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 LIBRARY RAP’
Brigham Young University » UNIVERS: + 4
UTAH

PHILOSOPHY LIBRARY
OBERT C. AND GRACE A. TANNER
FOUNDATION
NEOPLATONISM
 CHIELF* ANCIENT -PHILOSOPAIES.

© NEOPLATONISM

BY

eo GeeRiGG. -D.D.
CHRIST CHURCH, OXFORD.

PUBLISHED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE GENERAL

LITERATURE COMMITTEE,

LONDON:
SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE,
NORTHUMBERLAND AVENUE, W.C. ; 43, QUEEN VICTORIA STREET, HaGe

BRIGHTON: 129, Nortu STREET.

New York: E. & J. B.YOUNG & CO.
1895,
 Ricuarp Cray & Sons, LiMiTED,
Lonpon & BuNGAY.

THE
BRIGHA HOE ee
PROVO, UTAN VERSITY
 CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

I. STOICISM oe: ce ey 9
Il. THE PYTHAGOREANS a eae
Ill. THE PLATONISTS, ATTICUS, ETC. eb
IV. PLATONISTS, NIGRINUS, DION CHRYSOS-
TOMUS re si Far care
V. PLUTARCH ei, 13: ais neared
Pie SORESUS 4. ote ru; tee et
Vil. THE NEOPLATONIC TRINITY ... Wiel ro
Vl. ‘ HELLENISM ” ae oe Pepe
IX. THE GNOSTICS AND APOLOGISTS ere
X. THE ALEXANDRINES ee Ee ea A
XI. PLOTINUS sie ss ict
XII. THE WORLD OF SENSE—I. ... me eye BORE
XIII. THE WORLD OF SENSE—II. ... ae RON
XIV. THE INTELLIGIBLE WORLD ... rite tok
XV. DOCTRINE OF GOD ae jo: eee
XVI. GOD, HIS NATURE AND OPERATIONS ... 241
‘XVII. MAN IN NATURE ... a Se ORt
XVIII. THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL sy ea
Vill CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

XIX. ETHICS 266

XX. ON BEAUTY 473
XXI. VISION: 45% ae te er 219
XXII. PORPHYRY 292
XXIII. IAMBLICHUS AND THE MEN OF JULIAN 202
XXIV. THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS SET
XXYV. LATER INFLUENCE OF PLATONISM ON
THE CHURCH 334
 NEOPLATONISM

I
STOICISM

IN this little volume it 1s proposed to run over the

history of the later Platonism, a large and intricate
subject. But, narrow as are our limits, it is not possible
to enter fairly upon the task without a brief review of
Stoicism. This school of thought, the Porch, as it is
often called, from the Painted Porch at Athens where
its first professors lectured, was founded in the third
century before Christ, by Zeno, Cleanthes and Chry-
sippus, and was predominant in Rome from the time
of Nero to that of Marcus Aurelius. It affected
Platonism partly by direct influence, but still more by
ra way of re-action.
In the days of Epes under the Flavian
emperors, the only schools, that could be regarded
as serious rivals of Stoicism in the capital, were the
Academics and the Epicureans. Peripatetics, the
disciples of Aristotle, were, he tells us, few and faint-
hearted ;Plato himself was hardly read at all.
10 : NEOPLATONISM

The Epicureans were atomists in science, and _utili-

tarians in morals. They taught that the world was —
made by the fortuitous aggregation of infinitesimally
small particles of matter, and they admitted no standard
of right or wrong but pleasure. They did not deny
the existence of gods; but they held that the gods
were made in exactly the same way as everything else,
and took no part whatever in the government of the
world. They “sat around their nectar,” and “ lived
acareless life.” Hence the Epicureans were commonly —
regarded as atheists. The Academics, degenerate
representatives of the Academy of Plato, were universal —
doubters. They had learned from Plato himself to
distrust the senses, and from the conflict of opinions
to distrust reason. Their maxim was, “Suspend thy ©
judgment,” or, as Pliny expresses it, ‘‘only one thing is
certain, that nothing is certain.”
Epicureanism is not necessarily coarse. Men may
be utilitarians without being “swine,” in spite of
Horace. But it is necessarily selfish and relative.
Even of its modern social form—the form given to it —
by Mr. J.S. Mill—this is true. Men differ in their ideas
of what is agreeable, and each is supreme judge in
his own case. Hence, though the pursuit of pleasure
may establish a coterie, it cannot build a society or
organize a state.
It is at this point that Epictetus attacks Epicurus.
He charges him with denying the great moral truth of
‘the natural brotherhood of man with man.” But
now, he proceeds, see what happens ! These audacious
thinkers, who would destroy the obvious and whole-
 STOICISM If

some facts of human nature, are compelled by that

very nature to assert the very facts which they deny.
“What does Epicurus say? ‘Do not be mocked,
good people. There is no natural brotherhood
between one reasonable being and another, believe
me. Those who tell you this are deluding you.’ Well,
but what does it matter to you? Let us be deluded.
~ Will you be any the worse off, if the rest of the world
believes that there is a natural brotherhood, and that
they ought zealously to cherish this faith? Nay, it
will be far better and safer for you. Good sir, why
trouble your head about us? Why lhe awake for our
sake? Why hght your lamp, and get up early, and
_ write books, lest we should be deluded into thinking
that the gods care for men, or lest we should imagine
that the Good is something else, and not pleasure? If
that be so, go to bed and sleep, live like the worm
whose equal you make yourself; eat, drink, and snore.
Why should you care what others think about these
things? For what bond is there between us and
you?”
Epicurus takes pains to make people follow pleasure.
Surely, says Epictetus, it is Nature herself who thus
convicts him out of his own mouth.
With the same weapon the Stoic smites the
apostles of doubt. ‘If I were the slave of an
_ Academic, I would plague him finely, though I were
to be flogged for it every day of my life. ‘ Bring me
oil, boy,’ he would say, ‘for the bath.’ I would take
fish-sauce, and pour it over him. ‘What is this?’ he
would cry. ‘By my fortune,’ I would answer, ‘my
T2 : NEOPLATONISM

senses tell me that it is oil.’ Or again, ‘ Boy, give me

my barley-water.’ I would bring him a bason full of |
brine. ‘Did I not call for barley-water?’ ‘Yes, sir,
this is barley-water.’ ‘Is not this brine, sirrah ?’
‘Why not barley-water?’ ‘Take it and smell it,’
cries he in a fury, ‘take it and taste it.’ ‘And what,
sir, is the good of that, if our senses deceive us ?’
O, if I had three or four fellow-slaves of the same
mind as myself, I would make him hang himseif or
recant.”
It is the same argument that “‘coxcombs” urged
with a grin against the idealist Berkeley, and no doubt
a man may question the existence of an objective
cause of sensation without denying the reality of the
sensations themselves. But these lively passages show
very clearly the position taken up by Stoicism against
its two most formidable opponents. The Stoic agreed
with the Epicurean, that sense and reflection upon the
data of sense are the two sources of all that we can be
said to know. As against the Academic, he insisted
that both can be trusted, if we have learned to use
them aright. As against the Epicurean, he maintained
that reflection on the order of nature teaches us that
there is a God; that reflection on the mind of man
teaches us that it contains a faculty, the reason or con-
science, which ought to bear rule; that reflection on life
shows that we are social beings, owing certain duties
to.one another. The sum of these reflections is what
the Stoic meant by nature. When he enunciated his
great maxim, “ Live according to Nature,” he was not
thinking of the “state of nature’ of the French philoso-
 STOICISM ee)

phe, still less of the animal instincts which we some-

times call natural. By Nature he intended that which is
best in man. “ Follow Nature,” means, “ take Reason
for thy guide.”
The Roman Stoics cared little for ioe: dieing
in this probably from their brethren in Greece.
Epictetus impressed upon his disciples hardly anything
beyond the necessity of strict moral discipline.
Logic was useful in the last stage to “ clear the mind of
cant,” to correct false impressions, and read correctly
the lesson taught by experience; yet, even for this
limited purpose, its usefulness was dubious. Simple
men, he thought, were better without intellectual
accomplishments, which sometimes puzzled them, and
sometimes puffed them up. Epictetus is particularly
emphatic in his disparagement of book-learning. “It
is in the bath, in bed, above all in fever and sick-
ness, that a man shows whether he is a philosopher
or not.” He has no patience with the man who
complains that he has no time to read. Books are
only a means to tranquillity, and where is the tranquil-
lity, if one is to fret and fume every time he is called
away from his books? Still less can he tolerate the
man who boasts that he knows his Chrysippus. ‘‘ Do
you not know that the whole volume is worth but half-
a-crown? And he who can explain it all is worth no
more than the volume.” In the same spirit Marcus
writes, “Pitch away your books, and be no more
distracted.” “Look within.” So too Musonius
Rufus. ‘‘ Those who are to be true philosophers,” he
says, “do not need many words, nor should young
 14 NEOPLATONISM

men attempt to learn this welter of theorems on which

the sophist plumes himself. In truth, this kind of
thing is enough to wear a man’s life out. What is
most necessary and useful a farmer can learn, for after
all he is not always at work.”
These last words remind us of Tyndale’s saying,
that “if God spared his life, he would cause a boy that
driveth the plough to know more of the Scriptures
than great doctors.” Erasmus again, in the preface
to his Paraphrases, spoke in a similar strain of the
Bible and its contents. ‘I long that the husbandman
should sing portions of them to himself as he follows
the plough ; that the weaver should hum them to the
tune of his shuttle ;that the voyager should beguile
with these stories the tedium of his journey.”
Stoic, Humanist, and Reformer were all anxious to
simplify dogma. ‘The resemblance between Tyndale
and the Roman Stoic is very close. Both thought
that the necessary beliefs are few, and attainable by
the simplest man, without any help from instruction or
authority.
It may be that the Roman Stoics did not wholly
believe their own creed, and this latitudinarianism
enables them to smooth off many of its angles, and use
language which, in their mouths, could have no real
meaning. Nevertheless the creed is there, though
hundreds have read Epictetus and Marcus without
perceiving it.
The Stoic theory of knowledge was very similar to
that of Locke. What we know is, firstly, a constant
stream of sensations, which is poured into us from
 \

STOICISM | 15

without ; secondly, those general conceptions which

we form from sensations, such as a man, a cow;
thirdly, propositions or judgments, which the mind
infers from these conceptions. Sensations are the
whole raw material of thought: there is nothing in the
~ mind which does not come into it through the inlet of
the senses. All the mind contributes is the power of
remembering, grouping, distinguishing. The mind,
they said, is ‘‘Itke a sheet of paper that works.” Sense
writes letters upon it, and it shakes these letters
together into syllables, words, and sentences. Like the
stomach, it receives food and digests it, but, in the
Stoic view, contributes nothing of its own.
Nevertheless the Stoic, again lke Locke, was a
realist. He did not doubt the truth of his senses,
_ but believed ‘‘ that it is the actual receiving of ideas
from without, that gives us notice of the existence of
other things, and makes us know that something doth
exist at that time without us, which causes that idea in
us, though perhaps we neither know nor consider
how it does it.” But he carried his principle further
than Locke, and maintained that the objects of which
we have cognizance by sense are the only real exist-
ences ; that nothing can be said to be unless it is
apparent to sense.
~The two great questions of ancient, and indeed of
all philosophy, are What is that which is? and What
is that faculty (criterion) by which we know that it is?
Here, accordingly, the Platonist joined issue with
the Stoic. The Platonist insisted that sense knows
nothing but sensations, and can tell us nothing what-
16 NEOPLATONISM

ever about the object that produces the sensations,

just as the sight of the bright picture on the screen
tells us nothing about the magic lantern behind the
screen. ‘It is most wonderful,” says Plotinus, “that
the Stoics, who prove everything by sense, should
assert that that is, which sense has no power to grasp.”
In fact, the Stoic realism is untenable, unless we are
justified, on the ground of mere experience, in asserting
that everything must have a cause. According to the
Platonist, the word mus¢ introduces a law not of
matter but of mind. Experience cannot guarantee
a universal, We are here on the great dividing line
of thought, where the two main schools part company.
The Stoic compared the mind to a sheet of paper —
“that works,” but did not accurately explain how it
works, whether it does, or does not, bring something
of its own to the work. Upon this all turns.
Still more vehemently did the Platonist object to the
Stoic tenet, that the cause of sensation is that which
really, and therefore that which alone, exists. ‘“‘ They
put in the forefront,” says Plotinus again, ‘‘that which |
has but a hypothetical existence (ro sj Ov; not the
non-existent), as if it were the real and true exist-
ence, and put the last first. The reason is that sense
is their guide, and they rely upon it for the foundation
of their principles, and everything else.” According
to the Platonist the marks of true existence are eternity
and unchangeableness. But the object of sense is for
ever shifting. As you put out your finger to touch it,
it has become something else. Hence the one thing
that exists, and can be known, is mind. All else
 STOICISM 17

exists, only in so far as it “participates” in the true

life of thought. It can be known, only in so far as
it is knowable, that is to say, in so far as it is ordered
and prepared for our knowledge by the indwelling
mind. In itself it is neither Being nor Not-being,
but something that hovers between the two, the pi ov.
It is shapeless and formless, infinite, without qualities
of any kind. We know that it exists in a sense, but
only by “a bastard reasoning.” It must be there, but
we know nothing about it.
Thus to the Platonist the object of knowledge is
mind, to the Stoic it is matter. ‘The Stoic expressed
mind “in terms of matter,’ the Platonist almost,
but not altogether, expressed matter “in terms
of mind.” Spinoza regarded thought and extension
as different modes of one substance, but the Stoic was
an absolute materialist. ‘‘ Whatever acts or is acted
upon,” he said, “‘is a body.” Both Theism and Deism
are excluded by this theory of Being. Accordingly
the Stoic was a Pantheist.
God, the absolute Being, is Himself material. He
is aether, the finest air, or “spirit,” that is “breath,”
but still has extension and shape, and is tangible. His
shape is the sphere, the perfect shape. ‘The Stoics
distinguished in Him an active and a passive, force
and the manifestation of force, zafura naturans and
natura naturata, but both were material. Out of God
at fixed intervals all things are evolved ; into Him, when
7 the cycle is accomplished, all things are absorbed by a
great “conflagration.” He is immanent in the world,
and is to the world what the soul is to the body. “‘Mens
B
18 NEOPLATONISM

agitat molem et magno se corpore miscet.” The mode

of creation or evolution was explained by the Logoi,
or “words,” which are a modification of the Platonic
Idea. The Idea was at first conceived as a pattern or
shape, which the Creator impressed upon matter, as a
seal upon wax. The Word is a force, or principle of
life, a sort of seed (hence the ‘spermatic’ Word),
which fructifies matter and moulds it from within.
God Himself is the Word of words, the sum-total of
all vital forces. This mode of expression was after-
wards adopted by all Platonists, though the heathen
writers use it only in a physical sense. In Philo and
Christian literature, and in a few non-Christian writers.
like Hermes Trismegistus, who show distinct traces of
Christian influence, the Word is used‘as a Divine title,
in a sense very unlike its Stoic meaning.
To the Stoic, in fact, God was Natural Law, and
his other name was Destiny. Thus we read in the -
famous hymn of Cleanthes: “ Lead me, O Zeus, and
thou too, O Destiny, whithersoever ye have appointed
for me to go. For I will follow without hesitation,
And if I refuse I shall become evil, but I shall follow
all the same.” Man is himself a part of the great
world-force, carried along in its all-embracing sweep,
like a water-beetle in a torrent. He may struggle or
he may let himself go, but the result is the same,
except that, in the latter case, he embraces his doom,
and so is at peace. :
The Stoics often use personal language of God.
He is Father, King, our Escort in life. He cares for
His martyr and servant. Epictetus sings the praises
 STOICISM 19

of God: “ For what else can I do, a lame old man ?

If I were a nightingale I would play the part of a
nightingale, if a swan that of aswan. But now I am
a reasonable being. I must sing praises to God.”
But all this is to be understood in the sense of
Cleanthes. Such language, like much that we read
at the present day on the adoration of Nature, merely
testifies to the impossibility of religion, or indeed of
morality, without emotion. But emotion is personal,
and we may say of Epictetus, what Epictetus said of
the Sceptics, that his own words proclaim the truth
which his theory denies. Plotinus said of the Stoics,
that ‘‘ they only brought God in, in order to be in the
fashion.”’ They did not really want Him. When Justin
Martyr set out on the quest after truth, he applied
himself first to a Stoic, ‘‘ but,” says he, ‘‘ when I found
I could learn nothing from him about God (for he
_knew nothing himself, and maintained that this doctrine
was unnecessary), I quitted him and went to another.”’
The religious language of the Stoics is deceptive
again in another way, because by God they often mean
the God within, the intelligence, which is to every
manasa “demon,” or guardian angel. Indeed, they
made no real difference between God and the soul.
The soul was ‘‘a fragment,” ‘‘a bit broken off” God,
a piece of the extended and divisible Deity. Sucha
part would be the same in kind as any other part, and
hence the Stoic maintained that the wise man was in
ho way inferior to Zeus. ‘“* Dion,” they said, “does
as much for God as God for Dion,” Thus worship
becomes egotism.
 20 ‘ NEOPLATONISM

Like God himself, the soul of man in the opinion

of the Stoics was material. Some called it an ex-
halation of the blood. They could hardly hold that
it was in any true sense immortal. One of the signs ;

of the times was the craving for a future life, but the
Pantheist could not satisfy it. Indeed the later
Stoics are more sceptical than their forerunners.
Cleanthes held that all souls lived on till the cyclic
conflagration, when they would be absorbed into the
divine substance, the Heraclitean fire. Chrysippus
confined this limited immortality to the souls of the
wise ; but Epictetus passes the subject over without
a word. Man dies; the pitcher that went so often
to the well is broken. Aurelius doubts, but does not
actually deny. At one time he speaks of the soul as
absorbed at death into the Seminal Word, the World
Spirit ; at another he calls death ‘‘ perhaps an extinc-
tion, perhaps a change of abode.”
It is obvious that in such a system there is no place
for aspiration, or for humility. Another way of ex-
pressing the same defect is to say that Stoicism leaves
no room for Revelation. Locke too felt this difficulty.
He was no Pantheist, but his sensational principles
leave the human reason no other office than that of
verifying the credentials of the divine message. God’s
mind is different from our mind. If we are sure
that He has spoken, we must accept the utterance
as a mystery, though it has no vital relation to the
painful inductions of experience. But the Panthe-
ist made man’s mind a homogeneous sample of ta

God’s mind. There could be no mystery at all.

 STOICISM 21

This to the Platonist was the great offence of

Stoicism.
The disputed. question, whether Stoicism is to be
called a religion, depends therefore on the prior
question, whether there can be a religion without
worship.
Pantheism cannot be hedonic, because it holds the
stern belief in a present God; it cannot be altruistic,
because its God is within. Hence this system, which
seems to attain to an absolute unity, no sooner touches
morality than it splits into two. God is the world ;
but practically the world is against God, because God
is also the I, and the world is against the I.
Hence Stoicism issued in defiance of the world,
or, as they often called it, “the flesh.” We may discern
in it the first Western philosophy of suffering, for its
bent was clearly decided by that purpose. Man must
find happiness, so the argument runs. If so, happi-
ness must be absolutely in his own power. But
pleasure he cannot command ; pain he cannot avoid ;
therefore he must renounce pleasure, and bear pain
without wincing. Externals are neither good nor
evil; happiness and misery depend entirely on our
own will. We can think this if we choose, and, if we
think so, it is so.
‘It is just here that Buddhism joins hands with
Stoicism. One regards the world as real, the other as
unreal ; but both are Pantheistic, and both are systems
of resistance. ‘‘ Whosoever,” said Buddha, ‘shall
adhere unweariedly to this law and discipline, he shall
cross the ocean of life, and make an end of sorrow.”
 22 : NEOPLATONISM

And again: “Rise up! sit up! what advantage is

there in your sleeping? To men ailing, pierced by
the darts of sorrow, what sleep indeed can there be?
Sloth is defilement, to be ever heedless is defilement.
By earnestness and wisdom root out your darts of
sorrow” (Rhys Davids, Buddhism, pp. 79, 132). The
resistance to pain implies the avoidance of pleasure,
which inevitably, and most inevitably in its highest
form of love, leads to pain. ‘This policy of defiance
can only be carried out by withdrawing into the
citadel of self. Hence both systems are strongly
individualistic. ‘‘Be lights unto yourselves,” says
Buddha. ‘ Look within,” says the Stoic. Both were
Pantheists, and Pantheism seems to destroy individu-
ality. Yet both issue in extreme self-assertion. Both
refused to bear the burden of life, and life will not
thus be flouted. But the Buddhist accepted the
punishment of his mistake with the amiable melan-
choly of the Oriental, while the Stoic fought against it
with the defiant self-reliance of the European. The
. difference is seen most clearly in the patience, with
which the Buddhist waited for a Nirvana to be at-
tained only after many lives. The Stoic was always
prepared to make his own Nirvana with his own knife.
‘The door is always open,” says Epictetus again and
again. One of the worst features of Stoicism is not
so much suicide in itself, as the theatrical effects with
which the last great act of defiance was deliberately
surrounded.
The Stoics had no grace, but they taught the manly
virtues of self-reliance, fortitude, justice, purity, truth,
 STOICISM 23

and, in a way, renunciation with splendid emphasis.

But the rift in their system makes itself felt at every
turn. ‘They teach,” said Plutarch, “that man should
live according to Nature. Yet all that we mean
in ordinary speech by Nature, all the play of our
material and social environment, they rank among
things indifferent. And if these external circum-
stances, which in themselves are of no import, turn
against a man, he is justified in killing himself. Surely
Nature is not indifferent, but stupid, if she places
thinking beings in a scene that can in no way
contribute to their felicity, and may lead to their
self-destruction.”
Again, evil in the Stoic theory is according to
Nature. If there were no evil, there would be no
good ; both are necessary to the constitution of the
whole.’ “ Yet,’ remarks the sage of Chaeronea, an-
ticipating a well-known saying of Goethe, “they
‘spend their time in trying to jump off their own
shadow.”
Or again, “ Man they teach is a part of God; yet
some men are evil. Asif the Deity were an animal
whose legs should walk different ways.”
Epictetus insists on the sociability of man, but
Stoicism is the most unsociable doctrine ever
preached. Pleasure can hardly be tasted without a
friend, but tranquillity stands absolutely alone. ‘The
Stoic used magnificent language about the World-
City, the dear city of Zeus, which is full of friends ;
and their words bore much fruit in the enactments of
the great Stoic lawyers. But to him, as to Carlyle,
 24 NEOPLATONISM

mankind were ‘mostly fools.” Epictetus speaks of

children as ‘‘ snivelling brats.” The Stoic allowed no
weak hands to cling round his neck ; he would suffer,
but for himself alone. He set a high value on social
duties, and discharged them faithfully; but he taught
-that they are mere ‘‘ relations,” chance juxtapositions.
A man must perform them, because it is the will of
God, but they have no vital affinity to happiness.
They give experience, but nothing more. For the
sorrows or sins of others the Stoic consoled himself
very easily. “Such men,” says Marcus Aurelius,
“do such things of necessity.” He heard with the
same placid smile of the infidelity of his wife, the
martyrdom of Blandina, or the revolt of a province.
Had he believed in the immortality of the soul, he
would have thought more of the souls of others.
‘The Stoics were in theory determinists, but in
practice they insisted in the most’ strenuous language
that the will is free, to this extent at least, that it
can always, and at any moment, choose what is right.
‘“Not Zeus himself,’ says Epictetus, “can conquer
the will.” ‘Like a good king, a true father, he has
given us a will untrammelled, uncompelled; he has
put it wholly in our own control, and not left even
himself the power to thwart or hinder it.”
It is curious to note the many points of similarity
between Stoicism and Calvinism. The Stoics be-
lieved in instantaneous conversion. ‘‘ What,” asks
Chrysippus, “if Lichas passed from vice to virtue
while hurled into the sea by Hercules like a stone
from a sling?” The words remind us of the knight
oon
-

STOICISM 25
|.
eS
ea
who found mercy ‘‘between the stirrup and the
ground.” They divided mankind into two classes:
the “fool”? who could do nothing right, and the
“wise man” who could do nothing wrong. They
taught that all sins are equal. ‘“ As well,” they said,
“be a mile under water as an inch.” ‘They dis-
_ paraged literature and art, and had disputes about
assurance and final perseverance. Some of them
Were antinomians; all of them may be called
solifidians.
In its finer traits, as has often been remarked,
Stoicism bears a striking, though superficial, resem-
blance to the Epistles of St. Paul, and it is, perhaps,
more than a historical coincidence that its chief
stronghold was Tarsus. Few, if any, of its great
professors were Greeks, and its whole tone was
anti-Hellenic. But it was admirably suited to the
rigid integrity of the Roman character, and to the
thin abstractions of the old Roman religion. Under
the early empire it was the philosophy of the political
dissenters ; it was framed for rebellion, and could not
bear the sunshine; it ruined Seneca, and was itself
stifled by the purple of Aurehus.
Stoicism left behind it many enduring results, chief
of which, for our purposes, are the Logos doctrine
in physics, and in morals the conviction that man’s
happiness must be sought in the perfection of his
moral and intellectual nature. They inherited this
conviction from Socrates, but they deepened it im-
mensely, though in a one-sided way. ‘Their gospel is
that of the Strong Man, but it may be said that this
*
26 NEOPLATONISM

harsh evangel has never been better preached in

ancient or in modern times.
Their fault is that they refused to accept the
‘teaching of facts. Pantheism insists on finding perfect
unity in this world, and the force with which it pulls
together the subject and object results in‘their spring-
ing more violently apart. Hence it became evident
that the point of union must be sought above, in the
conception of a God who made both the I and the
Not-I, who therefore is higher than either, and yet in
both. Thus the craving of thought for the One is
satisfied, and the opposition of mind and sense is
made susceptible of reconciliation ; there remains a
difference, but no longer a contradiction.
This is the philosophical statement of the task
attempted by the Platonists. All the objections which
they urged against the Porch, its individualism, its
rigorism, its moral inconsistency, its incompatibility
with religion in general, and with Hellenism in
particular, flow from the same source.
 II

THE PYTHAGOREANS

THE reaction against Stoicism was the work partly

of the Pythagoreans, partly of the Platonists. The
names are not easy to distinguish. Plato himself
‘‘ pythagorized,”’ and, towards the end of the second
century after Christ, the two schools melt into one
another. ‘The distinctive features of Pythagoreanism
were the love of sacred numbers and the ascetic life.
Pythagoras flourished in the sixth century before
Christ, and Diogenes Laertius tells us that the last
philosophers of his school were “ those whom Aris-
toxenus knew,” the disciples of Philolaus and Eurytus
of Tarentum. Philolaus was one of the teachers of
Plato, and the mystic arithmetic of the Zzmaeus prob-
ably comes from him. Another famous name is that
of Lysis, the tutor of Epaminondas. Aristotle wrote
a treatise, no longer extant, on the Pythagoreans,
and down to the end of the second century B.c.
the sect attracted the attention of writers, among
whom were Aristoxenus, Neanthes, Dicaearchus, and
Hermippus. }
 38 NEOPLATONISM

When we are told that the school disappeared, we

’~ must understand that it renounced the lecture-hall,
and ceased to write. The Pythagorean life maintained
an apparently unbroken existence.
‘The earliest distinct traces of this ascetic discipline
meet us in the literature of the fourth century before
Christ, but they are at first connected rather with
the name of Orpheus than with that of Pythagoras.
Herodotus tells us, that the Egyptian priests would
not wear woollen garments in the temple, and were
never buried in woollen, “agreeing in this with those
that we call Orphics and Pythagoreans.” Woollen
garments were forbidden from some mystic dread of
animal contamination. The Hippolytus of Euripides,
the stepson of the wicked Phaedra, eats no flesh, and
lives in virgin chastity, because he takes Orpheus for
his king. Plato knew a crowd of books ascribed to
Orpheus and Musaeus. Some thought that they were
compiled, or interpolated, or invented by Onomacritus,
who tampered with the text of Homer, and was
banished from Athens by Hipparchus for forgery.
It is curious that Aristophanes had nothing to say
about these ascetics, ‘They can hardly have. been
numerous in his day. A~hundred years later the
Pythagoreans, as they are now distinctively called,
afford great sport to the comic writers. ‘The Pythago-
reans,” says one of the characters in the Zarendines of
Alexis, “as we hear, neither eat kitchen-stuff, nor
anything that has life, and they alone drink no wine.”
“Well, but,” the other replies, “Epicharides is a
Pythagorean, and he eats dogs.” ‘Aye, but not till
 THE PYTHAGOREANS 29

he has killed them, and then they are no longer

alive.” ‘Eating dogs” may be meant for “ demolish-
ing cynics.” The wits amused themselves with the
‘meagre diet, the silence, the subtle disquisitions of
the Pythagoreans, and even scoffed at them as ‘the
unwashed.” ‘This was hard, for they washed oftener
than most people.
Again after a long interval we come across new
evidence of the Life. In Judaea it is thought. by
Zeller and Schiirer to have contributed to the rise of
Essenism. In the West, Cato heard Nearchus, a
Pythagorean, lecture at Tarentum in 209B.c. -Ennius
translated the works of Epicharmus of Megara, a
comic poet of the fifth century, who interlarded his
jokes with a dash of heavy philosophizing.
Towards the end of the second or beginning of the
first century before Christ, the school broke once more
into literary productiveness. About ninety Pytha-
gorean treatises belonging to this period are enume-
rated by Zeiler. They were nearly all pseudonymous.
Many bore on their title-page names that belong to
the ancient history of the school, that of Pythagoras
himself, of Brontinus his father-in-law, Theano his
wife, Telauges his son. A great mass were~attributed~
to the old mathematician Archytas. |The best known
“>
-is..the__Golden_ Verses, a- briéf collection of _moral
ea
' precepts in seventy-one hexameter lines. Another
3 seca

famous treatise is that-of-Ocellus.Lucanus, in which

a brief sketch of a pantheist system is succeeded
by some quaint rules for the ensurance of a beau-
tiful progeny. Ocellus handed down to the later
30 NEOPLATONISM

Platonic school the Aristotelian tenet of the eternity

of creation.
In the first century B.c. we find the school existing
in Rome. One of its adherents was P. Nigidius
Figulus, praetor and Pompeian, who was a voluminous
writer, and énjoyed repute as astrologer, prophet,
and magician. Vatinius is charged by Cicero with
calling himself a Pythagorean, and sacrificing little
boys. If he really did this, he was a mere necro-
mancer. Cicero himself wrote a Zimaeus, in which
Nigidius figures as one of the dramatis personae. The
learned Varro made frequent mention of Pythagor-
eanism, and the no less learned Alexander Polyhistor, —
who flourished at Rome between B.c. 80 and B.c. 62,
has left us an account of certain Pythagorean Com-
mentaries, which are of particular value, because they
are thought to have been known to Aristotle, and in
that case reach back beyond the apocryphal literature.
Pythagoras taught his disciples every evening, when
they came back home, to say: “‘What have I done
amiss? What duty have I done? What have I left
undone?” Not to offer victims to the gods, but to
worship only at bloodless altars; not to swear by
the gods, but to live so that all men would believe
their word. To revere elders; to honour gods before
heroes, and heroes before men, and parents before all
other men. ‘To liveso with one another as to make
friends of enemies, and never to make enemies of
friends. ‘To call nothing their own; to support the
law; to resist lawlessness; to destroy no cultivated
plant, nor any beast that is not hurtful to man. That
 THE PYTHAGOREANS 31

modesty and discretion consist neither with uproarious

laughter, nor with a sullen face. To avoid fullness of
flesh ; to practise the memory ; neither to say nor do
anything in a passion; to respect all (or not at all)
kinds of augury; to sing hymns to the lyre, and
cherish a grateful remembrance of good men. To
avoid beans because they are windy, and so near akin
to things that have soul. Wind and soul, it should be
noted, may be expressed by the same word (rvetpa)
in Greek.
In respect of doctrines, Polyhistor tells us, his book
taught that Monad was the beginning of all things,
and that out of the Monad came into being the
Indefinite Dyad, which is, as it were, the matter for
the Monad, the Cause, to work upon. The Monad
is the One God; it is a phrase which constantly
“reappears in this sense. The Indefinite Dyad, or
Two, is matter not yet shaped and ordered. It will
be noticed that Polyhistor’s authority speaks of it as
evolved out of the One, which is Pantheism and not
Platonism. Out of the One and Two spring the other
numbers, and from these points, lines, superficies, and
solids. Hence the world we know, which is animated,
intelligent, and spherical. In the middle of it is the
earth, which is also spherical and inhabited all round,
so that what to us is down, is to the antipodes up.
Thus all science, physical and mental, is resolved
into arithmetic and geometry. The Pythagoreans had
observed the numerical relations of musical sounds,
and found in them the explanation of everything, just
as a modern savant finds the clue to eternity in
32 NEOPLATONISM

evolution. They would have been immensely in-

terested in the combination formulae of modern
chemistry. Like ourselves, they measured the great
unknown by the little known. They regarded number
not as the manifestation of law, but as the law itself.
To the Platonist law was the Idea, the thought of
God. Both numbers and ideas are immaterial, and
thus they were readily confused. But the numbers
were not only mathematical and scientific, they were
also religious, and had a life of their own’ derived
from Judaea and Babylonia. They were tricksy
sprites, and we shall see what they made of Platonism
in the end.
The soul, the Commentaries proceed, is a “bit
broken off” the aether, ‘‘cold aether” (uy# being
supposed to come from wWiyw), but it is immortal,
because the aether is immortal. It is divided into
three parts, situated in different parts of the body;
the intelligence, which inhabits the brain, is alone
properly immortal. After death the soul still wears
the shape of the body. Pure souls are conducted by
Hermes to “the Highest”; impure souls dwell in
solitude, each by itself, cut off from all communion
with their kind, “bound by the Furies in adamantine
chains.” The whole air is full of souls; these are
called demons and heroes, and by them are sent
dreams and prognostications of health and sickness
to man and beast. To them appertain lustral and
propitiatory rites, augury, and omens. E
The Commentaries, as they stand, show signs of
Stoic influence, quote the Golden Verses, and give to
 THE PYTHAGOREANS 33

God a Hebrew title, ‘‘the Highest.” Their exact

nature and date are uncertain, but we may accept
them as perhaps the oldest existing monument of
Pythagoreanism. Like the Golden Verses, they form
a sort of catechism or manual adapted to be learned
by heart; the philosophy is archaic, confused, and
imperfect. The Pythagoreans were spiritualists, yet,
from the ‘‘cold soul,” it can be seen that they had
only imperfectly grasped what is meant by spirit.
Their system was more a religion than a philosophy ;
in fact, it was not a system, but a handful of leading
ideas, which were allied through the doctrine of
numbers to Pantheism, yet could readily be adapted
to Platonism, and were finally absorbed by that school.
They believed in immortality, in transmigration, in
communion with God; they believed in the unity of
all, in One God as the author of all. They had
taken the Eleatic One, a mere abstraction of the
schools, and made it an object of worship, that is to
say, they had grasped the relation of science to faith.
But with this deity of the reason, not of the conscience,
they combined all the gods and demigods of Poly-
theism, the “created gods” of Plato, a long range of
beings of mixed nature, ranging from seraphic good-
ness to devilish maleficence. All were to be wor-
shipped and propitiated, though not in the same way.
“Equal honours must not be paidto gods and
heroes. ‘The gods are to be worshipped at all times
with holy words, white garments, and purity; the
heroes only in the afternoon.” Purity is to be attained
by baths and sprinklings, and by avoiding things that
Cc
 34 NEOPLATONISM

defile—the touch of a corpse, unclean food, and so

forth. Flesh, wine, and marriage are not absolutely
prohibited, but abstinence is to be understood as a
counsel of perfection. We observe further a love of
music, a pitifulness, a tendency to socialism and to
mysticism, generally a touch of art, of affection, of
romance, that lead us very far away from the ngid
common sense of Stoicism. The Pythagorean was
in contact with the unseen, and his morality was
“touched with emotion,” or in other words, was —
religious. This was, naturally, the ground on which
Paganism elected to do battle with the Church. The
agnosticism of the Porch, with its utter lack of
enthusiasm, had no chance at all. :
Pythagoreanism seems ‘to have had no existence
in Rome itself during the first or even the second
century after Christ, though it made great progress
elsewhere. Its chief records come to us from a later
date, but with a little careful sifting they yield a clear
picture of the ideas that were coming into vogue
between the times of Augustus and Marcus Aurelius.
We have to do with two romances of markedly anti- —
Christian character, the lives of Pythagoras - and of |
Apollonius of Tyana.
There were scores of lives of Pithavoms of which
three are extant by Diogenes Laertius, Porphyry, and —
Iamblichus. The last is perhaps the very worst
- biography in existence. The truth is, that scarcely —
anything is known about this famous man. It is
probable that he himself never put pen to paper, but
even this is disputed.
 THE PYTHAGOREANS 35

He was born about 580 B.c., son of Mnesarchus, a

Samian, or, as some said, a Tyrrhenian ; domiciled at
Samos, taught by Pherecydes of Syros, initiated in all
‘the Greek mysteries, and a great traveller. ‘That he
visited Egypt in the time of King Amasis 1s certain ;
in later times he was said to have made acquaintance
with Arabs, Chaldees, Hebrews, Indians, Galatians,
in a word, all the inspired peoples of the East. From
his long-continued voyage, he returned to Samos, but,
disgusted with the tyranny of Polycrates, and finding
by experience that a prophet has no honour in his
own country, he emigrated to Croton in South Italy, a
flourishing city, famous in particular for its school of
medicine and for its athletes. There his teaching,
enforced by his striking personality, produced an
electric effect. Men flocked to hear him, adopted
his practices, and formed themselves into a séct, or
brotherhood. The result was a widespread and
}
passionate moral reformation, ‘incontinence dis-
appeared, luxury became discredited, and women
hastened to exchange their golden ornaments for the
simplest attire’? (Grote, iv. p. 541). A change so
violent would excite many enemies, and hostility was
embittered by the political activity of the new sect.
A popular insurrection was headed by Ninon and
~ Kylon; the Pythagoreans were attacked in the temple
of Apollo, or the house of Milo; the building was
set on fire, and many perished in the flames. What
became of Pythagoras himself no man knew, but in the
time of Cicero his tomb was shown at Metapontum.
‘The sect never again attained to power, though, as
 36 NEOPLATONISM

we have seen, it continued in a way to exist both in

Italy and elsewhere.
/ That Pythagoras was regarded in very early times
'as endowed with miraculous powers there can be no
‘doubt. Hermippus treats him as an impostor on —
this very account, and by so doing testifies to the
belief of his followers. Pythagoras not only taught
the transmigration of souls, but professed to know
what had happened to himself and to others in
previous existences. Xenophanes of Elea tells us,
that once seeing a dog beaten, he desired the striker
_ to forbear, saying, ‘It is the soul of a friendof mine,
whom I recognize by the voice.” Another story tells
that the soul of Pythagoras had inhabited the body
of Hermotimus, and in that shape recognized in
Apollo’s temple at Branchidae the shield which, as —
Euphorbus, he had wielded in the Trojan war. He
had a golden thigh, like Pelops, which he once showed
/to Abaris as a proof of his divine mission. Later
' writers added greatly to his supernatural character.
' Some said that he was son not of Mnesarchus, but of
_ Apollo and Parthenis, the “ virgin mother,” and there
| was a widespread belief that he was, at any rate, an
avatar of the sun-god. |On one occasion, when he
t had retired to pray on Mount Carmel, the sailors,
waiting for him in the boat below, saw him return to
them floating over rocks and precipices. He began
_ his ministry by causing a miraculous draught of fishes,
cured diseases by incantations, appeared at one and
the same time at Metapontum and Tauromentum, and
died after a fast prolonged for forty days. He wasa
Fat

eee
ap

THE PYTHAGOREANS 4%

brother to the birds,and beasts; an ox, into the ear

of which he had whispered, never ate beans any more,
and a wild eagle perched upon his wrist, and allowed
him to stroke its feathers. He was lord even of
inanimate nature, and-when-he was crossing the river
Nessus, or Caucasus, the waters criedto him, “ Hail,
Pythagoras.” Iamblichus professes-to doubt some of
these miracles, and tells his brethren that they went
too far, in believing that of a god nothing was in-
credible. The impression he wishes to leave is, that
such things were possibly true of Pythagoras, but —
certainly not true of our Lord. However, the stories 2
were current. :
To the first century may probably be ascribed the
received account of the constitution of the Pytha-
gorean sect. Diogenes Laertius says nothing about
it, but other writers represent it as a strictly organized
body consisting of two or three distinct classes. Of
these the highest alone, after a novitiate of five years’
silence, were admitted to the inner secrets of the
school. The initiated are said to have recognized
one another by secret signs, like those of the Free-
masons. ‘The account rests upon an idea, which had
long been gaining ground, that philosophy was like
the mysteries, and that every great teacher must have
esoteric as well as exoteric doctrines,—doctrines, that
is to say, which are not merely more difficult, but
more sacred than others, so that it is a sin to reveal
them to the outer world. That the school had a
compact form is highly probable from its history ;
that it had the particular form ascribed to it in im-
38 NEOPLATONISM

perial times, is exceedingly dubious. The statements

of Jamblichus and Porphyry have probably no other _
foundation than the fact, that Pythagoras delighted to
clothe his moral teaching in a parabolic form, in
“symbols” as they were called. Such were thes
maxims, ‘‘not to jump over the steelyard,” “not to sit
upon a bushel,” “not to admit swallows into the
house,” ‘not to poke the fire with a sword,” “not
to turn one’s face back upon a journey,” the explanation
of which may be commended _to-the ingenious reader.
But the classes which never did exist, and the
disciplina arcani which to a certain extent did, were
useful weapons against the Church, which had a some-
what similar organization in the division into baptized
and catechumens, and guarded the Eucharist from —
all but the first.
Two of the most attractive features of Pythagorean-
ism, on which the biographers with justice lay great
stress, are the high value it sets upon friendship, and
its respect for women. The romantic story of Damon
and Phintias is too well known to need repetition ; but
many similar, if less beautiful, anecdotes were current
in the school; how Clinias of Tarentum collected a
large sum of money, and sailed to Cyrene to rescue
Prorus from bankruptcy; how another brother re-
warded the good innkeeper, who had nursed and
piously buried a destitute traveller. Pythagoras was
reputed to have taught, that “friends have all in
common,” and that ‘‘a friend is another self,” and he
bequeathed a generous brotherly spirit to his disciples.
Women, too, were the object of special care. ‘The
a . THE PYTHAGOREANS 39

Pythagoreans held chastity in great esteem, and

looked upon celibacy as a special grace. It was no
doubt a consequence of their regard for sexual
_—purity, that they treated women with a reverence and
__._ tenderness unknown otherwise in the ancient world.
They believed them to be as capable of inspiration as
men. ‘They numbered women among their martyrs,
such as Timycha, who bit her tongue out rather than
betray her husband; and seventeen women are in-
cluded in what we may call the calendar of saints
given by Iamblichus. Down to the last women con-
tinued to occupy a conspicuous place in the history
of the school.
The biography of Apollonius of Tyana is very simi-
lar to that of Pythagoras. Here also it is impossible
to discriminate fact from fiction. The long and
tedious life composed by Philostratus, in obedience to
the command of Julia Domna, the wife of the Emperor
Severus, quite early in the third century, is what
Germans call a Zendenz Roman, a novel with a pur-
pose. Hierocles, early in the fourth century, expressly
sets Apollonius against Christ, and there can be no
doubt that this comparison was in the mind of
Philostratus also.
Epictetus quotes a fine saying of Apollonius:
“When you wish to discipline yourself, and it is hot
and you are thirsty, take a mouthful of cold water and
spit it out, and tell nobody.” ‘This is the sole notice
by a contemporary of this remarkable man. He is
said to have died about 98 a.p., at the age of a
hundred. He wrote books on Sacrifice, and on
40 NEOPLATONISM |

Astrological Prediction, which are lost with the excep-

tion of a few lines. A collection of letters attributed
to him remains, but is of doubtful authenticity. All
that we know with certainty is, that he was regarded as
a perfect model of the Pythagorean life, and that he
was credited with miraculous powers. For this last
fact we can quote the testimony of his enemies.
Moeragenes charged him with bewildering Euphrates
the Stoic, and Lucian classes him as an impostor with
Alexander of Abonoteichos. |
We may notice here a point of some importance.
The Pythagoreans, though they believed in witch-
craft, or magic, like that of Horace’s Canidia, regarded
the black art with a certain aversion. The miracu-
lous powers, which they claimed for their most
eminent men, depended, like those of the Buddhists,
on extreme asceticism, and were never harmful.
Hence it was possible for the Platonist Celsus,
though a believer in miracles, to write ‘‘ against
magicians,” and to sympathize with the Epicurean
Lucian, who delighted in running down a charlatan.
It is easy to see how Origen was led into the mistake
of regarding Celsus as himself an Epicurean. What
was asserted by some against Apollonius and Alex-
ander, and by others against our Lord, was that their
signs and wonders were the proof not of zddht, of
white and beneficent art, but of the black magic of
the magus, or the prestidigitation of the goes. The
distinction is subtle, for though black magic might not »
be used to do harm, it was held lawful to employ it
against the black magic of wicked people.
 THE PYTHAGOREANS 4i

The clearest glimpse that we obtain of Apelonits,

is afforded by a passage from his book “ on Sacrifices,”
quoted by the learned Eusebius in his Praeparatio
Evangelica. ‘If a man wishes to pay fitting service
to the Deity, and by that means to be singled out as an
object of divine grace and goodness, he must offer to_
_ that God, whom we called the First, who is One and
above all, after whom only can the other deities be
recognized, no sacrifice at all; he must kindle no fire,
nor promise any earthly thing. For He needs nothing,
not even from beings that are higher than we; nor is
there any plant, any creature, produced or nourished
by earth or air, which is free from pollution. To Him
man must offer only the better word, I mean that+
which is not uttered by the lips, and ask good things
from the most Beautiful of all, by the most beautiful
faculty that we possess. This faculty is intelligence,
which needs no organ. ‘Therefore to the great and
supreme God no sacrifices at all must be offered.”
The writer distinguishes, in a way that is already
familiar to us, between the One God and the lower
gods, heroes, and demons. Inferior deities might be
-
propitiated with the reek of sacrifice. The Lord of
All gives all, but receives nothing. Here we have the
sublimest conception of Theism, united to what the
Fathers of the Church rightly regarded as devil-
worship, yet soaring above thé paganism out of which
it sprang.
But observe the price at which the heathen bought
this high vision. The Father has become the Ineff-
able, the Absolute, who ‘“‘ needs nothing,” and cannot
 >

ee
3

ean

42 . NEOPLATONISM ~

e
v
be thought, can only be seen, as a bright light, by
the rapt intelligence, that is, by the intuitive power of
the mind. The prayer offered to Him is no spoken
petition, but “the better word,” the voiceless gaze of
ecstatic communion, in which all consciousness is
suspended as in a trance.
Compare this with the language of the Psalmist:
“For Thou desirest not sacrifice, else would I give it
Thee ; but Thou delightest not in burnt offerings.
The sacrifice of God is a troubled spirit; a broken
and contrite heart, O God, shalt Thou not despise.”
The Pagan God desired no sacrifice; but he knew
nothing of troubled spirits. For broken hearts there
was Cybele, or Isis, or Demeter, with the wild frenzy
of their mysteries. It was their function to deaden for
a time, for they could not cure, the anguish of the
trembling soul.
How far Apollonius was deceived, and how far
deceiver, it is needless to inquire.. He lived habitually
in that borderland of imagination, which is peopled
with the creatures of fancy, and where nothing but
the strong curb of Christian morality can save men
from delusion. We need not recount his fictitious
life, which is very much a replica of that of Pythagoras.
- One scene only deserves notice, that of his Passion.
When Domitian began to persecute the philosophers,
Apollonius sailed to Italy to beard the tyrant. He
was denounced by Euphrates, the Stoic Pharisee, and
charged with having sacrificed a boy, with pretending
to be God, and with speaking against Caesar. He ©
was not betrayed by a disciple—Celsus treated the
 et
‘

ust
isle
Bais THE PYTHAGOREANS 43

treachery of Judas as a proof of the impotence of

Our Lord, who had not succeeded in persuading even
His nearest adherents—but Damis and Demetrius,
two apostles who fill the place of St. Peter and St.
Thomas, who doubt but do not deny, follow him to see oe

the end. Apollonius appears before the Emperor, is

en
a,
E,

mocked and ill-treated, and challenged to save himself

by a miracle. He accepts the challenge, and vanishes
‘from sight. Such, thinks Philostratus, should have
been the behaviour of our Lord. The cross was |
impossible. A crucified Saviour was to the heathen /
mind the same thing as an ass-headed God. ae
Some time after the accession of Nerva, Apollonius
ascended into heaven. At what precise date he
received divine honours we cannot say, but that he
received them is certain. Caracalla built him a
shrine, and Aurelian was prevented from destroying
Tyana by a vision of Apollonius, who came to inter-
cede for his birthplace. ‘The Emperor recognized his
visitor, because he had seen his statue in so many
fanes.
The romance of Philostratus is marked by great
bitterness against the Stoics, and attacks the heathen
priesthood for their blind, unreforming obstinacy. Its
purpose is to advocate a new paganism, the pro-
gramme of which was the union of Church and State
under the Emperor as God’s vicegerent, the abolition
of bloody sacrifices, and Apollonius for Messiah. All
mythologies were to be recognized, and if Christianity
would come in, a place should be found for it.
To the Pythagoreans of the first century belong
 44 NEOPLATONISM

also the names of Moderatus of Gades in Spain, and

Nicomachus of the Arabian Gerasa. The latter was
a mathematician of some note, and speculated largely
in the religious significance of numbers. Perhaps
the reader will like to know exactly what this means.
One denotes God, Intelligence, Form, and in religion
Apollo (a4-roA\ad = not many), the Sun, or Atlas.
But as all is evolved from the One, it also signifies
Matter, Darkness, Chaos. In the first aspect it is the
male, in the second the female element in creation ;
hence the Supreme is masculo-feminine.. With Two
begins multiplicity, the antithesis of the many to the
one; hence, this again stands for Matter, and, in re-
ligion, for Isis or Aphrodite. Three is the first true
number, because it exhibits the proportionate harmony
of beginning, middle, and end; hence the sacred
triplets which we see everywhere, in art, in science,
and in theology. Four was also a mystery; are there
- not four quarters of the sky? So was Five, for there
are five fingers and five senses; and Seven, for this is
the number of the planets. Greatest of all these
sacred emblems was the Tetractys, by which the
Pythagoreans swore, but whether it was four, ten, or
thirty-six is uncertain. To us all this seems incredibly
childish, but at any rate it gave a zest to the arid
science of numbers. In pursuit of this will-of-the-
wisp the Pythagorean discovered geometry and the
laws of music, as alchemists lighted upon chemistry,
and astrologers on the science of the stars; Thus
men find kingdoms while searching for asses.
One other freak of Nicomachus is worth a word.
 THE PYTHAGOREANS 45

The Babylonians, he says, and Ostanes, and Zoroaster

call the stars “‘ flocks,” ayéAa. Change the gender
of this noun, and add a second g, and we have
“angels,” ayyedor, and archangels the name of the
stars and of the demons. Angel is, of course, the
Greek word for “ messenger,” but this was far too
simple an explanation for the Pythagorean.
But, as a name for heavenly beings, angel was. used
only in the New Testament, and in the Greek version
of the Old. It is from one of these sources, probably
from the Septuagint, that the word had come to the
knowledge of Nicomachus. Perhaps it had reached
the ears even of Epictetus, for he says that ‘‘the
Cynic is sent to man as an angel from Zeus.”
Here we seem to catch a glimpse of one of the
little hidden pipes, through which a knowledge of the
Bible was trickling into heathen thought. We see
also the sensitiveness to Oriental influences, which
marked Pythagoreanism from first to last, This is
the explanation of the Neoplatonist dualism. The
‘philosophy of Plotinus was purely Greek; his religion
only was hybrid.
 Ill

THE PLATONISTS, ATTICUS, ETC.

