Neoplatonic ethics recognizes the social importance and value of the so-called cardinal virtues (justice, prudence, temperance, and courage), but the virtues’ main function lies in purifying and preparing us for a much more momentous individual relationship, that with divine Consciousness and, ultimately, the first principle itself. Necessarily, then, the moral precepts of the Neoplatonists concern the individual person, the goal being not the mundane fulfillment of life within the bounds of what is humanly possible, but nothing less than eudaimonia in its most expansive sense, deification. Unsurprisingly, the route to salvation turned out to be the philosophic life, a sincere and arduous effort of the mind to return to the One and forever abrogate any concerns for the body. It was on this basis that the Neoplatonists would most vehemently protest against the latter-day Christian dogma that human salvation has already been accomplished vicariously through the life and death of a man revered as the son of god.