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Plotinus ENNEADS - THE SIXTH ENNEAD, Part II, Complete

Translated by Stephen MacKenna and B. S. Page.

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Page 87

9. Admitted, then — it will be said — for the nobler forms of life; but how can the divine contain the mean, the unreasoning? The mean is the unreasoning, since value depends upon reason and the worth of the intellective implies worthlessness where intellection is lacking. Yet how can there be question of the unreasoning or unintellective when all particulars exist in the divine and come forth from it?

In taking up the refutation of these objections, we must insist upon the consideration that neither man nor animals here can be thought of as identical with the counterparts in the higher realm; those ideal forms must be taken in a larger way. And again the reasoning thing is not of that realm: here the reasoning, There the pre-reasoning.

Why then does man alone reason here, the others remaining reasonless?

Degrees of reasoning here correspond to degrees of Intellection in that other sphere, as between man and the other living beings There; and those others do in some measure act by understanding.

But why are they not at man’s level of reason: why also the difference from man to man?

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Reference address : https://ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/ancient-Greece/plotinus/enneads-6b.asp?pg=87