PLOTINUS
– ON BEAUTY – Ennead I, vi
(Trans. A
H Armstrong)
Short Biography of Plotinus
Plotinus was born in 204 C.E. in
Egypt, the exact location of which is unknown. In his mid-twenties Plotinus
gravitated to Alexandria, where he attended the lectures of various
philosophers, not finding satisfaction with any until he discovered the teacher
Ammonius Saccas. He remained with Ammonius until 242, at which time he joined
up with the Emperor Gordian on an expedition to Persia, for the purpose, it
seems, of engaging the famed philosophers of that country in the pursuit of
wisdom. The expedition never met its destination, for the Emperor was
assassinated in Mesopotamia, and Plotinus returned to Rome to set up a school
of philosophy. By this time, Plotinus had reached his fortieth year. He taught
in Rome for twenty years before the arrival of Porphyry, who was destined to
become his most famous pupil, as well as his biographer and editor.
It was at this time that
Plotinus, urged by Porphyry, began to collect his treatises into systematic
form, and to compose new ones. These treatises were most likely composed from
the material gathered from Plotinus' lectures and debates with his students.
The students and attendants of Plotinus' lectures must have varied greatly in
philosophical outlook and doctrine, for the Enneads are filled with refutations
and corrections of the positions of Peripatetics, Stoics, Epicureans, Gnostics,
and Astrologers. Although Plotinus appealed to Plato as the ultimate authority
on all things philosophical, he was known to have criticized the master himself
(cf. Ennead IV.8.1).
We should not make the mistake of
interpreting Plotinus as nothing more than a commentator on Plato, albeit a
brilliant one. He was an original and profound thinker in his own right, who
borrowed and re-worked all that he found useful from earlier thinkers, and even
from his opponents, in order to construct the grand dialectical system
presented (although in not quite systematic form) in his treatises. The great
thinker died in solitude at Campania in 270 C.E.
Synopsis of the treatise on
Beauty
What is it that makes things
beautiful? We will start our enquiry by considering the beauty of bodies. The
Stoic view that it is entirely a matter of good proportion will not do (ch. 1).
It is due to the presence of form from the intelligible world (ch. 2) and we
recognise and appreciate it by our inward knowledge of intelligible form (ch.
3). The beauty of virtue (ch. 4). It is the beauty of true reality in its
transcendent purity, and its opposite, moral ugliness, is due to admixture with
body (ch. 5). We attain to it by purifying ourselves (ch. 6). The supreme and
absolute beauty, the Good (ch. 7). The way to it (ch. 8). The power of inner
sight and how to develop it (ch. 9).
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Ch 1
(a) Beauty is mostly in sight,
but it is to be found too in things we hear, in combinations of words and also
in music, and in all music [not only in songs]; for tunes and rhythms are
certainly beautiful: and for those who are advancing upwards from sense perception
ways of life and actions and characters and intellectual activities are
beautiful, and there is the beauty of virtue. If there is any beauty prior to
these, this discussion will reveal it.
Very well then, what is it which
makes us imagine that bodies are beautiful and attracts our hearing to sounds
because of their beauty? And how are all the things which depend on soul
beautiful? Are they all made beautiful by one and the same beauty or is there
one beautifulness in bodies and a different one in other things? And what are
they, or what is it?
Some things, bodies for instance, are not beautiful from
the nature of the objects themselves, but by participation, others are beauties
themselves, like the nature of virtue. The same bodies appear sometimes
beautiful, sometimes not beautiful, so that their being bodies is one thing,
their being beautiful another. What is this principle, then, which is present
in bodies? We ought to consider this first. What is it that attracts the gaze
of those who look at something, and turns and draws them to it and makes them
enjoy the sight? If we find this perhaps we can use it as a stepping-stone and
get a sight of the rest.
(b) Nearly everyone says that it
is good proportion of the parts to each other and to the whole, with the
addition of good colour, which produces visible beauty, and that with the
objects of sight and generally with everything else, being beautiful is being
well-proportioned and measured. On this theory nothing single and simple but
only a composite thing will have any beauty. It will be the whole which is
beautiful, and the parts will not have the property of beauty by themselves,
but will contribute to the beauty of the whole. But if the whole is beautiful
the parts must be beautiful too; a beautiful whole can certainly not be
composed of ugly parts; all the parts must have beauty. For these people, too,
beautiful colours, and the light of the sun as well, since they are simple and
do not derive their beautifulness from good proportion, will be excluded from
beauty. And how do they think gold manages to be beautiful? And what makes
lightning in the night and stars beautiful to see? And in sounds in the same
way the simple will be banished, though often in a composition which is
beautiful as a whole each separate sound is beautiful.
