ABSTRACT
Our exposition has so far followed the way in which Plotinus begins with the introspection of the individual as he seeks to find that element in him which searches for reality. The discovery of the different levels of the self ended in the experience of the self as one with the principle of all other selves, the One. This personal exploration is, however, not the only source of knowledge about the structure of the universe. When, in this section, we introduce Plotinus’ ideas about the macrocosmic principles of the universe we will concentrate, as he often does, on the universe outside the self and will not only argue from the bottom upwards, i.e. from the physical universe as presented to sense-perception, but also from the first principle downwards, since Plotinus presents us with arguments that grapple with the problem first raised by the earliest Greek philosophers: how did this world of variety and multiplicity derive from an original unity. Of course that problem which was handed on to all subsequent Greek philosophers was itself bound up with the more ultimate unstated conviction that all things in some way do form a unity, that the intelligibility, even the existence of the physical cosmos is dependent on its coherence as a unity.
