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    "slug": "ennead-1",
    "name": "Ennead I — Ethics, Aesthetics, Inner Life"
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      "slug": "plotinus-enneads",
      "name": "Enneads",
      "url": "/sources/plotinus-enneads/"
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  "chapter": {
    "num": 5,
    "slug": "5-happiness-and-extension-of-time",
    "title": "I.5 — Does Happiness Increase With Time?",
    "of": 9,
    "words": 1734,
    "text": "## FIFTH TRACTATE\n\n\n#### FIFTH TRACTATE.\n\nHAPPINESS AND EXTENSION OF TIME.\n\n\n## Section 1\n\n\n##### Section 1\n\n1. Is it possible to think that Happiness increases with Time,\nHappiness which is always taken as a present thing?\n\nThe memory of former felicity may surely be ruled out of count,\nfor Happiness is not a thing of words, but a definite condition\nwhich must be actually present like the very fact and act of life.\n\n\n## Section 2\n\n\n##### Section 2\n\n2. It may be objected that our will towards living and towards\nexpressive activity is constant, and that each attainment of such\nexpression is an increase in Happiness.\n\nBut in the first place, by this reckoning every to-morrow's\nwell-being will be greater than to-day's, every later instalment\nsuccessively larger that an earlier; at once time supplants moral\nexcellence as the measure of felicity.\n\nThen again the Gods to-day must be happier than of old: and\ntheir bliss, too, is not perfect, will never be perfect.\nFurther, when\nthe will attains what it was seeking, it attains something present:\nthe quest is always for something to be actually present until a\nstanding felicity is definitely achieved. The will to life which is\nwill to Existence aims at something present, since Existence\nmust be a\nstably present thing. Even when the act of the will is directed\ntowards the future, and the furthest future, its object is\nan actually\npresent having and being: there is no concern about what is passed\nor to come: the future state a man seeks is to be a now to him; he\ndoes not care about the forever: he asks that an actual present be\nactually present.\n\n\n## Section 3\n\n\n##### Section 3\n\n3. Yes, but if the well-being has lasted a long time, if that\npresent spectacle has been a longer time before the eyes?\n\nIf in the greater length of time the man has seen more deeply,\ntime has certainly done something for him, but if all the process\nhas brought him no further vision, then one glance would give all he\nhas had.\n\n\n## Section 4\n\n\n##### Section 4\n\n4. Still the one life has known pleasure longer than the other?\n\nBut pleasure cannot be fairly reckoned in with Happiness- unless\nindeed by pleasure is meant the unhindered Act [of the true man], in\nwhich case this pleasure is simply our \"Happiness.\" And even\npleasure,\nthough it exist continuously, has never anything but the present;\nits past is over and done with.\n\n\n## Section 5\n\n\n##### Section 5\n\n5. We are asked to believe, then, it will be objected,\nthat if one\nman has been happy from first to last, another only at the\nlast, and a\nthird, beginning with happiness, has lost it, their shares are equal?\n\nThis is straying from the question: we were comparing the happy\namong themselves: now we are asked to compare the not-happy at the\ntime when they are out of happiness with those in actual\npossession of\nhappiness. If these last are better off, they are so as men in\npossession of happiness against men without it and their advantage\nis always by something in the present.\n\n\n## Section 6\n\n\n##### Section 6\n\n6. Well, but take the unhappy man: must not increase of\ntime bring\nan increase of his unhappiness? Do not all troubles- long-lasting\npains, sorrows, and everything of that type- yield a greater sum of\nmisery in the longer time? And if thus in misery the evil is\naugmented\nby time why should not time equally augment happiness when all is\nwell?\n\nIn the matter of sorrows and pains there is, no doubt, ground\nfor saying that time brings increase: for example, in a lingering\nmalady the evil hardens into a state, and as time goes on the body\nis brought lower and lower. But if the constitution did not\ndeteriorate, if the mischief grew no worse, then, here too, there\nwould be no trouble but that of the present moment: we\ncannot tell the\npast into the tale of unhappiness except in the sense that\nit has gone\nto make up an actually existing state- in the sense that, the evil\nin the sufferer's condition having been extended over a longer time,\nthe mischief has gained ground. The increase of ill-being then is\ndue to the aggravation of the malady not to the extension of time.\n\nIt may be pointed out also that this greater length of\ntime is not\na thing existent at any given moment; and surely a \"more\" is\nnot to be\nmade out by adding to something actually present something that has\npassed away.\n\nNo: true happiness is not vague and fluid: it is an unchanging\nstate.