ng incorporeal
or knowledge can have no stability and enquiry no end. Where, says
Mr Harris, is the microscope which can discern what is smallest in
nature? Where the telescope which can see at what point in the
universe wisdom first began? Since, then, there is no portion of
matter which may not be the subject of experiments without end, let
us betake ourselves to the regions of mind, where all things are
bounded in intellectual measure; where everything is permanent and
beautiful, eternal and divine. Let us quit the study of particulars, for
that which is general and comprehensive, and through this, learn to
see and recognize whatever exists.

With a view to this desirable end, I have presented the reader with a
specimen of that sublime wisdom which first arose in the colleges of
the Egyptian priests, and flourished afterwards in Greece; which was
there cultivated by Pythagoras, under the mysterious veil of numbers;
by Plato, in the graceful dress of poetry; and was systematized by
Aristotle, as far as it could be reduced into scientific order; which,
after becoming in a manner extinct, shone again with its pristine
splendour among the philosophers of the Alexandrian school; was
learnedly illustrated with Asiatic luxuriancy of style by Proclus; was
divinely explained by Iamblichus: and profoundly delivered in the
writings of Plotinus. Indeed, the works of this last philosopher are
particularly valuable to all who desire to penetrate into the depths of
this divine wisdom. From the exalted nature of his genius, he was
called Intellect by his contemporaries, and is said to have composed
his books under the influence of divine illumination. Porphyry
relates, in his life, that he was four times united by an ineffable
energy with the divinity; which, however such an account may be
ridiculed in the present age, will be credited by everyone who has
properly explored the profundity of his mind. The facility and
vehemence of his composition was such, that when he had once
conceived a subject, he wrote as from an internal pattern, without
paying much attention to the orthography, or reviewing what he had
written; for the celestial vigour of his intellect rendered him
incapable of trifling concerns, and in this respect, inferior to
common understandings, as the eagle, which in its bold flight
pierces the clouds, skims the surface of the earth with less rapidity
than the swallow. Indeed a minute attention to trifles is inconsiste