INTRODUCTION.

a In the Life of Plotinus original: "In Vit. Plotin."

"Therefore," he saysa, "I formed an intention to take my own life, which Plotinus remarkably perceived. As I was walking home, he stood before me and said, 'Your current plan, Porphyry, is not the result of a sound mind, but rather of a soul raging with a melancholy original: "atrabilarious," a term from the ancient medical theory of the four humors, suggesting a madness caused by an excess of black bile. fury.' As a result, he ordered me to leave Rome; and accordingly I went to Sicily, having heard that a certain worthy and refined man lived at that time near Lilybæum An ancient city on the western coast of Sicily, modern-day Marsala.. And so, indeed, I was freed from this mental distress; but in the meantime, I was prevented from being with Plotinus until his death."

Porphyry also holds a highly distinguished place among those great geniuses who helped explain the original teachings original: "dogmas" of Plato after they had been lost for more than five hundred years—as I have shown in my previously mentioned History of the Restoration of the Platonic Theology. Among these teachings, the one that is supremely important is this: that the indescribable principle of all things, which Plato calls the Good and the One, is something higher than both the intellect and existence itself. As we are told by Proclus, this was proven by Porphyry using many powerful and beautiful arguments in his book Concerning Principles.