WE must now turn to those men whose work it was
to revive, though with considerable differences, the
distinctive teaching of Plato.
The revolt against the sceptical conclusions of the
Academics was begun by Antiochus of Ascalon, whose
lectures Cicero attended at Athens in 79 B.c. From
him dates the reaction in favour of dogmatism, that is,
of the inculcation of definite systematic teaching. He
taught the Platonists once more to believe in the
attainability of truth, and gave them a creed, the creed
of the master whose name they professed.
It was long before the reaction gained a footing in
Rome itself. Epictetus knew no readers of the
Republic except a few ladies of the ‘‘ emancipated ”
type, who prattled about the marriage arrangements
of the ideal state, much as their modern sisters do
about the dramas of Ibsen. Down to the end of the
Flavian dynasty Roman society,or such part of it as
cared to have a creed at all, was divided between
Epicureans who denied, Academics who doubted, and

a)
3
 THE PLATONISTS, ATTICUS, ETC. ; 47

Stoics who affirmed but hardly reasoned. The last

numbered in their ranks all the best and strongest
characters.
Even in the Greek-speaking provinces, before
Flavian times, we meet with no Platonist of eminence
except the Alexandrian Philo, and the influence of this
remarkable man did not make itself felt till late in the
second century, when a school of Christian scholars
had arisen in his native town, and his Judaism was
no longer absolutely unintelligible to a certain section
of the Neoplatonists. The names of Thrasylus, Der-
cyllidas, Moderatus, Areios, Didymus, and Eudorus,
are of little importance except for the student of
literary history, and the dates of the two last are
uncertain. Theon of Smyrna (A.D. 20—140) belongs
rather to the roll of mathematicians. But, after the
middle of the first Christian century, we begin to meet
with a number of distinguished names. Plutarch was
born in 4.p. 48 ;Dion Chrysostom about A.D. 50. To
the palmy days of the Antonines belong Favorinus,
Calvisius Taurus, Nigrinus, Celsus, Atticus, Maximus
Tyrius, and the famous physician Galen. About the
middle of the second century, the ideas, which gave
birth to Neoplatonism, emerge in Albinus, or Alcinous
(there is some doubt as to his true name), and Apuleius,
and take more and more distinct shape in Numenius
and Ammonius Saccas.
We have already observed the point of view from
which the Platonist opposed Stoicism. On the great
moral points of the sufficiency of virtue for happiness
and the brotherhood of man the two schools were almost
48 NEOPLATONISM

in complete accord. Even in physics, so far as their

roads lay together, there was a certain agreement. —
The Platonist added the transcendence to the imma-
nence of God, and hence arose a considerable religious
difference. But, in all that touched what we call
natural science, he borrowed very freely the language
of his rival. What he complained of was, that Stoicism
could give no sufficient reason for its own conduct
that it had no religion, and was unable to explain the
moral obligations that it insisted upon with such
vehemence.
A remarkable passage of Atticus, preserved by
Eusebius in his Pracparatio Evangelica (xv. 4—9), will
show the reader the attitude of Platonism towards
another great system of thought. Atticus belongs
probably to the middle of the second century, and he is
writing against the Peripatetics, the school of Aristotle.
The main charge which he presses against Aristotle is,
that his morality is commonplace ; and the causes of
this defect he finds in Deism, and in the vagueness of
his teaching as to the immortality of the soul.
Aristotle regarded virtue as the mean between two
emotional extremes attained by habit under the guid-
ance of reason. Happiness, he taught, was the supreme
object of man’s endeavour, and virtue is the chief cause
of happiness. But he allowed also a certain weight
to external goods, birth, wealth, health, beauty, and
fortune generally. No one would call king Priam a
happy man, and he would doubtless have added, no one
could give the name to St. Paul. This the Platonist
regards as a “poor, low, vulgar, womanish”’ idea of
 THE PLATONISTS, ATTICUS, ETC. 49

happiness. It “takes away from virtue its crown and

royal sceptre ;” it does not fire the heart, and cannot
help the young and ardent. Virtue is no longer the “‘way
to heaven,” but a dull, earthly track, in which the fox
has as much chance as the eagle. Happiness itself
becomes the sport of fortune; a stroke of the clock
gives it, and takes it away.
The Platonist is here in very close agreement with
the Stoic. Virtue is happiness. Earth can neither
make, nor mar, the true life of the soul. On this
position, that righteousness is its own sufficient reward,
that where the mind is right all is right, there was no
difference between the two schools. It was the
teaching of Plato himself. Readers of the Repudlic will
remember the famous passage, where he insists, that the
just man will be happy, though he should be crucified
for his justice. In ethics as in physics, the difference
lies not in the fact, but in the way in which the fact was
linked on to a higher truth. To the Platonist virtue
is the “ way to heaven,” to the Stoic it is not.
The criticism of Atticus, it may be added, is just as
far asit goes. The morality of Aristotle is commonplace,
and, because commonplace, untrue. Doing a thing ten
times over will not make us like it, if the thing is
disagreeable. But Atticus does not state the objection
in the precise form that suggests itself at once to the
Christian reader of the Vicomachean Ethics. The initial
fault lies in the very attempt to define Happiness, that
is, Perfection. For no man can define that which
he has not attained, nor can we fathom the capacities
of our nature, until they have received their utmost
D
50 NEOPLATONISM

expansion. ‘The Platonist saw this, for he placed

happiness in the vision of God, but he did not see it
clearly, for he attempted to define God Himself, and so
brought back the limitation. And further, he omitted
to notice that the righteous man, of whom Plato spoke,
might be happy not in spite, but in consequence, of
his crucifixion.
The reason for this low-pitched morality Atticus
discerned, and here again he was right, in the Deism
of Aristotle. Deism regards God as creating and
equipping the world, and then leaving it to itself.
Nature is, as it were, a watch, which He sends forth
from His hands so perfectly adjusted that it needs no
further interference. Man is furnished with reason ;
and this is his only and sufficient guide. Like Epi-
curus, says Atticus, Aristotle represents the gods as
“spectators in a theatre.” Nay, he is worse; for while
Epicurus “turned the gods out of the world alto-
gether,” Aristotle ‘imprisons them in the world,” brings
them close enough to see and hear, and yet teaches
that they do not care. This may bea harsh judgment,
but it was the general opinion. The Christian fathers,
no doubt, gathered from writers like Atticus. the view,
which with one accord they express, that, according to
Aristotle, providence “reaches down to the moon,” but
no further, and takes no count of what from them
we have learned to call ‘‘sublunary” affairs. Deism
is of course materialistic, because it limits God locally,
and it was therefore abhorrent to the Platonist.
Pantheism he could speak of with equanimity, for
though he would not allow that God was in Nature,
 THE SPLATONISTS: ATPICUS, »ETC, Sf

he insisted very strongly that Nature was in God.

But Deism turns the Infinite into “an absentee
landlord.” |
The criticism of Atticus may be hostile, but it is not
practically unjust, for Aristotle, ‘the scribe of nature,”
is certainly the. author of that divorce from religion,
which has so often left morality barren. Nor is it
unjust to say that Aristotle in effect denies the im-
mortality of the soul. His expressions are obscure
and uncertain. The soul, which is in his view merely
sentient and emotional, is an “entelechy,” a form, or,
as we should say, a function of the body, though it
may bear to the body the relation of ‘‘a sailor to his
boat.” The Intelligence (votc) “comes in afterwards
from out of doors,’ and is imperishable and divine.
But, whatever these enigmatic utterances may mean,
no use is made of them. Rewards and punishments,
aspiration, grace, the hope of infinite perfection in a
future life, lie wholly outside of the Peripatetic system.
The soul might as well be mortal, there is no “ friend-
ship” between it and God. ‘To Atticus this indiffer-
ence seemed dreadful. The belief in the soul’s im-
mortality is “the cement that holds together the
Platonic school;” all that is ‘great and bright and
ardent” in virtue flows from this faith. If the soul
truly is, it never can die, and must be in constant con-
tact with the world of life, truth, and beauty, to which
by its nature it belongs. To doubt its immortality is
to doubt its existence, and such a doubt is a practical
denial of all fellowship between God and man.
Thus Deism was found as unsatisfying as Pantheism.
 52 : NEOPLATONISM

These two systems are philosophies, but not religions.

The first has no grace, and the second has no righteous-
ness. But the second century was anxiously groping
about for grace and righteousness ; and the spread of
Platonism was due not more to its speculative power,’
than to the spiritual cravings of the age. It was atime
of wild religious emotion. Heathenism is generally
passionate ; and the world’s nerves were strained by
physical misery, which in some districts was very acute,
by the influx of maddening Oriental fanaticisms, and
no doubt also by antagonism to Christianity. In the
time of Hadrian, Oenomaus wrote a book against
the Oracles, entitled Zhe Charlatans Unmasked, a
little later Demonax scoffed at the mysteries, and
Lucian scoffed at everything. But these are isolated
phenomena. The decadence of the Oracles, which
Plutarch lamented, was merely accidental, caused by
the shifting of population and political change. Men
were not less anxious to pry into the future, but they
had found out cheaper, safer, and baser methods for
the satisfaction of their curiosity.
It is commonly said that the second century exhibits a
marked advance in the direction of monotheism. This
is by no means true. Philosophers spoke of One God,
as they always had done, but they found at the same
time excellent reasons for worshipping every deity
and every demon known to mythology. In the world
at large polytheism had never been so rampant or
so degraded. ‘The deification of men was one of
the signs of the times. Not to reckon the Caesars,
Apollonius, Neryllinus, Antinous, and Alexander of
 ety Vey Vee é
oe

THE PLATONISTS, ATTICUS, ETC. 53

Abonoteichos, of whom the two last were infamous

characters, all received divine honours. Peregrinus,
another bad maja, aspired to the same dignity. The
mother of Dion Chrysostom was worshipped, and
probably there were many similar instances. Men
addicted themselves to particular divinities, but merely
as to the biggest and strongest of the supernatural
powers. Naturally they were unable to distinguish
one deity very accurately from another. Each nation
had its own hierarchy, and these hierarchies were
regarded as identical. The Zeus of Greece was con-
fused with the Jupiter of Rome, the Osiris of Egypt,
the Baal of Phcenicia, and the minor gods were inter-
changed in the same way. Mythologies were mixed
but not simplified.
The true characteristic of the age is to be found in
the eager craving for some kind of divine grace and
some kind of divine righteousness. To the heathen
mind these ideas necessarily assumed the shape of
lustral purifications, frenzied possession, and a cere-
monial moral law. For these purposes the old Roman
religion was absolutely useless. It lived on in Caesar-
worship, which was no new thing—Roman history
begins with the apotheosis of Romulus—and was as
devoid of spiritual significance as our own ceremony
of drinking the Queen’s health. Caesarism typified the
blessings of political unity, and the ancient Roman
deities were all moral emblems of the same kind.
They were not persons but abstractions, as Mommsen
has admirably shown. But in any case they were
dead and gone. The gods of Horace and Virgil are
 54 | NEOPLATONISM

Greek gods, though they bear Latin names, and under

the Empire the real character of the indigenous
Roman worship was known only to the antiquarian.
This singular religious revolution was effected quite
noiselessly, and even the writers, by whom it was
accomplished, do not seem to know what they were
doing. They brought about for the two mythologies
of Greece and Rome the same kind of fusion, that was
being applied to all known mythologies under the
reign of the Antonines.
The religion of the old Romans had fewer fables
and more morality than that of any of the ancient
peoples. ‘They worshipped the domestic, economic,
and political virtues. Heaven was an exact copy of
the earthly state and houszhold. Jupiter and Juno
presided over all as Lord and Lady, Ops gave plenty,
the Penates watched over the store-closet, Janus
guarded the door. Every act and every condition of
life, good or evil, great or insignificant, had its
' heavenly superintendent. Salus sent health, and
Febris fevers. But these thin abstractions neither
lent themselves to art nor ministered emotions.
Hence came the peculiar charm of Stoicism for the
Roman mind; it was, in fact, the philosophic ex-
pression of the national religious bent. But art and
emotion, dangerous as they may be, are inseparable in
the long run from worship. As civilization broadens,
the feelings and the imagination are quickened and
demand nutriment, and, if this necessity cannot be
supplied from native sources, it must be met by
importations from abroad. ‘The influx of Greek and
 THE PLATONISTS, ATTICUS, ETC. 55

Oriental ideas, that is to say, of art and of enthusiasm,

into Rome, was in one sense a deterioration, for it
certainly lowered the moral tone. But in another
aspect it may be regarded as an essential step in the
education of the race.
Emotion, as was natural in times when man’s
‘passions were far more violent and rapid than now,
was sought for in its keenest forms, and these came
mainly from the far East. Cybele, with Atys and her
frantic Galli, was brought from Phrygia, by decree of
the Senate itself, in the agony of the Hannibalian
war. In 186 Bc. the Bacchic orgies took root in
Rome, produced the most intolerable wickedness of
all kinds, and were suppressed by the police with the
most sanguinary rigour. From Egypt, in the latter
days of the Republic, came Isis, Osiris, and Serapis.
Virgil expresses the old Roman contempt for the
brute gods of the Nile, and their intrusion met with
vehement opposition on the part of the authorities.
On one occasion the emperor Tiberius was so ex-
asperated by a disgusting scandal, that he crucified
the priests of Isis, pulled down the sanctuary, and
threw the statue of the goddess into the Tiber. But
early in the second century the struggle was abandoned,
and temples of Isis were erected without let or hind-
rance, even within the limits of the sacred pomoerium,
that is to say, in the heart of the city of Rome.
About the same time the worship of the Persian
Mithra attained to great popularity.
Mithra, “the Unconquered Comrade,” was an
especial favourite with the army. The caves, in which
 56. NEOPLATONISM

he was worshipped, are found wherever the Roman

legions were stationed, in England and elsewhere.
- He belonged to the system of Zoroaster, which is
still professed by the Parsees, and of all the ancient
non-Biblical religions was the purest and most
elevated. Zoroastrianism tolerated no idols, and its
chief symbol was the sacred fire. Its governing idea
is dualism. In this world we see an unceasing and
universal conflict between Ormuzd the spirit of good,
and Ahriman the spirit of evil. One day the good
will triumph, and Mithra is the mediator, by whom the
victory will be achieved. Hence he is represented on
the monuments as a youth slaying a bull, and he was
worshipped in caverns. The cavern is this dark
world, and the bull typifies the power of evil. Mithra-
ism had rites of initiation, sacraments, a hierarchy,
and a society. It was widely diffused and strongly
organized. But, except in the ecclesiastical writers, it
- 1s little heard of, probably because it gave rise to no
scandals, was sober in its ritual, and made no noise
in the streets. Zoroastrianism, with much barbarous
superstition, combined a deep sense of moral evil, and |
of all the pagan influences at work in the second
century, it was, as far as we can judge, the most
wholesome.
Isis worship was far more stirring, and far more
dangerous. It was built upon the well-known myth,
which tells how Osiris was slain by the wicked demon
Typhon, and how Isis his wife, with labour and
sorrow, wandered over Egypt, gathering together the
mutilated limbs of her murdered lord. Here again
©, oe Ss ¥ ~
ee: 64 ,

‘
THE PLATONISTS, ATTICUS, ETC. 5

we have the strife of good and evil, but in a far more

sensuous and passionate form. Isis was represented
with a rattle in her hand, because she stirred ‘the
mind to frenzy. Every point in her worship was
calculated to rouse and excite. There were masquerad-
ing processions in the streets like those of a modern
carnival, there were prolonged fasts and elaborate
scenic representations by night. What these were we’
can only divine, but from our knowledge of the
Egyptian Ritual of the Dead, and from such books as
Mr. Le Page Renouf’s A/zbbert Lectures, we can form
an idea, which will not be far wrong. ‘The sorrows of
Isis, the torments of the damned, the happiness of
the blessed, would be exhibited, with all the resources
of the stage, before the eyes of spectators, wrought
up to the pitch of excitement by fasting and expecta-
tion. There they would see the crocodile lying in
wait for the wretched soul that has not obeyed the
directions of the priest, and there they would learn
the magic words, that enable the faithful to escape
from his jaws.
Besides the great mysteries, which had their gorgeous
temples and crowds of worshippers in the great cities,
there were a host of little ones, bringing the cup of
frenzy to the lips of peasants in out-of-the-way corners.
The vagabond priest of the Syrian goddess wandered
from village to village, with an ass laden with his
paraphernalia, and a couple of dancing boys. At
each hamlet they set up their idol, performed a wild
dance, gashing their arms with knives as they whirled
madly about, and made a collection.
 58 NEOPLATONISM

All these orgiastic worships inculcated the belief in

a future life, as it presents itself to the mind of
barbarians. ‘That is to say, as a scene of woe where
yet some kind of happiness may be procured by due
payment. Isis, Adonis, Thammuz, Atys, Dionysus
Zagreus are all of the same family. They rest upon
the terror of the unseen and the tragedy of existence,
and they express these awful thoughts in fables of
hideous deaths and savage mutilations. They are all
of great antiquity, belonging to the primary stratum of
religious belief, and their renewed popularity in the
second century must be regarded as a sort of volcanic
upheaval of the hidden depths. They all played upon
fear, and all were unable to turn fear to any moral end.
They fulfilled the task which Aristotle assigns to
tragedy, purging the breast from time to time of the
swelling emotions of terror and pity, and so producing
a temporary calm. They told of a suffering God, and
promised a kind of atonement ; but what they taught
men to bewail with frenzied lamentations was the
suffering, not the sinfulness, of life. ‘They. testify to
the deep unrest of the time and its readiness for better
teaching, but what sort of character they tended to
_ shape we see in the case of Apuleius.
These maddening Oriental deities were not artistic
and were not reasonable, and their worship was
generally regarded by the heathen themselves only as
a kind of safety-valve, a means of discharging the
perilous accumulation of religious melancholy in the
shortest and safest way, by noise, and movement, and
temporary insanity. On all these grounds they were
 THE PLATONISTS, ATTICUS, ETC. 59

viewed by the educated Greek with a certain reserve,

_as upon the whole necessary and even salutary, yet
not as possessing any high spiritual value. They be-
longed to demons, not to gods, and, though the
demons must be propitiated, because they can do us
harm, they are not the givers of the most precious
gifts. ‘These must be looked for in the reasonable
service of the bright gods of Olympus.
Greece too had its mysteries. We know little about
the rites of Eleusis; the secret was well kept. But
they stood no doubt to those of Egypt in the same
relation as the poetic tale of Demeter and Proserpine
to the ghastly myth of Osiris. They had the same
office, that of providing anodynes for affliction, remorse,
and all those states of mental disquiet, which under
Christian guidance lead to penitence. But what the
educated Greek loved best were the serene and tranquil
deities, who gave good things and never did harm, who
presided with benignity over all the joys and interests
of life, and were never hard upon their worshippers.
Homer, and all the choir of poets, had sung of them.
Pheidias, and artists innumerable, had made them
live in marble. Everywhere their beautiful presence
was visible, in the lecture-halls of the university, in
the market-place of the town, by haunted grove
and stream. They dispensed to all men wisdom,
prosperity, and merriment.
Unfortunately men are not always wise, and dis-
asters come thick and fast. The Homeric frame of
mind suited the ideal temperament of the Greek and
the bright days of life, but in times of distress
60 NEOPLATONISM

heathenism turned instantly into devil-worship. This

_was largely its character even in Greece, and almost
universal elsewhere. When the beloved Germanicus —
died, the people cast the images of the Penates into
the gutter. Such wild revolt against the injustice of
heaven is not unknown in Roman Catholic countries,
where civilization is backward. Jenan has told us of
a Breton blacksmith, who threatened to shoe the
Virgin with red-hot iron, if his daughter did not
recover. In heathenism it was an every-day incident. ©
At Rome, on the tomb of a young girl, is found the
following inscription—‘‘ Procope manus levo contra
Deum qui me innocentem sustulit,” ‘‘I, Procope, lift
my hands against God, who cut short my innocent ©
life.’ Below isa rude sculpture of two hands upraised
in protest. Germanicus, the emperor Titus, Servianus
in the time of Hadrian, and the emperor Julian, all
died with the same indignant sense of injustice in-
their hearts and on their lips. Even professed sceptics,
like Pliny the elder and Lucan, believed in the most
hideous forms of magic. Human sacrifice was not
unknown; the emperors Nero, Hadrian, Commodus,
-Didius Julianus, Heliogabalus, and Valerian were all-
charged with this crime. So universal was the belief in ~
witchcraft, that every man of remarkable attainments
was believed to have commerce with the infernal
powers. In the fourth century St. Athanasius enjoyed
a wide reputation among the heathen, and even among
the Arians, for knowledge of the black art. In the
second century people in country districts were as
much afraid of demons, as the inhabitants of an African
 THE PLATONISTS, ATTICUS, ETC. 61.

kraal often are, with good reason, of lions or elephants.

-The air was full of these malignant beings, ever ready
to burst forth and injure. Religion was in the maina
device for escaping from their clutches, or for enlisting
the aid of more powerful deities by arts which the
priests could teach. This hag-ridden superstition was
the necessary outcome of heathenism. It underlies
all the art and poetry of the classic times. As soon as
men left behind them the buoyant thoughtlessness of
Homer, as soon as the charm of life wore off, and the
question of the hereafter began to press, these frightful
dreams arose. What we notice in the second century
is, not the decay of faith, but the decline of other
interests, by which the inevitable tendency to devil-
worship had been kept in check. Reason was just
‘strong enough to rob men of their hopes, but
absolutely powerless to correct their fears.
There is no reason whatever for supposing that the
people at large had ceased to believe in the gods.
The world was producing new deities in shoals, and
even saints were forthcoming. Such was the aged
priestess of whom Dion Chrysostom gives a charming
description, and the Bceotian shepherd who was dis-
covered and exhibited by Herodes Atticus. Men
called him Agathion, “the good angel,” or Hercules,
because he spent his life in destroying wild beasts, and
supposed him to be the son of the demigod Marathon.
He would touch no food that had been prepared by a
woman, and could detect by the smell whether female
fingers had drawn the milk.
Bnet were no doubt plenty of sceptics to be found
62— NEOPLATONISM

in fashionable Roman society, especially during the

first century, while the memory of the civil wars still
endured, and Caligula, Nero, and Domitian reigned.
But generally speaking, educated men felt towards the
vulgar religion in much the same way as Rudyard
Kipling’s Baboo towards the Hindoo orgies, which he
laughs at, though yet they drive him mad. Their in-
fidelity was but skin deep, and they did not see how
irreconcilable their Stoic, or Peripatetic, or Epicurean
theories were with the very roots of the established
worship.
In the second century this was clearly understood.
Worship was felt to be a necessity, and the existing
forms were thought to be so closely interlaced with -
the national life, that, if destroyed, they could not be
replaced. The essential factors of true religion—
providence, prayer, atonement, righteousness—were all
to be found there. Could not a sounder philosophy
purify all these ideas, and bind them together in a
reasonable unity, without pulling down a single altar?
Could not heathenism be moralized?
This was the problem of the Platonists, and ours is
to ascertain where and why they failed.
 LV

PLATONISTS, NIGRINUS, DION CHRYSOSTOMUS

THE Platonists of the latter half of the first and

the earlier half of the second century were not marked
by any striking originality of thought, and do not
claim a high place in the history of philosophy.
Their interest is almost entirely religious. We shall
express the same thing better by saying, that they
were the champions of Hellenism. Hellenism is.
a word very distinctive of these times: it means
Greek habits of life and thinking. The Greek
gods were inseparably associated with Greek culture.
Their high priests were Homer, Solon, Pheidias,
Demosthenes. ‘They were the givers of civilization,
the authors of all the arts, all the sciences, the tis
spirers of Attic elegance in thought, expression, dress,
and manners. ‘The age was not one of production ;
its most characteristic offspring was the rhetorician.
But it was marked by a wide diffusion of what we
may call intellectualism, and an ardent though taste-
less admiration of the old classical models. The
universities were crowded with students, new pro-
fessorships were established and endowed, and a
 64 NEOPLATONISM

succession of Emperors, from Nerva to Marcus

Aurelius, vied with one another in condescension and
liberality towards men of letters. The love of literature
was amazingly widespread in the old Greek world.
Even in a half-savage outpost like Olbia, on the shores
of the Black Sea, the mass of the people are said to
have known the /iad by heart. Nor can there be
much exaggeration in this statement, for the harangues
of the rhetoricians were stuffed full of Homeric
allusions and quotations, and these must have been
perfectly familiar to the popular audiences to which
they were addressed.
The revival of Hellenism is the distinctive feature
of the second century, and with it went hand-in-hand
the revival of Platonism, the most Hellenic of all
philosophies. Epictetus knew no Platonists. Calvisius
Taurus complains of the shoals of young men who
- wanted to plunge into idealism “with unwashed feet,”
that is, without realizing the necessityof preparatory
study. For, as St. Justin found, the Platonist would
not explain his doctrines to any one, that had not
been through a regular training in abstract mathe-
matical science. The task of the new philosophers
was to regulate this movement by bringing philosophy
into line with religion. They did not want to give up
anything, not a single myth nor a single altar. They
desired to purify morals, and hoped to effect this
end not, like the Stoics, through rigid discipline, but
by the~spread of education. Hence art, science,
literature are of far higher importance to them than
to Epictetus, because it is through these means that
 PLATONISTS, NIGRINUS, DION CHRYSOSTOMUS 65

__they proposed to make men better. But not through

thesealone. They held that the highest culture is in-
separable from, does in fact kindle, faith in the divine ;
and that this faith in turn quickens and deepens
the insight of the thinker. Thus worship becomes
the secret of life and the crown of philosophy. The
student must approach his problem, as the priest
enters his shrine, in the spirit of holiness and
reverence. They saw no difficulty in the established
Polytheism. All that was necessary was to graduate
the gods, and explain awaya few of the more revolting
fables about them.
We shall discern their aims and methods best by
taking a group of representative names. We will
begin with Lucian’s sketch of Nigrinus. It belongs
to the age of the Antonines, but we may place it
first, because it gives so clear a picture of the moral
atmosphere of Platonism.
When Lucian was on a visit to Rome, the called
to pay his respects to the distinguished professor.
Though personally unknown, he was immediately ad-
mitted, and ushered into the presence of Nigrinus,
whom he found seated in his lbrary. On the table
lay a sheet of geometrical diagrams and a globe;
round the room were book-cases surmounted by busts
of the ancient sages. Nigrinus was in the talking
vein, and began by lamenting to his bright young
visitor the contrast between the vulgar bustle of
Rome and the simplicity of his beloved Athens,
much as a modern man of letters might compare
Mayfair or Cheapside with the groves of Magdalen
E
66 NEOPLATONISM

or the lime-walk of Trinity. ‘There is-just this flavour

of difference perceptible, that Nigrinus wanted to
teach, and not to shut himself up with his books.
Athens is the true home of the philosopher, and
there the delight of the teacher is to mix with the
throng of ardent youth, and mark the change that
steals over the noisy freshman, ‘as he takes his first
bath in the mysteries of the absolute. The genial
old professor passes on from the abstract to the
concrete, and illustrates the restraining force of Attic
taste by an anecdote of a rich undergraduate, who
had passed under his eye in the old days. He came
to the University with a host of slaves, dressed and
bejewelled in the height of the mode, and strutted
along the streets, thinking that all must admire and
envy him. ‘The Athenians set to work to teach him
better, not harshly, nor by open contradiction,—for
after all every one has a right to live as he pleases in
a free city,—but by good-humoured jests and lightly
glancing asides. If he went to the bath with a troop
of attendants, he would hear a whisper: “‘ He is afraid
of being assassinated. But the bath is a very quiet
place, there is no real need of ‘an army here.” If
he swaggered on the promenade in purple and gold,
he would be pursued bya ripple of undertoned banter :
“See, spring is here already,” or, ‘“‘ Where does this
peacock come from?” or, ‘Perhaps they are his
mother’s clothes.” And so graduaily the rings were
laid aside, the gorgeous raiment was exchanged for
simpler attire, the flowing locks were soberly trimmed,
and, before the young Fortunatus left the town, he
 PLATONISTS, NIGRINUS, DION CHRYSOSTOMUS 67

was ‘“‘much’ better; the tone of the place had

educated him.”
This gay passage is interesting, because it helps to
explain the intellectual change of the second century.
It was a revival of Hellenism, a reaction against
Romanism. The centre of thought was shifted from
the banks of the Tiber to those of the Ilissus, as it
was probably shifted again a little later on to those
of the Nile. When Nigrinus quitted Athens for
Rome, he felt as if he had left the light of the sun.
The coarseness, the harsh vices, and shameless im-
pudence of the capital disgusted him. The natural
antithesis to Roman grossness is Stoicism, the re-
ligion of rugged wills and sceptical intelligences.
Platonism appealed to the temperate, cultivated,
docile nature of the Greeks; its breath is the
pellucid air of Hellas, not the miasma of the
Subura.
Another interesting figure is Dion of the Golden
Mouth. Dion is far more of a rhetorician than of
a philosopher, but on this very account he shows us
more distinctly than anybody else the set of the times,
the new-born zeal for religion, the awakening of a
true and thorough-going religious morality. Nay, in
Dion we behold a very singular phenomenon, the
first gropings after the idea of a heathen church. He
is almost the only writer of antiquity, who takes a
keen, practical interest in social problems, and regards
the elevation of the masses as a religious work. This
- is a church view, wholly different from the attitude
of Stoicism, which taught that individual conversion
 68 NEOPLATONISM

was the one thing needful, and that material circum-

stances did not signify in the least.
Dion was born about the middle of the first century
in Prusa (now Brussa), a moderate town of Bithynia,
situated on the northern slopes of Mount Olympus.
He came of a wealthy equestrian family. His grand-
father was a friend of the then reigning emperor, by
whom he was presented with the Roman franchise.
His father, Pasicrates, was recognized as the chief
citizen of Prusa to the end of his life, and his mother |
was so beloved, that a statue and temple had been
erected to her. He was at first a rhetorician or
sophist, and, like other members of that curious pro-
fession, spent his life in wandering from town to town.
The rhetorician was one of the signs of the times, a
curious cross between an University Extension lecturer
and an operatic singer.
We must remember, that in the second century
there were hardly any topics for’a popular lecturer.
All the Sophist could offer, was an exhibition of
brilliant extempore talk about anything and every-
thing ; the more trivial the subject the better. It
was said of Swift, that he could have written finely
about a broomstick. This was the ambition of the
Sophist. Dion, in his younger days delivered “ dis-
plays,” as they were called, about a parrot and a gnat.
. The merit of the orator lay in his readiness, his copi-
ousness, his grandiloquence, and the skill with which
he could interweave high-flown metaphors, appropriate
or inappropriate allusions to Homer, and a dash of ©
philosophical or moral instruction. The Sophists
Be
By

-PLATONISTS, NIGRINUS, DION CHRYSOSTOMUS 69

were full of stagey ways, and affected great splendour

of apparel. ‘They dressed in character, and on one
occasion Dion, who was a thin little man, appeared
in a lion-skin, no doubt to perorate about Hercules.
| Latterly his style became graver and more practical ;
but he retained his sophistical mannerisms to the end,
and could hardly make a speech without assuring his
audience that it was quite extempore, and that he did
not know what was coming next.
About this earlier stage in his career we have little
information, unless we may accept as historical a scene
described by Philostratus. According to this romanc-
ing author, Vespasian, just before starting on his
expedition against Vitellius, gave audience at Alex-
andria to Euphrates the Stoic, Dion the Platonist, and
Apollonius the Pythagorean, and begged the advice
of the three philosophers on the delicate question,
whether he should make himself emperor or not.
Euphrates recommended him to re-establish the
Republic; Dion preferred an oligarchy, but urged
Vespasian to leave the decision in the hands of the
people; Apollonius answered: ‘I~ care not about
politics, for I am subject to the gods alone. But I do
not wish the flock to perish for want of a just and
moderate shepherd.” Vespasian wished to show his
gratitude by rich gifts to his three counsellors. Apol-
lonius refused all reward ; Dion begged the discharge
of a philosophic friend, Lasthenes, who in a rash
moment had enlisted in the army; Euphrates pulled
out of his pocket a paper, which he had brought with
him ready written, full of requests for himself and his
 70 NEOPLATONISM

friends. The passage is intended as a cut at Stoicism

for its impractical political intransigence and _ its
inconsistent morality.
In the reign of Domitian, Dion was in Rome, enjoy-
ing the intimate friendship of an illustrious man
nearly related to the Imperial family. This was
probably Flavius Sabinus, who was put to death by
Domitian, A.D. 82. After this tragedy Dion fled from
Rome, whether banished by formal decree, or driven
forth by horror and personal fear, is uncertain. What
he calls his exile lasted thirteen years, and it is
Dion’s praise that the touch of misfortune brought
out the real goodness and sincerity of a somewhat
flighty nature. He faced his adversity with cheerful
resignation. Often he had read, often he had
preached, about the temptations of wealth and the
blessings of poverty. Now if God allowed him, he
would find out for himself, how the truth was. The
Delphian Apollo in prose, for the prophet no longer |
spoke in verse, bade him ‘do what he was doing man-
fully till he had come to the ends of the earth.” And,
in reliance upon this behest, Dion set out to live the
life of a wanderer, alone and in ragged garb, with
nothing in his pocket but the Phaedo of Plato and a
speech of Demosthenes. He found his support partly
by manual labour as a gardener or a bathman, partly
by the alms of the charitable.
During this time of wandering we get but an occa-
sional glimpse of him. He tells us himself how, in
obedience to Apollo’s command, he roamed as far as
Borysthenes or Olbia on the Black Sea, where the
 PLATONISTS, NIGRINUS, DION CHRYSOSTOMUS ‘I

men of the town crowded into the theatre to hear

him discourse about the gods, though the battle-signal
was flying from the walls, and their harness was on
their backs ; how he followed in the train of the army
on the expedition against the Getae ; how towards
the end of the time he met a holy priestess in a
country place in Greece, who prophesied the downfall
of the tyrant, and the near end of his own sufferings.
The death of Domitian delivered him from all appre-
hensions. At the moment Dion was near a large
Roman camp, and the excitement of the soldiery at
the news of the Emperor’s assassination seemed likely
to issue in mutiny and outrage. Dion cast off his
cloak and sprang upon the altar, exclaiming, “ But
he, the wily Odysseus, stripped off his rags ’”—he was
never without an appropriate verse of Homer—and
succeeded in bringing the turbulent legions over to the
side of Nerva. 3
Ill-health kept Dion in retirement during the short
reign of Nerva; but under Trajan he emerged again,
and was treated with great distinction. On one occa-
sion the soldier-emperor took him up in his triumphal
chariot, and said to him, “I don’t know what you
mean, but I love you as myself.” Dion no doubt
set the compliment to his goodness of nature against
the affront to his style. In truth he did not always
quite know what he meant himself, and Trajan’s
civilities acted upon this uncertainty of purpose in a
way that shortly caused him great chagrin.
About a.p. roo he returned to his native town to
look after his property, which had become sadly
 72 NEOPLATONISM

dilapidated during his long absence. Dion was still

a Sophist at heart, with all the love of magnificence
that marked his class, and he allowed himself to be
seduced by the dream of doing for poor little Prusa
what Herodes Atticus had done for Athens. Only,
while Herodes had spent lavishly of his own enor-
mous wealth, Dion had little capital beyond his golden
tongue. Unfortunately things were just ripe for the
most chimerical schemes. The Asiatic towns were
agitated by the most furious rivalries, and Prusa was
determined not to be left behind in the race. The
happy moment seemed to have arrived. ‘There was the
great Dion their townsman once more among them.
What might not his influence with the Emperor
effect? ‘Trajan himself had said that he wished
to favour their city in every way. Dion easily
persuaded his townsmen to set about rebuilding
Prusa—it was an age of architectural extravagance
—on a scale of magnificence proportioned to the
splendid destiny in store. The work was begun, and
great expenses incurred, but all that Trajan could
‘be induced to do was to make Prusa an assize town,
to add a hundred members to the senate, and to
establish there the central offices for the adminis-
tration of the Bithynian revenues. This was a sad
blow to their ambitious hopes. Those who had
promised subscriptions refused to pay up, and the
proconsul exacted the money from the township at
large. ‘The rate-payers were so exasperated by this
unexpected turn of events, that they tried to set Dion’s
house on fire, and would have stoned the too per-
 PLATONISTS, NIGRINUS, DION CHRYSOSTOMUS 73

-suasive orator to death, if they could have laid hands

upon him.
Dion was evidently not a practical man, but he
took this lesson too in good part. He discarded the
ambition to lead a vestry, quitted Prusa, and contented
himself with the affectionate admiration, that to the
last attended upon his unquestioned literary and
oratorical ability. He appears to have spent the last
years of his life chiefly at Rome, where Plutarch
was his friend and Favorinus his disciple, and died
probably about A.D. 120.
Dion was a born sophist, and his orations are as a rule
_ too abstract and vague, and too verbose, to please the
modern reader. He is most interesting, when he
himself probably thought he was least so, in those
speeches where he tells the amusing tale of his vexa-
tions at Prusa. Among other misdeeds he had ordered
the demolition of an old smithy, which his opponents
insisted ought to have been preserved, as the workshop
of the only distinguished artist in bronze, that the town
had ever produced. Dion replied, that the place was
so dilapidated, that every stroke of the hammer upon
the anvil threatened to bring it down upon the
workmen’s heads. But it is amazing how little reality
there is in his speeches. How much he could have
told us! He knew Greek life from top to bottom, as
no other man of his time did. Yet there are only
five or six passages, that set before us what he saw.
But it is due to Dion to add, that these few notices tell
us more about the misery of the times, than we gather
from anybody else. He had witnessed the terrible
74 NEOPLATONISM

poverty and depopulation of the country districts, and

thought earnestly about a remedy for the evil. He
speaks with manly indignation of the horrible cancer of
sexual impurity, which sapped the life of the heathen
world. He does not regard these frightful sins with
the horror or the sternness ofa Christian, but at any
rate he points them out and condemns them. Indeed
he is always wholesome and earnest. Many of his
orations were delivered with the very practical object
of restoring peace between neighbouring towns, and
in his most complimentary harangues there is always
some point of well-aimed admonition, as when he
rebukes the Alexandrines for their scurrilous tongues.
Dion had in short a humane and philanthropic spirit.
The ancients describe his later harangues as those of
‘‘a counsellor,” ‘a statesman,’ and both epithets.
are deserved. He has many points of affinity with
Stoicism, but his view is larger, more modern, more
Christian we may almost say. He has caught the Stoic
idea of the World-City, “the dear city of Zeus.”
‘“¢ Philosophy tellsus of a good and loving communion
between demons and men, wherein all the benefits of
citizenship and law are granted, not indeed to the
brutes, but to all reasonable beings.” It is far better
and juster, he says, than the boasted polity of Lycurgus,
which did not permit the Helots to become Spartans,
and so fostered an undying enmity between the two.
There is neither master nor slave in the city of God.
He compares the world to the temple of Eleusis, in
which, at one point in the celebration of the mysteries,
the initiated danced round the novice with torches in
a,
pete

PLATONISTS, NIGRINUS, DION CHRYSOSTOMUS) 75

on”

their hands. So in this beautiful universe, not men but

the immortal Gods circle in rhythmic chorus round the
whole race of man, bearing with them night and day,
and all the lights of heaven. Dull is the heart that
cannot see that celestial band, and Him above all,
fairest among many fair, who governs and orders all
the wondrous show.
To Dion this language meant more than it did to
Epictetus. The Stoic after all cared little for any but
the elect of his own conventicle. But Dion really
loved the poor, and saw in their virtues the best
philosophy. The most attractive of his speeches is
the £uboic, in which he paints their simplicity, their
generosity and trustfulness, their domestic affection and
earnest piety. It is a picture of some poor folk
who were good to him, when he was shipwrecked on
the iron-bound coast of Eubcea, and it is meant to
show, how love and goodness can sweeten the hardest
lot. Nothing could be more tender than this charm-
ing prose idyll, and the feeling which inspires it, is
undoubtedly genuine.
As regards slavery again, Dion repeats the usual
Stoic commonplaces. The wise man alone is free,
the bad man is always a slave. But here too he
penetrates deeper into reality. He considers the
different methods, in which men become slaves, and
pronounces them all unjust. The time had not yet
come for giving practical effect to such a truth as this,
and Dion did not always quite mean what he said.
He recommends the master not to pursue a runaway
slave. If the slave, he asks, can be happy without a
76 NEOPLATONISM

master, who is supposed to be better than himself,

why cannot the master do without the slave, who 1s
supposed to be worse than himself? But, when on
his return to Prusa he found that his own human
chattels had taken the opportunity of absconding, he
manifests some, perhaps not unnatural, vexation.
Dion was an orator differing from other orators of
his time, not in method but in tone. After his exile
he never again declaimed about parrots and gnats. A'l
his utterances are marked by moral seriousness. On
this account men called him a philosopher. But he
had no disciples, and never discussed. He became
in fact a preacher, and we have to gather his philo-
sophical belief from those of his speeches, which most
nearly approach to the type of sermon. Of these the
most remarkable is the Olympic, delivered at Olympia
in presence of the glorious statue of Zeus, the master-
piece of Pheidias, which is in fact the text of his dis-
course. The speech is one of the best expositions of
Hellenism that we possess.
Dion enters upon his matter by an emphatic con-
demnation of Atheism and of Deism.
Many, he says, have set up a bad god, what they
are pleased to call Pleasure, a womanish deity, whom
they adore in the dark with cymbals and pipes. (This
is what the Stoic Hierocles called “the harlot
doctrine” of Epicurus, what in its modern garb of
utilitarianism Carlyle scoffs at ‘‘as the worship of the
frying-pan.”) We should not grudge them their jollity
if their heresy ended with their drinking songs. But
they have taken away our gods and banished them
 PLATONISTS, NIGRINUS, DION CHRYSOSTOMUS ee
, "4

from the world, saying that there is no mind in the

universe and no ruler over it; no providence and no
creator. They are worse than the Deistical Peripatetics,
who at least have some sort of god, if only like a
child, who starts his hoop, and then lets it bowl along
by itself.
Where are we to look for sounder doctrine? First
and foremost to the testimony of the soul itself, the
belief that is born in every man. Secondly and
thirdly, to the corroboration of poets and legislators,
for there is no song, no justice, without the inspiration
of God. Fourthly, to the teaching of Art. For whence
comes the sense of beauty in form and colour, and to
what conclusions does it lead us on?
But here a difficulty arises. What shall we say of
the fair creations of the sculptor or the painter, of
Pheidias or Zeuxis? For they do not deliver the same
message as the verse of Homer, or the statutes of Solon.
The poet’s song introduces into Olympus the tumult
of human passion ; the law-giver’s code embodies the
ideal of severe unbending right. The breathing
marble, the glowing canvas, call up before us a figure
which is pure, beautiful, unchanging, but human. Can
this be a worthy representation of God?
Here we reach the burning question of the day.
How was polytheism, idolatry, to be reconciled with
the reasonable service of an intelligent and spiritual
deity? To solve this problem we must call upon yet
a fifth witness, the philosopher, whose office it is to
explain and harmonize the superficial divergences of
the other four ; we must have recourse, as we should
78 NEOPLATONISM

say in our modern jargon, to the higher criticism. This

Dion proceeds to do in his oratorical fashion by calling
up the spirit of Pheidias to answer for his statue. Thou
noblest and best of artists, he says, no man will deny
that thou hast wrought a vision of wondrous delight for
all Greeks and all barbarians. The most toilworn of
mankind, as he gazes on this statue of thine, would
forget all the woes and hardships of life. But hast
thou wrought for us a shape worthy of God? For
great and lovely though it be, clothed in light and
grace, it is still the shape of man.
Pheidias replies, that no human skill can adequately
represent the majesty of the divine. The gods are
in heaven; they are the sun, moon, and stars. But
these bright orbs do not satisfy the cravings of the
heart. They are too simple and too far. Man wants
gods that he can touch. ‘‘ As infants in the dark stretch
forth their hands and cry for their father or mother, so
men, loving the gods for their bounty and goodness,
long to be with them, and speak to them.” Hence the
artless barbarians make gods of mountains or trees or
shapeless stones. But the cultivated Greek needs
some fitting image of the divine intelligence. ‘‘ Hence
we turn to the human body, attaching to God that
which is for us the vessel of wisdom and utterance,
striving to represent the invisible and formless by
visible form, by the best symbol in our power.” If
the sculptor’s art is limited in its vehicle of expres-
sions, there is a gain even in its simplicity. Poetry is
full of life and movement, but it is wild and turbulent.
‘Homer first showed to the Greeks many beautiful
 PLATONISTS, NIGRINUS, DION CHRYSOSTOMUS 79

images of all the gods, and of the great God of all, some
clement, some fearful and terrible. But my Zeus is
calm and ever mild, as befits the lord of peaceful
Hellas. Him, by my art and the wise counsel of Elis,
I set up here, tranquil and majestic in his unclouded
beauty, giver of life and wealth and all that is good,
father, saviour, guardian of all mankind, as perfect a
counterfeit of the ineffable nature of God as mortal
skill can engrave.”
- In this passage we have the most plausible exposition
of the Platonism of the second century, or the reformed
Paganism, as it is sometimes called, for they are one
and the same thing. The Gods are many, but one is
King. They are spiritual, just, and beneficent, and
man must and can be like them. If Homer tells us
shocking tales, these are the forgeries of the poet,
who lives to please and to astonish. Reason and
true art are safe and sufficient guides.
Dion’s plea for images is not without justice;
what he defends is not idolatry, but religious art. In
-this again he went further than his contemporaries,
who for the most part admitted a real presence of
the god in the statue. As for the masses, it cannot
be doubted, that they actually worshipped not only
the work of men’s hands, but shapeless stones,
mountains, trees, and in Egypt beasts.
On the subject of the demons he says little or
nothing. Spiritual beings are all god-like and good.
Here too he was in advance of his times, and here
too he did not see the state of things quite clearly.
A great part of the Greek ritual, and a still larger
80 NEOPLATONISM

part of the barbarian religions, was devil-worship, and

this dark fact called imperatively for some sort of
explanation. It. was the necessary result of two
causes, Polytheism and heathen notions of the divine
wrath ; and the mode in which it was handled forms
generally one of the most significant features in the
religious thought of the second century.
 Vy

PLUTARCH

PLUTARCH was as pure and amiable as Dion, and

of a much higher order of ability. He was not an
orator, and speaks of the Sophists with gentle dislike
for their insincerity. He was not even a philosopher,
in the sense in which we apply the term to Plato, or
Aristotle, or Locke. Philosophy was not his first,
nor by any means his only, concern, and his principles
are not always clear, consistent, or developed. He
belongs rather to the class of critics, or essayists, or
men of letters, and in this he holds a foremost place.
Every subject that interested the mind of his time, is
discussed in his voluminous pages, but the motive is
almost always moral or religious. All that he wrote
is marked by a sincere and beautiful piety. He was
the most learned, chatty, and agreeable of men, and
never said an unkind thing of any one, except the
historian Herodotus, who was as amiable as Plutarch
himself, but angered the Boeotian sage by disparage-
ment of the Bceotians. Plutarch loved his native
soil, and deserted as it was in his time by gods and
men, he would not allow the world to forget, that it
F
 82 NEOPLATONISM

was the land of Cadmus, of Hesiod, of Pindar, of -

Corinna, and Epaminondas. His one unfortunate
treatise, ‘on the Malignity of Herodotus,” may be
pardoned as a natural, if ill-aimed, outburst of indig-
nation against the injustice of mankind, who spoke
of his countrymen as “ Boeotian swine.”
His life, like that of most men of letters, is little
known. Not that he courted obscurity. One of his
shorter papers 1s on the maxim, ‘“‘live forgotten.”
‘The author of this adage,” says Plutarch, ‘devised
it, that he might not be forgotten.” But the tranquil
life of a man of the pen is marked by few incidents.
He was born about A.p. 48, in the reign of Claudius,
and died about a.D, 120, in the reign of Hadrian.
He studied, no doubt at Athens, under “the good
Ammonius,” a Peripatetic and an Egyptian. He
lectured at Rome as a young man, and visited the
capital again in later years. He had seen Alexandria
and Sparta; but the greater part of his long life seems
to have been spent almost entirely in his little native
' town of Cheronea. There he was squire, mayor (or
archon), and priest, attending to the welfare of his
tenants, managing the affairs of the community,
presiding at their sacrifices, passing the greater part
of his time in his well-stored library, and making
occasional excursions into the larger world. ‘There
is something very English about such a life. We
may consider Plutarch as a sort of Greek Kingsley.
His family held a considerable position, and were
rich in ability. Huis great-grandfather Nicarchus, his
grandfather Lamprias, his father, whose name is not
 PLUTARCH $3

recorded, his brothers ‘Timon and Lamprias, were all

men of intelligence. Notwithstanding his retired life,
he knew everybody that was worth knowing. ‘Trajan
and Hadrian are said to have honoured him with
public dignities, and, though this particular fact is
uncertain, he appears to have enjoyed the esteem of
both princes.
Plutarch is probably still best known by his Parad/e/
Lives, a series of biographical sketches, in which he
depicted and compared the great heroes of Greek
and Roman history side by side. In our scientific
age, which thinks more of the general movement and
less of the individual life, which is highly impatient of
all moral reflections, and is rather pleased when it
can prove that a fine saying was never uttered, or
a fine deed never done, the Zzves have become a
grammar-school text. But, from the revival of Greek
to the time of Rousseau, they were one of the most
popular books in existence. Montaigne delighted in
them, Shakespeare drew the material for his Roman
dramas from North’s Translation, and Jeremy Taylor
found in them an inexhaustible store of anecdote and
illustration. ‘There he read, how Lysimachus sold his
kingdom for a draught of wine, and repented too
late; how Phocion, when the populace applauded
him, turned to his friends and asked, ‘‘ What folly
have I uttered?” how Alexander said, “ Antipater
knows not, that one tear of his mother blots out all
the libels he has written against me”’; how the dying
Pericles, when his weeping friends were praising, some
his eloquence, some his courage, some his victories,
 84 NEOPLATONISM

