good men round him, his repute for supernatural virtues brought "fools
into a circle." What he meant by his belief that four times he had,
"whether in the body or out of the body," been united with the Spirit of
the world, who knows? What does Tennyson mean when he writes:

"So word by word, and line by line,
The dead man touch'd me from the past,
And all at once it seem'd at last
His living soul was flashed on mine.

And mine in his was wound and whirl'd
About empyreal heights of thought,
And came on that which is, and caught
The deep pulsations of the world."

Mystery! We cannot fathom it; we know not the paths of the souls of
Pascal and Gordon, of Plotinus and St. Paul. They are wise with a wisdom
not of this world, or with a foolishness yet more wise.

In his practical philosophy Plotinus was an optimist, or at least he was
at war with pessimism.

"They that love God bear lightly the ways of the world--bear lightly
whatsoever befalls them of necessity in the general movement of things."
He believed in a rest that remains for the people of God, "where they
speak not one with the other; but, as we understand many things by the
eyes only, so does soul read soul in heaven, where the spiritual body is
pure, and nothing is hidden, and nothing feigned." The arguments by
which these opinions are buttressed may be called metaphysical, and may
be called worthless; the conviction, and the beauty of the language in