interval, no self-differentiation what can have this intuitional approach to it but itself? Therefore it quite naturally assumes difference at the point where Intellectual-Principle and Being are diff…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 686

“Section 4 4. It will be asked how act rising from desire can be voluntary, since desire pulls outward and implies need; to desire is still to be drawn, even though towards the good. Intellectual-Principle itself comes under the doubt; havin…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 695 (part 2)

“For if the act of will springs from God Himself and is as it were His operation and the same will is identical with His essence, He must be self-established. He is not, therefore, "what He has happened to be" but what He has willed to be.…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 701

“Section 19 19. Stirred to the Supreme by what has been told, a man must strive to possess it directly; then he too will see, though still unable to tell it as he would wish. One seeing That as it really is will lay aside all reasoning upon…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 703

“Section 21 21. Could He then have made Himself otherwise than as He did? If He could we must deny Him the power to produce goodness for He certainly cannot produce evil. Power, There, is no producer of the inapt; it is that steadfast consta…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 710 (part 2)

“Unity, self-present, it has no need of self-intellection: indeed this "self-presence" were better left out, the more surely to preserve the unity; we must eliminate all knowing and all association, all intellection whether internal or exter…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 711

“Section 7 7. If the mind reels before something thus alien to all we know, we must take our stand on the things of this realm and strive thence to see. But, in the looking, beware of throwing outward; this Principle does not lie away somewh…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 713 (part 1)

“Section 9 9. In this choiring, the soul looks upon the wellspring of Life, wellspring also of Intellect, beginning of Being, fount of Good, root of Soul. It is not that these are poured out from the Supreme lessening it as if it were a th…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 714

“Section 10 10. But how comes the soul not to keep that ground? Because it has not yet escaped wholly: but there will be the time of vision unbroken, the self hindered no longer by any hindrance of body. Not that those hindrances beset that…”

◆Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 715

“Section 11 11. This is the purport of that rule of our Mysteries: Nothing Divulged to the Uninitiate: the Supreme is not to be made a common story, the holy things may not be uncovered to the stranger, to any that has not himself attained t…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 6

“Section 2 2. This first enquiry obliges us to consider at the outset the nature of the Soul- that is whether a distinction is to be made between Soul and Essential Soul [between an individual Soul and the Soul-Kind in itself]. * * All matte…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 8

“Section 4 4. Let us consider, then, the hypothesis of a coalescence. Now if there is a coalescence, the lower is ennobled, the nobler degraded; the body is raised in the scale of being as made participant in life; the Soul, as associated wi…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 11

“Section 7 7. The truth lies in the Consideration that the Couplement subsists by virtue of the Soul's presence. This, however, is not to say that the Soul gives itself as it is in itself to form either the Couplement or the body. No; from t…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 12

“Section 8 8. And towards the Intellectual-Principle what is our relation? By this I mean, not that faculty in the soul which is one of the emanations from the Intellectual-Principle, but The Intellectual-Principle itself [Divine-Mind]. This…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 13

“Section 9 9. That Soul, then, in us, will in its nature stand apart from all that can cause any of the evils which man does or suffers; for all such evil, as we have seen, belongs only to the Animate, the Couplement. But there is a difficul…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 14

“Section 10 10. It will be objected, that if the Soul constitutes the We [the personality] and We are subject to these states then the Soul must be subject to them, and similarly that what We do must be done by the Soul. But it has been obse…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 15

“Section 11 11. In childhood the main activity is in the Couplement and there is but little irradiation from the higher principles of our being: but when these higher principles act but feebly or rarely upon us their action is directed towar…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 17

“Section 13 13. And the principle that reasons out these matters? Is it We or the Soul? We, but by the Soul. But how "by the Soul"? Does this mean that the Soul reasons by possession [by contact with the matters of enquiry]? No; by the fact…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 19 (part 2)

“So with us: it is from the Supreme that we derive order and distribution and harmony, which are virtues in this sphere: the Existences There, having no need of harmony, order or distribution, have nothing to do with virtue; and, none the le…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 20

“Section 2 2. First, then, let us examine those good qualities by which we hold Likeness comes, and seek to establish what is this thing which, as we possess it, in transcription, is virtue but as the Supreme possesses it, is in the nature o…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 25

“Section 7 7. The virtues in the Soul run in a sequence correspondent to that existing in the over-world, that is among their exemplars in the Intellectual-Principle. In the Supreme, Intellection constitutes Knowledge and Wisdom; self-concen…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 27

“Section 1 1. What art is there, what method, what discipline to bring us there where we must go? The Term at which we must arrive we may take as agreed: we have established elsewhere, by many considerations, that our journey is to the Good,…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 28

“Section 2 2. The born lover, to whose degree the musician also may attain- and then either come to a stand or pass beyond- has a certain memory of beauty but, severed from it now, he no longer comprehends it: spellbound by visible lovelines…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 31

“Section 5 5. But whence does this science derive its own initial laws? The Intellectual-Principle furnishes standards, the most certain for any soul that is able to apply them. What else is necessary, Dialectic puts together for itself, com…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 35 (part 2)

“For, on this admission, its perfection cannot reside in any such planning and providing: its perfection will be something quite different, something of quite another class: Reason cannot be itself one of those first needs of nature; it cann…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 43

“Section 10 10. Perhaps the reason this continuous activity remains unperceived is that it has no touch whatever with things of sense. No doubt action upon material things, or action dictated by them, must proceed through the sensitive facul…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 62 (part 1)

“Section 1 1. Beauty addresses itself chiefly to sight; but there is a beauty for the hearing too, as in certain combinations of words and in all kinds of music, for melodies and cadences are beautiful; and minds that lift themselves above…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 64

“Section 3 3. And the soul includes a faculty peculiarly addressed to Beauty- one incomparably sure in the appreciation of its own, never in doubt whenever any lovely thing presents itself for judgement. Or perhaps the soul itself acts immed…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 68

“Section 7 7. Therefore we must ascend again towards the Good, the desired of every Soul. Anyone that has seen This, knows what I intend when I say that it is beautiful. Even the desire of it is to be desired as a Good. To attain it is for t…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 70

“Section 9 9. And this inner vision, what is its operation? Newly awakened it is all too feeble to bear the ultimate splendour. Therefore the Soul must be trained- to the habit of remarking, first, all noble pursuits, then the works of beaut…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 73

“Section 2 2. But the Universe outside; how is it aligned towards the Good? The soulless by direction toward Soul: Soul towards the Good itself, through the Intellectual-Principle. Everything has something of the Good, by virtue of possessin…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 74

“Section 3 3. But if life is a good, is there good for all that lives? No: in the vile, life limps: it is like the eye to the dim-sighted; it fails of its task. But if the mingled strand of life is to us, though entwined with evil, still in…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 78

“Section 3 3. If such be the Nature of Beings and of That which transcends all the realm of Being, Evil cannot have place among Beings or in the Beyond-Being; these are good. There remains, only, if Evil exist at all, that it be situate in t…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 79

“Section 4 4. The bodily Kind, in that it partakes of Matter is an evil thing. What form is in bodies is an untrue-form: they are without life: by their own natural disorderly movement they make away with each other; they are hindrances to t…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 80

“Section 5 5. But, it will be objected, if this seeing and frequenting of the darkness is due to the lack of good, the Soul's evil has its source in that very lack; the darkness will be merely a secondary cause- and at once the Principle of…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 83

“Section 8 8. But there will still be some to deny that it is through this Matter that we ourselves become evil. They will say that neither ignorance nor wicked desires arise in Matter. Even if they admit that the unhappy condition within us…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 84

“Section 9 9. But what approach have we to the knowing of Good and Evil? And first of the Evil of soul: Virtue, we may know by the Intellectual-Principle and by means of the philosophic habit; but Vice? A a ruler marks off straight from croo…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 85 (part 1)

“Section 10 10. But if Matter is devoid of quality how can it be evil? It is described as being devoid of quality in the sense only that it does not essentially possess any of the qualities which it admits and which enter into it as into a…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 86

“Section 11 11. It may be suggested that Vice is feebleness in the Soul. We shall be reminded that the Vicious Soul is unstable, swept along from every ill to every other, quickly stirred by appetites, headlong to anger, as hasty to compromi…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 95

“Section 5 5. But how explain the permanence There, while the content of this sphere- its elements and its living things alike- are passing? The reason is given by Plato: the celestial order is from God, the living things of earth from the g…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 96 (part 1)

“Section 6 6. We may now consider the question whether fire is the sole element existing in that celestial realm and whether there is any outgoing thence with the consequent need of renewal. Timaeus pronounced the material frame of the All…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 100 (part 2)

“Such motion alone can constitute its impulse towards its centre: it cannot coincide with the centre, for then there would be no circle; since this may not be, it whirls about it; so only can it indulge its tendence. If, on the other hand,…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 102

“Section 3 3. The truth may be resumed in this way: There is a lowest power of the Soul, a nearest to earth, and this is interwoven throughout the entire universe: another phase possesses sensation, while yet another includes the Reason whic…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 112 (part 2)

“For the Universe is in truth a thing of blend, and if we separate from it that separable Soul, the residue is little. The All is a God when the divine Soul is counted in with it; "the rest," we read, "is a mighty spirit and its ways are su…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 113

“Section 10 10. If all this be true, we must at once admit signification, though, neither singly nor collectively, can we ascribe to the stars any efficacy except in what concerns the [material] All and in what is of their own function. We m…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 114

“Section 11 11. And we must remember that what comes from the supernals does not enter into the recipients as it left the source; fire, for instance, will be duller; the loving instinct will degenerate and issue in ugly forms of the passion;…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 116

“Section 13 13. Of phenomena of this sphere some derive from the Kosmic Circuit and some not: we must take them singly and mark them off, assigning to each its origin. The gist of the whole matter lies in the consideration that Soul governs…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 117

“Section 14 14. What of poverty and riches, glory and power? In the case of inherited fortune, the stars merely announce a rich man, exactly as they announce the high social standing of the child born to a distinguished house. Wealth may be…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 118

“Section 15 15. According to Plato, lots and choice play a part [in the determination of human conditions] before the Spindle of Necessity is turned; that once done, only the Spindle-destiny is valid; it fixes the chosen conditions irretriev…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 120

“Section 17 17. But these Reason-Principles, contained in the Soul, are they Thoughts? And if so, by what process does the Soul create in accordance with these Thoughts? It is upon Matter that this act of the Reason is exercised; and what ac…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 121

“Section 18 18. Are the evils in the Universe necessary because it is of later origin than the Higher Sphere? Perhaps rather because without evil the All would be incomplete. For most or even all forms of evil serve the Universe- much as the…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 123

“Section 1 1. By common agreement of all that have arrived at the conception of such a Kind, what is known as Matter is understood to be a certain base, a recipient of Form-Ideas. Thus far all go the same way. But departure begins with the a…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 125

“Section 3 3. Now it may be observed, first of all, that we cannot hold utterly cheap either the indeterminate, or even a Kind whose very idea implies absence of form, provided only that it offer itself to its Priors and [through them] to th…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 126

“Section 4 4. The present existence of the Ideal-Forms has been demonstrated elsewhere: we take up our argument from that point. If, then, there is more than one of such forming Ideas, there must of necessity be some character common to all…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 127

“Section 5 5. It may be objected that the Intellectual-Principle possesses its content in an eternal conjunction so that the two make a perfect unity, and that thus there is no Matter there. But that argument would equally cancel the Matter…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 131

“Section 9 9. But how can we conceive a thing having existence without having magnitude? We have only to think of things whose identity does not depend on their quantity- for certainly magnitude can be distinguished from existence as can man…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 140

“Section 1 1. A distinction is made between things existing actually and things existing potentially; a certain Actuality, also, is spoken of as a really existent entity. We must consider what content there is in these terms. Can we distingu…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 144

“Section 5 5. How can we talk of it? How can it be the Matter of real things? It is talked of, and it serves, precisely, as a Potentiality. And, as being a Potentiality, it is not of the order of the thing it is to become: its existence is n…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 147

“Section 2 2. But we must enquire into Quality in itself: to know its nature is certainly the way to settle our general question. The first point is to assure ourselves whether or not one and the same thing may be held to be sometimes a mere…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 148

