the most celebrated writer and teacher of the Neo-Platonic school. He was born at Lycoopolis, a city of Egypt, in A.D. 204, and began very early to show a great singularity both in his taste and in his manners. At the age of twenty-eight he had a strong desire to study philosophy, on which occasion he was recommended to the most famous professors of Alexandria. He was not satis- fied with their lectures; but upon hearing those of Ammonius, he confessed that this was the man he wanted. He studied for eleven years under that excellent master, and then went to hear the Persian and Indian philosophers. In A.D. 243, when the Emperor Gordianus intended to wage war against the Persians, he followed the Roman army, but probably repented of it; for it was with difficulty he could save his life by flight after the emperor had been slain. He was then thirty-nine. The year following he went to Rome, and read philosophical lectures in that city; but avoided following the example of Erennius and Origen, his fellow- pupils, who having, like him, promised not to reveal some hidden and excellent doctrines which they had received from Ammonius, had nevertheless broken their pledge. Plotinus continued ten years in Rome without writing any- thing; but in his fiftieth year he obtained as his scholar Porphyry, who being of an exquisitely fine genius, was not satisfied with superficial answers, but required to have all difficulties thoroughly explained; and therefore Plotinus, to treat things with greater accuracy, was obliged to write more books. He had previously written twenty-one books, and during the six years of Porphyry's sojourn with him he wrote twenty-four, and nine after Porphyry left Rome, making in all fifty-four. The Romans had a high veneration for him; and he passed for a man of such judgment and virtue that many persons of both sexes, when they found themselves dying, entrusted him, as a kind of guar- dian angel, with the care of their estates and children. He was the arbiter of numberless lawsuits; and constantly be- haved with such humanity and rectitude that he did not create a single enemy during the twenty-six years he re- sided in Rome. He did not meet with the same justice, however, from all of his own profession; for Olympias, a philosopher of Alexandria, being envious of his glory, used his utmost endeavours, though in vain, to ruin him. The Emperor Gallienus and the Empress Salonina had a very high regard for him; and if it had not been for the oppo- sition of some jealous courtiers, they would have caused the city of Campania to be rebuilt, and given it to him, with the territory belonging to it, to establish a colony of philo- sophers, and to govern it according to the ideal laws of Plato's commonwealth. He laboured under various dis- orders during the last year of his life, which obliged him to leave Rome, when he was carried to Campania, to the heirs of one of his friends, who furnished him with everything necessary; and he died there, A.D. 270, at the age of sixty-six, in the noblest manner that a heathen philoso- pher could expire. "I am labouring with all my might," said he, "to return the divine part of me to the Divine Whole which fills the universe."

We have already remarked that the ideas of Plotinus were singular and extraordinary; and we shall now show that they were so. He was ashamed of being lodged in a body, for which reason he did not care to tell the place of his birth or family. The contempt he had for all earthly things was the reason why he would not permit his picture to be drawn; and when his disciple Amelius urged him to do so, "Is it not enough," said he, "to drag after us, whithersoever we go, that image in which nature has shut us up? Do you think that we should likewise transmit to future ages an image of that image, as a sight worthy of their attention?" On the same principle, he refused to at- tend to his health; for he never made use of preservatives or baths, and did not even eat the flesh of tame animals. He ate but little, and often abstained from bread; which, joined to his intense meditation, prevented him from sleep- ing. In short, he thought the body altogether below his notice, and had so little respect for it that he considered it as a prison, from which it would be his supreme happiness to be freed. When Amelius, after his death, inquired of the oracle of Apollo about the state of his soul, he was told that it was gone to the assembly of the blessed, where charity, joy, and a love of the union with God prevail. And the reason given for this, as related by Porphyry, is, "that Plotinus had been peaceable, gracious, and vigilant; that he had perpetually elevated his spotless soul to God; that he had loved God with his whole heart; that he had disengaged himself, to the utmost of his abilities, from this wretched life; that, elevating himself with all the powers of his soul, and by the several gradations taught by Plato, towards that Supreme Being which fills the universe, he had been enlightened by him, had enjoyed the vision of him without the help or interposition of ideas, and, in short, had often been united to him." This is the account of Porphyry, who also tells us that he himself had once been favoured with the vision. Plotinus had his familiar spirit as well as Socrates; but, according to Porphyry, it was not one of those called demons, but of the order of those who are called gods; so that he was under the protection of a spirit superior to that of other men. When Amelius de- sired him to share in the sacrifices which he used to offer up on solemn festivals, "It is their business," replied Plo- tinus, "to come to me; not mine to go to them."

Porphyry put the fifty-four books of Plotinus in order, and divided them into six Enneades. The greater part of them turn on the most high-flown ideas in metaphysics; and this philosopher seems, in certain points, to differ but little from Spinoza. He wrote two books to prove that all being is one and the same; which is, in fact, the very doc- trine of Baruc Spinoza. He inquires, in another book, whether there are many souls, or only one. His manner of composing partook of the singularity of his nature. He never read over his compositions after he had written them; he wrote a bad hand, and was not exact in his orthography; he stood in need, therefore, of a faithful friend to revise and correct his writings; and he chose Porphyry for this pur- pose in preference to Amelius, who had been his disciple twenty-four years, and was very much esteemed by him. Marsilius Ficiniius, at the request of Cosmo de Medici, exe- cuted a Latin version of the works of Plotinus, with a summary and analysis of each book, which was printed at Basil, first by itself in 1559, and afterwards with the Greek in 1580, folio. His Life was written by Porphyry, the most illustrious of his disciples. A beautiful edition of the works of Plotinus, in 3 vols. 4to, has been published at the Oxford university press, with this title, Plotini Opera Omnia Edidit Fredericus Creuser, Oxon., e typographico