Note 149.3 — Chapter V · THE PERIOD AFTER ALEXANDER
Reading edition
Such theosophy had a natural affinity with magic; and magic, always a power in an age of intellectual decay, begins to be most powerful in this latest age of Hellenism. It is a just reproach that Augustine brings against Porphyry, the most notable of the Neoplatonists that he ‘wavered between philosophy and a sacrilegious curiosity,’ that is, a vicious interest in the black art.149.3