“Section 3 3. The Whiteness, therefore, in a human being is, clearly, to be classed not as a quality but as an activity- the act of a power which can make white; and similarly what we think of as qualities in the Intellectual Realm should be…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 154

“Section 1 1. Seen from a distance, objects appear reduced and close together, however far apart they be: within easy range, their sizes and the distances that separate them are observed correctly. Distant objects show in this reduction beca…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 160

“Section 4 4. To those who assert that creation is the work of the Soul after the failing of its wings, we answer that no such disgrace could overtake the Soul of the All. If they tell us of its falling, they must tell us also what caused th…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 161

“Section 5 5. Still more unreasonably: There are men, bound to human bodies and subject to desire, grief, anger, who think so generously of their own faculty that they declare themselves in contact with the Intelligible World, but deny that…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 162 (part 1)

“Section 6 6. And, what are we to think of the new forms of being they introduce- their "Exiles" and "Impressions" and "Repentings"? If all comes to states of the Soul- "Repentance" when it has undergone a change of purpose; "Impressions"…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 162 (part 2)

“As a matter of fact the ancient doctrine of the Divine Essences was far the sounder and more instructed, and must be accepted by all not caught in the delusions that beset humanity: it is easy also to identify what has been conveyed in thes…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 163

“Section 7 7. That this world has neither beginning nor end but exists for ever as long as the Supreme stands is certainly no novel teaching. And before this school rose it had been urged that commerce with the body is no gain to a Soul. But…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 165 (part 1)

“Section 9 9. Wealth and poverty, and all inequalities of that order, are made ground of complaint. But this is to ignore that the Sage demands no equality in such matters: he cannot think that to own many things is to be richer or that th…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 165 (part 2)

“The more perfect the man, the more compliant he is, even towards his fellows; we must temper our importance, not thrusting insolently beyond what our nature warrants; we must allow other beings, also, their place in the presence of the Godh…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 166

“Section 10 10. Under detailed investigation, many other tenets of this school- indeed we might say all- could be corrected with an abundance of proof. But I am withheld by regard for some of our own friends who fell in with this doctrine be…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 167

“Section 11 11. Now, in the first place, if the Soul has not actually come down but has illuminated the darkness, how can it truly be said to have declined? The outflow from it of something in the nature of light does not justify the asserti…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 168 (part 2)

“The theory, therefore, refers the entire process to pre-existing compulsions: the guilt inheres in the Primal Beings.…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 169

“Section 13 13. Those, then, that censure the constitution of the Kosmos do not understand what they are doing or where this audacity leads them. They do not understand that there is a successive order of Primals, Secondaries, Tertiaries and…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 171

“Section 15 15. There is, however, one matter which we must on no account overlook- the effect of these teachings upon the hearers led by them into despising the world and all that is in it. There are two theories as to the attainment of the…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 172 (part 1)

“Section 16 16. On the other hand, to despise this Sphere, and the Gods within it or anything else that is lovely, is not the way to goodness. Every evil-doer began by despising the Gods; and one not previously corrupt, taking to this cont…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 173 (part 1)

“Section 17 17. Perhaps the hate of this school for the corporeal is due to their reading of Plato who inveighs against body as a grave hindrance to Soul and pronounces the corporeal to be characteristically the inferior. Then let them for…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 173 (part 2)

“Nothing base within can be beautiful without- at least not with an authentic beauty, for there are examples of a good exterior not sprung from a beauty dominant within; people passing as handsome but essentially base have that, a spurious a…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 174

“Section 18 18. But perhaps this school will maintain that, while their teaching leads to a hate and utter abandonment of the body, ours binds the Soul down in it. In other words: two people inhabit the one stately house; one of them declaim…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 186

“Section 10 10. To sum the results of our argument: All things and events are foreshown and brought into being by causes; but the causation is of two Kinds; there are results originating from the Soul and results due to other causes, those o…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 191

“Section 4 4. That water extinguishes fire and fire consumes other things should not astonish us. The thing destroyed derived its being from outside itself: this is no case of a self-originating substance being annihilated by an external; it…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 192

“Section 5 5. Now, once Happiness is possible at all to Souls in this Universe, if some fail of it, the blame must fall not upon the place but upon the feebleness insufficient to the staunch combat in the one arena where the rewards of excel…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 193

“Section 6 6. As for the disregard of desert- the good afflicted, the unworthy thriving- it is a sound explanation no doubt that to the good nothing is evil and to the evil nothing can be good: still the question remains why should what esse…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 195 (part 2)

“Bad men rule by the feebleness of the ruled: and this is just; the triumph of weaklings would not be just.…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 196

“Section 9 9. It would not be just, because Providence cannot be a something reducing us to nothingness: to think of Providence as everything, with no other thing in existence, is to annihilate the Universe; such a providence could have no f…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 198

“Section 11 11. Are we, then, to conclude that particular things are determined by Necessities rooted in Nature and by the sequence of causes, and that everything is as good as anything can be? No: the Reason-Principle is the sovereign, maki…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 200

“Section 13 13. And we must not despise the familiar observation that there is something more to be considered than the present. There are the periods of the past and, again, those in the future; and these have everything to do with fixing w…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 201

“Section 14 14. The ordinance of the Kosmos, then, is in keeping with the Intellectual Principle. True, no reasoning went to its creation, but it so stands that the keenest reasoning must wonder- since no reasoning could be able to make it o…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 202 (part 2)

“All this is the doing of man knowing no more than to live the lower and outer life, and never perceiving that, in his weeping and in his graver doings alike, he is but at play; to handle austere matters austerely is reserved for the thought…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 204 (part 1)

“Section 17 17. The nature of the Reason-Principle is adequately expressed in its Act and, therefore, the wider its extension the nearer will its productions approach to full contrariety: hence the world of sense is less a unity than is its…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 205

“Section 18 18. Souls vary in worth; and the difference is due, among other causes, to an almost initial inequality; it is in reason that, standing to the Reason-Principle, as parts, they should be unequal by the fact of becoming separate. W…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 207

“Section 1 1. What is our answer? All events and things, good and evil alike, are included under the Universal Reason-Principle of which they are parts- strictly "included" for this Universal Idea does not engender them but encompasses them.…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 209

“Section 3 3. For, even though the I is sovereign in choosing, yet by the fact of the choice the thing done takes its place in the ordered total. Your personality does not come from outside into the universal scheme; you are a part of it, yo…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 210 (part 1)

“Section 4 4. If man were all of one piece- I mean, if he were nothing more than a made thing, acting and acted upon according to a fixed nature- he could be no more subject to reproach and punishment than the mere animals. But as the sche…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 210 (part 2)

“The Reason-Principle of an ox does not occur except in connection with the Matter appropriate to the ox-Kind. It must be by such a process that the transmigration, of which we read takes place; the Soul must lose its nature, the Reason-Pri…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 211 (part 1)

“Section 5 5. There is, then a Providence, which permeates the Kosmos from first to last, not everywhere equal, as in a numerical distribution, but proportioned, differing, according to the grades of place- just as in some one animal, linke…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 211 (part 2)

“Thus a patient following his treatment is himself an agent and yet is acting in accordance with the doctor's method inspired by the art concerned with the causes of health and sickness: what one does against the laws of health is one's act,…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 212

“Section 6 6. But, if all this be true, how can evil fall within the scope of seership? The predictions of the seers are based on observation of the Universal Circuit: how can this indicate the evil with the good? Clearly the reason is that…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 215

“Section 1 1. Some Existents [Absolute Unity and Intellectual-Principle] remain at rest while their Hypostases, or Expressed-Idea, come into being; but, in our view, the Soul generates by its motion, to which is due the sensitive faculty- th…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 217

“Section 3 3. What, then, is the spirit [guiding the present life and determining the future]? The Spirit of here and now. And the God? The God of here and now. Spirit, God; This in act within us, conducts every life; for, even here and now,…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 218

“Section 4 4. But is this lower extremity of our intellective phase fettered to body for ever? No: if we turn, this turns by the same act. And the Soul of the All- are we to think that when it turns from this sphere its lower phase similarly…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 219

“Section 5 5. But if the presiding Spirit and the conditions of life are chosen by the Soul in the overworld, how can anything be left to our independent action here? The answer is that very choice in the over-world is merely an allegorical…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 220 (part 1)

“Section 6 6. What, then, is the achieved Sage? One whose Act is determined by the higher phase of the Soul. It does not suffice to perfect virtue to have only this Spirit [equivalent in all men] as cooperator in the life: the acting forc…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 224

“Section 3 3. That Love is a Hypostasis [a "Person"] a Real-Being sprung from a Real-Being- lower than the parent but authentically existent- is beyond doubt. For the parent-Soul was a Real-Being sprung directly from the Act of the Hypostasi…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 225

“Section 4 4. Does each individual Soul, then, contain within itself such a Love in essence and substantial reality? Since not only the pure All-Soul but also that of the Universe contain such a Love, it would be difficult to explain why our…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 226

“Section 5 5. But what is the Nature of this Spirit- of the Supernals in general? The Spirit-Kind is treated in the Symposium where, with much about the others, we learn of Eros- Love- born to Penia- Poverty- and Poros- Possession- who is so…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 227 (part 1)

“Section 6 6. What then, in sum, is to be thought of Love and of his "birth" as we are told of it? Clearly we have to establish the significance, here, of Poverty and Possession, and show in what way the parentage is appropriate: we have a…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 227 (part 2)

“We are forced to assume that there is a Matter of the Intellectual Order, and that Beings partaking of it are thereby enabled to enter into the lower Matter, the corporeal.…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 228 (part 1)

“Section 7 7. This is the significance of Plato's account of the birth of Love. The drunkenness of the father Poros or Possession is caused by Nectar, "wine yet not existing"; Love is born before the realm of sense has come into being: Pen…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 229

“Section 8 8. But what are we to understand by this Zeus with the garden into which, we are told, Poros or Wealth entered? And what is the garden? We have seen that the Aphrodite of the Myth is the Soul and that Poros, Wealth, is the Reason-…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 230

“Section 9 9. This Poros, Possession, then, is the Reason-Principle of all that exists in the Intellectual Realm and in the supreme Intellect; but being more diffused, kneaded out as it were, it must touch Soul, be in Soul, [as the next lowe…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 231

“Section 10 10. "Our way of speaking"- for myths, if they are to serve their purpose, must necessarily import time-distinctions into their subject and will often present as separate, Powers which exist in unity but differ in rank and faculty…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 238 (part 1)

“Section 6 6. the Intellectual Essence, wholly of the order of Ideal-form, must be taken as impassive has been already established. But Matter also is an incorporeal, though after a mode of its own; we must examine, therefore, how this sta…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 239

“Section 7 7. We are thus brought back to the nature of that underlying matter and the things believed to be based upon it; investigation will show us that Matter has no reality and is not capable of being affected. Matter must be bodiless-…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 240

“Section 8 8. It is a general principle that, to be modified, an object must be opposed in faculty, and in quality to the forces that enter and act upon it. Thus where heat is present, the change comes by something that chills, where damp by…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 241

“Section 9 9. In answer: It must, first, be noted that there are a variety of modes in which an object may be said to be present to another or to exist in another. There is a "presence" which acts by changing the object- for good or for ill-…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 247

“Section 15 15. Now the objects attracting the sun-rays to themselves- illuminated by a fire of the sense-order- are necessarily of the sense-order; there is perceptibility because there has been a union of things at once external to each ot…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 248

“Section 16 16. An Ideal-Principle approaches and leads Matter towards some desired dimension, investing this non-existent underlie with a magnitude from itself which never becomes incorporate- for Matter, if it really incorporated magnitude…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 250 (part 2)

“No: for there is no first Idea except the Ideal Principle of the Universe- and, by this Idea, Matter is [the seat of] all things at once and of the particular thing in its parts- for the Matter of a living being is disparted according to th…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 251

“Section 19 19. The Ideal Principles entering into Matter as to a Mother [to be "born into the Universe"] affect it neither for better nor for worse. Their action is not upon Matter but upon each other; these powers conflict with their oppon…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 253

“Section 1 1. Eternity and Time; two entirely separate things, we explain "the one having its being in the everlasting Kind, the other in the realm of Process, in our own Universe"; and, by continually using the words and assigning every phe…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 259

