ieve in reasoning of this kind. It
appears so. But can any thing either belong to, or be affirmed of that,
which is not? How can it? Neither therefore does any name belong to it,
nor discourse, nor any science, nor sense, nor opinion. It does not
appear that there can. Hence it can neither be named, nor spoken of, nor
conceived by opinion, nor be known, nor perceived by any being. So it
seems." And here it must be observed that this conclusion respecting the
highest principle of things, that he is perfectly ineffable and
inconceivable, is the result of a most scientific series of negations, in
which not only all sensible and intellectual beings are denied of him,
but even natures the most transcendently allied to him, his first and
most divine progeny. For that which so eminently distinguishes the
philosophy of Plato from others is this, that every part of it is stamped
with the character of science. The vulgar indeed proclaim the Deity to be
ineffable; but as they have no scientific knowledge that he is so, this
is nothing more than a confused and indistinct perception of the most
sublime of all truths, like that of a thing seen between sleeping and
waking, like Phaeacia to Ulysses when sailing to his native land,

That lay before him indistinct and vast,
Like a broad shield amid the watr'y waste.

In short, an unscientific perception of the ineffable nature of the
Divinity resembles that of a man, who on surveying the heavens, should
assert of the altitude of its highest part, that it surpasses that of
the loftiest tree, and is therefore immeasurable. But to see this
scientifically, is like a survey of this highest part of the heavens by
the astronomer; for he by knowing the height of the media between us and
it, knows also scientifically that it transcends in altitude not only the
loftiest tree; but the summits of air and aether, the moon, and even the
sun itself.

Let us therefore investigate what is the ascent to the ineffably, and
after what manner it is accomplished, according to Plato, from the last
of things, following the profound and most inquisitive Damascius as our
leader in this arduous investigation. Let our discourse also be common
to other principles, and to things proceeding from them to that which is
last, and let us, beginning from that which is perfectly effable and
known to sense, ascend too the ineffable, and establish in silence, as in
a port, the parturitions of truth concerning it. Let us