Taylor - Eleusianian and Bacchic Mysteries.pdf - Platonic Philosophy

"180 Eleminian andand the contrary, occultly acknowledged thedescent of his soul from a condition of beingsuper-material and immortal, into one material and mortal ;and that, on the contrary,by living according to the purity which theMysteries inculcated, he should re-ascend tothat perfection of his nature, from which hehad unhappily falien.* \* "Exiled from the true home of the spirit, imprisoned in thebody, disordered by passion, and beclouded by sense, the soul hasyet longings after that state of perfect knowledge, and purity, andbliss, in which it was first created. Itsaffinities are still on high.It yearns for a higher and nobler form of life. It essays to rise,but its eye is darkened by sense, its wings are besmeared by pas*sion and lust; it is borne downward until it falls upon andattaches itself to that which is material and sensual,and it flounders and grovels still amid the objects of sense. And now, Platoasks :How may the soul be delivered from the illusions of sense,the distempering influence of the body, and the disturbances ofpassion, which becloud its vision of the real, the good, and thetrue ?"Plato believed and hoped that this could be accomplished byphilosophy. This he regarded as a grand intellectual disciplinefor the purification of the soul.Bythis it was to be disenthralledfrom the bondage of sense, and raised into the empyrean of purethought, * where truth and reality shine forth. All souls have thefaculty of knowing, but it is only by reflection and self-knowledge,and intellectual discipline, that the soul can be raised to thevision of eternal truth, goodness, and beauty that is, to thevision of God." COCKER :Christianity and Greek Philosophy, x.pp. 351-2.