Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

286 THK FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMBut i highly as Plotinua pri/.es the activity of dis-cursive thought, it is not to him the highest thing ofall. It presupposes an immediate knowledge of thatwhich is above the senses. The soul of itself islimited to mere reflection ; it can only borrow fromthe Mind the principles of a higher knowledge.Spirit only can reveal itself to spirit; kin only canknow kin; mind only can understand the Mind.This higher knowing is an immediate possession ofwhat is known. In the contemplation which thustakes place the distinction between the divine and thehuman Mind ceases. The human thought, retiringinto the purity of its being, thereby unites itself withthe divine thought of which it is a part. In thewords of Plotinus: - " If he who has mind is himselfsuch as to be all things, when he conceives self heconceives all things with it; so that such an one withenergetic inworking, beholding himself, holds all thingsas contained in himself, and himself as containing allthings." The highest degree of this state is that doctrineof Ecstasy which is in contradiction to the wholeoriginal direction of Grreco-Roman thought. Plotinusmakes the ultimate end of philosophy to consist in abeholding of the divinity, in which all definiteness ofthought and all self-consciousness disappear in mystictrance. When3 God appears suddenly in the soul,there is nothing more between him and it; they areno longer two, but an indistinguishable unity. Thesoul becomes in this contemplation of the divinity notonly one with itself, in that the opposition betweenmind 4 and soul disappears, but one with the divinity.1 Zeller, v. 547.2 Knnead, iv. 4, 2. Quoted by Zeller, v. 548.3 Zeller, v. 551. 4 I.e., vovs and