§ 1.8.1. Those who are seeking to discover where evils come from – whether they belong among beings in general or to a particular genus of beings – would be making an appropriate start to their search if they first offered a hypothesis as to what evil is, that is, what its nature is. For in this way it would also be known where evil comes from and5 where it is located and in what sort of thing it occurs, and, in general, some agreement could be arrived at as to whether it is something that exists.
But if it is the case that we understand each thing by being the same as it, we would be at a loss to know by what capacity we know the nature of evil, for intellect and soul, being forms, would produce the knowledge of10 Forms, and would have a desire for these.1 Yet how could one imagine that evil is a Form, when it is situated in the absence of every good? If, however, the scientific understanding of one contrary is identical to the scientific understanding of what is contrary to it, and evil is contrary to good, the scientific understanding of good will be of evil,2 too; so, it is necessary for those who intend to know evils to comprehend good, since15 the better precedes the worse, that is, among Forms, and some of the worse are not Forms but rather a privation of Form. It is, all the same, a matter for investigation how good is contrary to evil, with perhaps one a beginning and the other an end, or the one as Form the other privation. But these questions will be addressed later.320
§1.8.2. Now we should say what the nature of the Good is to the extent that is appropriate for the present discussion. The Good is that upon which all beings depend and that ‘which all beings desire’;4 they have it as their principle and are also in need of it. It itself lacks nothing, being sufficient unto itself and in need of nothing. It is also the measure and5 limit of all beings, giving from itself Intellect and Substantiality and Soul and Life and the activity of Intellect. And all of these up to the Good are beautiful, but it itself is above Beauty and is the transcendent ruler of all that is best, all that is in the intelligible world.5 Intellect there is not like the intellects we are said to have, intellects that are filled with10 propositions and are capable of understanding things that are said and of calculative reasoning and so observing what follows, intellects which consequently observe beings that they did not formerly possess, since they were empty before learning them, despite being intellects.15
Intellect there is actually not like that; rather, it has all things and is all things and is present with them when it is present to itself and has all things while not having them, for they are not one thing and it another. Nor is each thing separate in it. For each is the whole, and everything is everywhere. Yet they are not mixed up, but each is in its turn separate. At least,20 that which shares in it does not share in all of them in the same way, but rather in the way that it is able to share. Intellect is the primary activity that comes from the Good,6 and the primary Substance that comes from it, while it remains in itself. But Intellect is active with reference to the Good, in a way living around it.7 Soul dances outside this, looking at it and, in25 contemplating its interior, looks at god through Intellect.
And ‘this is the life of the gods’,8 carefree and blessed, and evil is nowhere here. And if [the procession] had stopped here, there would be no evil but only the first and the second and the third order of goods. ‘All things are around the king of all, and that is the cause of all beauties, and30 all things come from that, and second things are around the second, and third things around the third.’9
§1.8.3. Indeed, if all that exists were these Beings and what transcends them, evil would not exist among Beings, or in what transcends them. For these Beings are good. So, it remains that if indeed evil does exist, it exists among non-beings as a sort of form of non-being and is involved5 in some way with that which is mixed or associated with non-being. ‘Non-being’ does not mean ‘that which is absolutely non-existent’ but only something different from being.10 Nor does it refer to the non-being that Motion and Rest have in relation to Being but rather to an image of Being or to something that has even more non-being than that.11 This non-being belongs to every sensible object and every state10 sensible objects are in, whether as something posterior to or accidental to them or as a principle of these or as some one of the elements that together comprise being of this sort.
On this basis, someone might immediately arrive at a conception of evil as a sort of absence of measure as opposed to measure, or absence of limit as opposed to limit, or absence of form as opposed to what is productive of form, or what is always in need as opposed to what is15 self-sufficient; always indefinite, in no way stable, absolutely passive, insatiable, and completely impoverished. And these properties are not accidental to it, but in a way its substantiality. Whichever part of it you look at, it, too, is all these things. All other things that partake of evil and are assimilated to it become evil, though they are not essentially evil.20
What, then, is the sort of existent in which these properties are present, not as being something different from it, but as being identical with what it is? For indeed if evil occurs in something else, it must be something prior to that occurrence, even if it is not a substance. For just as the Good itself is one thing and the property of being good another, so evil is one thing and the property of being evil, which immediately derives from that, another.
