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Plotinos: Complete Works, v. 2 In Chronological Order,...

SCORN OF THIS WORLD IS NO GUARANTEE OF GOODNESS.

Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition Plotinus and Guthrie, Kenneth Sylvan
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16. One does not become a good man merely by scorning the divinities, the world, and the beauties it contains. Scorn of the divinities is the chief characteristic of the evil. Perversity is never complete until scorn of the divinities is reached; and if a man were not otherwise perverse, this vice would be sufficient to make him such. The respect which the (Gnostic) pretend to have for the intelligible divinities (the aeons) is an illogical accident. For when one loves a being, he loves all that attaches thereto; he extends to the children the affection for the parent. Now every soul is a daughter of the heavenly Father. The souls that preside over the stars are intellectual, good, and closer to the divinity than ours. How could this sense-world, with the divinities it contains, be separated from the intelligible world? We have already shown above the impossibility of such a separation. Here we insist that when one scorns beings so near to those that hold the front rank, it can only be that one knows them by name only.

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Plotinos: Complete Works, v. 2 In Chronological Order, Grouped in Four Periods, Project Gutenberg eBook #42931

THE GNOSTICS IGNORE VIRTUE WITHOUT WHICH GOD IS A MERE WORD. TO EXCEPT CERTAIN CLASSES OF BEING FROM DIVINE CARE IS TO SHOW CALLOUSNESS OF DISPOSITION.