Select Works of Plotinus · 210 of 752 · tr. Thomas Taylor

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, but an act conflicting with the Providence of medicine.

Themes

◆Divine Simplicitytheology

The doctrine that God has no parts, divisions, or composite attributes; pure undivided being.

It states that the greater and prior principle suffers no diminution of its own nature despite the fall of the lesser.

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◆Monadcosmology

The absolutely simple, undivided first principle from which all multiplicity and existence flows.

The text acknowledges 'Firsts' as the source from which Secondaries and Tertiaries derive.

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◇Body As Obstacleanthropology

The material body viewed as a prison, tomb, or source of error that hinders spiritual knowledge and return.

[auto] Matter is associated with degradation and the loss of the soul's nature, implying it hinders the higher state.

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◇Emanation Hierarchycosmology

A chain of divine beings or principles flowing downward from a single transcendent source (the One or the Father), each level less perfect than the one above.

[auto] The passage describes a hierarchy of Firsts, Secondaries, and Tertiaries where lower levels are inferior to their priors.

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◇Logoscosmology

The divine reason, word, or ordering principle through which the universe was created; mediates between the transcendent God and the material world.

[auto] The text frequently references the 'Reason-Principle' as a distinct entity that transforms in connection with matter.

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◇Soul Migrationcosmology

The transmigration of the soul across lives.

[auto] The passage explicitly discusses transmigration where a human soul becomes an ox-soul through degradation.

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◇Tripartite Soulanthropology

Division of the human being into three principles: spirit (pneuma), soul (psyche), and body/matter (hyle or soma).

[auto] The text distinguishes between the Soul, the Reason-Principle, and Matter as distinct components of a being.

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Related passages · 2 parallels

◆christian_mysticism|The Life and Doctrines of Jacob Boehme|Chapter 9 (part 4)

“9.) "After the fall man with his interior body lived only in time; the precious gold of heavenly corporeity, which should tincture, penetrate and bless the external body, had lost its colour." 3 ( Signature , v. 8.) Moreover, the powers of…”

Both passages discuss the concept of the soul's degradation or fall from a higher state to a lower, animalistic state. They explore the transformation of the soul's nature and the consequences of this fall, though they come from different mystical traditions.

◆christian_mysticism|The Life and Doctrines of Jacob Boehme|Chapter 9 (part 7)

“Even in its best aspect the performance is disgusting before the sanctity of that which is divine, it having been caused by sin in consequence of primordial man's degradation, but being patiently submitted to by that which is divine in man,…”

Both passages discuss the concept of the soul's degradation and transformation, linking it to the idea of a fall from a higher state to a lower one. They explore the consequences of this fall and the nature of the soul's existence in its degraded state, though they do so within different metaphysical frameworks.