GENERAL INTRODUCTION.

with the character of science. The vulgar those without philosophical training indeed proclaim the Deity to be ineffable too great to be expressed in words; 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, or like Phæacia The island of the Phaeacians in Homer’s Odyssey; here used as a metaphor for a truth that appears dimly on the horizon of the mind to Ulysses when sailing to his native land,

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 the intermediate spaces or substances, such as the air and orbits between us and it, knows also scientifically that it transcends in altitude not only the loftiest tree, but the summits of air and æther the pure, upper atmosphere or the substance of the stars, the moon, and even the sun itself.

Let us therefore investigate what is the ascent to the ineffable, and after what manner it is accomplished, according to Plato, from the last of things, following the profound and most inquisitive original Greek: "zētikōtatos"² Damascius the last head of the Neoplatonist school in Athens, known for his rigorous doubt and inquiry 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 to the ineffable, and establish in silence, as in a port, the parturitions the labors or "birth-pangs" of bringing forth a new idea of truth concerning it. Let us then assume the following axiom a self-evident truth or starting principle, in which as in a secure vehicle we may safely pass from hence thither. I say, therefore, that the unindigent that which is self-sufficient and lacks nothing is

¹ Odyssey, Book 5, verse 281.
² This most excellent philosopher, whose manuscript treatise On Principles original Greek: "peri archōn" is a treasury of divine science and erudition, is justly called by Simplicius A 6th-century philosopher and contemporary of Damascius most inquisitive original Greek: "zētikōtatos". See a very long and beautiful extract from this work in the Additional Notes on the third volume.