What, then, is absence of measure if it is not just whatever is in25 that which is without measure? But just as there is measure that is not in that which is measured, so there is absence of measure that is not in that which is without measure. For if it is in something else, either it is in that which is without measure – but this thing does not need to partake of the absence of measure, since it is unmeasured – or it is in that which is measured. But it is not possible for that which is measured to have30 absence of measure, just to the extent that it is measured.
And then, there must be something that is absence of limit in itself and, again, absence of form in itself and all the other properties mentioned above which characterize the nature of evil.12 And if there is something like it that comes after it, either it has evil mixed in with it, or it looks towards evil and so is like it, or it is productive of this sort of thing.13 So, the substrate of figures and forms and shapes and measures35 and limits and whatever is ordered by an ordering alien to it, not having good from itself, but being like a reflection in relation to beings – that is actually the substantiality of evil, if indeed something can be the substantiality of evil. The argument has found this to be primary evil or evil itself.40
§1.8.4. It is the nature of bodies, insofar as they partake of matter, to be evil, but not to be primary evil. For bodies have some form, though it is not genuine, and they are deprived of life, and they destroy each other, and their motion is disordered and they are an ‘impediment’14 to the soul in regard to its own activity, and they flee substantiality inasmuch as5 they are continually in flux, and so they are secondary evil.
But soul in itself is not evil nor, again, is all soul evil. What is the evil soul? It is the sort of thing Plato is referring to when he says: ‘those who have been enslaved by the part of the soul that naturally brings evils to it’,15 because the non-rational form of the soul is receptive of evil, that is, of absence of measure, and of excess and defect, from which also come licentiousness and cowardice and the10 other evils of the soul, and involuntary states which produce false beliefs, and the thinking that evils and goods are what it is actually fleeing and pursuing.
But what is it that produces this evil, and how will you connect it to its principle or cause?
In fact, first, this type of soul does not transcend matter, nor does it15 exist in itself. It has, then, been mixed with absence of measure and is without a share in the form that orders it and connects it to measure, for it is mixed up with a body that has matter.
Next, the faculty of calculative reasoning, if it is harmed, is prevented by these corporeal states from seeing, and by being darkened by matter and inclined to matter and, generally, by looking not towards substantiality but towards becoming, whose principle is in20 this way the nature of matter. Being evil, it fills with its own evil even that which is never in it, but is only looking at it. For since it is absolutely without a share of good and is a privation or unmixed lack of it, it assimilates to itself everything that comes into contact with it in any way.25
The soul, then, that is perfect and inclines towards Intellect is always pure and turns away from matter and all that is indefinite and without measure and neither sees evil nor approaches it. It, then, remains pure when it is absolutely made definite by Intellect. That which does not remain like this but proceeds from itself by not being perfect or primary is like a reflection of that pure soul, due to its30 deficiency, just to the extent that it is deficient, and is filled up with indeterminateness and sees darkness and at that moment acquires matter and looks at that which it does not see – in the sense that we talk about seeing darkness, too.
§1.8.5. But if the lack of that which is good is the explanation of seeing and consorting with darkness, evil would consist in the lack that is in the soul and would be primarily there – let the darkness be evil secondarily – and the nature of evil will no longer be in matter but in that which is prior to matter.5
In fact, evil consists not in any particular type of lack but in absolute lack. At least, that which is slightly lacking with respect to that which is good is not evil, for it is still able to be perfect according to its own nature. But when something is absolutely lacking – which is what matter is – this is really evil, having no share of good.16 For matter does not10 even have existence, which would have allowed it to partake of good to this extent; rather, we say that ‘existence’ is said of it equivocally, so that the true way to speak of it is as non-existent.17
Lack, then, amounts to not being good, but evil is absolute lack. The greater lack consists in being able to fall into evil and thereby being evil already.18 Accordingly, it is necessary to think of evil not as a15 particular evil, such as injustice or some other kind of vice, but as that which yet is none of these, since these are in a way species of evil specified by their own additional [differentiae]. For example, wickedness in the soul and its species are differentiated either by the matter with which they are concerned or by the parts of the soul or by one being a sort of seeing and one an impulse or state.
But if someone were to suppose that things outside the soul, like20 sickness or poverty, can be evils, how will he connect it to the nature of matter?
In fact, sickness is a lack or excess in the materialized bodies that do not maintain order or measure.19 Ugliness is matter not conquered by form, and poverty is a lack or privation of that which we need due to the25 matter to which we are joined, a nature that has neediness.
