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under which many are drawn down, as the Chaldean oracles assert."
P. 105. But there are a certain few who by employing a certain supernatural power of intellect, are removed from nature, &c. The class to which these few belong is beautifully unfolded, as follows, by Plotinus, in the beginning of his Treatise on Intellect, Ideas, and real Being. "Since all men from their birth employ sense prior to intellect, and are necessarily first conversant with sensibles, some proceeding no farther, pass through life, considering these as the first and last of things, and apprehending that whatever is painful among these is evil, and whatever is pleasant is good; thus thinking it sufficient to pursue the one and avoid the other. Those, too, among them who pretend to a greater share of reason than others, esteem this to be wisdom, being affected in a manner similar to more heavy birds, who collecting many things from the earth, and being oppressed with the weight, are unable to fly on high, though they have received wings for this purpose from nature. But others are in a small degree elevated from things subordinate, the more excellent part of the soul recalling them from pleasure to a more worthy pursuit. As they are, however, unable to look on high, and as not possessing any thing else which can afford them rest, they betake themselves, together with the name of virtue, to actions and the election of things inferior, from which they at first endeavoured to raise themselves, though in vain. In the third class is the race of divine men, who, through a more excellent power, and with piercing eyes, acutely perceive supernal light, to the vision of which they raise themselves above the clouds and darkness, as it were, of this lower world, and there abiding despise every thing in these regions of sense; being no otherwise delighted with the place which is truly and properly their own, than he who after many wanderings is at length restored to his lawful country." See my translation of the whole of this treatise.
P. 117. By mire, therefore, understand every thing corporeal-formed and material. "Matter," says Simplicius in his Commentary on the first book of Aristotle's Physics, "is nothing else than the mutation of sensibles, with respect to intelligibles, deviating from thence, and carried downwards to non-being. Those things, indeed, which are the properties of sensibles are irrational, corporeal, distributed
