Part 5

Hence it is not difficult to see that Providence is deity itself, the fountain of all good. For whence can good be imparted, to all things, but from divinity? So that no other cause of good but deity is, as Plato says, to be assigned. And, in the next place, as this cause is superior to all intelligible and sensible natures, it is consequently superior to Fate. Whatever too is subject to Fate, is also under the dominion of Providence; having its connection indeed from Fate, but deriving the good which it possesses from Providence. But again, not all things that are under the dominion of Providence are indigent of Fate; for intelligibles are exempt from its sway. Fate therefore is profoundly conversant with corporeal natures; since connection introduces time and corporeal motion. Hence Plato, looking to this, says in the Timaeus, that the world is mingled from intellect and necessity, the former ruling over the latter. For by necessity here he means the motive cause of bodies, which in other places he calls Fate. And this with great propriety; since every body is compelled to do whatever it does, and to suffer whatever it suffers; to heat or to be heated, to impart or to receive cold. But the elective power is unknown to a corporeal nature; so that the necessary and the nonelective may be said to be the peculiarities of bodies.

As there are two genera of things, therefore, the intelligible and the sensible, so likewise there are two kingdoms of these; that of Providence, upwards, which reigns over intelligibles and sensibles, and that of Fate downwards, which reigns over sensibles only. Providence likewise differs from Fate in the same manner as deity from that which is divine indeed, but participation, and not primarily. For in other things we see that which has a primary subsistence, and that which subsists according to participation. Thus the light which subsists in the orb of the sun is primary light, and that which is in the air, according to participation; the latter being derived from the former. And life is primarily in the soul, but secondarily in the body. Thus also, according to Plato, Providence is deity, but Fate is something divine, and not a god: for it depends upon Providence, of which it is as it were the image. As Providence too is to intelligibles, so is Fate to sensibles. And, alternately, as Providence is to Fate, so are intelligibles to sensibles. But intelligibles are the first of beings, and from these others derive their subsistence. And hence the order of Fate depends on the dominion of Providence.

In the second place, let us look to the rational nature itself, when correcting the inaccuracy of sensible information, as when it accuses the sight of deception, in seeing the orb of the sun as not larger than a foot in diameter; when it represses the ebullitions of anger, and exclaims with Ulysses,

"Endure my heart;"

or when it restrains the wanton tendencies of desire to corporeal delight. For in all such operations it manifestly subdues the irrational motions, both gnostic and appetitive, and absolves itself from them, as from things foreign to its nature. But it is necessary to investigate the essence of every thing, not from its perversion, but from its energies according to nature. If therefore reason, when it energizes in us as reason, restrains the shadowy impressions of the delights of licentious desire, punishes the precipitate motion of fury, and reproves the senses as full of deception, asserting that

"We nothing accurate, or see, or hear:"

and if it says this, looking to its internal reasons, none of which it knows through the body, or through corporeal cognitions, it is evident that, according to this energy, it removes itself far from the senses, contrary to the decision of which it becomes separated from those sorrows and delights.

After this, let us direct our attention to another and a better motion of our rational soul, when, during the tranquillity of the inferior parts, by a self-convertive energy, it sees its own essence, the powers which it contains, the harmonic reasons from which it consists, and the many lives of which it is the middle boundary, and thus finds itself to be a rational world, the image of the prior natures, from which it proceeds, but the paradigm of such as are posterior to itself. To this energy of the soul, theoretic arithmetic and geometry greatly contribute, for these remove it from the senses, purify the intellect from the irrational forms of life with which it is surrounded, and lead it to the incorporeal perception of ideas. For if these sciences receive the soul replete with images, and knowing nothing subtile and unattended with material garrulity; and if they elucidate reasons possessing an irrefragable necessity of demonstration, and forms full of all certainty and immateriality, and which by no means call to their aid the inaccuracy of sensibles, do they not evidently purify our intellectual life from things which fill us with a privation of intellect, and which impede our perception of true being?