If this is indeed rightly stated, the principle of evils should not be supposed to be in the evils that are within ourselves but to be prior to us. Whatever evils take hold of human beings, they take hold of us unwillingly.20 Indeed, there is a ‘flight from evils in the soul’21 for those who are able, though not all are able.30
Though matter is present to the sensible gods,22 evil is not present, I mean the vice which human beings have, because that is not even present in all human beings. For these gods master matter – though the gods in whom matter is not present are better – and they master it by that in them which is not enmattered.
§1.8.6. We should investigate, too, what it means to say that evils are not eliminable, but exist of necessity and why they do not exist among gods but always inhabit ‘the mortal nature’ and ‘this region’.23 Does Plato mean that whereas heaven is always purified of evils – being5 borne around in a regular manner and in order, and there being nothing of injustice there, nor of any other vice, nor do the heavenly bodies do injustice to each other since they are borne around in order – on earth there is injustice and disorder? For this is what he means by ‘the mortal nature’ and ‘this region’. But when he says ‘fleeing from here’,24 he must no longer mean ‘fleeing from things10 on earth’. For the flight, he says, is not the removal of oneself from earth, but, being on earth, to be just and pious with wisdom, so that what is meant is that one must flee evil, and what is evil for him is vice and the things that result from vice. And when one of his interlocutors remarks that evils are eliminable if Socrates were to persuade human15 beings of what he says, he replies that ‘this is not possible, for evils exist of necessity, since there must be something contrary to that which is good’.25
As for the vice which is in a human being, how is it possible for it to be the contrary of the Good? For this is actually contrary to virtue, whereas virtue is not the Good, but a good, which allows us to master matter. But20 how could something be the contrary of the Good, for it actually has no quality?
Next, what necessity is there that wherever there is one of the contraries, there is the other? Suppose it is possible; indeed, let it be the case that when one contrary exists, the other one exists, for example, given that health exists, that it is possible that sickness exists. But it is25 still not the case by necessity.
In fact, Plato does not say it is necessary in the case of every contrary for this to be true, though he does say it about the Good.
But if the Good is Substance, or transcends Substance, how could there be a contrary of it?26 That there is no contrary substance in the case of a particular substance has been shown securely by induction,30 but this has not been shown generally for substance. What, then, will be universally contrary to substance and, generally, to the primary ones?
In fact, it is non-substance that is contrary to substance, and it is the nature and principle of evil that is contrary to the nature of Good. For both are principles, the one of evils and the other of goods and everything within each nature is a contrary of the other. So, wholes are35 contrary, and more contrary to each other than are the other contraries. For the others are contraries either within the identical species or within the identical genus, that is, with there being something common in which they participate.27
But things that are separate, where one is the contrary by being the complement of that which the other is, and where the contraries are in different things, would they not be contraries most of all – if indeed40 ‘those things are contraries that are most distant from each other’?28 Indeed, for limit and measure and everything else that is in divine nature, these are contraries of lack of limit and lack of measure and everything else that the nature of evil has. So, the whole is contrary to the whole. And evil’s existence contains something false, which is primarily45 and really false; but the existence of the divine is true existence so that, just as false is the contrary of true, what is not in accordance with substantiality is contrary to what is in accordance with it. So, we have shown that it is not the case that there is no contrary to substance anywhere.
Besides, even in the case of fire and water, we would allow them to be contraries if they did not have matter in common in which hot and cold50 and wet and dry turned up as accidents. But if, in their case, they had only that which comprises the substantiality of each without the common matter, there would also have come to be a contrariety here, that of substance to substance. Things, therefore, that have been separated and have nothing in common and stand at the greatest distance from each55 other in their natures are contraries. For their contrariety is due, not to some quality or, generally, to their being members of some genus, but exists insofar as they are separated from each other as much as possible and is constructed from their being placed opposite to each other and this produces the contraries.
§1.8.7. But how, then, is it necessary that, if the Good exists, so does evil? Is it, then, because there must be matter in the universe? This universe is indeed of necessity made of contraries.