“Section 7 7. Now comes the question whether, in all this discussion, we are not merely helping to make out a case for some other order of Beings and talking of matters alien to ourselves. But how could that be? What understanding can there…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 264 (part 1)

“Section 12 12. We are brought thus to the conception of a Natural-Principle- Time- a certain expanse [a quantitative phase] of the Life of the Soul, a principle moving forward by smooth and uniform changes following silently upon each othe…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 264 (part 2)

“This brings us to the fact that, in a certain sense, the Movement, the orbit of the universe, may legitimately be said to measure Time- in so far as that is possible at all- since any definite stretch of that circuit occupies a certain quan…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 265 (part 1)

“Section 13 13. The Spheral Circuit, then, performed in Time, indicates it: but when we come to Time itself there is no question of its being "within" something else: it must be primary, a thing "within itself." It is that in which all the…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 269

“Section 3 3. But if this Reason-Principle [Nature] is in act- and produces by the process indicated- how can it have any part in Contemplation? To begin with, since in all its production it is stationary and intact, a Reason-Principle self-…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 271

“Section 5 5. This discussion of Nature has shown us how the origin of things is a Contemplation: we may now take the matter up to the higher Soul; we find that the Contemplation pursued by this, its instinct towards knowing and enquiring, t…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 272

“Section 6 6. Action, thus, is set towards contemplation and an object of contemplation, so that even those whose life is in doing have seeing as their object; what they have not been able to achieve by the direct path, they hope to come at…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 273

“Section 7 7. Certain Principles, then, we may take to be established- some self-evident, others brought out by our treatment above: All the forms of Authentic Existence spring from vision and are a vision. Everything that springs from these…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 274 (part 2)

“The Intellectual-Principle on the other hand was never merely the Principle of an inviolable unity; it was a universal as well and, being so, was the Intellectual-Principle of all things. Being, thus, all things and the Principle of all, i…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 275 (part 1)

“Section 9 9. Clearly a Being of this nature is not the primal existent; there must exist that which transcends it, that Being [the Absolute], to which all our discussion has been leading. In the first place, Plurality is later than Unity.…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 276 (part 1)

“Section 10 10. And what will such a Principle essentially be? The potentiality of the Universe: the potentiality whose non-existence would mean the non-existence of all the Universe and even of the Intellectual-Principle which is the prim…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 276 (part 2)

“It cannot be, itself, The Good, since then it would not need to see or to perform any other Act; for The Good is the centre of all else, and it is by means of The Good that every thing has Act, while the Good is in need of nothing and there…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 278 (part 1)

“Section 1 1. "The Intellectual-Principle" [= the Divine Mind]- we read [in the Timaeus]- "looks upon the Ideas indwelling in that Being which is the Essentially Living [= according to Plotinus, the Intellectual Realm], "and then"- the text…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 280 (part 1)

“Section 3 3. (A)... How, then, does Unity give rise to Multiplicity? By its omnipresence: there is nowhere where it is not; it occupies, therefore, all that is; at once, it is manifold- or, rather, it is all things. If it were simply an…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 280 (part 2)

“But intellection does not mean self-ownership; it means turning the gaze towards the Primal: now the act of intellection is itself the Primal Act, and there is therefore no place for any earlier one. The Being projecting this Act transcend…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 283

“Section 1 1. In the Intellectual Kosmos dwells Authentic Essence, with the Intellectual-Principle [Divine Mind] as the noblest of its content, but containing also souls, since every soul in this lower sphere has come thence: that is the wor…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 285 (part 2)

“The magnitude present in any mass is definitely one thing, yet its identity from part to part does not imply any such community as would entail common experience; within that identity there is diversity, for it is a condition only, not the…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 289 (part 1)

“Section 2 2. To this our first answer is that to place certain things under one identical class- by admitting an identical range of operation- is to make them of one common species, and puts an end to all mention of part; the reasonable co…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 290

“Section 3 3. Is it a question of part in the sense that, taking one living being, the soul in a finger might be called a part of the soul entire? This would carry the alternative that either there is no soul outside of body, or that- no sou…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 294

“Section 7 7. So far, so good: but what of the passage in the Philebus taken to imply that the other souls are parts of the All-Soul? The statement there made does not bear the meaning read into it; it expresses only, what the author was the…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 295 (part 1)

“Section 8 8. These considerations, amounting to the settlement of the question, are not countered by the phenomenon of sympathy; the response between soul and soul is due to the mere fact that all spring from that self-same soul [the next…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 295 (part 2)

“This means that it is no external limit that defines the individual being or the extension of souls any more than of God; on the contrary each in right of its own power is all that it chooses to be: and we are not to think of it as going fo…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 296 (part 1)

“Section 9 9. But we must examine how soul comes to inhabit the body- the manner and the process- a question certainly of no minor interest. The entry of soul into body takes place under two forms. Firstly, there is the entry- metensomato…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 296 (part 2)

“The universe spreads as broad as the presence of soul; the bound of its expansion is the point at which, in its downward egression from the Supreme, it still has soul to bind it in one: it is a shadow as broad as the Reason-Principle procee…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 298

“Section 11 11. I think, therefore, that those ancient sages, who sought to secure the presence of divine beings by the erection of shrines and statues, showed insight into the nature of the All; they perceived that, though this Soul is ever…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 299

“Section 12 12. The souls of men, seeing their images in the mirror of Dionysus as it were, have entered into that realm in a leap downward from the Supreme: yet even they are not cut off from their origin, from the divine Intellect; it is n…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 300

“Section 13 13. The Ineluctable, the Kosmic Law is, thus, rooted in a natural principle under which each several entity is overruled to go, duly and in order, towards that place and Kind to which it characteristically tends, that is towards…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 302

“Section 15 15. The souls peering forth from the Intellectual Realm descend first to the heavens and there put on a body; this becomes at once the medium by which as they reach out more and more towards magnitude [physical extension] they pr…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 303

“Section 16 16. The punishment justly overtaking the wicked must therefore be ascribed to the kosmic order which leads all in accordance with the right. But what of chastisements, poverty, illness, falling upon the good outside of all justic…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 304

“Section 17 17. Various considerations explain why the Souls going forth from the Intellectual proceed first to the heavenly regions. The heavens, as the noblest portion of sensible space, would border with the least exalted of the Intellect…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 305

“Section 18 18. There remains still something to be said on the question whether the soul uses deliberate reason before its descent and again when it has left the body. Reasoning is for this sphere; it is the act of the soul fallen into perp…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 307 (part 1)

“Section 20 20. Here a question rises to which we must find an answer: whether these and the other powers which we call "parts" of the Soul are situated, all, in place; or whether some have place and standpoint, others not; or whether again…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 307 (part 2)

“Because the soul is not seen and the body is: we perceive the body, and by its movement and sensation we understand that it is ensouled, and we say that it possesses a soul; to speak of residence is a natural sequence. If the soul were vis…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 314

“Section 27 27. But of what soul; of that which we envisage as the more divine, by which we are human beings, or that other which springs from the All? Memory must be admitted in both of these, personal memories and shared memories; and when…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 317

“Section 30 30. But what of the memory of mental acts: do these also fall under the imaging faculty? If every mental act is accompanied by an image we may well believe that this image, fixed and like a picture of the thought, would explain h…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 322

“Section 2 2. Enough on that point: we come now to the question of memory of the personality? There will not even be memory of the personality; no thought that the contemplator is the self- Socrates, for example- or that it is Intellect or S…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 326

“Section 6 6. Souls that descend, souls that change their state- these, then, may be said to have memory, which deals with what has come and gone; but what subjects of remembrance can there be for souls whose lot is to remain unchanged? The…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 327

“Section 7 7. Well but can they not tell themselves that yesterday, or last year, they moved round the earth, that they lived yesterday or at any given moment in their lives? Their living is eternal, and eternity is an unchanging unity. To i…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 328 (part 2)

“And if it is in eternal perfection, it has no points of time and place at which it will achieve perfection; it will, therefore, have no concern about attaining to any such points: it will, therefore, make no measurements of time or place; i…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 333

“Section 13 13. But what is the difference between the Wisdom thus conducting the universe and the principle known as Nature? This Wisdom is a first [within the All-Soul] while Nature is a last: for Nature is an image of that Wisdom, and, as…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 334

“Section 14 14. Of the corporeal thus brought into being by Nature the elemental materials of things are its very produce, but how do animal and vegetable forms stand to it? Are we to think of them as containers of Nature present within them…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 336

“Section 16 16. But if in the soul thing follows thing, if there is earlier and later in its productions, if it engenders or creates in time, then it must be looking towards the future; and if towards the future, then towards the past as wel…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 337

“Section 17 17. But how comes it that the intuitions and the Reason-Principles of the soul are not in the same timeless fashion within ourselves, but that here the later of order is converted into a later of time- bringing in all these doubt…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 338

“Section 18 18. There remains the question whether the body possesses any force of its own- so that, with the incoming of the soul, it lives in some individuality- or whether all it has is this Nature we have been speaking of, the superior p…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 339

“Section 19 19. Thus what we know as pleasure and pain may be identified: pain is our perception of a body despoiled, deprived of the image of the soul; pleasure our perception of the living frame in which the image of the soul is brought ba…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 344

“Section 24 24. The next question is whether perception is concerned only with need. The soul, isolated, has no sense-perception; sensations go with the body; sensation itself therefore must occur by means of the body to which the sensations…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 345

“Section 25 25. But the organ is not the only requisite to vision or to perception of any kind: there must be a state of the soul inclining it towards the sphere of sense. Now it is the soul's character to be ever in the Intellectual sphere,…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 348 (part 1)

“Section 28 28. Thus much established, we may return on our path: we have to discuss the seat of the passionate element in the human being. Pleasures and pains- the conditions, that is, not the perception of them- and the nascent stage of…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 349 (part 1)

“Section 29 29. But- keeping to our illustration, by which the body is warmed by soul and not merely illuminated by it- how is it that when the higher soul withdraws there is no further trace of the vital principle? For a brief space there…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 350

“Section 30 30. We have declared acts of memory unnecessary to the stars, but we allow them perceptions, hearing as well as seeing; for we said that prayers to them were heard- our supplications to the sun, and those, even, of certain other…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 351 (part 1)

“Section 31 31. Our problem embraces all act and all experience throughout the entire kosmos- whether due to nature, in the current phrase, or effected by art. The natural proceeds, we must hold, from the All towards its members and from t…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 351 (part 2)

“It is not to be thought that such beings engage themselves in human affairs in the sense of making men thieves, slave-dealers, burglars, temple-strippers, or debased effeminates practising and lending themselves to disgusting actions: that…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 356

“Section 36 36. The Universe is immensely varied, the container of all the Reason-Principles and of infinite and diverse efficacies. In man, we are told, the eye has its power, and the bones have their varied powers, and so with each separat…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 360

“Section 40 40. But magic spells; how can their efficacy be explained? By the reigning sympathy and by the fact in Nature that there is an agreement of like forces and an opposition of unlike, and by the diversity of those multitudinous powe…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 362

“Section 42 42. It follows that, for the purposes which have induced this discussion, the stars have no need of memory or of any sense of petitions addressed to them; they give no such voluntary attention to prayers as some have thought: it…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 363

“Section 43 43. And the Proficient [the Sage], how does he stand with regard to magic and philtre-spells? In the soul he is immune from magic; his reasoning part cannot be touched by it, he cannot be perverted. But there is in him the unreas…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 376

“Section 1 1. Perceptions are no imprints, we have said, are not to be thought of as seal-impressions on soul or mind: accepting this statement, there is one theory of memory which must be definitely rejected. Memory is not to be explained a…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 377

“Section 2 2. But if perception does not go by impression, what is the process? The mind affirms something not contained within it: this is precisely the characteristic of a power- not to accept impression but, within its allotted sphere, to…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 382

“Section 3 3. Anyone who rejects this view, and holds that either atoms or some entities void of part coming together produce soul, is refuted by the very unity of soul and by the prevailing sympathy as much as by the very coherence of the c…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 388

“Section 8 8. A. [sometimes appearing as 9] There are those who insist on the activities observed in bodies- warming, chilling, thrusting, pressing- and class soul with body, as it were to assure its efficacy. This ignores the double fact th…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 392 (part 2)

