Theosophical Review (Volume 18) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: REVIEWS. Porphyry To Marcella. Translated by Alice Zimmern. [London: Redway. i896. Price 35. 6d.' This is one of the most pleasing books that fortune has lately brought into onr hands. Tastefully and artistically printed and bound, s'mpathetically and daintily translated, it is a treatise that every theo- sophical student should hasten to place on his shelves. If we wish to learn the ethical principles of that great theology and theosophy which was handed on by Orpheus, Pythagoras and Plato to that brilliant school of thinkers which surrounded the declining years of Rome with unfading lustre?if we would understand what true philosophy can produce at its best, then we should turn to the pages of Porphyry, who above all others was attracted to that school by the ethical side of its teachings. At the age of seventy (302 A.d.), Porphyry married a lady called Marcella; she was already a widow with seven children, and the alliance was essentially " platonic." Porphyry married Marcella to educate her and train up her children in that theosophy which he loved better than life. It was to comfort her and console her during his absence on a long journey, that he penned this famous " Letter." One solitary and imperfect MS. of Porphyry's wise words had survived the oblivion of the centuries, and was discovered in the Ambrosian Library at Milan in i8i6; and though several texts have been published, until the present excellent translation of Miss Zimmern no version has ever been given to the English-reading world. In fact, of versions, there seems to be only an Italian translation in existence. Why so charming and high-minded a treatise should have been left all these years in such obscurity is hard to imagine; but Porphyry has never been a favourite because of his fifteen books Contra...