In fact, these would not exist if matter did not. For ‘the nature of this universe is a mixture of Intellect and of necessity’,29 and the things that5 come into it from god are good, whereas evils come from ‘the archaic nature’, meaning the material substrate before it has been ordered by some god.30 But how is Plato using ‘mortal nature’ given that by ‘this region’ he means the universe?31
In fact, the answer comes in the words ‘since you were generated, you are not immortal, but neither will you be destroyed by me’.32 If this is10 actually so, then it would be correctly stated that evils will never be destroyed.33 How, then, can we flee from them? Not by going to a different region, he says, but by possessing virtue and distancing oneself from the body. For in this way, one distances oneself from matter. At least, whoever consorts with the body is consorting with matter. Plato somewhere makes clear what separating oneself and not15 separating oneself means.34 ‘Being among the gods’ means being among the intelligibles.35 For these are the immortals.
It is also possible to grasp the necessity of evil in this way. Since the Good is not alone, there is necessarily in the procession which comes from it – or, if one wants, in the eternal descent and removal from it – a last point, and after this it would not be possible for anything else to20 come to be; and this is evil. That which comes after the first necessarily exists, so that the last must necessarily exist, too. But this is matter which has nothing more of the Good. And this is the necessity of evil.
§1.8.8. If someone were to say that it is not because of matter that we become evil – on the grounds that neither ignorance nor bad appetites are because of matter; and further, that if these conditions were to arise because of a defective body it would not be because of matter that they arise, but it is the form that does it, for example, heat, coldness, the5 bitter, the salty, and all the other humours, and in addition, saturations and purgations, and not simple saturations, but saturations of a certain sort, and, generally, a certain sort of quality producing the difference of appetites and, if you like, errors in beliefs, so that it is the form more than the matter that is evil – this person would be compelled no less to10 concede that matter is evil. For what quality does in matter, it does not do when it is separate, just as the shape of an axe does nothing without the iron.36
Next, too, the forms in matter are not identical with what they would be if they existed by themselves, but rather are enmattered expressed15 principles corrupted and infected by that nature.37 For it is not fire itself that burns nor any of the other things that exist by themselves that do what they are said to do when in matter. For matter, being authoritative over that which shows up in it, corrupts and destroys it, juxtaposing its20 own nature which is contrary, not by adding cold to heat, but by bringing along its own formlessness to the form of heat, and the shapeless to the shape and excess and deficiency to the measured, until it makes it its own instead of belonging to itself, just as, in the nourishment of living beings, that which is introduced is no longer what is digested, but25 becomes the blood of the dog and entirely canine, and all the humours of the one who has received it. Indeed, if the body is the [proximate] cause of evils, matter would be the [ultimate] cause of evils.
But one must dominate it, someone else might say. However, that which is able to dominate does not do so perfectly if one does not flee.30 And the appetites become stronger in such a mixture of bodies, and the appetites of some are stronger than those of others, so that they are not able to dominate that which is in each of them, whereas others are duller and they are chilled and blocked in their ability to discern the evil that comes through bodies. The contrary corporeal appetites render them feckless. Differences in our own habits at different times bear witness to35 this. When we are full we are different in our appetites and in our thoughts than when we are hungry; and some people are one way when they are full, and others another.
Let it indeed be the case that, whereas the unmeasured is the primary evil, that which, having come to be in that which is unmeasured either by assimilation or by participation, which is accidental to it, is a secondary40 evil. And the primary evil is darkness, the secondary is darkened in this way. Indeed, vice, being ignorance and lack of measure in the soul, is a secondary evil and not evil itself. For virtue is not the primary Good, but something which is assimilated to or participates in it.
§1.8.9. With what, then, do we know good and evil? First, with what do we know vice? For we know virtue with intellect itself or with intellectual virtue; for it recognizes itself. But how do we know vice?
In fact, just as we know the straight and the not straight with a ruler, thus we know that which does not harmonize with virtue.38 Is it by5 looking or by not looking, I mean, that we know vice?
In fact, as for absolute vice,39 it is by not looking, for it is unlimited. We know by abstraction, then, that which is in no way virtue. As for that which is not absolute vice, we know it by that which it lacks. If we see one part of a thing, then we grasp along with the part that is present that which is absent – which is in the whole form, but is absent from there.10 It is, we say, the same with vice, leaving in the indefinite that which is deprived of form. Moreoever, looking at matter like some ugly face, with the expressed principle not dominating in it, so that the ugliness of matter is hidden, what appears to us is ugly by its lack of form.
