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

by Plotinus

The whole subject of the Book is the composite soul, and this is thoroughly Numenian.[457]

Then we have the giving without return.[458]

Then we find the pilot-simile as illustration for the relation of soul to body,[459] although in Numenius it appears of the Logos and the world.

We find the animal divided in two souls, the irrational and the rational,[460] which reminds us of Numenius's division into two souls.[461]

The soul consists of a peculiar kind of motion, which however is entirely different from that of other bodies, which is its own life.[462] This reminds us of Numenius's still-standing of the Supreme, which however is simultaneously innate motion.[463]

Referring to the problem, discussed elsewhere, that these Plotinic works of the latest or Eustochian period, are the most Numenian, which we would be most likely to attribute to his early or formative stage, rather than to the last or perfected period, it is interesting to notice that these works seem to imply other works of the Amelian or Porphyrian periods, by the words,[464] "It has been said," or treated of, referring evidently to several passages.[465] Still this need not necessarily refer to this later work, it may even refer to Plato, or even to Numenius's allegory of the Cave of the Nymphs,[470] where the descent of the souls is most definitely studied. Or it might even refer to Num. 35a, where birth or genesis is referred to as the wetting of the souls in the matter of bodies.

Moreover, they contain an acknowledgment, and a study of positive evil, something which would be very unlikely after his elaborate explaining away of evil in his treatise against the Gnostics, of the Porphyrian period, and his last treatment of Matter, where he is even willing to grant the possibility of matter possessing Being. The natural process for any thinker must ever be to begin with comparative imitation of his master, and then to progress to independent treatment of the subject. But for the process to be reversed is hardly likely.

Moreover, when we examine these Eustochian works in detail, they hardly seem to be such as would be the expressions of the last years of an ecstatic, suffering intense agony at times, his interest already directed heavenwards. The discussion of astrology must date from the earliest association with Gnostics, in Alexandria, who also might have inspired or demanded a special treatment of the nature of evil, which later he consistently denied. Then there is an amateurish treatment of anthropology in general, which the cumulatively-arranging Porphyry puts at the very beginning of the First Book. The treatise on the First Good and Happiness, is not unlike a beginner's first attempt at writing out his body of divinity, as George Herbert said, and Porphyry also puts it at the beginning. The Eros-article is only an amplification of Platonic myths, indeed making subtler distinctions, still not rising to the heights of pure, subjective speculation.

These general considerations may be supplemented by a few more definite indications. It is in the Eros-article that we find the Platonic myth of Poros and Penia. Yet these reappear in the earliest Amelian treatment of matter (ii. 4), as a sort of echo, mentioned only by the way, as if they had been earlier thoroughly threshed out. Here also we find only a stray, incidental use of the term "hypostasis," whereas the Stoic language in other Amelian and Porphyrian treatises has already been pointed out.

We are therefore driven to the following, very human and natural conclusion. Plotinos's first attempts at philosophical writing had consisted of chiefly Numenian disquisitions, which would be natural in Alexandria, where Numenius had probably resided, and had left friends and successors among the Gnostics. When Plotinos went to Rome, he took these writings with him, but was too absorbed in new original Amelian treatises to resurrect his youthful Numenian attempts, which he probably did not value highly, as being the least original, and because they taught doctrines he had left behind in his Aristotelian and Stoic progress. He laid them aside. Only when Porphyry had left him, and he felt the increasing feebleness due to old age and Stoic austerities, did his attendant Eustochius urge him to preserve these early works. Plotinos was willing, and sent them to Sicily where Porphyry had retired. And so it happened with Plotinos, as it has happened with many another writer, that the last things became first, and the first became last.