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Plotinus, The Six Enneads
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First Tractate. The Animate and the Man.
Third Tractate. On Dialectic [The Upward Way].
Fourth Tractate. On True Happiness.
Fifth Tractate. Happiness and Extension of Time.
Seventh Tractate. On the Primal Good and Secondary Forms of Good
Eighth Tractate. On the Nature and Source of Evil.
Ninth Tractate. The Reasoned Dismissal.
First Tractate. On the Kosmos or on the Heavenly System.
Second Tractate. The Heavenly Circuit.
Third Tractate. Are the Stars Causes?
Fourth Tractate. Matter in its Two Kinds.
Fifth Tractate. On Potentiality and Actuality.
Sixth Tractate. Quality and Form-Idea.
Seventh Tractate. On Complete Transfusion.
Eighth Tractate. Why Distant Objects Appear Small.
Second Tractate. On Providence (1).
Third Tractate. On Providence (2).
Fourth Tractate. Our Tutelary Spirit.
Sixth Tractate. The Impassivity of the Unembodied.
Seventh Tractate. Time and Eternity.
Eighth Tractate. Nature Contemplation and the One.
Ninth Tractate. Detached Considerations.
First Tractate. On the Essence of the Soul (1).
Second Tractate. On the Essence of the Soul (2).
Third Tractate. Problems of the Soul (1).
Fourth Tractate. Problems of the Soul (2).
Fifth Tractate. Problems of the Soul (3).
Sixth Tractate. Perception and Memory.
Seventh Tractate. The Immortality of the Soul.
Eighth Tractate. The Soul's Descent into Body.
Ninth Tractate. Are All Souls One?.
First Tractate. The Three Initial Hypostases.
Second Tractate. The Origin and Order of the Beings.
Third Tractate. The Knowing Hypostases and the Transcendent.
Fourth Tractate. How the Secondaries Rise from the First: and on the One.
Seventh Tractate. Is There an Ideal Archetype of Particular Beings?
Eighth Tractate. On the Intellectual Beauty.
Ninth Tractate. The Intellectual-Principle, the Ideas, and the Authentic Existence.
First Tractate. On the Kinds of Being (1).
Second Tractate. On the Kinds of Being (2).
Third Tractate. On the Kinds of Being (3).
Fourth Tractate. On the Integral Omnipresence of the Authentic Existent (1).
Fifth Tractate On the Integral Omnipresence of the Authentic Existent (2).
Seventh Tractate. How the Multiplicity of the Ideal-Forms came into Being: and Upon the Good.
"The Reasoned Dismissal".
"You will not dismiss your Soul lest it go forth . . . " [taking something with it].
For wheresoever it go, it will be in some definite condition, and its going forth is to some new place. The Soul will wait for the body to be completely severed from it; then it makes no departure; it simply finds itself free.
But how does the body come to be separated?
The separation takes place when nothing of Soul remains bound up with it: the harmony within the body, by virtue of which the Soul was retained, is broken and it can no longer hold its guest.
But when a man contrives the dissolution of the body, it is he that has used violence and torn himself away, not the body that has let the Soul slip from it. And in loosing the bond he has not been without passion; there has been revolt or grief or anger, movements which it is unlawful to indulge.
But if a man feel himself to be losing his reason?
That is not likely in the Sage, but if it should occur, it must be classed with the inevitable, to be welcome at the bidding of the fact though not for its own sake. To call upon drugs to the release of the Soul seems a strange way of assisting its purposes.
And if there be a period allotted to all by fate, to anticipate the hour could not be a happy act, unless, as we have indicated, under stern necessity.
If everyone is to hold in the other world a standing determined by the state in which he quitted this, there must be no withdrawal as long as there is any hope of progress.