Ch 2
And when, though the same good
proportion is there all the time, the same face sometimes appears beautiful and
sometimes does not, surely we must say that being beautiful is something else
over and above good proportion, and good proportion is beautiful because of
something else? But if when these people pass on to ways of life and beautiful
expressions of thought they allege good proportion as the cause of beauty in
these too, what can be meant by good proportion in beautiful ways of life or
laws or studies or branches of knowledge? How can speculations be
well-proportioned in relation to each other? If it is because they agree, there
can be concord and agreement between bad ideas. The statement that
"righteousness is a fine sort of silliness" agrees with and is in
tune with the saying that "morality is stupidity"; the two fit
perfectly. Again, every sort of virtue is a beauty of the soul, a truer beauty
than those mentioned before; but how is virtue well proportioned? Not like
magnitudes or a number. We grant that the soul has several parts, but what is
the formula for the composition or mixture in the soul of parts or speculations
? And what [on this theory], will the beauty of the intellect alone by itself
be ?
So let us go back to the
beginning and state what the primary beauty in bodies really is. It is
something which we become aware of even at the first glance; the soul speaks of
it as if it understood it, recognises and welcomes it and as it were adapts
itself to it. But when it encounters the ugly it shrinks back and rejects it
and turns away from it and is out of tune and alienated from it. Our
explanation of this is that the soul, since it is by nature what it is and is
related to the higher kind of reality in the realm of being, when it sees
something akin to it or a trace of its kindred reality, is delighted and
thrilled and returns to itself and remembers itself and its own possessions.
(c)
What likeness, then, is there
between beautiful things here and There? If there is a likeness, let us agree
that they are alike. But how are both the things in that world and the things
in this beautiful? We maintain that the things in this world are beautiful by
participating in form; for every shapeless thing which is naturally capable of
receiving shape and form is ugly and outside the divine formative power as long
as it has no share in formative power and form. This is absolute ugliness. But
a thing is also ugly when it is not completely dominated by shape and formative
power, since its matter has not submitted to be completely shaped according to
the form. (d)
Ch 3
The form, then, approaches and
composes that which is to come into being from many parts into a single ordered
whole; it brings it into a completed unity and makes it one by agreement of its
parts; for since it is one itself, that which is shaped by it must also be one
as far as a thing can be which is composed of many parts. So beauty rests upon
the material thing when it has been brought into unity, and gives itself to
parts and wholes alike. When it comes upon something that is one and composed
of like parts it gives the same gift to the whole; as sometimes art gives
beauty to a whole house with its parts, and sometimes a nature gives beauty to
a single stone. So then the beautiful body comes into being by sharing in a
formative power which comes from the divine forms.
The power ordained for the
purpose recognises this, and there is nothing more effective for judging its
own subject-matter, when the rest of the soul judges along with it; or perhaps
the rest of the soul too pronounces the judgement by fitting the beautiful body
to the form in itself and using this for judging beauty as we use a ruler for
judging straightness. But how does the bodily agree with that which is before
body? How does the architect declare the house outside beautiful by fitting it
to the form of house within him? The reason is that the house outside, apart
from the stones, is the inner form divided by the external mass of matter,
without parts but appearing in many parts.
When sense-perception, then, sees
the form in bodies binding and mastering the nature opposed to it, which is
shapeless, and shape riding gloriously upon other shapes, it gathers into one
that which appears dispersed and brings it back and takes it in, now without
parts, to the soul's interior and presents it to that which is within as
something in tune with it and fitting it and dear to it; just as when a good
man sees a trace of virtue in the young, which is in tune with his own inner
truth, the sight delights him. And the simple beauty of colour comes about by
shape and the mastery of the darkness in matter by the presence of light which
is incorporeal and formative power and form. (e) This is why fire itself is
more beautiful than all other bodies, because it has the rank of form in
relation to the other elements; it is above them in place and is the finest and
subtlest of all bodies, being close to the incorporeal. It alone does not admit
the others; but the others admit it : for it warms them but is not cooled
itself; it has colour primarily and all other things take the form of colour
from it. So it shines and glitters as if it was a form. The inferior thing
which becomes faint and dull by the fire's light, is not beautiful any more, as
not participating in the whole form of colour.
