Now when we consider the nature of some being, it should be studied
in its rarest condition, since extraneous additions hinder it from
being rightly judged. The soul must be therefore considered only after
abstraction of foreign things, or rather, he who makes this abstraction
should observe himself in that condition. He then will not doubt that
he is immortal, when he sees himself in the pure world of intelligence.
He will see his intelligence occupied, not in the observation of some
sense-object that is mortal, but in thinking the eternal by an equally
eternal faculty.[83] He will see all the entities in the intelligible
world, and he will see himself become intelligible, radiant, and
illuminated by the truth emanating from the Good, which sheds the light
of truth on all intelligible entities.[84] Then (like Empedocles, in
Diog. Laertes[85]), he will have the right to say:
"Farewell, I am now an immortal divinity."
For he has ascended to the divinity, and has become assimilated
thereto. As purification permits one to know the better things, so the
notions we have within us, and which constitute real science, are made
clear. Indeed, it is not by an excursion among external objects that
the soul attains the intuition of wisdom and virtue, but by re-entering
into herself, in thinking herself in her primitive condition. Then she
clears up and recognizes in herself the divine statues, soiled by the
rust of time. Likewise, if a piece of gold were animated and released
itself from the earth by which it was covered, after first having been
ignorant of its real nature because it did not see its own splendor,
it would admire itself when considering itself in its purity; it would
find that it had no need of a borrowed beauty, and would consider
itself happy to remain isolated from everything else.[86]