sdi | Entries tagged with all god is good

There are four degrees of the cardinal virtues: the civic virtues of men and women, the purifying virtues of contemplatives, the intellectual virtues of a Soul purified from body, and the archetypal virtues of the Mind purified from Soul. [...] So the one who possesses the civic virtues is a good neighbor; the purifying virtues, a saint; the intellectual virtues, a god; the archetypal virtues, the Father of the Gods.

(Porphyry, Sentences XXXII, adapted by yours truly)

It causes most of us even now something of a shock to be told by a medieval Arab philosopher that to call God benevolent or righteous or to predicate of him any other human quality is just as Pagan and degraded as to say that he has a beard.

(Gilbert Murray, Five Stages of Greek Religion I)

[The descent of the souls of men] is deepened since [their spirit] is compelled to labour in care of the [needy body] into which they have entered. But Zeus, the father, takes pity on their toils and makes the bonds in which they labour soluble by death and gives respite in due time, freeing them from the body, that they too may come to dwell there where the Universal Soul, unconcerned with earthly needs, has ever dwelt. (Plotinus, Enneads IV iii §12)

It may seem strange, from our perspective on the earth, to think of death as the gift the Gods give to us in pity, but I have another example like it.

I have very severe allergies to many things, and one of the worst of these is hay fever season. It is not merely itchy eyes or a runny nose for me, though; my lungs and skin catch fire, my throat and eyes swell shut, and I become unable to breathe, eat, sleep, or generally function at all. In time, my wife and I have learned to manage this very carefully through a quarantine protocol, and while I'm more-or-less confined to part of the house, at least I can live normally otherwise.

Back in New York, hay fever season lasted late July through late August—that is, when the Sun is in Leo. (I have long wondered about this—guess which planet rules my sixth house?) This was also when the sunflowers were in bloom, and while I really like sunflowers, I've always had to enjoy them from a distance.

Here in Oklahoma, hay fever season began in June and is still ongoing—I expect it to continue for the rest of the month or so. One might lament a three-month house arrest, but the gods are merciful and given me, too, a gift of their strange sort of pity: a volunteer sunflower sprang up right behind the house, in easy view from the window, for me to enjoy up close. But not only this, but it seems to act as a clock for the allergies: it began to blossom in June, right as I could no longer go out, and has been in continuous bloom since then but for a single week—and it happened to be a single week where the drought had been severe enough to reduce the pollen, letting me go out for a few days. (Conveniently, this coincided with an appointment that I needed to keep.) So this sunflower is the gods' good messenger to me, warning me of danger and safety—and I imagine the last of its flowers will wilt when it is safe for me to again leave the house for the autumn.

So rather than complain about what kind of divinity should cause me to be locked up for a substantial fraction of the year, it is better to realize that it was men who poisoned the plants with their chemicals and sickened my body with autoimmune disease, but it is the providence of the gods that help me to bear it.

Who indeed, I suppose, could give greater voice to the changing of the guard than the Lyrist Himself?

Aye, if ye bear it, if ye endure to know
That Delphi's self with all things gone must go,
Hear with strong heart the unfaltering song divine
Peal from the laurelled porch and shadowy shrine.
High in Jove's home the battling winds are torn,
From battling winds the bolts of Jove are born;
These as he will on trees and towers he flings,
And quells the heart of lions or of kings;
A thousand crags those flying flames confound,
A thousand navies in the deep are drowned,
And ocean's roaring billows, cloven apart,
Bear the bright death to Amphitrite's heart.
And thus, even thus, on some long-destined day,
Shall Delphi's beauty shrivel and burn away,—
Shall Delphi's fame and fane from earth expire
At that bright bidding of celestial fire.

(Apollo, as quoted by Porphyry, as quoted by Eusebius, and as translated Frederic William Henry Myers)

III 3: On Providence (2)
Continuing from the previous discussion, is it strange, then, to consider the world good while it contains things that may do evil? Wouldn't it make more sense to consider the world both good and evil?
Consider a general leading an army: he makes plans and manages logistics, yet it is up to the soldiers to carry out those plans. Certainly a general is honored or criticised for the course of the war, but this does not mean we do not award medals to a particularly gallant soldier or that we do not court-martial a soldier derelict in his duties. In our case, the general—the World Soul—is at once doing its duty while some soldiers—individual souls—are derelict in theirs. Providence is when the general takes those soldiers, sets them to hard labor, corrects them, restores them to rank, and at last allows them to demonstrate their own courage and valor again.
To put it another way, a soul might be weighted down by Matter and placed into circumstances that might drive it to do good or evil; but it is well said that an anchorite makes a tavern his cell and a drunk makes a cell his tavern. A mighty soul can do good work even with poor materials, while a feeble soul might struggle even with the finest. But we do not criticize a plant for failing to be an animal, and neither should we criticize a soul for being anything other than what it is. Instead, we should take a wider view: where does a plant or an animal fit into an ecosystem? Where does an evil act fit into a life or series of lives? Where does a soul, be it weak or strong, fit into the World Soul?

