Plotinos: Complete Works, v. 4: In Chronological Order, Grouped in Four PeriodsPlotinus
Philosophy
Plotinos: Complete Works, v. 4: In Chronological Order, Grouped in Four Periods
Plotinus
Plotinus
The distinction of past and future suits its action. When passing from
one object to another, the soul changes thoughts; not indeed that
the former perish, or that the latter suddenly issue from some other
source; but the former, while seeming to have disappeared, remain in
the soul; and the latter, while seeming to come from somewhere else, do
not really do so, but are born from within the soul, which moves only
from one object to another, and which successively directs her gaze
from one to another part of what she possesses. She resembles a spring
which, instead of flowing outside, flows back into itself in a circle.
It is this (circular) movement of the soul that constitutes time, just
as the permanence of intelligence in itself constitutes (aeonial)
eternity. Intelligence is not separated from eternity, any more than
the soul is from time. Intelligence and eternity form but a single
hypostatic form of existence. That which moves simulates eternity by
the indefinite perpetuity of its movement, and that which remains
immovable, simulates time by seeming to multiply its continual present,
in the measure that time passes. That is why some have believed that
time manifested in rest as well as in movement, and that eternity was
no more than the infinity of time. To each of these two (different
things) the attributes of the other were mistakenly attributed. The
reason of this is that anything that ever persists in an identical
movement gives a good illustration of eternity by the continuousness of
its movement; while that which persists in an identical actualization
represents time by the permanence of its actualization. Besides, in
sense-objects, duration differs according to each of them. There is a
difference between the duration of the course of the sun, and that of
the moon, as well as that of Venus, and so on. There is a difference
between the solar year, and the year of each of these stars. Different,
further, is the year that embraces all the other years, and which
conforms to the movement of the soul, according to which the stars
regulate their movements. As the movement of the soul differs from the
movement of the stars, so also does its time differ from that of the
stars; for the divisions of this latter kind of time correspond to
the spaces travelled by each star, and by its successive passages in
different places.
INTELLIGENCE IS MANIFOLD.
33. (10-12) Intelligence is not the principle of all things; for it
is manifold. Now the manifold presupposes the One. Evidently, it is
intelligence that is manifold; the intelligibles that it thinks do
not form unity, but manifoldness, and they are identical therewith.
Therefore, since intelligence and the intelligible entities are
identical, and as the intelligible entities form a manifoldness,
intelligence itself is manifold.
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