speak hereafter.

But in the meanwhile we must look at another quarrel which arose between
the two twin schools of Alexandria. The Neoplatonists said that there
is a divine element in man. The Christian philosophers assented
fervently, and raised the old disagreeable question: "Is it in every
man? In the publicans and harlots as well as in the philosophers? We
say that it is." And there again the Neoplatonist finds it over hard to
assent to a doctrine, equally contrary to outward appearance, and
galling to Pharisaic pride; and enters into a hundred honest self-
puzzles and self-contradictions, which seem to justify him at last in
saying, No. It is in the philosopher, who is ready by nature, as
Plotinus has it, and as it were furnished with wings, and not needing to
sever himself from matter like the rest, but disposed already to ascend
to that which is above. And in a degree too, it is in the "lover," who,
according to Plotinus, has a certain innate recollection of beauty, and
hovers round it, and desires it, wherever he sees it. Him you may raise
to the apprehension of the one incorporeal Beauty, by teaching him to
separate beauty from the various objects in which it appears scattered
and divided. And it is even in the third class, the lowest of whom
there is hope, namely, the musical man, capable of being passively
affected by beauty, without having any active appetite for it; the
sentimentalist, in short, as we should call him nowadays.

But for the herd, Plotinus cannot say that there is anything divine in
them. And thus it gradually comes out in all Neoplatonist writings
which I have yet examined, that the Divine only exists in a man, in
proportion as he is conscious of its existence in him. From which
spring two conceptions of the Divine in man. First, is it a part of
him, if it is dependent for its existence on his consciousness of it?