The Mystical Hymns of Orpheus - Platonic Philosophy

14 THE MYSTICAL HYMNS
Goddess of phantoms and of shadowy play,
Whose drowsy pow'r divides the nat'ral day ;
therefore, symbolically, calls these hundred-handed, as touch-
ing all the fabrication of things, and being the causes of it.
The triad *, however, of the Centimrtni is of a guardian
nature. But Plato adduces negatively what he found cele-
brated affirmatively by the theologist. For what Orpheus
calls Night, that Plato denominates without colour. And
what the former says negatively is without fulsehood,
Prediction without falsehood was to Night
Of all things giv'n. [says Orpheus.]
that the latter celebrates, as having a6out it the genus of tme
science, and as being truly existing essence. Plato also, having
celebrated the supercelestial place by three negations, again
adduces three affirmations, introducing three of them from
being. For, since this order is a triadic one, Plato very
properly preserves the triadic, both in the negative and
affirmative conclusions. Or it may be said that, since it is
both one and bring, and is triadic according to each of
these, he indicates the negative conclusions according to
the superessential one, but the affirmative according to
being. Here likewise the first number is unfolded into
light.
In the next place Hermeas enumerates the different kinds
of Truth, as follows : "Superior illuminate subordinate
natures with the light of Truth. We must extend the eye
of intellect therefore to these four ; viz. the one, which is
the first principle of things ; Phanes, who is the boundary
of the intelligible, but the exempt principle of the intellec-
tual Gods (for the Nights are principles with which prin-
ciple is co-ordinate) ; Jnpiter, who is the king of the super-
mundane, but the boundary of what are properly called the
* This triad consists of Cottus, Gyges, and Briareus.