According to Plotinus, there is also another gradation of the virtues besides these, viz, the paradigmatic. For, as our eye, when it is first illuminated by the solar light, is different from that which illuminates, as being illuminated, but afterwards is in a certain respect united and conjoined with it, and becomes, as it were, solar-form; so also our soul at first indeed is illuminated by intellect, and energizes according to the theoretic virtues, but afterwards becomes, as it were, that which is illuminated, and energizes uniformly according to the paradigmatic virtues. And it is the business indeed of philosophy to make us intellect; but of theurgy to unite us to intelligibles, so that we may energize paradigmatically. And as when possessing the physical virtues, we know mundane bodies (for the subjects to virtues of this kind are bodies); so from possessing the ethical virtues, we know the fate of the Universe, because fate is conversant with irrational lives. For the rational soul is not under fate; and the ethical virtues are irrational, because they pertain to the irrational part. According to the political virtues we know mundane affairs, and according to the cathartic supermundane; but as possessing the theoretic we know intellectual, and from the paradigmatic intelligible natures. Temperance also pertains to the ethical virtues; justice to the political, on account of compacts; fortitude to the cathartic, through not verging to matter; and prudence to the theoretic. Observe too, that Plato in the Phædo calls the physical virtues servile, because they may subsist in servile souls; but he calls the ethical σκιογραφιαι _adumbrations_, because their possessors only know _that_ the energies of such virtues are right, but do not know _why_ they are so. It is well observed too here, by Olympiodorus, that Plato calls the cathartic and theoretic virtues, those which are in reality true virtues. He also separates them in another way, viz. that the political are not telestic, i. e. do not pertain to mystic ceremonies, but that the cathartic and theoretic are telestic. Hence, Olympiodorus adds, the cathartic virtues are denominated from the purification which is used in the mysteries; but the theoretic from perceiving things divine. On this account he accords with the Orphic verses, that The soul that uninitiated dies, Plung’d in the blackest mire in Hades lies. For initiation is the divinely-inspired energy of the virtues. Olympiodorus also further observes, that by the thyrsus-bearers, Plato means those that energize according to the political virtues, but by the Bacchuses those that exercise the cathartic virtues. For we are bound in matter as Titans, through the great partibility of our nature; but we rise from the dark mire as Bacchuses. Hence we become more prophetic at the time of death: and Bacchus is the inspective guardian of death, because he is likewise of every thing pertaining to the Bacchic sacred rites.