On Suicide

Of Plotinus, who for the sublimity of his genius and the profundity of his conceptions has been no less justly than unanimously dignified by his followers with the appellation of the great, I have elsewhere given the life from Porphyry, who of all his disciples was the most learned and the best.

Genius sublime! whilst bound in mortal ties, Thy soul had frequent commerce with the skies, And oft you loos'ned the lethargic folds By which th' indignant mind dark matter holds. What depth of thought, what energy is thine! What rays of intellect in ev'ry line! The more we fathom thy exalted mind, A stronger light, a greater depth we find.

Since all men from their birth employ sense prior to intellect, and are necessarily first conversant with sensibles, some proceeding no further, pass through life, considering these as the first and last of things, and apprehending that whatever is painful among these is evil, and whatever is pleasant, is good; thus thinking it sufficient to pursue the one and avoid the other.

But others are in a small degree elevated from things subordinate, the more excellent part of the soul recalling them from pleasure to a more worthy pursuit. As they are, however, unable to look on high, and not possessing anything else in which they can find repose, they betake themselves, together with the name of virtue, to actions and the election of things of an inferior nature, from which they at first endeavoured to raise themselves, though in vain.

In the third class is the race of divine men, who, through a more excellent power, and with piercing eyes, acutely perceive supernal light, to the vision of which they raise themselves above the clouds and darkness, as it were, of this lower world, and there abiding, despise everything in these regions of sense; being no otherwise delighted with the place which is truly and properly their own, than he who, after many wanderings, is at length restored to his lawful and native land.