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Select Works of Plotinus · 515 of 752 · tr. Thomas Taylor

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 concerns their first and their last; the sweet and the bitter of sense are their good and evil; they feel they have done all if they live along pursuing the one and barring the doors to the other. And those of them that pretend to reasoning have adopted this as their philosophy; they are like the heavier birds which have incorporated much from the earth and are so weighted down that they cannot fly high for all the wings Nature has given them. Others do indeed lift themselves a little above the earth; the better in their soul urges them from the pleasant to the nobler, but they are not of power to see the highest and so, in despair of any surer ground, they fall back in virtue's name, upon those actions and options of the lower from which they sought to escape. But there is a third order- those godlike men who, in their mightier power, in the keenness of their sight, have clear vision of the splendour above and rise to it from among the cloud and fog of earth and hold firmly to that other world, looking beyond all here, delighted in the place of reality, their native land, like a man returning after long wanderings to the pleasant ways of his own country.
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Themes
Apophatic Theologytheology

Describing the divine only by negation—God transcends all positive categories and concepts; the via negativa.

[auto] It states that the prior principle does not deign to be beautiful, negating attributes for the highest source.

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Divine Simplicitytheology

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

[auto] The passage centrally argues that primal Beauty is entire, lacks no parts, and cannot be possessed partially.

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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 text distinguishes between a 'prior' principle and the first manifestation of Form or Intellect.

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Monadcosmology

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

The reference to 'Its prior' implies the undivided first principle from which Beauty flows.

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Self Knowledgesoteriology

The recognition of one's own true divine nature as the primary path to liberation; 'know thyself' as soteriology.

The passage notes that lovers fail to recognize what is passing within them regarding the source of beauty.

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Spiritual Ascentpraxis

A staged journey of the soul upward through heavenly realms or levels of being toward the divine source.

It suggests tracing earthly beauty back to its divine source as a cognitive movement upward.

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Unity Of Beingtheology

The doctrine that all existence is ultimately one substance or one divine reality; non-duality as a theological claim.

[auto] It describes the primal principle as an omnipresent entirety where nothing is lacking or divided.

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Related passages · 7 parallels
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