Some more sightseeing: §4 calls back to a discussion we had on whether beastly men can reincarnate into beastly bodies (Plotinus follows Plato and disagrees with Proclus and Sallustius), §5 gives a good summary of the entire discussion of Providence in Plotinus' words, and §6 has an interesting digression on how divination works at the boundary of Providence and Necessity (which reminds me of how Stephen Wolfram is always going on about how everything interesting happens at the boundary of order and chaos).

III 2: On Providence (1)
The world is the product of both Reason and Necessity. Being a divine creation and perfect, the world is beautiful as a whole: though the parts of it that are of Necessity may be ugly. But is it fair to denigrate the whole because of a part? Is blessed Achilles to be condemned because of Thersites, "the ugliest man who came to Troy?"
Life in this world may be likened to a play. The World Soul is the playwright, individual souls are actors, bodies are the characters those actors play, and the material world is the stage. But the greatest plays require drama, and the harm or even the death of characters. But does this trouble the actors? Of course not—they play their parts to the best of their ability, appreciating that the travails of their character are necessary to the story. And if a character dies, what is it to the actor? They simply go backstage, change their costume and makeup, and play a new character in the next act—just as souls do when they take on new bodies. And neither should we consider the actors passive: they did not write their role, sure, but they have considerable freedom to act and improvise within the bounds of the story, and so the greatest actors are celebrated nearly as highly as the playwright themselves.
If this is not enough to go on, let us consider an example: why do the wicked prosper? Because they do the work, of course! The gods help those who help themselves: do you think that if a man who, depraved of morals, has nonetheless trained his body or mind to be strong should have any trouble despoiling those who have not? Even such a man is not pure wickedness, for the discipline and practice it takes to strengthen himself is good! If you wish to protect yourself from him, follow his example and take matters into your own hands—see, the gymnasium and the academy are there before you!—rather than blame Providence for your feebleness.

For sake of sightseeing, let me call out some sections of particular interest: §3, where the material world pleads its nobility, is moving; §13 has an excellent description of karma; and Plotinus' elegant analogy of the play is from §15.

This tractate is much lengthier than those that came before, and I found it beautiful in two ways: first, it contains something of a summary of Plotinus' worldview, and second, because it contains some very clear and stirring analogies. These are interspersed with a long list of arguments against specific Gnostic teachings, which I have generally skipped over in my summary, but I found reading them interesting—and even funny at times! It is worth reading in the original, and I especially liked §13, §16, and §18.

II 9: Against Those that Affirm the Creator of the Kosmos and the Kosmos Itself to be Evil [Generally Quoted as "Against the Gnostics"]
In the teachings given by the ancients and proven by myriad means elsewhere, there are three transcendent principles: the One (the ineffable unity beyond all things), Beauty (the definition of form), and the World Soul (the definition of animation). The cosmos ultimately comes from the interplay of these. Of ourselves, we too possess a soul, part of which dwells with the World Soul in Beauty and part of which dwells within the body. It is true that the body weighs down the soul, but the soul can never become what it is not: the light of the Divine suffuses the entire cosmos—even, though it be dimmer, here in the material world. Therefore everything that exists partakes of the Divine and exists eternally, without beginning or end: even material forms which may be destroyed get recycled into new images of what they were!
The Gnostics reject these teachings and despise the world as an evil image of a higher world. But if this world is evil, it must be patterned on evil, all the way up to the Highest. If that's the case, it is hopeless to conceive of "escape:" why would you want to live in a purer version of the world you hate? Won't you just hate it more? In this and many other ways, their teachings are incoherent.
One doesn't find light by running away from darkness: if it is all around you, where would you run? And anyway, you would probably just trip over something. If you want light, you should light a lamp! In the same way, merely hating evil does not make one good: rather than leading you to a better world, it will just lead you in circles and trip you up. One should instead take some positive action and love the good things in this world: by doing so, one prepares themselves to love the good things in the higher world.

And with that, we conclude the second ennead and the first third of the text. My bookmark looks to only be about of fifth of the way through the book, though, so the tractates ahead are likely longer and more challenging than those we've passed already!