_ raised his héad from the pillow, and said, ‘‘ What you
admire are little things, or gifts of fortune ; the greatest
of all you forget, that no citizen ever wore black
through me.”
To Plutarch, as to Teufelsdrockh, the supreme in-
terest of history was the humano-anecdotical. There
he found human nature at work on the most picturesque
and impressive scale, always the same human nature,
always teaching the same lessons of piety, duty,
magnanimity, moderation, and kindliness. For our
present purpose the JZzves are of importance as
showing not only the learning and amiability of their
author, but the changing attitude of the thought of
the time. If we contrast this broad, social, artistic
view of life with the sour Puritanism of the Stoic, we
shall find it wiser and more practical. To Epictetus
‘Caesar is the corrupter-general, the devil ; to Plutarch,
as to St. Paul, he is a minister of God for good,
though possibly a very unfaithful minister.
No other writer of antiquity handles the domestic
affections with such insight as Plutarch. One of the
best of his treatises is the dialogue called Amatorius,
It is suggested by a comical incident of real life. A
wealthy widow named Ismenodora, of great personal
attractions and spotless character, became enamoured
of a poor young gentleman, Bacchon. Her suitors
were furious, and Bacchon, though not unwilling,
was afraid of the ridicule of his companions.
‘Things were at a deadlock, when Ismenodora boldly
‘cut the knot by carrying Bacchon off and marrying
him there and then. ‘This gives rise toa discussion
 PLUTARCH 85

whether a man ought to marry, whether he is justified

in marrying a wife richer and a little older than
himself, and how he ought to treat his wife. The
dialogue is marked by its outspoken condemnation
of that ghastly Greek vice, which cannot even be
named by Christian lips, but still more by its ex-
quisite treatment of the subject of conjugal love.
“In marriage,” says Plutarch, “it is better to love
than to be loved.” His tone is that of a modern
gentleman. The wife is to be not the mistress only,
but the friend and companion of the husband, and
he overflows with anecdotes of the purity, the
courage, the generosity of woman. Nor does
marriage in his view altogether lack a sacramental
character ; it is under the special care, not of the
earthly, but of the heavenly Eros. This goes to the
root of the matter, and it is hardly too much to say,
‘that the Amatorius is worth all other heathen writings
on morality put together. Plutarch’s life was in strict
accordance with his professions.
This difference of moral tone implies of course a
difference of moral theory, and in the de wirtute
moralt Plutarch explains very clearly his scientific
objections to Stoicism.
There are, he says, two great moral antitheses;
the first is between the soul and the world, the
second is in the soul itself, between reason and
desire. The Stoics admit the first, but not the
second. They regard the soul as practically one.
Hence vice is an error of judgment. Marcus Aurelius
taught that “all things are opinion,” that is to say,
86 NEOPLATONISM

that moral evil consists in the mistaken idea that

pleasure is good. Obviously then vice is a corrup-
tion of the soul itself; in other words, of the God
within. Thus Pantheism not only, as we have seen,
makes all bad men equally bad, but destroys all
possibility of amendment. The whole soul is given
up to evil, and there is absolutely nothing left, to
which an appeal can be made.
Plutarch admits both antitheses, but in a much
modified form. The world is neither evil nor in-
different. Being the work of God, it must be either
a blessing or a scene of trial. Similarly, in the soul
reason and desire are distinguished not as opposites,
though they may become so, but as superior and
inferior. The office of reason is not to extirpate
affection, for this is impossible, but to control it.
Affection is the matter, reason the form, and each
moral virtue may be regarded as a mean between two
extremes, the too much and the too little. Thus
courage is a mean between foolhardiness and
cowardice.
On this view each virtue becomes a kind of
musical harmony; the tumult of sound is formed
and regulated by the art of the composer. But now
earthly music may be better or worse according to
the ideal of the artist, and the skill whereby he realizes
his ideal. Where the ideal is not absolutely master
of the material, the result is always discord, pain, the
accompaniment and sign of effort and uncertainty.
So it is with virtue. Plutarch divides men into four
classes, the Temperate (ow@pwr), the saint, in whom
 PLUTARCH 87

reason is sO supreme that there is no longer any

resistance on the part of the lower nature; the
Continent and the Incontinent (éy«parhe, axparye), in
whom good and evil are striving for the mastery, good
predominating in the first and evil in the second;
‘this is the region of free-will, as it is commonly
called, of choice and its concomitants, shame, repent-
ance, pain; and lastly the Intemperate, the bad, in
whom evil is as absolute as goodness in the saint.
To the moral virtues the good things of the
world, or, as Plutarch called them, the gifts of the i
gods, are necessary and helpful. The musician
cannot play without an instrument, and he can make
finer music with an organ than with a drum.
It is obvious to what practical differences the two
theories lead. According to Plutarch a good wife is
a blessing, according to Epictetus she is a thing
' indifferent. The latter looked upon a bad man with
- hopeless scorn as ‘a fool,” the former cried to the
weak and erring, “You are children of God; you
. know better.” For the Platonist held that reason is
never false; it ‘‘contemplates the first, abiding, un-
changing truths,” and always knows what is right. It
may sleep; 1t may be violently overcome by desire,
but it is never persuaded to assent to sin. The worst
of men can be forced to give evidence against him-
self. The Platonist appeals to the festimonium animae
naturaliter Christianae; the chief defect in his
system is, that it is esthetic and intellectual rather
than moral. .
The student will perceive, that in this analysis of
88 NEOPLATONISM

the practical virtues Plutarch has adopted bodily the

teaching of Aristotle. The two agree again neces-
sarily in setting the intellectual virtues above the
practical, This is merely their way of saying that
reason, or dogma, or faith must regulate conduct, a.
‘truth too obvious to need discussion. But here
begins the difference between the Peripatetic and the
Platonist. Plutarch held that the reason (vovc), which
is not, properly speaking, in the body, because the
body is in it, was in immediate contact with the
divine, saw the divine nature, and possessed the
divine thoughts. Thus reason, dogma, and faith are
different names for the same thing.
Thus sound learning and true godliness are
identified. Plutarch was almost more priest than
philosopher. He would have said, that he was a
philosopher, because he was a priest. Religion is to
him the crown of life, the source of all harmony and
unity. Against the Epicureans he maintains, that
those, who make pleasure the end, cannot live
pleasantly. There is no pure joy without a pious,
grateful spirit. We have seen how he applied this
maxim to the blessing of domestic happiness, but he
learned it also from the performance of his own
priestly duties in the temple of Apollo at Chaeronea.
“Nothing that we see,” he says, ‘‘nothing that we do,
cheers the spirit more effectually than the sights and
actions of our worship, when we celebrate a festival, or
dance in a choir, or attend at a sacrifice. For there
is a good hope and faith, that the god will be pro-
pitious and favourably allow our service,” It is on
 PLUTARCH 89

the comforting nature of the belief and on the natural

desire for perfection, that he rests the immortality of
the soul, though he found it also in revelation.
Without religion then society itself is impossible.
‘ Belief in the gods is the’first and chiefest thing, the
cement of all society, the bulwark of all laws.” Like
virtue, religion appeared to Plutarch as a golden mean
between the marsh of superstition and the precipice
of atheism. Atheism he regarded as “a brutish way of
thinking.” Superstition was as bad as atheism. “ For
the crushing fear of the gods is inseparable from the
wish, that there were no gods.” But elsewhere he
takes a wiser view. ‘‘ Few men fear the gods so much,
that it were better they should not fear them at
all.” “Most men, being unlearned, yet not wholly
bad, worship the gods with a certain dread, which is
called superstition; yet the fear is immensely out-
weighed by hope and joy, and the filial feeling with
which they pray for and receive good things as the
gift of the gods.”
Superstition here means craven fear of the unseen.
It tells a man that the gods act towards him like
tyrants, “by wrath or favour.” This is not true.
God is good. ‘As it is the property of fire not to
chill but to warm, so it is the property of the good
to benefit not to harm.” Hence Plutarch was
shocked by the Old Testament, of which he had a
little indirect knowledge, because it speaks of the
wrath of Jehovah. God is beneficence pure and
simple. Thus Hellenism, intellectualism, recoiled
from the popular devil-worship to the opposite ex-
 go NEOPLATONISM

treme of geniality. But Plutarch wasa firm believer

in the divine government by rewards and punish-
ments, both in this world and in the world to come.
God renders to every man what he deserves. ‘Those
who are incurable He slays at once, because they
harm others, and themselves most of all. To others
He allows a space for repentance. For there is no
fear, lest any should escape His hands.”
By gods Plutarch meant the gods of Greece,
though each man, he thought, was bound to worship
the deities of his native land. It was not lawful to
explain away their personality. “You see what a
gulf of impiety gapes for us, if we turn the gods into
affections, or natural forces, or virtues.” Nor were
they to be questioned. ‘If you are going to ask for
proof about each one, you will shake with your
sophistry every temple and every altar, and leave
nothing free from cavil.” No Hellenist was a mono-
theist, not even the Stoics, who for all their
Pantheism were as superstitious as anybody else.
Like all his school, Plutarch contented himself with
teaching that all gods were pure, reasonable, and
good, and that One above all was Father, Ruler, and
Creator. ‘Thus the minor deities became dependent
and inferior beings, as indeed they are in the Zimaus,
acting as vicegerents of the Supreme. Celsus com-
pares them to proconsuls, and Nicomachus of Gerasa
calls them ‘‘ archangels,” a name which he must have
borrowed from the Bible.
Plutarch generally thinks and speaks of God under
the old royal and paternal forms. But at times he
 PLUTARCH gt

adopts the modern Pythagorean view, and identifies

the Supreme with the absolute. One of the most
interesting of his dialogues is on the letter E, which
was fixed on the walls in three different places of the
Delphic temple. The letter was shaped much as in
our English alphabet, but it was called Ei, and this
diphthong may mean “Thou art.” Ammonius takes
the name of the letter as a symbol of the Deity, and
“explains it to mean “Thou art One.” Ged is the
one substance, the Eternal, the All-sufficient. In this
adoption of the Pythagorean doctrine we find the
first distinct step in the transition from Platonism to
Neoplatonism. But like Plato himself, Plutarch did
not admit the eternity of creation as a necessary self-
evolution of God. Another closely related doctrine,
that of Ecstasy, has not yet attained in his mind the
definite position, which it occupies in the teaching of
Plotinus. But he was a firm believer in inspiration
and revelation of every kind. God manifests Himself
by the heavenly graces of love and genius, by pre-
dictions, omens, dreams, by what we call possession,
and by the ecstatic trance. Physical aids, the fumes
of a sacred fountain, or the steam of the Pythian cleft
are sometimes useful, and indeed ordained; _ but
the great help is the preparation of the soul by quiet
and detachment. Plutarch in fact believes in revela-
tion in the Christian sense, and in enthusiasm and
trance in the Pagan sense, as he saw them actually
manifested, especially in his own land of Bceotia, but
hardly touches on the philosophic trance of Plotinus,
and exhibits no taint of the mesmerism of the later

ae
f.
92 NEOPLATONISM

Neoplatonists. Mysticism in the lower sense of the

word is not yet welded into his system. But he
carefully laid the fuel for others to kindle.
We shall certainly not blame Plutarch for believing.
in revelation, which is the necessary corollary of
belief in a God, who is wiser and better than man.
But what we have to notice is, that ecstasy is not, as
Zeller seems to have thought, a necessary complement
of the doctrine of the absolute. It 1s, as Plutarch
shows, much older than that doctrine, and quite inde-
pendent of it. All that Neoplatonism did, was to
make ecstasy absolutely sterile by divesting God of
all relation to the world.
Down to this point Plutarch’s creed is pure and
elevating. It is intellectual, yet in the fine saying, “ It
is better to love than to be loved,” it is unconsciously
at one with the teaching of our Lord: ‘‘it is more
blessed to give than to receive.” Noble and even holy
lives might be inspired by his teaching, and in fact
were so inspired. Nor so far does there seem to be
any great difficulty in his way. The immoral myths,
which Homer weaves about the persons of the
Olympian gods, admitted of explanation. Plutarch
compares them to the rainbow, which colours yet
refracts the light of the sun. They might be gently
put aside as the fancies of a crude, semi-barbarous
anthropomorphism, or they might be treated as moral
allegories. Nevertheless there was a great difficulty ;
Plutarch’s doctrine was not a reform but a revolution,
and a conservative revolution, which is a contradiction
in terms; He wanted to keep the whole ritual, and
 PLUTARCH 93

yet transfigureit ; to put a Christian head on a heathen

body. This could not be done, for there was that in
the ritual itself, which made the junction impossible.
What he wanted to get rid of was Magic. But the
belief in Magic is the root from which Polytheism
sprang, and dies only with the death of Polytheism.
There were myths which could not be allegorized,
and rituals which could not be brought under the
general doctrine of the unmixed beneficence of God.
They were the frantic orgiastic cults which were con-
nected with the names of Cybele, Dionysus Zagreus,
Isis, Adonis, and many others. They had a certain
religious meaning, in so far as they gave barbarous
expression to two great religious facts, the sense of sin
and the need for an atonement. Platonism could not
~ account for either of these facts, and was rather shocked
by them. Nevertheless there they were in Hellenism
itself, and some kind of explanation must be pro-
vided. This difficulty was met by the doctrine of
Demons.
Plutarch approaches this subject several times from
different points of view. In his Commentary on the
Timeus he maintains that God, the Supreme Intelli-
gence, the One Word, as he elsewhere calls Him, did
not create either body or soul. Chaos, Matter, the
Indefinite Dyad, already possessed both. What God
did, was to infuse reason and form into this tumultuous
disorderly life. His work is compared to that of a
mus.cian, who does not create sound, but harmonizes
it. Thus in the World-animal, which is a deity, there
is, aS in man, a double principle, the infused divine
 94 - NEOPLATONISM

intelligence side by side with lawless desire. ‘This last

is the Evil Soul of Plato’s laws.
Another remarkable treatise is that Ox the Failing
of the Oracles. The decay of the ancient seats of
prophecy lay heavy on the pious mind of Plutarch.
How could God so change, he asked, as to withdraw
from man this special mark of His favour, through
which so many blessings had been showered on Greece
in the great old days?
The decline was unmistakable. Bceotia had been
a land of inspiration ; now her glory was all but de-
parted. The oracle of Teiresias at Orchomenos had
been dumb since the great plague. At Ptous and
Tegyra sheep browsed on the site of the fane. Deso-
lation had fallen ‘on the famous oracles of Mopsus and
Amphilochus in Cilicia. Even at Delphi one Pythia
did the work of the ancient three, and the responses
were given no longer in verse but in bald prose. What
was the reason? The rough-tongued Cynic said that
the gods “had packed up and gone,” in wrath at the
wickedness of those who consulted them. Others
sought a cause in the depopulation of Greece, which
was so terrible, that the whole country could with
difficulty send three thousand hoplites into the field,
the same number that the single state of Megara had
despatched in the old days to fight the Persians at
_ Plataea.
Plutarch himself cannot accept either of these
explanations. ‘To him they seemed irreverent. But
what will be thought of his own answer? He held
that oracles were given not by the gods at all, but by
 PLUTARCH 95
the demons who wait upon them. Their cessation might
‘be accounted for either by subterranean catastrophes
diverting those earthy fumes, which at Delphi and
elsewhere excited the convulsions of the priestess, or
by the death of the Demon himself. For these beings,
though long-lived, are not eternal. In the reign of
Tiberius Caesar a mysterious voice had sounded from
Paxae, an islet of the Echinades group, bidding an
Egyptian mariner spread the news, that ‘‘ great Pan
was dead.” And Demetrius, a Roman officer, while
on duty in an island on the coast of England, had
witnessed a wild tumult in the sky, which, the people
told him, betokened the death of one of the princes of
the air.
The demons, he tells us in this strange dialogue, are
the agents of Providence, and epecially of the divine
retribution. Such work befits not the higher gods,
whom Hesiod calls “chaste givers of wealth.” To
the Demons belong the mysteries, and all the dark
side of religious life. “ Black and ill-omened days, on
which men devour raw flesh, obscene cries at sacred
altars, fasts, and beatings of the breast do not belong
to the worship of any god, but are propitiatory rites
to keep off evil demons.” So with human sacrifices,
and tales of barbarous lust, and stories of painful
expiation, like that of Apollo after he had slain the
python. All these belong to the ‘‘hard gods,” the
Alastors.
The same idea recurs in the dialogue Ox the Face in
the Moon. In the moon are both heaven and hell.
- There the good, after their appointed time of purgation,

tes
ert
96 NEOPLATONISM

become pure spirits, and dwell in the Elysian plain

on the side next the sun. Thither go the evil to be
tormented in the shadow of that awful Face, which is
the face of Proserpine. But the good return again to
the spaces below the air as demons. Some of them
sin and abuse their powers; these must once more
endure the trial of life as man.
The /szs and Osiris is remarkable chiefly for its repe-
tition in another shape of the doctrine of the Evil
Soul. The wild Egyptian myth of the murder of Osiris
by Typhon is meant to teach, that the world is the
work, not of one author, but of two. Typhon fights
against Isis and Osiris, as Ahriman in Parsee theology
against Ormuzd.
Plutarch traces the belief in demons all through
Greek literature and all over the world. He finds it
in Hesiod, in Plato, in Empedocles, in Xenocrates,
in the Stoic Chrysippus, and in the Atomist Demo-
critus ;in Persia, in Thrace, in Phrygia, in Egypt, in
Britain. He might have added Rome, which wor-
shipped Fever and Mephitis. It was everywhere.
The most sceptical wits who believed in nothing else
believed in devils. Lucan and Pliny the Elder are
just as vulnerable on this point as Apuleius. For the
vulgar there was no other faith. ‘‘ They sacrificed,”
the Apostle says, “to devils.” |
These facts do not alter our estimate of Plutarch’s
own character, but they are absolutely ruinous to his
system. With what effect could he denounce those
vices, which Astarte claimed as her tribute, when by
the side of the holy gods he himself enthroned these
 PLUTARCH 97

spirits of darkness, who must be placated lest they

should do harm. It was through this breach that
the Christian apologists stormed irresistibly in.
This part of Plutarch’s doctrine is interesting also
in other aspects. It shows us that Gnosticism, of
which the characteristic feature is the belief in an
evil creator, was not so late in its appearance as is
commonly supposed, and this remark has an import-
ant bearing on the authenticity of certain of the
letters of St. Paul. It shows us again, that Hellenism
could do nothing better with religious emotion than
provide a sort of sink to carry it off. The explanation
of this fact goes down to the very root of the difference
between Hellenism and the Gospel,

G
 VI

CELSUS
rd

SucH was the Platonism of the second century.

It has shaken itself free from the scepticism of the
Academy, and offers to the world a definite body of
dogmatic teaching. |
Its teaching is that of Plato, with a difference. In
one aspect the difference is that between the original
inspiration of genius, and the plodding industry of
the commentator or professor. Platonism has passed
from the free open air to the library. We see no
Socrates quickening the spark of divine truth in dull
souls, like that of Menon’s slave, by his art of
‘‘ midwifery,” but Nigrinus. musing among his books
and globes. We hear no longer the inimitably
graceful “‘myths” of the Phaedrus or the Republic,
those parables, as we may call them, in which
dialectic divination, sober earnest, and airy fancy are
blended together like the hues of the rainbow. We
miss the rare personality of Plato, so richly endowed
both on the philosophic and on the sensuous side.
We miss the poetry and the sense of humour, and
these influences have a serious bearing on the reality,
the practicality of speculation. What Plato gave as
 CELSUS 99

a tale told by ancient sages, as a vision, a possibility,

the allegory of the Charioteer, the story of Er,
the son of Armenius, the poetical cosmogony of
the Zimaeus, has become part and parcel of the
cut-and-dried teaching of the school. Philosophy
has become impersonal, methodical, in a sense less
real. Yet in another respect it is more real. The
great charm of Plato is that he binds men to nothing.
But definiteness of thought is after all a necessity for
men who want to live and not to drift. Hence the
later Platonists were driven, by the nature of things,
to ask their master precisely what he meant, to seize
and define his leading thoughts, and as far as they
could to bring his idealism into an orderly whole.
Plato used vague language everi of the Ideas. His
followers explained them to mean not only the great
spiritual laws of beauty, goodness, and truth, but the
actual patterns of existing things. They regarded God
in the old-fashioned way as intelligent and good, yet
at the same time they spoke of Hin as ‘‘ beyond
existence,” and as ‘‘ wanting nothing,” the first of
these phrases implying that He does not think, and
the second that He has no consciousness: of the
world, so that He’ could really be neither intelligent
nor good. Again, they conceived of the ideas as
existing outside the mind of God, like ‘‘ golden
statues,” as Plotinus says, so that when the Deity
wished to create He must first look about for the
pattern, and perhaps not recognize it when He found
it. All these crudities are found in Plato himself,
often side by side with Lints of a-different complexion.
 I0o NEOPLATONISM

What his followers did, down to the middle of the

second century, was to select, reiterate, and harden
them, and in this way to bring to light their inherent
confusion. ‘They were more real again in another
manner. They could no longer play with ideal
republics. The deluge was upon them, and the
question was, how the existing State could be saved.
Hence their zeal for the conservation of the established
religion. This is why, by the.side of the two deities
of their philosophy, the Supreme Intelligence and
the World-Spinit, they introduced the whole Pantheon
of the popular mythology, the lower gods and the
demons. ‘This also they found in Plato. What
distinguishes them here from their master, is the clear
_ perception, that the influence of the schools so far had
been antagonistic to religion, that religion itself was
imperiled, and that with it morality and general
culture were in danger of perishing. What they
desired was to consolidate the various mythologies,
to retain the whole fabric of Polytheism, and to
guard the self-respect of the philosopher, by giving
him, not instead but in addition, a more enlightened
creed of his own.
How far was this possible? How far could men
hope on these lines to build a system that might
pretend to rival the Gospel? The question will be
answered for us by one of these very men. The
True Word of Celsus was an elaborate attack upon
Christianity from precisely this position ; and it is still
to be found almost entire in the treatise which Origen
wrote in reply.
 CELSUS IOL

It is uncertain who Celsus was, nor is it possible

to fix the date of his book with absolute accuracy.
He mentions the apotheosis of Antinous, and seems
to speak of the devastation of Judaea after the sup-
pression of Barcochba’s revolt towards the end of
the reign of Hadrian, though his words may apply to
the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus. Beyond these
facts there is no very certain note of time. But
persecution was raging against the Christians, and the
ship of the state was apparently in danger. Hence
Keim supposes that he wrote about 178 A.D., just
after the persecution of Vienna, when Marcus Aurelius
was preparing for his expedition against the Quad.
In this case he was probably the Celsus to whom
Lucian dedicated his exposure of the famous quack,
Alexander of Abonoteichos.
He was undoubtedly a Platonist, though Origen
fell into the error of regarding him as an Epicurean.
But he was rather a cultivated man of the world,
than a philosopher. There is a tone about him,
keen, scornful, positive, practical, which seems to de-
note familiarity with affairs on a large scale and in
high position. He writes hke a clever pro- consul.
There is a ring of menace in his words. Like many
another magistrate in those days, he condescends
to argue and even to implore, but ends by pointing
-_ to the altar, and bidding the trembling Christian
burn incense or die. But it is characteristic of the
man, that he saw with the eye of a true statesman
the dangers to which Aurelius was blind. To this
resolute, clear-sighted man, the meek pertinacity of the
 102 — NEOPLATONISM

down-trodden Church was ominous of catastrophe;

and his diatribe resolves itself into a sort of fierce
appeal to the Christians to have mercy on the Empire.
They must make concessions like everybody else ;_
they must if necessary be forced to make them, for
the unity and very existence of the State are in
jeopardy.
Celsus insists that he knew all about Christianity,
and his information is indeed extensive, though it does
not penetrate to a real appreciation of the points at
issue. He was awake to the distinction between
“the great” or Catholic Church and the heretics,
though he sometimes confuses properly Christian
teaching with the vagaries of an obscure Gnosticism,
of which he knew more than Origen himself. He had
read the books of Genesis and Exodus, of Jonah and
of Daniel. He had studied the four Gospels, and
possessed besides a general acquaintance with the
phraseology of the whole Bible, which he may have
acquired by reading or in conversation, for he had
talked} with Christian priests. There is a highly
interesting point involved here. Celsus tells us
enough about the Catholic Church of his time to
assure us, that it was in all essentials the same then as
now. ‘The only articles in the Creed, with which he
explicitly deals, are the Incarnation, the Descent into
Hell, and the Resurrection; but as far as this
enlightened and bitter antagonist is aware, there was
not, and never had been, any difference in the Church
on these points. He knew the four Gospels, and the
four only, he alludes to the Epistles of St. Paul, and his
\
 CELSUS 103

silence is no proof that he did not possess the rest of

the New Testament as well, because he mentions no
book that he could not strike. Thus this trenchant
_ heathen critic becomes one of the most effective of
apologists, and his evidence is all the more important,
because there is really no strong ground for dating his
book much after the Barcochba revolt. Widely read
as he was, he knew of none but ignorant Christians,
and had never heard of Justin, Tatian, Athenagoras,
Melito, Miltiades, or Apollinaris. And he does not
refer to the infamous charges of child-murder and
debauchery, which in the time of Aurelius were alleged
currently against the Christians.
The Zrue Word falls into two divisions, of which
the first is put into the mouth of a Jew, while in the
second Celsus speaks in his own voice. To the Jew
is ascribed the task of attacking the person of our
Lord. Part of what is here to be read, for instance,
the Panthera legend, still exists in the Talmud, and
Celsus is no doubt guided by what he had actually
heard from the lips of Jews. The arrangement gave
him a double advantage. It enabled him to assail
the moral character of our Lord under cover. When ~
he speaks in his own person he is much more
temperate and conciliatory, ‘‘ willing to wound, and yet
afraid to strike.” Again, Celsus hated and scorned
the Jews beyond the power of expression. To him
they were ‘‘runaway Egyptian slaves, who had never
done anything worth speaking of ;”’ their sacred books
were mean and ridiculous to the last degree. He
scoffs at Egyptian beast-worship ; the Jews were inf-
104 NEOPLATONISM

nitely beneath the Egyptians, and the Christians were

renegade Jews, at whom their own kinsmen made a
mock. ‘This is why the Jew is called in to demolish
the Gospel, before Celsus takes up his parable, and,
in a much less acrid tone, undertakes to show the
Christians the real truth, which they had missed though
not wholly—which they had missed precisely because
of their Jewishness.
The point insisted upon by the Jew is the weakness,
the baseness, and the failure of the life of Jesus. He
was the son of Panthera. The prophets foretold ‘‘a
great prince, lord of all the earth, all nations, all
armies ; nota pestilent fellow like this.’’ Compare
His passion with that of Bacchus in Euripides. King
Pentheus, who had dared to imprison the god, was
torn in pieces for his impiety. But Pontius Pilate
suffered nothing. Why did not Christ: then, at any
rate, if not before, show His divine power, save Him-
self from this shame, and punish those who were out-
raging Himself and His Father? See how on the
Cross He craved for drink, unable to bear thirst with
the commonest fortitude. And do ye reproach us, ye
faithful ones, because we do not count Hima god, nor
agree with you that He bore all this for the good of man,
that we too might learn to bear chastisements? The
truth is, that after He had failed in life to persuade any-
body, even His own disciples, He was punished thus.
You will not surely say, that after He had failed to per- _
suade men here, He went to Hades to persuade men
there. You may invent absurd apologies for Him; but, if
they are to be heard, what is to prevent us from regard-
 CELSUS 105

ing any one, who has been condemned and died a miser-
able death, as a divine messenger? It needs but suf-
ficient impudence to say of any executed robber or
murderer: ‘‘ He was no robber but a god, for he
foretold his fellow-robbers,*what he was to suffer.”’
The evidence of miracles the Jew derides, on the
ground that our Lord Himself confessed that evil men
could perform them; the evidence of prophecy, on
the ground, that if He had known what He was to
endure, He would have avoided it.
It has been said that the gospel leaves us with the
dilemma Aut Deus aut homo non bonus. Celsus
distinctly adopts the second alternative—Christ was
not a good man. The later Platonists, Porphyry and
Hierocles, had learned to use very different language,
and preferred to argue, that the Church was unworthy
of its Founder. But the Zrue Word is valuable on
this very account, because it points so sharply the
radical, inherent antagonism between Hellenism and
Christianity. Hellenism was always aesthetic,
dignified, aristocratic, and abhorred suffering as a
personal degradation. Christ could not be God, just
because He was crucified. It is curious to notice to
what a depth of perplexity the clever Celsus was
here reduced. If Christ had failed, why was he writing
his book ? .
There was no beauty in our Lord, that any Platonist
should desire Him. It was still commonly believed
in the Church, that our Lord’s figure was plain and
unattractive ; and this was a ground of offence, for
personal grace had come to be regarded as a necessary
106 NEOPLATONISM

adornment for the philosopher. Socrates was ugly —

as a Satyr; but the Greek Alexander traded largely
on his good looks. But the want of “wisdom” was
even more repulsive to Celsus than the want of
dignity. On this point he will speak for himself.
“This is their cry: Let no educated man enter in,
none wise, none prudent, for these things we count
evil. But if any be ignorant, any foolish, if any
untaught, if any childish, let him come boldly. These
they count worthy, just as they are, of their God,
and it is therefore obvious, that they can, and will,
persuade only fools, and baseborn, and dullards,
and slaves, and silly women and children. But
why is it wrong to be educated, and trained in the
best thoughts, and to be, and be known to be, wise?
How does all this prevent a man from knowing God ?
Why, does it not rather help him in the attainment of
truth? We all know the jugglers, who display their
abominable tricks in the market-place, and then send
round the hat ; they would not dare to come into a
company of sensible men, and there play their pranks ;
but wherever they see lads, or a group of slaves, or a
gathering of foolish fellows, thither they shoulder their
way, and there they show their wonders. Just so we
see in private houses wool-carders, cobblers, fullers,
the most ignorant and the rudest fellows, never daring
to open their lips in the hearing of grave elders or
sensible masters. No; but they get the children and
foolish wenches into a corner, and tell them wonderful
things ; ‘ Do not listen to your father or your tutor, but
to me; they talk nonsense, they are dotards, so stuffed
 CELSUS 107
up with idle prejudices, that they neither know, nor do,
anything right. We alone know how one ought to
live. Listen to us, and you will be happy, and the
house will prosper.’ And while they are talking in this
way, should the tutor or the father pass by, if they are
prudent they run away, but the hot-headed ones egg
the children.on to rebellion. ‘We cannot tell you what
is good,’ they whisper, ‘ while father or the tutor is here,
because they are bad men and will punish us. Come
away with us into the women’s apartments, or the
cobbler’s, or the fuller’s shop, and then we will tell you
all about it.’
_ The priests of other mysteries,’he proceeds, ‘ cry,
Come, ye that are clean of hand and discreet of tongue,
ye that are pure of all stain, whose spirit knows no
guile, and whose life has been good and just.’ But
whom do these Christians invite? The sinner, the
foolish, the childish, theunhappy. ‘These the King-
dom of God will admit. The sinner! that is the
unjust, the thief, the burglar, the prisoner, the robber
of temples and tombs. Why, it is a robber’s invitation !
God sent to sinners! Not to the sinless? Why,
what harm is there in being without sin? The
unjust man then, if he brings himself low through his
wickedness, God will receive, but the just, who practises
virtue, and looks up to Him from the first, He will not
receive. Men, who rightly administer justice, compel
the prisoner to cease from wails and laments, lest
justice should be warped by pity. But God, as it
seems, is guided in His judgments, not by truth, but
by flattery.”
108 NEOPLATONISM

Few things in ancient literature are more striking

than the picture, which Celsus gives us here, of the
manner in which Christianity was burrowing its way
into the most guarded recesses of pagan life. There
were shoals of these obscure missionaries, many of
them doubtless very ignorant and very narrow, though
many were neither one nor the other. Hermas and
Blandina were slaves ; so were the popes Pius and
Callistus ; so possibly was the great Clement of Rome.
So indeed were a multitude of distinguished heathen
philosophers, including Epictetus. The “sensible
men,” of whom Celsus speaks with admiration,
denounced these humble servants of God to the
magistrate, and clapped their hands, when they were
torn in pieces by wild beasts in the arena. What a
commentary is afforded by his fierce scorn of the
Kingdom of God upon the high-flown pagan Pe tees
about the dear city of Zeus!
Celsus makes the mistake of supposing, that all
Christian teachers were ignorant. But he makes the
still graver mistake of not asking what it was, that
gave fullers and cobblers a power of persuasion denied
to the schools? Why did what he thought their
parrot cry, “‘ Believe, and thou shalt be saved,” go home,
where the doctrine of the Absolute passed unheeded?
Celsus himself supplies the answer. He believed,
that ‘“‘a sensible man” wants no Redeemer, that a
wicked man must not come near God, that God
cannot forgive or pity, and that religion is an abstruse
science, which no “cobbler” can understand. The
nature of evil, the nature of God, could only be
 CELSUS 109

explained to philosophers: if the mechanic, |“the

unhappy,” wanted to be saved, let them first learn
geometry, astronomy, and the theory of ideas.
Then, and not till then, they might hope ‘to see
God.”
Origen cuts through all this intellectual system with
one quotation from the Gospel, “ Blessed are the pure
in heart, for they shall see God.” Justin Martyr’s
Platonism was knocked to pieces by one. question
from the old man, whom he met on the sea-shore:
How can the intelligence of man see God, except it
be adorned with the Holy Spirit? Of human nature
the wise Greek was more ignorant than a child. The
heart. was an unexplained riddle to him, a mere
source of disturbance to the abstract laws of motion.
To this day our knowledge of it is based upon that
mystery of the Cross, which Celsus derided.
The Platonists were therefore wholly wrong in their
favourite contention, that there was nothing new in
Christianity. To the heathen world sin was a new idea,
meekness 2 new virtue, and love a new law. Even
if it were true that there is no saying in the Gospel to
which some sort of parallel cannot be found elsewhere,
it would not follow that the Gospel as a whole is not
new. A watch is a new thing, though cog-wheels,
chains, and springs were all known before the first
watch was made. If it were permissible to speak of
our Lord for one moment as a scientific discoverer,
we might say that He found the supreme law of
spiritual life in a set of phenomena, which the Greek
had wholly neglected, and which even the Jew did not
I1O NEOPLATONISM

understand, and that He thereby revolutionized all

philosophy and all ethics.
The same unlovely spirit of scorn guides Celsus in
his treatment of the subject of revelation. Here
he differed from the Christian first of all as to the
position of man in nature.
“The race of Jews and Christians,” he says, ‘is
like a string of bats, or ants coming out of a hole, or
frogs squatting together round a pond, or worms met
in church in a corner of the mud, disputing which are
the more sinful, and saying : ‘God foretells everything
to us. He leaves the whole world, the moving
heavens, and neglects the broad earth to live amongst
us alone. ‘To us alone He sends messengers without
cease, always scheming that we may be with Him.’
They are like worms who say, ‘There is a God,
and next to Him are we, His children and His
likeness. He has made us lords of all, earth, water,
air, stars. All is for our sake; all is appointed to
minister to us.’ And now the worms go on to say,
‘ Because some of us are sinners, God will come and
burn up the unjust, in order that the rest may have
eternal life with Him.’”’
Celsus more than once speaks of Christians and Jews
as “worms,” but his language is something more than
a mere outburst of Roman contempt. His point is,
that the Bible makes the whole universe revolve round
man as its centre, and that this is wrong. He would
not even allow that man is chief of the animals;
they eat him, with as much right as he eats them.
The bee is equal to him in social wisdom, the
 CELSUS bE Et

elephant in conscientiousness, the stork in filial piety,

and.the phoenix is altogether more wonderful. The
All, he concludes, is not madefor man any more than
for lions, eagles, or dolphins,but in order that this
world, as God’s work, may be complete in all its parts.
And from this he draws the inference, that God is no
more angry with man than with apes or flies.
_ Origen was so staggered by this language, that he
thought Celsus could be nothing but an Epicurean,
that is, an Atheist. Indeed, Celsus is altogether
wrong. He misapprehends the position of his an- |
tagonists, and he coarsely exaggerates one element
of the Platonic theory, while leaving out of sight
the considerations by which it was laboriously cor-
rected. :
The Bible does not say that all was made for man,
but it does regard man as the chiefest of all God’s
visible works, by virtue of the reason and conscience
with which he is endowed. He is the interpreter,
and in a limited sense the ruler of nature. The
Almighty created all things for His own good
purposes. He governs and cares for all; He feedeth
the young lions that call upon Him. Yet it is written
of man, that ‘“‘he is a little lower than the angels,” and
that “all things are put under his feet.” Man is the
crown and king of the world, but we do not therefore
affirm that the world was made for him, or that his
_ happiness is the one sole object, for which the world
exists. Just so we say that the Czar is the Emperor
of Russia, without meaning that Russia was called
into existence for his good pleasure.
 Ti2 NEOPLATONISM

No true Platonist could flatly deny ail this. They

allowed that man was the image of God,—a phrase
that Celsus ridicules,—that he alone possessed in-
telligence, that he alone was immortal.
But if man by virtue of his reason and conscience
is the chief of creation, it follows, that the whole
must be ordered with some regard to the training and
development of those faculties. Each part has a
meaning and value of its own, yet all strive towards
the perfect fruit, and minister to its formation and
nutriment, sometimes by their own destruction. This
is the sole ground on which modern science can
justify vivisection.
This again no true Platonist could flatly deny,
_ though the school never attained to a consistent view
of its own meaning. The subordination of nature to
man was involved in their opposition to Stoicism,
and in their belief in Providence. The Stoics main-
tained that nature was indifferent, and had nothing at
all to say to man. Plutarch replied, as we have seen,
that this was not true, that the world was a proper
training-ground for human virtue; and it is obvious
that the school must be constructed with a view to
the needs of the scholar. The same thing follows
from any conception of Providence. God cares for
all the world, but He must care principally for that
which is principal. He cannot have flung reason into
an alien world and left it to shift for itself. But the
Platonists were hampered on many sides. They held
that the world is good, and yet that matter is evil;
and it seemed to them to follow that life, though a
 CELSUS 113

school, is only a reformatory school, into which souls

are sent to expiate the sins of a previous existence.
Again, the conception of God as Absolute was every
day gaining the upper hand of the conception of God
as Father. God the Absolute “wants nothing,” and
therefore knows and cares for nothing. Here Platon-
ism differs from Atheism only by its contention, that,
though God neither knows nor cares for the world,
the world knows and cares for God. But the Abso-
lute, as Celsus rightly maintains, can feel neither
love nor wrath. He got over this difficulty, like
Plutarch, by assigning the administration of Provi-
dence entirely to the demons, “the masters of the
prison-house,” as he calls them. Thus Polytheism
becomes a vital part of his monotheism, and the chief
offence of Christianity is its crowning saying, that
God is Love.
Celsus held in common with all his school that the
world, being the work of the perfect and unchange-
_ able God, is itself perfect and unchangeable. Evil
was not of God; it was the resistance of matter to
the divine thought. Hence the quantity of both
good and evil in the world was invariable. He could
not therefore admit any kind of evolution. All truth
has been known from the first, and the world can
never be either better or worse. Hence there never
can be any reason for God to come and set it right.
This is the only serious point that he makes against
the Incarnation. He scoffs at the idea of God
“ coming down,” and leaving heaven vacant, in order
to find out what He knew already. He scoffs again
H
II4 NEOPLATONISM —

at the flesh of Our Lord, though Homer compelled

him to admit that the gods had often appeared in
human shape. But, without giving up his philosophy,
he could not admit that there was any need for the
Incarnation.
Origen held that the world was growing worse, a
view which at that particular period of history was by
no means without foundation. This lends some
appearance of force to the assertion of Celsus, that
the Bible represents God as perpetually interfering
with His own work, issuing new and ever more
stringent appeals to sinners, and issuing them in vain.
But the Christian teacher also saw how God’s purpose
broadens down through the Old Testament into the
New, how the light waxes brighter and clearer through
the long line of prophets and symbols to the rising
of the dayspring from on high. ‘There is a deeper
philosophy in the opening verses of the Lfzstle to
the Hebrews, than any that Celsus had grasped. He
could not admit, that truth grows or is increased,
He hoped for revelations like all Platonists, but to
him revelation signified not the gift of knowledge or ~
new strength, but the mere sight of a Deity.
So much has been said of the influence of Greek
philosophy upon the Church, that we should not omit
to notice that evolution is a purely Christian idea.
To the Greek unity implied fixity, to the Christian it
involved the idea of a living and growing whole. It
was thus that the Church answered the Gnostics, who
regarded the Old Testament as false ; it was thus that
Athanasius explained the Incarnation. From theology
 CELSUS FI

this fruitful conception has passed into science, and

from science it has made its way into philosophy.
The Church need not be afraid of its own child.
The Resurrection of the Body Celsus rejects with
profound disdain. Here again he labours under
difficulties. The doctrine of the Church was not
altogether what he makes it, nor does he fairly
represent the state of opinion on his own side.
Homer ascribes to the dwellers in Hades a material
though shadowy existence, Plato in the story of Er,
the son of Armenius, represents the spirits as coming
in bodily shape, to cast lots for their new lives upon
earth. ‘The demons, who play so large a part in the
system of Celsus, were corporeal. The gods, the sun,
moon, and stars, had proper bodies of their own, and
could assume human shape when it so pleased them.
It was generally allowed, that, till the spirit was finally
purified from all taint of uncleanness, according to
Empedocles for 30,000 “ hours,” or cycles, it retained
its corporeity in some sense. Many Platonists speak
of a “fifth body” or element besides the recognized
four, air, earth, fire, and water, of which the super-
terrestrial organism is composed. But here again
Celsus allows his scornful spirit to run away with him.
He makes one brief gibe at the “seed,” or glorified
body, of the Zpzstle to the Corinthians, and directs his
artillery solely against the belief in the resurrection of
‘‘this flesh.” He insists on the absurdity of suppos-
ing, that the tissues once dissolved can ever again be
brought together. But his chief point is the shame-
fulness of the belief. The body is unclean, disgusting,
116 NEOPLATONISM

‘a miasma.” ‘That God should ever unite Himself

with such a mass of corruption is the inconceivable
thing ; that man should hope to see God with ‘‘ these
eyes” is ‘the hope of worms.” “‘They say, he
adds, “that with God nothing is impossible. But »
He cannot do what is shameful, nor will He do what
is against nature.”
The argument of Celsus rests upon the deep-seated
belief, that the flesh is a devilish thing, and to
Christians who have learned to look upon the body
as a worthy tabernacle of the Divine spirit, this calls
for no answer. But we must notice, that here too,
in the Resurrection of the Body, as in Revelation,
the Church dogma enfolded the germ of a philosophy
absolutely antagonistic to the whole current of Greek
thought, and yet deeper and truer. ‘The way to that
unity, which the Hellenist sought in vain, lay through
a right appreciation of his own flesh and blood. ‘This
Celsus might have learned from Christianity, in which
he could find “‘nothing new.” _
Christianity, in fact, was something absolutely new.
Its morality rested on new motives, and implied new
standards ; its doctrines, though not as yet explained
or co-ordinated, were destined to issue in a new
philosophy. Celsus felt this, and he taunts the
Christians with being “ revolutionists.” And what isa
revolution if not new? But he was too passionate to
see it clearly. He forgot that, though a thing may be
stupidly put by “fullers and cobblers,” it is not
necessarily stupid in itself. He forgot also that every
religion is an inarticulate philosophy ; indeed he did
¢
 CELSUS lt]

not in the Jeast understand this, or he would never

have thought it possible to unite the Absolute with
the demons, or the religion of Greece with that of
Egypt.
As it was, he thought it must surely be possible to
convince these simple men of the error of their ways.
They could not persist in the infatuation of worship-
ping “fan impostor,” ‘‘a dead man,” now that they
had listened to the Z7ue Word. They must give up
Jesus, and then the only question that could arise
between himself and them, was the lawfulness of
demon-worship. This accordingly he proceeds to
make as simple as possible.
You say, he tells them, that you may not serve two
masters. But you are already doing so; for you set
Christ beside, and even above, God. You say, that
you may not eat at the demon’s table. But you
cannot help it. They send you corn and wine; theirs
is the water you drink, the air you breathe. They
bless your marriages, and comfort you in trouble.
You cannot refuse their benefits, unless you go out of
the world they govern. How, then, can you refuse
them due honour. It is true, that God is to be
worshipped above all. But He permits and requires
due observance to His agents, just as Caesar expects
men to reverence his own majesty in the person of
his pro-consuls.
If the Christian shrank from idolatry, Celsus
comforted him with the assurance, that the statue was
a mere symbol. But even here he cannot abstain
from a cruel scoff. Many of the hot-headed Christians,
118 NEOPLATONISM

eager for the martyr’s crown, would strike the images

of the gods, crying : ‘See, I stand before your Zeus or
your Apollo, I curse him and buffet him, and he can
do me no harm.” “Yes,” answers Celsus; “‘and do
you not see that we stand before your demon, and not
only curse Him, but banish Him from land and sea?
And you, His consecrated image, we bind and
crucify, and your demon, Son of God as you call
Him, cannot defend you.” It was too true; the
demons had been fed with Christian blood, and the
time for argument was surely past. Celsus dwells
on the bright side of Hellenism, and no doubt it had
a bright side; but the persecuted Church knew too
well that murder, lust, and malice belonged to the
worship of the Greek gods as truly as feasting and
music.
It is a strange sight, to see this proud Roman
appeal to the patriotism of those, whom he was ready
to crucify for the Name’s sake. He must have credit
for discerning how dangerous the Church might
become ; but, if he had looked a little deeper, he would
have realized the futility of the compromise he pro-
posed. In the last sentence of the Zrue Word he
professes his intention to write a sort of catechism
for those Christians who listened to his reasoning, as
he makes no doubt that many would. But this
treatise does not appear to have been called for. -
 VII

THE NEOPLATONIC TRINITY

SOMEWHERE about the middle of the second century

a change came over Platonism in its two main articles
—the doctrine of God and the doctrine of the Ideas.
Out of this change sprang Neoplatonism in the strict
sense Of the term.
Plato distinguishes between two worlds, the invisible
and the visible, the spiritual and the material. The
first is the eternal pattern of the second; the second
exists only as it “ participates in,” reproduces, the
first. The first is the world of Being, the second of
Becoming; because here all things are born, grow,
decay, and die.
How does a carpenter make a bed? He does not
make the idea, the notion. All the beds in the world
are built with one purpose, express one thought, par-
ticipate in oneruling conception. The carpenter does
not make the idea—that is given to him; but he
makes the bed in accordance with the idea.
But whence did he get the idea? It was given to
him from above. There are two beds, the ideal and
the actual; and two makers of beds, God and the
carpenter,
 120 NEOPLATONISM

Ideas are not separable in the same way as things

that we can see ortouch. They run into one another.
A bed is a piece of furniture on which to take sleep.
Sleep is useful ; usefulness is good. Thus all ideas
culminate in the sovereign idea of the Good, the
fountain of all knowledge and all existence. Of this
** wonder of beauty which is the author of science and
truth, and yet surpasses them in beauty,” Socrates
speaks in the sixth book of the Republic. It cannot
be described, for it is far above the reach of mortal
words. Long training in abstract science leads on to
the ‘‘hymn ” of dialectics, to the metaphysical faculty,
that is to say, in which reason blends with the vision
of the poet and divination of the saint. It can only
be expressed dimly in a figure.. It is like the sun.
The sun is “the child of the Good, whom the Good
begat in his own likeness, to be in the visible world,
in relation to sight and the things of sight, what the
Good is in the intellectual world in relation to mind
and the things of mind.” But in itself it is beyond
the sun, and “‘ beyond all being in majesty and power.”
These last words form the definition which Plotinus
gives of the supreme God. To him God is the Good.
The same thought must surely have crossed the mind
of Plato himself, but for some reason he refrained
from adopting it. This we see in the Zzmaeus, the
Platonic Book of Genesis. Jowett called the Zzmaeus
“the most obscure and repulsive to the modern
reader of all the writings of Plato,” and the reader,
who does not mind obscurity, 1s puzzled by a further
difficulty, whether the dialogue is to be taken seriously
 THE NEOPLATONIC TRINITY 122

- or regarded as a mere jeu d’esprit. But there can be

no doubt that the later Platonists took it very seriously
indeed. They found in it the keystone of the Pla-
tonic system; and if Plato had a system at all it is
certainly here that its leading principles should make
themselves felt, for the subject is nothing less than the
relation of God to the world and to man. Now in
the Zimaeus God is expressly distinguished from the
ideas. They are the “eternal pattern,” to which
God looked when He created the world.
It is obvious what a difficulty arises from this curious
bit of psychological archaism. If we are to press the
point, God thinks as man thinks. His thoughts are
suggested by an external object, and He has no ideas
of His own. We can scarcely understand, how such a
notion can ever have arisen. Plato abhorred sensa-
tionalism ; yet it might be said, he has only translated
sensationalism into heaven. But this strange defect
adhered to the school for centuries, and Plutarch even
assigns a definite local habitation to the ideas. There
are a hundred and eighty-three worlds, he tells us,
arranged in avast triangle. ‘The space within is called
the Plain of Truth, and here dwell the eternal Forms.
Plutarch, however, tells us also, that some held
intelligence to be the place of Forms. A little later
Alcinous (or Albinus) calls the Ideas the thoughts of
God. Yet later still Porphyry opposed Plotinus on
this very point, insisting that the Ideas were “outside
of the mind.” But Porphyry was already behind the
times. It had become evident, that this grotesque
conception was not tenable, Henceforth men held
122 NEOPLATONISM

that God thinks His own thoughts, and that the world,
in which we live, is a copy of the Divine Mind. The
former of the two propositions is in fact the Aristo-
telian doctrine that God “thinks Himself.” Perhaps
this is the best instance of the sense, in which
the Neoplatonists were eclectic. It is evident how
greatly their native system gained in_ simplicity
and coherency by this adaptation of a Peripatetic
formula.
Side by side with this change, by which the Ideas
became finally the contents of the Divine Intelligence,
another was in progress, by which the number of the
divine Beings were increased from two to three. In
the Zzmaeus there are two, the Creator and the World-
Spirit. The latter is called “the only begotten and
created heaven,” ‘‘a blessed god,” and is said to have
received soul and intelligence through the providence
of God. This is still in the main the position of
Plutarch. But shortly afterwards we find the soul of
the World-Spirit distinguished from its Intelligence.
Thus we get a triplet—Soul, Intelligence, and a higher
Intelligence. The last is spoken of as One, as a
point, as neither good nor evil because above both,
as having no differences, no qualities, and wanting
nothing, yet at the same time as mind and as self-
conscious, It isthe Pythagorean Monad, the Absolute |
Cause, and yet it is the Aristotelian Deity. This is
the position of the Second Platonic Epistle (which
is quoted by Justin Martyr, but cannot have been
known to either Philo of Alexandria or Plutarch, and
probably came into existence not very early in the
 THE NEOPLATONIC TRINITY a3

second century), apparently of Albinus and Apuleius,

and certainly of Numenius of Apamea.
Numenius was the first to speak distinctly of Three
Gods. He was a Syrian, and possibly a Jew; for
he was well acquainted with the Old Testament,
quoted and allegorized the prophets, spoke of the Book
of Genesis as a prophecy, and called Plato “an
Atticizing Moses.” By this phrase, which would have
shocked Celsus unutterably, he meant that all Platon-
ism could be evolved by skilful interpretation out of
the Pentateuch. It becomes therefore not impossible,
that Numenius was acquainted with the works of
Philo of Alexandria, which were written with this very
purpose. ‘There is, however, no clear proof that he
was, and a strong argument on the other side is to
be found in the fact, that he did not give his second
Deity the distinctively Philonian title of Logos. This
is why it has not been judged necessary to give in
this little volume any account of the famous Alex-
andrian Jew. Philo lies altogether outside the line of
development of heathen Platonism ; though he antici-
pated by more than a hundred years that onward step
by which Alcinous identified the intelligible world
with the mind of God.
One further step was needed, before this physical
and intellectual trinity could be brought into a satis- '
factory shape. ‘Two divine intelligences might have
been possible, if they had been endowed with mutual
desire. This, however, was altogether repugnant to
the Platonic notion of Deity. God wants nothing.
He is Cause of All in a very peculiar sense, not as
I24 NEOPLATONISM

man is cause of his own actions, but as a magnet is

cause of movement in iron filings ; not an impelling,
but an attracting cause. He is that, towards which all
things strive. Hence there could not possibly be two
equal or similar intelligences in the Divine world.
One “moves” (all thought is “ movement’), and there-
fore the other cannot “move,” it is the stable point
towards which the other’s movement is directed, a
point and nothing more. Hence it cannot be an
intelligence ; it cannot be anything at all. It is as it
were an ideal spot outside the whole realm of existence,
towards which the whole realm of existence is drawn.
It has no name; but we may call it the One, the
Good, two names which express different ways of
regarding the same mysterious fountain of all life.
This idea was present to the minds of Alcinous and
Numenius, but it was not clearly grasped. The extreme
elaboration with which Plotinus argues that the One
could neither think nor exist, shows that the concep-
tion was strange and repellent to his own disciples.
It was no doubt that philosopher, who gave final shape
to the Platonic Trinity—Soul, Mind, and the One.
We might say without absolute error that these
three represent the Platonic World-Spirit, the Aris-
totelian Deity, and the Pythagorean Monad, and that
we find here at the top of Neoplatonism a fusion of
three schools of thought. Yet it is to be observed,
that there is not a single element in the new com-
bination, which is not to be found in Plato himself.
Plotinus merely defined and arranged in _ logical
sequence, what the Z7maeus tells us about the Creator
 THE NEOPLATONIC TRINITY 125

Mind, and the God of Nature, and what the Republic

tells us about the Child of the Good, and the Good,
which is “beyond all being.” The Neoplatonists
were eclectic only in that sense, in which all learned
and historical thinkers must be so. They developed
their own system by the aid of hints derived from
other schools.
As regards their philosophy, they were purely Greek.
Mommsen indeed regards it as a transformation of
Western thought in the spirit of the East. Tenne-
mann, Ritter, and Harnack take much the same
view. On the other hand, Richter pronounces it
“essentially a creation of Greek thought, on which
the spiritual forces of the time naturally exercised an
influence.” And Vacherot, while noticing that Plutarch
dabbled in Oriental speculations such as Zoroastrian
dualism, finds in Plotinus “an energetic reaction of
the Greek mind against the influences of the East.”
It is a question not of individual thoughts, but
of balance and temperament. The leading Neo-
platonists were not Greeks; but this is true also of
the Stoics. Again a certain impalpable tinge of
Orientalism lies possibly at the very root of both
Pythagoreanism and Platonism in the doctrine of
metempsychosis, and in a general leaning towards
mysticism, which in the former is strongly marked.
- But in Neoplatonism as a system there is not one
single idea, that does not flow in a straight line from
the dialogues of Plato himself. Plotinus is a meta-
physician rather than a moralist, that is to say, he has
moved on to a new field, but at no point has he lost
 126 NEOPLATONISM

touch with his master. His modes of reasoning, his

phraseology, the character of his intelligence, his
precision, his aestheticism, are all intensely Greek.
He moves among the clouds; but, if he does not
succeed in introducing scientific exactness among the
airy forms that surround him, it is not for want of a
desperate struggle.
It is not in their thought, but in their mysticism
that we must seek for Oriental influences if they are
to be found at all. Even here there was a Greek root.
Mysticism is of all countries and all times. But there
is a vast difference between Hermes tripping out of a
_ wood to meet Odysseus, or even the Pythoness raving
on her tripod, and the ecstatic vision of the Absolute.
The one grew out of the others; but no doubt the
growth was fostered and quickened by the increasing
influence of the Mysteries; and of these the most
powerful form was the Egyptian superstition of Isis.
Here arises the question, whether Mysticism in the
shape given to it by the Neoplatonists, was essential
to their system, or whether it was really a foreign
adjunct, a branch at which they caught, when they
felt their logic begin to shake beneath their feet.
Upon this depends largely the view, which the reader
will take, as to the value of their contribution to the
thought of the world. But we must postpone the
point, till Plotinus has shown us what the Neo-
platonic mystic was at its best.
Vacherot, as we have seen, regards Neoplatonism
as an energetic reaction of Hellenism against foreign
influences. These were no doubt of many kinds; but
 THE NEOPLATONIC.TRINITY 127

the most menacing were either directly Christian or

set in motion by Christianity. We have seen the
angry alarm of Celsus at the growth of the Church.
But the ship of the faith, as it ploughed its way
onward, disturbed the waters far and wide. Many
men watched the new movement with curious eyes,
attended Church, as we learn from the Shepherd of
Hermas, to see what went on there, and, without
becoming converts, assimilated so much Christian
thought as made them very bad Hellenists. The
result was a cluster of systems, in which heathenism
is so jumbled up with Christianity, that it is often
difficult to say which predominates. They are what
we know as Gnosticism. Gnosticism was in no case
properly speaking Christian ; it formed a éertium guid
between the Church and other ways of thinking, and
it forced upon both sides the necessity of closing
their ranks and defining their position. Neither
Christian nor Hellenist would have anything to do
with it. Plotinus is just as emphatic in his con-
demnation of the Gnostic mingle-mangle as Irenzeus.
In this way a peculiar interest attaches to the wild
rhapsody, that goes by the name of the Poemander of
Hermes Trismegistus. It belongs probably to the
second century, and contains a most singular farrago
of Pythagorean pantheism and Egyptian ‘quasi-
philosophy drawn from the Book of the Dead. The
style is that of an opium-dreamer, of whom we can
just say, that he was once a reasonable being. But
it is dotted throughout (not, as Zeller thought, in only
two of the thirteen chapters) with Christian phrases,
128 - NEOPLATONISM

uttered as in sleep; and it is the only pagan work, in

which the second person of the Platonic Trinityis en-
titled the Logos. Wesee in it the absolute breakdown
of philosophy in face of the new problems of the age.
We see Christianity, like the fig-tree rooted in the
walls of a Greek temple, loosening the joints of the
masonry, and helping on the work of secular decay.
But we learn from it also to appreciate the real power
of Plotinus, by whose strong hand the battle was once
more set in array, and the forces of disintegration
checked, at any rate for a time. |
It is not necessary to treat at any length of the
writings of Apuleius of Madaura. He was an orator
anda romancer ; but not an original thinker. Indeed,
even his “ Milesian tale” of the Golden Ass is not
original ; the framework and most of the incidents of
the story are borrowed, and the reputation of Apuleius
rests chiefly on his style, which, with all its elaborate
euphuism, is not unpleasing. He was a man of
peculiarly vile character ;and any one, who is inclined
to agree with Dr. Hatch in thinking that the im-
morality of heathenism has been exaggerated, cannot
do better than read through the Metamorphoses, and
compare it with Zom Jones. The book is all the more
instructive, because it was not meant to be instructive
at all.- Apuleius simply narrates and never moralizes,
but the picture of life, which he gives, is several degrees
darker than that of Juvenal, a professed satirist.
The book, however, has one redeeming feature, in
the charming story of Cupid and Psyche. ‘This has
more than once been clothed in an English dress,
 } mets : ae

THE NEOPLATONIC TRINITY 126

Mr. R. Bridges has turned it into graceful verse, and

Thomas Taylor and William Adlington into plain
prose. The latter version has been edited by Mr. A.
Lang, with a learned preface on folk-lore. But this
artistic composition has very little indeed to do with
Hottentots or Zulus. It is really a very elaborate
piece of allegory, metaphysics without tears. |
Psyche, the youngest, fairest, and sweetest daughter
of a king, was beloved by Cupid, yet knew not that
she was beloved. By the God’s command Zephyr
bore her on his wings down the hideous mountain
precipices to his palace in a fairy glade beneath. It
was the most beautiful palace ever seen, full of all
kinds of glorious things. ‘There is nothing, that was
not there.”
Here she was married to Cupid. But the heavenly
bridegroom visited her only in the darkness of the
night. He was loving and good as heart could desire,
but straitly charged her never more to look upon
the two sisters she had left behind. ‘ Otherwise,”
said he, “thou wilt bring upon me the most poignant
grief, and on thyself utter destruction.”
Nevertheless poor Psyche could not rest content,
- and teased until she gained an unwilling consent.
The two sisters came, full of spite and envy, and
poured into her yielding ears the forgeries of their own
malice. Psyche listened, and was lost. Resolved to
break through the mystery of her life, she took into
her bridal chamber a covered lamp and a knife. In
the dead of night she bared the light, and beheld on
the couch not the monster she feared, but the winged
I
130 NEOPLATONISM

son of Venus, in all the radiance of his divine beauty.