“The other order, the entire corporeal Kind, is process; it appears and it perishes; in reality it never possesses Being, but is merely protected, in so far as it has the capacity, by participating in what authentically is.…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 394

“Section 10 10. (15) That the soul is of the family of the diviner nature, the eternal, is clear from our demonstration that it is not material: besides it has neither shape or colour nor is it tangible. But there are other proofs. Assuming…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 397

“Section 13 13. (18) But how does the soul enter into body from the aloofness of the Intellectual? There is the Intellectual-Principle which remains among the intellectual beings, living the purely intellective life; and this, knowing no imp…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 398

“Section 14 14. (19) As for the souls of the other living beings, fallen to the degree of entering brute bodies, these too must be immortal. And if there is in the animal world any other phase of soul, its only possible origin, since it is t…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 402 (part 1)

“Section 2 2. Enquiring, then, of Plato as to our own soul, we find ourselves forced to enquire into the nature of soul in general- to discover what there can be in its character to bring it into partnership with body, and, again, what this…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 403

“Section 3 3. The Human Soul, next; Everywhere we hear of it as in bitter and miserable durance in body, a victim to troubles and desires and fears and all forms of evil, the body its prison or its tomb, the kosmos its cave or cavern. Now th…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 407

“Section 7 7. The Kind, then, with which we are dealing is twofold, the Intellectual against the sensible: better for the soul to dwell in the Intellectual, but, given its proper nature, it is under compulsion to participate in the sense-rea…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 408

“Section 8 8. And- if it is desirable to venture the more definite statement of a personal conviction clashing with the general view- even our human soul has not sunk entire; something of it is continuously in the Intellectual Realm, though…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 410

“Section 1 1. That the Soul of every individual is one thing we deduce from the fact that it is present entire at every point of the body- the sign of veritable unity- not some part of it here and another part there. In all sensitive beings…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 411

“Section 2 2. Now to begin with, the unity of soul, mine and another's, is not enough to make the two totals of soul and body identical. An identical thing in different recipients will have different experiences; the identity Man, in me as I…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 412

“Section 3 3. Yet, looking at another set of facts, reflection tells us that we are in sympathetic relation to each other, suffering, overcome, at the sight of pain, naturally drawn to forming attachments; and all this can be due only to som…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 413

“Section 4 4. These reflections should show that there is nothing strange in that reduction of all souls to one. But it is still necessary to enquire into the mode and conditions of the unity. Is it the unity of origin in a unity? And if so,…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 414

“Section 5 5. How then can a multitude of essential beings be really one? Obviously either the one essence will be entire in all, or the many will rise from a one which remains unaltered and yet includes the one- many in virtue of giving its…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 420

“Section 4 4. But there is yet another way to this knowledge: Admiring the world of sense as we look out upon its vastness and beauty and the order of its eternal march, thinking of the gods within it, seen and hidden, and the celestial spir…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 422 (part 2)

“But in soul the utterance is obscured, for soul is an image and must look to its own original: that Principle, on the contrary, looks to the First without mediation- thus becoming what it is- and has that vision not as from a distance but a…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 423 (part 1)

“Section 7 7. We must be more explicit: The Intellectual-Principle stands as the image of The One, firstly because there is a certain necessity that the first should have its offspring, carrying onward much of its quality, in other words th…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 423 (part 2)

“Now, even in the Divine the engendered could not be the very highest; it must be a lesser, an image; it will be undetermined, as the Divine is, but will receive determination, and, so to speak, its shaping idea, from the progenitor. Yet an…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 424

“Section 8 8. This is the explanation of Plato's Triplicity, in the passage where he names as the Primals the Beings gathered about the King of All, and establishes a Secondary containing the Secondaries, and a Third containing the Tertiarie…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 426

“Section 10 10. We have shown the inevitability of certain convictions as to the scheme of things: There exists a Principle which transcends Being; this is The One, whose nature we have sought to establish in so far as such matters lend them…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 427

“Section 11 11. Since there is a Soul which reasons upon the right and good- for reasoning is an enquiry into the rightness and goodness of this rather than that- there must exist some permanent Right, the source and foundation of this reaso…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 428

“Section 12 12. Possessed of such powers, how does it happen that we do not lay hold of them, but for the most part, let these high activities go idle- some, even, of us never bringing them in any degree to effect? The answer is that all the…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 430

“Section 1 1. The One is all things and no one of them; the source of all things is not all things; all things are its possession- running back, so to speak, to it- or, more correctly, not yet so, they will be. But a universe from an unbroke…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 431

“Section 2 2. To resume: there is from the first principle to ultimate an outgoing in which unfailingly each principle retains its own seat while its offshoot takes another rank, a lower, though on the other hand every being is in identity w…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 433

“Section 1 1. Are we to think that a being knowing itself must contain diversity, that self-knowledge can be affirmed only when some one phase of the self perceives other phases, and that therefore an absolutely simplex entity would be equal…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 434

“Section 2 2. We begin with the soul, asking whether it is to be allowed self-knowledge and what the knowing principle in it would be and how operating. The sense-principle in it we may at once decide, takes cognisance only of the external;…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 435

“Section 3 3. Sense sees a man and transmits the impression to the understanding. What does the understanding say? It has nothing to say as yet; it accepts and waits; unless, rather, it questions within itself "Who is this?"- someone it has…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 437 (part 1)

“Section 5 5. Does it all come down, then, to one phase of the self knowing another phase? That would be a case of knower distinguished from known, and would not be self-knowing. What, then, if the total combination were supposed to be of…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 437 (part 2)

“It possesses self-knowing, thus, on every count; the act is itself; and the object seen in that act- self, is itself.…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 440 (part 1)

“Section 8 8. Now comes the question what sort of thing does the Intellectual-Principle see in seeing the Intellectual Realm and what in seeing itself? We are not to look for an Intellectual realm reminding us of the colour or shape to be…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 440 (part 2)

“The life in the Divine Intellect is also an Act: it is the primal light outlamping to itself primarily, its own torch; light-giver and lit at once; the authentic intellectual object, knowing at once and known, seen to itself and needing no…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 441

“Section 9 9. In order, then, to know what the Divine Mind is, we must observe soul and especially its most God-like phase. One certain way to this knowledge is to separate first, the man from the body- yourself, that is, from your body- nex…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 443

“Section 11 11. Thus the Intellectual-Principle, in the act of knowing the Transcendent, is a manifold. It knows the Transcendent in very essence but, with all its effort to grasp that prior as a pure unity, it goes forth amassing successive…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 444 (part 1)

“Section 12 12. But why, after all, should it not be such a manifold as long as it remains one substantial existence, having the multiplicity not of a compound being but of a unity with a variety of activities? Now, no doubt, if these vari…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 444 (part 2)

“The entire intellectual order may be figured as a kind of light with the One in repose at its summit as its King: but this manifestation is not cast out from it: we may think, rather, of the One as a light before the light, an eternal irrad…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 445

“Section 13 13. Thus The One is in truth beyond all statement: any affirmation is of a thing; but the all-transcending, resting above even the most august divine Mind, possesses alone of all true being, and is not a thing among things; we ca…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 446

“Section 14 14. How, then, do we ourselves come to be speaking of it? No doubt we deal with it, but we do not state it; we have neither knowledge nor intellection of it. But in what sense do we even deal with it when we have no hold upon it?…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 447 (part 1)

“Section 15 15. Conferring- but how? As itself possessing them or not? How can it convey what it does not possess, and yet if it does possess how is it simplex? And if, again, it does not, how is it the source of the manifold? A single,…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 448

“Section 16 16. We have, of course, already seen that a secondary must follow upon the First, and that this is a power immeasurably fruitful; and we indicated that this truth is confirmed by the entire order of things since there is nothing,…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 449

“Section 17 17. But what can it be which is loftier than that existence- a life compact of wisdom, untouched by struggle and error, or than this Intellect which holds the Universe with all there is of life and intellect? If we answer "The Ma…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 451

“Section 1 1. Anything existing after The First must necessarily arise from that First, whether immediately or as tracing back to it through intervenients; there must be an order of secondaries and tertiaries, in which any second is to be re…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 452 (part 1)

“Section 2 2. If the Intellectual-Principle were the engendering Source, then the engendered secondary, while less perfect than the Intellectual-Principle, would be close to it and similar to it: but since the engendering Source is above th…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 452 (part 2)

“And again, if that secondary is all things, and if above its multiplicity there is a unity not ranking among those things, once more this unity transcends Real Being and therefore transcends the Intellectual-Principle as well. There is thu…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 454 (part 1)

“Section 1 1. The Intellectual-Principle, the veritably and essentially intellective, can this be conceived as ever falling into error, ever failing to think reality? Assuredly no: it would no longer be intelligent and therefore no longer…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 454 (part 2)

“How does the Intellectual-Principle come to meet with them as it travels round; what keeps each true to its character; what gives them enduring identity; what conceivable shape or character can they have? They are being presented to us as…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 455

“Section 2 2. Thus we may not look for the Intellectual objects [the Ideas] outside of the Intellectual-Principle, treating them as impressions of reality upon it: we cannot strip it of truth and so make its objects unknowable and non-existe…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 456

“Section 3 3. Thus we have here one identical Principle, the Intellect, which is the universe of authentic beings, the Truth: as such it is a great god or, better, not a god among gods but the Godhead entire. It is a god, a secondary god man…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 457

“Section 4 4. We have said that all must be brought back to a unity: this must be an authentic unity, not belonging to the order in which multiplicity is unified by participation in what is truly a One; we need a unity independent of partici…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 458

“Section 5 5. We return to our statement that The First remains intact even when other entities spring from it. In the case of numbers, the unit remains intact while something else produces, and thus number arises in dependence on the unit:…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 463

“Section 10 10. Still, do not, I urge you, look for The Good through any of these other things; if you do, you will see not itself but its trace: you must form the idea of that which is to be grasped cleanly standing to itself not in any com…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 464

“Section 11 11. It is infinite also by right of being a pure unity with nothing towards which to direct any partial content. Absolutely One, it has never known measure and stands outside of number, and so is under no limit either in regard t…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 465

“Section 12 12. Knowing demands the organ fitted to the object; eyes for one kind, ears for another: similarly some things, we must believe, are to be known by the Intellectual-Principle in us. We must not confuse intellection with hearing o…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 466

“Section 13 13. The Supreme, as the Absolute Good and not merely a good being or thing, can contain nothing, since there is nothing that could be its good. Anything it could contain must be either good to it or not good; but in the supremely…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 468

“Section 1 1. There is a principle having intellection of the external and another having self-intellection and thus further removed from duality. Even the first mentioned is not without an effort towards the pure unity of which it is not so…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 469

“Section 2 2. Thus there is the primally intellective and there is that in which intellection has taken another mode; but this indicates that what transcends the primarily intellective has no intellection; for, to have intellection, it must…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 470

“Section 3 3. We may be told that nothing prevents an identity being thus multiple. But there must be a unity underlying the aggregate: a manifold is impossible without a unity for its source or ground, or at least, failing some unity, relat…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 475

“Section 1 1. We have to examine the question whether there exists an ideal archetype of individuals, in other words whether I and every other human being go back to the Intellectual, every [living] thing having origin and principle There. I…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 476

“Section 2 2. But individuals are brought into being by the union of the Reason-Principles of the parents, male and female: this seems to do away with a definite Reason-Principle for each of the offspring: one of the parents- the male let us…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 477

“Section 3 3. In the case of twin birth among human beings how can we make out the Reason-Principles to be different; and still more when we turn to the animals and especially those with litters? Where the young are precisely alike, there is…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 479

“Section 1 1. It is a principle with us that one who has attained to the vision of the Intellectual Beauty and grasped the beauty of the Authentic Intellect will be able also to come to understand the Father and Transcendent of that Divine B…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 480

“Section 2 2. But let us leave the arts and consider those works produced by Nature and admitted to be naturally beautiful which the creations of art are charged with imitating, all reasoning life and unreasoning things alike, but especially…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 482 (part 1)

“Section 4 4. To "live at ease" is There; and, to these divine beings, verity is mother and nurse, existence and sustenance; all that is not of process but of authentic being they see, and themselves in all: for all is transparent, nothing…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 486