Ch 4
The melodies in sounds, too, the
imperceptible ones which make the perceptible ones, make the soul conscious of
beauty in the same way, showing the same thing in another medium. It is proper
to sensible melodies to be measured by numbers, not according to any and every
sort of formula but one which serves for the production of form so that it may
dominate. So much, then, for the beauties in the realm of sense, images and
shadows which, so to speak, sally out and come into matter and adorn it and
excite us when they appear.
But about the beauties beyond,
which it is no more the part of sense to see, but the soul sees them and speaks
of them without instruments-we must go up to them and contemplate them and
leave sense to stay down below. Just as in the case of the beauties of sense it
is impossible for those who have not seen them or grasped their beauty-those
born blind, for instance,-to speak about them, in the same way only those can
speak about the beauty of ways of life who have accepted the beauty of ways of
life and kinds of knowledge and everything else of the sort; and people cannot
speak about the splendour of virtue who have never even imagined how fair is
the face of justice and moral order; "neither the evening nor the morning
star are as fair." But there must be those who see this beauty by that
with which the soul sees things of this sort, and when they see it they must be
delighted and overwhelmed and excited much more than by those beauties we spoke
of before, since now it is true beauty they are grasping. These experiences
must occur whenever there is contact with any sort of beautiful thing, wonder
and a shock of delight and longing and passion and a happy excitement. One can
have these experiences by contact with invisible beauties, and souls do have
them, practically all, but particularly those who are more passionately in love
with the invisible, just as with bodies all see them, but all are not stung as
sharply, but some, who are called lovers, are most of all.
Then we must ask the lovers of that
which is outside sense "What do you feel about beautiful ways of life, as
we call them, and beautiful habits and well-ordered characters and in general
about virtuous activities and dispositions and the beauty of Souls? What do you
feel when you see your own inward beauty? How are you stirred to wild
exultation, and long to be with yourselves, gathering your selves together away
from your bodies?" For this is what true lovers feel. But what is it which
makes them feel like this? Not shape or colour or any size, but soul, without
colour itself and possessing a moral order without colour and possessing all
the other light of the virtues; you feel like this when you see, in yourself or
in someone else, greatness of soul, a righteous life, a pure morality, courage
with its noble look,' and dignity and modesty advancing in a fearless, calm and
unperturbed disposition, and the godlike light of intellect shining upon all
this. We love and delight in these qualities, but why do we call them
beautiful? They exist and appear to us and lie who sees them cannot possibly
say anything else except that they are what really exists. What does
"really exists" mean? That they exist as beauties. But the argument
still requires us to explain why real beings make the soul lovable. What is
this kind of glorifying light on all the virtues? Would you like to take the
opposites, the uglinesses in soul, and contrast them with the beauties? Perhaps
a consideration of what ugliness is and why it appears so will help us to find
what we are looking for.
Ch 5
Suppose, then, an ugly soul,
dissolute and unjust, full of all lusts, and all disturbance, sunk in fears by
its cowardice and jealousies by its pettiness, thinking mean and mortal
thoughts as far as it thinks at all, altogether distorted, loving impure pleasures,
living a life which consists of bodily sensations and finding delight in its
ugliness. Shall we not say that its ugliness came to it as a "beauty"
brought in from outside, injuring it and making it impure and "mixed with
a great deal of evil," with its life and perceptions no longer pure, but
by the admixture of evil living a dim life and diluted with a great deal of
death, no longer seeing what a soul ought to see, no longer left in peace in
itself because it keeps on being dragged out, and down, and to the dark?
Impure, I think, and dragged in every direction towards the objects of sense,
with a great deal of bodily stuff mixed into it, consorting much with matter
and receiving a form other than its own it has changed by a mixture which makes
it worse; just as if anyone gets into mud or filth he does not show any more
the beauty which he had: what is seen is what he wiped off on himself from the
mud and filth; his ugliness has come from an addition of alien matter, and his
business, if he is to be beautiful again, is to wash and clean himself and so
be again what he was before. So we shall be right in saying that the soul
becomes ugly by mixture and dilution and inclination towards the body and
matter.
This is the soul's ugliness, not
being pure and unmixed, like gold, but full of earthiness; if anyone takes the
earthy stuff away the gold is left, and is beautiful, when it is singled out
from other things and is alone by itself. In the same way the soul too, when it
is separated from the lusts which it has through the body with which it
consorted too much, and freed from its other affections, purged of what it gets
from being embodied, when it abides alone has put away all the ugliness which
came from the other nature.
