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Plotinus ENNEADS - THE SECOND ENNEAD Complete

Translated by Stephen MacKenna and B. S. Page.

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SECOND TRACTATE.

THE HEAVENLY CIRCUIT.

1. But whence that circular movement?

In imitation of the Intellectual-Principle.

And does this movement belong to the material part or to the Soul? Can we account for it on the ground that the Soul has itself at once for centre and for the goal to which it must be ceaselessly moving; or that, being self-centred it is not of unlimited extension [and consequently must move ceaselessly to be omnipresent], and that its revolution carries the material mass with it?

If the Soul had been the moving power [by any such semi-physical action] it would be so no longer; it would have accomplished the act of moving and have brought the universe to rest; there would be an end of this endless revolution.

In fact the Soul must be in repose or at least cannot have spatial movement; how then, having itself a movement of quite another order, could it communicate spatial movement?

But perhaps the circular movement [of the Kosmos as soul and body] is not spatial or is spatial not primarily but only incidentally.

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Reference address : https://ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/ancient-greece/plotinus/enneads-2.asp?pg=14