"I have tried my hand on Plotinus, and find it easy to render the text
into modern philosophical phraseology. Until lately I have been unable
to procure a good critical edition of the Greek philosopher. And now,
if my energies are spared, a translation of his entire works is not
very far in the future."[9]
[Footnote 9: His works are comprised in fifty-four books, which his
disciple Porphyry divided into six Enneads, assigning, agreeably to
the meaning of the word, nine books to every Ennead. Thomas Taylor
translated parts of these only.]
It were a good test of one's aptitude for metaphysical studies, his
appreciation of Plotinus. Profound as any predecessor of the Platonic
school of idealism, he had the remarkable merit of treating ideas
in a style at once transparent and subtle, dealing with these as if
they were palpable things, such was his grasp of thought and felicity
in handling. His themes are of universal concernment at all times.
Promoting a catholic and manly method, his books were good correctives
of any exclusiveness still adhering in our schools of science and
divinity, while the tendencies of his time, as in ours, were towards
comparative studies.
A like tendency appeared, also, in England in the studies of the
British Platonists, or Latitudinarians,--Dr. Henry More, Dr. Cudworth,
Dr. Rust, Norris, Glanvil, John Smith, whose writings deserve a place
in theological libraries, and the study of divines especially.
Norris thus praises his friend Dr. More, whose works had high repute
and were much studied in his day:--
"Others in learning's chorus bear their part,
And the great work distinctly share;
Thou, our great catholic professor art,
All science is annexed to thy unerring chair;
Some lesser synods of the wise
The Muses kept in universities;
But never yet till in thy soul
Had they a council oecumenical:
An abstract they'd a mind to see
Of all their scattered gifts, and summed them up in thee.
Thou hast the arts whole Zodiac run,
And fathom'st all that here is known;
Strange restless curiosity,
Adam himself came short of thee,--
He tasted of the fruit, thou bearest away the tree."