[64] No opinion is more celebrated, than that of the metempsychosis of Pythagoras: but perhaps, no doctrine is more generally mistaken. By most of the present day it is exploded as ridiculous; and the few who retain some veneration for its founder, endeavour to destroy the literal, and to confine it to an allegorical meaning. By some of the ancients this mutation was limited to similar bodies: so that they conceived the human soul might transmigrate into various human bodies, but not into those of brutes; and this was the opinion of Hierocles, as may be seen in his comment on the Golden Verses. But why may not the human soul become connected with subordinate as well as with superior lives, by a tendency of inclination? Do not similars love to be united; and is there not in all kinds of life, something similar and common? Hence, when the affections of the soul verge to a baser nature, while connected with a human body, these affections, on the dissolution of such a body, become enveloped as it were, in a brutal nature, and the rational eye, in this case, clouded with perturbations, is oppressed by the irrational energies of the brute, and surveys nothing but the dark phantasms of a degraded imagination. But this doctrine is vindicated by Proclus with his usual subtilty, in his admirable commentary on the Timæus, lib. v. p. 329, as follows, “It is usual, says he, to enquire how souls can descend into brute animals. And some, indeed, think that there are certain similitudes of men to brutes, which they call savage lives: for they by no means think it possible that the rational essence can become the soul of a savage animal. On the contrary, others allow it may be sent into brutes, because all souls are of one and the same kind; so that they may become wolves and panthers, and ichneumons. But true reason, indeed, asserts that the human soul way be lodged in brutes, yet in such a manner, as that it may obtain its own proper life, and that the degraded soul may, as it were, be carried above it, and be bound to the baser nature, by a propensity and similitude of affection. And that this is the only mode of insinuation, we have proved by a multitude of reasons, in our commentaries on the Phædrus. But if it is requisite to take notice, that this is the opinion of Plato, we add, that in his politics, he says, that the soul of Thersites assumed an ape, but not the body of an ape: and in the Phædrus, that the soul descends into a savage life, but not into a savage body; for life is conjoined with its proper soul. And in this place he says it is changed into a brutal nature: for a brutal nature is not a brutal body, but a brutal life.”
[65] Pericles Lydus, a Stoic philosopher.
[66] Vide Pausan. lib. i. Atticorum, cap. 21. et 20.
[67] He means the Christians.
[68] Proclus was born in the year of Christ 412, on the 6th of the Ides of February. But, for the sake of the astrologers, I have subjoined the following figure from the Prolegomena of Fabricius to this life: and though I am not skilled in the art myself, I am persuaded, from the arguments of Plotinus, that it contains many general truths; but when made subservient to particulars, is liable to great inaccuracy and error. In short, its evidence is wholly of a physiognomic nature; for such is the admirable order and connection of things, that throughout the universe, one thing is signified by another, and wholes are after a manner contained in their parts. So that the language of the obscure and profound Heraclitus is perfectly just, when he says, “You must connect the perfect and the imperfect, the agreeing and the disagreeing, the consonant and the dissonant, and out of one all things, and out of all things one.”
A Scheme of the situation of the Stars, such as it was at Byzantium, when the philosopher Proclus was born.
[69] It was formerly the custom of almost all nations, to have their burial places in the suburbs, and not in the city itself.
[70] This eclipse happened, according to Fabricius, in A. C. 484. 19 Cal. Feb. at sun-rise.
