is not the same in body and in the soul; in that, the middle point is local, in this, it is that on which the rest depends. There is, however, an analogy; for as in one case, so in the other, there must be a middle point, and as the sphere revolves about its center, the soul revolves about God through its affections."

The conclusion of the work is, as might be supposed, upon the approach to, union with, and fruition of God. The author refers again to the analogy between the movements of the soul and those of the heavens. "We move round him like a choral dance; even when we look from him we revolve about him; we do not always look at him, but when we do, we have satisfaction and rest, and the harmony which belongs to that divine movement. In this movement, the mind beholds the fountain of life, the fountain of mind, the origin of being, the cause of good, the root of the soul." "There will be a time when this vision shall be continual; the mind being no more interrupted, nor suffering any perturbation from the body. Yet that which beholds is not that which is disturbed; and when this vision becomes dim, it does not obscure the knowledge which resides in demonstration, and faith, and reasoning; but the vision itself is not reason, but greater than reason, and before reason ","

The fifth book of the third Ennead, has for its

3 vi. Enn. ix. 8.

* Ib. 9.

5 Ib. 10.

man"."

subject the Dæmon which belongs to each man. It is entitled "Concerning Love;" and the doctrine appears to be, that the Love, or common source of the passions which is in each man's mind, is "the Dæmon which they say accompanies each These dæmons were, however, (at least by later writers,) invested with a visible aspect and with a personal character, including a resemblance of human passions and motives. It is curious thus to see an untenable and visionary generalization falling back into the domain of the senses and the fancy, after a vain attempt to support itself in the region of the reason. This imagination soon produced pretensions to the power of making these dæmons or genii visible; and the Treatise on the Mysteries of the Egyptians, which is attributed to Iamblichus, gives an account of the secret ceremonies, the mysterious words, the sacrifices and expiations, by which this was to be done.

It is unnecessary for us to dwell on the progress of this school; to point out the growth of the Theurgy which thus arose; or to describe the attempts to claim a high antiquity for this system, and to make Orpheus, the poet, the first promulgator of its doctrines. The system, like all mystical systems, assumed the character rather of a religion than of a theory. The opinions of its disciples materially influenced their lives. It gave the world the spectacle of an austere morality, a devotional exaltation, Ficinus, Comm. in v. Enn. iii.

6

combined with the grossest superstitions of Paganism. The successors of Iamblichus appeared rather to hold a priesthood, than the chair of a philosophical school. They were persecuted by Constantine and Constantius, as opponents of Christianity. Sopater, a Syrian philosopher of this school, was beheaded by the former emperor, on a charge that he had bound the winds by the power of magic. But Julian, who shortly after succeeded to the purple, embraced with ardour the opinions of Iamblichus. Proclus (who died A.D. 487,) was one of the greatest of the teachers of this school'; and was, both in his life and doctrines, a worthy successor of Plotinus, Porphyry, and Iamblichus. We possess a biography, or rather a panegyric of him, by his disciple Marinus, in which he is exhibited as a representation of the ideal perfection of the philosophic character, according to the views of the Neoplatonists. His virtues are arranged as physical, moral, purificatory, theoretic, and theurgic. Even in his boyhood, Apollo and Minerva visited him in his dreams: he studied oratory at Alexandria, but it was at Athens that Plutarch and Lysianus initiated him in the mysteries of the New Platonists. He received a kind of consecration at the hands of the daughter of Plutarch, the celebrated Asclepigenia, who introduced him to the traditions of the Chaldeans, and the practices of theurgy; he was also admitted to the mysteries 7 Deg. iii. 407.

8

Gibbon, iii. 352.

9

Deg. iii 419.

of Eleusis. He became celebrated for his knowledge and eloquence; but especially for his skill in the supernatural arts which were connected with the doctrines of his sect. He appears before us rather as a hierophant than a philosopher. A large portion of his life was spent in evocations, purifications, fastings, prayers, hymns, intercourse with apparitions, and with the gods, and in the celebration of the festivals of Paganism, especially those which were held in honour of the Mother of the Gods. His religious admiration extended to all forms of mythology. The philosopher, said he, is not the priest of a single religion, but of all the religions in the world. Accordingly, he composed hymns in honour of all the divinities of Greece, Rome, Egypt, Arabia;-Christianity alone was excluded from his favour (M).

2. Mystical Arithmetic. It is unnecessary further to exemplify, from Proclus, the general mystical character of the school and time to which he belonged; but we may notice more specially one of the forms of this mysticism, which very frequently offers itself to our notice, especially in him; and which we may call Mystical Arithmetic. Like all the kinds of Mysticism, this consists in the attempt to connect our conceptions of external objects by general and inappropriate notions of goodness, perfection, and relation to the divine essence and government; instead of referring such conceptions to those appropriate ideas, which, by

VOL. I.

X

due attention, become perfectly distinct, and capable of being positively applied and verified. The subject which is thus dealt with, in the doctrines of which we now speak, is Number; a notion which tempts men into these visionary speculations more naturally than any other. For number is really applicable to moral notions,-to emotions and feelings, and to their objects,-as well as to the things of the material world. Moreover, by the discovery of the principle of musical concords, it had been found, probably most unexpectedly, that numerical relations were closely connected with sounds which could hardly be distinguished from the expression of thought and feeling; and a suspicion might easily arise, that the universe, both of matter and of thought, might contain many general and abstract truths of some analogous kind. The relations of number have so wide a bearing, that the ramifications of such a suspicion could not easily be exhausted, supposing men willing to follow them into darkness and vagueness; which it is precisely the mystical tendency to do. Accordingly, this kind of speculation appeared very early, and showed itself first among the Pythagoreans, as we might have expected, from the attention which they gave to the theory of harmony and this, as well as some other of the doctrines of the Pythagorean philosophy, was adopted by the later Platonists, and, indeed, by Plato himself, whose speculations concerning number have