of the soul may
still be described as a field whereon the four virtues are exercised,
but they now assume a far higher meaning than as political virtues,
having relation solely to the contemplative life of the Nous.

Happiness is unknown to Plotinus as distinct from perfection, and
perfection in the sense of having subdued all material cravings (except
as regards the bare necessities of life), and entered upon the
undisturbed life of contemplation. If this recalls, at least in name,
the Aristotelian ideal, there are points added that appear to be echoes
of Stoicism. Rapt in the contemplation of eternal verities, the
purified soul is indifferent to external circumstances: pain and
suffering are unheeded, and the just man can feel happy even in the
bull of Phalaris. But in one important respect the Neo-Platonic
teaching is at variance with Stoical doctrine. Though its first and
last precept is to rid the soul from the bondage of matter, it warns
against the attempt to sever body and soul by suicide. By no forcible
separation, which would be followed by a new junction, but only by
prolonged internal effort is the soul so set free from the world of
sense, as to be able to have a vision of its ancient home while still
in the body, and to return to it at death. Small, therefore, as is the
consideration bestowed by Neo-Platonism on the affairs of practical
life, it has no disposition to shirk the burden of them.

One other peculiar aim, the highest of all, is proposed to the soul in
the Alexandrian philosophy. It is peculiar, because to be understood
only in connexion with the metaphysics and cosmology of the system. In
the theory of Emanation, the primordial One or Good emits the Nous
wherein the Ideas are immanent; the Nous, in turn, sends forth the
Soul, and the Soul, Matter or nature; the gradation applying to man as
well as to the Universe. Now, to each of these principles, there is a
corresponding subjective state in the inner life of man. The life of
sense answers to nature or the material body; the virtue that is
founded upon free-will and reason, to the soul; the contemplative life,
as the result of complete purification from sense, to the Nous or
Sphere of Ideas; finally, to the One or Good, supreme in the scale of
existence, corresponds the state of Love, or, in its highest form,
_Ecstasy_. This peculiar elevation is something far above the highest
intellectual contemplation, and is not reached by thought. It is no