{"collection":"Classics","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/cla/plotenn/enn113.htm","path":"cla/plotenn/enn113.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/cla/plotenn/enn113.htm","text":"11. And we must remember that what comes from the supernals does not enter into the recipients as it left the source; fire, for instance, will be duller; the loving instinct will degenerate and issue in ugly forms of the passion; the vital energy in a subject not so balanced as to display the mean of manly courage, will come out as either ferocity or faint-heartedness; and ambition... in love...; and the instinct towards good sets up the pursuit of semblant beauty; intellectual power at its lowest produces the extreme of wickedness, for wickedness is a miscalculating effort towards Intelligence.\nAny such quality, modified at best from its supreme form, deteriorates again within itself: things of any kind that approach from above, altered by merely leaving their source change further still by their blending with bodies, with Matter, with each other.","title":"The Enneads of Plotinus: THE SECOND ENNEAD: THIRD TRACTAT...","type":"page"}