After both these operations of the rational soul, let us now survey her highest intelligence, through which she sees her sister souls in the universe, who are allotted a residence in the heavens, and in the whole of a visible nature, according to the will of the fabricator of the world. But above all souls, she sees intellectual essences and orders. For a deiform intellect resides above every soul, and which also imparts to the soul an intellectual habit. Prior to these, however, she sees those divine monads, from which all intellectual multitudes receive their unions. For above all things united, there must necessarily be unific causes; above things vivified, vivifying causes; above intellectual natures, those that impart intellect; and above all participants, imparticipable natures. From all these elevating modes of intelligence, it must be obvious to such as are not perfectly blind, how the soul, leaving sense and body behind, surveys through the projecting energies of intellect those beings that are entirely exempt from all connection with a corporeal nature.

The rational and intellectual soul therefore, in whatever manner it may be moved according to nature, is beyond body and sense. And hence it must necessarily have an essence separate from both. But from this again, it becomes manifest, that when it energizes according to its nature, it is superior to Fate, and beyond the reach of its attractive power; but that, when falling into sense and things irrational and corporalized, it follows downward natures and lives, with them as with inebriated neighbors, then together with them it becomes subject to the dominion of Fate. For again, it is necessary that there should be an order of beings of such a kind, as to subsist according to essence above Fate, but to be sometimes ranked under it according to habitude. For if there are beings, and such are all intellectual natures which are eternally established above the laws of Fate, and also which, according to the whole of their life, are distributed under the periods of Fate, it is necessary that the medium between these should be that nature which is sometimes above, and sometimes under the dominion of Fate. For the procession of incorporeal natures is much more without a vacuum than that of bodies.

The free will therefore of man, according to Plato, is a rational elective, power, desiderative of true and apparent good, and leading the soul to both, through which it ascends and descends, errs and acts with rectitude. And hence the elective will be the same with that which characterizes our essence. According to this power, we differ from divine and mortal natures: for each of these is void of that two-fold inclination; the one on account of its excellence being alone established in true good; but the other in apparent good, on account of its defect. Intellect too characterizes the one, but sense the other; and the former, as Plotinus says, is our king, but the latter our messenger. We therefore are established in the elective power as a medium; and having the ability of tending both to true and apparent good, when we tend to the former we follow the guidance of intellect, when to the latter, that of sense. The power therefore which is in us is not capable of all things. For the power which is omnipotent is characterized by unity; and on this account is all-powerful, because it is one, and possesses the form of good. But the elective power is two-fold, and on this account is not able to effect all things; because, by it's inclinations to true and apparent good, it falls short of that nature which is prior to all things. It would however be all-powerful, if it had not an elective impulse, and was will alone. For a life subsisting according to will alone subsists according to good, because the will naturally tends to good, and such a life makes that which is characteristic in us most powerful and deiform. And hence through this the soul, according to Plato, becomes divine, and in another life, in conjunction with deity, governs the world. And thus much of the outlines of the leading dogmas of the philosophy of Plato.

In the beginning of this Introduction, I observed that, in drawing these outlines I should conduct the reader through novel and solitary paths, solitary indeed they must be, since they have been unfrequented from the reign of the emperor Justinian to the present time; and novel they will doubtless appear to readers of every description, and particularly to those who have been nursed as it were in the bosom of matter, the pupils of experiment, the darlings of sense, and the legitimate descendants of the earth-born race that warred on the Olympian gods. To such as these, who have gazed on the dark and deformed face of their nurse, till they are incapable of beholding the light of truth, and who are become so drowsy from drinking immoderately of the cup of oblivion, that their whole life is nothing more than a transmigration from sleep to sleep, and from dream to dream, like men passing from one bed to another,--to such as these, the road through which we have been traveling will appear to be a delusive passage, and the objects which we have surveyed to be nothing more than fantastic visions, seen only by the eye of imagination, and when seen, idle and vain as the dreams of a shadow.