But what about that which in no way has encountered form, how do we know that?15
In fact, we know it by taking away all form; that in which this is not present, we call matter, and we grasp it in ourselves as shapeless by taking away form from it, if we want to think about matter. For this reason, too, this is an alternative intellect that is not intellect, daring to see things that are not its own.40 Just as an eye removes itself from light20 in order that it might see the darkness – though it does not see; it leaves the light so that it can see the darkness, because it could not see it with the light; on the other hand, it cannot see without the light, so it does not see;41 it does this, then, so that it can ‘see’ the darkness. In this way, intellect, too, leaving the light that is internal to it, and proceeding in a way outside itself, comes to that which does not belong to it. It does25 not bring along its own light, and it experiences the contrary of what is, so that it can see that which is contrary to itself.
§1.8.10. These questions are resolved in this way. But how is matter, being without qualities, evil?
In fact, it is said to be without qualities by itself not having in itself the qualities which it receives and which will be in it as a substrate, not in the sense of having no nature.42 If it actually has some nature, what prevents5 this nature from being evil, but not evil in the sense of being qualified, seeing that ‘being qualified’ refers to something other than the quality that is qualifying?43 The quality, then, is an accident in something else, whereas the matter is not in something else, but is the substrate, and the accident is in this. Not having the quality that has the nature of an10 accident, then, it is said to be without quality. So, if the quality itself is without quality, how would matter, which is not receptive of the quality, be said to be qualified? It is, therefore, rightly said to be without quality and evil. For it is not said to be evil by having quality, but rather by not having quality, so that it would probably not be evil if it were44 a form,15 rather than a nature that is contrary to form.
§1.8.11. But the nature that is contrary to all form is privation. And privation is always in something else and is not itself a real existent.45 So, if evil is found in privation, evil will be in that which is deprived of form. So, it will not exist by itself. If, then, evil will occur in a soul,5 the evil will be privation in it and it will be its vice, and nothing external. Indeed, other arguments eliminate matter entirely, or take it not to be evil, though it exists. We should not, then, seek evil elsewhere but, being posited in the soul, to posit it thus as the absence of Good.
But if privation comes about through the absence of some form, if10 there is [thus] a privation of Good in the soul and the privation produces vice in the soul, then the soul has no good by definition [of ‘privation’]. So, the soul, though it is soul, does not have life either. The soul, therefore will be soulless, if indeed it does not have life. So, being soul, it will not be soul. Since soul, therefore, has life by15 definition, it does not have the privation of the Good in its own nature.46 It is, therefore, Good-like, having something good, a trace of Intellect, and it is not evil in its own nature. It is, therefore, not primary evil nor does it have primary evil accidentally, for the Good is not altogether absent from it.
§1.8.12. What, then, if someone says that vice or evil in the soul are not absolute privation of Good, but partial privation of Good? But if this is so, since one part has it and one is deprived of it, it will have a mixed disposition and will not have evil unmixed and we will5 not yet have found primary and unmixed evil. And that which is good in the soul will be in its substantiality and evil will be something accidental in it.
§1.8.13. If, therefore, evil in the soul is not like this, perhaps it is like an impediment to seeing in the eye. But if it is like this, evil will be productive of evil in the things in which it is present, and being thus productive of evil as some other thing, it will be something different from evil. If, then, vice is an impediment to soul, it is productive of evil, but vice will not be evil. And virtue will not be5 the Good, but will function as a catalyst; so, if virtue is not the Good, neither is vice evil.
Next, too, virtue is not Beauty itself nor Good itself. But we have said that virtue is not Beauty itself nor Good itself because Beauty itself and10 Good itself are prior to virtue and transcend it; it is good and beautiful by some sort of participation.
As, then, one ascends from virtue to Beauty and the Good, so one descends from vice to that which is evil itself, starting from vice. To the contemplator there is, on the one hand, the contemplation15 of whatever evil; on the other, there is the participation in it for someone who becomes it. For he finds himself altogether in the ‘region of lack of sameness’,47 and sinking into the participation in evil there, he will be walking into a ‘muddy darkness’.48 And if the soul were to fall absolutely into absolute vice, it no longer has vice, but changes itself into a different and worse nature. For vice20 mixed with its contrary is still human nature. It dies, then, as much as a soul can die, and death for it while still immersed in the body is to be sunk into matter and to be filled with it and, when it leaves the body, to lie there until it should turn away and lift up its gaze from the25 mud.49 And this is what it means to ‘come to Hades and fall asleep there’.50
§1.8.14. If someone should say that vice is a weakness in the soul51 – at least, that the bad soul is easily affected and easily moved, borne about from every kind of evil into every other, easily moved to appetite, easily roused to anger, precipitous in acts of assent, and5 giving way easily to clouded fantasies, those which are the most feeble of the things made by craft or by nature, which suffer destruction easily from winds or by the sun’s heat – it would be worthwhile enquiring what this weakness in the soul is and where it comes from. For indeed weakness in the soul is not like weakness in bodies.10 But the incapacity for function and the good state of the body has by analogy the same name as weakness in the soul – unless it is the case that matter would be the identical cause of the weakness in the soul [and the weakness in the body].