But, as she hung enraptured above him, a drop of
scalding oil fell upon Cupid’s shoulder, and awakened
him from his sleep. The god upbraided her sorrow-
fully with her fatal treachery, and flew out of sight on
his golden pinions.
Psyche, who had wounded her thumb with one of
Cupid’s arrows, now loved Love with her whole heart. —
In her despair she would have drowned herself; but
Pan, the shepherd god, who bestows the gift of divin- —
ation, soothed her grief with hope, bidding her
pray.
So she sets out on her lonely pilgrimage in quest of
Love, widowed, but no longer despairing. First she
avenges herself on her two sisters, whom she drives to
self-destruction. But the way is long, and helpers there -
are none. She turns to Ceres, the Queen of the
Mysteries, she adores Juno, the goddess who softens
the birth-pangs, but neither will protect her against the
wrath of Venus, who is bent upon destroying the
mortal bride of her son. At last, seeing all other
refuge vain, she makes submission, and casts herself
at the feet of her mighty enemy. She is received at
the palace gate by a handmaid named Habit, and
scourged by Anxiety and Sorrow. Yet here she is at
least under the same roof with her beloved lord.
Venus sets her hard tasks todo. She shows her a
huge heap of all sorts of grain, and bids her separate
them before nightfall according to their kinds. But
a legion of little ants come to her relief, and the work
is done.
 THE NEOPLATONIC TRINITY 131

Again she is commanded to bring a handful of wool

from the golden fleeces of the sheep beyond the river.
Here a whispering reed helps her. “ Before noon,” it
_ says, ‘‘the sheep are fierce, and will rend thee to
pieces. Wait till the cool of the day, when they fall
asleep. Then thou canst cross the water in safety,
and gather the tufts of wool, that thou wilt find sticking
on the branches of the neighbouring grove.”
Again she is to fetch water from the dismal cataract
of Styx. Here the eagle befriends her; he fills her
crystal vase and gives it back into her hand.
Last and hardest of all her labours, she is ordered
to go down to Hades, and bring back from Proserpine
a box of beauty. A tower, whose battlements she had
climbed with the intention of flinging herself down, and
so ending her woes, takes pity upon her; the friendly
stones begin to talk ;they warn her of all the perils of
the way, and enjoin her not to open the box. She
goes, and returns through perils unnumbered ; but no
sooner does she emerge into the light of day, than
curiosity overcomes her. She lifts the lid; forth flies
not beauty but a deadly sleep, and Psyche falls fainting
to the ground.
But here her trials end. Cupid, now healed of his
wound, came, and kissed her, and roused her from her
swoon. Jove himself appeased Venus, and sanctioned
the wedlock. And when the tale of months was run,
Psyche bore a fair child, a daughter, whom men call
Pleasure.
Shall we interpret the allegory ? Psyche is the Soul ;
Cupid is the love of the Ideal, the desire of the soul
 132 NEOPLATONISM

for God. His palace, stored with all manner of

beautiful things, is Heaven, the Intelligible World, the
Divine Mind filled with the radiant Ideas, the eternal |
patterns of all that is. But the Soul, prompted by its
two ugly sisters Anger and Desire, rebels ; it will not be
content with the darkness of celestial light; it craves
for visible sensual beauty, and is exiled to this earth to
atone for its folly.
Then begins the upward path, for this is a choice ©
soul which still feels the prick of the heavenly dart, and
cannot make its home below. It is saved from
despair by Pan the Demon, the spirit of prophecy, who
tells it, that heaven may be regained by prayer; and
the first impulse of repentance is to cast off the hateful
influence of Anger and Desire.
But the ordinary consolations of ordinary religion
are insufficient for the gifted soul, which aspires
to climb the heights. Neither the mysteries nor the
gods can help. Psyche must submit perforce to
Venus, the mother of her darling, the patron lady of
philosophic training, by which the heavenly love is
brought to the birth. By Venus, her enemy and yet
her friend, she is first chastened in the hard school of
Habit, Anxiety, and Sorrow, that is, of moral discipline,
for the practical virtues are the necessary purgation of
the aspiring soul. Then she is trained in intellectual
tasks. The heap of many kinds of grain. is the
multifarious pageant of sensation, which the busy ants,
the senses, arrange and discriminate. The golden
wool is the higher reflecting morality, which cannot be
garnered till the heat of the day is passed, till the storm
 ~

THE NEOPLATONIC TRINITY 133

and stress of youth is over. The water of Styx is

Dialectic, of which the fitting symbol is the eagle,
which alone of all creatures can gaze unabashed upon
the sun. Then comes the descent into hell, and the
deadly sleep. What is this? Is it that anguish of
spirit, which St. John of the Cross called the Dark
Night of the Soul, the black and horrible darkness
which precedes the mystic’s vision? Or is it death?
Perhaps it is both, for one is twin brother of the other.
At any rate, in the awakening that follows, the soul
clasps again the lover, to whom it-once proved faithless;
and the issue of that embrace is not a mortal but an
immortal child, not base earthly Pleasure, but that Joy
which can dwell in heaven.
 WELT

“ HELLENISM ”

WE have now traced the history of Platonism down

to the eve of the advent of Plotinus, and at this point
it may be well to pause, and cast a glance upon its
great rival, the Christian Church. The two systems
were in many important points wonderfully alike, and
Platonism on its religious side was remarkably catholic
oreclectic. Yet it did not adopt one single lesson
from the Gospel. It remained to the last in its tone
of mind purely aesthetic andintellectual, in its morals
predominantly egotistic, in its modes of worship purely
heathen. Was it the same with the Church, or are
we here to recognize a distinct influence of Greek
ideas? Andif so, is it an influence that plays upon
the surface only, or does it reach inwards, and effect
more or less of a transformation?
The question is embarrassed by the fact, that the
word Hellenism is used by two different classes of
writers in two different senses, To the one it sig-
nifies that which is true and permanent in Greek
thought, to the other that which is local, heathenish,
and transitory.
 ‘ HELLENISM ’ : 135
v

Both rest upon philosophy, and on antagonistic

philosophies, the former on Hegel, the latter on
Kant ; and the opposition of principle leads to different
conceptions of history and different rules of criticism.
To the former belong the Tiibingen school, Baur and
Pfleiderer ; to the latter the Ritschlian school, Harnack
and Hatch. Both claim Christianity as their property,
and undertake to show by their own special methods
how it came into existence, and how and in what order
its documents were produced. The reader will see
why Renan said, that ‘‘ few people have a right to dis-
believe.” Before we can settle the date of St. John, it
would seem to be necessary to regulate Hegel and
Kant. All we can attempt here is to convey some
idea of the difference between these two points of view.
For the first we may take a well-known passage from
the philosophy of Clothes. ‘‘ Highest of all symbols
are those wherein the Artist or Poet has risen into
Prophet, and all men can recognize a present God
and worship the same; I mean religious Symbols.
Various enough have been such religious Symbols,
what we call Re/Zgions ; as a man stood in this stage
of culture or the other, and could worse or better
body-forth the Godlike ; some Symbols with a transient
intrinsic worth ; many with only an extrinsic. If thou
~ ask to what height man has carried it in this manner,
look on our divinest Symbol; on Jesus of Nazareth,
and His Life, and His Biography, and what followed
therefrom. ... But, on the whole, as Time adds
much to the sacredness of Symbols, so likewise in
his progress he at length defaces, or even desecrates
 136 | ‘NEOPLATONISM

them; and Symbols, like all terrestrial garments, wax

old.”
‘¢ In the dogmas and rites of all the Churches,” says
Pfleiderer, ‘‘ Carlyle recognized the natural products
of the historical stage of culture reached by the
peoples; to him. they were the symbols in which the
eternal idea se clothe itself for the consciousness
of every age.”
All this is in fact modern Neopiiouian a Neo-
platonism which differs from the ancient by the
assimilation of the scientific doctrine of evolution, and
by the partial assimilation of the Christian doctrine
of character. Hence there are divergencies in the
midst of a strong general resemblance. ‘The view of
Carlyle, of Dr. Pfleiderer, of the Master of Balliol,
rests upon metaphysics, on the possibility of knowing
God by reason; it regards religion as a whole, as the
natural evolution of capacities implanted in the soul
of man; it denies all miraculous interference; it
regards all religion as imperfect and transitional;
and all dogmas as mythical presentations, symbols
(Vorstellungen) of the eternal truth (Begriff) ; yet it is
optimistic, and believes that there are new and better
things in store.
On this view Hellenism is precisely Idealism.
There are many difficulties in such a conception of
Christianity, which we may at least point out. It is
evolutionary, and makes of our Lord “ the product of
the age.” Yet the Jews rejected Him, and Judaism
has gone on evolving itself along its own lines. And
the “higher criticism” is making this evolution more
 ‘ HELLENISM ’ 137
°
N

and more difficult. Formerly we regarded the

Promise as succeeded by the Law, and this by the
Prophets, and it was possible to regard the light as
‘“‘ broadening slowly down.”’ But modern writers treat
first of ‘“‘ prophetism,” then of the “night of lezalism,’
and the development is gone. Again, Hegel spoke
of Christianity as ‘“‘the absolute religion.” But this is
not the language of evolution. Notions propounded
almost two thousand years ago cannot be regarded as
final by a Darwinian, either in dogma or in morals.
Dr. Pfleiderer criticizes and corrects even what he
allows to have been the genuine teaching of our Lord.
But if Christianity is not absolute, in what direction
‘is the advance to be made? Those who have rejected
dogma must now attack morality in order to justify
their own principles. And will this better things?
Dr. Pfleiderer holds that his view is optimistic. But
evolution is not optimist. It may issue in degrada-
tion, and actually did so in the case of Judaism.
But the main difficulty of this, as indeed of the
_ rival hypothesis, is that of accounting for the peculiar
dignity attributed to our Lord. It cannot explain
why He was crucified, because, apart from His personal
claims, His teaching was not more subversive of the-
ruling ideas than that of the Essenes. But still less can
it explain why the Church regarded Him as God.
There is agreement upon this point, that unless Jesus
had been deified, Christianity could never have been
more than a Jewish sect. Yet the Divinity must be
held to be an illusion, a mere symbol of the eternity
and universality of the truth which Jesus taught. This
138 NEOPLATONISM

illusion is generally regarded as originating with St.

Paul, who shows few, if any, traces of Hellenism, and
completed by St. John, who had perhaps heard ofPhilo.
We can permit ourselves only one remark on this most
singular view. Dr. Pfleiderer builds not indeed the
truth, but the whole power of Christianity, on a natural
and beautiful but wholly false mythology, and proposes
to retain the power while abolishing the mythology
that created it. Or may we hazard a second remark.
According to Dr. Pfleiderer, the deification of a man
secured the triumph of Christianity. Yet the Platonists
deified Apollonius, and nothing happened.
Idealism has the graces of breadth and sympathy.
It sees in rites and dogmas “clothes,” beautiful forms
of still more beautiful truths, which in their abstract
form would never have won their way into the hearts
of men. Renan and Victor Hugo adore Catholicism,
and would leave it intact as the religion of the
common sort, just as the Platonist did not in the least
want to interfere with the mysteries of Eleusis.
Ritschlianism, on the other hand, regards these same
rites and dogmas as stupid or cunning distortions,
by which a primitive Protestantism was turned into
Catholicism. For this reason it seems to be finding
favour with English Nonconformists, who welcome it
as an ally against ‘‘Sacerdotalism,” as the horse called
in the man to help him against the stag, without
adequately weighing the consequences.
Those who shrink from the difficulty of grappling
with Ritschl’s own writings, will find a lucid summary
of his teaching in a pamphlet by G. Mielke, das
 ‘ HELLENISM ” 139

System Albrecht Ritschls. Or they may be referred to

Kaftan’s Truth of the Christian Religion, which has
been translated in Clark’s series. Ritschlianism is a
free school, and there are differences of detail among
its adherents. But its general position is well defined.
It is based on the philosophy of Kant, who insisted
upon the relativity of all knowledge. Sense, he
taught, perceives what it is constructed to grasp ; reason
thinks as it 1s made to reason. We cannot get be-
hind and correct either our perceptions or our reason-
ings. We must believe them; but cannot tell whether
they correspond to objective realities or not. Yet to
this destructive criticism Kant admitted, or seemed to -
admit, one exception. While the understanding and
the speculative reason tell us nothing but what is
open to doubt, the practical moral reason grasps the
eternal law of right, the imperative command, or
‘categorical ought,’ of conscience. Here, then,
Kant found the one thing certain, the one road up
from the world of appearance to the world of reality,
the one proof of God, freedom and immortality.
But why this one? If it is generally wrong to
argue from effect to cause, why should it be permis-
sible in this all-important case? Readers of Heine
will recollect his wicked scoff at this sublime incon-
sistency. Kant’s followers endeavour to be more
thorough-going. Kaftan, for instance, makes con-
science as contingent as anything else. When we say
that men “ought” to do right, we mean simply, that
the world is so built, that they cannot be happy
without doing what we call mght. Nevertheless, the
I40 NEOPLATONISM ~

Ritschlian also must have a way up. ‘This he finds

in Faith, which guarantees the being, nature and
purpose of God and the soul. Thus the Kantian
metaphysics come back again, but only in a religious
shape, only to religious men, and only by direct
communication to the individual.
The proof of Faith’s message Kaftan finds, in con-
formity with his general principles, not in speculation
of any kind, but in History. We know, from History,
that Jesus Christ brought to man the full revelation of
the Father’s loving will, and planted it on earth in
the doctrine of the Atonement and in the institution
of the Church, or “Kingdom of God.” We know,
also from History, that this doctrine and this institu-
tion do make men free. They include the sum of
the highest knowledge attainable, that is to say, of
moral and religious belief, the only kind of knowledge
that brings man into his true relation to God. Thus
all that is supernatural, eesthetical, mystical or specu- |
lative, can be brushed aside as of no religious value.
But the Ritschlians regard all these elements in
common Christianity also as unhistorical, that is to
say, as later importations.
Like a man who disarms the robber by going
naked, Ritschlianism makes peace with science by
excluding from the Kingdom of God all that science
can possibly dispute. Yet, after all, it makes the
work of Christ consist in Revelation, in the imparting -
of some kind of knowledge, not in “satisfaction” ;
and this moralizing of the Atonement is precisely
what Dr. Pfleiderer regards with approbation as
 ‘HELLENISM ’ I41

“Hellenism.” But, with this far-reaching limitation,

it holds a high view of the Person of Christ. “In
Him,” says Kaftan, ‘‘faith has, and recognizes, God.”
Christ has for us “ the value of God.” Such language
is not to be taken to mean that He is God, nor
indeed that He is not. If pressed upon this point
the Ritschlian would reply: ‘Do not ask. We
cannot know; and, if we could know, it would not
avail. Knowledge is not religion.”
In this austere system Hellenism means, firstly, the
setting of knowledge above faith, or the co-ordination
of knowledge with faith ; secondly, all externalism or
legalism in doctrine, in-the sacraments, in ritual or
discipline. The Church is the kingdom of God, the
body of those who have absolute faith in Christ, and
there is a tendency to deny that the significant Parable
of the Tares and the Wheat was really uttered by our
Lord.
It will be seen that we have here an entirely dif-
ferent, indeed a contradictory, sense of the word
Hellenism. To the Idealist this word signifies Platon-
ism, regarded as true. To the Ritschlian it signifies
partly Platonism, regarded as false, but mainly the
influence of the unregenerate, or half-regenerate, world,
which is always striving to get hold of the pure gospel
and pull it down to its own dead level. By this agency
the simple kingdom of God was transformed into the
Catholic Church. There is no doubt a germ of truth
inthis. Worldliness is a vera causa of deterioration, else
there would have been no Reformation, Ritschlianism
is a truly religious mode of thought, and is right again
 142 NEOPLATONISM

in maintaining that the grace of God in Jesus Christ

is the one thing that makes the Christian. But what
difficulties arise when these two truths are made the
foundation of a system ! .
Ritschlianism will have nothing to do with intellec-
tual belief. ‘“‘God,” says Dr. Hatch, “did not reveal
metaphysics,” because Kant taught that the know-
ledge of the Ding an Sich is impossible. We must
leave this point to be fought out by the rival schools.
But Kant himself is a metaphysician, and so is Dr.
Hatch. They limit metaphysics, in what Heine and
others think an arbitrary fashion, but they believe in
God, a soul, a revelation. They believe above all in
the moral law, and the moral law belongs to the
essence of Deity. And if metaphysics are no help to
faith, we may ask, without entering on disputed points,
why Christ revealed the Father, or why St. Paul in the
Epistle to the Philippians drew the lesson of humility,
a lesson new to the heathen world, from the doctrine
of the pre-existence of Christ?
Again, the Ritschlian minimizes all sacramental or
disciplinary aids to faith, Here again we observe an
extraordinary difference of view between the two
schools. The ‘‘legalism,” which Baur called Jewish,
becomes on the Ritschlian theory mainly or entirely
Hellenic. But the truth is, that this vein of thought
is in the Gospels, in the undoubted teaching of our
Lord Himself. We believe that He instituted the
Catholic sacraments. But at any rate ‘ Catholicism ”’
is to be found wherever He spoke of the Father
as King or Master, and of His reward as “ wages.”
 ‘HELLENISM ’ 143

But finally, the Ritschlian view is, as Dr. Pfleiderer

rightly insists, pessimistic. It teaches that God is
Father, but, like the Greek Plutarch, it denies that
He is holy. It sees in St. Bernard much more to
lament than to admire. It regards St. Athanasius as
having saved Christianity from complete Hellenization:
by a definition which is radically absurd. It represents
the Church as the product of dull scholasticism and
uninspired moralism, the creation of the pedant, the
bureaucrat, and the man in the street. And to the
scientific world the remedy, which it proposes, will
appear even worse than the disease. It invites men
to go not forward, but back to a Gospel, of which
hardly any two of the critical school give the same
account, a Gospel which had from the first so little
vitality, that it degenerated into an alien type in the
very days, when such life as it possessed was at the
strongest.
The theology of the Church was not Hellenic. This
Celsus shows beyond the possibility of doubt. Even
Dr. Hatch does not assert that it is. What he main-
tains in his curiously oblique Avdsert Lectures is, that
whatever may be said as to the definitions in them-
selves; the “*tendency”. to define; and_ the further
‘tendency ” to insist upon the definitions as affecting
conduct, is Hellenic. But it seems’ unreasonable to
call the process by one name, when we must call the
result by another. Even the process was not that of
the Greek schools, as was shown by Mr. Gore in his
Bampton Lectures. And lastly, the insistence on agree-
ment in dogma was the very antipodes of Hellenism.
144 NEOPLATONISM

What the Greek claimed was hberty of thought. The

very reason why Christians were persecuted was that
they were exclusive. |
We must use the word Hellenism in its proper
sense, which is rather that of the Idealist than that of
the Ritschlian, to denote that which is distinctively
Greek in thought, conduct, and religion. What we
are to ask 1s how, and to what extent, properly Greek
ideas affected the Church? But we must confine our- —
selves to the region of speculation. Organization,
discipline, and ritual lie outside the limits of our
investigation.
 IX

THE GNOSTICS AND APOLOGISTS

PLATONISM is to be found even in the New Testa-

ment. St. John gives to the Saviour the title of Logos,
a title borrowed most probably, though through what
channels we know not, from the Alexandrines. It
answers to the creative Intelligence of Plotinus, but
Word was not used by the heathen Platonists except in
the baser Stoic sense of natural force. Platonic Philon-
ism may be detected also in the Epistle to the Hebrews,
Some commentators have fancied that Platonism
underlay even a famous passage of St. Paul (Phil. i.
6, 7), where the Apostle speaks of the “‘ form” of God,
the “shape” of man. Form belongs, at any rate in
the usage of Plotinus, to the ideas, and to the second
though not to the first god, shape only to visible
things. But St. Paul goes on to speak of the “ form
of a slave,” and the resemblance appears to be purely
accidental.
It would be most strange, if it were otherwise. Some
of the Christians were educated men, and why should
they not express themselves in educated language, so
far as it lent itself to their purpose? Philosophy is a
K
146 NEOPLATONISM

mode of reason, and much of what Greek philosophy

taught was true. The Gospel was given not to
destroy reason, or the language of reason, but to fulfil.
In applying to Christ the Jewish Platonic title of
Logos, St. John was following the example of St. Paul
at Athens, when he preached upon the Unknown
God—‘“ Whom ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I
unto you.”
When Hellenism endeavoured to thrust into the
creed notions at variance with its living import, the
Church resisted. It cast out Gnosticism.
The history of this struggle, in spite of the dullness
of the details, is most instructive. Gnosticism was an
attempt to capture the Church in the interests of
Hellenism, and would have resulted, if successful, in
the destruction of Christianity. About this there is
no dispute. But the Gnostics have been called “the
first theologians,” on the ground, that they only at-
tempted to do in a hurry, what the Fathers succeeded
in doing in more leisurely fashion, that is, to foist upon
the Church an alien and destructive system of meta-
physics. Yet they certainly would have destroyed the
Church, and the Fathers certainly did not.
The history of Gnosticism extends from an uncer-
tain date, somewhere about the Christian era to the
end of the second century. After this time it ran off
into other forms, especially Manichzanism, which had
a long life, and was known to St. Thomas Aquinas. It
originated partly in the vast and shifting mass of
Babylonian, Syrian, and Jewish angel lore, partly in
the Zoroastrian doctrine of an evil and a good god.
 THE GNOSTICS AND APOLOGISTS 147

The phantasmagoria resulting was tinged more or less

deeply with Greek philosophy, mainly Pythagorean or
Platonist. Pythagoreanism had Oriental affinities to
begin with, and the foggy Eastern intellect saw no
difference between the abstract conceptions of the
schools and the concrete shapes of its own mythology.
Even the later Platonists hardly kept the two apart ;
the triads of Iamblichus and Proclus are barely dis-
tinguishable from the Gnostic emanations. If we
add to these considerations, what we learn from the
Shepherd of Hermas, or Lanciani’s Pagan and Christian
Rome, that there were numbers of people, who regarded
the Church with an intelligent and not unfriendly
curiosity as the last new thing, who attended the Chris-
tian services and yet lived Gentile lives, we have all the
conditions out of which Gnosticism arose. It pro-
duced a multitude of arbitrary systems, which defy
classification, because they are so arbitrary. They
stretch away in a long line from the doors of the
Church to the vestibule of the pagan schools. None
was properly Christian, and none was properly philo-
sophical. They were opposed at the one end by
Irenaeus and Hippolytus, at the other by Plotinus and
Amelius. Zostrianus and Aquilinus, against whom
the Neoplatonists wrote, are not otherwise known to
us, but they belong to the same family as Basilides and
Valentinus. The former were excommunicated by the
schools and the latter by the Church.
The Gnostics started from the Platonic axiom, that
God is good and nothing else, and from a fact of
observation, that man’s works are often evil. Like
148 NEOPLATONISM

Platonism, indeed like all the Greek schools, they

would not admit that man makes his own evil. Evil
therefore must come from matter, and is the operation
of the wicked spirit, who created the sensible world.
This is, in fact, the Persian Ahriman. Even Plato
had hinted at the possibility of a ‘bad soul,” and
Plutarch, as we have seen, held the same belief. It is
the most permanent and characteristic feature of
Gnosticism. Indeed, in Marcion it is almost the only
one that survives.
That it is not a Christian doctrine goes without say-
ing. It is not even Greek, difficult as it may seem to
draw the line between the Platonic theory of Matter
and the Gnostic tenet of a god of matter. But it -
made a dogma of that, which to the Platonist was a
difficulty. Whatever might be the explanation of evil, it
could not possibly be a god; of this the Platonist felt
no doubt. And the world is the work of God, and
therefore cannot be bad, though it may fall short of
the divine plan. Further, the perceptions of sense are
the condition of the higher intellectual knowledge.
We gather our first ideis of God from the world itself.
What then becomes of either religion or philosophy, if
the first step of the ladder is broken away? “ You
cannot become good,” says Plotinus, ‘‘ by despising the
world, and the gods that are therein, and all beautiful
things. The bad man despises God, and if he is not
wholly bad, by despising God he will become so.”
The Gnostic, others said, wanted a sixth sense, for
his natural five senses showed him nothing but the
devil.
 THE GNOSTICS AND APOLOGISTS ~— 149

To the Gnostic, theoretically, salvation meant en-

lightenment, or knowledge. But, from the point of
view of practical religion, it meant deliverance from
the clutches of a hostile external power. By the
Christianizing sects this was held to be the work of
Jesus, who brought to light the hidden mysteries of
Wisdom, including all the cosmogonies. Yet not by
His death, for they more or less denied the reality
of the Passion, and not for all. There were three
classes of men—the earthly, or hylic, the psychic,
and the spiritual; the publican and sinner belong to
the first, and must perish eternally. Their dualism
led naturally to a harsh asceticism, for which also it
is curious to notice that Plotinus, an ascetic him-
self, reproved them. There are indeed two kinds of
asceticism, and what the Platonist says is entirely
in harmony with the sharp remark of Clement, who
observes of Basilides, that he hated the Creator though
he ate His food, breathed His air, and in His world
had the strange gospel of Gnosis preached to him.
Gnostic asceticism ought to have led to prompt starv-
ation, but like all fanaticism, it tended to produce
a result exactly opposite to its principles. It issued
frequently in the most disgusting antinomianism, in
which the rites of Aphrodite Pandemos were known
as ‘‘spiritual communion.” Porphyry notices this fact
as well as the Christian Fathers. Yet further, the belief
in a devil-god leads inevitably to magic. Plotinus
charges them with this also, not only because they
“cast out devils,” but because they thought to com-
mand the divine favour by “ hymns, noises, breathings,
150 NEOPLATONISM

and whistlings” of a ‘‘ technical” description. What

the technique was is not difficult to guess, and Gnostic
amulets remain in plenty to illustrate. What Irenaeus
tells us about Marcus is by no means mere Christian
prejudice, and is not to be compared, as Dr. Harnack
compares it, to the Christian doctrine of the Eucharist
even in its medizeval shape. Indeed there is nothing
more surprising in the history of the Church than the
slightness of the degree, in which the prevalent belief
in art-magic infected the sacraments. This alone is
sufficient to show, how correct and thorough was the
moral teaching of the Church.
The Gnostics were the first regular commentators
on the New Testament. Indeed they could not help
themselves. Valentinus found in the plural word
eons, of which St. Paul is rather fond, the name
which in his system belongs to the hierarchy of
Emanations. Heracleon the Basilidian discovered in
the husband, that was not a husband, of the Samaritan
Woman her Pleroma or guardian angel. Books that
contained such mysteries obviously required to be
turned over word by word; the rebus was no good
without a key. The Gnostics were aided in their
search for the non-existent by allegorism, that fatal
engine devised by pagans, who were ashamed of their
mythology, yet would not give it up. The Christians
adopted it not from the Gnostics, but from Philo, or
the spirit of the age. They wasted much time over it ;
but they used it mainly to “ discover what they already
possessed,” to find, that is to say, the New Testament
in the Old, and in this they were not altogether wrong.
 THE GNOSTICS AND APOLOGISTS I51

The Gnostics appealed also to a secret tradition

handed down from the Apostles. Against this the
Church very naturally opposed her own tradition,
What else could she do?
The Gnostics were also the first practitioners of
‘the higher criticism,” the first, that is, who applied sub--
jective canons to find ‘‘ interpolations” in documents
that did not happen to suit their theory or ‘ pragmat-
ism.” Thus Marcion mutilated the Gospel of St.
Luke. They were the first to find ‘“ Hellenism ”’—
they called it Judaism—in the teaching of our Lord
and the Apostles (Iren. i. 2, 2), and to set “ Paulin-
ism ” against ‘‘ Catholicism,” and to take philosophy
as the norm of what is possible or impossible for God,
and to hold that belief in the facts of the creed is not
necessary for a Christian man. Whether the Church
or the Kantians are their natural and lawful issue the
reader may decide.
But, for all these reasons, the Gnostics were not the
first theologians. Those, who call them so, mean that
they were the first, who attempted to spoil the pure
Gospel, by setting knowledge above faith. But it is
surely allowable to ask, of what kind was their know-
ledge, and what fruits it bore? The answer must be,
that their Gnosis does not even pretend to be derived
from the New Testament. The evil god comes
from a foreign and hostile source. And certainly it
cannot be denied, that Gnosticism had a tendency
to express itself in forms of life, that were heathen
and not Christian. At best it may be regarded
as a half-way house, through which many pagans, like
152 NEOPLATONISM

Ambrosius or St. Augustine, found their way into the

Church.
The second century is the age of the Apologists.
They were men who, living in a time when everybody,
even emperors, professed to honour philosophy, that is
to say truth, and when yet Christians were put to death
for their truth, thought that they might venture to
plead for toleration. Christians, they maintained, were
moral men and good citizens, and their dogmas were
not so unlike the conclusions of the schools as to call
for their extermination by fire and sword. ‘“ What
we are punished for,” they said, “is merely the Name.
You think that the Name is a cover for horrid crimes,
but this, if you will listen to reason, is not the case.”
Their object was to present Christianity from the
common-sense point of view, without using arguments
that a heathen would not recognize, and without
going into needless details. Hence the view, which
they present, of the life of the Church is by no means
complete. In particular they give us only the merest
outline of the Liturgy.
With one exception they abhorred the very name of
philosophy. To them it meant rationalism. ‘ The.
Greeks,” says Aristides, “ who profess to be wise are
more foolish than the Chaldzans.” Hermias wrote a
treatise full of bitter mockery of the schools. ‘They
contradict one another,” cries Tatian, ‘‘each utters just
what comes into his head; they hate each other ; they
receive large salaries from the Emperor in order that
they may not wear their long beards for nothing.”
Theophilus could not find the most ordinary truth in
 - THE GNOSTICS AND APOLOGISTS _ 163

their writings, “for, if any of their sayings seem to be

true, it is mingled with error.” “Among us,” says
Athenagoras, “you might find laymen, artisans, old
women, showing by deed the benefit of their profes-
sion, even if they cannot explain by word the good
the word has done them.” Irenaeus charges the
schools with calling ignorance knowledge; if they
had really known the truth, the Incarnation would
have been needless. ‘Tertullian regards the philoso-
phers as “ patriarchs of heresy,” ‘friends of error.”
Justin is an exception. He had been a philosopher,
before he became a Christian, and was no more
ashamed of his philosophy, than he was of his Chris-
tianity. Even after his conversion he wore the garb
of the schools, the blanket-cloak or pallium. He saw
in Greek science part of the great Praeparatio Evan-
gelica. Reason is the handmaid of faith, It teaches
men to love truth and to discern it. It gives truth,
and sharpens that hunger and thirst for divine know-
ledge, which can only be satisfied by Him, who is the
Light of the world. ‘This is the general position of
Justin, and it leads him to dwell with predominant
emphasis on the Johannine doctrine of the Logos,
which is the golden bridge between dialectic and
revelation. ‘The Word made all men, is in all men,
speaks truth to them, and saves them, if they will but
follow His guidance. ‘They who have lived with
the Word are Christians, even though they have been
counted godless, such as Socrates, Heraclitus, and
those like unto them among the Greeks.” Since the
proclamation of the Gospel, he held, that none could
154 NEOPLATONISM

be saved, unless he accepted Jesus as the Christ, that

is, as the promised Messiah. Still he was inclined to
go so far as to extend the name of Christian to those
who, while they accepted Jesus as Christ, yet denied
His eternal pre-existence and His miraculous birth,
because these cou'd not be “demonstrated,” could
not, that is to say, be proved exactly from the Old
Testament. ‘‘ For there are some,’’ he says, “‘of our
race, who confess that He is Christ, but insist that
He is man born of man. With them I do not concur;
and the majority agree with me, and would not say
so either, since we have been commanded by Christ
Himself not to believe in the doctrines of man, but in
those things which were preached by the blessed
prophets and by Himself.” That is to say, Justin
regards the belief in the divinity of our Lord as rest-
ing on the authority of Christ Himself, and as not
capable of absolute proof from the words of the Jewish
Scripture. He is thinking of the Ebionites, some of
whom, though not all, held that Jesus was mere man.
He judged that they might ‘‘ perhaps be saved,” pro-
vided that with their observance of the law they united
the confession of ‘‘ the Christ of God,’ and did not
insist upon binding the law on Gentile converts.
The belief of Justin himself was that of the Church
at large, and it was built upon the Gospels. But here
there arises a question. Is Hellenism to be found in
the belief in our Lord’s Divinity, or in its disbelief?
Again, did Hellenism cause the tolerance of Justin, or
the intolerance of other Christian teachers? Accord-
ing to Celsus, neither the belief nor the intolerance
 —

THE GNOSTICS AND APOLOGISTS 155

was Hellenic. According to Dr. Hatch, both were.

But Celsus is right. The belief is Christian; the
tolerance is Christian also; but it marks the man
trained in the free atmosphere of the Hellenic schools,
In one respect, however, the Apologists undoubtedly
philosophized. They are the first exponents of the
modern doctrine of the Freedom of the Will. Dr.
Hatch found the same teaching in Epictetus and the
later Stoics, but in this he did not display his usual
accuracy. No Greek school ever held the same
language as the Christian Church.
The Platonists did not regard the Will as a distinct
faculty. They considered it as an inclination of
character. To them we may say there were two wills,
or instinctive desires: that of the mind for truth, that
of the flesh for gratification. Aristotle made Will an
independent mental act, but confines its operation to
the selection of means towards a given end; how the
end is given, the all-important question, he does not
attempt to decide. The later Stoics, in spite of their
fatalism, went a step beyond this. The sensual man,
they held, is the slave of his delusive fancies, and
has no freedom at all. Yet there is such a thing as
freedom. It is right judgment, and this is absolutely
in our power at any time. Weare always free to be
free, because the one end is open to choice.
The Apologists, in their recoil from the Fatalism of
the Stoics and Gnostics, went further still. Will,
they taught, is the independent faculty of choice; it
selects not the means only, but the end, and not one
end only but both. Life and death are clearly set
 156 - NEOPLATONISM

before men in God’s Word, and each deliberately

chooses for himself either one or the other, either
good or evil. Freewill in this sense belongs to men
and angels. For God, the end is fixed by the goodness
of His Divine nature, but even He selects means.
The origin of this doctrine is undoubtedly Biblical.
It is found in both Testaments. It was held as a
necessary corollary of the belief in Divine rewards and
punishments. But it is absolutely un-Greek. In the
light of this conception, moral evil is no longer a
disease, the view of all Hellenic schools without ex-
ception, but a rebellion. This is an entirely different
point of view, and its moral consequences are
_ immense.
No one seems ever to have suggested that the
counter doctrine of Grace is Hellenic, though it has
an obvious resemblance to the Platonic theory of the
heavenly Eros. Both are Biblical ; but Freewill is more
Jewish, and Grace is more Christian. ‘The former,
we may say, is more ethical, the latter more religious.
The predominance of one or the other gives rise to two
different aspects of Christianity, which are sometimes,
though improperly, called by the names of Catholicism
and Paulinism. Both exist side by side in the Gospels.
We find them in the titles of God as King, as Father;
in the offices of our Lord as Saviour, as Judge; in the
conception of heaven as a hope deferred, as ‘‘ wages,”
or as a present kingdom, as the peace and joy of the
Holy Spirit ; in the view of the Christian life as a new
law, or as freedom; in fear and love as motives; in
the antithesis of works and faith. It is probable that
 THE GNOSTICS AND APOLOGISTS 157

St. Peter and the majority of the Twelve inclined to

the more ethical view. St. John insists upon love
almost to the destruction of Freewill, and St. Paul
carries the doctrine of Grace to the very verge of
individualism.
The history of the Church has been marked by re-
actions of the one tendency against the other. The
spirit of discipline is the first and most obvious need
of the Church, but it leads to dryness and formalism.
When these evils appear, the Christian mind turns
instinctively to the love of St. John, the grace of St.
Paul, and fills once more the empty bottles with wine.
And as these again issue in their characteristic defects
of vagueness of belief and disunion, the need of the
law, which guarantees the freedom, again asserts itself.
The first great revival of Paulinism or Johanninism is to
be found at the end of the second century in Irenaeus
and the Alexandrines; the next in the theology of
Athanasius ; the next in that of Augustine; another at
the Reformation ; and we are living at the close of yet
another. In all these crises we can detect the influence
of the “terae humaniores, of cultivated sympathetic
thought, of poetry, philosophy; in our own time of
science also, acting in unison with the Spirit of God
to break the fetters of conventionalism, and lift men
into nearer communion with their Father and with
one another. If Hellenism may be taken to mean the
love of truth and beauty for their own sakes, and of
all kinds of truth and beauty—and this is, in fact, the
noblest part of its meaning—this has been its appointed
task, to remind the Church from time to time that her
 158 NEOPLATONISM

dogmas spring from, and are intimately connected with,

the great laws of physical and human nature. But
- Hellenism also tells the Church, that those laws are
all-sufficient without any ‘‘ metaphysical” explanations,
and in this it is a bad counsellor.
 Xx

THE ALEXANDRINES 2

CLEMENT, or we may call him St. Clement, lived

from about 150 toabout 213; Origen from about 185
to 254. The first was born in the middle of the reign
of Antoninus Pius; the second died in consequence of
his sufferings in the persecution of Decius. Clement
would remember well the philosophic Emperors.
Origen died just before the shameful disasters of
the reign of Gallienus. There were general persecu-
tions under Aurelius and Severus, and every now and
again the governors of particular provinces lighted the
flame, as Arrius Antoninus under Commodus in Asia,
Scapula at Carthage under Caracalla, Serenianus in
Cappadocia under Maximin. But upon the whole, as
Lanciani shows, Christian and heathen got on amaz-
ingly well together. The Ostian potter did not care
in the least whether his lamps should be decorated
with Bacchus or with the Good Shepherd ; it was for
his customers to decide. The profession of the
Gospel was not more dangerous than many other
things ; it offered considerable prospect of gain to the
poor who could get upon the church-roll ; to the clever
160 NEOPLATONISM

who might hope for office; to all travellers, who by

means of ‘‘commendatory letters’ could secure free
and comfortable quarters wherever they went. The
Church was already a powerful and munificent cor-
poration, and numberless parasites fed upon its
simple-minded charity, like Peregrinus, whom Lucian
took for one of his butts. Peace had led to laxity
and corruption. Numbers flocked into the Church
who brought their heathen ways with them. Long
before the end of the second century the Church had
become a landowner. Pope Victor enjoyed influence
at the Imperial Court, and from the time of Severus,
perhaps from that of St. Paul, there were many
Christians about the palace. Caracalla was “suckled
on Christian milk.” Alexander Severus awarded to
the Church a piece of land that was claimed by the
guild of licensed victuallers, quoted Christian maxims,
thought highly of their mode of electing bishops, and
set up a bust of Christ in his private chapel. The
Emperor Philip is said to have been a Christian, and
to have submitted to Christian reproof.
It was the age of Gnosticism, of Noetianism, of
Artemonite Unitarianism, of the Puritan revolts of
Montanism and Novatianism, of the Easter and
Penance disputes. These exciting topics called forth
a host of learned writers, whose names are recorded in
the pages of Eusebius, from Hegesippus to Hippolytus.
They insisted on the authority of the Scriptures and
of ecclesiastical tradition; they shaped the liturgy
and formed the canon; they regulated the calendar
with a view to the due observance of Easter; they
 THE ALEXANDRINES 16tf

reduced prophecy under rule; they established the

theory and practice of the sacrament of penance, and
of infant baptism; and they brought the Episcopacy
into its final shape. The law that bishops should be
consecrated by bishops was made good even at
Alexandria in Clement’s time. Monasticism had not
yet begun, but its principles were already at work. It
is hardly an exaggeration to say, that there was no
essential difference between the Church of Origen’s
time and that of the Middle Ages. ‘Transubstan-
tiation was the prevalent belief, though the doctrine
was not as yet, of course, expressed in the technical
language of the Latin schoolmen.
At this crisis began the activity of the great Alexan-
drines. It was conditioned by a liberal education re-
ceived in the famous catechetical school founded, under
the Bishop, possibly by the Apologist Athenagoras,
but more probably by Pantaenus, a converted Stoic
philosopher, and by a double reaction, against Gnosti-
cism or semi-heathen intellectualism on the one hand,
and, on the other, against the formalism of those
whom Clement calls the ‘ Orthodoxasts,” and Origen
“the simpler brethren.” ‘The object is to show that
true philosophy and pure faith are not enemies, but
friends, and to bring back to the Church the right
understanding of St. Paul and St. John.
The School of St. Mark produced many eminent
names, notably the great Dionysius, in whom the.
blessed spirit of peacemaking, the crown of true learn-
ing, shone with the purest lustre. But we must con-
fine ourselves to the two most striking figures, those
L
162 NEOPLATONISM

of Clement and Origen. Both were learned men, and

possessed a good acquaintance with Greek literature,
down to the time of Numenius, Cronius and Harpocra-
tion. Origen had possibly been a pupil of Ammonius
Saccas, who began life as a Christian and a porter on
the quays, and ended it as a heathen and the most
famous lecturer of the time. Clement was, to some
extent, under the influence of Philo, the Jew Platonist
of the first century, who distinguished the First In-
effable God from the Second, and to the latter gave
the title of Logos or Divine Intelligence. For a
fuller account of this eminent man the present writer
may, perhaps, venture to refer to his Christian
Flatonists of Alexandria. But Philo’s importance
may easily be overrated. Both before and after
Clement the philosophy of churchmen was drawn
from heathen writers, and Clement’s own mind was
shaped by teachers, whom he had learned to respect,
before he ever heard of the metaphysical Jew.
In temperament the two great doctors were strongly
opposed. Clement was a Greek, Origen a native
Egyptian. Clement appears to have been at first a
heathen. Origen was son of the martyr Leonidas,
and, like Timothy, learned the Scriptures as a child.
Clement was a born orator and friend of the Muses,
delighting in apt anecdotes and fine sayings, loving
everything in the shape of literature, from the Rabe-
laisian comedy of Athens to the austere eloquence of
the Schools ; loving indeed everybody and every-
thing, except perhaps labour. Yet he was a diligent
reader, and a prolific though unmethodical writer.
 THE ALEXANDRINES 163
a

The chief of his extant works is the S/vomazezs, Carpet-

bags, or Miscellanies. This was a favourite book-title
at that time, used by many authors from Plutarch to
Origen. Its object is to present the contrast between
Gnosticism and the true Gnosis or Knowledge of the
Catholic Church. It flows on in sinuous meanders
like a river through flat and flowery meadows, and is
left unfinished at last.
Origen, on the other hand, was the prince of
schoolmen and scholars, as subtle as Aquinas, as
erudite as Routh or Tischendorf. He is a man of one
book, in a sense. The Bible, its text, its exposition,
furnished him with the motive for incessant toil, and
he cared for nothing except in so far as it could be
bent to this end. The charm of Hellenism, its Jed/es
lettres, its art, did not touch him. Evenits philosophy
he regarded with a certain disfavour. As a boy he
coveted martyrdom ; he died a confessor. The first
part of his spiritual course he spent in the austerest
asceticism, and his days and nights to the last were
devoted to labours of which no Greek writer had any
conception. ‘There was iron in his mould, and it had
been heated in the furnace. But there was also a gran-
deur and a tenderness, which gave him an extraordinary
hold on the mind of his contemporaries. We know
hardly anything of Clement, but almost all that
Origen did was chronicled by friends or foes.
We must not attempt to give the long list of his
works, or the details of his well-known career. For
our purpose it is sufficient to say, that he was infinitely
more laborious than Clement, that he had passed
164 NEOPLATONISM

through deeper experiences, and that his intellect was

bolder, keener, more comprehensive, and more disci-
plined. Clement is apt to catch at anything that
strikes him as what we call “suggestive.” Origen
never forgets the relation of the part to the whole,
never slurs over a difficulty, and his boldest flights are
generalizations. It may be on this account that he is
much less liberal and much more ecclesiastical than
Clement. Learning, with its load of facts, is the
ballast of speculation.
Like Justin, Clement found in the Gospel the true
philosophy. Truth, he held, is one shape under
many names. ‘‘There is one river of truth, but
many streams fall into it on this side and on that.”
Truth is like the corpse of Pentheus, torn asunder by
the Bacchants; each seizes a limb, and each thinks
she has the whole; a famous simile borrowed from
the Platonist Numenius. Philosophy must not be
judged by the sins of the heathen, any more than
Christianity by the defects of Churchmen. It is the
gift of the Word, and its natural fruit is not iniquity,
but righteousness. It was a true covenant, and
justified those whom it led to renounce idolatry
and live chaste lives. Further, Clement held that
it has abiding utility. Man must dedicate his whole
nature, the best efforts of his noblest faculties, to
God. He can neither understand the Scriptures, nor
give'a reason for the faith that is in him, nor do his
duty in the world, without cultivated thought. Hence
Clement calls upon men and women alike to ‘ philo-
sophize,” that is to think, and if they can, to study.
 THE ALEXANDRINES 165

They are not to ‘‘fear bogies,” ? not to fancy that any

truth can hurt them. It is the ghost of knowledge
that does harm, not the reality. True knowledge,
Gnosis, belongs not to the Gnostics, or Knowalls, nor
to the schools, but to the Church, which has received
the One Body in the Incarnation of the Divine Word.
Thus philosophy becomes something more than a
pracparatio Evangelica. Clement not only blesses its
past work, but promises it a place of high dignity in
the future, if it will take service in the army of Christ.
Regarding the Creed as the expression of ultimate
truth, he saw rays shoot out from it in all directions
to the furthest limits of human capacity. Two great
thoughts are combined in this view, the slow growing
of light towards the perfect day (this was Justin’s
idea, and is the first germ of what we call Evolution),
and an infinite growth of knowledge from a fixed and
stable centre. ‘The Incarnation is the sum of all the
past, and the pronuise of all the future.
Clement’s view was perhaps a little too optimistic.
He did not allow sufficiently for the love of battle,
which cleaves to the old Adam even in matters of
research. Nor did he see clearly how variety of belief
issues in variety of character. “One righteous man,
in so far as he is righteous,” he says, “does not differ
from another.” He hardly recognized any distinction
between a good Stoic and a good Christian, though
he himself makes love the secret of righteousness.
Origen, on the other hand, was a pessimist. He
thought that the world was growing worse, and this
view increased, as it must always do, the positiveness
166 NEOPLATONISM

of his disposition. He sets the Bible much higher,

and philosophy much lower, than Clement. “ Few,”
he says, ‘‘have taken of the spoils of the Egyptians
and made of them the furniture of the tabernacle.’’
He knew Celsus, and looked upon Hellenism as a
hostile power to be conquered and stripped. He
took the gold and used it; but it must first be cast
into the melting-pot. This rule is a necessary safe-
guard against the silliest eclecticism ; but Origen puts
it a little harshly.
The influence of Hellenism on these two distin-
guished men may be summed up under three heads.
1, the Notion of God; 2, the Morality of God; 3,
the life of man in the Church.
1. As regards the Notion of God, Platonism rendered
them signal service. It taught them what is meant
by the words, “ God is a Spirit.” To the Stoics, and
to the popular understanding, the Deity was material,
and this opinion prevailed for some time in the
Church. We find traces of it in Irenaeus, in Ter-
tullian, in the Clementine Homies, perhaps in Melito,
and in the anthropomorphism of the Egyptian
monks. It leads logically either to Tritheism, or to
Unitarianism. That which is material is divisible.
Three material things cannot be one. But God is One.
The Platonists held that the Divine Being is of the
nature of thought, which is timeless and indivisible.
Three thoughts may very easily be really and truly
one. For instance, Justice, Wisdom, and Fortitude
are all the knowledge of the Good. Wisdom is the
knowledge in itself; Justice the knowledge as applied
 THE ALEXANDRINES 167

to the distinction of mine and thine; Fortitude the

same knowledge regarded as resisting the impact of
fear. They differ, according to the Platonist, not
only in their contact with matter, in their mode of
dealing with circumstance, but in themselves ; they are
distinct, yet they are one. This is the great service of
Platonism to the Church. It is in fact the one step
from the Baptismal Formula to the Nicene Creed.
Platonism thus supplied the wanted explanation of
the unity and co-eternity of the Divine Persons, but
it could not be used to express the co-equality.
Whether the subordination of Origen is traditional or
metaphysical may be open to question ; but there is
no doubt whatever that to the Pagan schools the
word “‘homoousios”’ did not imply equality. Indeed
in the case of Deity this notion was expressly ex-
cluded. The Intelligence was inferior to the One,
the Soul to the Intelligence, in virtue of the rule that
“the child is always worse than the father.” ‘The
definition of Athanasius was in no sense Greek. It
rested on Scripture, on the religious experience, on
the Christian doctrine of redemption; in a word, on
a wholly different cycle of thought.
But Clement was not content with “spoiling the
Egyptians.” In his lazy eclectic way he borrowed
from the schools the whole definition of the First and
Second Persons. ‘The Father is the Monad, the
Pythagorean One, the Absolute ; the Son is the con-
sciousness of the Father, the One become self-reflect-
ing. Others had used the same kind of language
before him. The doctrine of the Monad was not
 “

168 NEOPLATONISM

quite so abstract in the mind of Numenius and his

contemporaries, as it afterwards became ; but the main
difference was that they did not as yet discern clearly
what it amounted to. The Monad is a Cause, but
not a God; it has great physical but no religious
import; 1t shapes a mystical philosophy, yet raises no
barrier, as we shall see, against the most abject
idolatry. Clement could not, and did not, really
believe in this self-contradictory Deity, who has no
consciousness of the world. But he tried hard to
believe in it, and it affected seriously his view of the -
religious life. Origen was far more clear-sighted. He
held that man has in Jesus, and from the world, a true
though imperfect knowledge of the Father, and he
could not allow that the Supreme was “apathetic” ;
‘‘God,” he writes, “‘has’the passion of love.”
2. The sight of sin and suffering led the Gnostics
to believe in an evil God, to whom they attributed
also the absurd function of punishing the evil that he
has caused. The true God, they thought, is good,
but not just. The Alexandrines maintained that He
is both good and just, that His severity is merely the
reverse of His fatherly love. And, as a corollary of
this, they adopted the famous Platonic axiom, that the
object of all punishment is to amend. ‘There they
fell into a grave inconsistency. They held, like all
the Church, that the seat of evil is in the will. But
the Platonic axiom is the outcome of a system, which
teaches that sin has nothing to do with will, that the
soul itself never chooses wrong, and that vice is
nothing but a form of bodily disease.
 THE ALEXANDRINES 169

These two theories of evil are wholly different, and

lead to two wholly different theories of punishment. If
evil is disease, the cure is chastisement, and chastise-
ment is cure. By way of medicine or by way of surgery
the sufferer can be healed, if sufficient time is allowed,
and ex hypothest the soul is immortal. On the other
view, evil is rebellion against a law, the revolt of one
will against another. Ignorance is not sin, though
it may be the punishment of sin. Evil begins when
the ‘‘I will” of the bad man sets itself against the
“‘‘Thou shalt not” of the ruler. In this case the object
of the Sovereign, the personified Law, in inflicting
penalties is self-preservation. Punishment is_ the
safeguard of Law, that is to say, of the unity, life, and
welfare of the whole, and of the individual in and
through the whole. It does not aim at amendment,
but at the maintenance of that law, which alone
can amend. That this is so is evident from the
fact that, if the sufferer refuses to acknowledge the
justice of the law, his punishment only makes him
worse. |
The inadequacy of the Platonic theory seems
obvious. It teaches us that we have no right to
punish a man unless we are sure that he will amend ;
and that, if he will not amend, we must go on increas-
ing the penalties ad infinitum for the smallest offence,
until we have broken him down. Mild as it seems,
it leaves no place for either repentance or forgiveness.
Sin is ignorance, and ignorance is eternal, because
the soul is inferior to God. And so long as ignor-
ance endures, punishment must endure, But, if sin
170° NEOPLATONISM

is rebellion, then submission is peace. No further

punishment can be needed, except for the sake of
example, a consideration that may weigh with the
State, whose laws are uncertain in their operation, but
not with Almighty God.
Further, experience teaches us that the punishments
of God are not curative. Shame and remorse indeed
are so, but these must be considered rather as the
pangs of returning life. Nor again is discipline, the
loving severity of the Holy Spirit, to be regarded as
punitive. The proper penalty of sin as such is hard-
ness and indifference. ‘God,’ it is written, “ hardened
Pharaoh’s heart.” These words shocked Origen inex-
pressibly. He felt that they could not be brought
within the circle of his ideas; but he could not see,
that this stubborn verse contained the very truth he
wanted.
In this particular point a mistaken theory has been
productive of great disasters. It led the Church to
that ‘debtor and creditor” theory of sin, in which
Luther discovered the taproot of all the medizeval
corruptions. It made Forgiveness unmeaning. The
Christian was forgiven once in Baptism, because all
Be Aeiok ere
revious sins had been committed “in ignorance”;
but now that he had received the Light, he could never
be forgiven again. Further, it made the Cross, the
fountain of pardon, an absolutely unintelligible
mystery. For why did the spotless Lamb suffer if all
suffering is medicinal?—or how could His sorrows
profit those who can be healed only through their
own? |
 THE ALEXANDRINES ~ sah By

