There are two fountains, whose noxious streams detain the soul in matter, and with which, as if saturated with lethargic potions, she forgets her own proper speculations: I mean pleasure and grief, the artificer of which is sense and its perceptions, together with the operations attendant on the senses, imaginations, opinions, and memory. The passions, roused by the energies of these, and the irrational part, now fattened with noxious nutriment, draw down the soul, and avert her inclinations from her native love of true being. It is requisite, therefore, that we revolt from these to the utmost of our ability. But true defections can alone take place by avoiding the passions and rash motions produced by the senses. But, sensation respects whatever moves the sight, or the hearing, or the taste, or the smell. And sense is, as it were, the metropolis of that foreign colony of passions which reside in the soul, and which must be expelled by him who wishes, while connected with body, to become an inhabitant of the royal regions of intellect. Let us then enquire how much fuel of the passions enters into us through each of the senses; and this either when we behold the spectacles of horses in the race, and the labours of the athletic, or the contests of those who twist and bend their bodies in leaping, or when we survey beautiful women. For all these insnare us, unconscious of the danger, and subject to their dominion the irrational appetite, by proffered inchantments of every kind.
For by all such inchantments the soul, as if driven into fury, compels the compound man to leap rashly, and without reason, and full of the brutal nature to bellow and exclaim. In the mean time, the perturbation appearing from without, being inflamed by the internal, which was first of all roused by sense. But the vehement motions excited by the hearing, arise from certain noises and sounds, from base discourse, and mixed assemblies; so that some, exiled from reason, behave as if struck mad; and others, enervated by effeminate softness, agitate themselves by a multitude of trifling gesticulations. And who is ignorant how much the soul is fattened, and infested with material grossness, by the ointments and perfumes which commend lovers to each other? But why is it necessary to speak of the passions originating from the taste: in this respect especially, binding the soul in a double band; one of which is thickened by the passions excited by the taste; the other becomes strong and powerful by the different bodies which we receive in food. For as a certain physician observed, those are not the only poisons which are prepared by the medical art, but such things as we daily receive for food, as well liquid as solid, are to be reckoned among this number; and much greater danger arises to our life from these, than to our bodies from poisons. But the touch does all but transmute the soul into body, and excites in it, as in a dissonant body, certain broken and enervated sounds. The remembrance, imagination, and cogitation of all these raise a collected swarm of passions, i. e. of fear, desire, anger, love, emulation, cares, and griefs, they fill the soul with perturbations of this kind, cloud its intellectual eye with oblivion, and bury its divine light in material darkness.
On which account it is a great undertaking to be purified from all this rout of pollutions; and to bestow much labour in meditating day and night, what measures we shall adopt to be freed from these bonds, and this because we are complicated with sense, from a certain necessity. From whence, as much as our ability will permit, we ought to recede from those places in which we may (perhaps unwillingly), meet with this hostile rout; and it is requisite we should be solicitous not to engage in combat with these dangerous foes, lest, through too great a confidence of victory and success, instead of vigorous contention, we produce only unskilfulness and indolence.”
And in the conclusion of the first book, he adds, “For, indeed, if it be lawful to speak freely, and without fear, we can by no other means obtain the true end of a contemplative, intellectual life, but by adhering to the Deity (if I may be allowed the expression), as if fastened by a nail, at the same time being torn away and separated from body and corporeal delights; having procured safety from our deeds, and not from the mere attention to words. But if friendship is not to be conciliated with a divinity, who is only the governor of some particular region, with any kind of food, or by the use of animal nutriment, much less can a gross diet effect an union with that God who is exalted above all things, and who is superior to a nature simply incorporeal; but after every mode of purgation, and the greatest chastity of body, and purity of soul, we shall scarcely be thought worthy to obtain the vision of his ineffable beauty; though this is sometimes permitted to him whose soul is well disposed, and who has passed through life with the greatest sanctity and purity of manners. So that, by how much the Father of all exceeds every nature in simplicity, purity, and self-sufficiency, as being infinitely remote from all suspicion of material contagion, by so much the more ought he who approaches to the Deity, to be entirely pure and holy, first in his body, and afterwards in the most secret recesses of his soul; having distributed a purgation adapted to every part, and being completely invested with purity, as with a transparent garment, fit for the intimate reception of divine illumination.” Thus far Porphyry, whose excellent sentiments on this subject are a lasting monument of the elevation and purity of soul which the Platonic philosophy affords; and at the same time sufficiently prove the arrogance and ignorance of those who depreciate the wisdom of the ancients, and consider their greatest philosophers as involved in mental darkness and delusion. But presumption of this kind is continually increased by indolence, and strengthened by interest; and it is common to find scribblers of every kind, laughing at Plato and his philosophy, who are too mean for criticism, and even too insignificant for contempt. Let us, therefore, leave such in their native inanity, and listen to the instructions of the divinely elegant Proclus, by which we may ascend to the contemplation of true being, and the ineffable principle of things.
