Note 156 — FIRST ENNEAD, BOOK EIGHT. Of the Nature and Origin of Evils.156

See books ii. 3; ii. 9; iii. 1, 2, 3, 4, for the foundations on which this summary of Plotinos's doctrine of evil is contained. To do this, he was compelled to return to Plato, whose Theaetetus, Statesman, Timaeus and Laws he consulted. Aristotle seems to have been more interested in natural phenomena and human virtue than in the root-questions of the destiny of the universe, and the nature of the divinity; so Plotinos studies him little here. But it will be seen that here Plotinos entirely returns to the later Plato, through Numenius.