Guthrie: Vida de Plotino VIII

VIII. PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS OF PLOTINOS.

Once Plotinos had written something, he could neither retouch, nor even re-read what he had done, because his weak eyesight made any reading very painful. His penmanship was poor. He did not sepa”- rate words, and his spelling was defective; he was chiefly occupied with ideas. Until his death he con tinuously persisted in this habit, which was for us all a subject of surprise. When he had finished composing something in his head, and when he then wrote what he had meditated on, it seemed as if he copied a book. Neither in conversation nor in discussion did he allow himself to be distracted from the purpose of his thoughts, so that he was able at the same time to attend to the needs of conversation, while pursuing the medi tation of the subject which busied him. When the person who had been talking with him went away, he did not re-read what he had written before the interruption, which, as has been mentioned above, was to save his eyesight; he could, later on, take up the thread of his composition as if the conversation had been no obstacle to his attention. He therefore was able simul taneously to live with others and with himself. He never seemed to need recuperation from this interior attention, which hardly ceased during his slumbers, which, however, were troubled both by the insufficiency of food, for sometimes he did not even eat bread, and by this continuous concentration of his mind.