[71] All the ancient theologists, among whom Plato holds a distinguished rank, affirmed that the soul was of a certain middle nature and condition between intelligibles and sensibles: agreeable to which doctrine, Plotinus divinely asserts that she is placed in the horizon, or in the boundary and isthmus, as it were, of eternal and mortal natures; and hence, according to the Magi, she is similar to the moon, one of whose parts is lucid, but the other dark. Now the soul, in consequence of this middle condition, must necessarily be the receptacle of all middle energies, both vital and gnostic; so that her knowledge is inferior to the indivisible simplicity of intellectual comprehension, but superior to the impulsive perceptions of sense. Hence the mathematical genera and species reside in her essence, as in their proper and natural region; for they are entirely of a middle nature, as Proclus proves in this and the sixth following chapter. But this doctrine of Plato’s, originally derived from Brontinus and Archytas, is thus elegantly explained by that philosopher, in the concluding part of the sixth book of his Republic. “Socrates, know then, they are, as we say, two (the Good itself, and the Sun,) and that the one reigns over the intelligible world, but the other over the visible, not to say the heavens, lest I should deceive you by the name. You comprehend then, these two orders of things, I mean the visible and the intelligible?—Glauco. I do.—Socrates. Continue this division then, as if it were a line divided into two unequal segments; and each part again, i. e. the sensible and intelligible, divided after a similar manner, and you will have evidence and obscurity placed by each other. In the visible segment, indeed, one part will contain images. But I call images, in the first place, shadows; afterwards, the resemblances of things appearing in water, and in dense, smooth, and lucid bodies, and every thing of this kind, if you apprehend me?—Glauco. I apprehend you.—Socrates. Now conceive that the other section comprehends the things, of which these images are nothing more than similitudes, such as the animals around us, together with plants, and whatever is the work of nature and art.—Glauco. I conceive it.—Socrates. Do you consider this section then, as divided into true and false? And that the hypothesis of opinion is to the knowledge of science, as a resemblance to its original?—Glauco. I do, very readily.—Socrates. Now then, consider how the section of the intelligible is to be divided.—Glauco. How?—Socrates. Thus: one segment is that which the soul enquires after, using the former divisions as images, and compelled to proceed from hypotheses, not to the principle, but to the conclusion. The other is that which employs the cogitative power of the soul, as she proceeds from an hypothesis to a principle no longer supposed, and, neglecting images, advances through their obscurity into the light of ideas themselves.—Glauco. I do not, in this, sufficiently understand you.—Socrates. But again, for you will more easily understand me from what has been already premised. I think you are not ignorant, that those who are conversant in geometry, arithmetic, and the like, suppose even and odd, together with various figures, and the three species of angles, and other things similar to these, according to each method of proceeding. Now, having established these, as hypotheses sufficiently known, they conceive that no reason is to be required for their position: but beginning from these, they descend through the rest, and arrive at last, at the object of their investigation.—Glauco. This I know perfectly well.—Socrates. This also you know, that they use visible forms, and make them the subject of their discourse, at the same time not directing their intellect to the perception of these, but to the originals they resemble; I mean the square itself, and the diameter itself; and not to the figures they delineate. And thus, other forms, which are represented by shadows and images in water, are employed by them, merely as resemblances, while they strive to behold that which can be seen by cogitation alone.—Glauco. You speak the truth.—Socrates. This is what I called above a species of the intelligible, in the investigation of which, the soul was compelled to use hypotheses; not ascending to the principle, as incapable of rising above hypotheses, but using the images formed from inferior objects, to a similitude of such as are superior, and which are so conceived and distinguished by opinion, as if they perspicuously contributed to the knowledge of things themselves.—Glauco. I understand indeed, that you are speaking of the circumstances which take place in geometry, and her kindred arts.—Socrates. Understand now, that by the other section of the intelligible, I mean that which reason herself reaches, by her power of demonstrating, when no longer esteeming hypotheses for principles, but receiving them in reality for hypotheses, she uses them as so many steps and handles in her ascent, until she arrives at that which is no longer hypothetical, the principle of the universe; and afterwards descending, holding by ideas which adhere to the principle, she arrives at the conclusion, employing nothing sensible in her progress, but proceeding through ideas, and in these at last terminating her descent.—Glauco. I understand you, but not so well as I desire: for you seem to me to propose a great undertaking. You endeavour, indeed, to determine that the portion of true being and intelligible, which we speculate by the science of demonstration, is more evident than the discoveries made by the sciences called arts; because in the first hypotheses are principles, and their masters are compelled to employ the eye of cogitation, and not the perceptions of the senses. Yet, because they do not ascend to the principle, but investigate from hypotheses, they seem to you not to have intelligence concerning these, though they are intelligible, through the light of the principle. But you seem to me to call the habit of reasoning on geometrical and the like concerns, cogitation, rather than intelligence, as if cogitation held the middle situation between opinion and intellect.—Socrates. You understand me sufficiently well. And again: with these four proportions take these four corresponding affections of the soul: with the highest intelligence; with the second cogitation; against the third set opinion; and against the fourth assimilation, or imagination. Besides this, establish them in the order of alternate proportion, so that they may partake of evidence, in the same manner as their corresponding objects participate of reality.” I have taken the liberty of translating this fine passage differently from both Petvin and Spens; because they have neglected to give the proper meaning of the word διάνοια, or cogitation, the former translating it mind, and the eye of the mind, and by this means confounding it with intellect; and the latter calling it understanding. But it is certain that Plato, in this place, ranks intellect as the first, on account of the superior evidence of its perceptions; in the next place, cogitation; in the third, opinion; and in the fourth, imagination. However, the reader will please to remember, that by διάνοια, or cogitation, in the present work, is understood that power of the soul which reasons from premises to conclusions, and whose syllogistic energy, on active subjects, is called prudence; and on such as are speculative, science. But for farther information concerning its nature, see the dissertation prefixed to this work, and the following fifth chapter.