Plotinos: Complete Works, v. 4 / In Chronological Order, Grouped in Four Periods

by Plotinus

MAN IS SELF-CONSCIOUS BY BECOMING INTELLIGENCE.

Will he who thus knows himself content himself therewith? Surely not. Exercising a further faculty, we will have the intuition of the intelligence that knows itself; or, seizing it, inasmuch as it is "ours" and we are "its," we will thus cognize intelligence, and know ourselves. This is necessary for our knowledge of what, within intelligence, self-consciousness is. The man becomes intelligence when, abandoning his other faculties, he by intelligence sees Intelligence, and he sees himself in the same manner that Intelligence sees itself.