_Enn._ iii. lib. v. capp. 2 & 7. There the gardens of Jove, and Porus, with his plenty, are said to be allegorical representations of the intellectual food of a soul nourished and delighted by the truths of Reason. Poverty, again, with its sense of need, is the source of intellectual desire. Comp. Plato, _Symp._ p. 429 (_Bekk_). Footnote 20: See Note 2, p. 82. Footnote 21: _Enn._ i. lib. 3, c. 1. CHAPTER III. Lume è lassù che visibile face Lo creatore a quella creatura Che solo in lui vedere ha la sua pace.[22] DANTE. MRS. ATHERTON. I confess I cannot understand what that state of mind can be which Plotinus calls ecstasy in the letter you read us last night, and about which most of your mystical fraternity talk so mysteriously. KATE. I think I shall have myself mesmerised some day to form an idea. WILLOUGHBY. I suppose the mystic, by remaining for many hours (enfeebled, perhaps, by fast and vigil), absolutely motionless, ceasing to think of anything—except that he _thinks_ he is successful in thinking of nothing, and staring pertinaciously at vacancy, throws himself at last into a kind of trance. In this state he may perceive, even when the eyes are closed, some luminous appearance, perhaps the result of pressure on the optic nerve—I am not anatomist enough to explain; and if his mind be strongly imaginative, or labouring with the ground-swell of recent excitement, this light may shape itself into archetype, dæmon, or what not. In any case, the more distinct the object seen, the more manifestly is it the projection of his own mind—a Brocken-phantom, the enlarged shadow of himself moving on some shifting tapestry of mist. KATE. Like the woodman described by Coleridge as beholding with such awe an appearance of the kind, when he Sees full before him gliding without tread An image with a glory round its head, This shade he worships for its golden hues, And _makes_ (not knowing) that which he pursues. ATHERTON. Such has been the god of many a mystic. He will soar above means, experience, history, external revelation, and ends by mistaking a hazy reflex of his own image for Deity. GOWER. But we must not forget that, according to Plotinus, all sense of personality is lost during ecstasy, and he would regard any light or form whatever (presented to what one may call his cerebral vision) as a sign that the trance was yet incomplete. He yearns to escape from everything that can be distinguished, bounded, or depicted, into the illimitable inane.