214 PHYSICAL SCIENCE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 



look from him we revolve about him : we do not always look at him, 

 but when we do, we have satisfaction and rest, and the harmony which 

 belongs to that divine movement. In this movement, the mind be- 

 holds the fountain of life, the fountain of mind, the origin of being, the 

 cause of good, the root of the soul." 4 " There will be a time when this 

 vision shall be continual ; the mind being no more interrupted, nor 

 suffering any perturbation from the body. Yet that which beholds is 

 not that which is disturbed ; and when this vision becomes dim, it 

 does not obscure the knowledge which resides in demonstration, and 

 faith, and reasoning ; but the vision itself is not reason, but greater 

 than reason, and before reason." 5 



The fifth book of the third Ennead has for its subject the Daemon 

 which belongs to each man. It is entitled " Concerning Love ;" and 

 the doctrine appears to be, that the Love, or common source of the 

 passions which is in each man's mind, is " the Daemon which they say 

 accompanies each man." 6 These daemons were, however (at least by 

 later writers), invested with a visible aspect and with a personal char- 

 acter, including a resemblance of human passions and motives. It is 

 curious thus to see an untenable and visionary generalization falling 

 back into the domain of the senses and the fancy, after a vain attempt 

 to support itself in the region of the reason. This imagination soon 

 produced pretensions to the power of making these daemons or genii 

 visible ; and the Treatise on the Mysteries of the Egyptians, which is 

 attributed to Iamblichus, gives an account of the secret ceremonies, 

 the mysterious words, the sacrifices and expiations, by which this was 

 to be done. 



It is unnecessary for us to dwell on the progress of this school ; to 

 point out the growth of the Theurgy which thus arose; or to describe 

 the attempts to claim a high antiquity for this system, and to make 

 Orpheus, the poet, the first promulgator of its doctrines. The system, 

 like all mystical systems, assumed the character rather of religion than 

 of a theory. The opinions of its disciples materially influenced their 

 lives. It gave the world the spectacle of an austere morality, a devo- 

 tional exaltation, combined with the grossest superstitions of Paganism. 

 The successors of Iamblichus appeared rather to hold a priesthood, 

 than the chair of a philosophical school. 7 They were persecuted by 

 Constantine and Constantius, as opponents of Christianity. Sopater, a 



« vi. Enn. ix. 9. 5 vi. Enn. ix. 10. 6 Ficinus, Comm. in. v. Enn. in. 



» Deg. ill. 407. 



