Why I enjoy studying philosophy ...

From The Enneads by Plotinus

(Ennead I, Tracate 6: Beauty)

I don't want to pretend to sound like I understand all of this, but just
reading it, it astounds me - this is so Christian. It's crazy.
All this points to God, no matter how dimly.

"Let us flee then to the beloved Fatherland": this is the soundest
counsel. But what is this flight? How are we to gain the open sea? For
Odysseus is surely a parable to us when he commands the flight from
the sorceries of Circe or Calypso- not content to linger for all the
pleasure offered to his eyes and all the delight of sense filling
his days.
    The Fatherland to us is There whence we have come,
and There is The Father.
    What then is our course, what the manner of our flight? This is
not a journey for the feet; the feet bring us only from land to
land; nor need you think of coach or ship to carry you away; all
this order of things you must set aside and refuse to see: you must
close the eyes and call instead upon another vision which is to be
waked within you, a vision, the birth-right of all, which few turn
to use.
    9. And this inner vision, what is its operation?
    Newly awakened it is all too feeble to bear the ultimate
splendour. Therefore the Soul must be trained- to the habit of
remarking, first, all noble pursuits, then the works of beauty
produced not by the labour of the arts but by the virtue of men
known for their goodness: lastly, you must search the souls of those
that have shaped these beautiful forms.
    But how are you to see into a virtuous soul and know its
loveliness?
    Withdraw into yourself and look. And if you do not find yourself
beautiful yet, act as does the creator of a statue that is to be
made beautiful: he cuts away here, he smoothes there, he makes this
line lighter, this other purer, until a lovely face has grown upon his
work. So do you also: cut away all that is excessive, straighten all
that is crooked, bring light to all that is overcast, labour to make
all one glow of beauty and never cease chiselling your statue, until
there shall shine out on you from it the godlike splendour of
virtue, until you shall see the perfect goodness surely established in
the stainless shrine.
    When you know that you have become this perfect work, when you are
self-gathered in the purity of your being, nothing now remaining
that can shatter that inner unity, nothing from without clinging to
the authentic man, when you find yourself wholly true to your
essential nature, wholly that only veritable Light which is not
measured by space, not narrowed to any circumscribed form nor again
diffused as a thing void of term, but ever unmeasurable as something
greater than all measure and more than all quantity- when you perceive
that you have grown to this, you are now become very vision: now
call up all your confidence, strike forward yet a step- you need a
guide no longer- strain, and see.
    This is the only eye that sees the mighty Beauty. If the eye
that adventures the vision be dimmed by vice, impure, or weak, and
unable in its cowardly blenching to see the uttermost brightness, then
it sees nothing even though another point to what lies plain to
sight before it. To any vision must be brought an eye adapted to
what is to be seen, and having some likeness to it. Never did eye
see the sun unless it had first become sunlike, and never can the soul
have vision of the First Beauty unless itself be beautiful.
    Therefore, first let each become godlike and each beautiful who
cares to see God and Beauty. So, mounting, the Soul will come first to
the Intellectual-Principle and survey all the beautiful Ideas in the
Supreme and will avow that this is Beauty, that the Ideas are
Beauty. For by their efficacy comes all Beauty else, but the offspring
and essence of the Intellectual-Being. What is beyond the
Intellectual-Principle we affirm to be the nature of Good radiating
Beauty before it. So that, treating the Intellectual-Kosmos as one,
the first is the Beautiful: if we make distinction there, the Realm of
Ideas constitutes the Beauty of the Intellectual Sphere; and The Good,
which lies beyond, is the Fountain at once and Principle of Beauty:
the Primal Good and the Primal Beauty have the one dwelling-place and,
thus, always, Beauty's seat is There.