There are many other unclassifiable Numenian traces in Plotinos. Two of
them, however, are comparatively important. First, is a reaffirmation
of the ancient Greek connection between generation, fertility of birth
of souls and wetness,[730] which is later reaffirmed by Porphyry in
his "Cave of the Nymphs." Plotinos, however, later denies this.[731]
Then we come to a genuine innovation of Numenius's; his theory of
divine or intelligible giving. Plato had, of course, in his genial,
casual way, sketched out a whole organic system of divine creation
and administration of this world. The conceptions he needed he had
cheerfully borrowed from earlier Greek philosophy without any rigid
systematization, so that he never noticed that the hinge on which all
was supposed to turn was merely the makeshift of an assumption. This
capital error was noticed by Numenius, who sought to supply it by a
psychological observation, namely, that knowledge may be imparted
without diminution. Plotinos, with his winning way of dispensing with
quotation-marks, appropriated this,[732] as also the idea that life
streams out upon the world in the glance of the divinity, and as
quickly leaves it, when the Divinity turns away His glance.[733]
Other less important points of contact are: the Egyptian ship of
souls;[734] the Philonic distinction between "the" God as supreme, and
"god" as subordinate;[735] the hoary equivocation on "kosmos;"[736] and
the illustration of the divine Logos as the pilot of the world.[737]