Plotino – Tratado 5,1 (V, 9, 1) — Três gêneros de homens e três concepções do saber

1. Todos los hombres, desde su comienzo, se sirven de los sentidos antes que de la inteligencia, recibiendo, por tanto, primeramente la impresión de las cosas sensibles. Unos se quedan aquí y, ya a lo largo de su vida, creen que las cosas sensibles son las primeras y las últimas; piensan, por ejemplo, que el dolor y el placer que de ellas deriva son el mal y el bien, por lo que estiman como suficiente continuar persiguiendo al uno y mantenerse alejados del otro. Los que de entre ellos reclaman para sí la razón, proponen esto como la sabiduría; se parecen a esos pesados pájaros que, teniendo encima mucha tierra y agobiados por su carga, son incapaces de elevarse hacia lo alto, aunque la naturaleza les haya dotado de alas. Los otros se limitan a elevarse un poco por encima de las cosas inferiores, debido a que la parte superior del alma les lleva de lo agradable a lo hermoso; no obstante, incapaces de mirar hacia lo alto y dado que no tienen otro punto en que fijarse se precipitan con su nombre de virtud en la acción práctica al elegir las cosas de aquí abajo, sobre las que, en un principio, habían querido elevarse. Pero una tercera raza de hombres, divinos por la superioridad de su poder y la agudeza de su visión; estos hombres ven con mirada penetrante el resplandor que proviene de lo alto, elevándose hacia allí sobre las nubes y las sombras de aquí abajo. Allí permanecen, contemplando desde arriba las cosas de este mundo y gozando de esa región verdadera que es la suya propia, como el hombre aquel que luego de una larga peripecia llegó por fin a su patria bien regida.

I. Les hommes, dès leur naissance, exercent leurs sens plus tôt que leur intelligence[2], et sont forcés par la nécessité d’accorder d’abord leur attention aux objets sensibles. Il en est qui s’arrêtent là, et qui passent leur vie sans chercher plus loin : ils regardent la souffrance comme le mal, le plaisir comme le bien, jugent qu’il faut éviter l’un et rechercher l’autre ; c’est en cela que font consister la sagesse ceux d’entre eux qui se piquent d’être raisonnables, semblables à ces oiseaux pesants, qui, s’étant alourdis en empruntant trop à la terre, ne peuvent prendre leur essor, quoiqu’ils aient reçu des ailes de la nature. Il en est d’autres qui se sont élevés un peu au-dessus des objets terrestres, parce que leur âme, douée d’une nature meilleure, se détache de la volupté pour chercher quelque chose de supérieur[3] ; mais, comme ils ne sont pas capables d’arriver à contempler l’intelligible et qu’ils ne savent où prendre pied après avoir quitté la région d’ici-bas, ils en reviennent à faire consister la vertu dans ces actions et ces occupations vulgaires dont ils avaient d’abord tenté de dépasser la sphère étroite. Enfin, une troisième espèce comprend ces hommes divins qui, doués d’une vue perçante, considèrent avec un regard pénétrant l’éclat du monde intelligible, et s’y élèvent en prenant leur vol au-dessus des nuages et des ténèbres d’ici-bas ; alors, pleins de mépris pour les choses terrestres, ils restent là-haut, et ils habitent leur véritable patrie avec la joie ineffable de l’homme qui, après de longs voyages, est enfin rendu à ses foyers légitimes[4].

THE SENSUAL MAN. THE MORAL. AND THE SPIRITUAL.

1. From their birth, men exercise their senses, earlier than their intelligence, and they are by necessity forced to direct their attention to sense-objects. Some stop there, and spend their life without progressing further. They consider suffering as evil, and pleasure as the good, judging it to be their business to avoid the one and encompass the other. That is the content of wisdom for those of them that pride themselves on being reasonable; like those heavy birds who, having weighted themselves down by picking up too much from the earth, cannot take flight, though by nature provided with wings. There are others who have raised themselves a little above earthly objects because their soul, endowed with a better nature, withdraws from pleasures to seek something higher;2 but as they are not capable of arriving at contemplation of the intelligible, (and as, after having left our lower region here, they do not know where to lodge, they return to a conception of morality which considers virtue to consist in these common-place actions and occupations whose narrow sphere they had at first attempted to leave behind. Finally a third kind is that of those divine men who are endowed with a piercing vision, and whose penetrating glance contemplates the splendor of the intelligible world, and rise unto it, taking their flight above the clouds and darkness of this world. Then, full of scorn for terrestrial things, they remain up there, and reside in their true fatherland with the unspeakable bliss of the man who, after long journeys, is at last repatriated.

1. All human beings from birth onward live to the realm of sense more than to the Intellectual.

Forced of necessity to attend first to the material, some of them elect to abide by that order and, their life throughout, make its concerns their first and their last; the sweet and the bitter of sense are their good and evil; they feel they have done all if they live along pursuing the one and barring the doors to the other. And those of them that pretend to reasoning have adopted this as their philosophy; they are like the heavier birds which have incorporated much from the earth and are so weighted down that they cannot fly high for all the wings Nature has given them.

Others do indeed lift themselves a little above the earth; the better in their soul urges them from the pleasant to the nobler, but they are not of power to see the highest and so, in despair of any surer ground, they fall back in virtue’s name, upon those actions and options of the lower from which they sought to escape.

But there is a third order – those godlike men who, in their mightier power, in the keenness of their sight, have clear vision of the splendour above and rise to it from among the cloud and fog of earth and hold firmly to that other world, looking beyond all here, delighted in the place of reality, their native land, like a man returning after long wanderings to the pleasant ways of his own country.

I. Since all men from their birth employ sense prior to intellect, and are necessarily first conversant with sensibles, some proceeding no farther pass through life, considering these as the first and last of things, and apprehending that whatever is painful among these is evil, and whatever is pleasant is good; thus thinking it sufficient to pursue the one and avoid the other. Those too among them, who pretend to a greater share of reason than others, esteem this to be wisdom, being affected in a manner similar to more heavy birds, who collecting many things from the earth, and being oppressed with the weight, are unable to fly on high, though they have received wings for this purpose from nature. But others are in a small degree elevated from things subordinate, the more excellent part of the soul recalling them from pleasure to a more worthy pursuit. As they are, however, unable to look on high, and as not possessing any thing else which can afford them rest, they betake themselves together with the name of virtue to actions and the election of things inferior, from which they at first endeavoured to raise themselves, though in vain. In the third class is the race of divine men, who through a more excellent power, and with piercing eyes, acutely perceive supernal light, to the vision of which they raise themselves above the clouds and darkness as it were of this lower world, and there abiding despise every tiling in these regions of sense; being no otherwise delighted with the place which is truly and properly their own, than he who after many wanderings is at length restored to his lawful country.