The following arguments, however, may perhaps awaken some few of these who are less lethargic than the rest, from the sleep of sense, and enable them to elevate their mental eye from the dark mire in which they are plunged, and gain a glimpse of this most weighty truth, that there is another world, of which this is nothing more than a most obscure resemblance, and another life, of which this is but the flying mockery. My present discourse therefore is addressed to those who consider experiment as the only solid criterion of truth. In the first place then, these men appear to be ignorant of the invariable laws of demonstration properly so called, and that the necessary requisites of all demonstrative propositions are these: that they exist as causes, are primary, more excellent, peculiar, true, and known than the conclusions. For every demonstration not only consists of principles prior to others, but of such as are eminently first; since if the assumed propositions may be demonstrated by other assumptions, such propositions may indeed appear prior to the conclusions, but are by no means entitled to the appellation of first. Others, on the contrary, which require no demonstration, but are of themselves manifest, are deservedly esteemed the first, the truest, and the best. Such indemonstrable truths were called by the ancients axioms from their majesty and authority, as the assumptions which constitute demonstrative syllogisms derive all their force and efficacy from these.

In the next place, they seem not to be sufficiently aware, that universal is better than partial demonstration. For that demonstration is the more excellent which is derived from the better cause; but a universal is more extended and excellent than a partial cause; since the arduous investigation of the why in any subject is only stopped by the arrival at universals. Thus if we desire to know why the outward angles of a triangle are equal to four right angles, and it is answered, Because the triangle is isosceles; we again ask, but why Because isosceles? And if it be replied, Because it is a triangle; we may again inquire, But why because a triangle? To which we finally answer, because a triangle is a right-lined figure. And here our inquiry rests at that universal idea, which embraces every preceding particular one, and is contained in no other more general and comprehensive than itself. Add too, that the demonstration of particulars is almost the demonstration of infinites; of universals the demonstration of finites; and of infinites there can be no science. That demonstration likewise is the best which furnishes the mind with the most ample knowledge; and this is, alone, the province of universals. We may also add, that he who knows universals knows particulars likewise in capacity; but we can not infer that he who has the best knowledge of particulars, knows any thing of universals. And lastly, that which is universal is the object of intellect and reason; but particulars are coordinated to the perceptions of sense.

But here perhaps the experimentalist will say, admitting all this to be true, yet we no otherwise obtain a perception of these universals than by an induction of particulars, and abstraction from sensibles. To this, I answer that the universal which is the proper object of science, is not by any means the offspring of abstraction; and induction is no otherwise subservient to its existence than an exciting cause. For if scientific conclusions are indubitable, if the truth of demonstration is necessary and eternal, this universal is truly all, and not like that gained by abstraction, limited to a certain number of particulars. Thus, the proposition that the angles of every triangle are equal to two right, if it is indubitably true, that is, if the term every in it really includes all triangles, cannot be the result of any abstraction; for this, however extended it may be, is limited, and falls far short of universal comprehension. Whence is it then that the dianoetic power concludes thus confidently that the Proposition is true of all triangles? For if it be said that the mind, after having abstracted triangle from a certain number of particulars, adds from itself what is wanting to complete the all; in the first place, no man, I believe, will say that any such operation as this took place in his mind when he first learnt this proposition; and in the next place, if this should be granted, it would follow that such proposition is a mere fiction, since it is uncertain whether that which is added to complete the all is truly added; and thus the conclusion will no longer be indubitably necessary.

In short, if the words all and every, with which every page of theoretic mathematics is full, mean what they are conceived by all men to mean, and if the universals which they signify are the proper objects of science, such universals must subsist in the soul prior to the energies of sense. Hence it will follow that induction is no otherwise subservient to science, than as it produces credibility in axioms and petitions; and this by exciting the universal conception of these latent in the soul. The particulars, therefore, of which an induction is made in order to produce science, must be so simple, that they may be immediately apprehended, and that the universal may be predicated of them without hesitation. The particulars of the experimentalists are not of this kind, and therefore never can be sources of science truly so called.

