II. Life of Plotinus, 273—His personal influence and popularity, 275—The part assigned to him in a dialogue of Leopardi’s, 277—Composition and arrangement of his writings, 277—Mythical elements in his biography, 280—Alleged derivation of his teaching from Ammonius Saccas, 281.
III. Difficulties presented by the style of Plotinus, 282—General clearness of his philosophy, 284—His dependence on Plato and exclusive attention to the metaphysical side of Plato’s teaching, 285—His unacknowledged obligations to Aristotle, 287.
IV. Plotinus on the spiritual interpretation of love and beauty, 287—His departure from the method of Plato, 289—Aristotelian influences, 290—His subjective standpoint shared by Plato and Aristotle, 291—Relation of the post-Aristotelian schools to their predecessors, 292—The antithesis between materialism and spiritualism common to both, 292—Services rendered by the later schools, 293.
V. Anti-materialistic arguments of Plotinus, 294—Coincidence with modern philosophy, 295—Criticism of the Aristotelian doctrine, 296—Weakness of Greek philosophy in dealing with the phenomena of volition, 297—Difficulties raised by astrology, 298—Plotinus as a philosophical critic and reformer, 299.
VI. Intermediate position of the soul between the principles of unity and division, 302—Combination of the Aristotelian Nous with the Platonic Ideas, 303—Difficulties to which it gave rise, 304—Unity and plurality in the Ideas and in the Nous, 304—Descent of the soul into the material world, 305—The triad of body, soul, and spirit, 307—Search for a supreme principle of existence: data furnished by Plato and Aristotle, 307—The unity of all souls, 309—Universal dependence of existence on unity, 310—Method for arriving at the One, 310—To what extent Plotinus can be called a mystic, 312—Mystical elements in the systems of his predecessors, 313.
VII. Retrospect and recapitulation, 315—Transition to the constructive philosophy of Plotinus, 317—Three aspects of the supreme principle, 317—Creative power of the One, 318—Influence of false physical analogies on metaphysics, 319—Inconceivability of causation apart from time, 320—Subjective nature of logical and mathematical sequence, 321—The Neo-Platonic method in the Christian creeds, 322—How Plotinus employed the method of generation by contraries, 322—Difficulty of explaining the derivation of Soul from Nous, 323—and of accounting for the existence of Matter, 323—Return to the Platonic identification of Matter with Extension, 326—Generation of the Infinite from the One, 327—Hesitation of Plotinus between monism and dualism, 328—Influence of Stoicism, 329—Substitution of contemplation for action as a creative principle, 330.