Plotinos: Complete Works, v. 1 / In Chronological Order, Grouped in Four Periods

by Plotinus

PLATO DISTINGUISHES BETWEEN THE HOMELY AND THE HIGHER VIRTUES.

3. We will now, following (Plato),[339] speak of another kind of assimilation as the privilege of a higher virtue. We will thus better understand the nature of homely virtues, and the higher virtues, and the difference between them. Plato is evidently distinguishing two kinds of virtues when he says that assimilation to the divinity consists in fleeing from (the world) here below; when he adds the qualification "homely" to the virtues relating to social life; and when in another place he asserts[340] that all virtues are processes of purification; and it is not to the homely virtues that he attributes the power of assimilating us to the divinity.