“During the long period of his residence at Rome, Plotinus enjoyed an estimation almost approaching to a belief in his superhuman wisdom and sanctity. His ascetic virtue, and the mysterious transcendentalism of his conversation, which made him the Coleridge of the day, seems to have carried away the minds of his associates, and raised them to a state of imaginative exaltation. He was regarded as a sort of prophet, divine himself, and capable of elevating his disciples to a participation in his divinity.... These coincidences or collusions [his alleged miracles] show how sacred a character had attached to Plotinus. And we see the same evidenced in his social influence. Men and women of the highest rank crowded round him, and his house was filled with young persons of both sexes whom their parents when dying had committed to his care. Rogatian, a senator and prætor-elect, gave up his wealth and dignities, and lived as the humble bedesman of his friends, devoting himself to ascetic and contemplative philosophy. His self-denial obtained for him the approbation of Plotinus, who held him up as a pattern of philosophy; and he gained the more solid advantage of a perfect cure from the worst kind of rheumatic gout. The influence of Plotinus extended to the imperial throne itself. The weak-minded Gallienus, and his Empress Salonina, were so completely guided by the philosopher, that he had actually obtained permission to convert a ruined City of Campania into a _Platonopolis_, in which the laws of Plato’s _Republic_ were to be tested by a practical experiment; and the philosopher had promised to retire thither accompanied by his chief friends.” The “practical common sense” (which usually may be interpreted to mean cynical indifferentism), of the statesmen and politicians of the day interposed to prevent this attempt at a realisation of Plato’s great ideal; and, considering the prematurity of such ideas in the then condition of the world--and, it must be added, the extravagance of some of them--we can, perhaps, hardly regret that his “Republic” was never instituted. As to the essence and spirit of the teaching of Plotinus,