4 It is necessary to inform the Platonical reader, that the Beautiful,
in the present discourse, is considered according to its most general
acceptation, as the same with the Good: though, according to a more
accurate distinction, as Plotinus himself informs us, the Good is
considered as the fountain and principle of the Beautiful. I think it
likewise proper to observe, that as I have endeavoured, by my
paraphrase, to render as much as possible the obscure parts evident,
and to expand those sentences which are so very much contracted in
the original, I shall be sparing of notes; for my design is not to
accommodate the sublimest truths to the meanest understandings (as
this would be a contemptible and useless prostitution), but to render
them perspicuous to truly liberal and philosophic minds. My reasons
for adopting this mode of paraphrase, may be seen in the preface to
my translation of _Orpheus's Hymns._
5 "Enters deep into its essence," etc. The Platonic Philosophy insists
much on the necessity of retiring into ourselves in order to the
discovery of truth; and on this account Socrates, in the first
_Alcibiades,_ says that the soul entering into herself will
contemplate whatever exists and the divinity himself. Upon which
Proclus thus comments, with his usual elegance and depth (in
_Theol. Plat,_ p. 7): "For the soul," says he, "contracting herself
wholly into a union with herself, and into the centre of universal life,
and removing the multitude and variety of all-various powers,
ascends into the highest place of speculation, from whence she will
survey the nature of beings. For if she looks back upon things
posterior to her essence, she will perceive nothing but the shadows
and resemblances of beings; but if she returns into herself she will
evolve her own essence, and the reasons she contains. And at first
indeed she will, as it were, only behold herself; but when by her
knowledge she penetrates more profoundly in her investigations she
will find intellect seated in her essence and the universal orders of
beings; but when she advances into the more interior recesses of
herself, and as it were into the sanctuary of the soul, she will be
enabled to contemplate, with her eyes closed to corporeal vision, the
genus of the gods and the unities of beings. For all things reside in
us, after a manner correspondent to the nature of the soul; and on
this account we are naturally enabled to know all things, by exciting
our inherent powers and images of whatever exists."
6 "And such is matter," etc. There is nothing affords more
wonderful speculation than matter, which ranks as the last among
the universality of things, and has the same relation to being as
shade to substance. For, as in an ascending series of causes it is
necessary to arrive at something, which is the first cause of all, and
to which no perfection is wanting; so in a descending series of
subjects, it is equally necessary we should stop at some general
subject, the lowest in the order of things, and to which every
perfection of being is denied. But let us hear the profound and
admirable description which Plotinus gives us of matter (lib. vi.,
Ennead 3), and of which the following is a paraphrase: "Since
matter," says he, "is neither soul, nor intellect, nor life, nor form, nor
reason, nor bound, but a certain indefiniteness; nor yet capacity, for
what can it produce? Since it is foreign from all these, it cannot
merit the appellation of being, but is deservedly called non-entity.
Nor yet is it non-entity in the manner as motion or station; but it is
true non-entity, the mere shadow and imagination of bulk and the
desire of subsistence; abiding without station, of itself invisible, and
avoiding the desire of him who wishes to perceive its nature. Hence,
when no one perceives it, it is then in a manner present, but cannot
be viewed by him who strives intently to behold it. Again, in itself
contraries always appear, the small and the great, the less and the
more, deficience and excess. So that it is a phantom, neither abiding
nor yet able to fly away; capable of no one denomination and
possessing no power from intellect, but constituted in the defect and
shade, as it were, of all real being. Hence, too, in each of its
vanishing appellations it eludes our search; for if we think of it as
something great, it is in the meantime small; if as something more, it
becomes less; and the apparent being which we meet with in its
image is non-being, and as it were a flying mockery. So that the
forms which appear in matter are merely ludicrous, shadows falling
upon shadow, as in a mirror, where the position of a thing is
different from its real situation; and which, though apparently full of
forms, possesses nothing real and true--but imitations of being and
semblances flowing about a formless semblance. They appear,
indeed, to affect something in the subject matter, but in reality
produce nothing; from their debile and flowing nature being endued
with no solidity and no rebounding power. And since matter,
likewise, has no solidity they penetrate it without division, like
images in water, or as if anyone should fill a vacuum with forms."
7 "In itself perfectly pure." This is analogous to the description of
the beautiful in the latter part of Diotima's Speech in the _Banquet_;
a speech which is surely unequalled, both for elegance of
composition and sublimity of sentiment. Indeed, all the disciples of
Plato are remarkable for nothing so much as their profound and
exalted conceptions of the Deity; and he who can read the works of
Plotinus and Proclus in particular, and afterwards pity the weakness
and erroneousness of their opinions on this subject, may be fairly
presumed to be himself equally an object of pity and contempt.
8 "Let us depart," etc., _vide_ Hom., _Iliad,_ lib. ii., 140, et lib. ix.,
27.
9 Porphyry informs us in his excellent treatise, _De Antro Nymph,_
that it was the opinion of Numenius, the Pythagorean (to which he
also assents), that the person of Ulysses in the _Odyssey,_
represents to us a man, who passes in a regular manner, over the
dark and stormy sea of generation; and thus, at length, arrives at that
region where tempests and seas are unknown, and finds a nation
who
"Ne'er knew salt, or heard the billows roar."
Indeed, he who is conscious of the delusions of the present life and
the enchantments of this material house, in which his soul is
detained like Ulysses in the irriguous cavern of Calypso, will like
him continually bewail his captivity, and inly pine for a return to his
native country. Of such a one it may be said as of Ulysses (in the
excellent and pathetic translation of Mr Pope):
"But sad Ulysses by himself apart
Pour'd the big sorrows of his swelling heart,
All on the lonely shore he sate to weep
And roll'd his eyes around the restless deep
Tow'rd the lov'd coast he roll'd his eyes in vain
Till, dimmed with rising grief, they stream'd again."
_Odyssey,_ book v., 103.
Such a one too, like Ulysses, will not always wish in vain for a
passage over the dark ocean of a corporeal life, but by the assistance
of Mercury, who may be considered as the emblem of reason, he
will at length be enabled to quit the magic embraces of Calypso, the
Goddess of Imagination, and to return again into the arms of
Penelope, or Philosophy, the long lost and proper object of his love.