Page:Enneads (IA enneads05plot).pdf/36

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
24
PLOTINUS

otherwise we must hold that thinking and walking are not even actions. But if they are not in the category of Action, where then in our classification must they fall?

It may perhaps be urged that the act of thinking, together with the faculty of thought, should be regarded as relative to the thought object; for is not the faculty of sensation treated as relative to the sensible object? If then, we may ask, in the analogue the faculty of sensation is treated as relative to the sensible object, why not the sensory act as well? The fact is that even sensation, though related to an external object, has something besides that relation: it has, namely, its own status of being either an Act or a Passion. Now the Passion is separable from the condition of being attached to some object and caused by some object: so, then, is the Act a distinct entity. Walking is similarly attached and caused, and yet has besides the status of being a motion. It follows that thought, in addition to its relationship, will have the status of being either a motion or an Act.

19.

We have to ask ourselves whether there are not certain Acts which without the addition of a time-element will be thought of as imperfect and therefore classed with motions. Take for instance living and life. The life of a definite person implies a certain adequate period, just as his happiness is no merely instantaneous thing. Life and happiness are, in other words, of the nature ascribed to Motion: both therefore must be treated as motions, and Motion must be regarded as a unity, a single genus; besides the quantity and quality belonging to Substance we must take count of the motion manifested in it.

We may further find desirable to distinguish bodily from psychic motions, or spontaneous motions from those induced by external forces, or the original from the derivative, the original motions being activities whether externally related or independent, while the derivative will be Passions.

But surely the motions having external tendency are actually identical with those of external derivation: the cutting issuing from