Plotinos: Complete Works, v. 3: In Chronological Order, Grouped in Four PeriodsPlotinus
Philosophy
Plotinos: Complete Works, v. 3: In Chronological Order, Grouped in Four Periods
Plotinus
Plotinus
We have already decided that eternity is life characterized by rest,
identity, immutability and infinity (in intelligence). It is, further,
(admitted that) this our world is the image of the superior World
(of intelligence). We have also come to the conclusion that time
is the image of eternity. Consequently, corresponding to the Life
characteristic of Intelligence, this world must contain another life
which bears the same name, and which belongs to that power of the
universal Soul. Instead of the movement of Intelligence, we will have
the movement characteristic of a part of the soul (as the universal
Soul ceaselessly passes from one thought to another). Corresponding to
the permanence, identity, and immutability (of Intelligence), we will
have the mobility of a principle which ceaselessly passes from one
actualization to another. Corresponding to the unity and the absence
of all extension, we will have a mere image of unity, an image which
exists only by virtue of continuity. Corresponding to an infinity
already entirely present, we will have a progression towards infinity
which perpetually tends towards what follows. Corresponding to what
exists entirely at the same time, we will have what exists by parts,
and what will never exist entire at the same time. The soul's existence
will have to be ceaseless acquiring of existence; if it is to reveal an
image of the complete, universal and infinite existence of the soul;
that is the reason its existence is able to represent the intelligible
existence.
TIME IS AS INTERIOR TO THE SOUL AS ETERNITY IS TO EXISTENCE.
Time, therefore, is not something external to the soul, any more than
eternity is exterior to existence. It is neither a consequence nor a
result of it, any more than eternity is a consequence of existence. It
appears within the soul, is in her and with her, as eternity is in and
with existence.
TIME IS THE LENGTH OF THE LIFE OF THE UNIVERSAL SOUL.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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