Page:Three Books of Occult Philosophy (De Occulta Philosophia) (1651).djvu/549

 declare him to have done in the deserts of Thracia. So we read that Epimenides of Crete because learned by a very long sleep, for they say that he slept fifty years, i.e. to have lay hid so long; Pythagoras also in like manner to have layen hid ten years, and Heraclitus, and Democritus for the same cause were delighted with solitariness. For by how much the more we have the animal and the humane life, by so much the more we live like angels, and God, to which being conjoyned, and brought into a better condition, we have power over all things, ruling over all. Now how our mind is to be separated from an animal life, and from all multitude, and to be erected, untill it ascend to that very one, good, true, and perfect, through each degree of things knowable, and knowledges, Proclus teacheth in his Commentaries upon Alcibiades, shewing how that first sensible things are to be shunned, that we may pass to an incorporeal essence, where we must exceed the order of souls yet multiplied by divers rules, habitudes, and various proportions, many bonds, and a manifold variety of forces, and to strive after an intellect, and intelligible kingdome, and to contemplate how far better these are then souls. Moreover we must bear an intellectual multitude, although united, and individuall, and come to the superintellectual and essential unity, absolute from all multitude, and the very fountain of good, and truth. In like manner we must avoid all knowledge that doth any ways distract, and deceive, that we may obtain the most simple truth. The multitude therefore of affections, senses, imaginations, and opinions is to be left, which in it self is as different, as some things are contrary to others in any subject; and we must ascend to sciences, in which although there be a various multitude, yet there is no contrariety. For all are knit one to the other, and do serve one the other, under one the other, untill they come to one, presupposed by all, and supposing none beyond it; to which all the rest may be referred: yet this is not the highest top of knowledges, but above it is a pure intellect. Therefore all composition, division,