Plotinus porphyrian I.6 · chronological 1 · chapter 5 · volkmann page 89-91

τῷ δὴ καὶ περὶ τὰ ἐν οὐκ αἰσθήσει ἐρωτικῶν ἀναπυνθάνεσθαι δεῖ: τί πάσχετε περὶ τὰ λεγόμενα ἐπιτηδεύματα καλὰ καὶ τρόπους καλοὺς καὶ ἤθη σώφρονα καὶ ὅλως ἔργα ἀρετῆς καὶ διαθέσεις καὶ τὸ τῶν ψυχῶν κάλλος; καὶ ἑαυτοὺς δὲ ἰδόντες τὰ ἔνδον καλοὺς τί πάσχετε; καὶ πῶς ἀναβακχεύεσθε καὶ ἀνακινεῖσθε καὶ ἑαυτοῖς συνεῖναι ποθεῖτε συλλεξάμενοι αὐτοὺς ἀπὸ τῶν σωμάτων; πάσχουσι μὲν γὰρ ταῦτα οἱ ὄντως ἐρωτικοί. τί δέ ἐστι, περὶ ὃ ταῦτα πάσχουσιν; οὐ σχῆμα, οὐ χρῶμα, οὐ μέγεθός τι, ἀλλὰ περὶ ψυχήν, ἀχρώματον μὲν αὐτήν, ἀχρώματον δὲ καὶ τὴν σωφροσύνην ἔχουσαν καὶ τὸ ἄλλο τῶν ἀρετῶν φέγγος, ὅταν ἢ ἐν αὐτοῖς ἴδητε, ἢ καὶ ἐν ἄλλῳ θεάσησθε μέγεθος ψυχῆς καὶ ἦθος δίκαιον καὶ σωφροσύνην καθαρὰν καὶ ἀνδρείαν βλοσυρὸν ἔχουσαν πρόσωπον καὶ σεμνότητα καὶ αἰδῶ ἐπανθοῦσαν ἀτρεμεῖ καὶ ἀκύμονι καὶ ἀπαθεῖ διαθέσει, ἐπὶ πᾶσι δὲ τούτοις τὸν θεοειδῆ νοῦν ἐπιλάμποντα. ταῦτα οὖν ἀγάμενοι καὶ φιλοῦντες πῶς αὐτὰ λέγετε καλά; ἔστι μὲν γὰρ καὶ φαίνεται καὶ οὐ μήποτε ὁ ἰδὼν ἄλλο τι φήσει, ἢ τὰ ὄντως ὄντα ταῦτα εἶναι. τί ὄντα ὄντως; ἢ καλά. ἀλλ’ ἔτι ποθεῖ ὁ λόγος, τί ὄντα πεποίηκε τὴν ψυχὴν εἶναι ἐράσμιον: τί τὸ ἐπὶ πάσαις ἀρεταῖς διαπρέπον οἷον φῶς; βούλει δὴ καὶ τὰ ἐναντία λαβών, τὰ περὶ ψυχὴν αἰσχρὰ γινόμενα, ἀντιπαραθεῖναι; τάχα γὰρ ἂν συμβάλλοιτο πρὸς ὃ ζητοῦμεν τὸ αἰσχρὸν ὅ τί ποτ̓ ἐστὶ καὶ διότι φανέν. ἔστω δὴ ψυχὴ αἰσχρά, ἀκόλαστός τε καὶ ἄδικος, πλείστων μὲν ἐπιθυμιῶν γέμουσα, πλείστης δὲ ταραχῆς, ἐν φόβοις διὰ δειλίαν, ἐν φθόνοις διὰ μικροπρέπειαν, πάντα φρονοῦσα ἃ δὴ καὶ φρονεῖ θνητὰ καὶ ταπεινά, σκολιὰ πανταχοῦ, ἡδονῶν οὐ καθαρῶν φίλη, ζῶσα ζωὴν τοῦ ὅ τι ἂν πάθῃ διὰ σώματος ὡς ἡδὺ λαβοῦσα [τὸ] αἶσχος. αὐτὸ τοῦτο τὸ αἶσχος αὐτῇ ἆρα οὐ προσγεγονέναι οἷον ἐπακτὸν κακὸν φήσομεν, ὃ ἐλωβήσατο μὲν αὐτῇ, πεποίηκε δὲ αὐτὴν ἀκάθαρτον καὶ πολλῷ τῷ κακῷ συμπεφυρμένην, οὔτε ζωὴν ἔτι ἔχουσαν οὔτε αἴσθησιν καθαράν, ἀλλὰ τῷ μίγματι τοῦ κακοῦ ἀμυδρᾷ τῇ ζωῇ κεχρημένην καὶ πολλῷ τῷ θανάτῳ κεκραμένην, οὐκέτι μὲν ὁρῶσαν ἃ δεῖ ψυχὴν ὁρᾶν, οὐκέτι δὲ ἐωμένην ἐν αὐτῇ μένειν τῷ ἕλκεσθαι ἀεὶ πρὸς τὸ ἔξω καὶ τὸ κάτω καὶ τὸ σκοτεινόν; ἀκάθαρτος δή, οἶμαι, οὖσα καὶ φερομένη πανταχοῦ ὁλκαῖς πρὸς τὰ τῇ αἰσθήσει προσπίπτοντα, πολὺ τὸ τοῦ σώματος ἔχουσα ἐγκεκραμένον, τῷ ὑλικῷ πολλῷ συνοῦσα καὶ εἰς αὐτὴν εἰσδεξαμένη εἶδος ἕτερον ἠλλάξατο κράσει τῇ πρὸς τὸ χεῖρον: οἷον εἴ τις δὺς εἰς πηλὸν ἢ βόρβορον τὸ μὲν ὅπερ εἶχε κάλλος μηκέτι προφαίνοι, τοῦτο δὲ ὁρῷτο, ὃ παρὰ τοῦ πηλοῦ ἢ βορβόρου ἀπεμάξατο: ᾧ δὴ τὸ αἰσχρὸν προσθήκῃ τοῦ ἀλλοτρίου προσῆλθε καὶ ἔργον αὐτῷ, εἴπερ ἔσται πάλιν καλός, ἀπονιψαμένῳ καὶ καθηραμένῳ ὅπερ ἦν εἶναι. αἰσχρὰν δὴ ψυχὴν λέγοντες μίξει καὶ κράσει καὶ νεύσει τῇ πρὸς τὸ σῶμα καὶ ὕλην ὀρθῶς ἂν λέγοιμεν. καὶ ἔστι τοῦτο αἶσχος ψυχῇ μὴ καθαρᾷ μηδὲ εἰλικρινεῖ εἶναι, ὥσπερ χρυσῷ ἀναπεπλῆσθαι τοῦ γεώδους, ὃ εἴ τις ἀφέλοι, καταλέλειπται χρυσὸς καὶ ἔστι καλός, μονούμενος μὲν τῶν ἄλλων, αὐτῷ δὲ συνὼν μόνῳ. τὸν αὐτὸν δὴ τρόπον καὶ ψυχή, μονωθεῖσα μὲν ἐπιθυμιῶν, ἃς διὰ τὸ σῶμα ἔχει, ᾧ ἄγαν προσωμίλει, ἀπαλλαγεῖσα δὲ τῶν ἄλλων παθῶν καὶ καθαρθεῖσα ἃ ἔχει σωματωθεῖσα, μείνασα μόνη τὸ αἰσχρὸν τὸ παρὰ τῆς ἑτέρας φύσεως ἅπαν ἀπεθήκατο.

