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

by Plotinus

PROOFS FOR THE EXISTENCE AND NATURE OF INTELLIGENCE.

3. Let us now consider the Intelligence which reason tells us is absolute essence and genuine "being," and whose existence we have already established in a different manner. It would seem ridiculous to inquire whether Intelligence form part of the scale of beings; but there are men who doubt it, or who at least are disposed to ask for a demonstration that Intelligence possesses the nature we predicate of it, that it is separated (from matter), that it is identical with the essences, and that it contains the ideas. This is our task.