II 5: On Potentiality and Actuality
Matter is potential: it has no actuality of itself. It serves only to give rise to actuality in the Ideas presented to it. But the Matter itself does not actualize: the actualization is in the fusion of Matter and Idea.
But we have said that there is no Matter in the empyrean, and so there is no potential there: everything is actual.

I had made an offhand comment a while back to boccaderlupo, that I have the impression that souls enter the material world specifically in order to change: that is, that the divine part of one is essentially static, and that if it wishes to become something else it must enter the world of change in order to do so.

This vague notion dovetails nicely with what Plotinus is saying: there is no potentiality in the empyrean, everything there is actuality. Plotinus doesn't say so himself, but I suspect this is why there is a material world at all, and why we are here in it: if a soul wishes to explore some potential—that is, be other than it already is—the only way to do so is to first create that potential in the lower worlds, become that potential in actuality, and then raise back up into the upper worlds. But this is fraught: the material world has bonds of karma, and in order to set up one's desired patterns of potential, one necessarily must generate lots—certainly many lifetimes' worth!—of "bad" karma, meaning that one "gets stuck" here in the material until those bonds are resolved. If you clear your karma, you get to leave materiality behind and go home.

But this is just saying the same thing, of resolving the potential into actuality. If you clear the karma, you've turned the potential into actuality, and there's no reason for you to be in the material any more, having accomplished the original goal.

If that's all right, what we label karma (and, indeed, "evil") is simply our lack of perspective enforced by time. With an angel's eyes, we see that there was purpose behind it all. And not just the purpose of the gods: but our own purposes also. I think it also explains why some people are so hellbent on making a mess of their own lives and the lives of people around them: they are busily setting up the karmic bonds they need in order to actualize their desired potential. (Similarly, people who are heaven-bent (?) on cleaning up their own lives and the lives of others are busily tearing down those karmic bonds and getting ready to move on.)

As a corollary, I suspect that the more sophisticated of an actuality that one desires, the more karma it takes to get there. In a sense we should not envy those hypothetical blessed souls who spend less time in incarnation: if we are here longer, it is precisely because we are striving for a more complex end.

I 8: On the Nature and Source of Evil
Evil is the negation of all that is Good. But Good has Form, has Life, has Beauty, has Being; and so evil must be formless, lifeless, without beauty, without existence. But we see evil all around us, so it must exist—but this demonstrates that evil is not an essential thing, as the Good is; there is no Ultimate Evil in the same way that there is an Ultimate Good. Evil is like darkness, which isn't a quality that exists on its own, but rather is the absence of light. We say that evil "increases" with distance to the Good, but really it is merely that the inherent Good is diminished.
It is not possible for the soul, which is essentially Good, to have evil anywhere within it. Therefore it is not possible for a man, which cannot exist without the soul, to be wholly evil: evil to a man is to sink, as far as is possible, into the body, and so be as distant as possible from its source of Good. And so we call Matter evil, not because it is essentially evil but because it is the reason for a man to act in ways contrary to the soul.
In the same way that we say virtue is not Good but a path toward the Good, mere vice is not evil but a path toward evil; for even in vice, there is a trace of Good: one undertakes vice because he believes that it will do some Good to him.

I have often said, in comments on this diary and elsewhere, that I do not think evil exists; Plotinus explicitly describes what I mean when I say so right at the end of the tractate:

Evil is not alone: by virtue of the nature of Good, the power of Good, it is not Evil only: it appears, necessarily, bound around with bonds of Beauty, like some captive bound in fetters of gold; and beneath these it is hidden so that, while it must exist, it may not be seen by the gods, and that men need not always have evil before their eyes, but that when it comes before them they may still be not destitute of Images of the Good and Beautiful for their Remembrance.

Before digging into a work, I like to know a little about where the author is coming from. My book on Plotinus has an adequate little biography of him (an abridgment of Porphyry's), but of MacKenna, the translator, nothing is; what one finds of him, looking online, is a mystery. Not in that he is obscure, but in that he is a thread that, being tugged, draws you down the rabbit-hole into a still-greater mystery, one which enchants and bewitches and entices and maddens. That is all to say, MacKenna seems to have been very interesting indeed.

