its outward vesture. Deprived of soul, it is in itself, h says, 'not-being' and 'no-thing'; 'its very nature is on long want' (1, 8. 5). As a picture is the crude and partia condensation of an artist's dream-all that he can fore his recalcitrant material to express-so the physica world is but a fragmentary manifestation of the grea and vivid universe of soul, and the body the smalles part of the real man. When we grasp this, we see how great is the sum of possibilities opened to us by the Cosmos; how easily the country Yonder' can find room for all the visions and intuitions of artists, poets and saints.

The Plotinian doctrine of man, which became in du course the classical doctrine of Christian mysticism, i the logical outcome of this cosmology. Man, like th rest of Creation, has come forth from God, and will onl find happiness and full life when his true being is re united, first with the Divine Mind, and ultimately with the One. 'Our quest is of an End, and not of Ends That only can be chosen which is ultimate and noblest that which calls to the tenderest longings of the soul (1, 4. 6). As the descending stages of reality are three so the stages of the ascent are three. They are called i the Enneads purification-the work of reason-whic marks the transference of interest from sense to soul enlightenment-the work of spiritual intuition-whic lifts life into communion with the eternal world of spirit and ecstasy, that profound transfiguration of conscious ness whereby the 'spirit in love' achieves union with the One. These stages are familiar to all students o Christian asceticism, as the codified 'mystic way' o purgation, illumination and union. But it is importan to remember that in Plotinus this way' is not-as i sometimes becomes in medieval writers-a rigid serie of mutually exclusive psychological states, separated by water-tight bulkheads. It is rather a diagram by which he seeks to describe one undivided movement of life; prolonged effort and adventure, which has for its objec a deeper and deeper penetration into reality, the achieve ment of a true scale of values, in order that the rea proportions of existence may be grasped. In this move ment nothing is left behind, but everything is carried

up into a higher synthesis, as the latent possibilities of humanity are gradually realised and man grows up into eternal life.

Since your soul is so exalted a power, so divine, be confident that in virtue of its possession you are close to God. Begin therefore with the help of this principle to make your way to Him. You have not far to go; there is not much between. Lay hold of that which is more divine than this god-like thing; lay hold of that apex of the soul which borders on the Supreme (Nous) from which the soul immediately derives' (v, i, 3).

All practical mysticism is at bottom a process of transcendence; and this process, in different temperaments, assumes different forms. Since Plotinus united in his own person the characteristics of the metaphysician, the poet and the saint, he tends to present it under three aspects: as the logical outcome of a reasoned philosophy, as a moral purification which strips us of all unreality, and as a progressive initiation into beauty. In the high place which he gives to the category of Deauty, which is to him one of the three final attributes of God, the strongly poetic character of his vision of reality becomes evident. He anticipates Hegel in regarding natural beauty as the sensuous manifestation of spirit and the signature of the world-soul, 'fragment s it were of the Primal Beauty, making beautiful to the fulness of their capacity whatsoever it grasps and moulds' (1, 6. 6); and those lovers, artists and nusicians who can apprehend it have already made the irst step towards the inner vision of the One. Therefore he harsh other-worldliness which made some mediæval scetics turn from visible loveliness as a snare, would ave seemed blasphemy to him.* On the contrary, he ives a religious sanction and a philosophic explanation o those special experiences and apprehensions of artists, oets and so-called 'nature-mystics'-known to many ormal persons in moments of exaltation-when

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The world is charged with the grandeur of God

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil.'

Cf. his great imitator St Augustine, 'There is no health in those who ad fault with any part of thy creation' (Conf., VII, 14).

In such hours, he would say, we perceive through matter the inhabiting Psyche, and by it reach out to communion with Nous. He would have understood Blake's claim to see the universe as a world of imagination and vision,' and accepted Erigena's great saying, "Every visible and invisible creature is a theophany or appearance of God.'*

Thus the whole mystic ascent can be conceived as a movement through visible beauty to its invisible source, and thence to the Beauty supreme, the absolute and primal, which fashions its lovers to beauty and makes them also worthy of love' (1, 6. 7). Yet this progress is not so much a change in our consciousness of the world and of ourselves, as a shifting of the centre of our being from sense to soul, from soul to spirit. A point of special interest in the Enneads is the extremely modern view which Plotinus takes of consciousness. He was the first great thinker to draw attention to the distinction between our mental processes and our own awareness of them; perceiving and stating the truth, well known to all creative workers, that such consciousness of our own activities is a weakness, not a strength, and that we are only at the top of our powers when all awareness of self is abolished and we lose ourselves in our work' (v, 8. 11). This view, which has an obvious bearing on the doctrine of ecstasy, is probably closely connected with his own mystical experience; for the success of contemplation, in all its degrees, largely depends on the extent to which self-consciousness is transcended, and the whole attention is concentrated, as Ruysbroeck says, on 'a simple staring and seeing.'

