PLOTINUS. THE LATER PLATONISTS. 303 



realities ; the first intelligence is at the same time the universal intelli- 

 gence, and it contains necessarily all other intelligences. 1 



" Even the errors of great men are fruitful of truths ;" arid this one 

 practical advantage at least may be derived from a survey, however 

 brief, of philosophical errors that, in enabling us to trace, it teaches us 

 to avoid, the source from which they have arisen, and the mazes through 

 which they run. The history of the Plotinian school of men who 

 rendered profitless the high mental endowments they had received from 

 nature, by substituting " ungrounded fancies" and mystical aspirations 

 for those sober inquiries which lie within the reach of the human 

 intellect affords, we think, a useful exemplification of that species of 

 error, which the great Bacon has placed among the " peccant humours" 

 by which learning has been corrupted. It has proceeded " from too 

 great a reverence and a kind of adoration of the mind and under- 

 standing of man, by means whereof men have withdrawn themselves 

 from the contemplation of nature, and the observations of experience, 

 and have tumbled up and down in their own reason and conceits. 

 Upon these intellectualists, which are, notwithstanding commonly taken 

 for the most sublime and divine philosophers, Heraclitus gave a just 

 censure, saying, * men sought truth in their own little w r orlds, and not 

 in the great and common world ;' for they disdain to spell, and so by 

 degrees to read in the volume of God's works ; and contrariwise, by 

 continual meditation and agitation of wit, do urge and, as it were, 

 invocate their own spirits to divine and give oracles unto them, where- 

 by they are deservedly deluded." 1 



Such is a faint and naturally very imperfect outline of the peculiar 

 philosophy, 2 which, generally spread, exerted mighty influence from 

 the third to the seventh century ; which, after having reappeared in 

 the middle ages, shone with great lustre in the fifteenth and sixteenth 

 centuries ; 3 and which, notwithstanding its wildness and extravagance, 



1 Degerando, Hist. Comp. des Syst. Phil. torn. ii. c. 21. 



2 Of the Advancement of Learning, lib. i. c. 5. 



3 Our object having been merely to present a clear outline of the most prominent 

 features of the Eclectic school, together with a succinct view of its most noted pro- 

 pagators, we have been obliged to avoid entering into a detail of its metaphysical 

 and theological principles, or into notices of the long train of eminent men who 

 have successively adopted and extended Platonic notions. Among the authors of a 

 marked Platonic cast, who adorn the annals of English Literature, it is sufficient to 

 mention the celebrated names of Theophilus Gale, of Henry More, and, above all, 

 of R. Cudworth. 



4 Degerando, Hist. Comp. des Syst. Phil. Besides this able work, by which, 

 together with the learned Brucker's Hist. Critic. Phil. torn. ii. and Enfield's Hist, 

 of Phil, we have been chiefly guided, the reader will find additional information in 

 the writings of Mather, Tiedemann, Tennemann, Buhle, and V. Cousin. See also 

 Cudworth's Intellectual System, with Mosheim's valuable notes to his Latin trans- 

 lation ; Mosheim de turbata per recentiores Platonicos Ecclesia ; Fabric. Biblioth. 

 Grasc. torn. ix. Ed. Harles; Creuzer's Letter to Wyttenbach, prefixed to his edition 

 of the fragment of Plotinus, De Pulchro ; to which may be added the following 

 works, noticed by Degerando (torn. iii. note p, p. 478), Beausobre, Hist, de 



