3. CONTRAST BETWEEN THEM.
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.