Select Works of Plotinus · 486 of 752 · tr. Thomas Taylor
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 it is seen and now not seen. We must not run after it, but fit ourselves for the vision and then wait tranquilly for its appearance, as the eye waits on the rising of the sun, which in its own time appears above the horizon- out of the ocean, as the poets say- and gives itself to our sight. This Principle, of which the sun is an image, where has it its dawning, what horizon does it surmount to appear? It stands immediately above the contemplating Intellect which has held itself at rest towards the vision, looking to nothing else than the good and beautiful, setting its entire being to that in a perfect surrender, and now tranquilly filled with power and taking a new beauty to itself, gleaming in the light of that presence. This advent, still, is not by expectation: it is a coming without approach; the vision is not of something that must enter but of something present before all else, before the Intellect itself made any movement. Yet it is the Intellect that must move, to come and to go- going because it has not known where it should stay and where that presence stays, the nowhere contained. And if the Intellect, too, could hold itself in that nowhere- not that it is ever in place; it too is uncontained, utterly unplaced- it would remain for ever in the vision of its prior, or, indeed, not in vision but in identity, all duality annulled. But it is Intellect [having a sphere of its own] and, when it is to see, it must see by that in it which is not Intellect [by its divinest power]. No doubt it is wonderful that The First should thus be present without any coming, and that, while it is nowhere, nowhere is it not; but wonderful though this be in itself, the contrary would be more wonderful to those who know. Of course neither this contrary nor the wonder at it can be entertained. But we must explain:
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.
The mention of the 'Intellectual-Principle' presupposes its position within a broader metaphysical structure of divine principles.
Augustinian and Plotinian doctrine that evil has no positive being of its own but is a lack, distortion, or absence of the good — denying ontological dualism while preserving moral seriousness.
The passage explicitly contrasts 'authentic' truth with 'falsehood' and 'phantasms,' defining the latter as a lack of containing the authentic reality.
Salvation through direct experiential knowledge of the divine nature, not through faith, ritual, or moral works alone.
[auto] The text distinguishes between possessing authentic truth internally versus holding only external images or phantasms, defining a mode of direct intellectual knowledge.
The claim that the divine realm is present inside the individual, accessible without external mediation.
[auto] The argument emphasizes that the authentic objects of intellection must be contained within the Intellectual-Principle rather than existing outside it.
The doctrine that all existence is ultimately one substance or one divine reality; non-duality as a theological claim.
[auto] The passage argues that true knowledge requires the Intellectual-Principle to contain the objects it knows, implying a fundamental unity between knower and known.