Page:Life of plotinus by porphyry.pdf/7

 Thus we have twenty-four treatises composed during the six years of my association with him and dealing, as the titles indicate, with such problems as happened to arise at the Conferences; add the twenty-one composed before my arrival, and we have accounted for forty-five treatises.

6.

The following five more Plotinus wrote and sent to me while I was living in Sicily, where I had gone about the fifteenth year of Galienus:—

46. On Happiness (I. 4). 47. On Providence, First (III. 2). 48. On Providence, Second (III. 3). 49. On the Conscious Hypostases and the Transcendental (V. 3). 50. On Love (III. 5).

These five he sent me in the first year of Claudius: in the early months of the second year, shortly before his death, I received the following four:—

51. On Evil (I. 8). 52. Whether the Stars have Causal Operation (II. 3). 53. On the Animate and the Man (I. 1). 54. On the First Good; or, On Happiness (I. 8).

Adding these nine to the forty-five of the first and second sets we have a total of fifty-four treatises.

According to the time of writing—early manhood, vigorous prime, worn-out constitution—so the tractates vary in power. The first twenty-one pieces manifest a slighter capacity, the talent being not yet matured to the fulness of nervous strength. The twenty-four produced in the mid-period display the utmost reach of the powers and, except for the short treatises among them, attain the highest perfection. The last nine were written when the mental strength was already waning, and of these the last four show less vigour even than the five preceding.