“ Iamblichus does not seem ever to have attained to that ecstatic communion with and absorption in deity which was the aim of earlier Neoplatonism, and which Plotinus enjoyed four times in his life, Porphyry once. Indeed his tendency was not so much to raise man to God as to bring the gods down to men—a tendency shown still more plainly in the “Answer of Abamon the master to Porphyry’s letter to Anebo and solutions of the doubts therein expressed,” afterwards entitled the Liber de mysteriis, and ascribed to Iamblichus. ”

“ This return is effected by the virtuous activities which the soul performs through its own power of free will, and by the assistance of the gods. These virtues were classified by Porphyry as political, purifying (καθαρτικαί) , theoretical, and paradigmatic; and to these Iamblichus adds a fifth class of priestly virtues (ἱερατικαὶ ἀρεταί) , in which the divinest part of the soul raises itself above intellect to absolute being. ”

“ Another difficulty of the system is the account given of nature. It is said to be “bound by the indissoluble chains of necessity which men call fate,” as distinguished from divine things which are not subject to fate. ”

“ Yet, being itself the result of higher powers becoming corporeal, a continual stream of elevating influence flows from them to it, interfering with its necessary laws and turning to good ends the imperfect and evil. ”

“ As in Plotinus νοῦς produced nature by mediation of ψυχή, so here the intelligible gods are followed by a triad of psychic gods. The first of these is incommunicable and supramundane, while the other two seem to be mundane though rational. In the third class, or mundane gods (θεοὶ ἐγκόσμιοι) , there is a still greater wealth of divinities, of various local position, function, and rank. ”

“ He speaks of them as intellectual (θεοὶ νοεροί) , supramundane (ὑπερκόσμιοι) , and mundane gods (ἐγκόσμιοι) . The first of these—which Plotinus represented under the three stages of (objective) being (ὄν) , (subjective) life (ζωή) , and (realized) intellect (νοῦς) —is distinguished by him into spheres of intelligible gods (θεοὶ νοεροί) and of intellectual gods (θεοὶ νοεροί) , each subdivided into triads, the latter sphere being the place of ideas, the former of the archetypes of these ideas. ”

“ He says that all the gods are good (though he in another place admits the existence of evil demons who must be propitiated) , and traces the source of evil to matter; rebuts the objection that their answering prayer implies passivity on the part of gods or demons; defends divination, soothsaying, and theurgic practices as manifestations of the divine activity; describes the appearances of the different sorts of divinities ”

“ T. Kiessling (1815) , A. Nauck (St Petersburg, 1884) ; for a discussion of the authorities used see E. Rohde in Rheinisches Museum, xxvi., xxvii. (1871, 1872) ; Eng. trans. by Thomas Taylor (1818) , (2) The Exhortation to Philosophy (Λόγος προτρεπτικὸς εἰς φιλοσοφίαν) , ed. T. Kiessling (1813) ”