VIII. What measures, then, shall we adopt? What machine employ, or what reason consult, by means of which we may contemplate this ineffable beauty: a beauty abiding in the most divine sanctuary, without ever proceeding from its sacred retreats, lest it should be beheld by the profane and vulgar eye? We must enter deep into ourselves, and, leaving behind the objects of corporeal sight, no longer look back after any of the accustomed spectacles of sense. For, it is necessary that whoever beholds this beauty, should withdraw his view from the fairest corporeal forms; and, convinced that these are nothing more than images, vestiges, and shadows of beauty, should eagerly soar to the fair original from which they are derived. For he who rushes to these lower beauties, as if grasping realities, when they are only like beautiful images appearing in water, will, doubtless, like him in the fable, by stretching after the shadow, sink into the lake, and disappear. For, by thus embracing and adhering to corporeal forms, he is precipitated, not so much in his body, as in his soul, into profound and horrid darkness; and thus blind, like those in the infernal regions, converses only with phantoms, deprived of the perception of what is real and true. It is here, then, we may more truly exclaim “Let us depart from hence, and fly to our father’s delightful land.”1 But, by what leading stars shall we direct our flight, and by what means avoid the magic power of Circe, and the detaining charms of Calypso? For thus the fable of Ulysses obscurely signifies,2 which feigns him abiding an unwilling exile, though pleasant spectacles were continually presented to his sight; and every thing was promised to invite his stay which can delight the senses, and captivate the heart. But our true country, like that of Ulysses, is from whence we came, and where our father lives. But where is the ship to be found, by which we can accomplish our flight? For our feet are unequal to the task, since they only take us from one part of the earth to another. May we not each of us say,
What ships have I, what sailors to convey
What oars to cut the long laborious way?3
But it is in vain that we prepare horses to draw, or ships to transport us to our native land. On the contrary, neglecting all these, as unequal to the task, and excluding them entirely from our view, having now closed the corporeal eye, we must stir up, and assume a purer eye within,4 which all men possess, but which is alone used by the few.
Let us depart, etc. Vide Hom., Iliad. lib ii. 140 et lib. ix. 27. ↩
Porphyry informs us, in his excellent treatise, De Antro Nymph. [TTS vol. 13] that it was the opinion of Numenius, the Pythagorean, (to which he also assents) that the person of Ulysses, 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 Ulysses 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 pathetic translation of Mr Pope,)
But sad Ulysses by himself apart.
Pour’d the big sorrows of his swelling heart;
All on the lonely shore he sate to weep,
And roll’d his eyes around the restless deep:
Tow’rd the lov’d coast, he roll’d his eyes in vain,
Till, dimm’d with rising grief, they stream’d again.
Odyssey book v. 103.
Such a one, too, like Ulysses, will not always wish in vain for a passage over the dark ocean of a corporeal life, but by the assistance of Mercury, 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. ↩See Pope’s Homer’s Odyssey, book v. 181. ↩
We must stir up and assume a purer eye within. This inward eye, is no other than intellect, which contains in its most inward recesses, a certain ray of light, participated from the sun of Beauty and Good, by which the soul is enabled to behold and become united with her divinely solitary original. This divine ray, or, as Proclus calls it ovpdrjfxoe, a mark or impression, is thus beautifully described by that philosopher, (Theology of Plato): “The Author of the universe, (says he) has planted in all beings impressions of his own perfect excellence, and through these, he has placed all beings about himself, and is present with them in an ineffable manner, exempt from the universality of things. Hence, every being entering into the ineffable sanctuary of its own nature, finds there a symbol of the Father of all. And by this mystical impression, which corresponds to his nature, they become united with their original, divesting themselves of their own essence, and hastening to become his impression alone; and, through a desire of his unknown nature, and of the fountain of good, to participate him alone. And when they have ascended as far as to this cause, they enjoy perfect tranquillity, and are conversant in the perception of his divine progeny, and of the love which all things naturally possess of goodness, unknown, ineffable, without participation, and transcendendy full.” ↩