_- These remarks apply more or less to the ante-

Nicene Church at large. The peculiar work of ~
Clement and Origen was merely to enlarge the
prevalent belief in Purgatory into that of Universal
Salvation, which is found in Clement, but was elabor-
ated into a system by Origen. It rests partly on the
corrective Platonic theory of punishment, partly on
the Aristotelian axiom, that justice binds God to deal
equally with all men, which is quite as untenable.
Origen saw clearly, that in this world no such equality
rules, and could find no way of escape but by import-
ing into Christian theology the whole Platonic account
of the origin and destiny of man. Antenatal sin and
birth upon earth as its punishment, the descent of
‘the purer souls” who come freély down to help the
Spirits in prison, the resurrection of an ethereal body
‘created for itself by the “‘spermatic logos” of the
soul, the gradual rise through eons and zons of
further trials, the final consummation—all this is
Neoplatonic, and all this Origen read into Scripture
by his method of allegorism. Origen’s after eternity
falls under the warning “not to be wise above that
which is written.” His prior eternity is demolished
by a passage in Justin’s Zyrypho—‘‘Are the souls
aware,” asks the old man, “that this is the reason
why they are in fleshly bodies, and that they sinned
before birth?” ‘I think not,” replies Justin. “Then
it would seem, that they cannot profit by the
chastisement. Nay, I should not even say, that
they are chastised, if they do not perceive the
chastisement,”
172 NEOPLATONISM

Yet Origen used his Hellenism to defend a purely

Christian thesis, the morality of God.
3. Both Clement and Origen were firm believers
in the Creed, which they had received. Every article
of it is to be found in Clement, and Origen wrote out.
his regula fided in the beginning of the De Principits.
But they were both, though Origen in a less degree,
tinged with intellectualism. ‘To both the supreme.
end of human effort is the knowledge of God, and
heaven presents itself as that ideal world in which all
mysteries will be explained, and reason, the noblest
part of man, will attain to perfect satisfaction. They
added that the road lay through Love, and in this the
Platonist agreed. They added also, “through Jesus
Christ,” and from this the Platonist would not have
dissented, provided that by Christ he might have been
allowed to understand the pure, divine, unembodied
intelligence, which he recognized as a distinct Person-
ality. The question is, what is meant by knowledge,
by love, and by Jesus Christ? The Alexandrines
held that iove is of the ideal, not of the material ; this
is Platonic; and that Jesus Christ is the ideal, and
that His Flesh was merely the veil of Godhead, a
necessary screen to prevent men’s eyes from being
blinded ; this again is half Platonic. As to knowledge,
there was a very broad, practical difference. The
Christians held that the Gospel was a philosophy,
yet it was within the reach of “old women.” The
Platonist maintained, that no one could know God,
unless he had taken a University degree, and studied
geometry and the laws of music, ‘There is plainly a
 THE ALEXANDRINES 173

great difference of spirit here. Both sides insist upon

“contemplation,” ‘‘ recollection,” but the Christian
type is that of Thomas a Kempis, with the Bible on
his knees; the heathen that of Nigrinus, with his
diagrams and his Euclid. Nevertheless it is clear,
that neither knowledge nor love could be rightly
understood, till Athanasius destroyed for ever the old
Hellenic philosophic aversion to ‘‘the flesh.”
But in many points intellectualism is in agreement
with the purest spirituality. The Alexandrines taught
not only that God is our Father, but that the believer
is already His son.. The kingdom is within, though
not as yet perfectly. In this they were in harmony
with the general sentiment of the Church, which was
already praying, not for the coming, but for “the
delay of the end,” that the Divine Will might have
time to realize itself upon earth. The view that
perfect. dife is “‘wages,” “a crown,” “a” beatific
vision,” they had no wish to alter, because it is
evidently just; but they destroyed the gross, sensual
conceptions of the ‘heavenly banquet,” which
attended what is known as Chiliasm. With the
general frame and discipline of the Church, as it
existed in their time, they had no desire to meddle.
Their sense of the need of unity was as strong as it
well could be. They were not Protestants. But
within the creed and within the discipline they insisted
on freedom as the heritage of every true Christian.
They held that in the Sacraments (here again their
Platonism comes in), it is not the matter that profits,
but the spirit. They acknowledged the three orders,
 Se
ti
ys

174 NEOPLATONISM

and did not in any way interfere with their official

position. But Clement regards the “Gnostic,” the
true Christian, as the only earthly sacrificer, because
he brings to the Father the offering of his own spirit,
and ascribes:to the Gnostic the judgment of souls,
whether he be ordained or not. Even Origen did
not admit that the priest could exercise the power
of the Keys, unless he were a holy man. Indeed
this view is to be found in Cyprian and the Const-
tutiones Apostolicae. Yet they were not Protestants,
and probably, even if they had lived in the days of
Tetzel, would have stood rather with Contarini than
with Luther. For they were content to buy freedom
at the price of reserve, and recognized different types
of Churchmanship. Both, but Clement more especi-
ally, divided the Christian experience into two kinds
of life. In modern times we have divided it into two
kinds of Church.
‘In this the Alexandrines were, from one point
of view, restricting the doctrine of Freewill. From
another they were attempting to harmonize the
teaching of the whole Canon of the New Testament;
or perhaps we should rather say, to assign their
rightful influence to the teaching of St. Paul and St.
John. They pursued this aim in true eclectic fashion,
not by grasping the inner harmony of Freewill and
Grace, but by putting the latter on the top of the
former, so as to make it grow out of it.
The inherent difficulty of combining two such
antitheses, which is already very great, was vastly
increased by Platonism. Clement really takes his
 THE ALEXANDRINES SES

start from the current distinction between practical

and contemplative, or moral and intellectual, virtue.
The philosophers, whom he followed, regarded the
former as merely negative or purificatory. They break
the hold of desire, and set the soul free. Affection
must be thus exterminated, the spirit must become
‘“‘apathetic,” before it can really see and love the
divine light of the Monad. This heathen intellectual-
ism threw over the imagination of Clement the same
sort of glamour, as scientific phraseology sometimes
exercises at the present time. It led him to a mode
of talking, which is a Christianized form of the fairy
tale of Apuleius.
The two Lives are opposed, as law and freedom,
fear and love, symbol and truth, negative holiness
and positive righteousness, freewill and grace, heaven
as a reward, and heaven as a frame of spirit. The
lower begins with faith in the sense of submission, it
is fostered by grace, in the sense of the external favour
or help of God, and issues in holiness, or purification
from desire. It is a life of struggle, sacrifice, post-
poned desire, ‘‘ reasonable self-love,” and its scriptural
basis is the Parable of the Talents.
But now, through obedience and growing reflection
we learn to understand and to love. Gradually the
‘servant becomes ason. ‘Temptations fall away, and
the light grows, till at last the believer is “ one spirit
with the Lord.” Henceforth he is filled with, upborne
by, grace, which in this Life is no longer favour or
power, but loving communion. He attains to perfect
Apathy, because no thought stirs against the Saviour’s
176 NEOPLATONISM

mind. He does God’s will, because he cannot help

doing it; he knows, because love is the key to all
secrets. He has sacrificed even the consciousness of
sacrifice, and there is absolutely nothing left for him
to desire, because in Christ he has all. This is the
Disinterested Love so famous in later mysticism. It
expresses itself in the “mystic paradox,” that it is
better to be with Christ in hell, than without Him in
heaven. ‘The true mystic demands nothing but to be
allowed to love, and will not pray the Beloved even
to cast a glance or a thought upon him.
Like all mystics, Clement speaks of “silent prayer,”
but at this point he stopped short, and left the dream-
ing of dreams to the heathen Neoplatonists and the
Christian monks. The reason is to be found partly
in the brightness of his disposition, but still more in
that spirit of godly fear, which tinged so deeply the
devotion of the early Church. Men did not venture to
grasp at the Beatific Vision, till their heads had been
fired by sensuous allegorisms of the Song of Songs.
No one can help loving Clement, yet it is difficult
not to be angry with him. If he had hunted through
the dictionary of scientific jargon on purpose, he could
hardly have picked out a more disastrous word than |
Apathy. But his Two Lives are the “ outer” and
“inner way’ of all the Mystics, and the Church
would have been poorer without Thomas a2 Kempis.
We may say that he has drawn the Lower Life in a
spirit of charity and tolerance, not of worldly com-
promise. He wanted to find a place in the Kingdom
of God for those to whom their Christian pilgrimage
 THE ALEXANDRINES © 177

is a battle, those who are in the just sense of the

word ‘‘apathetic,” who feel sadly their own lack of
fire and joy. To most of us probably Miss Rossetti’s
words go home—
‘We are of those who tremble at Thy Word,
Who faltering walk in darkness towards our close
Of mortal life, by terrors curbed and spurred,—
We are of those.
Not ours the heart Thy loftiest love hath stirred,
Not such as we Thy lily and Thy rose,
Yet, Hope of those who hope with hope deferred, —
We are of those.”

Of the Higher Life may we not say that, with all

his Platonic affectation, Clement is a true child of St.
John? His Apathy after all is the Love of the Last
Supper, whereof the love between the Father and the
Eternal Word is the archetype and fountain. Or
rather, what Clement calls Apathy,—it has been
termed Detachment in later times,—is its concomitant.
The monks held it to lead not to the sanctifica-
tion, but to the renunciation, of all earthly ties. Here
the Platonic taint crept in again. Clement held the
Platonism, but shrank from its extreme conclusions.
He was the most amiable and sociable of mankind.
Nevertheless, that love is unearthly. Its loins are
girded, its ear is uplifted for the heavenly summons,
and it shrinks not only from caresses and endearments,
but even from all labour which is not directly spiritual,
from engrossing study, from the ‘‘ questions of the
day.” Its type is Mary, not Martha; Clement, not
Origen ; and its work is to fill the reservoir, not to
irrigate the fields.
M
 178 NEOPLATONISM

The main fault in Clement’s description is that it

is too systematic. Many illustrious Christians do not
really belong to either of his categories. The Two
Lives lie side by side in the world, as they do in the
Gospels, and interlock. There is love in fear, and
fear in love. Probably no one ever attained to
“sonship” without passing through the discipline of
the “servant,” lke Luther, or Ongen, or Wesley.
But the conception of the Higher Life is at once too
_ ideal—love never can be ‘‘disinterested’”’; it is not
its nature—and too narrow. It seems to exclude
those who, with the fullest sense of the Fatherhood
of God, combine the deepest fear of His Kingship.
It does not really explain the cry of St. Paul, ‘“‘ Woe
is me if I preach not the Gospel !””—and it does scant
justice to. those whom we may call practical saints,
the great scholars, rulers, missionaries, organizers,
philanthropists of the Church.
- 'The work of the Alexandrines must be considered
rather as a reformation, a reaction against materialism
and formalism, than as an advance into hitherto
unexplored regions.
The reaction was conditioned by enlightenment.
Whence did this enlightenment come? In form it
was Platonic, in substance it was Evangelical. Partly
it harmonized with the Gospel, partly it did not.
The reader must now decide for himself where their
Platonism was in fact the voice of the Holy Spirit,
where it aspired beyond the limits of revelation,
where it led astray.
They put knowledge above faith, but even this is
 \

THE ALEXANDRINES 179

not wrong unless the New Testament is wrong, for

Wisdom is the fruit, and not the seed. They may,
perhaps, have erred in attriLuting too high a value to
the intellectual factor of Wisdom, and in depreciating
to the same extent the other elements of the Christian
character. It is a question of degree.
It is not their fault, but their crowning merit, that
they welcomed knowledge as the ally of faith, and
saw in God’s children not one type, but several. ‘‘In
My Father’s House are many mansions.”
 XI

PLOTINUS

WE may exhibit in tabular form the chronology of

Plotinus as given by Porphyry—
Emperor. ‘Regnal A.D. of
Year. : Plot.
Severus 645 13" 50 (205+6) Plotinus born.
27 ~Becomes student of
philosophy at Alex-
° andria-; attaches him-
self to Ammonius, and
remains with him 11
years.
38 Joins expedition of
Gordian against the
Persians. After the
Emperors defeat es-
capes to Antioch.
PME Re te has MAAR ee AO Settles in Rome.
nt 25) we A246e7) Amelius joins him,
and remains with him
24 years, till. the first
year of Claudius.
CLALBE RUS WOE GE sa (RRA ne Ten years. after his
settlement in Rome,
Plotinus begins to
write.
fs LOO N2O2FS ieee GS Porphyry, who had
already been some little
time in Rome, is in-
troduced to Plotinus;
remains with him six
years. At this date
Plotinus had written
21 Enneads. While
Porphyry was with him
he wrote 24 more,
 PLOTINUS 181

Emperor. Regnal A.D. os

2 Sak Plot. .
Gallienus .... 15 (ab.) (267-8 about) Porphyry retires to
Sicily.
Clams}. 7Bs... (268-0) ©ase oes Plotinus sends him
thither five more Z7-
neads.
a Bee 6209-70)250" OO Plotinus sends Por-
phyry the remaining
four Ezneads, and dies
towards the end of the
year,

The dates do not fit with exact precision. Porphyry

got at the birth-year by calculating backwards from the
death. Either he placed the birth a year too late, or
he added a year to his master’s age. He did not
know the day, nor even the month. Plotinus would
never speak upon the subject, though he kept as
festivals the birthdays of Plato and Socrates. ‘‘ He
seemed to be ashamed of his body,” and would not
allow his portrait to be painted. There was, however,
a likeness of him, taken by Carterius, a famous artist,
who was secretly introduced into the lecture-room by
Amelius, and stole the shy philosopher’s features.
Origen tells us, that in the Scriptures none but bad
men are recorded to have kept their birthdays as a
feast. The trait is quite Platonic. But it is surprising
that Porphyry does not even tell us where Plotinus
was born. According to Eunapius and Suidas he was
a native of Lycopolis, in Egypt. Porphyry possibly
left this bit of information out designedly. He
wantedto convey a touch of mystery, and in this he
succeeded, for the learned Empress Eudocia, in her
Bed of Violets written in the eleventh century, says,
 182 NEOPLATONISM

“ Plotinus appears to have been of no country, but

some say he was a Lycopolite.” |
The Roman name Plotinus was possibly inherited
from Plotina, the wife of Trajan. The philosopher
may have been a Copt, descended from a freedman
of the Empress.
At the age of twenty-seven, having no doubt run
through the ordinary preparatory course, he entered
the University of Alexandria, for the definite study
of philosophy. Here he listened to one famous
teacher after another, but ‘‘ went away full of sorrow,
with head hanging down.” At last a friend introduced
him to the class-room of Ammonius Saccas. At the ~
end of the lecture Plotinus exclaimed, ‘‘ This is the
man I was looking for.” For eleven years he re-
mained the attached disciple of this famous teacher.
Our readers will remember that in the tale of Cupid
and Psyche the golden wool could only be gathered
after the heat of noonday, and Aristotle thought
young men ‘‘ unfit to hear moral philosophy.”” ‘These
words were seriously meant. No one was thought
ripe for the discussion of first principles until he had
attained the age of thirty, at which he was eligible
for the consulate in the state, or the priesthood or
the episcopate in the Church.
Plotinus was released from his silekinece to Am-
monius, probably by the death of the latter; but his
Wanderjahre were not yet completed. ~ With the
view of perfecting his experience by personal acquaint-
ance with the wisdom of the Persians and Hindoos,
he attached himself to the expedition of the ill-starred
 PLOTINUS 183

Gordian. Gordian was murdered at the very outset of

the campaign by Philip, and Plotinus returned imme-
diately to Antioch. Hence after a brief stay he made
his way to Rome. In the capital he spent the
remainder of his life, leaving it only to die.
At Alexandria he had acquired a knowledge of all
forms of Greek thought, of Christianity, for Ammonius
was a renegade, and of those bastard systems that
we know as Gnosticism. What he had deliberately
chosen, out of all this seething flood of opinion, was
the teaching of the inspired porter, the new Platonism,
the idealist religion, to be hereafter expanded by the
patient labour of his devout and original mind.
Rome was exile to a student like Nigrinus ; but it was
the fitting post for an apostle like Plotinus. Athens
was Impossible, because it was the seat of the Dzado-
chus, the high-priest of conservative Platonism, and in
any case was too far distant from the centre of life.
Plotinus was drawn to the banks of the Tiber by the
same motives as St. Paul.
At Rome he lived for twenty-six years the life of a
priest-philosopher. He did not preach the gospel to
the poor, nor was it possible for him to found a
Church ; but in life and in thought he was true to his
high idealist creed. Knowledge he regarded as but
the means to communion with a personal God, and to
the fuller performance of the Divine Will. He lived
in privacy, disliking politics, and dissuading his friends
from taking part in them, and exercised the strictest
self-discipline. When he lay dying he refused to take
“treacle,” a popular nostrum composed of the flesh of
 yo

184 fl NEOPLATONISM

adders, saying that he had never used the meat even

of domesticated animals; and his sleep was of the
shortest. His friends were numerous and devoted,
and included the Emperor Gallienus (who tolerated
Christianity), and his wife Salonina. At one time he
is said to have obtained from his imperial patrons
permission to refound a deserted town in Campania,
which was to be called Platonopolis, and governed as
an ideal state. Fortunately the project fell through,
and Plotinus escaped the unpleasant experiences of
Dio Chrysostom, and indeed of Plato himself. But
the fascination of his priestly character is best illus-
trated by the story of his Wards.
‘““Many,” says Porphyry, ‘of the noblest men and
women, when death drew near, brought to him their
boys and girls, and property, and entrusted all to him
as to a holy and divine guardian. His house was full
of boys and maidens, among whom was Polemo, for
whose education he was so careful that he would
listen to his school-boy verses. He endured even to
go through the accounts of his wards’ possessions,
and was most accurate and business-like, saying that,
until they became philosophers, their property and
revenues ought to be kept intact and secure.”
When they became philosophers, he hoped that they
would renounce their wealth, like Rogatianus the
senator, who gave away all his possessions, emanci-
pated his slaves, resigned the praetorship, and did not
keep even a roof to sleep under. .
Like a true priest again he was a peacemaker, and
many a feud between the hot-blooded Roman nobles
 PLOTINUS 185

was composed by his influence. Among the official

class, says Porphyry, he had no enemy. But this
popularity with the great raised him up adversaries
among the ‘ philosophers,” who were for the most
part aself-seeking race. Olympius, who had also been
a pupil of Ammonius, and envied the success of his
old class-mate, tried to bewitch him. But his
sorceries recoiled upon his own pate, and finding
that he was more likely to suffer than to do harm, he
desisted. Plotinus revenged himself by comparing
Olympius to an empty purse, a body without a soul.
The meaning of the story is, that Plotinus, as the
chosen servant of the One God, could not be hurt by
the demons who were at the beck and call of Olympius.
In many ways he enjoyed special marks of the Divine
favour. Four times, while Porphyry was in Rome, did
Plotinus attain to the beatific vision. To Porphyry
himself this grace was but once vouchsafed, and then
not till his sixty-eighth year. Once, in the temple of
Isis,an Egyptian priest summoned a demon to appear
in the presence of Plotinus; but to the great alarm of
the enchanter, a god revealed himself. Plotinus could
read the-secrets of the soul.. Once he detected a
thief by looking on the faces of a crowd of slaves.
He foretold that Polemo would live a brief and stormy
life. He divined Porphyry’s intention to commit
suicide; told him the cause of his depression, and
ordered him to travel. .
He died of a disease in the throat, at the country
house of Zethus, in Campania, six miles from Min-
turnae. When the end was at hand, he sent for
186 NEOPLATONISM

Eustochius, who was living not far off at Puteoll.

Eustochius was long in coming, and when at last he
entered the room Plotinus said, ‘I was waiting for
you. The divine in me is struggling to go up to the
Divine in all.” Thus he closed his life, repeating, as
it were, the ideal creed. As he drew his last breath,
a serpent crawled from under the bed, and vanished
in a crevice of the wall.
He had always been a delicate man, suffering much
from indigestion. He had a defective articulation,
and stumbled over awkward words. When he spoke
he perspired freely. He was as shy as a girl, and on
one occasion broke down in his discourse, because the
famous Origen (the heathen) was present. He had
the autocratic ways of shy men. When Diophanes
read a paper in defence of impurity, Plotinus ordered
Porphyry to reply to it. He seldom condescended to
defend himself.
For ten years after his arrival in Rome he taught
orally, having, it 1s said, made a pact with Erennius
and Origen not to vulgarize the doctrines of Ammo-
nius by publication. During this period his lectures
seem to have been of a loose conversational kind,
‘‘with no order, and a good deal of nonsense,” says
Amelius, “as if he were provoking his hearers to
think for themselves.” In this temporary abstention
from writing, we find a trace of the disciplina arcant,
or Economy, which from the Platonic schools crept
into the Church.
Such reserve is, of course, impossible in an age of
books. Erennius and Origen broke the pact, and
 PLOTINUS. 187

Plotinus followed their example. Porphyry gives a

curious account of his literary method. He could not
spell correctly, wrote a very bad hand, and ran the
words into one another. His sight was so weak that
he could never bear to read over what he had written.
He did not put pen to paper, till he had clearly arranged
in his own mind all that he meant to say. Then he
wrote as if copying from a book, and if interrupted
would go on again from the point where he left off,
as if nothing had happened. Porphyry speaks of the
terseness, the pregnancy, the passion, and enthusiasm
of his style. We shall convey the best impression to
an English reader by saying that it is remarkably like
the style of Browning in its subtlety and lack of
grammar. ‘There is no difficult word, but the whole
is infinitely hard.
His school was more like a literary society than a
class-room. Generally the course was to read a
passage from some standard author, Severus, Crontus,
Numenius, Gaius, or Atticus among the Platonists;
Aspasius, Alexander, or Adrastus among the Pert-
patetics. Upon this text there would be free dis-
cussion, and the master would expound his views.
Sometimes one of the disciples read an essay. —
Sometimes one of them would request the master to
lecture on a special point, such as the unionof the
soul with the body. Occasionally distinguished
visitors, like Origen or Thaumasius, would attend,
_ and there would be a sort of field-day. Out of these
discussions grew the Lzneads, so called from the six
groups of nine in which Porphyry arranged them.
188 NEOPLATONISM

His most constant friends were Amelius Gentili-

anus, a Tuscan, who quoted St. John, and wrote
many volumes against the Gnostics; Paulinus of
Scythopolis or Bethshan ; Eustochius, an Alexandrine
physician ; Zethus, an Arabian, another physician ;
Zoticus, a critic and poet; Castricius Firmus, Mar-
cellus Orrontius, Sabinillus, and Rogatianus, four
Roman nobles; Serapion of Alexandria, a rhetor
turned philosopher ; and a number of ladies, Gemina,
her daughter of the same name, Amphicleia, Chione.
Chief of the band, though late in joining, was
Porphyry or Malchus (King), a Tyrian. Plotinus
called him ‘“poet, philosopher, and priest,” saved
him from self-destruction, told him as much of his
own life as he chose to make known, and appointed
him his executor. Porphyry wrote a famous book
‘‘against the Christians.” There is a taint of super-
stition, contentiousness, and inaccuracy about him,
and he stands on a much lower intellectual level than
his master. But he was not an unworthy disciple, and
fills a respectable place in the history of his school.
Plotinus was a man of reading and of wide ex-
perience. He had surveyed all the schools, and
learned much from Stoics and Peripatetics. But all
his ideas, whatever the source from which they
emanated, have been transformed and welded into
new relations by the fire of his own creative genius.
His system is Platonism, though it has absorbed
all the best fruits of Greek thought. Further, it is.
Hellenism in substance, form, and method. Through
his residence in Alexandria, Plotinus was no doubt
 PLOTINUS 189

familiar with many forms of Orientalism, but no trace

of Eastern opinion is to be found in the Lumneads.
Everything flows in a direct line from the teaching of
his Greek predecessors. He was himself an Eastern,
but if his intellectual activity was in any way
modified by his origin, it can only have been through
the sentiments, and the result must be looked for
simply in the profoundly religious cast of all his
speculations. In this, as in other points, he repre-
sents the culminating point of a tendency universal
among the Greeks themselves. But when we observe
how many of his nearest adherents were Eastern, like
himself, it is possible to think, that the fervour of his
devotion was intensified by his Coptic blood. Much
the same thing is true of Stoicism also. The Orient -
has always been the land of inspiration. §
Plotinus was charged with filching the ideas of
Numenius. His friends repelled the attack with a
heat that we cannot quite understand, for there was
certainly a connection between the two. Nor do
they explain the difference, further than by main-
taining that Plotinus was far superior in “accuracy.”
What they mean probably is, that the One of
Numenius still possesses attributes, and is not
absolutely unconditioned. But they may mean, that
Numenius was a Jew.
According to Porphyry and his circle, the spiritual
father of Plotinus was Ammonius Saccas. Ammonius
left no writings, and the brace of quotations that bear
his name must be regarded with doubt. Hence we
have no means for estimating the exact relationship
190 NEOPLATONISM

between him and his great disciple. But it must

have included the two leading points, the final
definition of the Absolute, and the identification of
the Ideas with the Intelligence of God. Neither
was in a strict sense the creation of Ammonius, but
his must have been the mind which brought them
into clear relation, and stamped them with that co-
herency which is the life of doctrines. With what
difficulty these conceptions won their footing is
evident from the facts, that both Porphyry and
Longinus opposed the new theory of ideas, and
that Plotinus spends page after page in arguing that
the One cannot think. Here then we find the
dividing line between the Conservative and the New
Platonism, and the debt of Plotinus to Ammonius.
Both conceptions are of the highest importance.
They form the bridge between ancient and modern
metaphysics. And whatever may be thought of the
Neoplatonist One, the new theory of ideas is now
so firmly rooted that we can hardly believe that there
was once a time when it was not accepted.
 XII

THE WORLD OF SENSE—I

Like all the Greek Idealists, Plotinus drew a very

sharp distinction between the World of Sense and the
World of Intelligence.
The World of Sense is in itself manifold, imper-
manent, half real, and therefore imperfectly knowable.
It is marked— |
1. By Multiplicity. What it offers to us is an
interminable host of sensations, of sight, sound,
touch, taste, smell. These we can in no way grasp
or understand, till we have reduced them to order.
We observe their recurrence in more or less fixed
combinations, we gather them into groups, and these
again into still larger groups. From the conception
of a horse we rise to that of an animal, and froma
comparison of all animals with all plants and all
inorganic things to that of sensible existence. We
generalize; we unify; and, in proportion as we
succeed in laying hold of a principle of unity, we
begin to know. The unity is in the things themselves.
“All things that are, are, because they are one.
There could be no army, no chorus, no flock of
Ig2 NEOPLATONISM

sheep, if each were not one; no house, no ship ; for,

if the house or the ship loses its unity, it is no longer —
a house or a ship.” But in a higher sense it is in
Mind. It is imparted to the things by the Divine
Mind, and we perceive it because our minds are akin
to the Divine.
2. By Change. The Platonists had learned from
Heraclitus that all things “flow” lke a stream of
water. ‘‘ You cannot step twice into the same river.” -
God alone can say ‘‘I am.’ The man who goes to
bed at night 1s not the same man who rose in the
morning. All that we see is like a drifting cloud;
before you can point your finger at it, it has taken a
different shape. Perpetual mutability is the law of
life ; ‘‘ peace,” Heraclitus said, ‘‘ belongs only to the
dead.” From this again it follows that the sensible
world cannot in itself be known. For knowledge 1s
enduring, and its object must endure also.
3. By Strife. Here again Heraclitus taught the
Platonist that the condition of existence is the cease-
less play of antagonisms. Life begets death, and
death life. ‘* War,” said Heraclitus, ‘‘is the father of
all things, and the king of all,” and on this ground
he found fault with Homer for praying “that strife
might perish from among gods and men.” JIn the
philosopher’s judgment the poet had unwittingly
cursed the world, “for all things are the children of
strife.” This idea was a commonplace among the
Platonists. They were not dismayed so much by
the apparent harshness of the world’s march, by the
laws of life-in-death, of competition and survival of |
 THE WORLD OF SENSE.—I 193

the fittest. Whatever is lawful seemed to admit of

some kind of explanation, though not a wholly satis-
factory one. The main difficulties they found in
lawlessness, in imperfection of type, and above all,
in moral evil. How they grappled with ‘these per-
plexities we shall see later on; here it is sufficient to
notice that in the sensible world they discerned
everywhere traces of inadequacy, a weakening of the
ideal, as in a picture that only partially realizes the
artist’s conception. But the power to recognize 1m-
perfection depends on the knowledge of the perfect.
It is by the law that we condemn the lawless. Now
law, says Plotinus, does not make lawlessness, neither
does lawlessness make law. Disorder is due to the
fact, that order is superimposed by a higher intelligence
upon things or creatures, that are for some reason or
another imperfectly receptive of it. Here again then
the sensible world cannot be understood in itself.
We must look to the ideal of which it is the image,
the shadow ; and we claim to possess this ideal by
the very fact that we can venture to pass judgment
on the deficiencies of the shadow.
4. By Necessity. Here everything is bound in
the iron chain of causality. Everything has a cause ;
the cause is outside it, and yet determines its nature.
Even man himself, so far as he is an animal, is not
free. His reasonings depend on sensations, and
these on external objects. His will is limited by
circumstances; even his virtues are called into
existence by the nature of the peculiar difficulties
with which he has to contend. Nevertheless an
N
194 NEOPLATONISM

universal, and therefore true, belief tells him that he

is free. Where then is freedom to be found? Not
in this material contingent world, where all depends
on something else, but in the realm of thought.
Thought is cause and not effect, determined only by
the laws of truth and goodness, which are itself,
therefore self-determined, therefore free. Thus again
we are led to believe in the existence of another
world higher and better than the world of sense.
From these considerations it followed that the
world we live in is a world of half reality, a world of
becoming, not of being, apprehended by opinion, not
by true knowledge. The facts of sense, which we
think most certain, are really least certain. We do
not even know that they are not purely subjective.
They are a stepping-stone to understanding; we
must begin with them; but they play us sad tricks,
‘because they make it most difficult for us to avoid
attributing to spiritual existence the qualities which
we are accustomed to recognize in finite objects.
Those who have read the Republic of Plato will
recollect the famous allegory of the men in the Cave.
The favourite simile of Plotinus.is that of St. Paul.
The world is like a mirror, in which a man sees the
shadows of realities. ‘‘ Only,” he adds, “‘ you see the
mirror, and you do not see Matter.”
If we look closely at the world of sense, we discover
that it is a combination of two factors—(i.) Matter and
(11.) Qualities.
I. The reader must distinguish carefully between
Matter and Material or Stuff.
 THE WORLD OF SENSE.—1I 195

According to the Zimaeus of Plato, the Cosmos

was made by God out of Necessity or Chaos,
primeval stuff that is, already possessing certain
attributes, including, no doubt, solidity and extension,
but piled together without order, and heaving to and
fro with a discordant, unintelligent movement. This
view is represented in later times by Plutarch, whom
it led to the belief in an evil creator side by side with
the good. For this determined material is already a
“‘ manufactured article,” and, as it is not moulded by
Ormuzd, it must owe its nature to Ahriman. :
But the later Platonists, as Albinus (or Alcinous)
and Plotinus, follow on this point the teaching of
the Peripatetics and Stoics. Aristotle was the first to
use the word Matter. (in Greek Ayle, wood; in
Latin Materia, building stuff), as a term of the
schools, to denote the impalpable, invisible sub-
stratum of things, in contradistinction from the visible
Form. From him these two famous phrases passed
to the Stoics, and from them to Neoplatonism.
Plotinus differs from Aristotle in some minor details,
but practically what he did was to clear the idealist
use of the word from any sort of ambiguity. Strip off
from any finite existence all attributes of every kind ;
take away from it colour, taste, smell, warmth,
texture, solidity, shape, extension, and the residuum
is matter. The necessity of such a residuum was
established partly by appeal to the universal belief of
the schools, partly by the scientific axiom that nothing
can come out of nothing, and nothing can return
into nothing. Suppose a case of complete change,
 196 NEOPLATONISM

such as that of the grub into the butterfly. There

has been complete alteration, yet no death, no breach
of continuity. Something has persisted; the Form
has been entirely renewed, but the Matter subsists
unaffected.
Hence Matter is called the nurse, receptacle,
vehicle, substratum of the Form. It must not be
supposed that the Matter becomes the Form, or that
it acquires qualities by union with the Form. It is
merely the principle of the Form’s cohesion, the
_condition of its manifestation. ‘“‘It receives shape,
? yet is not shaped.” It remains always exactly what
it was, absolutely undefined. For modern readers
there is a trap in the word we have borrowed from
the Latin.. We call it Matter, but to the Greek
matter itself is immaterial; it has “no body.” It
has no parts or divisions; it is “‘one, continuous,
unqualified.” ‘The nearest approach we can make
to it is to be found in that intangible aether, which
physicists speak of as pervading all space.
It cannot be said either to exist or not to exist.
Actually it is nothing ; potentially, if it be joined to
Form, it is all things. Its existence is a future, a
promise of being. The subtle Greek marked the
distinction by one of its exquisite turns of expression.
Matter is not Nothing (ov« dv), but No Thing (u) ov).
But, if it has no qualities, what can we know about
it? In the night all colours are black, says Plotinus,
and so, when the mind strips its object of all definite-
ness, no light is left, and it sees nothing but the
darkness. Can it be said even to see the darkness,
 THE WORLD OF SENSE.—I 197

forit can see it only as solid, and matter has no

solidity? Is thinking about Matter, then, the same
as thinking about Nothing? No; when we think
about Nothing, the mind is blank, but when we think
about Matter, we have a kind of impression of the
shapeless. So Plato gee that we ee of it by
a “bastard reasoning.”
It will be seen that the Neoplatonist went very
near to denying the existence of matter. If, as he
defined it, it was not nothing, it was, at any rate,
next to nothing. Sometimes Plotinus seems inclined
to blot it out altogether, as Bishop Berkeley did,
and Carlyle; but this is merely due to his love of
starting every possible hypothesis. The eternity of
matter lies at the root of his whole system, and it
lands him in two grave difficulties. If matter is
eternal, it ought, on his own most cherished principles,
to be perfect, yet he regards it as the cause of evil.
_And, if it has no qualities, it ought to be a perfectly
indifferent medium for the form. Yet, as we shall
see, there was much in the world for which he could
only account by supposing that matter had a certain
power of resistance, a sort of imperfect transparence,
so that the form often succeeded only partially in
suffusing the matter with its ght.
This is the fundamental difficulty of Platonism. It
does not succeed, after all, in attaining that unity
towards which all philosophy aspires. It issues in a
dualism. Matter is distinguished from God, and
therefore limits God both physically and morally.
This explains why the Platonist was so anxious to
198 NEOPLATONISM

reduce the conception of Matter to the lowest possible

term, why he ascribed to it a merely hypothetical
existence. If he could show that Matter was all but
nothing, he could also show that God was all but
almighty. He narrowed the gulf to a mere chink,
but could not close it altogether.
If Plotinus had done what modern philosophers are
inclined to do, if he had set the human mind on the
same plane with bodily existence, and found in God
the common and sole cause of both, he would have
been compelled to distinguish between finite and
infinite spirits, and this he thought impossible. But,
further, he would have imported moral evil and
physical imperfection into the self-evolution of the
divine, and thus again have limited God. In some
shape or another the dualism must always remain.
We cannot leap off our own shadow, as Goethe said.
No philosophy can solve the insoluble. The best
philosophy is that which approaches nearest to a solu-
tion, and explains the most, and the most important,
phenomena of life.
It is worth while to dwell upon the definition of
Matter, for it is one of the most interesting words in
language. Endless controversies, philosophical and
theological, have centred round it; the doctrine of
transubstantiation, for instance, with all its momentous
consequences, hinges upon the definition of Plotinus,
which in words agrees with, but in substance absolutely
differs from, that of Aristotle. Yet Aristotle was not
a Christian, and Plotinus was an antagonist of
Christianity. But the word has received a more
 THE WORLD OF SENSE.—I 199

immediate and practical interest in our own times.

For the Matter of Plotinus is, in fact, the Infinite, the
God, of the modern Agnostic.
Agnosticism begins by setting the Finite against
the Infinite, and endeavours to grasp the Infinite by
throwing on one side all those properties or imitations
which make the Finite. This is precisely the method,
the wa negativa, pursued by Plotinus in his hunt after
matter. Naturally the result is the same. The
Infinite is a presupposition of all knowledge, but in
itself it is a mere negation, involved in our perception
of all finite things, yet in itself No Thing. We must
believe in it; yet cannot know it, because it is like a
vast sheet of grey paper stretched across the sky, with
no lines or divisions upon which the eye can rest.
We have a sort of consciousness of it, an impression,
as Plotinus said, of the shapeless. It is, in fact, the
Matter, the Infinite, of the Platonist ; but, what the
Agnostic calls good, the Platonist called evil. This
startling contradiction depends on the view that is
taken as to the nature of qualities. If the Infinite is
the perfect, the finite is imperfect; and if this im-
perfection comes from its finitude, finitude as such is
bad. Hence the qualities which define and limit and
negate the Infinite are in themselves evil. But to the
Platonist the qualities are precisely that which gives
existence, life and beauty. They are the reality, so
far as reality is to be found in this world. It is true
that they are but shadows, imperfect copies of the
heavenly realities, but the imperfection is due precisely
to their contamination by the Infinite. .
200 NEOPLATONISM

Things would have been a great deal clearer, if the

Platonist had only used the word Law in its modern
sense. When he spoke of law, he meant convention;
what we call law, he called Idea. But, if we may
translate his teaching into our own familiar phrase-
ology, it amounts to this, that where there is law there
is good, and where there is no law there is evil.
‘ Liberty,” says Mr. Ruskin, “ whether in the body,
soul, or political estate of man, is only another word
for Death, and the final issue of Death, Putrefaction;
the body, soul, and political estate being healthy only
by their bonds and laws.” ‘This is Platonism pure
and simple. Liberty here is the indefinite, infinite,
material, which in itself is no good and no thing.
Law is neither finite nor infinite, though both terms
may be applied to it with equal impropriety. It is
the reality and the life, and qualities are the scintil-
lations, the bubbles on the stream, by which we
ascertain the presence and the nature of the life.
 XIII

THE WORLD OF SENSE—II

II. THe leading passages on the subject of

Qualities are Hz. i. 6 throughout : vi. 3, 8, 9, 10, 15.
All sensible existence Plotinus considered to be
an aggregate of Matter and Qualities. He devoted
much labour and space to a thorough and exceedingly
keen-sighted criticism of the Categories of Aristotle,
which no student of the history of philosophy ought
to neglect. But for our present purpose it is sufficient
to notice one of the most important of his conclu-
sions. All Qualities, whether of what we call in the
narrower sense of the word quality, such as colour,
warmth, and so forth, or of quantity, or of movement,
or of relation, may be divided from another point of
view into those which are complementary to the
existence, and those which are not.
By those which are not, he means acquired or
fortuitous dispositions, such as virtue, beauty, health,
disease ; or transient affections, such as blushing ; or
the operations of one body upon another, such as the
warmth of a garment which has been placed near the
fire and then removed. These do not concern the
202 NEOPLATONISM

existence of the thing. They come and go, and make

no real difference. A man is neither more nor less a
man because he is bad, and iron is neither more nor
less iron because it happens to be red-hot. The last
instance is not well chosen from a modern point of
view ; but to the ancient physicist, heat was a property
of fire, was caused by fire, and belonged to fire.
Hence when found in other things it was a mere acci-
dent, a quality gone astray, as it were, from its proper
habitat. .
The really important qualities are the complement-
ary, those which belong to a particular thing, which
make it what it is, and with the matter constitute its
sensible existence. A particular man produces in us
a particular group of impressions; he has a certain
height, shape, colour, carriage; these define him, and
mark him off from all other objects of perception. We
cannot analyze the sensations that he causes in us ;
they are ultimate facts. But can we account for them
in any way? Can we explain how they come to be
there for us to perceive, and to be there in that peculiar
combination? Plotinus thought that we could, and
looked upon the complex group of sensations pro-
duced by an individual object as the energies of a
Logos, by which that individual object was made.
Logos is another famous term of the schools. It
requires to be distinguished from Idea, and from
Eidos, or Form.
The Idea is the Divine Thought in its highest and
most abstract expression. It is the ultimate cause
of all that exists in this world. Before God could
 THE WORLD OF SENSE.—II 203

create, there must have been in His intelligence a

distinct notion or idea of what He meant to create.
‘¢‘ How was it possible that He should first wish to
form a horse, and then invent the type of a horse?
Obviously, the type of a horse must have existed first”
(vi. 7, 8).
Form is sometimes used as practically synonymous
with Idea. Where they are distinguished it is in this
way, that Idea belongs to the Intelligence, the second
person of the Neoplatonist Trinity, while Form resides
in the Soul, the third person. The Soul is busy with
the world of becoming, over which it presides. Hence
the ideas which it has received from above have
become forms; they have taken shape as it were;
they are more concrete, Forms, Plotinus says, are all
“sensible.” They are nearly what we mean by
Natural Kinds or Types.
The Form is still a thought, but it is on the point
of plunging into material existence. It is the general
about to become the particular. At this stage it changes
into or evolves the Logos, which is no longer a thought,
but a power or energy.
Logos is generally translated ‘“‘ Word,” owing to the
influence of the English version of St. John’s Gospel,
and we may render it in accordance with general
usage by this expression. Yet it should be noticed
that the usage is inaccurate and misleading. Logos
signifies not ‘‘Word” but “speech,” ‘fan account or
description of anything.” Hence it acquired the sense
of definition, reasonable explanation. From this again
it came by a natural transition to denote that which
204 NEOPLATONISM

forms the basis of the explanation, the cause, the living ©

force or energy which brings the thing into being, and
makes it what it is. In this last acceptation it is a
coinage of the Stoics, from whom it was borrowed by
the Neoplatonists. The difference between its usage
by the two schools depends on the difference
between their respective conceptions of God. The
Stoics were Pantheists ; their deity was the soul of
the world, and the indwelling Word was therefore
a first cause, an immediate operation of the creative
mind. Butthe Neoplatonists were Theists and Tran-
scendentalists, and in their teaching accordingly the
Word is a secondary cause, and approaches very
nearly to what we mean by physical law. Only the
law is regarded as a living force, proceeding from,
and inseparably connected with, a thought in the
Divine mind, of which it is the likeness, the shadow.
Nor is this force wholly unintelligent, though its
operation resembles rather instinct, and it bears to the
Idea or the Form the relation of the sleeping to the
waking mind. ;
And now we can see what Qualities are. The
Word is often called “spermatic” (from the Greek
sperma, ‘‘seed”), because it is like the seed which
carries implicit within itself all the properties of the
developed plant. The texture, colour, fragrance, shape
of the rose all come from the seed. ‘They must there-
fore have lain in the seed as hidden powers or laws of
life, which manifest themselves to our perception in
this way. This of course is but an analogy, for the seed
itself is material, What we are to understand is, that
 - THE WORLD OF SENSE.—II 205

whenever the Word, shot out as it were from the divine

soul, comes into contact with matter, it “makes a thing.”
All its manifold activities come into play; it produces
*“‘ bodihood,” solidity, and extension, and all the phe-
nomena that go with these. It creates, we may say, the
ox or the horse as we see them. Not that it moulds
or qualifies the Matter, The Matter is in no case
anything but a sort of reflecting surface on which the
Form is able by means of the Word to project a
picture of itself, a sensible picture adapted to our
modes of sensible apprehension. Hence though the
Word as such is always combined with Matter
(axwproroc), being in fact life as we see it at work,
we are able to abstract it (ywpiZew), and consider it in
the Form or the Idea.
It will be gathered from what has been said that
Idea, Form, and Word belong properly to the works of
God. They bring down life. It should be noticed,
however, that on the one hand every natural thing
shares in life so far as it is capable. Even a stone has
energies, is a cause in some limited degree, because it
has a word. On the other hand, certain exceptions
were admitted, abnormalities, things contrary to nature.
There was no idea of fever. As to the products of
human art, there was a divergence of opinion. Most
Platonists, according to Albinus (or Alcinous), would
not allow that a house, a shield, a picture had any idea.
They were works of man, not of God. In the view
of Plotinus (v. 9, 11), all creations of art and industry
are ideal in a secondary sense, in so far that is as they
embody the thoughts of the derived intelligence of
206 NEOPLATONISM

man. Thus he is able to speak of the form of a

house, as Plato spoke of the idea of a bed. These
instances will help the reader to grasp the general
meaning of the doctrine of Form. What we recognize
when we see a house is the plan, the mind of the
builder. It is a concrete thought, and could not have
been there unless the thought had preceded it.
Doors, windows, chimneys, the arrangement of the -
rooms, the brick, or stone, or mud, or marble, of
which the walls are composed, are all expressions of
the word of the man who dwelt under this roof, and
tried to make himself as comfortable as his material
surroundings would allow. In one building we discern
his poverty, in another his love of art, in another his
political condition, in another his religious aspira-
‘tions. Everywhere, so far as we can grasp the idea,
the generating purpose, we understand. Where the
meaning is illegible, the order confused, knowledge
stumbles. So it is in the world at large. The effect-
is always a symbol of the cause, the thing of the mind
that called it into being.
Thus we arrive at the idealist position as_ first
distinctly formulated by the great Neoplatonist.
The external world is none other than the thought of
God transmuted into vital law. What we cognize or
recognize therein are the traces, imitations, shadows
of intelligence. We know them in so far as they are
shadows ; we do not know them in so far as they are
only shadows. The modern way of expressing the
same view is that there is no object without a subject,
no thing without a thinker. Nothing can exist,
 THE WORLD OF SENSE.—II 207

nothing be known, except in so far as it is made,

arranged, brought into definite relation with other
things by an ordering reason.
There still remain for consideration two important
phenomena of the sensible world, which we call
Space and Time.
The same general considerations, that rule all the
conditions of sensible existence, apply here also.
Space and Time are half real, because they are the
shadows of realities. It is with them as with all
qualities. Colour does not belong to the idea, yet
there is something in the idea, which ultimately pro-
duces colour. It is just the same with Space and
‘Emme:
It will assist the reader, if we translate here the
two most instructive passages on the subject of
Space.
The first is Lxnead v. 5, 9—
‘‘ Every effect is either in its cause or in something
else, if there is anything after that which-caused it
(any secondary cause, that is). For inasmuch as it
is brought into being by something else, and wanted
that something else in order that it might come to be,
it wants it absolutely ; wherefore it is zz it. The last
things therefore are in the last before them; these
again. in those before them; and one thing is in
another up to the first principle of all. But the first
principle, inasmuch as it has nothing before it,
cannot be in anything else ; and since it cannot be in
anything, it embraces in itself all those things that are
in what precedes them. But, though it embraces
208 NEOPLATONISM

them, it is not dissipated among them, and contains

without being contained. Since it contains, then,
yet is not contained, there is nowhere where it is
not. Otherwise it does not contain. And if it is not
contained, it zs not. So that it is, and is not; is not
because it is not limited, but able to be everywhere,
because free from all restraint. For if it is unable, it
is bounded by something else, and what lies beyond
that boundary does not share in it, and God reaches
to that boundary and no further, and will be no
longer independent, but subject to the things that lie
beyond Him. Things, therefore, which are in some-
thing, are where they are; but those things which are
nowhere are everywhere.”
The other passage is Ennead vi. 8, 11—
‘“The whole difficulty, that besets us in the con-
sideration of the world of sense, arises from our first
assuming Space, as a kind of chaos, and then, when
we have set up this notion of Space in our imagin-
ations, bringing God into it. Then when we have
brought Him in, we begin to ask whence and how
did He come, and, as if He were a new arrival, we
have been wondering how He got here, and what He
is, as if He had suddenly emerged from some abyss,
or dropped down from the clouds. It is needful,
then, to cut away the cause of all this perplexity, and
cast Space away altogether from our thought of Him,
and not suppose that He is in anything, or lies, or is
seated in anything, or that He ‘came’ at all, but
just that He is, as He is, and as reason proves
Him to be, and that Space, like everything else,
 THE WORLD. OF -SENSE.—Il- 209

is after Him—that Space indeed is after everything

else.”
Rather more has been translated here than is
requisite. for our immediate purpose, but it will all
help the reader on his way. Space, it will be seen, is
explained by the general doctrine of causality. The
effect is always zz the cause. When the Word makes
bodies, it gives them extension, and so makes space.
Space is the last of all things ; it is made by bodies,
which are made by words, which come from the
mind. Everything is in that which precedes it; all
therefore is in mind, which is in God, who is in
nothing, and therefore is everywhere and nowhere.
If the reader is a little startled by this abrupt
conclusion, he must remember that existence, ac-
cording to Plotinus, is thought, and then ask himself
how thoughts exist in the mind. What, for instance,
are the length and breadth of the idea of justice, or
how is it parted off from other ideas? What is true
of these abstract notions is obviously true also of
conceptions derived from material things, if we can
reason about them as Plotinus held that we could,
without forming a picture of them. Even if we do
form some sort of picture, what is the size of our
imaginative presentation of an ox, or how is it
separated from the thought of an animal, or in which
particular pigeon-hole of the mind is it stored away ?
And where is the mind itself? These questions
help us at any rate to understand what Plotinus
means.
We commonly speak of the world as ‘‘in space.”
O
210 NEOPLATONISM

According to the Neoplatonist, space is in the world

and. nowhere else. Space, in’ fact 1s) extension:
If bodies are limited by space, they are limited by
their own space or shape; the limit is from within,
and not from without. Thus space, place, room, bulk,
are only different names for the same property of
corporeal existence. It is in the body, or rather
about the body, and this distinction shows us what
is really meant by “in.” Bodies cannot be “in”
bodies ; they may be adjacent, or circumjacent, but
never injacent, if that word may be coined. ‘The
wine is surrounded by the pitcher, but it is not ‘fin”’
the pitcher in the same sense in which a thought is
‘‘in” the mind, as a part which implies the whole,
and is inter-penetrated by every other part, as an
energy of the undivided life.
Thus Space turns out to be a mere mode of earthly
existence, a rough similitude of the true spiritual
existence. Carefully interrogated, the little word
‘“‘in ” will lead us up from things ‘‘here” to things
“yonder.” From the materialized ideas flattened
out into length and breadth so as to become visible,
we can rise to the conception of the same ideas as
they exist, one in all and all in one, in the Divine
Mind.
It is the same with Time, to the treatment of which
a special book of the Lxneads (ill. 7) is devoted.
The subject is a commonplace with the later Plato-
nists. They set Time over against Eternity as its
counterpart, but not as its contradictory. They are
not distinguished as finite and infinite. ‘Time is not
 THE WORLD OF SENSE.—II OTT

a piece snipped off from Eternity and measured out.

