14 October 2022

From Plotinus’s On Difficulties about the Soul II:

“. . . and the needs of the body and the passions make us have continually different opinions.  Then there is ignorance of the [true] good, and the soul’s not knowing what to say when it is dragged in every direction, and still other results from the mixture of all these.  But is it actually our best part which has different opinions?  No, perplexity and variety of opinions belong to the gathering [of our various parts and passions]: from our best part the right account of the matter is given to the common gathering, and is weak because it is in the mixture, not by its own nature.  But it is as if in the great clamour of an assembly the best of the advisers does not prevail when he speaks, but the worse of those who clamour and shout, but he (the best) sits quietly unable to do anything, defeated by the clamour of the worse.  And in the worst kind of man there is the common gathering and his human nature is composed of everything in the manner of a bad political constitution; in the middling man it is as it is in the city in which some good can prevail as the democratic constitution is not entirely out of control; but in the better kind of man the style of life is aristocratic; his human nature is already escaping from the common gathering and giving itself over to the better sort.  But in the best man, the man who separates himself, the ruling principle is one, and the order comes from this (the One) to the rest.  It is as if there was a double city, one above and one composed of the lower elements set in order by the powers above.”

(Plotinus, Ennead IV.4.17, On Difficulties about the Soul II, translated by A. H. Armstrong, Loeb Classical Library, 1984, 179-183.  Note: The square brackets are inserts by the translator, A. H. Armstrong.  The parentheses are inserts by me.)

As I read this passage, I feel that it accurately describes my own life which has been pulled this way and that by the kinds of mechanisms that Plotinus describes.  I describe my spiritual journey as having many setbacks and that it has had a five-steps-forward, then two or three steps back, kind of rhythm.  I think this is common.  There are those who hear about the path and then follow it forward, but I think they are extremely rare.  It is more common to become distracted, step off the path, enticed by some attraction, and then if one is fortunate, one comes to one’s senses and returns to the path.  A consequence of this is that initially progress on the Platonic path is difficult to discern.  I have found that it is only when I look back over a longer period of time, say ten years, that it becomes clear how much I have learned and how much has changed.  And this helps to build a foundation for a more secure onward journey on the path.

Plotinus seems to have realized this.  I don’t know if this is based on his own experience, but it does indicate in Porphyry’s biography of Plotinus that Plotinus spent quite a few years searching for a knowledgeable teacher in Alexandria before finally finding Ammonius Saccas.  That period of searching may be what informs a passage like this which has the authenticity of experience for me.  I find that gratifying as it means that Plotinus also felt, early in his life, the attraction of ephemeral distractions.  And it also means that overcoming those distractions is possible for people like myself.