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I should have deemed it insulting to have offered any of these things to the frugal followers of Zeno, and nothing can surpass my astonishment at the manner in which the austere Theocles has incessantly persecuted me for choice food and wine, stately rooms and soft couches." "O Plotinus," replied Theocles, "let me make the grounds of my conduct clear to thee.
He considers the doctrine of the indestructibility of the monad to be that belief in the immortality of the soul which was professed by the Druids, the Egyptians, the Brahmins, and the Buddhists, the belief of Pythagoras and Plato, of Plotinus, of Lessing, and of Goethe, in unison with the evolution of Darwin and Haeckel.* * Landseck, Bruno der Martyrer der neuen Weltanschauung, p. 37.
The pagan philosophers under Constantine had but few pupils and met with but little encouragement. Alypius of Alexandria and his friend Iamblichus, however, still taught the philosophy of Ammonius and Plotinus.
Of Plotinus, we have eulogies by Porphyry and Longinus, and the favor of the Emperor Gallienus, indicating the respect he inspired among his contemporaries.
I thought with envy of the Aztec children, of the headless horseman of Sleepy Hollow, of Saint Somebody with his head tucked under his arm. Plotinus was less ashamed of his whole body than I of this inconsiderate and stupid appendage. To be sure, I might swim for a certain distance under water.
Between these two no peace is possible: they conflict at every turn. It becomes apparent to you that the declaration of Plotinus, accepted or repeated by all the mystics, concerning a "higher" and a "lower" life, and the cleavage that exists between them, has a certain justification even in the experience of the ordinary man.
The writer now leaves classical antiquity behind him he does not repeat a saying of Plotinus, the mystic of Alexandria, who lived in the third century of our era. The best known anecdote of him is that his disciples asked him if he were not sometimes levitated, and he laughed, and said, "No; but he was no fool who persuaded you of this."
"But one may be an exceptional woman without being an Aspasia." "How so? Am I inferior to Aspasia in beauty?" "I should hope not," said Plotinus ambiguously. "Or in the irregularity of my deportment?" "I should think not," said Plotinus, with more confidence. "Then why does the Plato of our age hesitate to welcome his Diotima?" "Because," said Plotinus, "you are not Diotima, and I am not Plato."
Of this, instances are given by Iamblichus in his Life of Pythagoras. It seems probable that the title of Theodidaktos, given to Ammonius Saccas, the master of Plotinus, referred less to the sublimity of his teachings than to this divine instruction received by him in the Mysteries.
Mechanically I turned to the shelves by the fireplace, and examined the volumes ranged in that department. I found they contained the works of those writers whom we may class together under the title of mystics, Iamblichus and Plotinus; Swedenborg and Behmen; Sandivogius, Van Helmont, Paracelsus, Cardan. Works, too, were there, by writers less renowned, on astrology, geomancy, chiromancy, etc.
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