“With locks in waves of gold that ebb and flow On ivory neck, in robes more white than snow, Truth steadfastly before thee holds a glass, Indent with gems, where shineth all that was, That is, or shall be. Here, ere aught was wrought, Thou knew all that thy pow’r with time forth brought, And more, things numberless which thou couldst make, That actually shall never being take: Here, thou behold’st thyself, and, strange, dost prove At once the beauty, lover, and the love.” (ll. 56–66.) Platonic metaphysics are also present in Drummond’s account of the essential unity persisting throughout the triplicity of Persons. Plotinus had held that The One caused the mind or intellect, and that in turn caused universal soul. The order, however, is not one of time sequence, but merely a logical order of causation. In this series of causation there is no idea of a production as an act going out of itself and forming another; each producing cause remains in its own centre; throughout the series runs one cause or manifestation of life. His favorite figures by which he explains this idea are, first, that of an overflowing spring which gives rise to a second and this to a third; and, second, that of a sun with a central source of light with its spreading rays. (“Enneads,” V. ii. 1, 2.) Thus intellect is an irradiation of The One and soul is an irradiation of intellect. (“Enneads,” V. i. 6.) Drummond, holding to the idea of the self-sufficiency of God as expressed in Plotinus, a state in which God is alone by Himself and not in want of the things that proceed from Him (“Enneads,” VI. vii. 40), is thus able to unfold the mystery of the One in Three: “Ineffable, all-powrfull God, all free, Thou only liv’st, and each thing lives by thee; No joy, no, nor perfection to thee came By the contriving of this world’s great frame; · · · · · world nought to thee supplied, All in thyself thyself thou satisfied. Of good no slender shadow doth appear, No age-worn track, in thee which shin’d not clear; Perfections sum, prime cause of every cause, Midst, end, beginning, where all good doth pause. Hence of thy substance, differing in nought, Thou in eternity, thy Son forth brought, The only birth of thy unchanging mind, Thine image, pattern-like that ever shin’d, Light out of light, begotton not by will, But nature, all and that same essence still Which thou thyself.... · · · · ·