“Section 8 8. This then is Beauty primally: it is entire and omnipresent as an entirety; and therefore in none of its parts or members lacking in beauty; beautiful thus beyond denial. Certainly it cannot be anything [be, for example, Beauty]…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 487

“Section 9 9. Let us, then, make a mental picture of our universe: each member shall remain what it is, distinctly apart; yet all is to form, as far as possible, a complete unity so that whatever comes into view shall show as if it were the…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 489

“Section 11 11. Similarly any one, unable to see himself, but possessed by that God, has but to bring that divine- within before his consciousness and at once he sees an image of himself, himself lifted to a better beauty: now let him ignore…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 490

“Section 12 12. We have told how this vision is to be procured, whether by the mode of separation or in identity: now, seen in either way, what does it give to report? The vision has been of God in travail of a beautiful offspring, God engen…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 491

“Section 13 13. The God fettered [as in the Kronos Myth] to an unchanging identity leaves the ordering of this universe to his son (to Zeus), for it could not be in his character to neglect his rule within the divine sphere, and, as though s…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 493

“Section 1 1. All human beings from birth onward live to the realm of sense more than to the Intellectual. Forced of necessity to attend first to the material, some of them elect to abide by that order and, their life throughout, make its co…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 495

“Section 3 3. We will have to examine this Nature, the Intellectual, which our reasoning identifies as the authentically existent and the veritable essential: but first we must take another path and make certain that such a principle does ne…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 497 (part 1)

“Section 5 5. This Intellectual-Principle, if the term is to convey the truth, must be understood to be not a principle merely potential and not one maturing from unintelligence to intelligence- that would simply send us seeking, once more,…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 497 (part 2)

“This universe, characteristically participant in images, shows how the image differs from the authentic beings: against the variability of the one order, there stands the unchanging quality of the other, self-situate, not needing space beca…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 499

“Section 7 7. Knowledge in the reasoning soul is on the one side concerned with objects of sense, though indeed this can scarcely be called knowledge and is better indicated as opinion or surface-knowing; it is of later origin than the objec…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 500

“Section 8 8. If, then, the Intellection is an act upon the inner content [of a perfect unity], that content is at once the Idea [as object: eidos] and the Idea itself [as concept: idea]. What, then, is that content? An Intellectual-Principl…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 502

“Section 10 10. All, then, that is present in the sense realm as Idea comes from the Supreme. But what is not present as Idea, does not. Thus of things conflicting with nature, none is There: the inartistic is not contained in the arts; lame…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 504

“Section 12 12. It should however be added that if the Idea of man exists in the Supreme, there must exist the Idea of reasoning man and of man with his arts and crafts; such arts as are the offspring of intellect Must be There. It must be o…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 506

“Section 14 14. There is, thus, a Nature comprehending in the Intellectual all that exists, and this Principle must be the source of all. But how, seeing that the veritable source must be a unity, simplex utterly? The mode by which from the…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 510

“Section 2 2. But are we really obliged to posit the existence of such genera? Take Substance, for Substance must certainly be our starting-point: what are the grounds for regarding Substance as one single genus? It has been remarked that Su…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 511

“Section 3 3. But perhaps we should rather speak of some single category, embracing Intellectual Substance, Matter, Form, and the Composite of Matter and Form. One might refer to the family of the Heraclids as a unity in the sense, not of a…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 512 (part 1)

“Section 4 4. We are told that number is Quantity in the primary sense, number together with all continuous magnitude, space and time: these are the standards to which all else that is considered as Quantity is referred, including motion wh…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 512 (part 2)

“True, greatness and smallness are not claimed to be quantities, but relations: but it is by their apparent possession of quantity that they are thought of as relations. All this, however, needs more careful examination. In sum, we hold th…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 516

“Section 9 9. It follows that in the cases specified above- agent, knowledge and the rest- the relation must be considered as in actual operation, and the Act and the Reason-Principle in the Act must be assumed to be real: in all other cases…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 517 (part 1)

“Section 10 10. As regards Quality, the source of what we call a "quale," we must in the first place consider what nature it possesses in accordance with which it produces the "qualia," and whether, remaining one and the same in virtue of t…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 521

“Section 14 14. The Academy and the Lyceum are places, and parts of Place, just as "above," "below," "here" are species or parts of Place; the difference is of minuter delimitation. If then "above," "below," "the middle" are places- Delphi,…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 540

“Section 2 2. In asserting that Being is not a unity, we do not mean to imply a definite number of existences; the number may well be infinite: we mean simply that it is many as well as one, that it is, so to speak, a diversified unity, a pl…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 548

“Section 10 10. In what sense is the particular manifestation of Being a unity? Clearly, in so far as it is one thing, it forfeits its unity; with "one" and "thing" we have already plurality. No species can be a unity in more than an equivoc…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 549 (part 2)

“In the first place, the point is common to lines and yet is not their genus, and this unity we are considering may also be common to numbers and not be their genus- though, we need hardly say, the unity of Unity-Absolute is not that of the…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 550

“Section 12 12. Enough upon that side of the question. But how does the perfection [goodness] of numbers, lifeless things, depend upon their particular unity? Just as all other inanimates find their perfection in their unity. If it should be…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 551

“Section 13 13. We turn to ask why Quantity is not included among the primary genera, and Quality also. Quantity is not among the primaries, because these are permanently associated with Being. Motion is bound up with Actual Being [Being-in-…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 553

“Section 15 15. How then do the four genera complete Substance without qualifying it or even particularizing it? It has been observed that Being is primary, and it is clear that none of the four- Motion, Stability, Difference, Identity- is d…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 555

“Section 17 17. Why are not beauty, goodness and the virtues, together with knowledge and intelligence, included among the primary genera? If by goodness we mean The First- what we call the Principle of Goodness, the Principle of which we ca…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 558

“Section 20 20. We may thus distinguish two phases of Intellect, in one of which it may be taken as having no contact whatever with particulars and no Act upon anything; thus it is kept apart from being a particular intellect. In the same wa…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 560 (part 1)

“Section 22 22. We may here adduce the pregnant words of Plato: "Inasmuch as Intellect perceives the variety and plurality of the Forms present in the complete Living Being...." The words apply equally to Soul; Soul is subsequent to Intelle…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 560 (part 2)

“Similarly, this likeness of the Intellectual realm carries images, not of the creative element, but of the entities contained in that creator, including Man with every other living being: creator and created are alike living beings, though…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 562

“Section 1 1. We have now explained our conception of Reality [True Being] and considered how far it agrees with the teaching of Plato. We have still to investigate the opposed principle [the principle of Becoming]. There is the possibility…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 563

“Section 2 2. Our first observations must be directed to what passes in the Sensible realm for Substance. It is, we shall agree, only by analogy that the nature manifested in bodies is designated as Substance, and by no means because such te…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 564

“Section 3 3. How then do we go to work? Let us begin by distinguishing Matter, Form, the Mixture of both, and the Attributes of the Mixture. The Attributes may be subdivided into those which are mere predicates, and those serving also as ac…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 565

“Section 4 4. What, then, we have to ask, is the constant element in the first three entities? What is it that identifies them with their inherent Substance? Is it the capacity to serve as a base? But Matter, we maintain, serves as the base…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 567

“Section 6 6. Granted, it may be urged, that these observations upon the nature of Substance are sound, we have not yet arrived at a statement of its essence. Our critic doubtless expects to see this "Sensible": but its essence, its characte…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 568

“Section 7 7. But Matter, it may be contended, is the source of existence to the Sensible things implanted in it. From what source, then, we retort, does Matter itself derive existence and being? That Matter is not a Primary we have establis…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 569

“Section 8 8. The division into elements must, in short, be abandoned, especially in regard to Sensible Substance, known necessarily by sense rather than by reason. We must no longer look for help in constituent parts, since such parts will…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 572

“Section 11 11. Passing to Quantity and the quantum, we have to consider the view which identifies them with number and magnitude on the ground that everything quantitative is numbered among Sensible things or rated by the extension of its s…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 577 (part 2)

“But we refrain from assigning Soul to Sensible Substance, on the ground that we have already referred to Quality [which is Sensible] those affections of Soul which are related to body. On the contrary, Soul, conceived apart from affection…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 585

“Section 24 24. With regard to locomotion: if ascending is to be held contrary to descending, and circular motion different [in kind] from motion in a straight line, we may ask how this difference is to be defined- the difference, for exampl…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 586

“Section 25 25. The nature of integration and disintegrations calls for scrutiny. Are they different from the motions above mentioned, from coming-to-be and passing-away, from growth and decay, from change of place and from alteration? or mu…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 598

“Section 8 8. The light of our world can be allocated because it springs from a corporeal mass of known position, but conceive an immaterial entity, independent of body as being of earlier nature than all body, a nature firmly self-based or,…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 602

“Section 12 12. Think of a sound passing through the air and carrying a word; an ear within range catches and comprehends; and the sound and word will strike upon any other ear you may imagine within the intervening void, upon any that atten…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 603

“Section 13 13. But how account, at this, for its extension over all the heavens and all living beings? There is no such extension. Sense-perception, by insistence upon which we doubt, tells of Here and There; but reason certifies that the H…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 604

“Section 14 14. But, admitting this one soul at every point, how is there a particular soul of the individual and how the good soul and the bad? The one soul reaches to the individual but nonetheless contains all souls and all intelligences;…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 609

“Section 2 2. Now the reasoning faculty which undertakes this problem is not a unity but a thing of parts; it brings the bodily nature into the enquiry, borrowing its principles from the corporeal: thus it thinks of the Essential Existence a…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 610

“Section 3 3. If this principle is the Authentic Existent and holds unchanging identity, does not go forth from itself, is untouched by any process of becoming or, as we have said, by any situation in place, then it must be always self-gathe…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 611

“Section 4 4. Then consider this god [in man] whom we cannot think to be absent at some point and present at another. All that have insight into the nature of the divine beings hold the omnipresence of this god and of all the gods, and reaso…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 614

“Section 7 7. To Real Being we go back, all that we have and are; to that we return as from that we came. Of what is There we have direct knowledge, not images or even impressions; and to know without image is to be; by our part in true know…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 615

“Section 8 8. For my part I am satisfied that anyone considering the mode in which Matter participates in the Ideas will be ready enough to accept this tenet of omnipresence in identity, no longer rejecting it as incredible or even difficult…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 616

“Section 9 9. The elements in their totality, as they stand produced, may be thought of as one spheric figure; this cannot be the piecemeal product of many makers each working from some one point on some one portion. There must be one cause;…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 618

“Section 11 11. But how can the unextended reach over the defined extension of the corporeal? How can it, so, maintain itself as a unity, an identity? This is a problem often raised and reason calls vehemently for a solution of the difficult…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 622

“Section 2 2. What, then, of the "Number of the Infinite"? To begin with, how is Number consistent with infinity? Objects of sense are not unlimited and therefore the Number applying to them cannot be so. Nor is an enumerator able to number…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 623

“Section 3 3. And there is the question How can the infinite have existence and remain unlimited: whatever is in actual existence is by that very fact determined numerically. But, first, if multiplicity holds a true place among Beings, how c…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 631

“Section 11 11. It may be suggested that the decad is nothing more than so many henads; admitting the one henad why should we reject the ten? As the one is a real existence why not the rest? We are certainly not compelled to attach that one…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 633 (part 2)

“If Unity is necessary to the substantial existence of all that really is- and nothing exists which is not one- Unity must precede Reality and be its author. It is therefore, an existent Unity, not an existent that develops Unity; considere…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 635

“Section 15 15. We must repeat: The Collective Being, the Authentic, There, is at once Being and Intellectual-Principle and the Complete Living Form; thus it includes the total of living things; the Unity There is reproduced by the unity of…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 636 (part 1)

“Section 16 16. But here we may be questioned about these numbers which we describe as the primal and authentic: "Where do you place these numbers, in what genus among Beings? To everyone they seem to come under Quantity and you have certa…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 636 (part 2)

“When you enumerate two things- say, animal and beauty- each of these remains one thing; the number is your production; it lay within yourself; it is you that elaborate quantity, here the dyad. But when you declare virtue to be a Tetrad, yo…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 637

