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.

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    rived by imitation* And with respect to the argu¬ ment from fire, it may be said that divinity pos¬ sesses virtue, but that virtue in him is in reality greater than virtue [because it subsists causally.] But if that virtue indeed, of which the soul parti¬ cipates, was the same with that from which it is derived, it would be necessary to speak in this manner* Now, however, the one is different from the other. For neither is the sensible the same with the intelligible house [or with that which is the object of intellectual conception] though it is similar to it. And the sensible house participates of order and ornament; though there is neither order, nor ornament, nor symmetry, in the produc- tive principle of it in the mind. Thus, therefore, we participate from thence [i. e. from divinity] of ornament, order and consent, and these things per¬ tain to virtue, but there consent, ornament and order, are not wanted, and therefore divinity has no need of virtue. We are, however, nevertheless assimilated to what he possesses, through the pre¬ sence of virtue. And thus much for the purpose of showing, that it is not necessary virtue should be there, though we are assimilated to divinity by virtue. But it is also necessary to introduce per-
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