Ch 6
For, as was said in old times,
self-control, and courage and every virtue, is a purification, and so is even
wisdom itself. This is why the mysteries are right when they say riddlingly
that the man who has not been purified will lie in mud when he goes to Hades,
because the impure is fond of mud by reason of its badness;' just as pigs, with
their unclean bodies, like that sort of thing. For what can true self-control
be except not keeping company with bodily pleasures, but avoiding them as
impure and belonging to something impure ? Courage, too, is not being afraid of
death. And death is the separation of body and Soul; and a man does not fear
this if he welcomes the prospect of being alone. Again, greatness of soul is
despising the things here : and wisdom is an intellectual activity which turns
away from the things below and leads the soul to those above. So, the soul when
it is purified becomes form and formative power, altogether bodiless and
intellectual and entirely belonging to the divine, whence beauty springs and
all that is akin to it. Soul, then, when it is raised to the level of intellect
increases in beauty. Intellect and the things of intellect are its beauty, its
own beauty and not another's, since only then [when it is perfectly conformed
to intellect] is it truly soul. For this reason, it is right to say that the
soul's becoming something good and beautiful is its being made like to God,
because from Him come beauty and all else which falls to the lot of real
beings. Or rather, beautifulness is reality, and the other kind of thing is the
ugly, and this same is the primary evil; so for God the qualities of goodness
and beauty are the same, or the realities, the good and beauty.
So, we must follow the same line
of enquiry to discover beauty and goodness, and ugliness and evil. And first we
must posit beauty which is also the good; from this immediately comes
intellect, which is beauty; and soul is given beauty by intellect. Everything
else is beautiful by the shaping of soul, the beauties in actions and in ways
of life. And soul makes beautiful the bodies which are spoken of as beautiful;
for since it is a divine thing and a kind of part of beauty, it makes
everything it grasps and masters beautiful, as far as they are capable of
participation.
Ch 7
So we must ascend again to the
good, which every soul desires. Any-one who has seen it knows what I mean when
I say that it is beautiful. It is desired as good, and the desire for it is
directed to good, and the attainment of it is for those who go up to the higher
world and are converted and strip off what we put on in our descent; (just as
for those who go up to the celebrations of sacred rites there are
purifications, and strippings off of the clothes they wore before, and going up
naked) until, passing in the ascent all that is alien to the God, one sees with
one's self alone That alone, simple, single and pure,' from which all depends
and to which all look and are and live and think : for it is cause of life and
mind and being. If anyone sees it, what passion will he feel, what longing in
his desire to be united with it, what a shock of delight!
The man who has not seen it may
desire it as good, but he who has seen it glories in its beauty and is full of
wonder and delight, enduring a shock which causes no hurt, loving with true
passion and piercing longing; he laughs at all other loves and despises what he
thought beautiful before; it is like the experience of those who have met
appearances of gods or spirits and do not any more appreciate as they did the
beauty of other bodies. "What then are we to think, if anyone contemplates
the absolute beauty which exists pure by itself, uncontaminated by flesh or
body, not in earth or heaven, that it may keep its purity?" All these
other things are external additions and mixtures and not primary, but derived
from it.
If then one sees That which
provides for all and remains by itself and gives to all but receives nothing
into itself, if he abides in the contemplation of this kind of beauty and
rejoices in being made like it, how can he need any other beauty? For this,
since it is beauty most of all, and primary beauty, makes its lovers beautiful
and lovable. Here the greatest, the ultimate contest is set before our souls;
all our toil and trouble is for this, not to be left without a share in the
best of visions. The man who attains this is blessed in seeing that
"blessed sight", and he who fails to attain it has failed utterly. A
man has not failed if he fails to win beauty of colours or bodies, or power or
office or kingship even, but if he fails to win this and only this. For this he
should give up the attainment of kingship and of rule over all earth and sea
and sky, if only by leaving and overlooking them he can turn to That and see.
Ch 8
But how shall we find the way?
What method can we devise ? How can one see the "inconceivable beauty
" which stays within in the holy sanctuary and does not come out where the
profane may see it? Let him who can, follow and come within, and leave outside
the sight of his eyes and not turn back to the bodily splendours which he saw
before. When he sees the beauty in bodies he must not run after them; we must
know that they are images, traces, shadows, and hurry away to that which they
image. For if a man runs to the image and wants to seize it as if it was the
reality (like a beautiful reflection playing on the water, which some story
somewhere, I think, said riddlingly a man wanted to catch and sank down into
the stream and disappeared) then this man who clings to beautiful bodies and
will not let them go, will, like the man in the story, but in soul, not in
body, sink down into the dark depths where intellect has no delight, and stay
blind in Hades, consorting with shadows there and here.
