Plotinus ENNEADS - THE THIRD ENNEAD Complete

Translated by Stephen MacKenna and B. S. Page.

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THE THIRD ENNEAD:   1) FATE,   2) ON PROVIDENCE,   3) ON PROVIDENCE II,   4) OUR TUTELARY SPIRIT,   5) ON LOVE,   6) THE IMPASSIVITY OF THE UNEMBODIED,   7) TIME AND ETERNITY,   8) NATURE CONTEMPLATION AND THE ONE,   9) DETACHED CONSIDERATIONS

128 pages - You are on Page 128

9. “A Number, a Measure, belonging to Movement?”

This, at least, is plausible since Movement is a continuous thin; but let us consider.

To begin with, we have the doubt which met us when we probed its identification with extent of Movement: is Time the measure of any and every Movement?

Have we any means of calculating disconnected and lawless Movement? What number or measure would apply? What would be the principle of such a Measure?

One Measure for movement slow and fast, for any and every movement: then that number and measure would be like the decade, by which we reckon horses and cows, or like some common standard for liquids and solids. If Time is this Kind of Measure, we learn, no doubt, of what objects it is a Measure — of Movements — but we are no nearer understanding what it is in itself.

Or: we may take the decade and think of it, apart from the horses or cows, as a pure number; this gives us a measure which, even though not actually applied, has a definite nature. Is Time, perhaps, a Measure in this sense?

No: to tell us no more of Time in itself than that it is such a number is merely to bring us back to the decade we have already rejected, or to some similar collective figure.



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