“Section 17 17. But what of the Infinite Number we hear of; does not all this reasoning set it under limit? And rightly so if the thing is to be a number; limitlessness and number are in contradiction. How, then, do we come to use the term?…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 638

“Section 18 18. It appears then that Number in that realm is definite; it is we that can conceive the "More than is present"; the infinity lies in our counting: in the Real is no conceiving more than has been conceived; all stands entire; no…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 641 (part 1)

“Section 2 2. Thus we have even here the means of knowing the nature of the Intellectual-Principle, though, seeing it more closely than anything else, we still see it at less than its worth. We know that it exists but its cause we do not s…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 641 (part 2)

“The why is inherent, therefore, in the entity, that is to say in every thought and activity of the Intellectual-Principle. Take for example the Idea of Man; Man entire is found to contribute to it; he is in that Idea in all his fulness inc…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 642

“Section 3 3. What then is there to prevent man having been the object of planning There? No: all stands in that likeness, nothing to be added or taken away; this planning and reasoning is based only on an assumption; things are taken to be…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 649

“Section 10 10. But failure There? What can defensive horns serve to There? To sufficiency as living form, to completeness. That principle must be complete as living form, complete as Intellect, complete as life, so that if it is not to be o…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 650 (part 1)

“Section 11 11. The very heavens, patently multiple, cannot be thought to disdain any form of life since this universe holds everything. Now how do these things come to be here? Does the higher realm contain all of the lower? All that ha…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 650 (part 2)

“Now, it is quite certain that these are equally within the living total, parts of the living all; life does not appear visibly in them; but neither does it in the case of the earth where its presence is inferred by what earth produces: but…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 652 (part 1)

“Section 13 13. For Intellectual-Principle is not a simplex, nor is the soul that proceeds from it: on the contrary things include variety in the degree of their simplicity, that is to say in so far as they are not compounds but Principles…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 652 (part 2)

“To a traveller over land, all is earth but earth abounding in difference: so in this journey the life through which Intellectual-Principle passes is one life but, in its ceaseless changing, a varied life. Throughout this endless variation…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 653

“Section 14 14. On the nature of the Intellectual-Principle we get light from its manifestations; they show that it demands such diversity as is compatible with its being a monad. Take what principle you will, that of plant or animal: if thi…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 654

“Section 15 15. That Life, the various, the all-including, the primal and one, who can consider it without longing to be of it, disdaining all the other? All other life is darkness, petty and dim and poor; it is unclean and polluting the cle…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 655

“Section 16 16. But even there we are not to remain always, in that beauty of the multiple; we must make haste yet higher, above this heaven of ours and even that; leaving all else aside we ask in awe "Who produced that realm and how?" Every…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 656

“Section 17 17. But in what mode are these secondaries, and Intellectual-Principle itself, within the First? They are not in the Filling Principle; they are not in the filled since before that moment it did not contain them. Giving need not…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 657 (part 1)

“Section 18 18. But in what way is the content of Intellectual-Principle participant in good? Is it because each member of it is an Idea or because of their beauty or how? Anything coming from The Good carries the image and type belonging…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 657 (part 2)

“We cannot be content with the conviction of their goodness on the ground of their origin in that realm: we do not deny that things deriving Thence are good, but our subject demands that we discover the mode by which they come to possess tha…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 659

“Section 20 20. Since we are not entitled to make desire the test by which to decide on the nature and quality of the good, we may perhaps have recourse to judgement. We would apply the opposition of things- order, disorder; symmetry, irregu…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 660

“Section 21 21. Now what in all these objects of desire is the fundamental making them good? We must be bold: Intellectual-Principle and that life are of the order of good and hold their desirability, even they, in virtue of belonging to tha…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 663

“Section 24 24. But ourselves- how does it touch us? We may recall what we have said of the nature of the light shining from it into Intellectual-Principle and so by participation into the soul. But for the moment let us leave that aside and…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 664

“Section 25 25. It is in view, probably, of this difficulty that Plato, in the Philebus, makes pleasure an element in the Term; the good is not defined as a simplex or set in Intellectual-Principle alone; while he rightly refrains from ident…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 665

“Section 26 26. Any conscious being, if the good come to him, will know the good and affirm his possession of it. But what if one be deceived? In that case there must be some resemblance to account for the error: the good will be the origina…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 666

“Section 27 27. But what is that whose entry supplies every such need? Some Idea, we maintain. There is a Form to which Matter aspires: to soul, moral excellence is this Form. But is this Form a good to the thing as being apt to it, does the…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 667

“Section 28 28. Now to see what all this reasoning has established: Universally, what approaches as a good is a Form; Matter itself contains this good which is Form: are we to conclude that, if Matter had will, it would desire to be Form una…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 668

“Section 29 29. Suppose, however, that pleasure did not result from the good but there were something preceding pleasure and accounting for it, would not this be a thing to be embraced? But when we say "to be embraced" we say "pleasure." But…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 669

“Section 30 30. Whether pleasure must enter into the good, so that life in the contemplation of the divine things and especially of their source remains still imperfect, is a question not to be ignored in any enquiry into the nature of the g…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 670

“Section 31 31. But since Thence come the beauty and light in all, it is Thence that Intellectual-Principle took the brilliance of the Intellectual Energy which flashed Nature into being; Thence soul took power towards life, in virtue of tha…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 672

“Section 33 33. When therefore we name beauty, all such shape must be dismissed; nothing visible is to be conceived, or at once we descend from beauty to what but bears the name in virtue of some faint participation. This formless Form is be…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 673

“Section 34 34. No longer can we wonder that the principle evoking such longing should be utterly free from shape. The very soul, once it has conceived the straining love towards this, lays aside all the shape it has taken, even to the Intel…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 674

“Section 35 35. Such in this union is the soul's temper that even the act of Intellect, once so intimately loved, she now dismisses; Intellection is movement and she has no wish to move; she has nothing to say of this very Intellectual-Princ…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 676

“Section 37 37. Those ascribing Intellection to the First have not supposed him to know the lesser, the emanant- though, indeed, some have thought it impossible that he should not know everything. But those denying his knowing of the lesser…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 677

“Section 38 38. And yet this "He Is" does not truly apply: the Supreme has no need of Being: even "He is good" does not apply since it indicates Being: the "is" should not suggest something predicated of another thing; it is to state identit…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 679 (part 1)

“Section 40 40. That there can be no intellection in the First will be patent to those that have had such contact; but some further confirmation is desirable, if indeed words can carry the matter; we need overwhelming persuasion. It must b…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 679 (part 2)

“But this would make the power something outside itself; there would be, I mean, the power it grasped and the power by which it grasped: if there is but the one power, what is there to grasp at?…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 680

“Section 41 41. Intellection seems to have been given as an aid to the diviner but weaker beings, an eye to the blind. But the eye itself need not see Being since it is itself the light; what must take the light through the eye needs the lig…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 681

“Section 42 42. Faced by the difficulty of placing these powers, you must in reason allocate to the secondaries what you count august: secondaries must not be foisted upon the First, or tertiaries upon the secondaries. Secondaries are to be…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 683

“Section 1 1. Can there be question as to whether the gods have voluntary action? Or are we to take it that, while we may well enquire in the case of men with their combination of powerlessness and hesitating power, the gods must be declared…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 685

“Section 3 3. All this calls for examination; the enquiry must bring us close to the solution as regards the gods. We have traced self-disposal to will, will to reasoning and, next step, to right reasoning; perhaps to right reasoning we must…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 687

“Section 5 5. Are we, however, to make freedom and self-disposal exclusive to Intellectual-Principle as engaged in its characteristic Act, Intellectual-Principle unassociated, or do they belong also to soul acting under that guidance and per…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 688

“Section 6 6. How then did we come to place freedom in the will when we made out free action to be that produced- or as we also indicated, suppressed- at the dictate of will? If what we have been saying is true and our former statement is co…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 690

“Section 8 8. But it is not, in our view, as an attribute that this freedom is present in the First. In the light of free acts, from which we eliminate the contraries, we recognise There self-determination, self-directed and, failing more su…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 691

“Section 9 9. If we cannot but speak of Happening we must not halt at the word but look to the intention. And what is that? That the Supreme by possession of a certain nature and power is the Principle. Obviously if its nature were other it…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 693

“Section 11 11. But this Unoriginating, what is it? We can but withdraw, silent, hopeless, and search no further. What can we look for when we have reached the furthest? Every enquiry aims at a first and, that attained, rests. Besides, we mu…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 695 (part 1)

“Section 13 13. Our enquiry obliges us to use terms not strictly applicable: we insist, once more, that not even for the purpose of forming the concept of the Supreme may we make it a duality; if now we do, it is merely for the sake of conv…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 696

“Section 14 14. Another approach: Everything to which existence may be attributed is either one with its essence or distinct from it. Thus any given man is distinct from essential man though belonging to the order Man: a soul and a soul's es…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 697

“Section 15 15. Lovable, very love, the Supreme is also self-love in that He is lovely no otherwise than from Himself and in Himself. Self-presence can hold only in the identity of associated with associating; since, in the Supreme, associat…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 698

“Section 16 16. We maintain, and it is evident truth, that the Supreme is everywhere and yet nowhere; keeping this constantly in mind let us see how it bears on our present enquiry. If God is nowhere, then not anywhere has He "happened to be…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 699

“Section 17 17. Or consider it another way: We hold the universe, with its content entire, to be as all would be if the design of the maker had so willed it, elaborating it with purpose and prevision by reasonings amounting to a Providence.…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 700 (part 1)

“Section 18 18. Seeking Him, seek nothing of Him outside; within is to be sought what follows upon Him; Himself do not attempt. He is, Himself, that outer, He the encompassment and measure of all things; or rather He is within, at the inne…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 700 (part 2)

“Thus we must speak of God since we cannot tell Him as we would.…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 702

“Section 20 20. The difficulty will be raised that God would seem to have existed before thus coming into existence; if He makes Himself, then in regard to the self which He makes He is not yet in being and as maker He exists before this Him…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 705

“Section 1 1. It is in virtue of unity that beings are beings. This is equally true of things whose existence is primal and of all that are in any degree to be numbered among beings. What could exist at all except as one thing? Deprived of u…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 707 (part 2)

“Note, similarly, that, when we speak of this First as Cause, we are affirming something happening not to it but to us, the fact that we take from this Self-Enclosed: strictly we should put neither a This nor a That to it; we hover, as it we…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 708

“Section 4 4. The main part of the difficulty is that awareness of this Principle comes neither by knowing nor by the Intellection that discovers the Intellectual Beings but by a presence overpassing all knowledge. In knowing, soul or mind a…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 713 (part 2)

“Any that have seen know what I have in mind: the soul takes another life as it approaches God; thus restored it feels that the dispenser of true life is There to see, that now we have nothing to look for but, far otherwise, that we must put…”

◇Select Works of Plotinus | Select Works, Section 716

“Section 11 11. This is the purport of that rule of our Mysteries: Nothing Divulged to the Uninitiate: the Supreme is not to be made a common story, the holy things may not be uncovered to the stranger, to any that has not himself attained t…”

◆Pseudo-Dionysius: The Divine Names | Chapter 10, Section 1a

“CHAPTER X Concerning ” Omnipotent ,” ” Ancient of Days “; and also concerning ” Eternity “ and ” Time .” 1. Now ‘tis time that our Discourse should celebrate God (Whose Names are many) as “Omnipotent” and “Ancient of Days.” The former titl…”

◆Pseudo-Dionysius: The Divine Names | Chapter 10, Section 1b

“For where Scripture speaks of things as “eternal” it doth not always mean things that are absolutely Uncreated or verily Everlasting, Incorruptible, 171 Immortal, Invariable, and Immutable ( e.g. “Be ye lift up, ye eternal doors,” 461 461…”

◆Pseudo-Dionysius: The Divine Names | Chapter 10, Section 1c

“It is spoken of by ail the Christian Mystics as the root of our being, or as the spark, or the Synteresis, etc. Our perfection consists in this ultimate reality, which is each man’s self, shining through his whole being and transforming it…”

