Select works of Plotinus ... and extracts from the treatise of Synesius on providence / Translated from the Greek. With an introduction containing the substance of Porphyry's Life of Plotinus. By Thomas Taylor.

  • Plotinus
Date:
1817
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Select works of Plotinus ... and extracts from the treatise of Synesius on providence / Translated from the Greek. With an introduction containing the substance of Porphyry's Life of Plotinus. By Thomas Taylor. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    662/700 (page 568)
    the cathartic virtues are surveyed according to both these significations of purification ; for they purify the soul, and are present with purification. For the end of purification is to become pure. But since purification, and the being purified, are an ablation of every thing foreign, the good resulting from them will be different from that which puri¬ fies ; so that if that which is purified was good prior to the impurity with which it is defiled, purification is suf¬ ficient. That, however, which remains after purification, is good, and not purification. The nature of the soul also was not good, but is that which is able to partake of good, and is boniform. For if this were not the case, it would not have become situated in evil. The good, therefore, of the soul consists in being united to its generator; but its evil, in an association with things subordinate to itself. Its evil also is tw ofold; the one arising from an associa¬ tion with terrestrial natures ; but the other from doing this with an excess of the passions. Hence all the poli¬ tical virtues, which liberate the soul from one evil, may be denominated virtues, and are honourable. But the ca¬ thartic are more honourable, and liberate it from evil, so far as it is sopl. It is necessary, therefore, that the soul when purified should associate with its generator. Hence the virtue of it after its conversion consists in a scientific knowledge of [true] being; but this will not be the case unless conversion precedes.