Chapter XVII. Plotinus on the Same

[PLOTINUS] [1] ‘IF any one admires this world of sense, beholding at once its greatness and beauty and the order of its eternal course, and the gods that are therein, some visible, and some invisible, the daemons, and animals and all kinds of plants, let him mount up to its original pattern and to the more real world, and there let him see all intelligible things, and things which are of themselves eternal in their own understanding and life, see also the pure intelligence and the infinite wisdom that presides over them.’

Then afterwards in addition to this he says:

‘Who then is He that begat Him? He who is simple, and prior to a plurality of this kind, who is the cause both of His being, and of His plurality. For number came not first: since before the duad is the one; and the duad is second, and produced from the one.’ [2]

And again he goes on and adds: [3]

‘How then and what must we conceive concerning that abiding substance? A light shining around and proceeding from it, while it remains itself unchanged, as from the sun proceeds the bright surrounding light that runs around it, ever produced out of it, while it remains unchanged itself.

‘And all existing things, so long as they remain, give forth necessarily from their own essence and from the power present in the substance which surrounds them externally and is dependent upon them, being as it were an image of the archetypes from which it sprang.

‘Thus fire gives forth the heat which proceeds from it, and snow does not merely retain its cold within itself. And especially all fragrant things bear witness to this fact: for as long as they exist, a something from them goes forth around them, which is enjoyed by whatever is near.

‘Moreover all things as soon as they are perfect begin to generate: so that which is always perfect is always generating a something eternal, and what it generates is less than itself.

‘What then must we say concerning the Most Perfect? That He either generates nothing from Himself, or the things which are the greatest next to Himself. But after Him mind is the greatest and the second. For the mind beholds Him and has need of Him alone, but He has no need of it: and that which is begotten from a superior mind, must be mind; and mind is superior to all things, because all the rest come after it.’

After this he says further: [4]

‘Now everything desires and loves that which begat it, and especially when that which begat and that which is begotten exist alone. And when that which begat is also the very best, the begotten is necessarily so joined with it, as to be separated only by its otherness. But, since it is necessary to speak more plainly, I mean that mind is His image.’

And to this again he adds: [5]

‘This is the reason also of Plato’s trinities: for he says that around the King of all are all the primaries, and around the second the secondaries, and around the third the tertiaries. He says also that the Cause has a Father, meaning that Mind is the Cause, for with Plato Mind is the Creator.

‘And Mind, he says, makes the Soul in that cup of his. And the Cause which is Mind has for its Father, he says, the Good, and that which transcends both Mind and essence. But in many places he speaks of Being and of Mind as the Idea. So that Plato recognizes Mind as proceeding from the Good, and the Soul from Mind: and these are no new doctrines, nor now first stated, but long since, though not publicly divulged: and the doctrines of the present time have been interpretations of the former, which by the testimony of Plato’s own writings have confirmed the antiquity of these opinions.’

This is what Plotinus says. And Numenius highly commending Plato’s doctrines in his treatise Of the Goodgives his own interpretation of the Second Cause, as follows: