His repulsiveness is, perhaps, in a measure due to his want
of skill in the art of composition, for he did not learn to write till
he was fifty years old. He professed a contempt for the advantages of
life and for its pursuits. He disparaged patriotism. An ascetic in his
habits, eating no flesh and but little bread, he held his body in utter
contempt, saying that it was only a phantom and a clog to his soul. He
refused to remember his birthday. As has frequently been the case with
those who have submitted to prolonged fasting and meditation, he
believed that he had been privileged to see God with his bodily eye, and
on six different occasions had been reunited to him. In such a mental
condition, it may well be supposed that his writings are mysterious,
inconsequent and diffuse. An air of Platonism mingled with many Oriental
ideas and ancient Egyptian recollections, pervades his works.

[Sidenote: The trinity of Plotinus.]

[Sidenote: Ecstasy; communion with the invisible.]

Like many of his predecessors, Plotinus recognized a difference between
the mental necessities of the educated and the vulgar, justifying
mythology on the ground that it was very useful to those who were not
yet emancipated from the sensible. Aristotle, in his Metaphysics,
referring to mythology and the gods in human form, had remarked, "Much
has been mythically added for the persuasion of the multitude, and also
on account of the laws and for other useful ends." But Plotinus also
held that the gods are not to be moved by prayer, and that both they and
the daemons occasionally manifest themselves visibly; that incantations
may be lawfully practised, and are not repugnant to philosophy. In the
body he discerns a penitential mechanism for the soul. He believes that
the external world is a mere phantom--a dream--and the indications of
the senses altogether deceptive. The union with the divinity of which he
speaks he describes as an intoxication of the soul which, forgetting all
external things, becomes lost in the contemplation of "the One." The
doctrinal philosophy of Plotinus presents a trinity in accordance with
the Platonic idea. (1.) The One, or Prime essence. (2.) The Reason. (3.)
The Soul. Of the first he declares that it is impossible to speak fully,
and in what he says on this point there are many apparent
contradictions, as when he denies oneness to the one. His ideas of the
trinity are essentially based on the theory of emanation. He describ