Taylor on the Good of Plotinus

Thomas Taylor · Mystic Verse and Insights Series · 5 pages

Five pages of Thomas Taylor's commentary on Plotinus, Ennead VI vii, taken from the Collected Writings of Plotinus in the Thomas Taylor Series, arranged under running headings and given the sub-title "The English Platonist on Plotinus."

The first claim is about Plotinus's purpose: that he seems to have left the orb of light solely for the benefit of mankind, to teach men how to repair the ruin contracted by their exile from good and how to return to their true country. Taylor is careful to say what that does not mean. Plotinus did not descend in order to unfold the sublimest truths to the vulgar part of mankind, which would have been a vain and ridiculous attempt, since the eyes of the multitude, as Plato says, are not strong enough to look at truth; he came as a guide to the few born with a divine destiny who are struggling to regain the lost region of light but do not know how to break the fetters that hold them, and who are impatient to leave the obscure cavern of sense where all is delusion and shadow. The second and blunter claim is the one the file is arranged around: let no one deceive himself by fancying that he can understand the writings of Plotinus by barely reading them. The argument for it is that Porphyry — a man of great sagacity, living when he did and possessing advantages denied to every modern — found so much difficulty in fathoming Plotinus that there must necessarily be very few now who can. The reason offered is not obscurity of style but the nature of the subjects: since they are for the most part objects of intellect alone, to understand them is to see them, and to see them is to come into contact with them, which is only accomplished by long familiarity and a life conformable to the things themselves. Plato's seventh Epistle supplies the closing image — that a light, as if leaping from a fire, will suddenly be kindled in the soul and will then nourish itself.

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