Select Works of Porphyry (On Abstinence, Cave of the Nymphs, Auxiliaries)

Auxiliaries to the Perception of Intelligibles may be considered an excellent introduction to the works of Plotinus in general, from which a great part of it is extracted. It is particularly useful for the following books of that most sublime genius: On the Virtues ^h; On the Impassivity of Incorporeal Natures ⁱ; and On Truly-Existing Being, in which it is demonstrated that such being is everywhere one and the same whole ^k. This Porphyrian treatise is also admirably calculated to assist the student of the Theological Elements of Proclus, a work never to be sufficiently praised for the scientific accuracy, profundity of conception, and luminous development of the most important dogmas it displays.

In the fourth place, Porphyry, in his treatise On the Cave of the Nymphs, informs us that Numenius the Pythagorean considered the person of Ulysses in the Odyssey to be the image of a man who passes in a regular manner over the stormy sea of generation (or a sensible life), and thus at length arrives at a region where tempest and seas are unknown, and finds a nation

I have endeavored, by the assistance of this

^h Ennead I. 2.        ⁱ Ennead III. 6.
^k Ennead VI. lib. 4, 5.