Platonismo

And thus much for the life of Plotinus, who was a philosopher pre-eminently distinguished for the strength and profundity of his intellect, and the purity and elevation of his life. He was a being wise without the usual mixture of human darkness, and great without the general combination of human weakness and imperfection. He seems to have left the orb of light solely for the benefit of mankind; that he might teach them how to repair the ruin contracted by their exile from good, and how to return to their true country, and legitimate kindred and allies. I do not mean that he descended into mortality, for the purpose of unfolding the sublimest truths to the vulgar part of mankind; for this would have been a vain and ridiculous attempt ; since the eyes of the multitude, as Plato justly observes, are not strong enough to look to truth. But he came as a guide to the few who are born with a divine destiny (theia moira) ; and are straggling to gain the lost region of light, but know not how to break the fetters by which they are detained: who are impatient to leave the obscure cavern of sense, where all is delusion and shadow, and to ascend to the realms of intellect, where all is substance and reality.

This very extraordinary man also appears to have been the first of the Platonic philosophers, who clearly and distinctly asserted the subsistence of the three hypostases that rank as principles (archikai hypostaseis) viz. the good, intellect, and soul, and who demonstrated that there can be neither more nor less than these. But these three are thus denominated, because they are not consubsistent; and they are not consubsistent, because they are essentially different from each other. For according to Plato the good is super essential; intellect is an impartible, immoveable essence; and soul is a self-motive essence, and subsists as a medium between intellect and the nature which is distributed about bodies. By no means therefore is the Platonic the same with the Christian trinity, as the advocates for the latter have ignorantly and idly supposed. For the good or the highest God according to Plato being so perfectly exempt from all multitude, that he is even beyond essence, is not to be connumerated with any thing, or to be co-arranged with the second and third principles in the above-mentioned or any other triad. Indeed, according to the philosophy of Plato, as I have elsewhere shown, in every order of things a triad is the immediate progeny of a monad. Hence the intelligible triad proceeds immediately from the ineffable principle of things. Phanes, or intelligible intellect, who is the last of the intelligible order, is the monad, leader, and producing cause of a triad, which is denominated noetos kai noeros, i.e. intelligible and at the same time intellectual. In like manner the extremity of this order produces immediately from itself the intellectual triad, Saturn, Rhea, and Jupiter. Again, Jupiter, who is also the demiurgus, is the monad of the supermundane triad. Apollo, who subsists at the extremity of the supermundane order, produces a triad of liberated Gods. (theoi apolytoi) And the extremity of the liberated order becomes the monad of a triad of mundane Gods. (See my translation of Proclus on the “ Theology of Plato.”) This theory too, which is the progeny of the most consummate science, is in perfect conformity with the theology of the Chaldaeans. And hence it is said in one of their oracles, “In every world a triad shines forth, of which a monad is the ruling principle.”

This likewise appears to he the peculiarity of the philosophy of Plotinus, that it considered all the above-mentioned orders, all true beings that are superior to soul, and the multiform variety of ideas, or paradigms of things, as comprehended in one supreme intellect, which it denominates the intelligible world, and as there subsisting in impartible union, without any specific distinction. Hence Plotinus was more anxiously employed in profoundly investigating the nature of this divine world, than in scientifically unfolding the order of the beings it contains. Indeed, his genius on every subject seems to have been more adapted to an intimate perception of the occult essence of a thing, than to an explanation of its gradual evolution, and a description of the mode of its participations. However, though he did not develops the more particular progressions of true beings, yet he inserted the principles of this sublime investigation in his writings; and laid the foundation of that admirable and beautiful system, which was gradually revealed by succeeding Platonists, and at last received its perfection by the acute, accurate, and elegant genius of Proclus.