Plotinus by magic arts, had his weapons so completely turned against
himself, that all his limbs were contracted. From him we learn that
Plotinus, having summoned in the temple of Isis his familiar spirit, a
god, and not a mere daemon, appeared. He writes sensibly enough however
to one Anebos, an Egyptian priest, stating his doubts as to the popular
notions of the Gods, as beings subject to human passions and vices, and
of theurgy and magic, as material means of compelling them to appear, or
alluring them to favour man. The answer of Abamnon, Anebos, Iamblichus,
or whoever the real author may have been, is worthy of perusal by every
metaphysical student, as a curious phase of thought, not confined to
that time, but rife, under some shape or other, in every age of the
world's history, and in this as much as in any. There are many passages
full of eloquence, many more full of true and noble thought: but on the
whole, it is the sewing of new cloth into an old garment; the attempt to
suit the old superstition to the new one, by eclectically picking and
choosing, and special pleading, on both sides; but the rent is only made
worse. There is no base superstition which Abamnon does not
unconsciously justify. And yet he is rapidly losing sight of the real
eternal human germs of truth round which those superstitions clustered,
and is really further from truth and reason than old Homer or Hesiod,
because further from the simple, universal, everyday facts, and
relations, and duties of man, which are, after all, among the most
mysterious, and also among the most sacred objects which man can
contemplate.

It was not wonderful, however, that Neoplatonism took the course it did.
Spirit, they felt rightly, was meant to rule matter; it was to be freed
from matter only for that very purpose. No one could well deny that.
The philosopher, as he rose and became, according to Plotinus, a god, or
at least approached toward the gods, must partake of some mysterious and