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Plotinos: Complete Works, v. 3 In Chronological Order,...

THE LIFE OF THE INTELLIGENCE IS EVER CONTEMPORANEOUS.

Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition Plotinus and Guthrie, Kenneth Sylvan
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What that it does not already possess could (intelligible existence) possess later? What could it be in the future, that it is not now? There is nothing that could be added to or subtracted from its present state; for it was not different from what it is now; and it is not to possess anything that it does not necessarily possess now, so that one could never say of it, "it was"; for what did it have that it does not now have? Nor could it be said of it, "it will be"; for what could it acquire? It must therefore remain what it is. (As Plato thought438), that possesses eternity of which one cannot say either "it was," or "will be," but only, "it is;" that whose existence is immutable, because the past did not make it lose anything, and because the future will not make it acquire anything. Therefore, on examining the existence of intelligible nature, we see that its life is simultaneously entire, complete, and without any kind of an interval. That is the eternity we seek.

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Plotinos: Complete Works, v. 3 In Chronological Order, Grouped in Four Periods, Project Gutenberg eBook #42932

ETERNITY AS A UNION OF THE FIVE CATEGORIES. ETERNITY IS NOT AN ACCIDENT OF THE INTELLIGIBLE, BUT AN INTIMATE PART OF ITS NATURE.