Of this, however, the man of experiment appears to be totally ignorant, and in consequence of this, he is likewise ignorant that parts can only be truly known through wholes, and that this is particularly the case with parts when they belong to a whole, which, as we have already observed, from comprehending in itself the parts which it produces, is called a whole prior to parts. As he, therefore, would by no means merit the appellation of a physician who should attempt to cure any part of the human body, without a previous knowledge of the whole; so neither can he know any thing truly of the vegetable life of plants, who has not a previous knowledge of that vegetable life which subsists in the earth as a whole prior to, because the principle and cause of all partial vegetable life, and who still prior to this has not a knowledge of that greater whole of this kind which subsists in nature herself; nor, as Hippocrates justly observes, can he know any thing truly of the nature of the human body who is ignorant what nature is considered as a great comprehending whole. And if this be true, and it is so most indubitably, with all physiological inquiries, how much more must it be the case with respect to a knowledge of those incorporeal forms to which we ascended in the first part of this Introduction, and which in consequence of proceeding from wholes entirely exempt from body are participated by it, with much greater obscurity and imperfection? Here then is the great difference, and a mighty one it is, between the knowledge gained by the most elaborate experiments, and that acquired by scientific reasoning, founded on the spontaneous, unperverted, and self-luminous conceptions of the soul. The former does not even lead its votary up to that one nature of the earth from which the natures of all the animals and plants on its surface, and of all the minerals and metals in its interior parts, blossom as from a perennial root. The latter conducts its votary through all the several mundane wholes up to that great whole the world itself, and thence leads him through the luminous order of incorporeal wholes to that vast whole of wholes, in which all other wholes are centred and rooted, and which is no other than the principle of all principles, and the fountain of deity itself. No less remarkable likewise, is the difference between the tendencies of the two pursuits, for the one elevates the soul to the most luminous heights, and to that great ineffable which is beyond all altitude; but the other is the cause of a mighty calamity to the soul, since, according to the elegant expression of Plutarch, it extinguishes her principal and brightest eye, the knowledge of divinity. In short, the one leads to all that is grand, sublime and splendid in the universe; the other to all that is little, groveling and dark. The one is the parent of the most pure and ardent piety; the genuine progeny of the other are impiety and atheism. And, in fine, the one confers on its votary the most sincere, permanent, and exalted delight; the other continual disappointment, and unceasing molestation.

----------------- That this must be the tendency of experiment, when prosecuted as the criterion of truth, is evident from what Bacon, the prince of modern philosophy, says in the 104th Aphorism of his Novum Organum, that "baseless fabric of a vision." For he there sagely observes that wings are not to be added to the human intellect, but rather lead and weights; that all its leaps and flights may be restrained. That this is not yet done, but that when it is we may entertain better hopes respecting the sciences. "Itaque hominum intellectui non plumae addendae, sed plumbum potius, et pondera; ut cohibeant omnem saltum et volatum. Atque hoc adhuc factum non est; quum vero factum fuerit, melius de scientiis sperare licebit." A considerable portion of lead must certainly have been added to the intellect of Bacon when he wrote this Aphorism. -----------------

If such then are the consequences, such the tendencies of experimental inquiries, when prosecuted as the criterion of truth, and daily experience unhappily shows that they are, there can be no other remedy for this enormous evil than the intellectual philosophy of Plato. So obviously excellent indeed is the tendency of this philosophy, that its author, for a period of more than two thousand years, has been universally celebrated by the epithet of divine. Such too is its preeminence, that it may be shown, without much difficulty, that the greatest men of antiquity, from the time in which its salutary light first blessed the human race, have been more or less imbued with its sacred principles, have been more or less the votaries of its divine truths. Thus, to mention a few from among a countless multitude. In the catalogue of those endued with sovereign power, it had for its votaries Dion of Siracusian, Julian the Roman, and Chosroes the Persian, emperor; among the leaders of armies, it had Chabrias and Phocion, those brave generals of the Athenians; among mathematicians, those leading stars of science, Eudoxus, Archimedes and Euclid; among biographers, the inimitable Plutarch; among physicians, the admirable Galen; among rhetoricians, those unrivaled orators Demosthenes and Cicero; among critics, that prince of philologists, Longinus; and among poets, the most learned and majestic Virgil. Instances, though not equally illustrious, yet approximating to these in splendour, may doubtless be adduced after the fall of the Roman empire; but then they have been formed on these great ancients as models, and are, consequently, only rivulets from Platonic streams. And instances of excellence in philosophic attainments, similar to those among the Greeks, might have been enumerated among the moderns, if the hand of barbaric despotism had not compelled philosophy to retire into the deepest solitude, by demolishing her schools, and involving the human intellect in Cimmerian darkness. In our own country, however, though no one appears to have wholly devoted himself to the study of this philosophy, and he who does not will never penetrate its depths, yet we have a few bright examples of no common proficiency in its more accessible parts.

