Iamblichus: On the Mysteries · 178 of 218 · tr. Thomas Taylor
Chapter VIII-r
But there are a certain few who by employing a certain supernatural power of intellect, are removed from nature , &c.
The class to which these few belong is beautifully unfolded, as follows, by Plotinus, in the beginning of his Treatise on Intellect, Ideas, and real Being.
“Since all men from their birth employ sense prior to intellect, and are necessarily first conversant with sensibles, some proceeding no farther, pass through life, considering these as the first and last of things, and apprehending that whatever is painful among these is evil, and whatever is pleasant is good; thus thinking it sufficient to pursue the one and avoid the other.
Those, too, among them who pretend to a greater share of reason than others, esteem this to be wisdom, being affected in a manner similar to more heavy birds, who collecting many things from the earth, and being oppressed with the weight, are unable to fly on high, though they have received wings for this purpose from nature.
But others are in a small degree elevated from things subordinate, the more excellent part of the soul recalling them from pleasure to a more worthy pursuit.
As they are, however, unable to look on high, and as not possessing any thing else which can afford them rest, they betake themselves, together with the name of virtue, to actions and the election of things inferior, from which they at first endeavoured to raise themselves, though in vain.
In the third class is the race of divine men , who, through a more excellent power, and with piercing eyes, acutely perceive supernal light, to the vision of which they raise themselves above the clouds and darkness, as it were, of this lower world, and there abiding despise every thing in these regions of sense; being no otherwise delighted with the place which is truly and properly their own, than he who after many wanderings is at length restored to his lawful country.” See my translation of the whole of this treatise.
P.
117 .
By mire, therefore, understand every thing corporeal-formed and material.
“Matter,” says Simplicius in his Commentary on the first book of Aristotle’s Physics, “is nothing else than the mutation of sensibles, with respect to intelligibles, deviating from thence, and carried downwards to nonbeing.
Those things, indeed, which are the properties of sensibles are irrational, corporeal, distributed 361 into parts, and passing into bulk and divulsion, through an ultimate progression into generation, viz.
into matter; for matter is always truly the last sediment.
Hence, also, the Egyptians call the dregs of the first life, which they symbolically denominate water, matter, being as it were a certain mire.
And matter is, as it were, the receptacle of generated and sensible natures, not subsisting as any definite form, but as the state or condition of subsistence; just as the impartible, the immaterial, true being, and things of this kind, are the constitution of an intelligible nature; all forms, indeed, subsisting both in sensibles and intelligibles, but in the former materially, and in the latter immaterially; viz.
in the one impartibly and truly, but in the other partibly and shadowy.
Hence every form is in sensibles distributed according to material interval.” P.
120 .
Through the innovation and illegality of the Greeks.
Iamblichus says, that through this innovation and illegality, both names and prayers have at present lost their efficacy.
For during his time, and forborne centuries prior to it, the genuine religion of the Greeks was rapidly declining, through their novelty and volatility, of which he here complains.
A chain of divine beings or principles flowing downward from a single transcendent source (the One or the Father), each level less perfect than the one above.
The text outlines a hierarchy of human classes ranging from those bound by nature to those raised above clouds and darkness toward the divine.
Augustinian and Plotinian doctrine that evil has no positive being of its own but is a lack, distortion, or absence of the good — denying ontological dualism while preserving moral seriousness.
Pain is described as evil and pleasure as good within the sensible realm, aligning with the view that evil lacks positive being.
The felt condition of exile from one's divine origin — Rumi's reed flute torn from its bed, Plotinus's 'we have forgotten,' the Gnostic forgetfulness; the affective wound that complements return_to_source and gives the return its motive.
The passage describes souls that are 'unable to look on high' and must be raised from clouds and darkness to their true origin.