This would be truer advice
"Let us fly to our dear country." What then is our way of escape, and
how are we to find it? We shall put out to sea, as Odysseus did, from the witch
Circe or Calypso as the poet (g) says, I think with a hidden meaning, and was
not content to stay though he had delights of the eyes and lived among much
beauty of sense.' Our country from which we came is there, our Father is there.
How shall we travel to it, where is our way of escape? We cannot get there on
foot; for our feet only carry us everywhere in this world, from one country to
another. You must not get ready a carriage, either, or a boat. Let all these
things go, and do not look. Shut your eyes, and change to and wake another way
of seeing, which everyone has but few use.
(h) And what does this inner
sight see? When it is just awakened it is not at all able to look at the
brilliance before it. So that the soul must be trained, first of all to look at
beautiful ways of life : then at beautiful works, not those which the arts
produce, but the works of men who have a name for goodness : then look at the
souls of the people who produce the beautiful works. How then can you see the
sort of beauty a good soul has?
Ch 9
Go back into yourself and look;
and if you do not yet see yourself beautiful, then, just as someone making a statue
which has to be beautiful cuts away here and polishes there and makes one part
smooth and clears another till he has given his statue a beautiful face, so you
too must cut away excess and straighten the crooked and clear the dark and make
it bright, and never stop "working on your statue" till the divine
glory of virtue shines out on you, till you see " self-mastery enthroned
upon its holy seat." If you have become this, and see it, and are at home
with yourself in purity, with nothing hindering you from becoming in this way
one, with no inward mixture of anything else, but wholly yourself, nothing but
true light, not measured by dimensions, or bounded by shape into littleness, or
expanded to size by unboundedness, but everywhere unmeasured, because greater
than all measure and superior to all quantity; when you see that you have
become this, then you have become sight; you can trust yourself then; you have
already ascended and need no one to show you; concentrate your gaze and see.
This alone is the eye that sees the great beauty.
But if anyone comes to the sight
bleareyed with wickedness, and unpurified, or weak and by his cowardice unable
to look at what is very bright, he sees nothing, even if someone shows him what
is there and possible to see. For one must come to the sight with a seeing
power made akin and like to what is seen. No eye ever saw the sun without
becoming sun-like,' nor can a soul see beauty without becoming beautiful. You
must become first all godlike and all beautiful if you intend to see God and
beauty.
First the soul will come in its
ascent to intellect and there will know the Forms, all beautiful, and will
affirm that these, the Ideas, are beauty; for all things are beautiful by
these, by the products and essence of intellect. That which is beyond this we
call the nature of the Good, which holds beauty as a screen before it. So in a
loose and general way of speaking the Good is the primary beauty; but if one
distinguishes the intelligibles [from the Good] one will say that the place of
the Forms is the intelligible beauty, but the Good is That which is beyond, the
"spring and origin" of beauty; or one will place the Good and the
primal beauty on the same level: in any case, however, beauty is in the
intelligible world.
Notes
a) It is necessary to inform the
Platonic reader, that the Beautiful, in the present discourse, is considered
according to its most general acceptation, as the same with the Good: though,
according to a more accurate distinction, as Plotinus himself informs us, the
Good is considered as the fountain and principle of the Beautiful. I think it
likewise proper to observe, that as I have endeavoured, by my paraphrase, to
render as much as possible the obscure parts evident, and to expand those
sentences which are so very much contracted in the original, I shall be sparing
of notes; for my design is not to accommodate the sublimest truths to the
meanest understandings (as this would be a contemptible and useless
prostitution), but to render them perspicuous to truly liberal and philosophic
minds. My reasons for adopting this mode of paraphrase, may be seen in the
preface to my translation of The Hymns of Orpheus. – (Thomas Taylor.)
b) That good proportion was a
part of beauty was widely accepted by Greek philosophers including Plato (see,
for example, his view that the Creator used harmonic proportion in the
arrangement of his beautiful universe at Timaeus 35b-c) and Aristotle
("The chief forms of beauty are order and symmetry and definiteness."
