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
For us Wisdom also is a whole; it is common to all of us, because it
is not different in different places; it would, indeed, be ridiculous
for it to need existence in some locality. Besides, wisdom does not
resemble whiteness; for (whiteness is the quality of a body, while)
Wisdom does not at all belong to the body. If we really participate
in Wisdom, we necessarily aspire to some thing single and identical,
which exists in itself, as a whole, simultaneously. When we participate
in this Wisdom, we do not receive it in fragments, but entire; and
the Wisdom which you possess entire is not different from that which
I myself possess. We find an image of this unity of Wisdom in the
assemblies and meetings of men, where all those present seem to help in
making up a single Wisdom. It seems that each one, isolated from the
others, would be powerless to find wisdom; but when the same person
is in a meeting, where all the minds agree together, in applying
themselves to a single object, he would produce, or rather discover,
Wisdom. What indeed hinders different minds from being united within
one same and single Intelligence? Although Intelligence be common to
us and to other men, we do not notice this community. It is as if,
touching a single object with several fingers, one should later imagine
having touched several objects; or as if one had struck a single
chord of the lyre without seeing it (and thinking that one had struck
different chords).
BY THE INTELLIGIBLE PARTS OF THEIR BEING, ALL MEN SHARE THE SAME
INTELLIGIBLE.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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