So to attempt to get a sense of the man, I turn to his published letters and diary, and clicking around randomly—ha!—brought me to a letter from MacKenna to Sir Ernest Debenham, penned in January of 1916 (and hastily transcribed by me, so I apologize for any errors):

I hope you and yours are well and as happy as the dismal times allow: myself I sicken at the all the blood, the mowing down of the youth of Europe, the stop, dead, of all we have thought of civilization, the multiform, wide as the world almost, agony and desolation. Plotinus mocks at all such emotions—if I weren't too lazy I'd transcribe a passage ad hoc, very fine as literature but dreadfully unreal to-day, at least to my lower sense—and this tho' Plotinus had been a soldier and seen, ce qu'on appelle vu ["what we call seen"], on no small scale too, the horrors of which his "Sage"—really our "Saint" tho' one daren't use the word— declares a trivial ragged fringe on his beautiful inner peace. For my part I find this war, with all that it entails to the world and to my own poor little land, setting me blaspheming. I see men as trees walking—soulless motion merely, and no purpose over it all—perhaps beasts ravening would be better, nearer to my mind, and no thought ruling the rage even to some sound material end. I suppose in the light of history all this is absurd—and then Plotinus would be right—all comes out smiling at the end, and the fall of one civilization is the beginning of another: if the Yellow Peril that once was a music-hall joke turned into a Yellow Actuality and all the world was yellow, there would once be once more arts and religions and contempt for the ancient and passed thing with lyric celebrations of the triumph of light at last. The world certainly renews itself, and always manages, with relatively brief periods of disaster and ugliness, to keep a sober average—but at the moments of ugliness, it is no pretty thing, no cheerful sight, and we get a sharp reminder (which our history is generally too dead in our minds to give us) that all our "truths" are merely dreams and that nothing is sure but birth and death, both sure but dark in their meaning. The God of the world is discovered to be an incalculable: we do not know what he is up to, or whether there is any care up there at all: ["but he is impious"], says Æschylus of the man that thinks this, that Gods do not deign to care for the good and ill doings of men: I'm afraid I'm ["impious"]. Of course, by the way, so is Plotinus in this: his Supreme is too great and different to care: it is man that must care; and on that Plotinus gets as stern a moral code as others get out of the God who is offended and appeased and always working at the wheel of the world. The Father's house has many mansions and still more approaches: all roads lead to its peace, and a good Plotinian would be undistinguished in life from a good Christian, except perhaps being better.

I imagine we will, ourselves, be in the same times MacKenna lamented quite soon! But the dance of Mars gives way to the dance of Venus, just as the dance of Venus gives way to the dance of Mars. If we embrace the show of Venus in all Her beauty and grace and joy and voluptuousness, should we not, too, embrace the show of Mars? Sure, it may be dirty and hard and sorrowful and severe, but ah! what He brings with Him!

I am reminded of a Sufi parable:

A dervish fell into the Tigris. Seeing that he could not swim, a man on the bank cried out, "Shall I tell some one to bring you ashore?" "No," said the dervish. "Then do you wish to be drowned?" "No." "What, then, do you wish?" The dervish replied, "God's will be done! What have I to do with wishing?"

Perhaps we each have our favorite Divinity, but nonetheless may we all learn and learn well to trust all Divinity, and in so doing learn to appreciate every dance.

I chanced across Lafcadio Hearn's In Ghostly Japan the other day. I've been enjoying its mix of travelogue, topical studies, and ghost stories—but what I wanted to call out here is this pleasant meditation analogizing the evolution of the domesticated silkworm moth to the evolution of the soul.

It is a good reminder that while the goal is, in a sense, to leave material existence behind; doing so does not escape us from our troubles, but rather prepares us for their intensification.

Happy Wednesday! Perhaps surprisingly for this week’s controversial subject, none of our three translators give notes for this chapter: so I suppose we are on our own! Boldly, then, let us pick the puzzle-box back up, shall we?

XII. The origin of evil things; and that there is no positive evil.
The Gods being good and making all things, how do evils exist in the world? Or perhaps it is better first to state the fact that, the Gods being good and making all things, there is no positive evil, it only comes by absence of good; just as darkness itself does not exist, but only comes about by absence of light.
If Evil exists it must exist either in Gods or minds or souls or bodies. It does not exist in any god, for all god is good. If any one speaks of a 'bad mind' he means a mind without mind. If of a bad soul, he will make soul inferior to body, for no body in itself is evil. If he says that Evil is made up of soul and body together, it is absurd that separately they should not be evil, but joined should create evil.
Suppose it is said that there are evil spirits:—if they have their power from the gods, they cannot be evil; if from elsewhere, the gods do not make all things. If they do not make all things, then either they wish to and cannot, or they can and do not wish; neither of which is consistent with the idea of God. We may see, therefore, from these arguments, that there is no positive evil in the world.
It is in the activities of men that the evils appear, and that not of all men nor always. And as to these, if men sinned for the sake of evil, Nature itself would be evil. But if the adulterer thinks his adultery bad but his pleasure good, and the murderer thinks the murder bad but the money he gets by it good, and the man who does evil to an enemy thinks that to do evil is bad but to punish his enemy good, and if the soul commits all its sins in that way, then the evils are done for the sake of goodness. (In the same way, because in a given place light does not exist, there comes darkness, which has no positive existence.) The soul sins therefore because, while aiming at good, it makes mistakes about the good, because it is not Primary Essence. And we see many things done by the Gods to prevent it from making mistakes and to heal it when it has made them. Arts and sciences, curses and prayers, sacrifices and initiations, laws and constitutions, judgements and punishments, all came into existence for the sake of preventing souls from sinning; and when they are gone forth from the body gods and spirits of purification cleanse them of their sins.*