We should, though, attend more closely to the argument, which concerns what the cause is of the so-called weakness in the soul. For it15 is indeed not density or rarity or thinness or fatness or sickness, some fever, for example, that makes the soul weak. Actually, such weakness in the soul is necessarily found in its absolute form either in separated souls or embodied souls or in both. But if it is actually not in those separate from matter – for all these are pure and are said to be ‘winged20 and perfect’52 and their function unimpeded – what is left is that the weakness is in fallen souls, which are neither pure nor purified, and their weakness would not be the removal of something, but the presence of something alien, just like phlegm or bile in the body.5325 Grasping more clearly the cause of the soul’s fall, and grasping it in the appropriate way, the weakness of the soul that we are seeking will be more evident.
Matter is among things that exist and soul exists, and there is one sort of region for them. For the region of matter is not separate from the region of soul – say, matter on earth and soul in the air – but the region30 for the soul that is separate is not being in matter, that is, not being united with matter. This means that a unity does not come to be out of soul and matter. And this means that soul is not in matter as in a substrate. And this is what being separate means. The soul has many faculties, and soul has a beginning, a middle, and an end. But matter,35 when it is present, begs and in a way importunes and wants to come into soul,54 but ‘the place is holy’55 and there is nothing which is without a share of soul. Throwing itself under soul, then, it is illuminated, and it is not able to receive that by which it is illuminated. For that cannot40 sustain matter, though it is present, because it does not see it due to its evil. Matter darkens the illumination and the light there by mixing with soul and has made it weak, presenting generation to it and the explanation for its coming into matter. For it would not have come into that which is not present.
And this is the fall of the soul; to come in this way into matter and to45 be weakened, because all of its faculties are not present in the activity, matter preventing their presence by occupying the region that soul inhabits and in a way making it ‘contract itself’,56 and what it seized by a kind of theft it makes evil, until soul can lift itself up again. So, matter is the cause of weakness in the soul and the cause of vice. This evil,50 therefore, is prior evil, that is primary evil. For even if the already affected soul itself generated matter, and if it associated with it and became evil, matter is the cause of it by its presence. For soul would not have come to be in it if it were not by the presence of matter that soul’s generation occurred.
§1.8.15. If someone says that matter does not exist, he must be shown the necessity of its existence based on the many points made in the [previous] discussions of its real existence.57 Further, if someone were to say that there is absolutely no evil in beings, he must necessarily also5 eliminate the Good and say that it is not desired and doesn’t exist; so, desire and avoidance and intellection would not exist either. For desire is for good, avoidance is of evil, whereas intellection and practical wisdom is of good and evil, and is itself one among goods. There must be, then, Good, that is, unmixed Good, whereas that which is mixed10 already presupposes evil and good as ingredients, and participating in more evil thereby contributes to the totality of evil, whereas participating in less evil, insofar as it is diminished, contributes to the totality of good.
What, then, is evil in the soul? Or, in which soul could it exist if the soul were not in contact with the nature of that which is worse? For if it were not, there would be no appetites or pains or bouts of anger or fears.15 For fears are in the composite, lest it be dissolved, and pain and suffering are in the process of dissolution. But appetites come to be when there is something bothering the composite – or, if someone is planning a remedy for this, they are for not being bothered. Imagination is an external blow by that which is non-rational. And the soul receives the blow because it is not indivisible. And it has false beliefs by coming to be20 outside the truth; but it is outside the truth by not being pure. The desire directed towards Intellect is something else: for it should consort with Intellect alone and be situated in it, not inclining to the worse.58
Because of the power and nature of Good, evil is not just evil; since it appeared of necessity, it is bound with certain beautiful chains, like25 prisoners bound with golden chains, hidden by these, so that, being like this, it is not seen by the gods, and human beings do not always have to look at evil. But whenever they look, they are accompanied by images of Beauty to recollect.
