Plotinos: Complete Works, v. 1: In Chronological Order, Grouped in Four PeriodsPlotinus
Philosophy
Plotinos: Complete Works, v. 1: In Chronological Order, Grouped in Four Periods
Plotinus
Plotinus
7. The scientific notions that the soul forms of sense-objects, by
discursive reason, and which should rather be called opinions,[132]
are posterior to the objects (they deal with); and consequently,
are no more than images of them. But true scientific notions
received from intelligence by discursive reasons do not contain any
sense-conceptions. So far as they are scientific notions, they are
the very things of which they are the conceptions; they reveal the
intimate union of intelligence and thought. Interior Intelligence,
which consists of the primary (natures) possesses itself intimately,
resides within itself since all eternity, and is an actualization. It
does not direct its glances outside of itself, because it possesses
everything within itself; it does not acquire, and does not reason to
discover things that may not be present to them. Those are operations
characteristic of the soul. Intelligence, remaining fixed within
itself, is all things simultaneously. Nevertheless, it is not thought
which makes each of them subsist; it is only because intelligence
thought the divinity or movement, for instance, that the divinity
or movement exists.[133] When we say that thoughts are forms, we
are mistaken if thereby we mean that the intelligible exists only
because Intelligence thinks it. On the contrary, it is only because
the intelligible exists, that Intelligence can think. Otherwise, how
would Intelligence come to think the intelligible? It cannot meet the
intelligible by chance, nor waste itself in fruitless efforts.
THOUGHT IS THE FORM, SHAPE THE ACTUALIZATION OF THE BEING.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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