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
43. The divinity[350] is everywhere because it is nowhere. So also with
intelligence and the soul. But it is in relation to all beings that it
surpasses, that the divinity is everywhere and nowhere; its presence
and its absence depend entirely on its nature and its will.[351]
Intelligence is in the divinity, but it is only in relation to the
things that are subordinated to it, that intelligence is everywhere and
nowhere (?). The body is within the soul and in divinity. All things
that possess or do not possess existence proceed from divinity, and are
within divinity; but the divinity is none of them, nor in any of them.
If the divinity were only present everywhere, it would be all things,
and in all things; but, on the other hand, it is nowhere; everything,
therefore, is begotten in it and by it, because it is everywhere, but
nothing becomes confused with it, because it is nowhere. Likewise if
intelligence be the principle of the souls and of the things that come
after the souls, it is because it is everywhere and nowhere; because
it is neither soul, nor any of the things that come after the soul,
nor in any of them; it is because it is not only everywhere, but also
nowhere in respect to the beings that are inferior to it. Similarly
the soul is neither a body, nor in the body, but is only the cause of
the body, because she is simultaneously everywhere and nowhere in the
body. So there is procession in the universe (from what is everywhere
and nowhere), down to what can neither simultaneously be everywhere
and nowhere, and which limits itself to participating in this double
property.
THE HUMAN SOUL IS UNITED TO UNIVERSAL BEING BY ITS NATURE.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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