This imaginary fragment from Ammonius Saccas is, I believe, true to what seems fairly inferred concerning his teaching. See _Brucker_, ii. p. 211; and _Jules Simon_, i. 205; ii. 668. Plotinus appears to have been indebted to Numenius even more than to Ammonius or Potamon for some of the ideas peculiar to his system. The modicum of information concerning Numenius which Eusebius has handed down shows that this Platonist anticipated the characteristic doctrine of Neo-Platonism concerning the Divine Being. Like the Neo-Platonist, he pursued philosophical inquiry in a religious spirit, imploring, as Plotinus does, divine illumination. He endeavoured to harmonize Pythagoras and Plato, to elucidate and confirm the opinions of both by the religious dogmas of the Egyptians, the Magi, and the Brahmins, and, like many of the Christian Fathers, he believed that Plato stood indebted to the Hebrew as well as to the Egyptian theology for much of his wisdom. He was pressed by the same great difficulty which weighed upon Plotinus. How could the immutable One create the Manifold without self-degradation? He solved it in a manner substantially the same. His answer is—by means of a hypostatic emanation. He posits in the Divine Nature three principles in a descending scale. His order of existence is as follows:— I. _God_, the Absolute. II. _The Demiurge_; he is the Artificer, in a sense, the imitator of the former. He contemplates matter, his eye ordains and upholds it, yet he is himself separate from it, since matter contains a concupiscent principle,—is fluctuating, and philosophically non-existent. The Demiurge is the ἄρχὴ γενέσεως, and good; for goodness is the original principle of Being. The second Hypostasis, engaged in the contemplation of matter, does not attain the serene self-contemplation of the First. III. _Substance_ or Essence, of a twofold character, corresponding to the two former. The Universe is a copy of this third Principle. This not very intelligible theory, which of course increases instead of lessening the perplexity in which the Platonists were involved, though differing in detail from that of Plotinus, proceeds on the same principle;—the expedient, namely, of appending to the One certain subordinate hypostases to fill the gap between it and the Manifold. (See, on his opinions, _Euseb. Præp. Evang._ lib. viii. p. 411 (ed. Viger); lib. xi. c. 18, p. 537; capp. 21, 22, and lib. xv. c. 17.) Note to page 81.