Select works of Plotinus ... and extracts from the treatise of Synesius on providence / Translated from the Greek. With an introduction containing the substance of Porphyry's Life of Plotinus. By Thomas Taylor.

  • Plotinus
Date:
1817
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Select works of Plotinus ... and extracts from the treatise of Synesius on providence / Translated from the Greek. With an introduction containing the substance of Porphyry's Life of Plotinus. By Thomas Taylor. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    19/700
    « it was the work of Plotinus. For the former of these, who was by birth an Alex¬ andrian, and at first nothing more than a porter, opened a philosophical school at Alexandria, but with a determination not to commit the more abstruse and theologi¬ cal dogmas of his philosophy to writing. Indeed, this truly great man was so fearful of profaning these sublime mysteries, by exposing them to vulgar inspection, that he revealed them to his disciples Erennius, Origen, and Plotinus, on the condition of inviolable secrecy, and under the guard of irrevocable oaths. However, fortunately for posterity, Erennius dissolved the compact, and Origen (not the Christian father of that name) imitating Erennius, disclosed a part of his master s secrets, in a curious treatise on Daemons, which unfortunately is lost. But