But whether the way be conceived under æsthetic or ascetic symbols, Plotinus is at one with all the mystics in declaring that the driving force which urges the soul along the pathway to reality is love. This inspires its labour, supports its stern purifications, and gives it at last the only eye that sees the mighty Beauty.' Love means for him active desire. -'the longing for conjunction and rest. All shades of spiritual and poetic

*The description of the 'Many-coloured Land' and 'Soul of the World' in The Candle of Vision' by A. E. (1918) prove how close is the correspondence between the experiences of this living mystic and the world-map of Neoplatonism; and help us to realise the extent to which personal vision of this type may have influenced the Plotinian scheme.

passion, the graded meanings of admiration, enthusiasm and worship, are included in it. It is the true magic of the universe'; an attribute of Nous, and an earnest f real life. 'The fullest life is the fullest love, and the ove comes from the celestial light which streams forth Tom the Absolute One' (VI, 7. 23). The suggestion of he Dean of St Paul's, that it differs in character from he fervid emotion which he finds so displeasing in many Christian saints, is hardly borne out by the texts. It is rue that the impersonal nature of the Neoplatonic One ives no apparent scope to the intimate feeling which lays so large a part in Christian devotion. But the eality and warmth of the true mystical passion for he Absolute-its complete independence of anthropoorphic conceptions-is strikingly demonstrated by those lowing passages in which Plotinus allows his overowering emotion, that veritable love, that sharp deire,' to speak, and appeals to the experience of those ellow mystics who have attained the vision of 'the plendour yonder, and felt the burning of the flame of ve for that which is there to know; the passion of the ver resting on the bosom of his love' (VI, 9. 4). This assion is the instrument of that ecstasy in which he ught that those men who have wrought themselves to harmony with the Supreme,' may briefly experience e vision of the ineffable One. In it the spirit is burned a white heat, which fuses to one single state the ghest activities of feeling, thought and will. Though e doctrine of ecstasy appears in Philo, and could asonably be deduced from Plato himself, its treatent by Plotinus, the intense actuality and poetic ferour of its presentation, are the obvious results of such rsonal experiences as Porphyry describes to us. This stasy, according to him-and here he is supported by Le majority of later mystics-is not a merely passive ate, nor does it result in a barren satisfaction. When, thdrawing from all lesser interests, the soul passes yond all contingency through virtue to the Divine ind, through wisdom to the Supreme,' and poises itself pon God in a single state of rapt attention, it receives a reward of its effort, not only the beatific vision of e Perfect, but also an accession of vitality. At this oment, says Plotinus, it has another life,' and 'knows

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that the Supplier of true life is present.' The mystic, or 'sage,' is not a spiritual freak, he is a man who has grown up to the full stature of humanity and united himself with that source of life which is 'present every where, yet absent except only to those prepared to receive it' (VI, 9. 4). Therefore he alone can be trusted to be fully active; since his action is not a mere restless striving after the discordant objects of a scattered attention, but an ordered movement based on the contemplation of reality.

'We always move round the One, but we do not always fix our gaze upon it; we are like a choir of singers who stand round the conductor, but do not always sing in time because their attention is diverted to some external object. When they look at the conductor, they sing well, and are really with him. So we always move round the One. If we did not, we should be dissolved and no longer exist. But we do not always look at the One. When we do, we attain the end of our existence, and our rest; we no longer sing out of tune but form a divine chorus round the One' (VI, 9. 7).

Yet in spite of the majesty and purity of his vision the devil's advocate is not without material for an attack upon Plotinus. The charge brought by St Augustine against the books of the Platonists,' as a whole-and by these he meant chiefly the Enneads-is well known. He found in their philosophy no response to the needs of the struggling and the imperfect. In its complete escape from the standing religious snare of anthropo morphism, Neoplatonism also escaped from the grasp of humanity. It left man everything to do for himself For the Christian philosophy of divine incarnation dramatised in history, and expressed in the phrase 'God so loved the world,' the Neoplatonist substitutes, 'So the world loves God.' 'No one there,' says Augustine of their school, 'hearkens to Him who calleth, Come unto Me all ye that labour.' The One is the transcendent source and the magnet of the Universe, the object and satisfaction of spiritual passion, but not the lover, helper or saviour of the soul. It needs nothing, desires nothing.' The quality of mercy cannot be ascribed to

* Aug., Conf., VII, 20, 21.