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
7. It may however be objected that if the soul produce the nature of a
brute only when she is depraved and degraded, she was not originally
destined to produce an ox or a horse; then the ("seminal) reason" of
the horse, as well as the horse itself, will be contrary to the nature
(of the soul). No: they are inferior to her nature, but they are not
contrary to her. From her very origin, the soul was (potentially) the
("seminal) reason" of a horse or a dog. When permitted, the soul which
was to beget an animal, produces something better; when hindered, she
(only) produces what accords with the circumstances. She resembles the
artists who, knowing how to produce several figures, create either
the one they have received the order to create, or the one that is
most suited to the material at hand. What hinders the (natural and
generative) power of the universal Soul, in her quality of universal
("seminal) Reason," from sketching out the outlines of the body, before
the soul powers (or, individual souls) should descend from her into
matter? What hinders this sketch from being a kind of preliminary
illumination of matter? What would hinder the individual soul from
finishing (fashioning the body sketched by the universal Soul),
following the lines already traced, and organizing the members pictured
by them, and becoming that which she approached by giving herself some
particular figure, just as, in a choric ballet, the dancer confines
himself to the part assigned to him?
THE SENSE-WORLD AND THE INTELLIGIBLE WORLD ARE CONNECTED BY THE
MANIFOLD TRIPLE NATURE OF MAN.
Such considerations have been arrived at merely as result of
scrutiny of the consequences of the principles laid down. Our
purpose was to discover how sensibility occurs in the man himself,
without intelligible things falling into generation. We recognized
and demonstrated that intelligible things do not incline towards
sense-things, but that, on the contrary, it is the latter that aspire
and rise to the former, and imitate them; that the sense-man derives
from the intellectual man the power of contemplating intelligible
entities, though the sense-man remain united to sense-things, as the
intellectual man remains united to the intelligible entities. Indeed,
intelligible things are in some respects sensual; and we may call them
such because (ideally) they are Bodies, but they are perceived in a
manner different from bodies. Likewise, our sensations are less clear
than the perception which occurs in the intelligible world, and that
we also call Sensation, because it refers to Bodies (which exist on
high only in an ideal manner). Consequently, we call the man here below
sensual because he perceives less well things which themselves are less
good; that is, which are only images of intelligible things. We might
therefore say that sensations here below are obscure thoughts, and that
the Thoughts on high are distinct Sensations. Such are our views about
sensibility.
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