The soul’s final aim in its flight from evil Plotinus defines in Plato’s words: it is likeness to God.[258] That is the sum of all virtue. But the master distinguishes grades and degrees of virtue in practice. There are the social virtues of wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice, which serve to regulate the passions and help man to form right opinions. At this stage these cardinal virtues are related solely to external objects, and serve primarily to better man in his mundane activities. Next come those virtues which purify the soul from the pollution of the body, the activities which have nothing to do with the body but belong wholly to the soul; they are concerned with thought and reason. But in the highest range the virtues of the lower stages are no longer related to external objects, but have to do with the Intelligence (Νοῦς) alone. This is the contemplative life, man’s highest activity, in which he becomes himself divine.[259] Yet the Neoplatonist held that there is a still higher stage. When man’s soul has mounted upward to Intelligence and lives the contemplative life, the space between Intelligence and God is yet unbridged. This gulf can only be crossed when the soul in ecstasy, forgetful of all thought and of self, rises to complete knowledge and union with the One.[260] This supreme privilege, according to Porphyry, was vouchsafed his master four times in the years he was his pupil; and once he too had seen the Beatific Vision.[261] It is evident that Neoplatonism, the last stage of Greek philosophy, is no isolated or strange phenomenon. On its metaphysical side it is the consummation and final synthesis of the whole course of Greek thought from the sixth century to its own day; likewise in ethics it combined the views of its chief predecessors as its leaders understood them; and finally in the doctrine of the soul’s union with God it only carried the mystical tendencies of previous centuries to their natural conclusion. If time allowed, we might consider the way in which the Neoplatonists reconciled their theology with the polytheism and demonology of popular belief, but that would lead us too far; indeed it would take us away from our own proper subject and from the main interest of the great leaders of this school. They were most concerned with finding out and showing men the true path to the soul’s peace and happiness, and we are chiefly interested in the history of their thought on this high theme. They found their object not in the exercise of the reason or the will alone, but in mysticism. FOOTNOTES: [225] _De vita beata_, 17. [226] _Diss._, I, 1; II, 5, 13; and often. [227] Stob. _Ecl._ I, 1, 12 = SVF, I, 537. [228] Diog. Laërt. VII, 149 = SVF, I, 175. [229] Aetius, I, 27, 5 = SVF, I, 176; II, 974 ff. [230] _Gnomol._ Stobaei 31 Schenkl; cf. _Diss._ 4, 1 (_On Freedom_) entire.