An Observation

[sdi]

Thomas Taylor is the kind of person whose footnotes have footnotes.

Comments

[sdi]

I sympathize!

One of the few pieces of good advice I was given during my fundamentalist upbringing was, "Your job is not to get from A to Z. Your job is to get from C to D." That is to say, take it one step at a time.

Taylor himself says well in preface, too,

I have before observed, that this little work was composed by its author with a view of benefiting a middle class of mankind, whose souls are neither incurable, nor yet capable of ascending through philosophy to the summit of human attainments: but in order to understand this distinction properly, it is necessary to inform the reader, that human souls may be distributed into three ranks; into such as live a life pure and impassive when compared with the multitude; into such as are neither wholly pure nor yet perfectly impure; and into such as are profoundly impure. Souls of the first class, which are consequently the fewest in number, may be called divine souls, heroes and demigods, and when invested with a terrene body, form such men as Pythagoras, Plato, Plotinus, Jamblichus, Proclus, &c., were of old: souls of this kind, not only descend into mortality in consequence of that necessity by which all human souls are at times drawn down to the earth, but for the benevolent purpose of benefiting such as are of an inferior class; they likewise easily recover a remembrance of their pristine state, and, in consequence of this, descend no farther than to the earth. But souls of the middle class, for whom the book of Sallust is designed, in consequence of becoming vitiated and defiled, though not in an incurable degree, are incapable of acquiring in the present life philosophic perfection and purity, and are with great difficulty, and even scarcely able to ascend, after long periods, to the beatific vision of the intelligible world. But souls of the third class, are such as, from their profound impurity, and from having drank immoderately deep of oblivion, may be considered as abiding perpetually in life, as in the dark regions of Tartarus, from which, through having lost all freedom of the will, they can never emerge.

If we are not eminently capable, at least neither are we so depraved as to not try!