105
 

...for the Platonist and the Neoplatonist alike that cause which is revered above all others is that ultimate, rational benefit for the purpose or sake of which a thing has been fashioned by God and his divine intellect. Now, it is in this way, too, that Plato imitates God, for his dialogues, like the cosmos, have a single end, i.e. the Good, and ?for the sake of this they have been created? (Anon. Proleg. 21.20-25). The immediate consequence of this for the exegesis of Plato?s dialogues is that the most important critical question that can be asked is that which concerns the end which a dialogue is designed to serve, about the Good which it has been created to bring us.
 

106
 

For the Platonists, however, there was a part of the soul which actually participated in the divine, and when this received its full illumination, it seems that it did have the power to do something like what the Demiurge had done when he fashioned the cosmos. In this matter, the Neoplatonists may perhaps be thought of as reformulating, in their own special terms, a?belief of some antiquity?that of the divine inspiration of the poet.
 

For Plato, too, in several of his dialogues, had attempted to sketch what we should call a theory of the psychology of literary creativity. In these a good deal of attention was paid to an analysis of the psychic faculties brought into play in literary creation.
 

The Neoplatonists, too, evolved a theory of the Poet...
 

...Plato?s dialogues were thought to portray a much higher level of reality than that found in the poets, in general. On the other, Plato?s dialogues, surprisingly, were deemed to fall short of poetry such as we find, in much of Homer. In Proclus? treatment of the problem of Plato and the poets these two perspectives coexist...
 

107
 

The Neoplatonists? chief answer, i.e. Plato?s desire to assimilate himself to God ...not superior to the poets; they create with mania, he with logos.
 

...Proclus ...three states (hexeis) of the soul and of the three modes of poetic composition which are the product of each. The belief that Plato posited three psychic states and a corresponding number of species of poetic composition, and that these same divisions were already explicitly in evidence in Homer...
 

The first, the ?best and most perfect? ?life? (zoe) of the soul, is that in which union with the divine is achieved; it is a state in which the soul ?transcends its own intellect? (nous) (177.15-23). The analogous form of poetry (178.10-179.3), the entheastic (cf. 179.3), ?places the soul in the very causes of reality, bringing, by virtue of an indescribable union, that which is filled into identity with what fills, etc.? i.e. it annihilates those oppositions in terms of which intellect (nous) necessarily perceives reality.
 

108

The intermediate state of soul (177.23-178.2), ?second in dignity and power,? is that of intellect and scientific understanding (nous and episteme); a ?reversion? from the ?god-filled life? of the soul, it ?unfolds the multiplicity of logoi and contemplates the multiform transformation of the ideas.? Its species of poetry (179.3-15) ?knows the being of reality? (rather than experiencing it directly by union) and ?delights in contemplating noble acts and words.? All of this it expresses in poetic form, creating the kind of poems which are valued by the wise for their good counsel...
 

19 There is a curious conflation of two faculties, nous and episteme, usually kept distinct in Neoplatonic thought. The former term, nous, customarily denotes that part of the human mind which perceives the object of its contemplation intuitively, all at once, without step-by-step analysis. It is the latter activity which is regularly associated with episteme. Proclus clearly wishes to curtail a four-part analysis of mental activity in order to accommodate it to his tripartite scheme of poetic faculties.
 

Lowest of all is that state (178.2-5) in which the soul is filled with mere sensuous ?images and perceptions.? Its corresponding species of poetry (179.15-32) is ?intermingled with opinions and images, is filled with mere copying (mimesis), and is, and is said (by Plato in Rep. X), to be nothing but representational (mimetike).? ...sub-species, two in number: the one (to eikastikon), aims at a representation of reality as it exists objectively; the other (to phantastikon), at a representation of phenomenal reality as it appears to the viewer.
 

21 ... (mania). Proclus clearly believed that the inspired unification of the philosopher with the One was a species of madness to be revered.
 

109

...Proclus... ?Plato himself often instructs us through the medium of images on divine matters in the way of the mysteries, and no shamefulness nor suggestion of disorder nor turbulent and material semblances find their way into his myths. Rather, his thoughts are hidden, undefiled; and placed before them, like visible statues made in the likeness of things within them, are likenesses of his secret teaching.?