Plotinos: Complete Works, v. 2: In Chronological Order, Grouped in Four PeriodsPlotinus
Philosophy
Plotinos: Complete Works, v. 2: In Chronological Order, Grouped in Four Periods
Plotinus
Plotinus
Will they not even remember that they performed their revolution
yesterday, or the year before, that they lived yesterday, and since
have lived a long while? They still live continuously; now, what
remains the same, is one. To try to distinguish yesterday and last year
in the movement of the stars, is to do like a man who would divide into
several parts the movement which forms one step, who would wish to
reduce unity to multiplicity. Indeed, the movement of the stars is one,
although it is by us subjected to a measure, as if it were multiple;
so we count the days different one from the other because the nights
separate them from each other. But since there is but one single day in
the heavens, how could one count several? How could there be a "last
year"?
BUT WHY COULD THE STAR-SOULS NOT BE CONSCIOUS OF OUR CHANGES?
It may be objected that the space transversed (by planets) is not a
unity, but contains several parts, as notably in the zodiac. Why then
could the celestial Soul not say, "I have passed this part, I have now
arrived at another"? Besides, if the star-souls consider human things,
how would they not see that there are changes here below, that the
men existing to-day have succeeded others? If so, they must know that
other men have already existed, that there have been other facts. They
therefore possess memory.
MANY NEW THINGS ARE UNNOTICED; NOTHING FORCES THE PERCEPTION OF NEW
THINGS.
8. It is not necessary to remember all one sees, nor by imagination to
represent to oneself all the things that follow fortuitously. Besides,
when the mind possesses a knowledge and a clear conception of certain
objects which later come to offer themselves to his senses, nothing
forces him to abandon the knowledge he has acquired by intelligence, to
look at the particular sense-object which is in front of him, unless he
be charged to administer some of the particular things contained in the
notion of the all.
MEMORY IS NOT COMPULSORY.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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