It is just as eternal in the vulgar sense of the word
as Eternity itself. It is ‘‘an image of Eternity ’—
Eternity made visible.
Eternity is defined as the life of Being, that is of
the Divine Intelligence ; and here, therefore, we must
to some extent anticipate the doctrine of God.
Conceive of a geometer who is absolute master of his
science, so that all Euclid is present at once to his
mind’s gaze as an articulated system,a host of pro-
positions ordered in unity. Conceive of him further
as making no immediate use of his knowledge, but
sitting with eyes closed contemplating it. Think
‘next of the Intelligence of God as the fullness of all
abstract thoughts. Each idea is perfectly distinct and
conscious, yet they melt into one another, and they
are felt as the powers of one life, and the conscious-
ness of their unity is as clear as that of their dis-
parateness. In such an Intelligence, says Plotinus,
there will be sameness and yet difference, rest and
yet movement. There will be life but no change,
because nothing can be added to it and nothing taken
away. Hence it will have no past or future, only
present.
The Divine Intelligence is unity in diversity, it
is the One-Many, and Eternity is its property, its
nature. We are not far from a correct definition if
we say that Eternity is life, which is infinite because
it includes all life, and never loses any part of itself.
We may even say that Eternity is the same as
God.
2255. NEOPLATONISM

In the Divine Soul the unity is weakened and the

diversity is increased. It is no longer One-Many,
but One and Many. Reasoning has taken the place
of contemplation, and creation has begun. With it
begins Time. ‘Time is born of the soul, and does
not exist out of the soul. It is the movement of the
reasoning faculty, which grasps one thought after
another, and passes from one perception to another.
It is not to be confused with the successive changes
of external things, such as the stars; these are in
time ; they do not create time, but reveal it. Time
is, in brief, the property of the lower life, as Eternity
is of the higher. ‘These two stand in the relation of
cause and effect, of substance and shadow.
Thus while Space is a fact of sensible existence, ©
Time is purely subjective. Both may be called Laws
of Thought, but only of the lower regions of thought.
It is possible, not indeed for all, but certainly for
some—for those in whom the higher faculty of intelli-
gence is awake—to deal with pure Being, with ideas, »
divested of these and all other sensible limitations.
 XIV

THE INTELLIGIBLE WORLD

ABOVE, around, within the World of Sense, which

is not unreal because it partakes of reality, yet is but
a shadow, a semblance, stands the World of Intelli-
gence, which truly exists, and can be truly known. It
is characterized by Unity, Eternity, Goodness, Beauty,
Truth, Freedom, and Life. All these things we see
‘here,’ as in a glass darkly, but “yonder” face to
face. “Here” and “ yonder” are the words by which
Plotinus most commonly marks the difference between
the two worlds. :
Two features of the Intelligible world call for
especial notice. It is Many, yet it is One. *
t. Itis Many. For it is the archetype, the pattern
of the world of sense. Whatever is “here” is also
‘‘vonder,” though not in exactly the same sense,
because its mode of existence is different. ‘There
is no matter yonder, yet there is something which
corresponds to it. Ideas are not compound and
divisible like bodies, yet some are lower and more
complex, “after” others. The idea of animal is
simpler, earlier than that of man, and intelligence
stands to soul in therelation of form. Soul is a child
 214 - NEOPLATONISM

of intelligence and “in” it. There are no qualities

yonder, yet there are powers which issue in qualities.
There is no room, yet mind is the room of the ideas.
_ There is no time, yet time, the moving life of the soul,
is the child and image of eternity.
For this aspect of intelligence the most. speaking
name is Life. Here again we will translate Plotinus
(vl. 7, 12)—
‘“‘For since we say that this All is framed after the
Yonder, as after a pattern, the All must first exist
yonder as a living entity, an animal; and since its idea
is complete, everything must exist yonder. Heaven,
therefore, must exist there as an animal, not without
what here we call its stars, and this is the idea of
heaven. Yonder too of course must be the Earth,
not bare, but far more richly furnished with life; in
it are all creatures that move on dry land and plants
rooted in life. Sea, too, is yonder, and all water
ebbing and flowing in abiding life; and all creatures
that inhabit the water, and all the tribes of the air
are part of the all yonder, and all aerial beings, for
the same reason as Air itself. For how should that
- which is in the living not live itself, seeing that even
here it lives? Surely then every animal must of neces-
sity be yonder. For as each of the great parts of the
world zs, so of necessity zs the nature of the creatures
that it contains, As then heaven itself exists yonder,
so yonder exist all the animals that dwell in heaven,
and it is not possible that it should be otherwise.”
The word ‘“‘ animals” in this passage embraces not
only sentient creatures, but plants and inorganic
 THE INTELLIGIBLE WORLD 215

substances. All share in a kind of life in so far as they

are moulded by a word. They answer to a thought,
- and therefore it cannot be beneath the dignity of
the Divine Intelligence to contemplate their ideas.
_ Existence in one of its aspects is life, or has life,
and life is teeming, prolific, manifold. This real and
fertile conception is the main avenue. through which ~
Plotinus endeavours to reach the notion of Deity.
Life begets all the infinite variety of qualities, even
Opposite and warring qualities, such as heat and cold.
It makes our bodies ; it makes the world in which they
move and act. Plotinus speaks, with something ap-
proaching to contempt, of logic, as a mere system of
barren rules, and professes to be guided by a truly
scientific method. It was his misfortune and not his
fault, that, in his time, there was scarcely anything
deserving the name of science, except in the way of
mathematics, and to some extent of surgery. But his
abstractions. were not mere abstractions. He does
not attempt to get at the unconditioned by leaving
out the conditioned. In this way we make God
merely the Great Denial; He is not this and not
that, and so we banish Him altogether, building up a
high wall, as it were, round the verge of the world.
The difficulty remains unsolved and unsolvable, be-
cause no number of negatives will make an affirmative ;
ten thousand ignorances will not create knowledge.
‘The method of Plotinus is the exact opposite. He
starts with an affirmative, with a fact, with something
that we know. God is, and is Life. Here we have a
seed-thought, a word full of powers capable of separate
216 NEOPLATONISM

and diversified manifestations. What we have to do

next, is to view this life in itself, as perfect and free.
This we can achieve, because its earthly limitations lend
us a hand, as it were; they are “traces,” which mark
out the upward path. Hence we must by no means
deny them, or leave them out of count, but simply |
transform them. We dismiss the particular, but carry
with us the general. We leave the thing, but grasp
the energy that causes the thing. God is God, not
because He is nothing, but because He embraces all
those energies. He is absolute, but not unconditioned.
And this Azagoge or upward path Plotinus held to be
open to us, because the human mind is a copy, and
may become an exact copy, of the mind of God.
Intelligence, therefore is Many, because it is the
fullness of thought (képoc). The sum-total of the Ideas
exists in the Divine Nous, not outside of it, “like
golden statues,” which God must search for and look
up to, before He can think. It is not to be supposed
that He must needs run about in search of notions,
perhaps not finding them at all, perhaps not recog-
nizing them when found, This is the lot of man,
whose life is spent often in the search, sometimes in
the vain scarch, after truth. But to the Deity all
knowledge is always equally present. This, as we have
already seen, was the master-thought, which gave birth
to Idealism as a coherent whole, and clinched it into
an intelligible system.
2. But it is also One.
‘“‘Suppose,” says Plotinus, “that thou hadst the
eyes of Lynceus, who could see into the inside of
 ue

THE INTELLIGIBLE WORLD 217

things. Suppose (v. 8, 9) that thou couldst view the

world from without, and it was a great sphere of
transparent glass full of light, so that thou couldst see
at a giance all that is in it. Keeping this supposition
in mind, conceive another sphere divested of bulk, of
place, of the notion of matter that is in thee. Do
not try to make the second sphere merely smaller
than the first, but call God to thy aid, who made the
sphere of which thou hast an imagination. And may
He come bringing with Him His own world with all —
the gods that are in it, being one and all, and all in
each, all blending into one, and in their powers being
different, but in the one sovereign power all being
one, or rather all being the One.”
Let us observe how Plotinus struggles to define the
idea of immaterial existence.
He was the first writer who fairly grappled with this
task. He was confronted by the usual difficulty, that
all words are coined to express the visible and tangible,
and do not apply exactly to anything that does not
fall under the grasp of the senses. Hence the nature
of mind can only be expressed in negatives. We say,
for instance, that life is immaterial or infinite. We
know exactly what we mean; the negative word has
a positive sense. But ‘the notion of matter is in
thee,” and has enlisted all language in its service, so
that, though the other notion of life is ‘‘in thee” too,
it cannot find a faithful interpreter. We can think
what it is; we can only say what it is not.
The general habit of Plotinus is to couple a positive
with a negative. ‘Thus, when he speaks of an idea as
 us
a

218 : NEOPLATONISM .

part of the mind, he will say, ‘‘a part, yet not a part,
1)

because the word part applies properly only to things

that we can break in pieces; yet a notion may be
said to have parts inasmuch as it is complex, and can
be defined, though it is incapable of physical division.
Similarly, for omnipresence, which has no equivalent
in Greek, he will say, “ everywhere and yet nowhere.”
In the passage just quoted, “immaterial sphere,” he
begs the reader to notice, does not mean ‘‘a smaller
sphere.” Size does not come in at all. What he
wants to get at is the pure idea of a sphere. Most
men being unapt for abstract thought, have only “
imagination,” can only grasp the notion by forming
an actual picture or image of it. Such pictures are
too concrete, they bring out the lines of division
too clearly ; they belong to the soul, but not to the
intelligence. We want not exactly to obliterate these
lines, but to see through them. But for this we want
the help of God, who alone can teach us to think
about that which transcends experience.
Intelligence, the Intellectual World, then, is One
(év Guod mavra) in all its diversity, because all its —
thoughts form a living whole. Each carries with it all
the others ; if we know one perfectly, we know all.
They are like the rays of a circle shooting out from
one point, like the manifold virtues immanent in one
seed. Yet even these similes are too material. It has
been said of “the flower in the crannied wall” —
«+ + + © if Tcould understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.”
 THE INTELLIGIBLE WORLD 219

For the whole world wentto the making of that

wind-blown plant. If we knew exactly how it came
to be there, we should know how the Almighty
created the universe. The roots of everything spring
from the Divine Mind, and these roots are thoughts
of which each hes in, and interpenetrates every other,
in a manner past expression, yet intelligible, because
it is the commonest experience of life. But we cannot
adequately express it, because to speak is to divide.
‘* Express ’’ means to “ flatten out.”
Intelligence again is One, because in it the thinker,
the act of thought, the object of thought, are all one.
The Soul, the lower reasoning faculty, sees itself as
Another. To use the modern phrase, the I is con-
scious of a not-I. The raw-stuff of its knowledge is
imported from abroad ; its office is to manufacture it
by judging, combining, discriminating the materials
supplied by sense. It is busy about external things,
and therefore does not ‘think itself,’’ though, in
order to perform its work correctly, it must be helped
by knowledge supplied to it from above. But the
Eternal Intelligence does not need to run to and fro
in search of information. It possesses all the ideas, it
does not want to discover them, because it sees them,
-and always seesthem. In this act of contemplation
the distinction of subject and object is really lost;
they are merely phases of the same thing; the thought
is the self.
Thus the Divine Intelligence, in ene phrase,
“ thinks itself,” sees all knowledge in itself, and itself
in all knowledge. It is perfect self-consciousness,
 j

2:29 : NEOPLATONISM

Mind withdrawn into itself, and seeing all life in its

cause—that is to say, in itself. This is the highest
conception of Existence; the Intelligence is Being,
is God. 7
To this height the human reason can attain, though
not without preparation, and not without prayer. But
there is still a further step needed; before the system
is complete. All things exist, because they are one.
But unity is a word of many different meanings.
Creatures have it; a chorus, a ship, a horse are each
one ; but their parts are separable and the combination
is evanescent. Thoughts have it, yet we can analyze
and distinguish thoughts, Still more emphatically
Intelligence has it. Yet even here we can take note
of the difference between thinker and thought, if only
as phases of the same energy. In all these cases,
then, even in the highest, the unity is derived; they
are One, but not the One; they have unity, but are
not unity. Hence above the Many we must set the
One ; above Existence, the Cause of Existence ; above
the Conceivable, the Inconceivable.
According to Plotinus, Being requires for its
adequate explanation two hypostases, or, as we trans-
late the word in English theology, Persons that Are—
Soul and Intelligence—and one Person that Is Not,
the One, or the Good. These three constitute the
Neoplatonic Trinity.
This is a topic of the highest interest. On the one
hand, there can be no doubt that these speculations
aided greatly in the clear formulation of Christian
truth, to this extent that they made it possible to
 THE INTELLIGIBLE WORLD 221

understand how the Three Divine Persons of the

Baptismal Formula should yet be One in Godhead.
On the other, the place assigned by the heathen
philosophers to the doctrine of the One, combined
with the purely intellectual character of their system,
was largely, though by no means entirely, the cause of
the rapid degradation of Neoplatonism, and of the
scornful judgment usually passed upon it by modern
historians. Before we proceed, then, to the fuller
consideration of the doctrine of God, it will be well to
see, if we can, how Plotinus reached it, and what he
meant by it.
Partly, as we have seen, the Neoplatonist Trinity was
historical. It combines the Pythagorean One, and the
Aristotelian Inteliigence, with the Platonic Creator.
But partly also it has a psychological basis.
The real method of Plotinus is undoubtedly based
upon observation of the phenomena of human con-
sciousness. He himself points out the importance
of psychology. The soul occupies an intermediate
position between the intelligible and the sensible.
Hence (iv. 3, 1) it opens to us knowledge in both
directions, upwards and downwards. How again, he
asks (v. 3, 8), could we even talk about intelligence
if we did notin some sort possess it? Again, all three
hypostases belong to us (v. 1, 10). Often it is difficult
to ascertain with precision whether he is speaking of
the divine or of the human soul, so immediately does
the knowledge of the one pass into that of the other.
It is really then at this point that we ought to begin,
if we are to grasp the mode in which his system was
222 NEOPLATONISM ,

developed, and avoid the temptation to mere barren

criticism. Yet it must be acknowledged that this is
not the method which Plotinus himself professes to
follow. Or shall we say—for it is equally true—that
he has no method?
_ What is it then that the human mind has to tell us?
Can we discover there the “‘shadow” of the Plotinian
Trinity? The answer to the question must be in the
affirmative.
Other writers, both before and’ after the Neo-
platonists, have distinguished between two modes of
mental activity—the Verstand and the Vernunft—the
Reason or Soul, and the Intelligence or Nous. ‘They
are generally differentiated in much the same way.
In the first, the mind goes forth to discover or to act;
in the second, it returns upon itself; In the first, the
antithesis of subject and object is sharply defined; in
the second, it is blurred or obliterated. In the first,
the particular is compared with the general, and so
understood ; the second deals with generals only.
But beyond these two we may discern a third phase,
when the mind withdraws into itself, and becomes as
it were a mere point. So it is in sleep, or in waking
moments, when no definite thought is present, and
consciousness is a blank. Mind has contracted itself
into its innermost source, and all its channels are dry.
Then again it darts forth its energies in contemplation,
in action, and life is once more in full flow. Con-
sciousness is not strictly equable; it has pulsations,
like the course of the blood, and sometimes the systole
and diastole seem to stand still. Yet the life is un-
 THE INTELLIGIBLE WORLD 223

fern peed, and the hidden basis of the mind is always

there. :
But what is this hidden basis? It is neither
thinker nor thought, for where one of these is, the
_ other must be, and where there is no thought there
can be no thinker. It is therefore neither, yet it is
the cause of both, the ultimate power which, as the
fountain of unity and life, is the Oneness, the Good
of the individual. |
It is not conscious, and has no name, because,
though the root of all activity, it has as yet assumed
no definite shape. We may say then, that it does
not exist. Only in so saying, we are limiting the
idea of existence to that of distinct thought. The
One does not exist, not because it is beneath
existence, but because it is above it.
Hidden though it be behind the light which it
sheds forth (this is a favourite image with Plotinus),
we yet know that it must be there, because of the
light. This inexplicable mystery is precisely the
thing in which we most certainly believe. No man
doubts that he is one; that he is himself.
Plotinus said that the individuality cannot be
known, but we must understand exactly what he
means by knowledge. Ordinarily, in our English
usage, we are said to know when we can describe, or
when we feel, or when we can explain. The last is
the oniy sense of the word admitted by the Greek
_ philosopher.
Things composite can be described in language or
by a drawing. Though the thing itself may never
224 | NEOPLATONISM

have been seen ; it may be some strange animal; yet

the parts of it, the colour, lines, texture will be
familiar, and those who see the drawing will know
what it means.
Simple facts of sense, for instance the colour of
redness, cannot be described in words ; they admit of
presentation, but not of representation; hence they
cannot be conveyed to the blind. But those who
have eyes can see them, and in that sense know them.
Further, they can be explained by reference to a
cause; thus the sensation of redness is the effect of
the vibration of a particular ray of light. This is the —
scientific, in the mind of Plotinus the only true sense
of knowledge, and in this sense only is colour a real
thing.
Now unity cannot be described, and cannot be
explained, but it may be felt as we feel colour. It is
a feeling, but it differs from all other feelings in two
very remarkable features. It is from within and not
from without, and it is inalienable. A man may have
no sense of colour, and yet be a man; but the
moment the sense of his unity departs, he is a man
no more.
Thus that which cannot be known, is not real, does
not exist, is yet, in the view of Plotinus, the most
certain, and the most important of all things.
 XV

DOCTRINE OF GOD

PLoTinus is by no means a methodical writer.

He expands his conception of the Deity over and
Over again in many different parts of the Leads,
and in many different connections. It will be neces-
sary, before we have done, to formulate what he has
said, and explain its bearings. But, to begin with,
we shall best consult the interests of the reader by
translating, with occasional condensations, one of the
more important passages, and thus putting him in a
position to judge for himself. |
We will start with the first book of the Fifth
Ennead, which is entitled “of the Three Principal
Hypostases.” Here the motive of the investigation
is supplied by the question of moral-evil. “ What
can it be that caused the soul of man to forget its
Father, God, and to be ignorant both of itself and of
Him? The root of the disaster must be sought in
the manifold nature of the soul, in its audacity, and
desire for independence. Like a child that has been
long absent from home, and brought up abroad, it
does not know its father, and therefore cannot per-
P
 226 NEOPLATONISM

fectly know itself. It has learned to honour things

that are below itself,—the pleasures of this world.
But he who honours and admires, confesses himself
by that very act to be inferior. And when the soul
thus deliberately sets itself beneath the things of a
day, it makes itself the least honourable, the most
mortal of all things, and can form no idea of the
nature or the power of God.
“There are two ways in which we may endeavour
to raise the soul again from this miserable fall, by
convincing it of the baseness of the attractions of
earth, or by teaching it its own high birth and dignity.
This latter method is by far the more important.
For without it we cannot even make the former
intelligible.”
Thus Plotinus places the New Birth before Re-
pentance. But indeed in the intellectual system of
Neoplatonism, what the New Testament means by
Repentance will be sought for in vain. We are to
rise first to the conception of the true Existence of
God, and this knowledge will of itself cure the audacity
of the soul.
“First then, let every Soul consider this; how by
breathing .life into them Soul made all animals,
the creatures of earth, sea, air, the divine stars in
heaven; made the sun, made the great firmament
above us, and not only made but ordered it, so that
it swings round in due course. Yet is this Soul a
different nature from what it orders, and moves, and
vivifies. It must needs then be more precious than
_its creations. For they are born, and, when the Soul
 DOCTRINE OF GOD. 224

which ministers their life abandons them, they die;

but the Soul ever is, because it never abandons itself.
And if it be asked how the life is ministered, in the
whole or in the part, let us frame the answer thus.
Let this great Soul be gazed upon by another soul,
a human soul which itself is no small one, and is
deemed worthy so to gaze, because it has escaped
from all deceit, and from all that bewitches the soul
of other men, and is calm and tranquil. Let such a
Soul banish all that disturbs; let the body that en-
velopes it be still, and all the frettings of the body,
and all that surrounds it; let earth, and sea, and air
be still, and heaven itself. And then let the man
think of Soul as streaming, pouring, rushing, shining
into him from all sides while he stands quiet. As the
rays of the sun, striking upon some dark mass of
cloud, make it shine with the splendour of gold, so
also Soul, coming into the body of heaven, gave it life
and immortality, and woke it up from sleep. Thus
heaven, being moved with an everlasting movement
by the wise guidance of Soul, became a happy
~creature, and the indwelling of Soul gave high dignity
to heaven which was before dead stuff, earth, and
water, or rather the darkness of matter and No Thing,
_and ‘abhorred,’ as the poet says, ‘by the gods.’
“The nature and power of Soul will become still
clearer and more distinct, if we consider how it
embraces and guides the heaven by its will. For it
gives itself to all this huge bulk, and there is no
particle of space, great or small, that is not filled
with Soul. Of the body one part is here, another
228 NEOPLATONISM

there; some parts are opposed, some are interde-

pendent. But with the Soul it is otherwise. It is
not cut up into little bits, so that each particle makes
a different life, but all things live by the whole Soul,
and it is all present everywhere, like to the father
who begot it, both in unity and in ubiquity. Heaven
is vast and disparate, but by virtue of Soul it is One
and a god. The sun too is a god, because it has
Soul, and so are the other stars, and so are we, if we
are anything, ‘for the dead are viler than dung.’
Now what makes gods must be older than they.
And our soul belongs to the same family, and, when
you can see it purged from all accretions, you will
find the same precious thing, Soul, more precious by
far than anything that is corporeal. For all such
things are earth. And if they be fire, what is that
part of the fire which burns? It is the same with
all that is compounded of the elements, even if you
add to them water and air. And if the things of
earth are worthy of desire, only because they have
Soul, why should man forsake himself to desire
another? When thou reverest the Soul in another,
thou art revering thyself. —
“ Since then Soul is so precious and divine a thing,
believing henceforth that thou hast a strong helper in
thy quest after God, take this cause with thee, and
go up to Him who is Yonder. And of a truth thou
wilt find Him not far off, for there is not much be-
tween. Grasp then what is diviner than this Divine,
the Soul’s neighbour above, after whom and from
whom the Soul is. For though the Soul is a thing |
 DOCTRINE OF GOD 229

(xpijza), aS our argument proved, it is an image of

Intelligence. As the word, which is uttered, springs
from the word in man’s soul, so is the All-Soul, and
the whole energy by which it shoots forth life to give
existence to other things, a word of Intelligence.
Just as in fire we can distinguish the essential heat
from the sensible heat, which it sends forth; only in
the world yonder we must think of the heat not as
actually streaming forth, but as partly abiding in its
source, partly coming into existence. Inasmuch, then,
as it comes forth from Intelligence, the Soul is intelli-
gent, and its intelligence shows itself in reasonings, and
its perfection is derived from Him who is, as it were,
the father who begot it, so that the child is not perfect
as compared with the father. Its existence then is
derived from Intelligence, and is the energizing word
of the Intelligence, to which it looks up. For when
it gazes on Intelligence, it possesses its ideas and
activities from within, as its own property. And these
are the only true activities of the soul, which it
possesses intellectually, and by inheritance; the
inferior movements come from another source, and
are affections of an inferior soul. Intelligence then
makes it doubly divine, because it is its father, and
because it. dwells within it. For there is nothing
betwixt, save their essential difference, but the one
is after and recipient, the other is Form. But even
the matter of Intelligence is beautiful, because it is
intelligent and simple as is the Intelligence itself.
And even from this it is evident, that the Intelligence
is better than the Soul, which is of such a nature.”
 230 NEOPLATONISM

The reader will here observe that Intelligence

stands to Soul in the relation of Form to Word,
hence of “‘father”’ and superior, because the higher
and prior is giver always, and never receiver. .
Further, as Form may be analyzed, being a larger
conception than Word, Soul may be spoken of as
in a sense the ‘“‘matter”’ of Intelligence. And it
will be noticed that Plotinus speaks here of two
souls. The first, which has no “affections,” is the
Divine; the soul second, and inferior, is that of
Nature, of Heaven and Earth, and of the body
generally. This too is ‘‘divine,’’ but in a much
lower sense. The distinction is one of the most
difficult points in the system of Plotinus, but it will
become a little clearer as we proceed. We resume
_ the translation. |
‘The same thing may be seen in the following way.
We admire this visible universe when we behold its
vastness, and its beauty, and the order of its ever-
lasting movement, and the gods that are therein—
some visible, some invisible,—and the demons, and
animals, and all the host of plants. It is well. But
go up to the archetype, and true world, and yonder
see the intellectual patterns of all, everlasting in their
own right, in their native wisdom and life. See too
their prince, the undefiled Intelligence and perfect
Wisdom, the true Saturnian life of God, who is
Fullness and Intelligence. For He embraces in
Himself all that is immortal,—all intelligence, all
God, all soul, ever-abiding. For why should He
seek to change, being perfect? And whither need
 DOCTRINE OF GOD 231

He go, since He has all in Himself? And how can

He grow, since He 1s absolutely complete ?
‘Wherefore also all that is with Him is perfect, that
- He may be absolutely perfect, having nothing which
is imperfect, having nothing in Himself, which He
does not think. And He need not search for His
thoughts, because He has them. And Huis blessed-
ness is not acquired, but all is in eternity, and this is
the true Eternity, which Time counterfeits as it runs
round the Soul, passing over some thoughts and
attending to others. For tothe soul belongs sequence
of ideas ; at one time it considers Socrates, at another
a horse; always some one definite object. But In-
telligence grasps all. It has then within itself all
things abiding in the same state ; it is; it is always
‘am, and never ‘shall be,’ never ‘have been.’
For yonder there is no future and no past; but all
things abide, because they are the same, and satisfied
with themselves as they are. And each of them is
Intelligence and Being, and the sum-total is all
Intelligence and all Being; Intelligence by thinking
making Being, and Being by being thought giving to
Intelligence the act of thought and Being.
“But the act of thought has a cause other than
itself, which is cause also of Being. Both then have
a cause. ‘Things yonder co-exist, and never fail one
another, but still here we have a duality which makes
a unity, Intelligence and Being, Thinker and Thought ;
Intelligence corresponding to Thinker as Being does
to Thought. Now there can be no thinking without
difference or without identity. Hence we obtain as
232 NEOPLATONISM

our first conceptions Intelligence, Being, Difference,

Identity. To these we must add Movement and
Rest. Intelligence must have Movement to think,
Rest to be changeless, Difference to be at once
thinker and thought. If you take away the Differ-
ence it becomes one, and will keep silence. The
several objects of thought also must be different
from one another, yet the same, because each is one
with itself, and there is something common in all, yet
the differentia is an otherness. And these aspects of
Intelligence, being many, make number and quantity,
and the individuality of the ideas makes quality also,
and these ideal distinctions are the principles from
which sensible distinctions proceed.”
The five attributes here ascribed to Intelligence
are borrowed from the .Sopfistes of Plato, and are
called by Plotinus, in his criticism of the Categories,
the five summa genera of true existence, the five
ultimate laws of Being. They have been explained
in outline in the preceding chapter.
We have here three final antitheses, Thought and
Being, Motion and Rest, Sameness and Difference.
They must not be obliterated, because on them
depend all life and all knowledge. They account for
everything. If they do not exist, there is nothing for
us to know. Yet again they must be reconciled,
or knowledge itself is divided, and ceases to be
knowledge. |
Plotinus finds a reconciliation, though not an ab-
solutely complete reconciliation, in the Intelligence
of God, In Him thought can be seen as the cause
 DOCTRINE OF GOD 234

of Being. In Him, as indeed in all abstract con-

templation, subject and object are identical; the
thinker thinks himself. God ever thinks the whole
of Himself, is absolutely conscious ; there is therefore
no change. Yet consciousness itself is an act, and
therefore dual. It carries with it life, which is quick
and diverse. Hence, even in this sameness there is
motion, a play of activity. God is living thought.
The unity is as nearly complete as anything that we
can grasp; still it is not ideally perfect, and* must
therefore be -regarded as given, as derived. What
then is the ultimate cause of All?
Whence then came this Manifold God, this One-
Many? We can see now the necessity of this
diversity of Being, but we crave for some solution of
the problem that has always vexed philosophy, how
from the absolutely One anything at all came into
existence, whether a multitude or a duality. Why
did it not remain by itself?
‘Let us seek an answer, calling God Himself to
our aid, not with audible words, but reaching out in
prayer with our soul, for that is the way in which we
can pray, alone to Him alone.
‘fe then that would behold Him who dwells in
the innermost shrine by Himself and remains tranquil
beyond all, must fix his gaze on that which, in com-
parison with the statues in the outer shrine, abides,
or rather on the first statue coming forth and revealing
itself in this wise.
“All that is moved must have something towards
which it moves, Now since He has nothing, we
 234 NEOPLATONISM

must not suppose that He is moved. But whatso-

ever comes into being after Him must have come
into being, because He turned Himself towards
Himself. We must not really think of birth in
time, when we are thinking of things that ever are,
-though in word we cannot help ascribing becoming to
them, when we assign to them a cause and an order.
And so we must say, that they became without His
moving. For if He moved, the thing which became
would be third in order; His movement being the
first, and He Himself the second. If then the thing
was second, it must have taken existence without
His moving, or inclining, or wishing, or stirring in
any way. How can this be, and what must we think
about Him who abides? We may conceive, that
though He abides, there is a shining round about
‘Him like the bright light of the sun, which ever runs
round about the sun, though the sun abides. Simi-
larly, all things, so long as they abide, give forth
necessarily an essence, which flows outwards and
envelopes them, and depends upon the power that is
present within, a sort of image of the archetypes from
which they sprang. So fire gives forth its heat, and
snow does not keep its coldness hidden within ; and
sweet-smelling things in particular show what we
mean, for, as long as they exist, something goes forth
from them and surrounds them, and this is an essence
which all bystanders enjoy. So all things, so soon
as they are perfect, beget. That then, which is always
perfect, always begets an everlasting offspring, yet
always something that is less than itself.
 DOCTRINE OF GOD 235

“What then shall we say of the most perfect of all?

Nothing comes from Him, except the greatest things
that follow Him. Now the greatest thing that
follows Him, and is second, is Intelligence. For
Intelligence looks to Him, and wants Him alone, but
He does not want Intelligence. And that, which is
begotten of Him that is better than Intelligence, is
Intelligence, and Intelligence is better than all things,
because all things are after it.; for instance, even soul
is a word, an energy of Intelligence, as Intelligence
is of the One. But the word of Soul is dim, for
it is a phantom of Intelligence, and must look up
to Intelligence. And so Intelligence must look up
to the One, that it may be Intelligence. But it
- sees Him not as disparate, but because it is after
Him; there is nothing between, any more than
there is between Soul and Intelligence. Now all
that is begotten yearns for the begetter, and finds
its satisfaction in Him, and especially so when be-
gotten and begetter are unique. And when the best
of all is begetter, of necessity the begotten is with
Him, so that they are separated by their difference
alone.” .
How then does the One beget Intelligence, His
image? Because, by turning Himself to Himself, He
began to see, and this seeing is Intelligence. The
One is the power of all things. Intelligence separates
itself, as it were, from the power, and sees its effects.
Plotinus here expresses the kindly intention of
“speaking more clearly,” and the reader will pro-
bably feel anxious for more light. But the text
 236 NEOPLATONISM

suddenly breaks down into a gulf of corruption, and

such part of it as might be translated does not
greatly help. In some mystic way by ‘turning
itself to itself,” yet ‘without moving,” the One:
became conscious, the Intelligence was filled with
Ideas, the Soul with Forms, the Words shot forth to
quicken matter, and the great stream of life began.
Each looked up to the cause above it, to the light of
the abiding Sun, and drank in life, meaning, power,
according to the measure of its capacity.
The two great difficulties are, first, the notion of a
cause acting by attraction, when there is nothing for
it to attract ; and second, the ‘“ becoming conscious.”
The first may be put aside for the present. As to
the second, we have seen that it admits of explanation,
in so far as it finds an analogy in the nature of
human individuality. We do ‘‘become conscious.”
All that Plotinus asks of the reader is to put away
the notion of becoming. The Divine Intelligence
never faints or sleeps like ours, but as we have a
oneness, so has He,
_ We will omit a passage of some length, in which
Plotinus brings his teaching into relation with myth-
_ ology and with the views of earlier philosophers, and
proceed with the tenth chapter, which will show us
how close was the link between his psychology and
his metaphysics. |
‘“We have shown that above Being must be the One,
and after Him Intelligence and Soul. But now as
these Three are in nature, so must they also be in us.
Our soul then also is divine, and of another, not a
 DOCTRINE OF GOD 237

sensible nature, like all soul. And it is perfect when

it has Intelligence. But there are. two kinds of
Intelligence, one which argues, one which gives the
power of arguing. The arguing part of the soul then,
_ which needs for the performance of its function no
bodily organ, but possesses its energy in purity, so
that it is able to argue purely, is separable, and not
mixed with body ; about this there can be no mistake.
We must give it a home in the realm of the intelligible.
We must not seek a place to fix it in; it is outside
all place. For so alone can it be independent,
external, immaterial, if it stands alone and owes
nothing to the flesh. Therefore Plato saith of the
world, “ And further the Creator clothed it with the
soul as with a garment,” meaning that part of the
soul which abides in the intelligible world; and of
man he saith that he lifts up his head to heaven. And
when we exhort men to ‘‘detachment,” we do not
mean that the soul is to be locally detached by
physical separation ; but we mean that it should not
condescend—we are speaking of the imagination and
of estrangement from the body—if it be possible to
lead and carry upwards not only the higher form of
the soul, but that also which has its abode in this
world, which alone is the creator and moulder of the
body, and is busied with the body.” |
Here we have the Platonic division of the soul
itself into two parts, a higher and a lower. This will
receive explanation further on.
‘‘Since then there is-a soul which reasons about
things just and beautiful, and since there is a power of
 238 NEOPLATONISM

reasoning which asks, ‘is this just ? is this beautiful?’

the just must be an abiding thing, and from: that
thing the soul acquires the power of reasoning about
it. How else could it reason about it? But the
soul sometimes reasons about these things, and some-
times does not. There must then be in us‘an Intelli-
gence which does not reason, but always has the idea
of justice. Further, there must be in us the principle,
the cause, the God of Intelligence. For He is not
divisible, but abides, and, since it is not in space that
He abides, is seen in many, according as each is able to
receive Him as another self. So also the centre of a
_ circle is in itself, and yet contains in itself every point
that is in the circle, and the radii derive their
peculiar nature from it. For, by that within us which
is like the radius, we touch that centre, and are with
it, and depend upon it. And those ofus who bend
thitherwards, are fast rooted in it. |
‘‘ How is it, then, that though we possess such high
faculties, we do not apprehend, but leave them, for
the most part of our time, idle ; nay, some never use
them at all? The answer is, that the Intelligence and
the One are always active, and thus the soul possesses
everlasting movement. It does not follow, that when
we have no sense of them, they are not there, for all
that is the soulis not instantly sensible; faculties
come to us when they come into consciousness. But
when a» faculty does not communicate with the
perceptions of sense, it has not yet permeated the
whole soul. In such a case we do not yet know,
because not merely a part of the soul, but the whole
 DOCTRINE OF GOD 239

soul, is absorbed in sense perception. Furthermore

every part of a thing that has soul, while it lives,
discharges without intermission its own function.
But knowledge does not begin, till there is communi-
cation and apprehension. If, then, there is to be
apprehension of what is intellectually present, the
apprehending faculty must turn inwards, and fix
its attention yonder. Just as a singer, who wants
’ to catch a note, must shut out all other notes, and
strain his ear to catch the true note when it comes,
so in this world we must shut out physical sounds,
except so far as is necessary, and keep the apprehen-
sive power of the soul clean, and ready to hear the .
voices from above.” |
The word rendered apprehension (avriAnyc) means
both “grasping” and “help.” Sense supplies the
soul witha “ type” (ruzoc) or imprint of the thing as it
is seen. Intelligence supplies (eradidwor) the soul
with the idea or form of the thing, as it ought to
be. By “grasping” the forms, the soul interprets the
types, just as the singer, by means of the true note
which his art supplies, recognizes, and if need be,
corrects, the note emitted by his lyre or voice. Thus,
without “apprehension” ‘and “communication,”
there can be no real knowledge. Intelligence and
sense-knowledge must chime together, as it were;
and this correspondence of the two faculties is known
as “co-perception” (cuvaicOnarc). “The understanding,
criticizing the types supplied by sense, sees the forms,
and sees them by what we may call co-perception ”
(i. t, 9). If we conceive of an earthly clock with a
240 NEOPLATONISM

heavenly chiming apparatus, we shall get some idea

of what Plotinus means. When the two are exactly
together the time is right.
The chime is always there, but not always audible,
because the clock has a will of its own, and goes its
own way. Thus Eternity comes to differ from Time.
But this is a point that must lie by till we come to
consider the nature of moral evil.
 XVI

GOD, HIS NATURE AND OPERATIONS

PLoTINUS, like all his school, admitted the existence

of a number of lower deities, Heaven, with its Stars,
Nature, Earth, the Demons. All these in their
degree are causes, and deserve worship. But the
supreme cause, God in the proper sense of the word,
stands far above all these created deities, and embraces
in Himself a unity of Three Hypostases. Hypostasis
is a Stoic word, which is generally used as equivalent
to Ousia, or Being. But it signifies more exactly the
underlying cause of the phenomenal manifestation.
Hence it can be applied equally to all three Persons
of the Platonic Trinity, while Being could only be
used of the second and third. This, again, explains
why the Eastern theologians adopted this word to
denote persons of the Christian Trinity. For they
also commonly speak of God the Father as ‘‘ beyond
Being.”
Each Hypostasis is a Person, but a purely intellec-
tual person. All three are one, like three mutually
enfolding thoughts, and where one is, there is the All
in the fullness of its power. All are eternal, but the
Q
242 NEOPLATONISM

second is inferior to the first, because “ begotten,” and

the third to the second, for the same reason.
The first is the One, the Good. The two names
mean the same thing, Unity is life, and fullness of life
is the good towards which everything strives. The
One is the Fountain of Life, the Power of all things,
but for that very reason he is none of them. He-
has no Form, no Beauty, no Virtue, no Will, no
Thought, no Consciousness, no Movement or Activity,
no Being.
The second is Intelligence, the One-Many, the
Intelligible World. Plotinus expressly refuses to
apply to him the title Logos, which in his system
means little more than physical force. Here life and
thought are in full play. Here are all the Ideas, not
stored away in memory, for God has no memory, but
all always equally vivid, in infinite diversity and eternal
sameness. Each thought of the Divine mind involves
each and all the rest. Hence each idea is in a sense
the whole mind (votc). Yet each is separate, has a
life, an energy of its own, is not Intelligence, but an
Intelligence (vote ric).
This is the highest conception of Being. Thought
is Being, makes Being by thinking it. And on this
plane the thinker is the thought, the thought is the
thinker.
The third is Soul, the One and Many. The One
abides, but the Many is increasing, and on the road to
preponderance.
Plotinus insists on the importance of a just know-
ledge of Soul. It “gives us information in both
 GOD, HIS NATURE AND OPERATIONS 243

directions.” On one side, it is in touch with Intelli-

gence, on another with nature. Above it is day,
beyond it is darkness. It is the outer ring of the
circle ; or like the moon, the two higher hypostases
being as it were the Light and the Sun. It is the
God that is nearest to us, the life that we know, the
being that is most properly ourselves. The spirit
within us, the beautiful world spread round about us,
is Soul.
Yet it is precisely here that difficulties accumulate.
The reason is obvious. Soul is the central knot in
the system of Plotinus. Under this heading he has
to grapple with the insoluble. difficulty of all philo-
sophy. Here, if anywhere, must be found the syn-
thesis of all the antitheses, physical, intellectual, and
moral, the One and the Many, Thought and Extension,
Good and Evil, Time and Eternity, Freedom and
Necessity, God and Man.
Part of the difficulty the Neoplatonists met, as we
have seen, by the distinction between Mind and
Matter. Matter is really No Thing, yet it is the
cause of divisibility and sensible existence. This is
the congenital defect of all Platonism; it admits a
cause which is not a cause, and in spite of all its
protests limits God by something that is not Himself.
It follows that when God draws near to Matter, He
must undergo an evolution and differentiation. There
are, in fact, two souls: one, that of God, which is pure
thought ; one, that of Nature, which is power. And
in man these two come into contact, and even into
antagonism.
244 NEOPLATONISM

On one side the divine soul gives off a stream of.

life which grows weaker as it flows onwards, which,
though never wholly unintelligent, is instinct rather
than reason. Soul becomes Nature’; the Forms or
thoughts become words, powers, forces. ‘These words —
enter into partnership with Matter, and create bodies,
including that of man.
On the other side, as Intelligence embraced the
sum of separate intelligences, so Soul enfolds within
itself all individual souls. They are it, and it is they.
And these individual souls, led by natural desire,
“come down ” to guard and care for the bodies that
the word has built for them, though never breaking
away from their source. ‘Thus man, and indeed all
that lives, has a double soul; one which makes his
visible frame, another which “rides upon it” and
governs it, like the pilot of a ship; one which has
sense and desire, another which regulates and controls
the senses and the desires, bringing with it, to use again
our former illustration, the right time from heaven,
andso checking the aberrations of the earthly clock.
These souls are all distinct, yet they are also all
one, and Plotinus constantly passes over from one to
the other, especially from the soul of God to the soul
of man, without warning the reader what he is doing.
It is necessary to exercise the greatest caution, and
even then it is only too possible to go wrong, on a —
point where such scholarly interpreters of Neo-
platonism as Kirchner and Zeller are at variance. If
we are to gather a clear conception of the Soul of
God, we must keep in mind a passage where Plotinus
 GOD, HIS NATURE AND OPERATIONS 246
‘

has expressed himself more distinctly than is his wont

(v. 3, 9), “ He who would know what Intelligence is,
must understand Soul, and the divinest part of Soul.
You may gain this understanding by stripping off,
first, the body of man, your own body ; next, the soul,
which moulded this body. Sense must be laid aside
with the greatest care, and desire and anger and all
such absurd emotions, as inclining strongly to what is
mortal. What is left is this Soul, which we called an
image of Intelligence, guarding a portion of the light
of that sun.” The better Soul, then, has no emotions,
no consciousness of the world below, no senses and
no faculty that requires sense as the condition of its
exercise.. It is in fact nothing but a paler copy of
Intelligence. It “ thinks ” (v0e?), but with a difference.
What it thinks is Form, a weakened Idea, answering
to our “general conception,” only that it is derived
from above and not from below, and is archetype,
not type. The Forms are not its own, but given to
it; hence subject and object are not identical. Soul
thinks itself as another; the thought is recognized as
coming, as imparted. Further, the soul is no longer
the “fullness” of thought. All the Forms are
there, but attention has begun; one object is more
luminously present than another. In the passage
translated in the last chapter Plotinus ascribes to the
Soul a sequence of notions; at one time it looks on
Socrates, at another on a horse, and so forth ; but else-
where (iv. 4, 1) it is explained that this sequence is
of order, and not of time, as when we look upon the
countenance of a friend we may be more distinctly
246 NEOPLATONISM

conscious of his eyes, though at the same time we

see all the features. So too he speaks of it as
“reasoning” (oy:Zéuevov), but not like man when
he schemes, contrives, or grapples with difficulties.
The Soul has no practical difficulties to contend
with; its reasoning is merely the endeavour to
appropriate and identify itself with the ideas that it
beholds in the Intelligence. It isnot in Time, though
Time is its offspring, being a concomitant of the.
lower forms of its activity, of those separate lives
which succeed one another, and are some longer, some
shorter. Nor is it divisible, though it has a nature
which lends itself to the semblance of division.
When it comes into contact with matter it assumes
a limit, takes upon it a definite extension, as the
indivisible light of the sun parts and distributes
itself into the different chambers of a house.
It will readily be perceived, from this laborious
and still obscure description, that the Divine Soul is
of little intellectual or religious significance in the
mind of Plotinus. But on the physical side Soul
is all-important. It is the great reservoir from which
flow all the minor conduits of life and force. It
supphes the key to creation, and thus again enables
us to comprehend, admire, rest satisfied with the
world in which we live. In this way it comes to
have even considerable religious weight, because it
is the safeguard against pessimism. All things were
made by God, and all are beautiful and good, so far
as they can reflect the Divine idea, and can lead us
up to their author.
 GOD, HIS NATURE AND OPERATIONS 247

The chief logical difficulty in the way of Plotinus

is his conception of Cause. He regards it as drawing,
not as pushing; as attracting like a magnet or gravita-
tion, not as going forth to mould. There is but one
movement ; all things strive towards God ; each looks
up to that above it. Any other view in his opinion
makes God dependent. He holds his theory con-
sistently in all that concerns the moral or intellectual
life. But it will not explain how things came to be.
Involution cannot account for evolution. He meets
the difficulty by maintaining that nothing “ came to
be,” that all is in fact equally eternal. God cannot
plan or scheme. Creation is as old as Himself.
Where He is, there is life. The work of creation, if
we may use the phrase, is compared to a full cup
running over, to the evening light striking upon the
clouds, to the scent diffused about a flower. But
these are mere metaphors. When we turn towards
the Real, we must put away the illusion of “‘ becoming.”
In Him is no shadow of change. Change is the
failure of matter to maintain its footing within the
circle of light.
But the lower soul has “desire” (épeéc), enters
into the body, cares for it, guards it. Where then
does this desire come from? Plutarch found it in
matter, and believed accordingly in an evil god.
_Plotinus would on no account admit this. But then
desire, like all else, must flow from the One, and
this again he would not admit. Thus again he leaves
an all-important word without any sort of explanation.
The Divine Soul is split into two. One half comes
248 NEOPLATONISM

straight down, the other runs round a corner, and

when it reappears as Nature, has somehow got a new
faculty. But howe
As a theory of life, then, the system of Plotinus is
open to the grave objection, that it does not account
for that desire of the soul for the body, which yet he
regards as the basis of physical existence. As a theory
of knowledge, the notion of an attracting, self-con-
tained cause is intelligible enough. We commonly
speak of the mind as seeking, as drawn onwards by
the Truth, and the love of the soul for the One would
be asufficient explanation of mental activity, without
our supposing that the Truth has any wish to be
known. Even in the sphere of morality and the
spiritual experience the notion is capable of consistent
application, and it was consistently applied. But
only at a tremendous cost. According to Plotinus,
God is Goodness without love. Man may love God,
but God cannot love man. Religion is the desire for
the star. Man can reach the star, and cannot be
happy unless he does; but the star does not know
anything about him, and does not care whether he
reaches it or not. We see here the full meaning of
the derision which Celsus pours upon the Incarnation.
According to the Platonist, God could not possibly
“come down.” |
The words, “No man can come unto Me except
the Father which hath sent Me draw him,” are half
Platonic, and half the .contradiction of Platonism.
The Deity of Plotinus “ draws,’ but could neither
“send,” nor think of sending any one.
 GOD, HIS NATURE AND OPERATIONS 249

It is not easy to combine the belief in Providence,

or the practice of prayer, with an absolute introverted
Deity.
Man must approach the Supreme Intelligence, as
we have seen, with prayer, that is with devotion, not
supplication, with the unspoken prayer of Apollonius
and Clement. The philosopher could not say, “O
send out Thy light and Thy truth!” All he could do
was to turn his soul towards the light and wait.
Petitions, are addressed by those who are not philoso-
phers, to the inferior gods, the sun and stars. Hence
Plotinus treats prayer, in the proper sense of the word,
under the heading of magic. The Sun being a god
cannot see or hear or remember ; but being involved
in nature he comes under the general law of natural
sympathy. A certain thrill may pass from the wor-
shipper to him, just as one string of a lyre will vibrate
when another is struck. Evil prayers cannot touch
the gods at all.
Providence was one of the Platonist war-cries.
The school regarded themselves as the champions
of this belief against Epicurean Atheists, Aristotelian
Deists, Stoic Fatalists, and Gnostic Dualists. Plotinus
explains the subject at great length; but he spends
his force mainly in accounting for evil, which he
would not allow to be in any way connected with
God. Particular providence, which Plutarch, Celsus,
and Maximus Tyrius ascribed to the demons, he .
denies. It is irreconcileable with the eternity of
creation, and implies “ foreseeing” and “ planning”
in the Deity. All that is left, then, is the belief, that
250 NEOPLATONISM

the world as a whole is “in accordance with intelli-

gence (kara vovy),” and admits of a rational explanation.
The difference between the Neoplatonist and the
rival schools lies in the conception of God, and of
His relation to the world. As against the Epicurean,
Plotinus maintained that God “does nothing, but
works great things;” as against the Gnostic, that He
is the Good; as against the Stoic, that He is trans-
cendent ; as against the Peripatetic, that He draws
men to Himself.
If the theology of Plotinus might be labelled with
a phrase, we should call it Centripetal Theism.
 XVIT

MAN IN NATURE

PLotinus seldom touches upon physical science.

