Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Excerpt from Plotinos Complete Works, Vol. 3: In Chronological Order, Grouped in Four Periods
How can infinity subsist in the intelligible world? Either it exists among the enuine essences, and then is determined; or it is no determined, and then it does not exist among the veritable essences, but it must be classified among the things which exist in perpetual becoming, such as time.1 The infinite is determinate, but it is not any the less infinite; for it is not the limit2 which receives the determination, but the infinites; and between the boundar and the in finite there is no intermediary that cou d receive the determination. This infinite acts as if it were the idea of the boundary, but it is contained by what embraces it exteriorly. When i say that it flees, I do not mean that it asses from one locality to another, for it has no loca ity; but 1 mean that space has existed from the very moment that this infinite was embraced.4 We must not imagine that what is called the movement of the infinite consists in a displacement, nor admit that the infinite by itself possesses any other of the things that could be named; thus the infinite could neither move, nor remain still. Where indeed would it halt, since the place indicated by the word where is posterior to infinity?_ Movement is attributed to infinity only to explain that the infinite has no perman enc Should we believe that the infinite exists on big in one only and single place, or that it arises there, and descends here below? No: for it is in re spect to one only and single place that we are enabled to conceive both what has risen and does not descend, as well as that which descends.
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