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Select Works of Plotinus · 329 of 752 · tr. Thomas Taylor

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 say of the undivine, unreal]. Deny this character of the soul and at once we refuse it perception, consciousness, any power of comparison, almost any understanding. Yet these powers of which, embodied it becomes the source cannot be absent from its own nature. On the contrary; it possesses certain activities to be expressed in various functions whose accomplishment demands bodily organs; at its entry it brings with it [as vested in itself alone] the powers necessary for some of these functions, while in the case of others it brings the very activities themselves. Memory, in point of fact, is impeded by the body: even as things are, addition often brings forgetfulness; with thinning and dearing away, memory will often revive. The soul is a stability; the shifting and fleeting thing which body is can be a cause only of its forgetting not of its remembering- Lethe stream may be understood in this sense- and memory is a fact of the soul.
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Themes
Body As Obstacleanthropology

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

[auto] The text states the soul cannot remain in this world as there is no natural recipient for it, implying the material realm is unsuitable for the soul's nature.

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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.

References to spheres to which elements belong imply a structured hierarchy of existence beyond the material world.

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Funerary Navigationpraxis

Texts and rituals guiding the soul through death.

The passage serves as a philosophical guide regarding the destination and fate of the soul immediately following death.

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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.

The 'divine law' described as ineluctable and carrying out doom functions as an ordering principle governing the universe.

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Paradox As Teachingethics

Using apparent contradiction, reversal, or riddle to destabilise ordinary understanding and induce insight.

[auto] The passage presents the paradox that the soul is brought to a lot it never chose through its own self-chosen movement and errors.

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Return To Sourcesoteriology

The soul's journey back to its divine origin, reversing the fall into matter through stages of purification or illumination.

The soul seeks a 'natural recipient' or 'fit place,' implying a journey back to where it belongs naturally.

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Soul Migrationcosmology

The transmigration of the soul across lives.

[auto] The passage centrally addresses the question of where the soul goes after leaving the body and describes its movement to a sphere based on its condition.

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