\n\nIf there is in this matter any increase besides that of\nmere time,\nit is in the sense that a greater happiness is the reward of a\nhigher virtue: this is not counting up to the credit of happiness\nthe years of its continuance; it is simply noting the high-water\nmark once for all attained.\n\n\n## Section 7\n\n\n##### Section 7\n\n7. But if we are to consider only the present and may not call\nin the past to make the total, why do we not reckon so in the case\nof time itself, where, in fact, we do not hesitate to add the past\nto the present and call the total greater? Why not suppose a\nquantity of happiness equivalent to a quantity of time? This would\nbe no more than taking it lap by lap to correspond with time-laps\ninstead of choosing to consider it as an indivisible, measurable\nonly by the content of a given instant.\n\nThere is no absurdity in taking count of time which has ceased\nto be: we are merely counting what is past and finished, as we might\ncount the dead: but to treat past happiness as actually existent and\nas outweighing present happiness, that is an absurdity. For\nHappiness must be an achieved and existent state, whereas any time\nover and apart from the present is nonexistent: all progress of time\nmeans the extinction of all the time that has been.\n\nHence time is aptly described as a mimic of eternity\nthat seeks to\nbreak up in its fragmentary flight the permanence of its exemplar.\nThus whatever time seizes and seals to itself of what stands\npermanent\nin eternity is annihilated- saved only in so far as in some degree\nit still belongs to eternity, but wholly destroyed if it be\nunreservedly absorbed into time.\n\nIf Happiness demands the possession of the good of life, it\nclearly has to do with the life of Authentic-Existence for that life\nis the Best. Now the life of Authentic-Existence is measurable not\nby time but by eternity; and eternity is not a more or a less or a\nthing of any magnitude but is the unchangeable, the indivisible, is\ntimeless Being.\n\nWe must not muddle together Being and Non-Being, time and\neternity, not even everlasting time with the eternal; we cannot make\nlaps and stages of an absolute unity; all must be taken together,\nwheresoever and howsoever we handle it; and it must be taken at\nthat, not even as an undivided block of time but as the Life of\nEternity, a stretch not made up of periods but completely rounded,\noutside of all notion of time.\n\n\n## Section 8\n\n\n##### Section 8\n\n8. It may be urged that the actual presence of past experiences,\nkept present by Memory, gives the advantage to the man of the longer\nfelicity.\n\nBut, Memory of what sort of experiences?\n\nMemory either of formerly attained wisdom and virtue- in which\ncase we have a better man and the argument from memory is\ngiven up- or\nmemory of past pleasures, as if the man that has arrived at felicity\nmust roam far and wide in search of gratifications and is not\ncontented by the bliss actually within him.\n\nAnd what is there pleasant in the memory of pleasure? What is it\nto recall yesterday's excellent dinner? Still more ridiculous, one\nof ten years ago. So, too, of last year's morality.\n\n\n## Section 9\n\n\n##### Section 9\n\n9. But is there not something to be said for the memory of the\nvarious forms of beauty?\n\nThat is the resource of a man whose life is without beauty in\nthe present, so that, for lack of it now, he grasps at the memory of\nwhat has been.\n\n\n## Section 10\n\n\n##### Section 10\n\n10. But, it may be said, length of time produces an abundance of\ngood actions missed by the man whose attainment of the happy state\nis recent- if indeed we can think at all of a state of\nhappiness where\ngood actions have been few.\n\nNow to make multiplicity, whether in time or in action,\nessential to Happiness is to put it together by combining\nnon-existents, represented by the past, with some one thing that\nactually is. This consideration it was that led us at the very\nbeginning to place Happiness in the actually existent and on that\nbasis to launch our enquiry as to whether the higher degree was\ndetermined by the longer time. It might be thought that the\nHappiness of longer date must surpass the shorter by virtue of the\ngreater number of acts it included.\n\nBut, to begin with, men quite outside of the active life may\nattain the state of felicity, and not in a less but in a greater\ndegree than men of affairs.\n\nSecondly, the good does not derive from the act itself but from\nthe inner disposition which prompts the noble conduct: the wise and\ngood man in his very action harvests the good not by what he does\nbut by what he is.\n\nA wicked man no less than a Sage may save the country, and the\ngood of the act is for all alike, no matter whose was the\nsaving hand.\nThe contentment of the Sage does not hang upon such actions and\nevents: it is his own inner habit that creates at once his felicity\nand whatever pleasure may accompany it.\n\nTo put Happiness in actions is to put it in things that are\noutside virtue and outside the Soul; for the Soul's expression is\nnot in action but in wisdom, in a contemplative operation within\nitself; and this, this alone, is Happiness.",
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