Plotinos: Complete Works, v. 4: In Chronological Order, Grouped in Four Periods — John Shaqi
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
6. If then (the bad things do not conform to Providence), the diviners
and astrologers predict evil things only by the concatenation which
occurs between contraries, between form and matter, for instance, in a
composite being. Thus in contemplating the form and ("seminal) reason"
one is really contemplating the being which receives the form; for one
does not contemplate in the same way the intelligible animal, and the
composite animal; what one contemplates in the composite animal is the
("seminal) reason" which gives form to what is inferior. Therefore,
since the world is an animal, when one contemplates its occurrences,
one is really contemplating the causes that make them arise, the
Providence which presides over them, and whose action extends in an
orderly manner to all beings and events; that is, to all animals, their
actions and dispositions, which are dominated by Reason and mingled
with necessity. We thus contemplate what has been mingled since the
beginning, and what is still continually mingled. In this mixture,
consequently, it is impossible to distinguish Providence from what
conforms thereto, nor what derives from the substrate (that is, from
matter, and which, consequently, is deformed, and evil). This is not
a human task, not even of a man who might be wise or divine; such a
privilege can be ascribed only to God.
FACTS OF LIFE ARE LETTERS THAT CAN BE READ.
In fact, the function of the diviner is not to distinguish the cause,
but the fact; his art consists in reading the characters traced by
nature, and which invariably indicate the order and concatenation of
facts; or rather, in studying the signs of the universal movement,
which designate the character of each being before its revelation in
himself. All beings, in fact, exercise upon each other a reciprocal
influence, and concur together in the constitution and perpetuity of
the world.[92] To him who studies, analogy reveals the march of events,
because all kinds of divination are founded on its laws; for things
were not to depend on each other, but to have relations founded on
their resemblance.[93] This no doubt is that which[94] is meant by the
expression that "analogy embraces everything."
ANALOGY DEMANDED BY THE UNITY OF GOD.
Now, what is this analogy? It is a relation between the worse and the
worse, the better and the better, one eye and the other, one foot and
the other, virtue and justice, vice and injustice. The analogy which
reigns in the universe is then that which makes divination possible.
The influence which one being exercises on another conforms to the
laws of influence which the members of the universal Organism must
exercise upon each other. The one does not produce the other; for all
are generated together; but each is affected according to its nature,
each in its own manner. This constitutes the unity of the Reason of the
universe.
EVIL IS INSEPARABLE FROM THE GOOD.
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