FIRST ENNEAD, BOOK SEVEN.
Of the First Good, and of the Other Goods.1
THE SUPREME GOOD AS END OF ALL OTHER GOODS.
1. Could any one say that there was, for any being, any good but the activity of “living according to nature? ”2 For a being composed of several parts, however, the good will consist in the activity of its best part, an action which is peculiar, natural, and unfailing. Further: as the soul is an excellent being, and directs her activity towards something excellent, this excellent aim is not merely excellent relatively to the soul, but is the absolute Good. If then there be a principle which does not direct its action towards any other thing, because it is the best of beings, being above them all, it can be this only because all other beings trend towards it. This then, evidently, is the absolute Good by virtue of which all other beings participate therein.
PARTICIPATION IN GOOD. TWO METHODS.
Now there are two methods of participation in the Good: the first, is to become similar to it; the second is to direct one’s activity towards it. If then the direction of one’s desire and one’s action towards the better principle be a good, then can the absolute good itself neither regard nor desire any other thing, remaining in abiding rest, being the source and principle of all actions conforming to nature, giving to other things the form of the Good, without acting on them, as they, on the contrary, direct their actions thereto.
PERMANENCE THE CHIEF NOTE OF ABSOLUTE GOOD.
Only by permanence—not by action, nor even by thought—is this principle the Good. For if it be super-Being, it must also be super-Activity, super-Intelligence, and Thought. The principle from which everything depends, while itself depending on nothing else, must, therefore, be recognized as the Good. (This divinity) must, therefore, persist in His condition, while everything turns towards Him, just as, in a circle, all the radii meet in the centre. An example of this is the sun, which is a centre of the light that is, as it were, suspended from that planet. The light accompanies the sun everywhere, and never parts from it; and even if you wished to separate it on one side, it would not any the less remain concentrated around it.
ALL THINGS DEPEND ON THE GOOD BY UNITY. ESSENCE, AND QUALITY.
2. Let us study the dependence of everything on the Good. The inanimate trends toward the Soul, while the animate Soul trends towards the Good through Intelligence. As far as anything possesses unity, essence or form, it participates in the Good. By its participation in unity, essence and form each being participates in the Good, even though the latter be only an image, for the things in which it participates are only images of unity, essence, and form. For the (first) Soul3 as she approaches Intelligence, she acquires a life which approaches closer to truth; and she owes this to Intelligence; thus (by virtue of Intelligence) she possesses the form of the Good. To possess the latter, all she needs to do is to turn her looks towards it; for Intelligence is the next after the Good. Therefore, to those to whom it is granted to live, life is the good. Likewise, for those who participate in intelligence, Intelligence is the good. Consequently, such (a being as) joins intelligence to life possesses a double good.
THERE IS NO UNALLOYED EVIL FOR THE LIVING BEING.
3. Though life be a good, it does not belong to all beings. Life is incomplete for the evil person, as for an eye that does not see distinctly; neither accomplish their purpose. If, for us, life, though mingled as it is, be a good, even if an imperfect one, how shall we continue to assert that death is not an evil? But for whom would it be an evil ? This we must ask because evil must necessarily be an attribute of somebody. Now there is no more evil for a being which, though even existing, is deprived of life, any more than for a stone (as they say). But if, after death, the being still live, if it be still animate, it will possess good, and so much the more as it exercises its faculties without the body. If it be united to the universal Soul, evidently there can be no evil for it, any more than for the gods who possess good unmingled with evil. Similar is the case of the soul which preserves her purity, inasmuch as he who loses her finds that life, and not death, is the real Evil. If there be chastisements in Hades, again is life an evil for the soul, because she is not pure. If, further, we define life as the union of the soul with the body, and death as their separation, the soul can pass through both these conditions (without, on that account, being unhappy, or losing her hold on the Good).
BY VIRTUE, LIFE CHANGES FROM AN EVIL TO A GOOD.
How is death not an evil, if life be a good? Certainly life is a good for such as possess the Good, (it is a good) not because the soul is united to the body, but because she repels evil by virtue. (Without the latter) death would rather be a good (because it delivers us from the body4). To resume: by itself, life in a body is evil; but, by virtue, the soul locates herself in the good, not by perpetuating the existing corporeal union, but by separating herself from the body.
Bouillet observes that this book is only a feeble outline of some of the ideas developed in VI. 7, 8, and 9. The biographical significance of this might be as follows. As in in the immediately preceding books Plotinos was harking back to Xumenius’s doctrines, he may have wished to reconcile the two divergent periods, the Porphyrian monism of VI. 7 and 8, with the earlier Amelian dualism of VI. 9. This was nothing derogatory to him; for it is well known that there was a difference between the eclectic monism of the young Plato of the Republic, and the more logical dualism of the older Plato of the Laws.
This latter was represented by Numenius and Amelius; the former—combined with Aristotelian and Stoic elements— by Porphyry. Where Plato could not decide, why should we expect Plotinos to do so? And, as a matter of fact, the world also has never been able to decide, so Ion? as it remained sincere, and did not deceive itself with sophistries, as did Hegel. Kant also had his “thing-in-itself,”—indeed, he did little more than to develop the work of Plotinos. ↩
Which is one of the three hypostases, II. 9.1 and V. 1. ↩
We see here Plotinos feeling the approach of his impending dissolution. ↩