300 GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 



means of the First Principle, even as the eye by means of light. 

 The vision, or intuition of God, the great point of perfection and felicity, 

 by which the mind, a link in the chain of intelligence, ascends, by the 

 various steps of purification, to the great source of life and being, 

 was the high object of the Plotinian school. Porphyry relates that 

 Plotinus had four times during his life enjoyed an intimate commu- 

 nication with the Divine Being, and that he himself had attained that 

 favour once. 1 



The liberation of the soul from its corporeal prison, was the end of 

 the new Platonic morals, to attain which it was to pass through several 

 degrees of human and divine virtues. 2 The human virtues are physical, 

 economical, and political ; they relate to the care of the body and the 

 duties of private and public life. The Divine virtues are purgative, 

 requiring abstinence and mortification ; theoretic, comprising the intel- 

 lectual exercise of contemplating intelligible natures; and theurgic, lead- 

 immediately ; in the other, it uses certain laws or characters engraven in us, for 

 God has imprinted in the human mind the rational forms of things. But true 

 knowledge is that in which the thing known is identical with the subject knowing : 

 such is that which the understanding has of itself. (Enn. iv. lib. viii. c. 4 ; Enn. 

 v. lib. iii. c. 4 ; Enn. iii. lib. viii. ; Enn. vi. lib. i. c. 4.) The faculties of the 

 soul are of two sorts ; one, directing themselves above themselves, constitute 

 reason ; the others, descending to the lower regions, form sensibility and vegetation. 

 Eeason is, as it were, intermediate between the understanding and the senses, it acts 

 not by means of corporeal organs, but by the sole force of intelligence. (Enn. v. 

 lib. iii. c. 2 ; Enn. ii. lib. i. c. 7.) The understanding is never passive, it receives 

 not forms from without ; it is not even passive in sensation, as some philosophers 

 suppose. In sensation, it is not modified by an impression reaching it; on the 

 contrary, it acts and carries itself without. Light comes not from the object 

 lighted, but from the luminous subject. (Enn. iii. lib. i. c. 10; lib, ii. c. 1; Enn. v. 

 lib. v. c. 6.) In vision, the mind places, but at a distance, the object perceived, 

 and attributes to it a size very different from that of which it has the image. (See 

 Enn. iv. lib. vi. c. 1, 2, &c.) Memory consists, not in the preservation or trace of 

 received impressions, but, on the contrary, in a development of the energy of the 

 soul, powerful in proportion as this energy is intense. (See Enn. iv. lib. iv. c. 3, 

 &c.) Degerando, Hist, des Syst. Philos. torn. iii. c. 21. 



1 There are three ways of elevating oneself to the First Principle. Harmony, love, 

 wisdom ; these are expressed by Plotinus when he distinguished three states, called 

 the Musician, the Lover (Epom/cbs), and the Philosopher. The first is still placed 

 in the midst of lower objects, but the admiration which is raised within him by the 

 image of beauty reflected on them prepares his soul for truth : the second resides 

 in a more exalted sphere; he is engaged in the love of immaterial things : the third 

 soars, as if borne on wings, to the sphere sublime, to the contemplation of intel- 

 ligibles in their very source. Plotinus recommends, therefore, his followers to 

 prepare themselves by purifications, by prayers, by exercises, which adorn the mind, 

 to ascend to the intellectual world, to nourish themselves with the celestial food 

 which it contains ; to raise themselves to that height where the spectacle becomes 

 identical with the spectator ; where the mind not merely sees itself in itself, but 

 everything else ; where essence is one with intelligence ; where, confounded in a 

 manner with the universality of beings, it embraces it not as being external, but as 

 belonging to it. Enn. vi. lib. vii. c. 36 ; Degerando, Hist. Comp. des Syst. Phil, 

 torn. iii. p. 382. 



2 See the learned dissertation of Fabricius, De Gradibus Virtutum, secundum 

 quas Proclum laudat Marinus, in his Prolegomena to the Life of Proclus by 

 Marinus. 



