The Enneads — trans. Stephen MacKenna

threatened ; all impression is the stroke of something unreasonable outside the Soul, accepted only because the Soul is not devoid of parts or phases ; the Soul takes up false notions through having gone outside of its own truth by ceasing to be purely itself.

One desire or appetite there is which does not fall under this condemnation ; it is the aspiration towards the Intellectual-Principle : this demands only that the Soul dwell alone enshrined within that place of its choice, never lapsing towards the lower.

Evil is not alone : by virtue of the nature of Good, the power of Good, it is not Evil only : it appears, necessarily, bound around with bonds of Beauty, like some captive bound in fetters of gold ; and beneath these it is hidden so that, while it must exist, it may not be seen by the gods, and that men need not always have evil before their eyes, but that when it comes before them they may still be not destitute of Images of the Good and Beautiful for their Remembrance.

NINTH TRACTATE
“The Reasoned Dismissal”

“ You will not dismiss your Soul lest it go forth . . .” (taking something with it).

For wheresoever it go, it will be in some definite condition, and its going forth is to some new place. The Soul will wait for the body to be completely severed from it ; then it makes no departure ; it simply finds itself free.

1. 9. l]

SUICIDE

p. 109

But how does the body come to be separated ?

The separation takes place when nothing of Soul remains bound up with it : the harmony within the body, by virtue of which the Soul was retained, is broken and it can no longer hold its guest.

But when a man contrives the dissolution of the body, it is he that has used violence and tom himself away, not the body that has let the Soul slip from it. And in loosing the bond he has not been without passion ; there has been revolt or grief or anger, movements which it is unlawful to indulge.

But if a man feel himself to be losing his reason ?

That is not likely in the Sage, but if it should occur, it must be classed with the inevitable, to be welcome at the bidding of the fact though not for its own sake. To call upon drugs to the release of the Soul seems a strange way of assisting its purposes.

And if there be a period allotted to all by fate, to anticipate the hour could not be a happy act, unless, as v>^e have indicated, under stern necessity.

If everyone is to hold in the other world a standing determined by the state in which he quitted this, there must be no withdrawal as long as there is any hope of progress.

hour could not be a happy act, unless, as v>^e have indicated, under stern necessity.

If everyone is to hold in the other world a standing determined by the state in which he quitted this, there must be no withdrawal as long as there is any hope of progress.

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND EXPLANATORY MATTER

NOTES

I. THE TEXT

The text on which this translation has been made is that of Richard Volkmann (Teubner, Leipzig, 1883) : occasionally a reading has been adopted from the text variations or spacious commentary given in the three-volume edition of Frederick Creuzer, Oxford, 1835 : very rarely the translator has been driven to venture an emendation of his own.

II. PREVIOUS TRANSLATIONS

The present translation has been scrupulously compared, clause by clause, over and over again, with those undermentioned : —

The Latin of Ficino (in Creuzer’s edition).

The French of M. N. Bouillet (three vols., Paris, 1875, etc.).

A complete version ; often inaccurate, often only vaguely conveying the meaning ; furnished with the most copious and fascinating notes and commentary. To the elucidation of Plotinus’ general themes Bouillet brings illustrations from the entire range of religious and mystical thought, beginning with the earliest thinkers, minutely comparing Plato, borrowing from the Fathers of the Church, from works of the Eastern mysticism, from the Rabbalah, from the mediaeval theologians, from Malebranche, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Bossuet, Thomassin, etc. He also uses Macrobius very effectively. As Bouillet’s monumental work is long out of print and very rare, it would be a service to Plotinian studies to translate his notes and commentary entire, the Greek and Latin equally with the French. If this were done, with of course a summary of the passages of Plotinus under illustration, the book would have a great value of its own as a conspectus of the mystic thought that has entered into Christianity from outside or been evolved by Christianity from its own depths.

The German of Hermann Friedrich Mueller (2 vols., Berlin : Weidmann, 1878-80)'

This valuable translation is described by its author as “ literal, but scarcely palatable unless taken in conjunction with the Greek text ” ; both statements are true : in parts the version is, even, meaningless without a close study of the original.

The German of Otto Kiefer (2 vols., Diederichs ; Jena and Leipzig, 1905).

eral, but scarcely palatable unless taken in conjunction with the Greek text ” ; both statements are true : in parts the version is, even, meaningless without a close study of the original.

The German of Otto Kiefer (2 vols., Diederichs ; Jena and Leipzig, 1905).

This is a book of selections, very extensive, purporting, indeed, to omit only what is judged to be out of date, futile or incomprehensible in the original : it is substantially a

PLOTINUS

p. 114

Mueller made very much more readable with often improvement in sense and sometimes, it is to be feared, a deterioration.

[The translator upon reading some of the treatises translated into English by Thomas Taylor decided, for reasons mainly literary, that the work of this devoted pioneer would not be helpful in the present undertaking ; it has, therefore, not been used in any part of this work except possibly by indirect suggestion from the quotations made occasionally in the com.mentaries of Bouillet and Creuzer.]

III. METHOD OF THE PRESENT TRANSLATION

Inevitably the present translator has sometimes differed from all his predecessors, as they have sometimes differed each from all the others : he hopes it will not be thought an insolence in him to remark that his rendering of any given passage is not to be tested finally by the authority of any of these scholars, still less by any preconceived idea of Plotinus’ meaning or by any hasty memory of controversy and decisions as to the peculiar uses of words in Plato or Aristotle. The text of the Enneads may be taken to be very fairly well-established, but it would be absurd to suppose that as yet Plotinus, so little cautious or consistent in verbal expression, yields his precise meaning, or full content, as Plato, for example, may be supposed now to do after the scholarly scrutiny of generations. It may, indeed, be said with a rough truth that Plotinus’ terms, shifting at best and depending upon context and again Xipon the context of the context, are never to be more carefully examined than when they seem to be most true to the Platonic or Aristotelian uses : the confusion is a constant pitfall : Plotinus was pouring a quite new wine into very old bottles. Plotinus is often to be understood rather by swift and broad rushes of the mind — the mind trained to his methods — than by laborious word-racking investigation : we must know him through and through before we can be quite sure of his minuter meanings anywhere : there must be many a scholar at work yet, many an order of mind, before we can hope to have a perfectly true translation of the Enneads in