He has been blamed for this, but hardly with justice.
He was a metaphysician, and all we can ask of such
an one is, that his speculations should neither be
inconsistent with what is known, nor discourage further
research. That he was not unscientific, as the word
was then understood, is shown by.the numbers of
physicians, musicians, and mathematicians who were
attracted by his teaching. Nordoes there seem to be
any reason why a modern chemist should not be a
Neoplatonist if he chose.
To Plotinus, physical science could not mean the
knowledge of matter, because matter was No Thing.
Its field was the relation of God to the world, the
mode of the combination of life with matter.
Two ideas were of great importance in his mind.
The first is that causation excludes necessity. Every-
thing has a cause, but there is a hierarchy of causes;
of these all are in their degree intelligent, and the
soul of'man even possesses a certain power of self-
determination. Whereas Fatalism reduces everything
 252 NEOPLATONISM

to one; even the distinction of cause and effect is

_ lost.
The second is that unity does not destroy indi-
viduality. The One is wholly everywhere, because
life is not divisible. All souls are one because they
come from the One, yet they are distinct numerically
as “thoughts in the same mind,” and they differ even —
in quality. ‘If Providence were all, there would be
no providence, for there would be nothing for it to
provide for.” It must have an object; it comes to
that object, for instance, to man, not to destroy him,
but to co-operate with him, in such a way as to leave
his manhood intact. Of individuality Plotinus says,
that “ nothing that is can perish.”
These two propositions are in fact corollaries of the
fundamental Platonic contention that Being is not
one, but many.
In the world of Becoming there is endless
multiplicity, things or bodies of every sort and kind.
They are made not directly by the Soul of God, but
by Nature, the World-spirit. Nature supplies the
word which, as we have seen, imposes bulk, shape,
and quality upon matter. Nature is the sum of
words as the Soul is of Forms and the Intelligence of
Ideas. She is life, a word, a creating power, a soul-
offspring of the earlier soul. Compared with the
Divine her consciousness is like that of sleep com- °
pared with waking. She is in fact a buffer-soul
inserted to disguise the transition from the inward to
the outward action of God, and from thought to
desire, and for this latter purpose she creates yet
 MAN IN NATURE 253

another buffer-soul. Her weakness is the reason why

she creates. Production, says Plotinus, is the result
of insufficient power of contemplation, as we see in
the case of the geometer, who is obliged to call sight
to his aid, and draw his diagrams on paper, because
his intelligence is not vivid enough to reason about
them without this help. Thus Euclid writes a book,
and Nature createsa world. Her “theory” externalizes
itself and projects a ‘‘ theorem.”
The words or forces differ, and produce accordingly
_ different kinds of bodies, inorganic and organic, stones,
plants, animals, men. According to their different
degree of receptivity, Nature supplies them with a
natural soul, the ‘‘other soul,” ‘shadow ofa soul,”
“word of a soul,” which brings with it the lower
powers of life, the vegetative and the sentient. To
each body God gives what it 1s capable of using, and
no more. The union of this lower soul with the
body makes the ‘‘ compositum,” the animal.
But man has also a higher soul, the true Ego. It
comes to him straight from God, and is like God.
To the lower belong the animal life, pleasure and
pain, desire, anger, sense; the higher differs from
the Divine only in this, that, while connected with the
body, it possesses memory, imagination, discursive
reasoning, and a finite will, faculties which form a
link between the absolute and the conditioned in-
telligence. :
The soul proper comes down to occupy the body
which Nature has prepared and endowed for it. No
force is needed. It comes “neither willingly nor
 254 NEOPLATONISM

sent,” but driven by natural instinct, because that to

which it comes needs its fostering care. When men
desire to secure the presence of a God, they build a
temple or a statue fit for Him, capable of receiving
Him, and then His power descends and dwells among
them. So Nature makes an idol, and then places her
handiwork under the patronage of the Divine.
Plotinus could not quite make up his mind, whether
the coming down of the soul was a sin or not. It was
a necessary part of his system. But the tradition of
his school held that it was a chastisement, and worked -
out this view of the penal character of earthly exist-
ence, by the addition of the fanciful doctrine of the
transmigration of the human soul into the body of
brutes. This Plotinus cculd not bring himself to
deny ; it was part of his religion, though not of his
philosophy. Hence he vacillates. At one time he
speaks of the soulas coming down through “ desire of
being its own master,” through “ honouring things
inferior to itself.” At others soul joins body for the
“perfection of the whole.” It does good in coming
down, because it shows in act its marvellous power.
Had there been no souls, the infinite richness of the
Ideal would have been unknown. Better for the soul
to stay at home. Yet we must not be indignant with -
her for coming, even though on earth she gains
the sad knowledge of evil; “ for the experience of evil
begets a clearer knowledge of the Good in those
whose powers are too feeble to discern evil scientific-
ally without experience” (Hv. iv. 8, 5—8). Here
the philosopher speaks,
 MAN IN NATURE 255

The current conception of the relation of soul to

body was absolutely reversed by Plotinus. The soul
is not in the body; on the contrary, the body is in the
soul like “a net in the sea,”’ pervaded, yet transcended.
Soul, the Ego, rides upon body, like a pilot on a ship.
Man’s feet are on earth, but his head is in heaven.
The soul is never separated from the first cause.
Each soul is in contact with all three of the Divine
hypostases. But here again comes in the doctrine of
receptivity. The union may be dormant. Man has
only what he uses. Hence there will be three classes
of men: those in whom Soul is operative, those in
whom Intelligence, those in whom the Good. Man’s
demon or guardian angel is the faculty next above
that which in his conduct he obeys.
The world, according to Plotinus, is: not only the
best possible world, but the only possible world, the
self-evolution of the One, reflecting in all its parts
the glory and wisdom of its Maker. It is the one
face seen in many mirrors, the one voice heard in
many ears, a copy, though a pale copy, of the eternal
archetype. This Plotinus presses very _ strongly
against the half-Christian Gnostics. They desire, he
says, “‘a new earth,” to which they hope to go. But
why do they profess to love the pattern, when they
disparage that of which it is the pattern? Against
dualistic pessimism this argument is unanswerable.
The Christian might reply, that on the showing of
Plotinus himself the pattern is better, and thus he
might justify his yearning for heaven. Plotinus would
have retorted, that in the mystic vision the philosopher
256 NEOPLATONISM

possesses the All, the Archetype, even here upon

earth. Hence his serene content is strongly con-
trasted with the divine discontent of the Christian.
The question arises whether his mysticism is reason-
able, and whether his vision is possible.
That the world is imperfect Plotinus knew full well.
If it were perfect, it would be God. He grapples
manfully with the problem of what is called physical |
evil. Partly he found a reason for it in the resistance
of matter; the word cannot always control or pene-
trate the medium of its manifestation. Partly it is to
be regarded as a chastisement for antenatal sin.
Partly he denied that it was evil. It is necessary to
the All. The part cannot be perfect in the same
sense as the whole; the statue must have feet as well
asa face. We must not take tears as a criterion of
evil. Children weep over what is not harmful. Life
is adrama. It has a unity though its parts are at
war. One plays the hero, another the clown. The
poet assigns to each his 7é/e, because he is what he is,
and, as he plays well or ill, gives him a better or a
worse place in other dramas. Hardship strengthens
men, and makes them better. Life is a constant
battle with difficulties, in which we may expect God’s
help if we take God’s way, but not otherwise.
Providence does not leave man to perish, but is
always calling him to better things: the Divine law
says that to the good, life shall be good, and vice versa.
Plotinus did not deny the difference between good
and evil fortune, but he minimized it. ‘ The nature
of the whole is mixed, but if any one detaches his
 MAN IN NATURE 204

soul, the rest is no great matter.” In this cheerful,

manly view we read the difference between Stoicism
and Platonism. The former said that “the rest,”
_ that is to say, such part of our environment as we
cannot control, did not matter at all. How Plotinus.
dealt with moral evil we shall see later on.
One very remarkable feature of the Plotinian view
of Nature is expressed by the word Sympatiluy.
Every part of the whole, by virtue of its provenance
from the One, is set in the same key, and vibrates in
unison. And this sympathetic affection does not re-
quire contact, but is capable of acting at a distance.
By this thrill of affinity Plotinus explained sensation.
He went so far as to affirm that, if there were another
world, we should not be able to perceive it, even if
it were exactly like our own, because the soul that
made it would not be in touch with ours. But in
this way he was able to defend astrology and magic.
The stars do not cause good or evil fortune, yet as all
nature is interdependent, their movements may prog-
nosticate. Magic cannot affect the higher soul, but it
has power over the lower, by subtle physical influences,
which it has at its command. In this way even a
good man may be bewitched, and in consequence may
suffer disease or even death; nor can he ward off
these baleful assaults, except by the use of counter
charms. The demons have power over him to this
extent. He is subject to their malefic influences, so
far as his life is relative. Plotinus saw no essential
difference between the art of the physician and that
of the enchanter; both made use of natural powers.
: R
 &

2 58 NEOPLATONISM

In this way, as we have seen, and in this very con-

nection, he explained the power of prayer to move at
any rate the lower gods.
It is possible that he held proudly aloof from these
vulgar superstitions; but at least he left the gate
wide open. Yet we may notice that he does not
seem to have made any use of mesmerism or artificial
means to induce the mystic vision.
The position of man is therefore a double one.
As regards his body and his irrational soul, he is
entangled in the chain of physical causation, and has
but a limited power of self-assertion. Only in his
Ego can he be free.
 XVIII

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL

WE must content ourselves with setting before the

reader an abstract of the famous argument of Plotinus
on the Soul’s immortality (Zz. v. 7).
The Platonist had to establish two propositions—
I. That the Soul is not a Body.
II. That it is not a Harmony or Form, or as we
might say, Function of a Body. If he could demon-
strate these two points, it follows that the soul must
belong to the immaterial, intelligible world ; that it is
a real Being or Ousza, and therefore eternal.
1. The critique of materialism is based partly on
the conception of life, partly on that of unity.
-The soul has life of itself. This is not true of any
material substance, not even of the four elements.
They never exhibit life, except as something that has
obviously been brought to them. But if no one
material substance possesses life, no aggregate of such
substances can generate it; ‘the unintelligent cannot
beget the intelligent.” Indeed no body can so much
as exist without soul. Organism implies an organizing
principle. For a word’ comes to the matter and
260 NEOPLATONISM

makes it a body, and the word can only come from

soul, |
Some, Leucippus Democritus, and Epicurus, built
up the world out of. atoms. An atom has no magni-
tude, and no qualities. Since it has no magnitude, no
number of them will form a bulk. Since it has no
qualities, it can never give birth to sympathy. But the
characteristic of soul is, that each part is in sympathy
with the others, and with the whole.
It cannot be, as the Stoics asserted, an affection of
matter. For matter does not shape itself, or put life
into itself. Where then does the affection come from?
There must be some Giver of Life outside and above
all material nature. For there could not be sucha
thing as a body, if there were no soul-power. Perhaps
even matter itself could not exist, and all would
go to wreck, if there were no order, no word, no
intelligence.
Again, if it were a body, life would possess one
definite set of attributes. Whereas life causes many
and diverse,—heat and cold, colour, and others. It
would have but one movement, that of gravitation, but
again it has many. It is the cause of growth, yet it
does not grow. It has no size, no parts.
Further, the immateriality of the soul results from
a consideration of its powers.
From Sense.—The sentient subject is one. When
we perceive an object, the eye reports one sensation ;
the ear, it may be, another. ‘The sensations are
combined ; at the same time they are distinguished,
because there is one percipient faculty, as it were, at
 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 261

the centre of a circle, whose radii are represented by

the different senses.
From Memory.—lIf the soul is a body, we must
suppose that perception imprints a kind of stamp upon
it. The imprint will decay, or later imprints. will
obliterate it ; in either case there will be no memory. |
From Pain.—The finger is hurt, and the Ego feels
the smart. Some explain this fact by transmission.
Are we to say then, that first the finger is pained, next
the nerve, next the brain, and lastly the percipient?
No; there is one pain, not many. Again, each link
in the chain would know only what was reported to it
~ by the last link. The mind would be aware that the
brain was suffering, not that the finger was hurt. It
follows that the soul must be in union with the whole
body ; it must be one and the same in every part.
From the power of abstract thought.—What thinks
the immaterial, cannot be material. And from the
capacity for aesthetic and moral ideas. If the soul is
corporeal, is virtue a kind of spirit or breath? Grant-
ing that a spirit might be strong or beautiful, how
could it be just or chaste? Virtue again comes and
goes, but, if the soul be material, it must always
remain as it ls. ,
It was maintained by some in the time of Plotinus,
that the soul was a physical force, analogous to heat.
To this he answers that force is not material, and
that forces of mind, thought, perception, desire, differ
in kind from the forces of nature.
A further argument is based upon the impossibility
of conceiving the mode of combination of soul and
262 NEOPLATONISM

body, if both are material. Lastly, Plotinus considers

and rejects a peculiar Stoic view, which regarded mind
as produced out of matter by a process of evolution.
It is expressed by four words denoting four successive
stages of existence, Condition, Nature, Soul, Intelli-
gence, which correspond to the modes of being of a
jelly, a jelly-fish, a monkey, anda man. ‘Truly there
is nothing new under the sun, and we have here the
first rough draught of Darwinism struck out by some
doctor of the Porch. Plotinus remarks upon this
curious anticipation of our modern perplexities, that it
puts the worst first, and makes the existence of God
hypothetical. Again, that if Condition, or let us say
inorganic nature, comes first, there is nothing to
account for the evolution, nothing to set things going
(ro ayov). The jelly cannot evolve itself; it must
have some definite goal ; it cannot be thought of as
sallying forth at random in quest of the unknown.
The attracting cause must be there, before the evolution
begins; that is to say, mind and intelligence must be
prior to inorganic nature, and not posterior. The
argument is directed primarily to establish the pre-
existence of God, but the human soul is part of God,
and so what is true of the one is true of the other.
We may notice that Plotinus does not here deny the
possibility of physical evolution ; that is, the growth of
more perfect out of less perfect bodies. What he
traverses is the evolution of life. Physical evolution
is not’ incompatible with his general view. He ad-
mitted a periodicity of Nature, a constant succession
of youth, maturity, and death, in the whole as in the
 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 263

parts, and any amount of phenomenal change he could

account for. On the other hand, he believed in per-
manence of type. There is, however, a curious and
obscure passage (v. 9, 13), in which it is argued that
the contents of the ideal world may be larger than
those of the phenomenal, and this might be applied to
the alteration of existing types, or the emergence of
new types. But the question had not yet arisen. The
requisite knowledge of Nature did not exist. All we
can say is, that Plotinus hit the root of the matter
when he asserted that growth, without an ordering
mind, is inconceivable.
2. Soul, then, is different from Body. But does it
depend on the body? Is it, as many think, a function
of the organism? In ancient times this view took
two expressions. ‘The Pythagoreans regarded Soul as
a Harmony, the Peripatetics as a Form (Entelechy)
of Body.
When the chords of a lyre are rightly strained, they
acquire a certain relation, which we call harmony. So
it has been held, a certain natural relation of the differ-
ent elements, of which body is composed, generates
life or soul.
But soul is a thing, harmony a relation. Again, the
mind constantly resists the body. Again, if health is
harmony, disease is discord, and the soul is changed or
gone. Again, there must be another soul to make the
harmony ; the chords cannot tune themselves. Thus
soul must come first, and strike the keynote. It is
impossible to bring music out of discord, or life out of
death,
264 NEOPLATONISM

The Peripatetic defined soul, in much the same

way, as “the form of an organism capable of life.” To
this Plotinus answers by repeating, what is surely a
conclusive argument, that there is, as a matter of fact,
war between the spirit and the flesh. Form, again, is
as divisible as matter. If you break off the leg of a
statue, you take away a part of its form. But you may
lop off the limbs of a man, and yet his Ego will remain
as whole as ever. ‘This is one of Butler’s arguments,
and it is not destroyed by the objection that if you hit
the man with a stick on a particular spot of his head
he will no longer be able to speak. If he loses a leg,
the faculty of sense remains intact, though one of its
organs is gone; and if he loses his brain the power of
thought may remain, though no longer able to manifest
itself by its material vehicle. Plotinus held that while
form is inseparable, intelligence is separable from the
body. This he thought was proved by the suspension
of the faculties in sleep, and by the nature of abstract
thought.
From all this the conclusion follows, that soul does
not exist merely because it is the form of something.
It is itself a thing, which does not receive being as a
result of its establishment in a body, but has a life of
its own, before it comes to belong to this or that
animal. ‘The body did not beget the soul.
What, then, is it? If it is neither a body nor an
affection of the body, but a mode of moral and physical
energy, containing many capacities, producing many
results ;it must be a kind of thing diffefing from all
material existences. Clearly it is what we call a Being.
 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 265

For all bodily existence must be called Becoming, not

being, because it is ever becoming, ever perishing, and
never truly is, but lives, while it lives, by participation
in being, so far as it does participate.
Yet another argument for the soul’s immortality
Plotinus finds in its capacity for virtue, and in the
nature of virtue, which reveals the Divine image within
us. Nothing but evil makes us doubt, that we are of
one substance (opoovewoc) with the Divine. ‘This fine
argument we must leave to the reader’s own power of
divination.
The sum and substance of the whole matter is, that
Soul is Life, and that Life is.
 XIX

ETHICS

Man, as we have seen, belongs to two worlds, and

is partly the creature of circumstance, partly not.
He has his feet in the water. Hence he is compared
to a thete, or serf, who was half-slave, half-free ; or
more aptly still, to the dancer in a choir. The music
has power over him, the measure also constrains him,
but there are certain movements which are all his
own. Plotinus insists very strongly and very often
on individuality. “If God,’ he says, “were sole
cause, all would be good.” Yet everything has a
cause, and, when the cause is outside the ee it
becomes a kind of necessity.
_ What, then, is the sphere of freedom, and what of
necessity?
There is an universal belief (évova) which tells us
that we are free. Yetif we look more closely, it
does not say that we are our own masters. Con-
sciousness assures us only of this, that we are free in
so far as we can carry out our wishes (vi. 8).
In truth, action is never free.’ It is at best of
mixed nature, because always relative to circum: .
 ETHICS 267

stances. We do, not what we would, but what we

can. The moment we go outside ourselves, we are
caught in a stream of causes, over which we have no
control. Success is not in our power, only right
motive and right conduct.
Even the motive is not always free. In many
cases, perhaps in most, it is a mere “ imagination”’
(gavracia) or opinion, dictated by our bodily needs.
All bad men, and in some things even good men,
are guided by sense, which is purely relative. Aristotle
held that a man was a free agent, if he was acquainted
with the particulars of his action; if he killed a man,
for instance, and knew what he was doing. Plotinus
considers that ignorance of the universal, of the
moral law, ‘thou shalt do no murder,” makes the
deed involuntary. Aristotle held that the man ought
to know this, “But,” retorts Plotinus, “suppose he
does not know, that he ought to know it.”
Freedom, then, is to be found, not in the outward
energy nor in sense-knowledge, but in the wish, and
this runs up to Intelligence and the knowledge of
the Good. This is the sole cause of liberty. Those,
who by the practice of moral virtue have attained to
a true understanding, are emancipated. They have a
master, it is true, but they are that, which is their
master.
God Himself is not to be called free, because He
is the cause of freedom. For man, liberty is nothing
else than “a living law.” His will is free, when it
sat one with the mind of God. The power of
contraries is not freedom, “for to be able to do
 268 NEOPLATONISM

things opposite is a sign of inability to cleave to

gene best.”
Vice therefore, in the view of the Neoplatonist, is
involuntary. It is in fact the sleep of the soul. The
bad man uses his bodily faculties, but suffers his
intelligence to lie dormant. “So in the assembly,
when the elders are wrapt in thought, the unruly
mob, craving food and complaining of its discomforts,
casts the whole meeting into unseemly uproar. If
they will keep quiet, and a word comes to them from
some wise signor, the tumult is allayed, and the
worse does not prevail. Otherwise, if the better
remains silent, the .worse prevails, because the
_clamouring throng cannot receive the word from
above” (vi. 4, 15).
The soul itself is divine, and can suffer no con-
tamination. But it nods and slumbers, and lets go
the reins. The cure of this moral evil is to be found
in philosophy, which wakes the dreamer, in the
drawing of Providence, in love of the ideal. Whether
the remedy is universally applicable, is dubious. It
is a favourite idea with Plotinus, that men are divided
into three classes. Some never rise above sense.
Some mount a little towards heaven, but cannot
sustain themselves ; they drop again to earth, and are
called virtuous. Some divine men climb up to
heaven and stay there. He does not explain, whether
itis possible for a man altogether to change his class.
Celsus has shown us, that one cardinal sin of the
Church, in the eyes of the philosopher, was, that it
promised the Beatific Vision to cobblers. In any
 ETHICS 269

case Plotinus thought it monstrous to suppose, that

the suffering of one man could make another better.
‘* For a bad man to ask some one else to become his
saviour, by the sacrifice of himself, is not lawful even
in prayer.” This is probably a sly hit at Christianity ;
at any rate we have here in a nutshell the whole
difference between the two systems.
Virtue is likeness to God. It has two grades,
the “political”’ or practical, and the “greater” or
intellectual (1. 2).
Of the former Plotinus seldom speaks, and always
with clear reference to its provisional character. It
is beautiful, ‘‘ fairer than the morning star,” yet but
a stepping-stone to better things. It is contingent.
The struggle with injustice makes a man stronger,
but it would be better if there were no injustice.
Again, the need of action is distracting. Conscious-
ness and attention stand in inverse proportion; the
more we have to attend to the act of reading, the less
conscious we are of what is read.
Considered from an empirical point of view, the
office of moral virtue is to ‘‘limit and measure the
desires and affections in general, and to take away
false opinions.’ Its work is mainly negative; it
wipes away the mud of vice, and is a “ purification.”
But it has also a positive effect. Virtue “ intelligizes’”’
the soul. The really important thing is, that it is a
form, a law, and forms and laws come from God.’
The Neoplatonist, as a rule, practised a rigid
asceticism, but he was not ascetic in his demands
upon others. There is even a tinge of antinomianism,
270° NEOPLATONISM

or perhaps we should say a touch of geniality about

Plotinus. Little things do not matter, so long as they
are not done on purpose. “ Nothing of this kind is
sin (apapria), but rather night action. But we ought
to aim not at being without sin, but at being God.
If then a man does things of this kind without will,
he is double, a god and a demon, or rather he has a~
companion at his side whose virtue is different from
his own. But if he does them not, he is pure God.”
The greater virtue springs out of the less. It is
the turning or “conversion ”’ (émustpogn) of the soul
from sense to God. Man turns his face to the light,
and sees the ideal beauty, not afar off, but in his soul.
For even before conversion he possessed the ideas,
though “thrust away in a dark corner.”” The greater
virtue is free, and needs no action ; it is communion
with the Divine. The world does not give it, and
cannot take it away.
Closely connected with virtue is happiness. The
bad man is doomed to misery; ‘‘ he behaves like a
wolf, and he becomes a wolf.” But for the good, life
is good.
Happiness is not pleasure, though it is pleasant,
for life and intelligence are beautiful, and beauty is
crowned with grace which the soul seeks with love.
It is “intensity of life,’ hence its good must come
not from without, but from within and above. In
details Plotinus is here almost completely Stoic.
Sympathetic sorrow is a weakness of the soul. Ex-
ternal blessings or misfortunes do not contribute to,
or detract from, the felicity of the wise. The lyre
 ETHICS 271

~ does not make the musician. If it is bad, the player

will get a new instrument, or he will sing without
one. But his general conception is the reverse of
the Stoic. For he regards action as incompatible
with happiness (i. 4).
The reward of the good is fullness of life, the
punishment of the evil is wolfishness. But what
about the future? Plotinus says very little about
this, and what he does say merely repeats the
traditional doctrine of his school. The wicked are
punished in Hades, or they come back to earth to
explate their sins in other and lower forms of life.
The soul that is purified by philosophy returns to the
intelligible world, and to it death is gain,
As to what becomes of the lower soul of man he
felt great difficulty. If it is the life of the body, it
passes into other bodies; if it belongs to the soul
proper, it will go whithersoever that goes. But tra-
dition affirmed that the eidolon of Heracles was in
the Elysian Fields, while the soul of Heracles was a
god in heaven. Here Plotinus leaves the question.
With him, as with all his school, Homer stands side
by side with philosophy, and polytheism with the
Absolute.
The morality of the Neoplatonists is purely in-
tellectual, and therefore purely individual. Sympathy
plays a great part in their physics, but is wholly
absent from their ethics. This is the main reason
why they could not found a church, or even an
enduring philosophy.
Again, there is no place in Neoplatonism for that
 272 NEOPLATONISM

fear of God, which is the beginning of Wisdom.

The man himself never sins. God is above man,
and there is room for aspiration and adoration. But
there is no remorse, or repentance, or humility, or
dread. Little things do not matter. In other words,
though the One is high, He is not high enough; He
does not charge the angels with folly. Hence the
road to Him is made too short and too easy.
Lastly, the Neoplatonic morals are entirely un-
practical. Action purifies, but in itself it is mere
distraction. The desire to do arises out of feeble-
_ ness of intelligence. Conduct has no inner relation
to moral perfection. The way to be happy is to
think much and do nothing.
 XX

ON BEAUTY

INTELLECTUAL Virtue is the Upward Path (avaywyf),

which leads us back to God. In thesleep of his soul
man has forgotten his Father, yet heis drawn towards
Him by a dumb impulse, “for all things crave for
Him, and reach towards him by necessity of nature, as
if divining, that without Him they cannot be.” Two
motives carry us upwards—the love of Beauty, and the
love of Good. The desire for Good is universal, and
is sweet. The love of Beauty is not universal ; it is
the new life, and its birth-pangs are sharp.
‘The perception and the awe of Beauty (v.5, 12), and
the awakening of Love, come to men when they already,
as it were, know, and are awake. But the Good, since
it has always been an object of congenial desire, is with
them even while they sleep, and does not awe them
when they begin to see, because it ever attends them,
and is not recollected at any particular moment. Nay,
they do not see it, because they have it even in sleep.
But the love of Beauty, when it comes, causes pain,
because they must first see and then desire. ‘This
love therefore is second, and not till men begin to
understand does it tell them that the Beautiful is.
S
 274 NEOPLATONISM =

But the older and unconscious desire testifies that

the Good is older and prior to Beauty.”
The love of Good is “‘ older” and natural. Never-
theless, as Good is above Form or Being, the love of
Good, as a distinctly moral motive, comes after, and
reaches higher, than the love of Beauty. Hence the
Upward Path falls into two sections. The love of
Beauty carries a man up to the top of Being, and
then hands him over to the love of Good.
We must consider, then, in this chapter the lower
half of the way (i. 3, 1) over which presides the idea of
Beauty; thatis,the Divine Intelligence. It is the sphere —
of Art and Knowledge. Three classes of men are
capable of the journey. Or the road, we may say, has
three branches. The first is for the Musician, the second
for the Lover, the third for the Philosopher. The
beauty of sound, of shape and colour, and of reasoned
truth all lead to thesame goal. But all these pilgrims
are lovers alike. All woo the same goddess, though
with different gifts. What, then, is the Beautiful that
they seek?
It is within us, and not without. It is the inner
loveliness that we seek, though we often forget this,
as Narcissus fell in love with his own reflection in
the pool (v. 8, 2).
Beauty (i. 6 throughout) has many manifestations,
in sights, in sounds, in virtue, in truth. What is it
that is common to all these? What is it that makes
them beautiful?
Let us begin with objects of sight, for in them we
may find a key. What is their charm?
 ON BEAUTY 275

The common opinion is, that it resides in symmetry.

Yet this will not suffice. For if it be so, the composite
whole is beautiful, while the parts are not. But how
can any number of uglinesses produce beauty? There
must be beauty also in the part, the simple, the in-
composite. Otherwise what becomes of beauty of
colour? ‘ How is gold beautiful, or lightning by night,
or the stars ?’’ What again of sound? ‘The melody is
sweet, but sois the note. What again do we mean by
the symmetry of virtue or of intelligence? In these
acts of mind there is no proportion, either geometrical
or arithmetical. And if we say that there is harmony,
it may be replied, that well-ordered falsehood is as
harmonious as truth.
Why then are we attracted by the beautiful, and
shocked by the ugly? It is because the soul belongs
to the better nature. Hence whenever she discerns |
that which is akin to herself, or a trace of that which
is akin, she rejoices and flutters with gladness, and
takes it home to herself, and remembers _ herself
and her parentage. Things are beautiful in so far as
they partake of form, which gives them unity, the
shadow of the One, and grace. They are beautiful
by participation in a word that comes from the gods.
They are ugly when the form, the word, has failed
to control the matter ; when they do not adequately
represent the thought of the Creator.
Sense recognizes the presence or absence of form,
and its judgment is valid, when the rest of the soul
co-operates in its judgment. Or perhaps soul herself
delivers this verdict, comparing the report of sense
276 NEOPLATONISM

with the form which she possesses, and using this as

her canon. ‘The Parthenon is but a concrete expres-
sion of the idea of Pheidias. When we behold it, we
see how the shape given by the artist masters the
alien material, and rides upon the other shapes. We
grasp the whole, and welcome it, just as a good man
rejoices over some trait of virtue in a child, because it
harmonizes with the truth in himself. It is the same
with colour. This too is a form, “a bodiless light.”
‘There are, however, higher beauties, which it is
not given to sense to behold, but soul sees and ex-
presses them without the aid of organs. These we must
mount up and contemplate, leaving sense below. But
now you cannot speak intelligibly about visible beauty
to those who have never seen it, and do not perceive
that it is beautiful ; for instance, to those who were born
blind. And there is the same difficulty in describing
moral loveliness to those who do not allow the beauty
of habits, or sciences, or other things of the same
nature, or the light of virtue to those who have no
conception, how fair is the face of justice and self-
control, fairer than the evening or morning star. Men
must first have seen, and must be that eye with which
the soul beholds the immaterial. And vision must have
been followed by delight, and wonder, and rapture, far
greater than what they felt over earthly things, because
they are now laying hold of the true. For these
feelings, awe, and sweet wonder, and craving, and love,
and delicious rapture, must attend all that is beautiful.
And these emotions are possible, and almost all souls
do experience them, even about objects that are not
 ON BEAUTY oe

seen ; but especially those souls that are more suscep-

tible of spiritual desire. It is the same with human
passion; ail feel it, but the wound is far deeper with
some than with others, and these are said to love.”
What, then, is it which fills the lovers of the unseen
with exultation when they behold the purity of tem-
perance, the severity of fortitude, in themselves or in
others? They will tell you that virtue is the truth of
truths, the eternally fair. But why does the truth
clothe the soul in light? Let us look at its opposite,
and find the answer.
“Take, then, an ugly soul, intemperate and unjust,
full of lusts, full of confusion, fearful through cowardice,
envious through meanness, thinking nothing but what
is mortal and base, crooked in all its parts, living a
life of fleshly passion, and thinking ugliness delightful.
Shall we not say that its ugliness came upon it as an evil
from without, that it maimed it and has made it unclean,
polluted with all that is bad, so that it has no pure life,
no pure sensation, because its very life is dimmed. by
the mixture of evil, and contaminated by much death,
so that it can no longer see what a soul ought to see,
and is no longer permitted to abide in itself, because
it is perpetually dragged outwards and downwards
towards the darkness? It is unclean then, and pulled
in all directions by cords towards the objects that im-
portune its senses; it is soiled with the body, by the
‘ material; it has received into itself an alien form, and
is altered by a debasing mixture, just as when a man
tumbles into mire or mud, so that he no longer shows
his beauty, and nothing can be seen but the filth which
278 NEOPLATONISM

sticks to him. When then ugliness cleaves to a man

by the plastering on of a foreign substance, and has
become his work, he must wash and be clean, before ~ 2
x

he can again be what he was. If, then, we say that

a soul is ugly by mixture and contamination and
condescension towards the body and matter, we shall
be right.”
The* remedy. is: to’ get tid of desire.. +“ Cut@the
rope,” says Zeller, “and the balloon will rise.” Virtue
is “purification,” ‘ detachment.” The believer casts
away every weight, and at once the Divine without
catches hold of the Divine within, and lifts him up.
Earthly beauty reveals the glory of the Soul by which
it was made, and from this vantage ground the
seeker, “if he do not turn his back upon the music,”
will hear the heavenly harmony of Intelligence.
‘Plotinus, it will be observed, does not resolve
Goodness into Beauty, but as he empties Goodness
of moral significance, he is compelled to use Beauty
as his first and chief motive. ‘To this accordingly he
attaches whatever there is left in his system of repent-
ance and awe. Repentance is the delicious anguish
of first love.
The relation of art to morality, he would decide in
summary fashion. Vice is ugliness. Uglinessis painful,
and the more realistically depicted the more painful
it will be. Itis painful because it represents God’s
failures, the triumph of the amorphous over the
ordering word, the power of darkness, the unknown
and horrible.
 XXI

VISION

INTELLECTUAL or aesthetic virtue leads men up to

Intelligence, into the realm of truth, of beauty, and
of freedom. Here the soul is truly free. It can do
what it wishes, unimpeded by misleading desires, by
hostile wills, or adverse circumstances. ‘There is no
law of God to be carried out at any cost of self-
sacrifice in the salvation of the brethren or the
improvement of the world. Providence can do all
this for Himself. Man’s duty is to unite himself with
God by mounting upwards and leaving the world
behind. The kingdom of God is meditation. “ Sense
is our messenger, Intelligence our king, and we are
kings when we are like Him (car? éxetvov).” Life is
happy there: “it is never weary when it is pure.”’
Still even in the intellectual life there are two
stages. In the first, God’s laws are written upon the
soul (v. 3, 4). We know God, know Him perfectly,
_ but we discern Him as a glorified image of ourselves,
projected before the eyes as an object of contempla-
tion (v. 8, 11). We know Him, but we know Him as
another, as something that we possess, and therefore
280 - NEOPLATONISM

that has been given. Even this is a high grace. The

soul ‘‘sees God in painless travail and the birth of
“His Son.”
We can understand this. Plotinus sits down in
his arm-chair, closes his eyes, and with his inner
vision sees the whole realm of knowledge spread out
before him. It is a conscious, but not a vividly
conscious, state, for he tells us in this connection,
that in perception acuteness and agreeableness stand
in inverse relation. The most pungent sensations
are those of pain ; the things that we know best and
that are best worth knowing do not excite us like
unfamiliar or less worthy objects (v. 8, 11). ‘* The
Ego has no senses.”
But we ought not to be content to rest here.
There is a higher stage in which we are “full of
God,” become the Beautiful and Intelligence, in
which we leave all images, even the most glorious,
return into ourselves, and see God there by direct
vision, as the Second Person of the Trinity beholds
the First.
- To this subject Plotinus constantly recurs. It
was to him the crown and keystone of all knowledge
and all virtue, their perfection and their proof. If
the One is a mere hypothesis, everything becomes
uncertain. He must be in some sense knowable,
and He could be known only by being seen or felt.
We will translate or condense the more important
passages on this interesting topic.
First, as to the possibility of Vision (v. 3, 14).
“We can tell what He is not, but what He is we
 VISION 281

cannot tell, so that we are driven to describe Him.

by His operations. But there is no reason why we
should not have Him, even if we cannot describe
Him. ‘Those who are inspired (éyfovawvrec), those
who are possessed (kdroyot), know this much, that
within them they have something greater than them-
selves, even if they do not know what. From what
they feel, from what they speak, they have some
conception of that which moves them, as of something
different from themselves. So it is with us, when we
use the pure Intelligence.”
It is illustrated by the act of sight (v. 5, 7). We
see two things, the sensible form, and the light that
makes it visible. But we should not know that we
saw the light, unless we saw the form. So Intelligence
sees Being, by light given by the One. It must turn
away from all objects, and contemplate this lght.
But the analogy of the eye will carry us still farther.
For the eye has light in itself—that light which you
see when you squeeze your eyelids. The Intelligence
must concentrate itself on this inner light.
**We must go up then further to the Good (i. 6, 7)
for which every soul craves. Those who have seen
it know what I say, how beautiful it is. For it is
desirable as Good, and we yearn towards it. But
we attain to it by climbing up and turning towards it,
and stripping off the outer garments, that we put on
in our downward course. Those who go up to holy
shrines must cleanse themselves, and put off their old
vesture, and enter in naked, till having left behind all
that is alien to the god, with their pure selves they
282 NEOPLATONISM

see the pure deity, sincere, simple, clean, on whom

all things depend, towards whom all things look, and
in whom they are, and live, and think. For He is
the cause of Life and Intelligence and Being. If we
can but see Him, with what love shall we be filled,
with what desire, longing to be united with Him!
With what joy shall we exult!
‘‘ What, then, is the way? How shall one behold
that ineffable beauty which abides in the inmost
sanctuary, and comes not forth lest any profane eye
should see it? Courage !—let him that is able, press
into the holy place, leaving behind the sight of the
eyes, and not turning back to gaze upon the bodily
charms that once attracted him. For when we see
material loveliness we ought not to run after it, but
to know that it is an image, a trace, a shadow, and
flee to that which is the archetype.. For if one
hastens to embrace as true the fair image reflected
on the water, like Hylas, he sinks into the stream and
is seen no more. So he who sets his affection on
earthly beauty, and will not let it go, falls not with
body but with soul, into abysses dark and horrible
to the intelligence, where he is blind and abides in
Hades, and will dwell with the shadows that he
clung to here. Let us fly then to our dear father-
land; this is the exhortation of truth. But how fly,
and how mount up? Even as the master (Plato)
says, in a parable, that Odysseus flew from the witch
Circe or from Calypso, willing not to stay for any
visible delights or any sensual beauty. And our
fatherland is the place from which we came, and our
 VISION ~ 283

_ Father is yonder. But what is the vehicle, and what

is the track? ‘Thou needest not go afoot ; for feet
carry men hither and thither from land to land.
Nor shalt thou get thee’ ship or chariot. Leave all
this and look not back, but close thy eyes as it were,
and get thee a new sight. Wake up that vision
which all have, but few employ.
““ What, then, does the inner vision see? On first
waking it cannot clearly discern those bright objects.
Hence we must train the Soul by itself, first of all
to see beautiful habits, then beautiful works ; I do
not mean works of art, but the works of good men.
Then behold the soul of those that do beautiful
works.
‘“Now how art thou to see the beauty of a good
soul? Go to thyself and look, and if thou findest
that thou art not yet beautiful, as the sculptor of a
statue, that is to be beautiful, chips and files away,
making this smooth and that pure, till he brings out
a lovely face on his statue, so do thou chip off what
is superfluous, straighten what is crooked, cleanse
what is dark and make it bright, and cease not to
- labour at thy statue till the Divine radiance of virtue
shine forth, till thou behold self-control mounted
_ upon her holy pedestal. If thou hast become virtue,
and hast seen thyself, and walked chastely with thy-
self; if thou hast nothing that hinders thee from in
this way becoming one, naught foreign mingled with
thy inner self, but art wholly true light, not measured
by size, not limited by shape, nor yet swollen to
infinitude, but without dimensions of any kind, as
284 NEOPLATONISM

being greater than every measure and better than

aught that has quantity—if, I say, thou art this, and
seest thyself and art sight, be of good cheer, mount
up, for thou needest no guide, and look with all thy
might.”
Elsewhere (v. 5, 3), the vision is compared to a
royal procession.
“This nature (Intelligence) is God, a second God,
who shows Himself before we can behold the first.
The First sits above on Intelligence as on a glorious
throne, which depends on Him. For it was right that
He should be mounted, not on the soulless, nor
immediately on soul, but that there should be an
ineffable beauty to go before Him; as when some
great king appears in state, first come those of less
degree, then those who are greater and more
dignified, then his body-guard who have somewhat of
royalty in their show, then those who are honoured
next to himself. After all these the great king him-
self appears suddenly, and all pray and do obeisance;
all, that is, who have not gone away before, satisfied
with the glorious pageant that preceded the king.”
He is King of kings and Father of gods.
Those, to whom this vision is granted, despise even
thought (vi. 7, 35), which before they delighted in.
For thought is a kind of movement, but in the vision
is no movement. ‘One who had entered into a
palace rich and beautiful through its richness, would
gaze with wonder on all its varied treasures,’ like
Psyche in the palace of Cupid, “till he caught sight
of the Master of the House. But when he beholds
 VISION 285

Him who is far more lovely than any of His statues,

and worthy of the true contemplation, he forgets the
treasures and marks their lord alone. He looks and
cannot remove his eyes, till by the persistence of his
gaze he no longer sees an object, but blends his
sight with the thing seen, so that what was object
becomes sight, and he forgets all other spectacles.”
The Vision is not to be regarded as unfruitful. It
is contact (érag/) with the Divine, and in this union
the perfect soul ‘‘ begets ”-—like God Himself—beau-
tiful thoughts and beautiful virtues. ‘‘ All these things
the soul conceives when filled with Him” (vi. 9, 9).
It is a special grace, and being the self-manifestation
of the One, it can be given only by Him whom it
reveals. The way is prepared by moral purity, by
art and knowledge; but these things only lift us as it
were out of the depths of a mine on to the plane of
earth. The shining of the sun must come to us.
All we can do.is to fit ourselves for His coming, and
wait patiently for the dawn. We cannot force God;
we must be ‘“‘ quiet.” ‘He is within, yet not within.
We must not ask whence, for there is no whence.
For He never comes, and He never goes; but
appears, and does not appear. Wherefore we must
_ not pursue Him, but wait quietly till He show Him-
self, only we must make ourselves ready to behold,
as the eye awaits the dayspring. And He swims
above the horizon—from the ocean, as the poets say
—and gives Himself to our gaze”’ (v. 5, 8).
Several points may be noticed in this description of
the Vision.
 286 NEOPLATONISM

It is accompanied by a complete suspension of all

external consciousness; the soul does not know
whether it is in the body or not.
It comes suddenly. This is repeatedly emphasized.
We are never told distinctly how long it endures ; “as
long as the soul will or can” is the most definite
phrase employed. St. Theresa’s trances are said to
have lasted about half-an-hour.
It is rare. Plotinus tells us that he had “ often”
enjoyed it (iv. 8, 1). From Porphyry’s account it
would appear that he was entranced about once a
year, at any rate towards the end of his life. Por-
phyry himself had seen the vision but once.
It was not attended by any sense of fear. St.
John of the Cross passed through the direst anguish
of soul before he beheld ‘‘the essential truth nakedly
in itself.” But Plotinus always speaks of the revela-
tion as attended by joy unspeakable. ;
The Vision was not pictorial. It was the manifest-
ation of the Formless One, and could not therefore -
come in any shape however majestic. In this it
differs from the visions of the Old ‘Testament
Prophets, which often, as in the case of Isaiah and
Ezekiel, presented definite forms and scenes to the eye
of the soul. Some of the medieval mystics regarded
these definite and particular manifestations with great
suspicion as possible delusions of the Evil One,
They were aware that fasting and sleeplessness, with
which they were only too familiar, will produce
hallucinations, visits of the devil, or phantasms of
sensuous and enticing delights, and were wisely on
 VISION 287

their guard. The Neoplatonists of the Plotinian

group were ascetic ; but not at all in the same sense
as the: Christian monks. Their diet was spare, but
wholesome ; they were on friendly terms with the
physician, and took reasonable care of their bodily
health. They had little to fear from those airy fancies,
whether seductive or horrible, which are bred of
enfeebled nerves or a disordered stomach.
Lastly, no words were heard. ‘There was no voice
of the Lord saying, ‘‘Go, and tell this people.” The
revelation was not communicable. It was granted
to the individual soul for his own comfort and edifica-
tion. It is true that the seer became a witness. He
could say thenceforth, ‘I have seen and know,” and
his vision made him a holier man. In this indirect
sense, the manifestation of the spirit was given to
profit withal. To some extent this is true of all
prophecy. But on the Christian prophet revelation
laid a burden: “ Woe is me if I preach not the
Gospel.” Whereas the effect of the Neoplatonist
vision was to draw the seer from the world of action.
Preaching is just as contingent, just as unfree as any
other mode of dealing with ‘the external, and the
wise man will avoid it. Christian mystics may have
' fallen into the same error, but only by denying their
principles.
When Plotinus speaks of waiting for the revelation,
he perhaps does not mean, that the manis to sit with
eyes shut and hands folded. This of itself would be
pressing God. What he seems to inculcate is that
there should be absolutely no desire even for the all-
288 NEOPLATONISM

desirable. The believer must put himself absolutely —

into the hands of God. He is always meditating,
and suddenly, when he least expects it, the ‘palace-
doors will be opened, and the King will step forth.
It has been said that the Agnostic Deity is really
the same as the Platonist Matter or No Thing. And
is not this equally true of the One?
Plotinus emphatically denied this. Matter and the
One agreed in being formless, but in nothing else.
The formeris unreal, the latter is more real than all
reality ; the former is mere potentiality, the latter is
power; of the former we have but a vague, disquieting
sense as of something shapeless, horrible, lawless,
and evil; the presence of the latter brings with it
the sweetest rapture. If we cannot explain, we can
see it, touch it, feel it. We can know it in this sense
even better than other things, because it is our true
self, our inmost personality; we are in it. It is the
fullness of life. This also cannot be defined or
communicated. What is perfect health? ‘There is
nothing vague or indefinite about it, yet it does not
admit of description.
‘Revelation is the revelation of a Presence, of a
Personality ; and without denying the possibility of
revelation altogether, we can hardly say that the vision
of Plotinus is inconceivable.
But two questions force themselves upon us. Is
what he says here sane or not sane? And is it a
necessary part of his system?
The first is by no means easy to answer. Plotinus
shared, though only to a limited extent, the super-
 VISION 289

stition of his age. But his superstition, his belief in

demons and in magic, has nothing whatever to do
with his vision, In practice the two are wholly dis-
connected, and if there is any link between them it
can only be one of historical sequence, of more or
less remote causation.
His intellect was singularly acute and logical, and
he was, as Porphyry tells us, by no means an un-
practical man, so far as he chose to entangle himself
in matters of business. Yet he was a visionary.
There can be no doubt that the experiences he
describes are real. Nor are they unique. Nor do
they betoken an unhealthy mind or body. Not to
speak of St. Paul, who was as sane a man as ever
lived, we find the same singular phenomenon in so |
thoroughly modern a book as the /z Memoriam.
The great point is, that the trance of Plotinus was
in no way mechanical or self-induced. If this be a
fact, his vision stands in a different class from the
torpor produced by whirling movement or gazing on
a bright object, or any form of mesmerism. He
himself believed it to be a Divine manifestation. The
point may be left to the judgment of the reader. All
‘ that we will insist upon is, that Plotinus was by no
means a besotted fanatic.
But did the Vision belong to his system, or is ita
mere accretion whose roots are elsewhere? We may
say with confidence, that it springs not from his
philosophy, but from his religion. We have already
seen something of the history of the doctrine. It
rested upon facts. Philo found an instance of the
; T
290 NEOPLATONISM

‘divine intoxication” in the Hebrew prophets; Plu-

tarch in the Pythoness or the Corybantes. The
Pythagorean seized upon the idea as opening the>
only possible way in which the One could be known, ~
and the Egyptian Plotinus fixed it in the forefront of
his creed. 2
- But it was not really necessary. This indeed is
proved by the fact that Neoplatonism in all its essential
features exists in our own days as Idealism ; but with-
out this mystical element. ‘The modern disciple of
Plotinus insists that the supreme unity, the synthesis
of all antitheses, can be known in other ways.
But why then does Plotinus lay such stress on this
particular kind of knowledge? To this it may be
replied that he does not represent the Vision as an
indispensable condition of the spiritual life. A man
might dwell in the Divine Intelligence, where subject
and object are one, might enjoy happiness, practise
all virtues, and possess all knowledge, yet conceivably
he might in this life never enjoy the Beatific Vision.
Yet he held it up before man’s eyes as a hope that
all ought to cherish, and whether the Vision as he
conceived it be sane or not, there can be no doubt
that “‘this way madness lies.” In individual cases it
might be wholesome, but as a system it is necessarily
deadly. A host of unclean spirits—sloth, presump-
tion, self-delusion, imposture—come flocking in, and
the very foundations of intelligence and even morality
are destroyed.
The Christian Church also believes in.a Beatific
Vision, when the saints will see “ face to face,” when
 VISION 201

they will be like God, and ‘‘see Him as He is.” But

she keeps this hope against the Great Day, and while
steadily asserting, that some holy souls have been
privileged to see things unspeakable, she forbids her
_ children to think that in this life they can scale the
summit of all things. ~ Here we see in a glass darkly.
None knoweth the Father save the Son. For others
the vision is “in Christ,” not immediate; and even
this conditioned vision who can exhaust?
But the strength of the Church lay in her posses-
sion of a revelation, and one, and probably not the
least, among the motives of Plotinus was the cesire to
outbid her.
 XXII

PORPHYRY

THE successors of Plotinus differ from their great

master in many remarkable ways.
About Plotinus there is a high and fine enthusiasm,
a noble conception of the Divine, and a grand faith in
the possibilities of man. Man’s feet are in the mud,
but his head reaches up to the One. ~Hence it is
possible for him to attain to perfect communion with
the Fountain of Life. Later Neoplatonists took a
less sanguine view. An illimitable hierarchy of beings
extends from God to earth. Man may climb as high
as the angels, but not beyond.
Plotinus, like all his school, is tinged with scholasti-
cism, a commentator on sacred texts. But his method
is singularly free. He follows the spirit, not the letter,
and borrows nothing that he does not transform.
Imagination in him is more than logic; his results are
consistent and original. His followers become more
and more eclectic and pedantic. ‘They pride them-
selves on making Aristotle and Plato agree, even in
their theory of Being, where they are poles asunder.
Plotinus holds fast to the conception of immateri-_
 PORPHYRY i 293

ality with the intuition of true genius. Those who

came after could not grasp this fine idea. It slips
from their hands, as Eurydice from the embrace of
Orpheus. The Plotinian Trinity begins at once to
materialize and break up.
In Plotinus philosophy almost takes wing, and
breaks loose to form a religion by itself. He left
behind him a compact system of Idealism, and a lofty
spiritual mysticism. Yet in the background of his
thought lay the whole of polytheism, with all its hate-
ful magic linked on to his philosophy by the doctrine
of the sympathy of nature. He himself was a man of
serene and fearless intelligence, who dwelt content in
the realm of Ideas, a servant of the highest God, to
whom the demons did homage. He could put them
out of his mind; their hideous forms and noxious arts
could do him no harm. For him the upward path
seems to lie past the gates of hell, along a secure and
_ happy track, where the spirits of evil have little or no
power to molest the pilgrim.
But he left all the horrors of Graeco-Oriental super-
stition intact. He even strengthened their hold upon
the imagination by supplying them with a sort of
scientific basis. To minds of weaker mould these
phantoms of the pit, the grotesque and ghastly creations
of Egyptian and Syrian demonology, seemed the nearest
and most pressing facts of the spiritual life. To them
the way appeared to lead almost to its summit right
through hell itself ; and the most precious of all know-
ledge was that which explained the names of devils
and angels, how to distinguish one from the other, by
 294 NEOPLATONISM

what amulets or charms to purchase the aid of the

ministers of light, and outwit the cunning of the foul
fiend.
The most important of the immediate disciples of
Plotinus was Porphyry. He was a Tyrian, though born
perhaps in Batanea. His real name was Malchus,
_“ King,” which was turned into Greek by Amelius as
Basileus, by Longinus as Porphyrius, “ purple-clad.”
He was born probably in 232 ; studied at Athens under
Longinus, famous as a critic, still more famous as the
minister of Zenobia; went to Rome in 262 and attached
himself to Plotinus. In 268 he retired to Sicily to get
rid of a fit of hypochondria, which had plunged him
into such depression,.that he even contemplated
suicide. From Sicily he visited Carthage, where, he
tells us, he had a tame partridge that could all but
talk. The rest of his life was spent in Rome. Late
in life he married Marcella, a poor widow with many
children. The union appears to have been purely
formal, and was probably contracted to enable him to
confer benefits without scandal. At Rome he died,
late in Diocletian’s reign, at an age somewhat above
sixty-eight. 7
From Longinus, whom Eunapius calls “a living
library and walking museum,” he acquired his learn-
ing and his style, which is clear, elegant, and long-
winded. He stood to Plotinus in the same relation as
Dumontto Bentham ; “‘ for Plotinus, by reason of his
heavenly-mindedness, and his twisty, enigmatic mode
of expression, was thought to be laborious and hard.
But Porphyry, ike a Hermaic chain let down to man,

iSES
S
f “s
-J-
 PORPHYRY 295

by his many sided culture made everything clear and

straightforward.”
“The most learned of philosophers,” St. Augustine
calls him, and this is the general estimate. His Jz¢vo-
duction to the Categories of Aristotle, still extant,
- formed the basis of all treatises on formal logic through
the middle ages to recent times. He wrote also on
philosophy and the history of philosophy, grammar,
rhetoric, mathematics, and religion. The most famous
of his works was that Agaznst the Christians, in fifteen
books, in which he criticized the Scriptures from a
rationalistic point of view, and maintained that the
Book of Daniel was not written till the time of
Antiochus Epiphanes. We possess the Sentences
(aoppai), an abstract of Neoplatonism, of which
a full analysis will be found in Vacherot, a Life
of Pythagoras, a Letter to his wife Marcella, four
books on Adstinence from Flesh, two little mytho-
logical treatises on Zhe Styx and the Grotto of the
Vymphs, and some considerable fragments of other
treatises.
Philosophically he did not differ greatly from his
master. He appears to have followed Amelius in
dividing the Divine Intelligence into three terms,
Being, Thought, and Life, and in regarding different
classes of entities as proceeding from each. What he
taught precisely is not clear, but he paved the way for
the Syrian and Athenian schools. Zeller says that he
denied the independence of matter and derived all
from the One, but the passages quoted do not bear
this out. He believed in transmigration, but, like
296 NEOPLATONISM

Tamblichus, did not allow that the soul of man could

pass into the body of a, brute.
The teaching is nearly the same, but the accent is
shifted. The sense of moral evil is more oppressive.
The way up is longer and more difficult. Plotinus
held, that in its descent the soul puts on an ethereal
body in heaven, the region of the fixed stars. Those
who have lived a good moral life on earth, rise after
death as far as the sun, but not higher, until after
successive incarnations they have attained to perfect
detachment. Thus all resurrections, till the last, were
resurrections of a body. Porphyry went a step further,
and held that the body was never wholly put off, that
a corporeal envelope of finer or grosser texture
(vetpa) was essential to the permanence of a human
soul. Moreover, the soul starts on its downward
course from the fixed stars, and puts on its garments
in the lower world of the planets. In this odd way
everything was put a step lower, and the flesh becomes
a permanent burden. It became necessary to add
another round to the ladder of virtue. Of this
Porphyry says there are four degrees, the political, the
purificatory, the theoretic, and the paradeigmatic. Of
these the third and the last correspond to the Divine
Soul and Intelligence, and le beyond the horizon of
this life. It followed from all this that man cannot
attain to perfect wisdom in this present life; his
defects must be made good by the grace of God in
the life to come.
In this deeper sense of sin, this view of the body,
this postponement of the Beatific Vision, we may
 PORPHYRY 297

trace a certain approximation to Christian teaching.

Socrates tells us that Porphyry had been a Christian.
In his younger days he himself tells us, that he had
met Origen, and he certainly knew the Bible. There
were renegades, like Ammonius Saccas. But it is
generally thought doubtful that Porphyry was one.
His acquaintance with the Scriptures proves little.
‘None know them so well, as those who read to
confute them.
He was a man of sombre, melancholy mood, and
he was a fanatic. The austerest puritan would stand
aghast at the severity of Porphyry’s morality. His
treatise on Abstinence is directed not to men of the
world—they are past praying for—but to philosophers.
Some of his fellow-disciples, Castricius Firmus in
particular, had returned after the death of Plotinus
to a laxer mode of life, and allowed themselves to eat
meat. Porphyry girds up his loins to deal faithfully
with them. All pleasure is abominable. Horse-
racing, the theatre, dancing, marriage, and mutton-
chops are equally accursed. Those who indulge in
these things are the servants of devils, not of God.
But what was the reason for his horror of flesh
food? Not transmigration. He did not regard it as
cannibalism ; this ground failed him; but he could
allege “fa most physical reason,” which had been
imparted to him by an Egyptian priest. The soul
of the murdered lingers near the corpse from which
it has been unjustly severed, and seeks to regain
possession of it. This we know from the arts of the
necromancer, from tales of ghosts, and from the fact
298 NEOPLATONISM

that the gift of augury may be acquired by eating the

heart of a crow, a hawk, or a mole. Hence it is
clear that the soul of the murdered sheep will enter
into him who unlawfully assimilates its mutton.
Here we seem to trace the influence of the Clemen- ~
tine Homilies, or some writing of the same school.
The most singular thing about him is, that he was
a man of most sceptical mind, and saw the difficulties
of polytheism quite as clearly as those of Christianity.
His Letter to Anebos brings out all the contradictions,
absurdities, immoralities of paganism with the keenest
and cruellest candour. Yet he definitely cast in his
lot with the untenable side.
His sentiments are admirable. He was a deeply
religious man,of high, pure, and tender, if exagger-
ated, morality. A long list of fine sayings may be
extracted from his writings. ‘‘God asks not sacrifice —
nor long prayers, but a pious life. He looks not on
the lips, but on the life.” ‘‘ True religion is to know
God, and to imitate Him.” ‘The true temple is the
soul of the wise; the wise man is the true priest.”
“One ought to offer sacrifice with a clean heart, not
with costly gifts.” He quotes the famous Epidaurian
inscription : “‘ He that would enter the fragrant shrine
must be holy, and holiness is to think holy thoughts,”
Of the angels, to whom he gave a place in his hier-
archy, he taught ‘that they should be imitated rather
than invoked.”
He was far from orthodox in his general principles.
The established cults were, in his view, all wrong.
What the ordinary man seeks by oracles, prayers,
 PORPHYRY 299

sacrifices is nothing but the goods of the flesh,

health, wealth, or the gratification of lust. Over
these things the devils have power. Those who
seek such blessings may worship the devils, and use
the magic to which they respond. The sage has
renounced all pleasure, and gives himself up to the
contemplation of the ideal God.
Then surely he is safe? Not at all. The Demons
bar his way to God. Hence Apollo once told the
prophet, that, before his prayers could be heard,he
must “pay ransom to. the Evil One.”
They crowd even the temples. Hence the Egyp-
tians and Phcenicians, before they begin their worship,
break symbolic fetters, sacrifice certain animals, and
beat the air with branches of trees to expel the wicked
spirits. _Otherwise the God cannot appear.
They have power by magic even over the elect.
Sosipatra, a Platonist saint, was bewitched by a love
philtre administered to her by Philometor. ‘The vile
lust could not be driven out.till Maximus summoned
a more potent Demon to her aid.
Lastly, they have wonderful powers of deceit. Bad
spirits can change their shape, and appearas angels.
Thus they have misled individuals, states, and even
philosophers.
Porphyry is the most devout believer in Hecate
and her hell-dogs, in jinns, hobgoblins, spectres, amu-
lets, spells, and can give most philosophical reasons
for the most ridiculous superstitions. Everything
that the Christian alleged against Polytheism he
admits in the coolest way. It was true that the
300 NEOPLATONISM

Greek sacrificed to devils, not to God. It was true

that the demons were corporeal, mortal, mostly male-
ficent. It was true that they were deceivers, and that
philosophy was no safeguard. It was true that they
demanded and received human sacrifice. He tells
us that human blood was regularly poured upon the
altars in his time in Arcadia and at Carthage, and that
even at Rome Jupiter Latiaris was annually sprinkled
with the blood of a gladiator.
What are we to say of this man, who found the New
Testament incredible, and took the Arabian Nights
as gospel? There is probably no one like him in the
whole history of literature. All the Neoplatonists
were two men, but no man that ever lived was at
once so sane and so insane as Porphyry.
He shows us the extraordinary violence of the
recoil against Christianity. ‘These men hated the
Church, and would believe anything rather than what
it taught them. Yet what they hated was obviously
neither its moral austerity nor its metaphysics. There
remains only the doctrine of a suffering Christ, and
all that this involves, the meekness, the toleration of
ignorance, the discipline of service (see de Civitate
Pe EX, 8.4.28),
St. Augustine makes two observations that are
worthy of notice. The Hellenism for which Porphyry
fought was not Hellenism at all. It was as novel as
Christianity. ‘Thou didst learn these things,” says
the saint, “not from Plato, but from thy Chaldzan
masters.” |
Again, the curious arts of the Chaldeans were all
 PORPHYRY 301

against the law, and Porphyry himself knew this.

