marks, either pity or correction. In short, if this is
to be the criterion of all moral and theological knowledge, that it must
be immediately obvious to every man, that it is to be apprehended by the
most careless inspection, what occasion is there for seminaries of
learning? Education is ridiculous, the toil of investigation is idle. Let
us at once confine Wisdom in the dungeons of Folly, recall Ignorance from
her barbarous wilds, and close the gates of Science with
everlasting bars.

Having thus taken a general survey of the great world, and descended from
the intelligible to the sensible universe, let us still, adhering to that
golden chain which is bound round the summit of Olympus, and from which
all things are suspended, descend to the microcosm man. For man
comprehends in himself partially everything which the world contains
divinely and totally. Hence, according to Pluto, he is endued with an
intellect subsisting in energy, and a rational soul proceeding from the
same father and vivific goddess as were the causes of the intellect and
soul of the universe. He has likewise an ethereal vehicle analogous to
the heavens, and a terrestrial body, composed from the four elements, and
with which also it is coordinate.

With respect to his rational part, for in this the essence of man
consists, we have already shown that it is of a self-motive nature, and
that it subsists between intellect, which is immovable both in essence
and energy, and nature, which both moves and is moved. In consequence of
this middle subsistence, the mundane soul, from which all partial souls
are derived, is said by Plato in the Timaeus, to be a medium between that
which is indivisible and that which is divisible about bodies, i.e. the
mundane soul is a medium between the mundane intellect, and the whole of
that corporeal life which the world participates. In like manner, the
human soul is a medium between a daemoniacal intellect proximately,
established above our essence, which it also elevates and perfects, and
that corporeal life which is distributed about our body, and which is
the cause of its generation, nutrition and increase. This daemoniacal
intellect is called by Plato, in the Phaedrus, theoretic and, the
governor of the soul. The highest part therefore of the human soul is the
summit of the dianoetic power ([Greek: to akrotaton tes dianoias]), or
that power which reasons scientifically; and this summit is our intellect.
As, however, o