Plotinus ENNEADS - THE FIRST ENNEAD Complete

Translated by Stephen MacKenna and B. S. Page.

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» Contents of this Ennead

THE FIRST ENNEAD:   1) THE ANIMATE AND THE MAN,   2) ON VIRTUE,   3) ON DIALECTIC - THE UPWARD WAY,   4) ON TRUE HAPPINESS,   5) HAPPINESS AND EXTENSION OF TIME,   6) BEAUTY,   7) ON THE PRIMAL GOOD AND SECONDARY FORMS OF GOOD - “ON HAPPINESS”,   8) ON THE NATURE AND SOURCE OF EVIL,   9) “THE REASONED DISMISSAL”

106 pages - You are on Page 60

3. Yes, but if the well-being has lasted a long time, if that present spectacle has been a longer time before the eyes?

If in the greater length of time the man has seen more deeply, time has certainly done something for him, but if all the process has brought him no further vision, then one glance would give all he has had.

4. Still the one life has known pleasure longer than the other?

But pleasure cannot be fairly reckoned in with Happiness — unless indeed by pleasure is meant the unhindered Act [of the true man], in which case this pleasure is simply our “Happiness.” And even pleasure, though it exist continuously, has never anything but the present; its past is over and done with.

5. We are asked to believe, then, it will be objected, that if one man has been happy from first to last, another only at the last, and a third, beginning with happiness, has lost it, their shares are equal?

This is straying from the question: we were comparing the happy among themselves: now we are asked to compare the not-happy at the time when they are out of happiness with those in actual possession of happiness. If these last are better off, they are so as men in possession of happiness against men without it and their advantage is always by something in the present.

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