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And the former, indeed, measures the essences of intelligibles[1] by sacred ways; but the latter, abandoning principles, gives itself up to the measurement of the idea of body. The former is a knowledge of the father; but the latter is a departure from him, and an oblivion of the God who is a superessential father, and sufficient to himself. The former, likewise, preserves the true life of the soul, and leads it back to its father; but the latter draws down the generation-ruling[2] man, as far as to that which is never permanent, but is always flowing. You must understand, therefore, that this is the first path to felicity, affording to souls an intellectual plenitude of divine union. But the sacerdotal and theurgic gift of felicity is called, indeed, the gate to the Demiurgus of wholes, or the seat, or palace, of the good. In the first place, likewise, it possesses a power of purifying the soul, much more perfect than the power which purifies the body; afterwards it causes a coaptation of the reasoning power to the participation and vision of theis inserted
- ↑ In the original, by a strange mistake, (
Greek characters)[Greek: tôn thnêtôn] here instead of (Greek characters)[Greek: tôn noêtôn], which is obviously the true reading. The version of Gale also has intelligibilium.
- ↑ i. e. Man, considered as a rational soul, connected with the irrational life; for this man has dominion in the realms of generation.