----------------- I never yet knew a man who made experiment the test of truth, and I have known many such, that was not atheistically inclined.

I have ranked Archimedes among the Platonists, because he cultivated the mathematical sciences Platonically, as is evident from the testimony of Plutarch in his Life of Marcellus, p. 307. For he there informs us that Archimedes considered the being busied about mechanics, and in short, every art which is connected with the common purposes of life, as ignoble and illiberal; and that those things alone were objects of his ambition with which the beautiful and the excellent were present, unmingled with the necessary. The great accuracy and elegance in the demonstrations of Euclid and Archimedes, which have not been equaled by any of our greatest modern mathematicians, were derived from a deep conviction of this important truth. On the other hand modern mathematicians, through a profound ignorance of this divine truth, and looking to nothing but the wants and conveniences of the animal life of man, as if the gratification of his senses was his only end, have corrupted pure geometry, by mingling with it algebraical calculations, and through eagerness to reduce it as much as possible to practical purposes, have more anxiously sought after conciseness than accuracy, facility than elegance of geometrical demonstration. -----------------

The instances I allude to are Shaftesbury, Akenside, Harris, Petwin, and Sydenham. So splendid is the specimen of philosophic abilities displayed by these writers, like the fair dawning of same unclouded morning, that we have only deeply to regret that the sun of their genius sat before we were gladdened with its effulgence. Had it shone with its full strength, the writer of this Introduction would not have attempted either to translate the works, or elucidate the doctrines of Plato; but though it rose with vigor, it dispersed not the clouds in which its light was gradually involved, and the eye in vain anxiously waited for it's meridian beam. In short, the principles of the philosophy of Plato are of all others the most friendly to true piety, pure morality, solid learning, and sound government. For as it is scientific in all its parts, and in these parts comprehends all that can be known by man in theology and ethics, and all that is necessary for him to know in physics, it must consequently contain in itself the source of all that is great and good both to individuals and communities, must necessarily exalt while it benefits, and deify while it exalts.

We have said that this philosophy at first shone forth through Plato with an occult and venerable splendor; and it is owing to the hidden manner in which it is delivered by him, that its depth was not fathomed till many ages after it's promulgation, and when fathomed, was treated by superficial readers with ridicule and contempt. Plato indeed, is not singular in delivering his philosophy occultly: for this was the custom of all the great ancients; a custom not originating from a wish to become tyrants in knowledge, and keep the multitude in ignorance, but from a profound conviction that the sublimest truths are profaned when clearly unfolded to the vulgar. This indeed must necessarily follow; since, as Socrates in Plato justly observes, "it is not lawful for the pure to be touched by the impure;" and the multitude are neither purified from the defilements of vice, nor the darkness of twofold ignorance. Hence, while they are thus doubly impure, it is as impossible for them to perceive the splendors of truth, as for an eye buried in mire to survey the light of day.