1 See Ar., DA 1.2. 404b17–18, 405.b15–19; 3.8.432a2–3. In knowing Forms, we are cognitively identical with them.
2 See Pl., Phd. 97D4–5; Ar., Pr. An. 1.24a21–22.
3 Cf. infra 3 and following.
4 See Pl., Phil. 20D8; Ar., Meta. 12.7.1072b14; EN 1.1.1094a3.
5 See Pl., Rep. 509B5–9.
6 Cf. 5.3.5.36; 6.7.40.18.
7 Cf. 6.9.9.17. See Ar., Meta. 12.7.1072b19–23, 9.1074b21–1075a5.
8 See Pl., Phdr. 248A1.
9 See Pl. [?], 2nd Ep. 312E1–4.
10 Cf. 2.4.16.1–4. See Pl., Parm. 162A4–B3; Soph. 257B3–4, 258E7–9.
11 See Pl., Soph. 240B11.
12 Plotinus will identify this with matter. Cf. 3.6.7.23–30.
13 This is ‘secondary evil’, that is, anything mixed with primary evil (i.e., matter). Cf. 2.4.12.8–10.
14 See Pl., Phd. 65A10.
15 See Pl., Phdr. 256B2–3.
16 See Pl., Phil. 20D1, 54C10, 60B4.
17 Cf. supra 3.6–7; infra 15.1–3; 2,4.11,1–12,28.
18 Following the punctuation of HS1 with a full stop before τῷ.
19 See Pl., Tim. 81E–82B.
20 See Pl., Gorg. 488A3; Prot. 345D8, 358C7, 358E2–359A1; Rep. 589C6; Tim. 85D2, E1; Lg. 731C2, 860D1–9. The evils are the types of wickedness mentioned supra ll. 17–19.
21 See Pl., Phd. 107D1.
22 These are the heavenly bodies.
23 See Pl., Tht. 176A5–8.
24 See Pl., Tht. 176A8–B2.
25 See Pl., 176A3–6.
26 See Pl., Rep. 509B7–8; Ar., Cat. 5.3b24–25; Meta. 14.1.1087b2–3.
27 See Ar., Cat. 11.14a15–16.
28 See Ar., Cat. 6.6a17–18.
29 I.e., Intellect (the Demiurge) working on necessity. Cf. 3.2.5.25–32; 3.3.7.1–3. See Pl., Tim. 47E5–48A1.
30 Reading ἐκ θεοῦ τοῦ with Creuzer. See Pl., Sts. 273B4–C2 and Tim. 53B1–4.
31 See Pl., Tht. 176A7–8.
32 See Pl., Tim. 41B2–4.
33 See Pl., Tht. 176A5.
34 See Pl., Phd. 67C5–7.
35 See Pl., Tht. 176A6–7.
36 See Ar., PA 1.1.642a10–11.
37 Cf. 2.3.16.50–52; 3.6.12.1–6.
38 See Ar., DA 1.5.411a6.
39 Presumably, equivalent to evil or matter. Cf. infra 13.1.16–20.
40 See Pl., Tim. 52B2.
41 Reading τούτου with Dodds.
42 Cf. 2.4.8.1–3. See SVF 1.85 (= D.L., 7.134, 139).
43 See Ar., Cat. 8.8b25.
44 Reading ᾖ.
45 This is a Peripatetic objection to Plotinus’ identification of privation and matter. Cf. infra 14.17–28. See Ar., Phys. 1.7.190b27, 9.192a1–6.
46 Cf. 1.4.3.24–40.
47 See Pl., Sts. 273D6–E1. Plotinus reads τόπον (‘region’), which is in all the Plato mss; modern editors, following Proclus’ conjecture, read πόντον (‘sea’).
48 See Pl., Phd. 69C6.
49 See Pl., Rep. 533D1–2.
50 See Pl., Rep. 534C7–D1.
51 See Pl., Gorg. 477B3–4; Rep. 444C1–2.
52 See Pl., Phdr. 246B7–C1.
53 See Pl., Rep. 564B10.
54 See Pl., Symp. 203B4.
55 See Sophocles, Oed. Col. 54.
56 See Pl., Symp. 206D6.
57 Cf. supra 3.6–7; 5.9–12; 2.4.11.1–12, 28.
58 Cf. 1.1.5.8–26; 4.4.19.1–4.