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Translated by Stephen MacKenna and B. S. Page.
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» Contents of this Ennead
129 pages - You are on Page 82
17. But how comes it that the intuitions and the Reason-Principles of the soul are not in the same timeless fashion within ourselves, but that here the later of order is converted into a later of time — bringing in all these doubts?
Is it because in us the governing and the answering principles are many and there is no sovereign unity?
That condition; and, further, the fact that our mental acts fall into a series according to the succession of our needs, being not self-determined but guided by the variations of the external: thus the will changes to meet every incident as each fresh need arises and as the external impinges in its successive things and events.
A variety of governing principles must mean variety in the images formed upon the representative faculty, images not issuing from one internal centre, but, by difference of origin and of acting — point, strange to each other, and so bringing compulsion to bear upon the movements and efficiencies of the self.
When the desiring faculty is stirred, there is a presentment of the object — a sort of sensation, in announcement and in picture, of the experience — calling us to follow and to attain: the personality, whether it resists or follows and procures, is necessarily thrown out of equilibrium. The same disturbance is caused by passion urging revenge and by the needs of the body; every other sensation or experience effects its own change upon our mental attitude; then there is the ignorance of what is good and the indecision of a soul [a human soul] thus pulled in every direction; and, again, the interaction of all these perplexities gives rise to yet others.
Reference address : https://ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/ancient-greece/plotinus/enneads-4.asp?pg=82