* Arthur Darby Nock's commentary of the chapter primarily concerns itself with the historical context of the text, noting that while Sallustius is usually theologically aligned with Iamblichus and Julian, in this chapter he is in disagreement with them, rather following Proclus. (For example, Iamblichus speaks of evil spirits.)

Those [Gods] who watch over [the world] are Hestia, Athena, and Ares. [... But] if there is no ordering power[, ...] whence comes the fact that all things are for a purpose[? ... To] attribute men's acts of injustice and lust to Fate, is to make ourselves good and the Gods bad. [Sallustius VI, IX]
Herostratus, an Ephesian, set fire to the temple of Artemis at Ephesus, which had been begun by Chersiphron, and completed by Demetrius and Paeonius. It was burnt on the same night that Alexander the Great was born, B. C. 356, whereupon it was remarked by Hegesias the Magnesian, that the conflagration was not to be wondered at, since the goddess was absent from Ephesus, and attending on the delivery of Olympias[. ...] Herostratus was put to the torture for his deed, and confessed that he had fired the temple to immortalize himself. The Ephesians passed a decree condemning his name to oblivion; but Theopompus embalmed him in his history, like a fly in amber. [William Smith, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology]

Of Hestia, we barely remember the name of Chersiphron. Of Athena, we have forgotten the names of the judges. But of Ares, we remember well the name of Herostratus.

We may not like Ares, but that does not mean He is not Good, and neither does it mean He does not look after His own.

Once upon a time, boccaderlupo recommended Sallustius' On the Gods and the World to me as a short introduction to Neoplatonism. But where he found it clear, I found it obscure! (I believe I described it to him as "a puzzle-box"—it seems to me that all the pieces fit together elegantly, but one needs to know the trick to open it up and get at the candy inside, and not knowing the trick all I could do was to play with it for a while before setting it down again.) Yesterday, I suggested perhaps starting up some discussion on the topic in the hopes that, with the help of other blind men, I might discover that this rope I'm touching is actually an elephant.

Therefore, I plan to post a chapter of the text each week (on Wednesday, in honor of the lord of dialogue), and perhaps we can unpack it together. I will only be posting the text in the subject post, and placing whatever thoughts and questions I may have down in the comments: after all, I am a student here rather than a lecturer, and anyway it might be helpful to break up discussion into parallel threads to keep things organized. Anyone is welcome to lurk, comment, ask their own questions, etc. I'll be transcribing from Gilbert Murray's 1925 translation, though I also have Thomas Taylor's 1793 translation handy and will call it out when there's something interesting. (Our good Br'er Wolf recommended Arthur Nock's 1926 translation, but I don't have a copy. It'll be in the public domain in a couple months, though, so perhaps we can revisit it then.)

Let's pick the puzzle-box up, shall we?

I. What the Disciple should be; and concerning Common Conceptions.
Those who wish to hear about the Gods should have been well guided from childhood, and not habituated to foolish beliefs. They should also be in disposition good and sensible, that they may properly attend to the teaching.
They ought also to know the Common Conceptions. Common Conceptions are those to which all men agree as soon as they are asked; for instance, that all God is good, free from passion,* free from change. For whatever suffers change does so for the worse or the better; if for the worse, it is made bad; if for the better, it must have been bad at first.

* Thomas Taylor's translation gives "without passivity." Arthur Darby Nock's gives "impassive."

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May 2025

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Page Summary

On Divine Domains
On Providence
The Changing of the Guard
Enneads III 3: On Providence (2)
Enneads III 2: On Providence (1)
Enneads II 9: [Against the Gnostics]
Enneads II 5: On Potentiality and Actuality
Enneads I 8: On the Nature and Source of Evil
Stephen MacKenna on Plotinus and Mars
Lafcadio Hearn on the Evolution of Souls
[Discussion] On the Gods and the World, Ch. XII
On the Good
[Discussion] On the Gods and the World, Ch. I