Their own soul, the soul of the least of mankind, they declare deathless, divine; but the entire heavens and the stars within the heavens have had no communion with the Immortal Principle, though these are far purer and lovelier than their own souls- yet they are not blind to the order, the shapely pattern, the discipline prevailing in the heavens, since they are the loudest in complaint of the disorder that troubles our earth.We are to imagine the deathless Soul choosing of design the less worthy place, and preferring to abandon the nobler to the Soul that is to die.
Equally unreasonable is their introduction of that other Soul which they piece together from the elements.
How could any form or degree of life come about by a blend of the elements? Their conjunction could produce only a warm or cold or an intermediate substance, something dry or wet or intermediate.
Besides, how could such a soul be a bond holding the four elements together when it is a later thing and rises from them? And this element- soul is described as possessing consciousness and will and the rest- what can we think?
Furthermore, these teachers, in their contempt for this creation and this earth, proclaim that another earth has been made for them into which they are to enter when they depart.Now this new earth is the Reason-Form [the Logos] of our world.Why should they desire to live in the archetype of a world abhorrent to them?
Then again, what is the origin of that pattern world? It would appear, from the theory, that the Maker had already declined towards the things of this sphere before that pattern came into being.
Now let us suppose the Maker craving to construct such an Intermediate World- though what motive could He have?- in addition to the Intellectual world which He eternally possesses.If He made the mid-world first, what end was it to serve?
To be a dwelling-place for Souls?
How then did they ever fall from it? It exists in vain.
If He made it later than this world- abstracting the formal-idea of this world and leaving the Matter out- the Souls that have come to know that intermediate sphere would have experienced enough to keep them from entering this.If the meaning is simply that Souls exhibit the Ideal-Form of the Universe, what is there distinctive in the teaching?
6.And, what are we to think of the new forms of being they introduce- their "Exiles" and "Impressions" and "Repentings"?
If all comes to states of the Soul- "Repentance" when it has undergone a change of purpose; "Impressions" when it contemplates not the Authentic Existences but their simulacra- there is nothing here but a jargon invented to make a case for their school: all this terminology is piled up only to conceal their debt to the ancient Greek philosophy which taught, clearly and without bombast, the ascent from the cave and the gradual advance of souls to a truer and truer vision.
For, in sum, a part of their doctrine comes from Plato; all the novelties through which they seek to establish a philosophy of their own have been picked up outside of the truth.
From Plato come their punishments, their rivers of the underworld and the changing from body to body; as for the plurality they assert in the Intellectual Realm- the Authentic Existent, the Intellectual-Principle, the Second Creator and the Soul- all this is taken over from the Timaeus, where we read:
"As many Ideal-Forms as the Divine Mind beheld dwelling within the Veritably Living Being, so many the Maker resolved should be contained in this All."Misunderstanding their text, they conceived one Mind passively including within itself all that has being, another mind, a distinct existence, having vision, and a third planning the Universe- though often they substitute Soul for this planning Mind as the creating Principle- and they think that this third being is the Creator according to Plato.
They are in fact quite outside of the truth in their identification of the Creator.
In every way they misrepresent Plato's theory as to the method of creation as in many other respects they dishonour his teaching:
they, we are to understand, have penetrated the Intellectual Nature, while Plato and all those other illustrious teachers have failed.
They hope to get the credit of minute and exact identification by setting up a plurality of intellectual Essences; but in reality this multiplication lowers the Intellectual Nature to the level of the Sense-Kind: their true course is to seek to reduce number to the least possible in the Supreme, simply referring all things to the Second Hypostasis- which is all that exists as it is Primal Intellect and Reality and is the only thing that is good except only for the first Nature- and to recognize Soul as the third Principle, accounting for the difference among souls merely by diversity of experience and character.Instead of insulting those venerable teachers they should receive their doctrine with the respect due to the older thought and honour all that noble system- an immortal soul, an Intellectual and Intelligible Realm, the Supreme God, the Soul's need of emancipation from all intercourse with the body, the fact of separation from it, the escape from the world of process to the world of essential-being.These doctrines, all emphatically asserted by Plato, they do well to adopt: where they differ, they are at full liberty to speak their minds, but not to procure assent for their own theories by flaying and flouting the Greeks: where they have a divergent theory to maintain they must establish it by its own merits, declaring their own opinions with courtesy and with philosophical method and stating the controverted opinion fairly; they must point their minds towards the truth and not hunt fame by insult, reviling and seeking in their own persons to replace men honoured by the fine intelligences of ages past.