6. [38]“Pythagoras and Plato command us to fly from the multitude, that we may pursue the most simple truth, and apply ourselves wholly to the contemplation of real being. From the multitude of exterior people drawing us aside in various ways, and deceiving us by fallacious appearances. But much more to shun the multitude of interior people; for this much more distracts and deceives. We must, therefore, fly from the various multitude of affections, the obscure informations of sense, the shadowy objects of imagination, and the dusky light of opinion. For every multitude of this kind is so different in itself, that its parts are contrary to one another; from whence it is necessary to betake ourselves to the sciences, in which multitude has no contrariety. For though affections are contrary to affections, one perception of sense to another, imaginations to imaginations, and opinions to opinions, yet no one science is found contrary to another. In this multitude, therefore, of propositions and notions, we may collect into one the number of sciences binding them in one according bond. For they are so remote from contrariety to each other, that notion is subservient to notion, and inferior sciences minister to superior, depending on them for their origin. Above all, it is here necessary, from many sciences which pre-suppose one, to betake ourselves to one science itself, no longer supposing another, and in an orderly series to refer them all to this original one. But after science, and its study, it will be necessary to lay aside compositions, divisions, and multiform discourses, and from thence to ascend to intellectual life, to its simple vision, and intimate perception. For science is not the summit of knowledge, but beyond it is intellect; not that intellect only which is separated from soul, but the illustration infused from thence into the soul, which Aristotle affirms to be the intellect by which we acknowledge the principles of science; and Timæus says, that this exists in no place but the soul. Ascending, therefore, to this intellect, we must contemplate together with it intelligible essence, by indivisible and simple perceptions, speculating the simple genera of beings. But after venerable intellect itself, it will be proper to contemplate that summit of the soul, by which we are one, and under whose influence our multitude is united. For as by our intellect we touch the divine intellect; so by our unity, and as it were the flower of our essence, it will be lawful to touch that first one, from whom all subordinate unities proceed. And by this our one, we are especially conjoined with divinity. For similitude may be every where comprehended by that which is similar; the objects of knowledge by science; things intelligible by intellect; and the most unifying measures of being, by the unity of the soul. But this unity and its energy is the summit of our actions; for by this we become divine, when, flying from all multitude, we retire into the depths of our unity, and, being collected into one, uniformly energize. Thus far we admonish to shun the multitude, by steps proceeding from the order of knowledge: in the next place, we shall proceed in the same design by the series of knowable objects. Fly then every sensible species, for they are heaped together, are divisible, and perfectly mutable, and incapable of affording sincere and genuine knowledge. From these dark informations, therefore, betake yourself to incorporeal essence; since every sensible object possesses adventitious unity, is by itself scattered and confused, and full of formless infinity. Hence its good is divisible, and adventitious, distant and separated from itself, and residing in a foreign seat. When you have ascended thither, and are placed among incorporeal beings, you will behold above the fluctuating empire of bodies, the sublime animal order, self-moving, spontaneously energizing in itself, and from itself possessing its own essence, yet multiplied, and anticipating in itself a certain apparition or image of the essence divisible about the unstable order of bodies. You will there perceive many habitudes of reasons, various proportions, and according bonds. Likewise the whole and parts, vivid circles, and a multiform variety of powers; together with a perfection of souls not-eternal, not subsisting, together as a whole, but, unfolded by time, gradually departing from their integrity, and conversant with continual circulations. For such is the nature of the soul.
But after the multitude belonging to souls, betake yourself to intellect, and the intellectual kingdoms, that you may possess the unity of things. There remain in contemplation of a nature ever abiding in eternity, of life ever flourishing, intelligence ever vigilant, to which no perfection of being is wanting, and which does not desire the chariot of time, for the full energy of its essence. When you have beheld natures of this exalted kind, and have seen by how great an interval they are superior to souls; in the next place enquire whether any multitude is there, and if intellect, since it is one, is also universal; and again, since it is uniform, if not also multiform: for you will find it subsists after this manner. When, therefore, you have intimately beheld this intellectual multitude, though profoundly indivisible and united, transport yourself again to another principle, and having considered, as in a more exalted rank, the unities of intellectual essences, in the last place proceed to unity perfectly separate and free from all things. And when advanced thus far, lay aside all multitude, and you will at length arrive at the ineffable fountain of good. And since it appears, from these various gradations, that the soul then properly obtains perfection, when she flies from all external and internal multitude, and the boundless variety of the universe, we may likewise conclude from hence, that our souls do not alone collect their knowledge from the obscure objects of sense, nor from things particular and divisible discover a perfect whole, and a perfect one, but draw forth science from their inmost recesses, and produce accuracy and perfection from whatever in appearances is inaccurate and imperfect. For it is not proper to suppose that things false and obscure, should be the principal sources of knowledge to the soul; and that things discordant among themselves, which require the reasonings and arguments of the soul, and which are ambiguous and confused, should precede science which is immutable; nor that things variously changed, should generate reasons abiding in one; nor that indeterminate beings should exist as the causes of determinate intelligence. It is not, therefore, fit to receive the truth of eternal entities from boundless multitude; nor from sensible objects the judgment of universals; nor from things destitute of reason, accurate discrimination of that which is good: but it is proper that the soul, retiring into her immortal essence, should there scrutinize the good and the true, and the immutable reasons of all things: for the essence of the soul is full of these, though they are clouded by oblivion. The soul, therefore, beholding exteriors, enquires after truth, in the mean time possessing it in the depths of her essence, and deserting herself, explores the good in the dark regions of matter. Hence, every one in the pursuit of reality ought to begin with the knowledge of himself. For, if we constantly extend our views among the multitude of men, we shall never discern the one species man, obscured by the multitude, and distracted by the division and discord, and the various mutations of those who participate the species. But if we turn our eye inwards, there, remote from perturbation, we shall behold one reason and nature of men; since multitude is an impediment to the conversion of the soul into herself. For here variety darkens unity, difference obscures identity, and dissimilitude clouds similitude; since species are confused in the folds of matter; and every where that which is excellent is mixed with the base.” Thus far Proclus; and thus much for our intended Dissertation.
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