So we must question those who love the things that are not in sense-perception: What do you experience about what are called beautiful pursuits, and beautiful ways of life, and self-controlled characters, and in general the works of virtue, and dispositions, and the beauty of souls? And when you see yourselves beautiful within, what do you experience? How is it that you are stirred as in Bacchic frenzy, and excited, and long to be with yourselves, gathering yourselves together away from bodies? For this is what true lovers experience. And what is it about which they experience this? Not a shape, not a colour, not some magnitude, but soul — itself without colour, and possessing a self-control without colour and the rest of the splendour of the virtues — whenever you see in yourselves, or behold in another, greatness of soul, and a just character, and a pure self-control, and courage with its grim face, and dignity and modesty flowering upon a disposition calm and unruffled and unaffected, and over all these the godlike intellect shining. We admire these, then, and hold them dear — but how do we say that they are beautiful? They are, and they appear so, and whoever has seen them will never say anything other than that they are the things that really are. Really are what? Beautiful. But the argument still wants to know what they are that has made the soul lovable: what is it that shines upon all the virtues like a light? Will you, then, take their opposites too — the ugly things that come to be in soul — and set them beside them? For perhaps it would help toward what we are seeking to see what ugliness is and why it appears. Let there be, then, an ugly soul, licentious and unjust, full of very many desires and of very great disturbance, in fears through cowardice, in envies through pettiness, thinking what it does think only of mortal and low things, crooked everywhere, a friend of impure pleasures, living a life of whatever it undergoes through the body, taking ugliness for sweetness. Shall we not say that this very ugliness has come upon it as an evil brought in from outside, which has outraged it and made it impure and smeared with much evil, no longer having life or sense-perception that is pure, but using a life made dim by its mixture with evil and blended with much death, no longer seeing what a soul should see, no longer allowed to remain in itself, because it is always being dragged toward the outside, and the below, and the dark? Impure indeed, I think, and borne about everywhere by the pull of whatever strikes the senses, with much of the body mixed into it, consorting with much that is material and taking into itself a form other than its own, it has changed by a mixture with the worse: as if someone who had plunged into mud or mire should no longer show the beauty he had, and what was seen should be what the mud or mire had left on him. For him ugliness has come by the addition of something alien, and his task, if he is to be beautiful again, is to be washed and cleaned and so to be what he was. We should be right, then, to say that a soul becomes ugly by mixture and blending and inclination toward the body and matter. And this is ugliness for a soul: not to be pure and unmixed, like gold filled up with earthy stuff; take that away, and the gold is left, and it is beautiful, isolated from other things and consorting with itself alone. In the same way the soul, isolated from the desires that it has through the body, with which it consorted too much, and freed from its other affections, and purified of what it has from being embodied, remaining alone, has put away all the ugliness that came from the other nature.

ὁ λόγος in the second paragraph is 'the argument', the ordinary sense (glossary). αἰσχρός and αἶσχος stay 'ugly' and 'ugliness' of the soul as of bodies, so that the argument's symmetry with καλός survives (glossary). Volkmann brackets τὸ before αἶσχος as a deletion.

Greek collated line by line against the Volkmann plate (vol. 1, pp. 89–91); every departure of the First1KGreek transcription from the printed page is corrected and recorded in the apparatus.

In the crux Ennead I.6 [1], On Beauty, chapter 5