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
withdraw, keep some trace of them; but that which is impassible retains
nothing; for instance, the air, when penetrated by the light, retains
none of it when it disappears. That that which has no magnitude can
become great is not any more surprising than that which has no heat
can become hot. Indeed, for matter to be matter is something entirely
different from its being magnitude; magnitude is as immaterial as
figure. Of matter such as it really is we should say that it is all
things by participation. Now magnitude forms part of what we call all
things. As the bodies are composite, magnitude is there among the
other qualities, without however being determinate therein. Indeed,
the "reason" of the body also contains magnitude.[80] On the contrary,
matter does not even contain indeterminate magnitude, because it is not
a body.
MAGNITUDE IS AN IMAGE FORMED BY THE UNIVERSAL REFLECTION OF UNIVERSAL
BEINGS.
17. Neither is matter magnitude itself; for magnitude is a form, and
not a residence; it exists by itself[81] (for matter cannot even
appropriate the images of beings). Not even in this respect, therefore,
is matter magnitude. But as that which exists in intelligence or in
the soul desired to acquire magnitude, it imparted to the things that
desired to imitate magnitude by their aspiration or movement, the power
to impress on some other object a modification analogous to their
own. Thus magnitude, by developing in the procession of imagination,
dragged along with itself the smallness of matter, made it seem large
by extending it along with itself, without becoming filled by that
extension. The magnitude of matter is a false magnitude, since matter
does not by itself possess magnitude, and by extending itself along
with magnitude, has shared the extension of the latter. Indeed as all
intelligible beings are reflected, either in other things in general,
or in one of them in particular, as each of them was large, the
totality also is, in this manner, great (?). Thus the magnitude of each
reason constituted a particular magnitude, as, for instance, a horse,
or some other being.[82] The image formed by the universal reflection
of intelligible beings became a magnitude, because it was illuminated
by magnitude itself. Every part of it became a special magnitude; and
all things together seemed great by virtue of the universal form to
which magnitude belongs. Thus occurred the extension of each thing
towards each of the others, and towards their totality. The amount of
this extension in form and in mass necessarily depended on the power,
that transformed what in reality was nothing to an appearance of being
all things. In the same manner color, that arose out of what is not
color, and quality, that arose out of what is not quality, here below
were referred to by the same name as the intelligible entities (of
which they are the images). The case is similar for magnitude, which
arose out of that which has none, or at least out of that magnitude
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