Categoria: Enéada-I-4

16. Those that refuse to place the Sage aloft in the Intellectual Realm but drag him down to the accidental, dreading accident for him, have substituted for the Sage we have in mind another person altogether; they offer us a tolerable sort of man and they assign to him a life of mingled good and…

15. But suppose two wise men, one of them possessing all that is supposed to be naturally welcome, while the other meets only with the very reverse: do we assert that they have an equal happiness? We do, if they are equally wise. What though the one be favoured in body and in all else…

14. For man, and especially the Sage, is not the Couplement of soul and body: the proof is that man can be disengaged from the body and disdain its nominal goods. It would be absurd to think that happiness begins and ends with the living-body: happiness is the possession of the good of life: it…

13. The characteristic activities are not hindered by outer events but merely adapt themselves, remaining always fine, and perhaps all the finer for dealing with the actual. When he has to handle particular cases and things, he may not be able to put his vision into act without searching and thinking, but the one greatest…

12. The pleasure demanded for the life cannot be in the enjoyments of the licentious or in any gratifications of the body- there is no place for these, and they stifle happiness- nor in any violent emotions- what could so move the Sage?- it can be only such pleasure as there must be where Good…

10. Perhaps the reason this continuous activity remains unperceived is that it has no touch whatever with things of sense. No doubt action upon material things, or action dictated by them, must proceed through the sensitive faculty which exists for that use: but why should there not be an immediate activity of the Intellectual-Principle and…

9. But when he is out of himself, reason quenched by sickness or by magic arts? If it be allowed that in this state, resting as it were in a slumber, he remains a Sage, why should he not equally remain happy? No one rules him out of felicity in the hours of sleep; no…

8. As for violent personal sufferings, he will carry them off as well as he can; if they overpass his endurance they will carry him off. And so in all his pain he asks no pity: there is always the radiance in the inner soul of the man, untroubled like the light in a lantern…

7. Then why are these conditions sought and their contraries repelled by the man established in happiness? Here is our answer: These more pleasant conditions cannot, it is true, add any particle towards the Sage’s felicity: but they do serve towards the integrity of his being, while the presence of the contraries tends against his…