/lit/ - Literature

Okay, [1] in furtherance of this post >>21635395 again. This tractate is really all interesting and there's pretty much no section that doesn't have something interesting in it. I'll just give what stood out to me.
>But those whose descent from the Intellectual is complete, how is it with them?
>They will recall their memories, of the same things, but with less force than those still in the celestial, since they have had other experiences to remember, and the lapse of time will have utterly obliterated much of what was formerly present to them.
>But what way of remembering the Supreme is left if the souls have turned to the sense-known kosmos, and are to fall into this sphere of process?
>They need not fall to the ultimate depth: their downward movement may be checked at some one moment of the way; and as long as they have not touched the lowest of the region of process [the point at which non-being begins] there is nothing to prevent them rising once more.
(IV.4.5) This "point at which non-being begins" sounds kinda dire. I wish he would have elaborated on it. Anyone got any insights about it?
Sections 9 and 10 deal with Zeus's roles as governor, guardian etc and how memory applies to God. 10 elaborates on Zeus's role as demiurge.
>But there is a difficulty affecting this entire settlement: Eternity is characteristic of the Intellectual-Principle, time of the soul- for we hold that time has its substantial being in the activity of the soul, and springs from soul- and, since time is a thing of division and comports a past, it would seem that the activity producing it must also be a thing of division, and that its attention to that past must imply that even the All-Soul has memory? We repeat, identity belongs to the eternal, time must be the medium of diversity; otherwise there is nothing to distinguish them, especially since we deny that the activities of the soul can themselves experience change.

Can we escape by the theory that, while human souls- receptive of change, even to the change of imperfection and lack- are in time, yet the Soul of the All, as the author of time, is itself timeless? But if it is not in time, what causes it to engender time rather than eternity?

The answer must be that the realm it engenders is not that of eternal things but a realm of things enveloped in time: it is just as the souls [under, or included in, the All-Soul] are not in time, but some of their experiences and productions are. For a soul is eternal, and is before time; and what is in time is of a lower order than time itself: time is folded around what is in time exactly as- we read- it is folded about what is in place and in number