Metaphysics Book 13. 107b.1), but it was the stoics who defined beauty
strictly and exclusively in these terms. We will see a little further on at the
end of section 2, that Plotinus uses the example of a house with its parts as
something beautiful: he may well have read the famous treatise Ten Books on
Architecture by Vituvius (1st century BC) in which this picture is included –
the influence of the ancient doctrine of proportion is clearly visible from
this picture which leads directly onwards to the well-known one by Da Vinci, commonly
called "Vitruvian Man." (Tim Addey)
c) Enters deep into its
essence, etc. The Platonic philosophy insists much on the necessity of
retiring into ourselves in order to the discovery of truth: and on this
account, Socrates, in the first Alcibiades, says, that the soul entering into
herself will contemplate whatever exists, and the divinity himself. Upon which
Proclus thus comments, with his usual elegance and depth, (in Theology of
Plato, page 7) "For the soul (says he) contracting herself wholly into
a union with herself, and into the centre of universal life, and removing the
multitude and variety of all-various powers, ascends into the highest place of
speculation, from whence she will survey the nature of beings. For if she looks
back upon things posterior to her essence, she will perceive nothing but the
shadows and resemblances of beings: but if she returns into herself, she will
evolve her own essence, and the reasons she contains. And at first indeed she
will as it were only behold herself; but when by her knowledge she penetrates
more profoundly in her investigations, she will find intellect seated in her
essence, and the universal orders of beings: but when she advances into the
more interior recesses of herself, and as it were into the sanctuary of the
soul, she will be enabled to contemplate, with her eyes closed to corporeal
vision, the genus of the gods, and the unities of beings. For all things reside
in us after a manner correspondent to the nature of the soul: and on this
account we are naturally enabled to know all things, by exciting our inherent
powers, and images of whatever exists." – (Thomas
Taylor)
d) And such is matter,
etc. There is nothing affords more wonderful speculation than matter, which
ranks as the last among the universality of things, and has the same relation
to being, as shade to substance. For, as in an ascending series of causes, it
is necessary to arrive at something, which is the first cause of all, and to
which no perfection is wanting: so in a descending series of subjects, it is
equally necessary we should stop at some general subject, the lowest in the
order of things, and to which every perfection of being is denied. (For a
further discussion of the nature of matter see Ennead III, vi, 7 and II, iv). –
(Thomas Taylor)
e) . . . by the presence of
light which is incorporeal and formative power and form. For Plotinus light
is the incorporeal energy of the luminous body. (Armstrong.)
f) In itself perfectly pure. This is
analogous to the description of the beautiful in the latter part of Diotima's
Speech in the Banquet; a speech which is surely unequalled, both for elegance
of composition and sublimity of sentiment. Indeed, all the disciples of Plato
are remarkable for nothing so much as their profound and exalted conceptions of
the Deity; and he who can read the works of Plotinus and Proclus in particular,
and afterwards pity the weakness and erroneousness of their opinions on this
subject, may be fairly presumed to be himself equally an object of pity and
contempt. – (Thomas Taylor)
g) Porphyry informs us, in his
excellent treatise, On the Cave of the Nymphs that it was the opinion of
Numenius, the Pythagorean, (to which he also assents) that the person of
Odysseus, in the Odyssey, represents to us a man, who passes in a regular
manner, over the dark and stormy sea of generation; and thus, at length,
arrives at that region where tempests and seas are unknown, and finds a nation,
who:
Ne'er
knew salt, or heard the billows roar.
Indeed, he who is conscious of
the delusions of the present life, and the enchantments of this material house,
in which his soul is detained, like Odysseus in the irriguous cavern of Calypso,
will, like him continually bewail his captivity, and inly pine for a return to
his native country. Of such a one it may be said as of Ulysses (in the
excellent and translation of Mr Pope,) Odyssey, book v. 103.
But sad
Ulysses by himself apart.
Poured
the big sorrows of his swelling heart;
All on
the lonely shore he sate to weep,
And rolled
his eyes around the restless deep:
Towered
the loved coast, he rolled his eyes in vain,
Till,
dimmed with rising grief, they streamed again.
Such a one, too, like Odysseus,
will not always wish in vain for a passage over the dark ocean of a corporeal
life, but by the assistance of Hermes, who may be considered as the emblem of
reason, he will at length be enabled to quit the magic embraces of Calypso, the
goddess of Sense, and to return again into the arms of Penelope, or Philosophy,
the long lost and proper object of his love. (Thomas Taylor)
