Of course we shall admit that there are differences between Plotinos
and Numenius, at least during his Porphyrian period; this was
inevitable while dismissing his Numenian secretary Amelius,[575] a
friend "who had become imbued with" such doctrines before becoming the
friend of Plotinos, who persevered in them, and wrote in justification
thereof. We find that the book chronologically preceding this one is v.
5, on the very subject at issue between Amelius and Porphyry. Plotinos
took his stand with the latter, and therefore against the former,
and through him, against Numenius; and indeed we find him opposing
several Gnostic opinions which can be substantiated in Numenius: the
creation by illumination or emanation,[576] the threefoldness of the
creator,[577] and the pilot's forgetting himself in his work.[578]
But, after all, these points are not as important as they might seem;
for in a very little while we find Plotinos himself admitting the
substance of all of these ideas, except the verbiage; he himself
uses the light and ray simile, the "light of light;"[579] he himself
distinguishes various phases of the allegedly single intelligence,[580]
and the soul, as pilot of the body incarnates by the very forgetfulness
by which the creator created.[581]
Further, as we shall show, during his last or Eustochian period after
Porphyry had taken a trip to Sicily to avoid suicide, he himself was
to return to Numenian standpoints. This may be shown in a general way
as follows. Of the nine Eustochian essays[582] only two[583] betray no
similarities to Numenian ideas, while seven[584] do. On the contrary,
in the Amelio-Porphyrian period,[585] written immediately on Amelius's
dismissal, only six[586] are Numenian, and six[587] are non-Numenian.
In the succeeding wholly Porphyrian period,[588] we have the same equal
number of Numenian[589] and non-Numenian[590] books. An explanation of
this reversion to Numenian ideas has been attempted in the study of the
development in Plotinos's views. On the whole, therefore, Plotinos's
opposition to Numenius may be considered no more than episodic.