Enneads

Plotinus, Enneads (in Victorinus’ Latin)

Plotinus; arranged by Porphyry; translated by Marius Victorinus

Six sets of nine treatises on the One. Arranged by Porphyry — yes, that Porphyry.

Catch rate: Not found in the wild
Base research: 200
Stat total: 282

Base stats

Every stat is a checkable fact about the actual book, not a designer's mood. Bars are drawn against the highest value any book reaches.

Stamina74

Contend78

Defend72

Popularity58

Total282

Why these numbers

The game's own explanation, as a reader sees it in the backpack.

Stamina 74

Fifty-four treatises, arranged into six sets of nine by Porphyry, and all of them survive. Very high Stamina.

Contend 78

The book that taught the Latin West how to think about a God who is not made of anything. That is a large amount of force for a book with no Scripture in it.

Popularity 58

Philosophers read it carefully; almost no one else opens it. It usually speaks second.

Cited for this book

Marius Victorinus translated Plotinus into Latin, and Augustine read him in that translation. Plotinus helped Augustine stop picturing God as a huge body of light. Victorinus’ own conversion, told in Confessions 8.2, moved Augustine a step closer to his own.

Development

A book develops as it is read — the fragment becomes the work, the work becomes the corpus.

Hortensius→
Lv 22

Enneads→
Lv 25

Confessions

Moves learned

By levelling up. A book that develops keeps what it knew and learns the rest on its new schedule.

Lv	Move	Type	Cat.	Pwr	Acc	PP
22	The One Beyond Being	Natural Theology	Argument	70	95%	10
26	Question the Premise	Rationality	Type shift	—	—	10
30	Take Up and Read	Bible	Argument	80	100%	5

The quotes behind its moves

How to read these. In Scholar’s Dream, books argue with each other. Each thing a book can do in a debate is a move, and most moves carry a real quotation — the words the book puts on the table when it uses that move.

Strong against lists the opposing books and arguments a move was written to answer. Used against one of them, it hits much harder than usual: ×2 means twice the normal force, ×4 four times. It is the game’s way of saying: this is the sentence that answers that argument. Open an entry to read why.

“But over this divine, there is still a diviner: grasp the upward neighbour of the soul, its prior and source. Soul, for all the worth we have shown to belong to it, is yet a secondary, an image of the Intellectual-Principle.”
Plotinus, Enneads 5.1.3 (trans. Stephen MacKenna & B. S. Page, public domain).public domain

The One Beyond Being

Natural TheologyArgument · power 70 · 95% accurate

In the gamePlotinus gave Augustine a way to think about God that was not made of stuff — which is what finally let him stop imagining God as a very large luminous body.

Strong against

×2The Two Kingdomsan argument · why?

Plotinus taught Augustine to think of God as spirit, not as a vast body of light. Once God was no longer one substance fighting another, the two kingdoms fell apart.

“He who pleads his cause first seems right; until another comes and questions him.”
Proverbs 18:17 (WEB).

Question the Premise

RationalityType shift

In the gameChallenge the foundation of an argument before it can be pressed. Lowers the foe’s Contend.

“Let us walk properly, as in the day; not in reveling and drunkenness, not in sexual promiscuity and lustful acts, and not in strife and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, for its lusts.”
Romans 13:13–14 (WEB) — the passage his eyes fell on in the garden at Milan. He read no further (Confessions 8.12).

Take Up and Read

BibleArgument · power 80 · 100% accurate

In the gameA child’s voice over a garden wall, chanting a game: take up and read. He took up the book, read the first passage his eyes fell on, and did not need to read any further.

Strong against

×2.5The Life of Teresa of Jesusa book · why?

Teresa writes that when she read how Augustine heard the voice in the garden, it felt as if the Lord had spoken to her (Life 9.9).

Read it: Honour Then Yourself

The passages the Scriptorium holds on screen, word for word from a public-domain translation. Written in Koine Greek — Augustine read it in Latin.

“If, then, it is the presence of soul that brings worth, how can a man slight himself and run after other things? You honour the Soul elsewhere; honour then yourself.”
Plotinus, Enneads 5.1.2 (trans. MacKenna & Page, public domain).

“But over this divine, there is still a diviner: grasp the upward neighbour of the soul, its prior and source. Soul, for all the worth we have shown to belong to it, is yet a secondary, an image of the Intellectual-Principle.”
Plotinus, Enneads 5.1.3 (trans. MacKenna & Page, public domain).

Notes

Not a Christian book, and it is not pretending to be. Plotinus taught at Rome in the 250s and never mentions Christ except to attack people he calls Gnostics.

What it did for Augustine was purely negative, and enormous. He had been unable to think of God as anything but a very large bright thing spread out in space. These books gave him a way to think of something real that is not extended at all.

So read the ladder and see where it goes. Body, then soul, then the Intellectual-Principle, then the One beyond even that — up and up, away from matter, by climbing.

And that is exactly where it stops. Augustine’s own verdict is that he found in these books that the Word was God, and did not find that the Word was made flesh. The ladder goes up. It never comes down to fetch anybody.