PRUDENCE TO DECIDE WHETHER IT IS POSSIBLE TO POSSESS VIRTUES UNSYMMETRICALLY?
(Many interesting questions remain). Is it possible for a man to possess the higher or lower virtues in accomplished reality, or otherwise (merely theoretically)? To decide that, we would have individually to examine each, as, for example, prudence. How could such a virtue exist merely potentially, borrowing its principles from elsewhere? What would happen if one virtue advanced naturally to a certain degree, and another virtue to another? What would you think of a temperance which would moderate certain (impulses), while entirely suppressing others? Similar questions might be raised about other virtues, and the arbiter of the degree to which the virtues have attained would have to be prudence.
THE HOMELY VIRTUES MUST BE SUPPLEMENTED BY DIVINE DISCONTENT.
No doubt, under certain circumstances, the virtuous man, in his actions, will make use of some of the lower, or homely virtues; but even so he will supplement them by standards or ideas derived from higher virtues. For instance, he will not be satisfied with a temperance which would consist in mere moderation, but he will gradually seek to separate himself more and more from matter. Again, he will supplement the life of a respectable man, exacted by common-sense homely virtues; he will be continually aspiring higher, to the life of the divinities; for our effort at assimilation should be directed not at mere respectability, but to the gods themselves. To seek no more than to become assimilated to respectable individuals would be like trying to make an image by limiting oneself to copying another image, itself modelled after another image (but not copying the original). The assimilation here recommended results from taking as model a superior being.
[FIRST ENNEAD, BOOK THREE.]
Of Dialectic, or the Means of Raising the Soul to the Intelligible World.
SEARCH FOR A DEMONSTRATION OF DIVINITY SUCH THAT THE DEMONSTRATION ITSELF WILL DEIFY.
1. What method, art or study will lead us to the goal we are to attain, namely, the Good, the first Principle, the Divinity,[343] by a demonstration which itself can serve to raise the soul to the superior world?