We have seen that the way up to the beautiful is not through the other, but through one's own. But what of the beauty scattered across the world in images and even in living faces: does it not assist in the voyage of the lover? Does the skill of the artist have anything of the transcendental about it? We will examine Plotinus’ attitude to the beauty around him, with some surprising results.

The rejection of art in the Tenth book of the Republic is well known, and it is always surprising for those who appreciate the thought of Plato. How can this great thinker and sorcerer of language deny that which is apparently part of himself, his own skill as an author? There seem to be two manoeuvres here. On the one hand, he rejects that techne which happens to give his writings their own particular magic, and all their seductive power over us, the readers; on the other, he denies that which obviously exercises an attraction for him and over him, so that we appear to be dealing with a kind of suppression or rejection of an element of his own person. The art of the poet includes Plato among its initiates, as author as well as spectator: he is at once the seducer and the seduced. Perhaps we are dealing with a deliberate irony in relation to himself.