◆Pseudo-Dionysius: The Divine Names | Chapter 1, Section 1b

“For even as things which are intellectually discerned 52 52 i. e. The Transcendent Truths which are beyond ordinary knowledge. νοητά . The word νοῦς = Mind in the sense not merely of abstract intellect but of the spiritual personality.…”

◆Pseudo-Dionysius: The Divine Names | Chapter 1, Section 1c

“59 59 ὡς οὐκ ὄντος ἴχνους τῶν ἐπὶ τὴν κρυφίαν αὐτῆς ἀπειρίαν διεληλυθότων. Two interpretations of this passage are possible: (1) Those who have penetrated the hidden Depths cannot describe the Vision (cf. Dante, Par. xxxiii. 55–66) ; (2…”

◆Pseudo-Dionysius: The Divine Names | Chapter 1, Section 1e

“These mysteries we learn from the Divine Scriptures, and thou wilt find that in well-nigh all the utterances of the Sacred Writers the Divine Names refer in a Symbolical Revelation 72 72 ἐκφαντορικῶς καὶ ὑμνητικῶς. to Its beneficent Emanat…”

◆Pseudo-Dionysius: The Divine Names | Chapter 1, Section 1f

“And in all the other Divine enlightenments which the occult Tradition of our inspired teachers hath, by mystic Interpretation, accordant with the Scriptures, bestowed upon us, we also have been initiated: apprehending these things in the pr…”

◆Pseudo-Dionysius: The Divine Names | Chapter 1, Section 1g

“But if It is greater than all Reason and all knowledge, and hath Its firm abode altogether beyond Mind and Being, and circumscribes, compacts, embraces and anticipates all things 87 87 παντῶν . . . προληπτική—i.e. contains them eternall…”

◆The Secret Teachings of All Ages (Manly P. Hall) | Introductiono

“Johann Friedrich Herbart's philosophy was a realistic reaction from the idealism of Fichte and von Schelling. To Herbart the true basis of philosophy was the great mass of phenomena continually moving through the human mind. Examination o…”

◆The Secret Teachings of All Ages (Manly P. Hall) | The Ancient Mysteries and Secret Societies Which Have Influenced Modern Masonic Symbolismm

“Of these shoots one is manifested from above, which is the Great Power, the Universal Mind ordering all things, male, and the other, [is manifested] from below, the Great Thought, female, producing all things. Hence pairing with each other…”

◆The Secret Teachings of All Ages (Manly P. Hall) | The Ancient Mysteries and Secret Societies Which Have Influenced Modern Masonic Symbolismn

“In discussing the original meaning of this word, Godfrey Higgins, in his Celtic Druids, has demonstrated that the numerological powers of the letters forming the word Abraxas when added together result in the sum of 365. The same author al…”

◆The Secret Teachings of All Ages (Manly P. Hall) | The Ancient Mysteries and Secret Societies Which Have Influenced Modern Masonic Symbolismo

“To the Gnostics, the Christ was the personification of Nous , the Divine Mind, and emanated from the higher spiritual Æons. He descended into the body of Jesus at the baptism and left it again before the crucifixion. The Gnostics declared…”

◆The Secret Teachings of All Ages (Manly P. Hall) | The Life and Teachings of Thoth Hermes Trismegistusf

“It is doubtful that the deity called Thoth by the Egyptians was originally Hermes, but the two personalities were blended together and it is now impossible to separate them. Thoth was called "The Lord of the Divine Books" and "Scribe of th…”

◆The Secret Teachings of All Ages (Manly P. Hall) | The Life and Teachings of Thoth Hermes Trismegistusg

“The Supreme Being--the Mind--male and female, brought forth the Word; and the Word, suspended between Light and darkness, was delivered of another Mind called the Workman , the Master-Builder , or the Maker of Things . "In this manner it w…”

◆The Secret Teachings of All Ages (Manly P. Hall) | The Bembine Table of Isisf

“Beside the altar, which usually was in the center of each room, was the cistern of Nile water which flowed in and out through unseen pipes. Here also were images of the gods in concatenated series, accompanied by magical inscriptions. In…”

◆The Secret Teachings of All Ages (Manly P. Hall) | The Bembine Table of Isisg

“ζ, η, θ--Serapæan Triad. 7. γ, δ (not shown), ε--Osirian Triad. In the lower section 1. λ, Μ, Ν--Horæan Triad. 2. ξ, Ο, Σ--Pandochæan Triad. 3. Τ, Φ, Χ--Thaustic Triad. 4. Ψ, F, Η--Æluristic Triad. Of these fifteen triads Kircher…”

◆Gospel of Philip | Section 1c

“And Jesus said, “Whoever will not eat my flesh and drink my blood has no life within him.” What does he mean? His flesh is the word and blood the holy spirit. Who has received these has food and drink and clothing. I condemn those who sa…”

◆Gospel of Philip | Section 1i

“His seed was Jesus, and the plant was the cross.” The tree of life in the middle of that garden of paradise is an olive tree, and from the olive tree comes chrism, and from that oil comes the resurrection. THE WORLD EATS BODIES The world e…”

◆Gospel of Philip | Section 1k

“If you become light, light will share you. If you are of those from above, one of those from above will rest in you. If you become a horse or a donkey or bull or dog or sheep or another animal that is wild or tame, then neither a person n…”

◆Gospel of Philip | Section 1m

“If we know the truth, we shall find the fruits of the truth within us. If we join it, it will fulfill us. THE STRONG AND WEAK, THE MANIFEST AND HIDDEN Now we have the manifest things of creation. We say, “The strong are they who are held…”

◆Gospel of Thomas | Logion 11

“Jesus said, "This heaven will pass away, and the one above it will pass away. The dead are not alive, and the living will not die. In the days when you consumed what is dead, you made it what is alive. When you come to dwell in the light, w…”

◆Gospel of Thomas | Logion 15

“Jesus said, "When you see one who was not born of woman, prostrate yourselves on your faces and worship him. That one is your father."…”

◆Gospel of Thomas | Logion 50

“Jesus said, "If they say to you, 'Where did you come from?', say to them, 'We came from the light, the place where the light came into being on its own accord and established itself and became manifest through their image.' If they say to y…”

◆Gospel of Thomas | Logion 61

“Jesus said, "Two will rest on a bed: the one will die, and the other will live." Salome said, "Who are you, man, that you ... have come up on my couch and eaten from my table?" Jesus said to her, "I am he who exists from the undivided. I wa…”

◆Orphic Hymns | Front Matter, p. 4 (part 4)

“Hence according to his theology there are two worlds, the intelligible and the sensible. Hence too his three demiurgic principles: Jovial, Dionysiacal, and Adonical, Δΐι#, ( ) Διονυσιακὴ, Αδωναϊκὴ, from whence many orders and differences o…”

◆Orphic Hymns | Front Matter, p. 4 (part 8)

“43 these unnatural habits." As, therefore, it is not wonderful that the greatest part of those who inhabit a pestiferous region, should languish and decline, but that a very few should preserve their natural strength; so we ought not to won…”

◆Orphic Hymns | Front Matter, p. 4 (part 10)

“For in this solemnity grass is carried about, enwrapping the kernels of olives, attended with figs, all kinds of pulse, oaken boughs or acorns, the fruit of the strawberry, wheat, and barley, a mass of dried figs, cakes composed from the me…”

◆Orphic Hymns | Front Matter, p. 4 (part 11)

“As the husbandman, therefore, performs sacred rites, by presenting handfuls of pulse and fruits, so ought we to sacrifice our purest thoughts, and other goods of the soul, thanking the divinities for the sublime contemplations they afford u…”

◆Orphic Hymns | Front Matter, p. 4 (part 12)

“But to the other Gods, to the world, and to the erratic and fixed stars, composed from body and soul, and to the visible divinities, testimonials of gratitude are to be offered by sacrificing with inanimate substances. After these there re…”

◆Orphic Hymns | Front Matter, p. 4 (part 14)

“If this is the case, do not they who deny that prayers are to be offered to the Gods, and who prevent their souls from being united with the divinities, that is with beings more excellent than themselves, appear similar to those who are dep…”

◆Orphic Hymns | Front Matter, p. 5 (part 3)

“Again, Vesta, in the Orphic hymns, is the same with the mother of the Gods; and the mother of the Gods is celebrated as "always governing rivers and every sea m ; which perfectly agrees with the appellations given both to Love and Proteus.…”

◆Orphic Hymns | Hymn II. NIGHT

“II. TO NIGHT. The FUMIGATION with TORCHES. NIGHT, parent goddess, source of sweet repose, From whom at first both Gods and men arose, Hear, blessed Venus, deck'd with starry light, 3 In sleep's deep silence dwelling Ebon night! Dreams and s…”

◆Agrippa: The Philosophy of Natural Magic, Chapter I — How Magicians Collect Virtues from the Three-Fold World is Declared in these Three Books | Chapter I, Section 1

“CHAPTER I. How Magicians Collect Virtues from the Three-Fold World is Declared in these Three Books . Seeing there is a Three-fold World—Elementary, Celestial and Intellectual—and every inferior is governed by its superior, and receiveth th…”

◆Agrippa: The Philosophy of Natural Magic, Chapter IV — Of a Three-Fold Consideration of the Elements | Chapter IV, Section 1

“CHAPTER IV. Of a Three-Fold Consideration of the Elements . There are, then, as we have said, four Elements, without the perfect knowledge whereof we can effect nothing in Magic. Now each of them is three-fold, that so the number of four ma…”

◆Agrippa: The Philosophy of Natural Magic, Chapter V — Of the Wonderful Natures of Fire and Earth | Chapter V, Section 1a

“CHAPTER V. Of the Wonderful Natures of Fire and Earth . There are two things, saith Hermes, viz., Fire and Earth, which are sufficient for the operation of all wonderful things: the former is active, the latter passive. Fire, as saith Di…”

◆Agrippa: The Philosophy of Natural Magic, Chapter VII — Of the Kinds of Compounds, what Relation They Stand in to the Elements, and What Relation There Is Betwixt the Elements Themselves and the Soul, Senses and Dispositions of Men | Chapter VII, Section 1a

“CHAPTER VII. Of the Kinds of Compounds, what Relation They Stand in to the Elements, and What Relation There Is Betwixt the Elements Themselves and the Soul, Senses and Dispositions of Men . Next after the four simple Elements follow the…”

◆Agrippa: The Philosophy of Natural Magic, Chapter VIII — How the Elements Are in the Heavens, in Stars, in Devils, in Angels, and lastly in God Himself | Chapter VIII, Section 1a

“CHAPTER VIII. How the Elements Are in the Heavens, in Stars, in Devils, in Angels, and lastly in God Himself . It is the unanimous consent of all Platonists, that as in the original and exemplary World, all things are in all; so also in t…”

◆Agrippa: The Philosophy of Natural Magic, Chapter VIII — How the Elements Are in the Heavens, in Stars, in Devils, in Angels, and lastly in God Himself | Chapter VIII, Section 1b

“Also according to orders of Angels, some are fiery, as Seraphim, and Authorities and Powers; earthy, as Cherubim; watery, as Thrones and Archangels; airy, as Dominions and Principalities. Do we not also read of the original maker of all th…”

◆Agrippa: The Philosophy of Natural Magic, Chapter XI — How Occult Virtues are Infused into the Several Kinds of Things by Ideas Through the Help of the Soul of the World, And Rays of the Stars; and what Things Abound Most with this Virtue | Chapter XI, Section 1

“CHAPTER XI. How Occult Virtues are Infused into the Several Kinds of Things by Ideas Through the Help of the Soul of the World, And Rays of the Stars; and what Things Abound Most with this Virtue . Platonists say that all inferior bodies ar…”

◆Agrippa: The Philosophy of Natural Magic, Chapter XII — How It Is That Particular Virtues Are Infused into Particular Individuals, even of the Same Species | Chapter XII, Section 1

“CHAPTER XII. How It Is That Particular Virtues Are Infused into Particular Individuals, even of the Same Species . There are also in many individuals, or particular things, peculiar gifts, as wonderful as in the species and these also are f…”

◆The Book of Enoch (1 Enoch, Charles translation) | Chapter XIV (part 2)

“None of the angels could enter and could behold His face by reason of the magnificence and glory and no flesh could behold Him. 22. The flaming fire was round about Him, and a great fire stood before Him, and none around could draw nigh H…”