The depth of this philosophy then does not appear to have been perfectly penetrated except by the immediate disciples of Plato, for more than five hundred years after its first propagation. For though Crantor, Atticus, Albinus, Galen and Plutarch, were men of great genius, and made no common proficiency in Philosophic attainments, yet they appear not to have developed the profundity of Plato's conceptions; they withdrew not the veil which covers his secret meaning, like the curtains which guarded the adytum of temples from the profane eye; and they saw not that all behind the veil is luminous, and that there divine spectacles every where present themselves to the view. This task was reserved for men who were born indeed in a baser age, but, who being allotted a nature similar to their leader, were the true interpreters of his mystic speculations. The most conspicuous of these are the great Plotinus, the most learned Porphyry, the divine Jamblichus, the most acute Syrianus, Proclus the consummation of philosophic excellence, the magnificent Hierocles, the concisely elegant Sallust, and the most inquisitive Damascius. By these men, who were truly links of the golden chain of deity, all that is sublime, all that is mystic in the doctrines of Plato (and they are replete with both these in a transcendent degree), was freed from its obscurity and unfolded into the most pleasing and admirable light. Their labors, however, have been ungratefully received. The beautiful light which they benevolently disclosed has hitherto unnoticed illumined philosophy in her desolate retreats, like a lamp shining on some venerable statue amidst dark and solitary ruins. The prediction of the master has been unhappily fulfilled in these his most excellent disciples. "For an attempt of this kind," says he, "will only be beneficial to a few, who from small vestiges, previously demonstrated, are themselves able to discover these abstruse particulars. But with respect to the rest of mankind, some it will fill with a contempt by no means elegant, and others with a lofty and arrogant hope, that they shall now learn certain excellent things." Thus with respect to these admirable men, the last and the most legitimate of the followers of Plato, some from being entirely ignorant of the abstruse dogmas of Plato, and finding these interpreters full of conceptions which are by no means obvious to every one in the writings of that philosopher, have immediately concluded that such conceptions are mere jargon and revery, that they are not truly Platonic, and that they are nothing more than streams, which, though, originally derived from a pure fountain, have become polluted by distance from their source. Others, who pay attention to nothing but the most exquisite purity of language, look down with contempt upon every writer who lived after the fall of the Macedonian empire; as if dignity and weight of sentiment were inseparable from splendid and accurate diction; or as if it were impossible for elegant writers to exist in a degenerate age. So far is this from being the case, that though the style of Plotinus and Jamblichus is by no means to be compared with that of Plato, yet this inferiority is lost in the depth and sublimity of their conceptions, and is as little regarded by the intelligent reader, as motes in a sunbeam by the eye that gladly turns itself to the solar light.

-------------- See my Dissertation on the Mysteries.

See the 7th Epistle of Plato.

It would seem that those intemperate critics who have thought proper to revile Plotinus, the leader of the latter Platonists, have paid no attention to the testimony of Longinus concerning this most wonderful man, as preserved by Porphyry in his life of him. For Longinus there says, "that though he does not entirely accede to many of his hypotheses, yet he exceedingly admires and loves the form of his writing, the density of his conceptions, and the philosophic manner in which his questions are disposed." And in another place he says, "Plotinus, as it seems, has explained the Pythagoric and Platonic principles more clearly than those that were prior to him; for neither are the writings of Numenius, Cronius, Moderatus, and Thrasyllus, to be compared with those of Plotinus on this subject." After such a testimony as this from such a consummate critic as Longinus, the writings of Plotinus have nothing to fear from the imbecile censure of modern critics. I shall only further observe, that Longinus, in the above testimony, does not give the least hint of his having found any polluted streams, or corruption of the doctrines of Plato, in the works of Plotinus. There is not indeed the least vestige of his entertaining any such opinion in any part of what he has said about this most extraordinary man. This discovery was reserved for the more acute critic of modern times, who, by a happiness of conjecture unknown to the ancients, and the assistance of a good index, can in a few days penetrate the meaning of the profoundest writer of antiquity, and bid defiance even to the decision of Longinus.

Of this most divine man, who is justly said by the emperor Julian to have been posterior indeed in time, but not in genius even to Plato himself, see the life which I have given in the History of the Restoration of the Platonic Theology, in the second vol. of my Proclus on Euclid. ----------------------