Commentary on the First Alcibiades of Plato

But how do we tend toward better things, other than by putting aside base and evil things? The soul, which is a power of acting through itself, cannot carry itself higher unless it has segregated itself from inferior things. Inferior things, however, are the passions of the soul, miserably distracting it and depressing it into matter. But that which is above the soul is what is purer, what is more abstract from all matter, what is freer and subsists more through itself. Therefore, as often as the soul converts itself into itself by segregating itself from external things, it thus abstracts itself inward, becomes freer, and is mixed with intelligible things. Love, however, is the medium by which the conversion happens, neither one nor various, but a unifying unity-maker, and constitutes a trinity of love, faith, and truth: faith which firms everything in the good, truth which explains all knowledge in beings; and finally, love, which converts and gathers all things into the nature of the Beautiful itself, a binder and conciliator of those things which are after it and those which are above it, a converter of things that follow into those that precede, and a reducer and perfector of imperfect things.