◆The Kabbalah Unveiled | Introduction, Section 1i

“unless he reads carefully what I have said in the Introduction concerning the Literal Qabalah under the heads of Notariqon and Temurah, to which therefore I refer him. Any four-lettered name is of course a tetragrammaton, but this term is…”

◆The Kabbalah Unveiled | Introduction, Section 1j

“(Here a reason is adduced from the proposed text itself, showing how the last letter of this form of the Tetragrammaton, namely, I, Yod , may be said to symbolize the bride, since p. 57 [paragraph continues] God himself might behold in tha…”

◆The Kabbalah Unveiled | Introduction, Section 1o

“And the mother is illuminated (that is, in the second part of the ordinary averse Tetragrammaton, which consists of the letters IH, to the letter I, Yod , which hath the signification of the father, is added the letter H, He , which is the…”

◆Sefer Yetzirah (The Book of Formation) | Section 1a

“Wescott, tr. (1887) CHAPTER 1 1. In two and thirty most occult and wonderful paths of wisdom did JAH the Lord of Hosts engrave his name: God of the armies of Israel, ever-living God, merciful and gracious, sublime, dwelling on high, who i…”

◆Sefer Yetzirah (The Book of Formation) | Section 1b

“4.) 11. He selected three letters from the simple ones, and sealed them as forming his great Name, I H V and he sealed the universe in six directions. Five.- He looked above, and sealed the height, with I H V. Six.- He looked below, and…”

◇The Book of Concealed Mystery (Siphra Dtzenioutha) | 1a

“CHAPTER V. 1. (It is written) Isa. i. 4: "Woe unto the sinful nation, unto the people heavy with iniquity, unto the seed of evildoers, &c." (Here the author of the "Siphra Dtzenioutha" reasoneth concerning the small word HVI, "woe," whi…”

◇The Book of Concealed Mystery (Siphra Dtzenioutha) | 1b

“If the reader turn to the introduction, to the Table showing the Sephiroth arranged in three pillars, he will see that Malkuth is, as it were, the antithesis of Kether; and hence it is said that "Malkuth is Kether after another manner." And…”

◆Corpus Hermeticum 3: The Sacred Sermon | Section 1

“The Sacred Sermon 1. The Glory of all things is God, Godhead and Godly Nature. Source of the things that are is God, who is both Mind and Nature - yea Matter, the Wisdom that reveals all things. Source [too] is Godhead - yea Nature, Energy,…”

◆Corpus Hermeticum 5: The Discourse of Hermes to Asclepius | Section 1c

“And for this cause hath He all names, in that they are one Father's. And for this cause hath He Himself no nome, in that He's Father of [them] all. Who, then, may sing Thee praise of Thee, or [praise] to Thee? Whither, again, am I to tur…”

◆Corpus Hermeticum 6: The All-Father | Section 1a

“In God Alone Is Good And Elsewhere Nowhere <This sermon on the nature of the Good, like To Asclepius (CH II), relies heavily on the technical language of classical Greek philosophy - a point which some of Mead's translations tend to obscure…”

◆Corpus Hermeticum 8: The Eight Sphere | Section 1a

“That No One of Existing Things doth Perish, but Men in Error Speak of Their Changes as Destructions and as Deaths <The idea of cyclic change central to CH III, "The Sacred Sermon", also takes center stage here. A current of ancient specula…”

◆Corpus Hermeticum 9: The Decalogue | Section 1b

“But I return once more to the Discourse (Logos) on Sense. That sense doth share with thought in man, doth constitute him man. But 'tis not [every] man, as I have said, who benefits by thought; for this man is material, that other one subs…”

◆Corpus Hermeticum 10: The Sermon on the Mount | Section 1a

“The Key <This longer tractate presents itself explicitly as a summary or abridgement of the General Sermons (CH II-IX), and discusses the Hermetic view of knowledge and its role in the lives and afterlives of human beings. The attentive re…”

◆Corpus Hermeticum 12: The Prayer | Section 1b

“But for the moment, [Tat,] let be the teaching as to vice and Fate, for we have spoken of these things in other [of our sermons]; but now our teaching (logos) is about the Mind: - what Mind can do, and how it is [so] different - in men bein…”

◆Corpus Hermeticum 12: The Prayer | Section 1e

“Observe this too, my son; that each one of the other lives inhabiteth one portion of the Cosmos - aquatic creatures water, terrene earth, and aery creatures air; while man doth use all these - earth, water air [and] fire; he seeth Heaven, t…”

◆The Egyptian Book of the Dead (Papyrus of Ani) | Chapter 8 (part 5)

“The opinion of Tiele is that the religion of Egypt was from the beginning polytheistic, but that it developed in two opposite directions: in the one direction gods were multiplied by the addition of local gods, and in the other the Egyptian…”

◆The Egyptian Book of the Dead (Papyrus of Ani) | Chapter 8 (part 6)

“, the litany from the tomb of Seti I., published by Naville, La Litanie du Soleil , Leipzig, 1875, p. 13 ff. 2. E.g. , Hymn to Amen-Ra, translated by Goodwin from papyrus No. 17, now preserved in the Gizeh Museum (see Les Papyrus Égypt…”

◆The Egyptian Book of the Dead (Papyrus of Ani) | Chapter 8 (part 7)

“The sacred Form, beloved, terrible and mighty in his two risings (?), the lord of space, the mighty one of the form of Khepera, who came into existence through Khepera, the lord of the form of Khepera; when he came into being nothing existe…”

◆The Egyptian Book of the Dead (Papyrus of Ani) | Chapter 8 (part 9)

“The priests of Annu at a very early period grouped together the nine greatest gods of Egypt, forming what is called the paut neteru or "company of the gods," or as it is written in the pyramid texts, paut aat , "the great company of gods";…”

◆The Egyptian Book of the Dead (Papyrus of Ani) | Chapter 8 (part 10)

“The passage reads:-- mes Pepi pen au atf Tem an xepert pet an Gave birth to Pepi this father Tmu [when] not was created heaven, not xepert ta an xepert reth an mest neteru an xepert met was created earth, not were created men, not were born…”

◆The Egyptian Book of the Dead (Papyrus of Ani) | Chapter 10 (part 4)

“In his daily course he vanquished night and darkness, and mist and cloud disappeared from before his rays; subsequently the Egyptians invented the moral conception of the sun, representing the victory of right over wrong and of truth over f…”

◆The Egyptian Book of the Dead (Papyrus of Ani) | Chapter 14 (part 2)

“The numbers in parentheses indicate the lines of the papyrus. 2. The god Khepera is usually represented with a beetle for a head; and the scarab, or beetle, was sacred to him. The name means "to become, to turn, to roll," and the abstrac…”

◆The Egyptian Book of the Dead (Papyrus of Ani) | Chapter 15 (part 2)

“Erpat is a very ancient word, and was probably in use in Egypt before suten , the common word for "king." For a discussion on this point see Maspero, Un Manuel de Hiérarchie Égyptienne , p. 15 ff.; Brugsch, Aegyptologie , p. 210. 2 Osiri…”

◆Plato: Phaedrus | Section 1o

“Zeus, the mighty lord, holding the reins of a winged chariot, leads the way in heaven, ordering all and taking care of all; and there follows him the array of gods and demigods, marshalled in eleven bands; Hestia alone abides at home in the…”

◆Plato: Phaedrus | Section 1p

“And there is a law of Destiny, that the soul which attains any vision of truth in company with a god is preserved from harm until the next period, and if attaining always is always unharmed. But when she is unable to follow, and fails to b…”

◆Plato: Phaedrus | Section 1u

“And the beloved when he has received him into communion and intimacy, is quite amazed at the good-will of the lover; he recognises that the inspired friend is worth all other friends or kinsmen; they have nothing of friendship in them worth…”

◆Plato: Republic | Section 1b

“You mean the sun, as you and all mankind say. May not the relation of sight to this deity be described as follows? How? Neither sight nor the eye in which sight resides is the sun? No. Yet of all the organs of sense the eye is the most…”

◆Plato: Republic | Section 1d

“And when I speak of the other division of the intelligible, you will understand me to speak of that other sort of knowledge which reason herself attains by the power of dialectic, using the hypotheses not as first principles, but only as hy…”

◆Plato: Timaeus | Section 1k

“Such was the whole plan of the eternal God about the god that was to be, to whom for this reason he gave a body, smooth and even, having a surface in every direction equidistant from the centre, a body entire and perfect, and formed out of…”

◆Plato: Timaeus | Section 1l

“This entire compound he divided lengthways into two parts, which he joined to one another at the centre like the letter X, and bent them into a circular form, connecting them with themselves and each other at the point opposite to their ori…”

◆Plato: Timaeus | Section 1m

“They are all parts of time, and the past and future are created species of time, which we unconsciously but wrongly transfer to the eternal essence; for we say that he "was," he "is," he "will be," but the truth is that "is" alone is proper…”

◆Tao Te Ching | Chapter 40

“The movement of the Tao By contraries proceeds; And weakness marks the course Of Tao's mighty deeds. All things under heaven sprang from It as existing (and named); that existence sprang from It as non-existent (and not named).…”

◆Tao Te Ching | Chapter 51

“All things are produced by the Tao, and nourished by its outflowing operation. They receive their forms according to the nature of each, and are completed according to the circumstances of their condition. Therefore all things without excep…”

◇Tao Te Ching | Chapter 6

“The valley spirit dies not, aye the same; The female mystery thus do we name. Its gate, from which at first they issued forth, Is called the root from which grew heaven and earth. Long and unbroken does its power remain, Used gently, and wi…”

◇Tao Te Ching | Chapter 25

“There was something undefined and complete, coming into existence before Heaven and Earth. How still it was and formless, standing alone, and undergoing no change, reaching everywhere and in no danger (of being exhausted)! It may be regarde…”

◇Tao Te Ching | Chapter 38

“(Those who) possessed in highest degree the attributes (of the Tao) did not (seek) to show them, and therefore they possessed them (in fullest measure). (Those who) possessed in a lower degree those attributes (sought how) not to lose them,…”

◇Tao Te Ching | Chapter 39

“The things which from of old have got the One (the Tao) are-- Heaven which by it is bright and pure; Earth rendered thereby firm and sure; Spirits with powers by it supplied; Valleys kept full throughout their void All creatures which throu…”

◇Tao Te Ching | Chapter 42

“The Tao produced One; One produced Two; Two produced Three; Three produced All things. All things leave behind them the Obscurity (out of which they have come), and go forward to embrace the Brightness (into which they have emerged), while…”

◇The Writings of Chuang Tzu (Inner Chapters) | Book 128 (part 11)

“243:4 Men at a very early time came to believe in the existence of their spirits after death, and in the existence of a Supreme Ruler or God. It vas to the Tâo that those concepts were owing. 243:5 The primal ether out of which all things…”

◆The Kalevala | Rune IXa

“OF IRON. Wainamoinen, thus encouraged, Quickly rises in his snow-sledge, Asking no one for assistance, Straightway hastens to the cottage, Takes a seat within the dwelling. Come two maids with silver pitchers, Bringing also golden goblets…”

◆The Kalevala | Rune XVf

“Now the mother speaks as follows: "Where may I procure the balsam, Where the drops of magic honey, To anoint my son and hero, Thus to heal my Lemminkainen, That again his month may open, May again begin his singing, Speak again in words of…”

◆The Kalevala | Rune Le

“"O, thou guiding-star of Northland, Star of hope, by God created, Dost thou know and wilt thou tell me Where my darling child has wandered, Where my holy babe lies hidden?" Thus the star of Northland answers: "If I knew, I would not tell th…”

◆Gnostic John the Baptizer — Portents at John's Birth | Section 8

“[What follows is presumably the beginning of the Letter.] Gnosis of Life 8 who is far from the height [writes]: "I have come unto thee, O Soul, whom Life has sent into this world. In robes of the Eight 9 went I into the world. I went in t…”

◆The Masnavi, Book I (Rumi) | STORY Vd

“But the light that lights the heart is the Light of God, Which is distinct from the light of reason and sense. At night there is no light, and colors are not seen; Hence we know what light is by its opposite, darkness. At night no colors…”