MacKenna - Plotinus

2. The born lover, to whose degree the musician also may attain and then either come to a stand or pass beyond has a certain memory of beauty but, severed from it now, he no longer comprehends it: spellbound by visible loveliness he clings amazed about that. His lesson must be to fall down no longer in bewildered delight before some, one embodied form; he must be led, under a system of mental discipline, to beauty everywhere and made to discern THE ONE Principle underlying all, a Principle (…)

For what could be added to the fullest life to make it the best life? If anyone should answer, “The nature of Good” [The Good, as a Divine HYPOSTASIS], the reply would certainly be near our thought, but we are not seeking the Cause but the main constituent. Enneads I,4,3
In what substantial-form [HYPOSTASIS] then is all this to be found not as accident but as the very substance itself? For if Evil can enter into other things, it must have in a certain sense a prior existence, even though (…)

Succession or repetition gives us Number dyad, TRIAD, etc. and the extent traversed is a matter of Magnitude; thus we have Quantity of Movement in the form of number, dyad, TRIAD, decade, or in the form of extent apprehended in what we may call the amount of the Movement: but, the idea of Time we have not. That definite Quantity is merely something occurring within Time, for, otherwise Time is not everywhere but is something belonging to Movement which thus would be its substratum or (…)

None the less, in spite of physical resemblance and similar environment, we observe the greatest difference in temperament and in ideas: this side of the human being, then, derives from some quite other Principle [than any external causation or destiny]. A further confirmation is found in the efforts we make to correct both bodily constitution and mental aspirations. Enneads III,1,5
How then do we explain desire and other forms of aspiration? Aspiration must be a motion having its origin (…)

If, indeed, that ASPIRATION towards the Intelligible which is in our nature exists also in this Ruling-Power, then need not look elsewhere for the source of order and of the virtues in ourselves. Enneads I,2,1
The quest and will of the Soul are not pointed directly towards freedom from this sphere: the reason which disciplines away our concern about this life has no fundamental quarrel with things of this order; it merely resents their interference; sometimes, even, it must seek them; (…)

11. In childhood the main activity is in the Couplement and there is but little IRRADIATION from the higher principles of our being: but when these higher principles act but feebly or rarely upon us their action is directed towards the Supreme; they work upon us only when they stand at the mid-point. Enneads I,1,11
But how does it thus contain the good within itself? It is, itself, of the nature of the good and it has been strengthened still towards the perception of all that is good by (…)

But it has been observed that the Couplement, too especially before our emancipation is a member of this total We, and in fact what the body experiences we say We experience. This then covers two distinct notions; sometimes it includes the brute-part, sometimes it transcends the brute. The body is brute touched to life; the true man is the other, going pure of the body, natively endowed with the virtues which belong to the Intellectual-Activity, virtues whose seat is the Separate Soul, the (…)

This natural tendency must be made the starting-point to such a man; he must be drawn by the tone, rhythm and design in things of sense: he must learn to distinguish the material forms from the Authentic-Existent which is the source of all these correspondences and of the entire reasoned scheme in the work of art: he must be led to the Beauty that manifests itself through these forms; he must be shown that what ravished him was no other than the Harmony of the Intellectual world and the (…)

The belief is that the planets in their courses actually produce not merely such conditions as poverty, wealth, health and sickness but even ugliness and beauty and, gravest of all, vices and virtue and the very acts that spring from these qualities, the definite doings of each moment of virtue or vice. We are to suppose the stars to be annoyed with men - and upon matters in which men, moulded to what they are by the stars themselves, can surely do them no wrong. 616 Enneads: II III. 1
The (…)

All these noble qualities are to be reverenced and loved, no doubt, but what entitles them to be called beautiful? They exist: they manifest themselves to us: anyone that sees them must admit that they have reality of Being; and is not Real-Being, really beautiful? But we have not yet shown by what property in them they have wrought the Soul to loveliness: what is this grace, this splendour as of Light, resting upon all the virtues? Let us take the contrary, the ugliness of the Soul, and set (…)