Select works of Plotinus ... and extracts from the treatise of Synesius on providence / Translated from the Greek. With an introduction containing the substance of Porphyry's Life of Plotinus. By Thomas Taylor.

  • Plotinus
Date:
1817
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Select works of Plotinus ... and extracts from the treatise of Synesius on providence / Translated from the Greek. With an introduction containing the substance of Porphyry's Life of Plotinus. By Thomas Taylor. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    632/700 (page 538)
    On this account, therefore, these daemons endea¬ vour by stratagems to destroy every one, whether he be a private person or a potentate, who refuses obedience to the laws of matter. As you, how¬ ever, are a king, it will be easier for you than for a private person to guard against their attacks. For they assault externally, if they do not make any progress in their internal attempts, by war, se¬ dition, and by such things as injure the body, by which, however, that king will not be in the least subdued who pays attention to himself. For that is not to be conquered in which strength and wis¬ dom are conjoined. But when these are separated from each other, strength being without skill, and wisdom being imbecile, they are easily subdued. The conception, indeed, my son, of your fore¬ fathers in the formation of sacred images, is per¬ fectly admirable. For the Egyptians make a two¬ fold representation of the daemon Hermes, placing a young by the side of an elderly man, intending to signify by this, that he who rightly inspects [sacred concerns] ought to be both intelligent and strong, one of these being imperfect in affording utility without the other. On this account, also, a sphinx