Human sacrifices and all noxious magic rites were
capital crimes ; those found guilty of them were to be
crucified or thrown to the beasts. Even the posses-
sion of magical books was fatal. ‘ Libros magicae
artis apud se neminem habere licet; et penes quos-
cumque reperti sint, ambustis his publice bonisque
ademtis, honestiores in insulam deportantur, humi-
liores capite puniuntur. Nec enim tantum huius
artis professio, sed etiam scientia prohibita est.”
Emperors themselves dabbled in the black art, and
the law was not always strictly enforced. But nothing
could be plainer or more severe than the language of
the Roman code.
 XXIII

IAMBLICHUS AND THE MEN OF JULIAN

IAMBLICHUS was the founder of what is commonly

known as the Syrian school of Neoplatonism. It is
not specially Syrian in a geographical sense, but. it
is marked by a fresh and stronger inrush of Syrian ©
theology with its grosser conceptions, its wild and
nonsensical trick of playing with numbers, and its
craving for the baser forms of the supernatural. So
far as it has any affinity with Greek thought, it may
be called a Pythagoreanism run mad. But its true
relations are to be sought rather in the lower forms
of Gnosticism. During the predominance of this
school Platonism becomes a mere adjunct, a mere
excuse for theosophy.
Iamblichus belonged to a wealthy family of Chalcis
in Coelesyria. He was a pupil of Anatolius, and after-
wards of Porphyry. Later he lectured in his native
town. The dates of his birth and death are not
accurately known. He was alive in the reign of
Constantine, but did not survive that emperor. His —
death may be placed about 330.
 IAMBLICHUS AND THE MEN OF JULIAN 303

Like the Schoolmen, the great Neoplatonist doctors’

had their special names of honour. ‘That of
Iamblichus is ‘‘the Divine.” Julian calls him “ the
famous hero,” and in the spurious letters of Julian he
is spoken of as “the precious treasure of all Greeks,”
‘the saviour of Hellenism,” “the benefactor of the
whole world.” ‘This wonder and adoration—for hero
means little less than God—he owed not to his in-
tellectual ability, but to his fame for miracles, From
this time forth knowledge was regarded as of little
value, except in so far as it issued in supernatural
powers. When the gulf was opening beneath its feet,
miracles were the last arbitrament to which Paganism
appealed.
“Why, O why,” said his disciples to him on one
occasion, ‘‘dost thou grudge us the more perfect
wisdom?” ‘They had been told that, when Iamblichus
said his prayers, he was lifted to a height of ten cubits
from the ground. This “ more perfect wisdom,” far
more precious than dull mathematics or hazy Ideas,
came from the Brahmins to Apollonius, from him to —
Iamblichus, and from him to our modern mediums.
“Levitation” is one of its favourite manifestations.
Iamblichus modestly disclaimed the grace, but his
biographer Eunapius clearly means us to believe. At
Gadara were two basins of warm water known as Eros
and Anteros, Love and Love-for-Love. Iamblichus
dipped his fingers in the pools, whispered some magic
words, and straightway two charming little Cupids
were seen kissing and embracing each other, as they
played over the surface. An Egyptian called up
 304 NEOPLATONISM

Apollo by his spells. A stern and savage figure

appeared. “It is the soul,” said Iamblichus, ‘‘of a
gladiator, not the God.”
Iamblichus renounced as futile the great task of
the later Greek philosophy. How God created the
world we cannot know. Itis enough to believe that
He is the cause of All, and that to Him nothing is
impossible. But if in this he cherished a wholesome
scepticism, in another he threw open the floodgates
_wide. Pythagoras, he says, rightly taught that we are .
not to disbelieve anything miraculous about the Gods
or the divine dogmas. ‘The Gods can do all things,
and we are not to measure them by the limited
power and intelligence that they have given to
mankind (Protrepticus, xxi.). Hence we require a
“science” that will teach us to disbelieve nothing
about the Gods. ‘‘Be not faithless,’ is the same
as saying, ‘‘Come and learn what will abolish thy
unbelief.” :
It is possible to recognize here a certain approxima-
tion to the language, and even the ideas, of the Church.
‘The object of Iamblichus is not being or thought, but
God, and knowledge is merely a preparation for
worship. God is Miracle. Heis more than we are,
and what He does we cannot understand, because we
are not gods, and cannot do it ourselves. We know Him
partly from ourselves, so far as our nature reflects His,
partly from history and revelation. These two kinds
of knowledge, inasmuch as both flow from the same
source and have a common meeting-place, will har-
monize with and supplement each other, but faith in

a
 IAMBLICHUS AND THE MEN OF JULIAN 305

‘the larger personality from which both proceed will be

above either.
Unfortunately history and revelation, as Iamblichus
knew them, were composed of all the fables of all the
mythologies ; his philosophy was not so much Platon-
ism as Pythagoreanism, which explains everything by
sacred numbers, and the “science” which was to
cure disbelief was magic.
What Plato and Plotinus were concerned for was
the inner essence of Paganism, the joyous, intellectual,
thoroughly human life of Hellenism, the religion of
poets, artists, legislators, thinkers, of the natural man
at his best. ‘To this Plotinus gave almost perfect
expression. But life is not all intellectual and joyous,
and his work fell to ruins like a house built upon
the sand. What Iamblichus had next his heart was
Hellenism as a practical system. ‘Those sweepings
of idolatry, which Plato cast aside as vile falsehoods
against the Highest, became to him necessaries of life,
because in them too there was a truth. Such as they
were, in their own villainous shapes, they conveyed
all that the Greek knew of in the way of personal
religious experience. Hence they could not be given
up, nor could they be shoved into the background.
Such a change in the attitude towards religion was
necessarily attended by a change equally great in the
philosophic basis. It is difficult to grasp or expound
the teaching of Iamblichus, partly because of its
inherent confusion, partly because it has to be pieced
together out of quotations made by other writers. In
its main features it was reproduced and brought into
U
306 NEOPLATONISM

order by the keener intelligence of Proclus, and as

the Audiments of Proclus are extant and easily acces-
sible in Didot’s edition,:we may defer what must be said
on the subject, till we come to the school of Athens. For
the present it will suffice to state, that Iamblichus puts
philosophy entirely on one side, and sets the Gods in
place of the Ideas. The philosophy is allowed to
remain as a mental exercise, but all life, thought, and
being are made to flow through the Gods, that is,
through Zeus, Apollo, and the rest. Somehow the
Ideas create the Gods, but it is with the Gods alone
that we are really concerned. Now as the Gods were
innumerable, Iamblichus wanted also innumerable
ideas to account for them, and this he accomplished
by splitting up the indivisible intelligence of Plotinus
into three. Thinking, Thought, and the Thinker
became three separate beings. Each of these begets
another Triad, and so ad infinitum, and by the side of
the Triads there is a Hebdomad. Thus he expanded
the series of the over-worldly Gods. The inworldly
Gods comprised Gods proper, Angels, Demons, and
Heroes. The 12 Olympian Gods give birth to 36
other orders, these to 72 others, these again to 360
others. Besides these we have 21 world-rulers (coopo-
kpatopec), and 42 ordersof Nature Gods. Itis obvious —
what he is doing. He is dealing with the seven
planets, the twelve signs of the zodiac, the 365
days of the year, not with laws of thought, except in so
far as the triplet may have sqme basis in Psychology.
In his morality he hardens the pessimistic tendency
of Porphyry. The outlook under Constantine was
 IAMBLICHUS AND THE MEN OF JULIAN 307

hopeless. Persecution roused the Christian to ardour,

and fired all his thoughts with the belief in the near-
ness of the End, and the coming of his Lord in
triumph. But it took all heart out of the Pagan.
Amid the dismal apprehensions of the time, the soul
sinks further and further away from God. Jamblichus
adds yet another round to the ladder of virtue. Above
the four degrees of Porphyry he sets a fifth, the
theurgic, hieratic, or priestly virtues. The soul is never
without a body; it is definitely separated from the
Divine Intelligence ; the sense-powers are part of it;
and it can never rise above the angels. Here on earth
it dwells among foes, and in its utter helplessness it
must look for salvation not to the Divine goodness
or love, but to the constant interposition of Divine
power. And this power must be invoked in God’s
own way, an inscrutable way, by the use of those
sacramental means which He has ordained. In other |
words, by magic.
Here comes in by way of commentary the de
Mysterits, which, though not written by Iamblichus
himself, represents the inner life of his school. It
presents itself as a reply to Porphyry’s sceptical Letter
to Anebos, and professes to be the work of Abammon,
the master of Anebos. It uses all the fine old
language about the Gods; this the reader will kindly
take for granted. But to what does it all amount?
What was it that Julian really wanted to set up again
in place of Christianity?
It was not knowledge, but revelation. All Greek
wisdom is derived from the East. Plato and Pytha-
 308 NEOPLATONISM
2

goras were mere interpreters, imperfect interpreters,

of lessons learned in Egyptian temples. All religion
comes from Osiris or Bel, all philosophy from Hermes
Trismegistus. The author complains of the restless
neologism of the Greeks, and appeals from the babel
of the schools to the ‘‘ faith once delivered” in Thebes
and Nineveh. ;
The old proverb, ‘‘ Know thyself,” the watchword
of the Socratic schools, means no longer ‘‘ Know thy
divine nature,’’ but ‘‘ Know thy weakness and need of
help.” And help can be vouchsafed only by means of
apparitions.
But apparitions were dangerous things. Scarcely
any man can distinguish the God that helps, from the
Demon that destroys. It is therefore of vital im-
portance to learn the rudiments of this saving lore, as
_ handed down not by irresponsible individuals, but by
learned and holy priests. A God always wears the
same shape, and is always friendly. Demons are
changeable—sometimes big, sometimes little, some-
times hideous, yet lovely when they choose. Angels
are neither so changeable as demons nor so constant
as Gods, but are’sweeter and less awful than Arch-
angels. Of Archons, those who rule the elements
are more comely than the ugly sprites who preside
over shapeless matter. Before the appearance of a
Demon there is seen alurid, smoky flame ; good spirits
are heralded by variously coloured glows of light.
Some Demons are attended by fierce beasts. Demons
do harm, or minister to sensual gratification ; Angels
give virtue and wisdom; Archangels perseverance,
 IAMBLICHUS AND THE MEN OF JULIAN 309

spiritual strength, and the power of vision; the Gods

alone impart love and joy.
Their coming may be invited, aaa not com-
pelled, by use of the prescribed means, magic songs
and potions, sacred characters written, perhaps with
phosphorus, on a wall, by a glass of water, by a
table, a staff, certain kinds of wood, stone, or grain,
lastly. by prayer.
And what was the prayer? Sometimes it was a
threat. If the God lingered, the priest might menace
him with consequences: “If thou dost not what I
ask, I will unseal the stars, reveal the secrets of Isis,
and give up the limbs of Osiris to Typhon.” But in
all cases the prayer was not an outpouring of soul
to the Father, but the utterance of certain formulas.
The words were a mere jargon, which had no reference
to anything in particular, which had indeed no sense at
all, yet brought an answer, God only knew why. When
fEdesius was in perplexity he had recourse to ‘‘ that
prayer in which he had most confidence.” Which
particular abracadabra this was Eunapius does not
inform us, but we have samples of these amazing
liturgies. They consisted mainly of strings of bar-
baric names. Honest Greek was no good. One
ran. Meu, Threu, Mor, Phor, Teux, Za, Zon, The,
Lou, Ge, Ze. The famous ‘‘Ephesian letters ” were
Aski, Kataski, Aix (or Lix), Tetrax, Damnameneus,
Aision. Sabaoth, Adonai, Cherubim, Seraphim,
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob furnished another equally
potent and more intelligible invocation.
It is not easy to guess whether such ill-sounding
“310 NEOPLATONISM

vocables as Meu and Threu are real names of

demons, or mere hocus pocus, but these Neoplatonist
prayers shed some light on what our Lord meant,
when He warned His disciples against “ vain repeti-
tions.” It will be observed, that though the Hellenists
borrowed from the Old Testamert, no one appears
to have followed the example of the seven sons of
Sceva. They spared the Crucified One this insult.
‘““A Christian old woman,” says St. Augustine,
‘is wiser than these philosophers.”
Such was the faith of the men by whom Julian
was led captive, and on whose advice he relied,
wholly in religious, and largely in political affairs.
They are hardly to be called men, so utterly is the
element of virility absent from their Eastern com-
position: It is curious to note, that in the fourth
century the rhetor and the philosopher seem to
have exchanged characters. In the second century
the rhetor was the woman, in the fourth he is the
man. Libanius, who was a /:¢¢évafeur and orator, and —
sat loose to philosophy, has more common-sense, force,
and intelligence, than any other among the heroes
of Eunapius. Indeed, if we compare the men of
the time, Athanasius with Iamblichus, Basil and the
two Gregories with Aedesius, Chrysanthius, Maximus,
it is easy to see how hopeless was the voyage on
which Julian embarked:
Maximus deserves special notice. He was the
chief agent in the perversion of Julian, and he owed
his success to magic of the most dubious kind. His
brethren confined themselves mainly to telepathy
 IAMBLICHUS AND THE MEN OF JULIAN at

and thought-reading, but he could do things which

the more sober regarded askance, as trenching upon
the domain of Goetia or the black art. Etisebius gave
Julian an ambiguous warning against him, perhaps
only intended to whet the prince’s curiosity.. Chrysan-
thius, he said, was the real teacher ; Maximus had com-
merce with hylic powers, who drive men to madness.
Julian of course pressed for an explanation, and was
then told how by burning a few grains of frank-
incense and repeating a hymn, Maximus had made
the statue of Hecate first smile, then laugh outright.
“When we were alarmed at the sight,” continued
the ingénuous narrator, ‘‘he cried, ‘Do not be
frightened ; in a moment the torches in the hands
of the goddess will light up.’ And quicker than the
word there they were, all aflame. But I think
nothing of these things; no more should you; the
great thing is purification by the word.” Julian
replied, ‘Farewell, and stick to your books (your
books of magic); you have shown me the man I
wanted.” He kissed Chrysanthius, and flew off to
Ephesus, where Maximus was.
When Julian became Emperor, he sent for Chry-
santhius and Maximus. Chrysanthius refused the
invitation, but Maximus hastened to court on the
wings of desire, undeterred by the evil omens that
met him on the road. His conduct was marked by
pride, corruption, and greed. “He retained his
influence throughout the reign of Jovian, but under
Valentinian and Valens fell into disgrace, was im-
prisoned, and treated with such severity that he
312 NEOPLATONISM

resolved upon suicide. His wife brought him poison,

drank first to give him courage, and fell dead at his
feet. But at this supreme moment his heart failed
him, and he would not drink. He was released from
prison, tried to get a living as a sophist, and failed;
and finally made his way back to Constantinople,
where his reputation as a wizard once more brought
him money and success. But, towards the end of
the reign of Valens, he suffered himself to overstep
the narrow line, that parted theurgy from _ high
treason. At a séance, held in a private house, the
fatal question was propounded, who should be the
next Emperor. A metal bowl, bearing within its rim
the letters of the alphabet, was placed upon a table.
Over it leaned the hierophant, holding between his.
fingers a ring suspended from a “ Carpathian”
thread. The ring vibrated within the bowl, and
touched one letter after another. It spelled out
THEO and stopped. The thing leaked out. It
was undoubtedly a case of “inquiring against the
life of the Emperor,” and all concerned in it were
put to death. Maximus had not been present, but
he had heard and not reported the secret, and he
perished with the others.
He deserves, as we said, special notice for two
reasons. It is often urged that these men were not
idolaters. They said that they were not; indeed no
human being ever allowed that he was. But they
one and all believed that the god or the demon
dwelt in the image and animated it. The statue of
Hecate could laugh, if it was nghtly approached.

9
eB)
iho
 IAMBLICHUS AND THE MEN OF JULIAN Phe

But there is a still graver question that meets us

here. Was Maximus honest, or was he a rogue?
The same doubt attaches to Eusebius, and indeed to
the whole tribe that hung about Julian. When
édesius displayed an oracle printed on his hand,
was not this some kind of trickery?
At any rate the Syrian school has no living interest,
either religious or scientific. They were not merely
dissenters, but political dissenters. The same worldly
ambitions, that degraded the Church during the
bitter Arian controversy, acted upon the Pagans with
ten times greater virulence. Intelligence and sanctity
fly out of the window when party strife comes in at
the door. The school of Athens had accepted its
defeat, renounced the world, and settled down to
peaceful industry.
Philosophy was never persecuted except by Julian,
for the decrees, by which the Apostate in effect drove
the Christians out of public schools, were blows at
learning. Heathenism and magic were treated
harshly enough, though, in the case of the latter,
nothing was really done that went beyond the
positive enactments of the old Roman law. Shortly
before his death Constantine prohibited all sacrifices,
and Constantius went further still, ordering all
heathen worship to cease, and all temples to be closed
under penalty of death and confiscation. These
decrees, however, were not enforced with absolute
uniformity. The ancient cult was still tolerated at
Rome, at Alexandria, and to some extent at Athens,
‘and probably elsewhere. In the year 368, five years
314 NEOPLATONISM

after Julian’s death, the word ‘ Paganism” first

occurs in a law of Valentinian. By this time the
towns were mainly Christian, and the old creed was
driven back into the “ pagi,” or country districts.
About the same time Gratian refused to wear the
ornaments belonging to the Pontifex Maximus, but
still retained the title. He was the last Emperor that
stamped it on his coins. He it was, who removed
from the senate house in Rome the statue and altar
of Victory. The reign of Theodosius is marked by
two notable events. In 391 the famous Serapeum
at Alexandria was razed, and the sacred places of
Hellenism delivered over to the black-robed monks,
“‘menin shape,” says Eunapius, “but their life is
that of swine.” In 394 the senate of Rome; the
very stronghold of idolatry, was formally converted,
and “cast the skin of the old serpent.” These
events were attended by new and more stringent
decrees. In 415 Hypatia was murdered at Alex-
andria; and in 423 Theodosius the younger informs
the world in an edict that Paganism is extinct. That
this was not strictly accurate is evident from the facts,
that Proclus made no disguise of his religious
practices, that St. Augustine and Orosius wrote
against those who regarded the invasion of the bar-
barians as a judgment on the national apostasy, and
that Justinian was compelled to tolerate Damascius
and his friends. From the time of Constantius to
that of Theodosius the pagans appear to have enjoyed
a precarious toleration, enforced by the external
troubles of the empire. But, even under the sharpest
 IAMBLICHUS AND THE MEN OF JULIAN 315

edicts, few if any appear to have lost their lives for

their religious opinions. Known adherents of the old
gods held high positions in the state, there was no
restriction on their use of the pen, and they retained
a practical monopoly of the schools.
Magic was a very different thing, and unfortunately
it was the Siamese twin of heathenism. It was, as we
have seen, condemned under penalty of death by the
Roman law, which entirely ignored the nice distinction
between Goetia and Theurgy, the black and the white
arts. Themis sometimes slumbered. There were
many magical books in Ephesus in St. Paul’s time.
But the penalties might be enforced. Our Lord was
called a Goes, and it is probable that many Christians
were put to death on this charge. When a Christian
mounted the throne, the old Jewish law against
witchcraft came in to sharpen the severity of Roman
jurisprudence. Eunapius tells us, that under Con-
stantine Atdesius was obliged to dissemble his
miraculous powers. Under Constantius there was a
bitter prosecution, which issued in the imprisonment
and torture of a number of persons, though no one
appears to have actually lost his life. “Ammianus
complains that no one could wear an amulet round
his neck to keep off the ague, or walk through a
cemetery by night, without jeopardizing his life as
a magician or necromancer. No sensible man, he
adds, would deny that witchcraft deserved punish-
ment, but severe penalties ought not to be enforced
except in the case of offences against the life of the
sovereign. This in fact had been the usual practice.’
3.16 NEOPLATONISM

We have seen what was the fate of Maximus under

Valens, but the danger was not confined to heathen-
philosophers. In 374 St. John Chrysostom nearly —
lost his life through fishing a book of magic out of the
Orontes. Finally, in 394 Theodosius forbade magic
of all kinds under pain of “ maiestas, etiamsi nihil
contra salutem principum aut de salute quaesierit.”
Yet even this did not prevent Proclus from enjoying
a harmless reputation as a medicine man, and
cabalistic books continued to find purchasers and
students.
Upon the whole Paganism was not cruelly treated,
and died almost a natural death. There was never
any Inquisition. The adherents of Jupiter were
never calied upon to blaspheme their God. The
Edicts did not extend beyond the prohibition of
public observances, and were little more than d7ufa
fulmina. VDeplorable excesses, like the assassination
of Hypatia, were rare, and were the work of popular
fanaticism. As for magic, it suffered under the old
heathen statutes, and if Christians ought not to have
believed in witchcraft, at any rate they could find
ample justification for their conduct in the writings of
the enlightened Porphyry.
 XXIV

THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS

PRocLus was born in Constantinople on February

S412, if the calculation from his horoscope is
correct ; but possibly in 410, in the reign of Theo-
dosius II.; three years before the murder of Hypatia,
and twenty-one years after the demolition of the Sera-
peum. Tis father, Patricius, and mother, Marcella,
were Lycians, and not long after his birth returned
to Xanthus in that country. Like many of the
famous Platonic teachers, he was wealthy, and he
possessed, what in this flesh-hating but esthetic school
_ was regarded as one of the chief qualifications of a
teacher, striking personal beauty. Nor was he devoid
of a pardonable vanity.. Marinus had seen numerous
portraits of him.
While yet but a boy he was sent to Alexandria,
where he studied under Leonas, a rhetorician, and
Orion, a grammarian and priest. He learnt Latin
also with a view to the law, his father’s profession.
But while on a brief visit to Constantinople, the god-
dess of the city appeared to him in a dream, and
called him to philosophy. On his return to Alex-
 318 NEOPLATONISM

andria he read Aristotle with the Peripatetic Olympio-

dorus, and mathematics with Heron, “a religious
man.”
Hence he passed at the age of nineteen to Athens,
where the gods were still worshipped, and the most
famous teachers of the day were to be found. Two
incidents were related in after times as ominous of
his future eminence. When he landed from his ship,
he sat down for a moment’s rest in the shrine of
Socrates, not knowing where he was, and the first
water he drank on Attic soil was drawn from the
sacred well. Shortly after his arrival he went up to
the Acropolis. It was late in the day, and the porter,
who was just barring the gates, greeted him with the
words, ‘‘ Unless you had come, I should have shut
up.” |
He arrived in Athens just in time to hear Plutarch,
who died two years afterwards. Under Syrianus he
read seven years, sharpening his intelligence with the
study of Aristotle and Plato, and drugging it with the
Oracles, the Orphic Verses, and Chaldzean books.
. But the teacher who left the deepest mark upon his
character was Asclepigeneia, the daughter of Plutarch,
from whom he acquired the whole art and practice of
theurgy. On the death of Syrianus, about 438, he
became head of the school, Diadochus or successor,
and about the same time, at the age of twenty-eight, he
published his Commentary on the Timcaus, which he
himself regarded as his masterpiece. At Athens he
remained till his death, though once he was obliged.
to fly, probably on account of his religious opinions.
 THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS 319

and remained for some time in shelter in his Lycian

home.
He is described as a man of singular amiability and
attractiveness. He remained unmarried, but took the
liveliest interest in the welfare of his friends, their wives
and children. His friendship with Archiadas was
thought worthy of comparison with that of Damon
and Phintias. Though a most laborious student, he
took an active part in municipal affairs. He was
a severe and diligent teacher, not sparing of rebuke,
flashing out at times into anger, yet placable, watching
the morals and progress of his pupils with a friendly
but exacting eye. In his personal habits he was
ascetic to an extreme degree, yet he would taste meat,
if pressed to do so at a banquet, for courtesy’s sake.
Every day, Marinus tells us, he delivered five lectures
or more, and wrote 700 lines. The afternoons were
generally spent in conversing on philosophic subjects
as he took his exercise, and in the evenings he held a
sort of conversazione. With all these occupations he
managed to combine an unremitting round of religious
observances. ‘Three times a day—at dawn, at mid-
day, and at evening—he worshipped the sun. <A
great part of every night was spent in singing hymns,
sacrifice, and prayers, especially for sick friends.
Every month he went down to the sea to perform his
lustrations. He observed all the feasts and fasts of
the Egyptian calendar, and many others, and once .
every year he held a solemn office for the repose of
the dead.
For such a life at that time no small courage was
 320 NEOPLATONISM

wanted. But Proclus did not lack resolution. When |

ke paid his freshman’s call upon Syrianus, it was the
evening of the new moon, and the old professor dis-
missed him rather curtly, being anxious to get to his
devotions as soon as possible, and not knowing what —
“manner of man he had to deal with. But happening ~
to cast a glance through the window, he saw Proclus
take off his shoes, and do obeisance to the crescent
moon in the open street. In later times the house of
Proclus, apparently it was the official residence of the
Diadochus or Rector, adjoined the temple of Asclepios,
and lay just under the Acropolis. This was conveni-
ent, as he could pass to and from his devotions secure
from prying and hostile eyes.
By study, maceration of the flesh, and careful
observance of the rules of Asclepigeneia, Proclus
attained through the political and purificatory to the
theurgic virtues. This is the point of view from which
Marinus, his pupil and successor, envisages his life.
He became an ‘‘ eyewitness.’’ Rufinus saw a halo of
light round his head as he lectured. The Gods
honoured him with constant apparitions, especially in
dreams. He was assured that he belonged to the
“¢ Hermaic chain,” the Platonic apostolical succession, ©
and that the soul of Nicomachus the Pythagorean
inhabited his body. When the statue of Pallas was
removed from the Parthenon, the goddess appeared
to him, and declared her intention of taking up her
abode under his roof. Machaon, Pan, Hecate, the
Mother of the gods, were constant visitants, and
Asclepios came to heal him of the gout. His vision
 THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS 3201

is no longer trance communion with the Absolute, but

actual personal converse with bodily Gods, and his
system aims at showing that these bodily Gods were
the Absolute, and not, as Plotinus thought, inferior
created beings.
He wrought miracles also, which Marinus tells us
were beyond number. He could summon rain in
time of drought, and also prevent earthquakes, though
how this latter power was ascertained is hard to see.
By prayer he restored to full health the daughter of
Archiadas, who lay at the point of death. Before
the exercise of his supernatural gifts he made use of
all the usual magic paraphernalia—Chaldzan lustra-
tions, the Chaldzan ‘‘strophalos,” a sort of teetotum,
the “wryneck,” familiar to readers of Pindar and
Theocritus, and the tripod. |
His death was portended by an eclipse of the sun,
which caused an extraordinary darkness, during which
the stars were seen at noonday. He expired on
April 17, 485, and was buried in the same tomb with
Syrianus, in the eastern suburb of Athens, under
Mount Lycabettus.
Proclus represents the expiring struggle of Poly-
theism. Plotinus found Paganism a shelter under
the wings of his Platonism, but treated it as the
religion of the vulgar. There is a certain tolerant
scorn in his attitude, as in that of the Vedanta towards
the Sanskrit mythology. This, however, was fatal.
For as Porphyry showed only too clearly, the moment
the Gods were seated below the Highest they became
devils. Their figures must be carried back without a
x
322 NEOPLATONISM

moment’s delay into the Holy of Holies, or the game

was lost. It would never do to confess in the face
of the Church that Hellas had two religions, This is
what Proclus saw, and this is the danger he set
himself to avert.
This religious object he achieved by the destruction
of Neoplatonism.
The system of Plotinus is severely scientific. It is
worked out with a single purpose on true idealist
lines, and issues in an unity as complete as is attain-
able by the mind of man. Polytheism indeed is
there, but it is smuggled in, if the expression may be
used, and might be completely dropped without
affecting the general result. The many Gods are
but an expression for the Divine Intelligence which.
permeates all and holds all in'sympathy. The object
to which Plotinus himself aspires is the One, the
Good, the Fountain of the one chain of life and
reason, which reaches through all that is. Proclus
breaks up this unity at every joint in its stem.
The distinctive feature of his method is its schol-
_asticism. His Rudiments of Theology is modelled on
Euclid, and proceeds, like the Z¢hics of Spinoza, in
deductive catenation from one proposition to another.
The distinctive feature of his scholasticism again is a
tendency to divide everything into threes. For this a
sort of justification may be found in what Vacherot
calls “the Law of. the Ternary.” Every product
being complex involves three principles—finite, in-
finite, and compositum; or has three moments—it
remains in its cause, goes forth from its cause, and
 THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS 323

returns to its cause. One can attach a meaning to

this. But Proclus brings in his triads in most arbi-
trary fashion, and the result is a confusion which
neither the learning of Zeller nor the lucidity of
Vacherot can render intelligible.
Three leading points may be signalized.
1. Proclus denies expressly the independence of
Matter. All comes from the One. Matter in the
later Platonists is so vanishing a quantity, that its total
disappearance makes little or no difference, except in
regard to the origin of evil. When Proclus says, “ the
body is divine,” he: hardly contradicts Plotinus, for
even according to that philosopher the body is form,
and form is divine. Nevertheless the change left
Proclus without any means whatever of accounting
for moral evil. All that he says of bad men is that
they are not ‘‘ receptive,” they ‘go out of the way of
the divine light.”
2. The three hypostases of the Platonic Trinity are
incommunicable (apéOexra). This is the most exas-
perating point in the systems of Iamblichus and
Proclus, for it sounds like nonsense, yet there must
surely be some rational explanation. It appears to
rest entirely upon the arbitrary use of the system of
Triads. If there is a Mind which participates and a
mind which is participated in, there must also, Proclus
thought, be a mind which js not participated in, which
is incommunicable (eréywv, perexopuevoc, apeOexroc).
But the result is that the Plotinian Good, Intelligence,
Soul cease to be fountains of life or causes at all.
The whole system of the Zxneads becomes a mere
 324 NEOPLATONISM

cabinet of curiosities, and nothing is left with any

vitality except the Gods and individual souls. Probably
this result is in fact the reason. dae
3. In Plotinus there is one great chain of Life. In
Proclus there is an infinity of chains. ‘This follows
from what has been said. Each God is a cause and
head of a separate family.
From the Incommunicable One spring—one knows
not how—a host of Henads. Each has the character
of absolute being, yet each has distinctive qualities.
The Henads run down in long lines ; the Intelligible
are followed by the Intellectual, these by the Over-
worldly, these again by the Inworldly. From the
Intelligible springs the family of Being, from the In-
_ tellectual that of Intelligence, from the Overworldly
that of Soul, from the Inworldly that of Nature.
These principal “ chains” are mainly like brooks falling
into one river; that which has a body may also have —
a soul and an intelligence ; but they subdivide as they.
go down, there are different kinds of intelligences
and different kinds of souls dependent on them, so
that the river is perpetually branching off into other
rivers. Further, there are chains in which the inter-
mediate links are wanting ; there may be soul without
intelligence, and existence without form. Yet further,
the principal chains have to be multiplied by the
number of Henads; for each chain is a family de-
pending on a God, and exhibiting throughout the
characteristic of that God. It includes not only
Angels, Heroes, Demons, and human beings, but
stones, plants, animals, which bear the signature of
 THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS 325

. the deity, and have sacramental virtues with respect

to him. But these divine characteristics are taken
from the pagan liturgy, so that the simple intelligible
divisions of philosophy are split up to suit the endless
ramifications of Polytheism.
It is needless to perplex the reader with further
details. Enough has been said to show the principal
object that Proclus had in view, and the means
whereby he sought to attain it. The fact is, that he
did not want the philosophy, or wanted it only to
justify his religion. He felt that the supreme entities
of the school, the One, the Intelligence, the Soul, are
not Gods at all. They do not feed the spiritual life -
nor minister to the formation of character. Hence
he labels them “ incommunicable,” and puts them on
the shelf. It is as easy to drop Platonism out of
Proclus as Polytheism out of Plotinus.
How much depends here on our estimate of the
character and ability of Proclus! Victor Cousin, no
bad judge, rates him among the first of ancient
thinkers, and there can be little doubt that he was a
good and religious man. But if so, how powerful is
his testimony to the fact that philosophy, even the
best and noblest, cannot satisfy the instincts of the
soul! The prejudices of the school were strong
enough to force Proclus to deny the Incarnation ; but
though all the fruits of all the systems were before
him, he could find none to quench the hunger and
thirst after righteousness.
There is, however, another lesson. Proclus aban-
doned knowledge. God is known, he said, “neither
 326 NEOPLATONISM ~

by opinion, nor by science, nor by reasoning, nor

by intuition, but necessarily,” that is, by affinity of
nature. Each God is known to those who belong to
his “‘chain ” and share his character. ‘‘ Necessarily ”
must mean by emotion, or some kind of unreasoning
faith, for Proclus excludes all the operations of pure
or mixed reason. He is a metaphysician, but he
uses his metaphysics to destroy metaphysics. ‘The
ideas are ‘“incommunicable,”’ or, as Dr. Hatch says,
“God does not reveal metaphysics.” We know
neither the finite nor the infinite, but the third term,
the compositum. Is not this very much the position
of Kantism? Yet this view did not save Proclus
from the most abject superstition, and its evil effects
have been witnessed more than once in the Church.
It is nothing but a residuum of metaphysics that
saves Schleiermacher or Kant from herding with the
Anabaptists.
There remains, as Proclus might have seen if he.
had been willing to apply his triads here also, a third
course. If philosophy by itself is barren, and faith by
itself is unbridled, there may be here too a composi-
tum. Faith may aid Reason, and Reason may estab-
lish Faith. This has always been the position of
Christian theology.
The succession of the Diadochi ran on after the
death of Proclus for forty-four years, through Marinus
the Samaritan, Isidorus, Zenodotus (about this name
there is some doubt), Hegias, and Damascius. But
the most famous member of the expiring school was
Simplicius, whose learned commentaries on Aristotle
 THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS 327

furnish a rich mine of information to the student of

Greek philosophy. The only glimpse we get of the
personality of these men is afforded by the Zzfe of
Isidore, the work of Damascius. It is a catalogue of
marvels of the most puerile description. Some of
them are natural phenomena, which science has since
learned to explain. Tiberius had a donkey, which
could be made to give off sparks by rubbing his coat.
The simple beast was thus used to prophesy his master’s
elevation to the purple; but we may regard him with
equal truth as the first known ancestor of the electric
telegraph. Ammonianus had another donkey, which
was so fond of hearing poetry that it forgot to eat its
hay. One could read the future by gazing into a
glass of water ;another by means of a crystal sphere ;
another by watching the shapes of the clouds—a new
art. Asclepiodotus could read in the dark, and
_ Eusebius cast out a devil*by adjuring “the rays of the
sun, and the God of the Hebrews.” And all the
while the practitioners of these arts were being hunted
down by the police, and often paid for their “ curi-
osity’’ with their lives. Such was the martyrdom
appointed for Neoplatonism.
In 528 Justinian ordained a new and more stringent
persecution, in which Macedonius, Asclepiodotus,
Phocas, and Thomas the Quaestor perished. In 529
came the final blow. The schools of Athens were
closed and their endowments confiscated. By this
time the income of the Platonic chair had risen by
successive legacies from three pieces (vopiéopara), the
rent of the garden in the Academe, bequeathed to his
 328 NEOPLATONISM

disciples by Plato himself, to something more than a

thousand. What became of the money we are not
told. Doubtless it was not spent on the encourage-
ment of letters.
One scene remains, half tragedy, half comedy.
Driven from the temples and lecture-halls of Athens,
a little band of seven sages, including Damascius,
Simplicius, Eulalius, Priscian, Hermias, Diogenes, and
Isidore, wandered across the desert to seek shelter in
Persia. Persia was to them a sacred land, the home of
the Zoroastrian mysteries. And Khosru Nushirvan
was the friend and patron of Greek culture. He had
caused Aristotle and Plato to be translated into
Syriac, and accepted from Priscian the dedication of
a learned treatise. There was this amount of found-
ation for their credulous belief, “ that the republic of
Plato was realized in the despotic government of —
Persia, and that a patriot king reigned over the hap-
piest and most virtuous of nations.’’ But they were -
soon undeceived. ‘‘ Their repentance,’’ adds Gibbon,
“‘was expressed by a precipitate return, and they loudly
declared that they had rather die on-the borders of
_ the Empire than enjoy the wealth and favour of the
barbarian.” After all, Christian Greece was _ less
intolerable than the favoured land of Ormuzd and of
Mithra. In 533 Khosru made his first peace with the
Romans, and stipulated that the seven sages should
be exempted from the penal laws, which Justinian
enacted against his pagan subjects. The fact is
greatly to his honour.
With this incident we may close our story. But
 THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS 329

life knows no dates, which are but as landmarks on

the banks of ariver. The stream flows past them,
sometimes lost in a swamp, sometimes gathering its
waters again in a brimming channel. The Neo-
_. platonist held that nothing perishes, and Neoplaton-
ism is still alive, though broken to pieces like the
body of Osiris, or still more aptly, like the image of
gold and clay. Its table-rapping, its crystal spheres,
its levitations, its telepathy, its materializations, are all
in full play. Within two miles of the spot where
these lines are written, in the depths of the English
midlands, is a theurgist whom Damascius would have
revered as a saint. Its mysticism has lived on in the
bosom of the Christian Church. Its idealism can
never die.
Time has pronounced its verdict. Heathenism is
dead, and magic is the belief of fools. In their effort
to save Polytheism, the ancient sages succeeded only,
like Mezentius, in shackling a corpse to the living; the
union could only infect with disease that which other-
wise possessed the seeds of health. All the drivelling
inanities of Neoplatonism spring from this fatal cause.
Knowledge of external nature they had almost
none. It was not given to their time. But they
dealt with those supremely interesting eternal ques-
tions to which science, after all, supplies no answer—
the nature and the communion of God and Man. It
is to the mind within us that we must look for their
solution, so far as reason can hope to find a solution.
The Neoplatonists believed that there is a mind, and
_ their analysis of its operations, primitive and in some
330 NEOPLATONISM

respects fantastic as it may be, differs mainly in its

dualism from that which is still largely held.
They were the first to attain to a clear and con-
sistent view of what is meant by spiritual existence,
of the nature of being, regarded as devoid of exten-
sion and divisibility. By this great advance they
became the founders of theology, of metaphysics, of
psychology, and of mental science in general. ‘Their
leading ideas are the common stock of medizval
schoolmen and of modern thinkers, down to Hegel
and Carlyle.
But what judgment are we to pass on their practical
results ?
They taught, if we look at their doctrines and forget
their practice, that there is One God, the fountain of
life, thought, and beauty, whose highest name is the
Good. He is above nature yet in nature, containing,
not contained. By His word all things are, and have
a meaning ;in Him rest, and from Him flow, all exist-
ence, order, perfection, happiness; He is law, and
to Him belongs eternity.
They taught that Nature, though changing as a
wisp of vapour, is in type as eternal as the thought of
God which it reflects. They taught that man is indl-
vidually eternal, that in this world he is an exile from
home, yet that God is in him, and ever draws him
upwards by the golden cord of reason. ‘They taught
that the upward path lies through duty and thought-
fulness to conscious communion with the Divine ; that
this is the fullness of being, and happiness, which the
world does not give, and cannot take away, They
 THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS 331

taught that sin is alienation from God, and brings its

own punishment; the sensual man is wolfish, and
misery dogs his steps, in this life and in the life to
come. |
Even their crowning doctrine of the Ineffable One
is not so irrational or so agnostic as it seems. Two
of the Divine Hypostases could be known, and they
included not only the Goodness, Wisdom, and Justice,
but even the eternity of God. It was but the Person-
ality itself, the ultimate root of the Divine Being, that
the Neoplatonists held to be withdrawn from rational
cognizance. Even this might be felt, as we feel the
personality of one another. Jules Simon discerned
in the Neoplatonist Trinity a sincere attempt to recon-
cile the results of pure speculation with those of the
religious experience. The Supreme God of Plotinus
is neither the Eleatic One, a mere abstract number,
who is devoid of all power of creation; nor, on the
other hand, the anthropomorphic deity, in any one of
the forms under which He has been misconceived.
He is the Head of all things, in whom the conflicting
demands of reason and conscience, science and faith
strive to find their satisfaction, the synthesis of all
the antitheses.
How like is all this to Christianity! Yet the two
systems are so unlike that no truce between them
was possible. And after a struggle of little more than
200 years, ‘‘ the Galilean conquered.”
What were the causes of this bitter hostility, and
_ by what means did God thus pull down the high
thoughts of the sons of Plato?
332 NEOPLATONISM

St. Augustine has given us the answer in the

seventh book of his Confessions. He was led through
Platonism to the Gospel, and well he knew of what
he writes. Common-sense led him to reject astrology,
and all the magical futilities that follow in its train.
The cause of evil was a deeper and far more terrible
problem, and long did he wrestle with it before he
was led to see that moral evil, the real difficulty,
springs not from matter, but from will, that it is not
a disease but a rebellion. ‘The last step was the
Incarnation. He read in the books of the Platonists
that the Word was God, and that by Him all things
were made; but that the Word became Flesh and
dwelt among us, this he did not read there.
That evil is not ignorance, but the cause of ignor-
ance, the sullen resistance of the worse to the better ;
that God ‘‘came down,” emptied Himself, took upon
Him the form of a servant to heal this strife—these
were the points.
According to the philosopher, whether ancient or
modern, God cannot come down, the universal can-
not embody itself in the particular. Not that the
God of the Platonist was exactly loveless. He might
be said to love with an unchanging love; but being
unchanging, He could only draw all things unto Him--
self, He could not go forth upon the mountains to
seek the lost sheep. 3
But observe. The Love which St. Augustine dis-
covered was suffering love. Precisely in the suffering
lies its difference from Platonic love. Thus the
Incarnation can be understood only through the
 THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS 234

Crucifixion. The distinctive emblem of Christianity

is the Cross.
_ There are modern thinkers, who find the whole
essence of the Gospel in Plato and Plotinus. There
is even an influential school of theology, which
inclines in the same direction, which stumbles over
the notion of the just suffering for the unjust, and
regards the word “ vicarious ” with a certain dread.
What we call Sanctification, the mode by which the
forgiven sinner becomes one spirit with the Lord, is,
if we may take it by itself, largely common to all
Idealism. The idea of “sonship” belongs to all the
later Greek schools, even to Stoicism. But howis the
sinner forgiven? Js there such a thing as forgive-
ness? How is the penal ignorance enlightened, and
the penal hardness softened, and the upward way
_ made possible? The Church replied, ‘‘ Through the
sufferings of Christ,’ ‘through the sacrifice of His
Death,” as the wilfulness of the child is broken by the
tears of his mother. This was what the Platonist
denied, and denies.
_ What are known as ‘ethical theories” of the
Atonement, are widely diffused in these vague and
good-natured days. But they ignore the commonest
fact of life, the law of vicarious suffering ; they render
the Gospel in the terms of Plato, and they may be
held, and actually are held, by those who deny the
Incarnation altogether.
 XXV

LATER INFLUENCE OF PLATONISM ON THE CHURCH

_ ORIGENISM, that is to say, the theodicy of Origen,

was little more than an incident in the history of the
Church. Origen’s theory of creation vanished almost
immediately. His tenet of Catharsis, or Purification,
was absorbed by the growing belief in Purgatory ; but
it was held that after death no repentance, no change
of will, was possible. Universalism, though condemned,
reappeared from time to time, but was generally based,
as we shall see, on a different foundation, The
learning of the great Alexandrine doctor is buried
under the mountain of modern acquirements, like
Typhoeus under Inarime, but he left to the Christian
world, even though his heirs do not always know from
whom the legacy is derived, his fearless spirit, his
Allegorism, that is to say, the love of the spirit beneath
the letter, his devotion to learning and his profound and
cultivated belief in essential dogma. Like Augustus,
he found his city of brick, and he left it of marble.
It is needless to dwell in detail on the influence
of Platonism, or Neoplatonism, upon the main stream
of theology after Origen. Even before Nicaea that
 INFLUENCE OF PLATONISMON THE CHURCH 335
influence was almost wholly limited to the idea of
timeless existence. It taught the Church that material-
ism is not consistent with true religion, nor with the
right understanding of Scripture, but the interest in
the full humanity of our Lord was much more than
sufficient to save the Church, as a whole, from the
opposite danger of identifying the God of conscience
with the abstractions of the schools.
Idealism pointed out the direction in which the
meeting point of religion and science must lie. No
more than this can be accomplished, until science can
rise from results to the first cause. As yet this has
not been done, but so long as science lags behind,
we might as well attempt to reconcile Euclid with
Shakespeare, as faith with. biology. Science must
complete herself before she can enter upon the
question. When she has discovered her God, we
shall be in a position to judge whether her laws are
akin, or not akin, to those of conscience enlightened
by revelation. At present we can only insist that, at
every turn, science presupposes Mind, which has so
far eluded her grasp, that the Thing is a Thought,
though how the Thought came to be a Thing we do
not know.
Arianism, like other ante-Nicene heresies, was
Aristotelic. Hence it insisted upon the solitary unity
of the First Cause, and applied to every other form
of being the Aristotelic distinction of potentiality and_
actuality, of matter and form. It followed that there
could not be Two uncreated, that Begotten meant the
same thing as Created, and that neither Son nor
 336 NEOPLATONISM

Spirit could be “ everlasting ” (aidwe : the word aiwrtoc

does not occur in Aristotle, and aiwy, in his diction,
means simply ‘the sum of time”). All these positions —
Plotinus would have denied. ‘‘ Begetting,”’ indeed, is
the very word that he employs to denote the relation
of his timeless hypostases. Athanasius also denied
them, but not for the same reasons as Plotinus. ‘The
ground of his faith is expressed in one sentence of the
De Incarnatione. ‘The Word alone was able to re-
create all, and sufficient to suffer for all, and to
intercede for all with the Father.” For the mediator
of forgiveness, for the example of obedience, for the
representative and High priest, he, lke St. Anselm,
wanted a Saviour, who was truly a Divine Person, not
merely the Intelligenceof God, not the mere unfolding
of the Monad into consciousness. Athanasius taught
the existence of Three Persons in one Deity. The
three hypostases of the Neoplatonist really formed but
one, and that an incomplete, because purely intellectual
person. It was by no means Hellenism that saved
the Church at Nicaea. |
- From this time philosophy becomes a mere name
for Christian culture. Theology went its own way,
and worked out its own destiny. Platonism, of the
Plotinian or earlier stamp, was still, indeed, called in
to illustrate the doctrine of the Trinity, or of divine
providence, or to support, by a limited application of
its arguments, the deathlessness of the soul. In this
sense its traces are to be found in many of the Greek
fathers down to the eighth century, when darkness —
settled on the Eastern Church, in the lumina Cappa--
 INFLUENCE OF PLATONISM ON THE CHURCH 337

dociae, in Eusebius, Cyril, Theodoret, Nemesius,

Aeneas of Gaza. In the West, the idealist cast of
thought found its noblest and most enduring expression
in the theology of St. Augustine. This great divine
knew the works of the Greek philosophers only in
Latin translations and analyses, but his thought ran
parallel to theirs. To him as to the Platonist “ evil
is a defect,” and the reconciliation between God. and
man is brought about, not by effort, but by grace,
that is, by love.
The emphatic proclamation of the powerof love is
St. Augustine’s crowning merit. But the brightest
light casts the darkest shadow. Love is given, not
claimed or deserved. The cry of the beloved is
always—‘‘ What didst Thou see in me?”
‘*Non sum tanti, Jesu, quanti
Amor tuus aestimat.”’

Only by logical inconsistency can the exaltation of

love be saved from determinism, and only by pantheism
from the exaggeration of moral evil. Augustine was
logical, and no pantheist. He drew a dark picture of
fallen nature, but against a real sin he set a real love.
Like all the great doctors, he builds his theology on
conscience, not on the abstract reason. The love that
he preaches is the love of Jesus, not of the Absolute ;
and this is, indeed, the main reason of his austerity. For
Jesus is the most austere of masters, and John is the
most austere of evangelists. From Augustine Platon-
ism, if so it may be called, runs on through Luther,
casting off in its course more and more of those
Y
338 ~ NEOPLATONISM

salutary restraining influences, that kept Augustinian-

ism within the bounds of the Catholic Church.
We have said, that after Nicaea Platonism became
little more than an accomplishment. - There is, how- _
ever, one remarkable exception to this statement; it
is Synesius of Cyrene, Bishop of Ptolemais in the
Libyan Pentapolis. Readers of Kingsley know him
well, and his biography has been written for this series
by Miss Gardner. He was a burly, jolly, kindly,
cultivated man; the very ideal of a squire-parson;
famous for his genealogy, which ran back for seventeen
hundred years, and began with the god Herakles,—
“the longest pedigree ever known” Gibbon calls it—
for his friendship with Hypatia, who was, by the way,
at least a middle-aged woman, for his love of horses
and dogs, and his hatred of oppression. An educated
Tory gentleman, we may style him, who was honour-
ably distinguished by his bold and_ statesmanlike
championship of the poor in an age of great disorder
and calamity. But he was also an exceedingly Broad
Churchman. When Theophilus of Alexandria pro-
posed to consecrate him Bishop, Synesius felt two
great difficulties, his‘love for his wife and his theo-
logical opinions. Let us hear what he has to say on
these points.
“God and the law and the sacred hand of Theo-
philus gave me a wife. I do therefore give all men
to know, and do solemnly protest, that I will neither —
be separated from her, nor will I live with her secretly
as aparamour. But I shall will and pray, that many
good children may be born to us.
i

INFLUENCE OF PLATONISM ON THE CHURCH 339

‘‘There is one other thing that Theophilus need

not be told, because he knows it already. It is the
chief point of all. It is difficult, indeed impossible,
that those beliefs which the demonstrations of science
have implanted in the soul, should be shaken. In
many respects philosophy contradicts received dogmas.
I shall never believe that the soul is born after the
body. I shall not say, that the world and its parts
are destined to perish together. The much preached-
of Resurrection I look upon as a holy mystery, and I
am far from agreeing with the opinion of the many.
The philosophic intelligence, in short, while it beholds
the truth, admits the necessity of lying. Light corre-
sponds to truth, but the eye is dull of vision ; it cannot
without injury gaze on the infinite light. As twilight
is more comfortable for the eye, so, I hold, is falsehood
for the common run of people. The truth can only
be harmful for those who are unable to gaze on the
reality. If the laws of the priesthood permit me to
hold this position, then I can accept consecration,
‘keeping my philosophy to myself at home, and
preaching fables out of doors.”
Gibbon chuckles over Synesius with great delight,
and thinks the love of a wife and the love of philosophy
equally amusing in a prelate. Most readers will think,
that his-manly conjugal fidelity is a fine trait, and that
it would have been better for the Church if there had
been more bishops like him in this. But his orthodoxy
leaves much to be desired. The date of the soul’s
creation was an open question ; and he does not say
exactly what he believed about the Day of Judgment
340 NEOPLATONISM

and the Resurrection. But he puts philosophy above

the creed, and seems to regard all dogmas as ‘‘ lies”
in the Platonic sense, that is to say, as allegories, or, to
use Carlyle’s expression, ‘‘clothes.” There is, in fact,
very little in any of his works that might not have
been writtenby a heathen Neoplatonist, and neither
Miss Gardner nor Vacherot can quite decide whether
he was a Christian at all. But he was a good man, ~
and a good Bishop, and he rode straight. He did
not hold his tongue that he might hold preferment.
What he sought in the Episcopacy was not lucre, but.
the opportunity of great and perilous work. Whether
this is a sufficient excuse may be doubted ; but there
can be no doubt as to the immorality of Theophilus,
who persecuted Chrysostom and consecrated Synesius.
We have been speaking of the influence of the older
Neoplatonism, which was, upon the whole, by no
means unhealthy. But in the sixth century, when the
shadows of night were beginning to fall, we come
into contact with a much more questionable phenome-
non, the influence of Proclianism, which gathering up,:
and giving shape to, a phase of feeling never wholly
absent from the Church, and already conspicuous in _
Clement and the Monks, gave birth to Mysticism. This
begins for literature with Dionysius the Areopagite.
Who this author was is not known, but his date ~
can be fixed with tolerable accuracy. His works
were quoted in a conference, held at Constantinople
under Justinian, in 532. On the other hand, they
are steeped in the peculiar terminology of Proclus,
and presuppose the Rudiments of that philosopher, a
 INFLUENCE OF PLATONISM ON THE CHURCH 341

work which cannot well have been composed before

440. He calls himself Dionysius the priest, and
represents himself as the friend of Timothy and Titus,
as the contemporary of the Apostles, as a disciple of
Hierotheus the pupil of St. Paul; ‘my teacher,” he
calls him, ‘‘after Paul.” He does not speak either of
Athens or of the Areopagus, but, in the first mention
that we have of him, he is styled ‘‘the Areopagite.”
Whether it was his intention to pass himself off as the
converted Athenian judge may be doubted. He
speaks of himself as having been at Heliopolis in
Egypt on the day of the Crucifixion, and we should
hardly expect to find an Areopagite there. In any
case the domino may have been merely an odd piece
of mystic self-denial. In the Letter to Demophilus it
is dropped entirely; and possibly Dionysius himself
would have been greatly surprised to learn that his
harmless masquerade had been taken seriously. But
it made him the patron saint of France.
Dionysius starts with the “chains,” the ‘‘triplets”
of Proclus. Above all stands the Trinity. Beneath this
is the Celestial Hierarchy, a square of three triplets—
1. Thrones, Cherubim, Seraphim.
2. Powers, Dominions, Mights.
3. Angels, Archangels, Principalities. (Cp. Eph.
Heo teeeol 1 16:)
Beneath this again comes the Earthly Hierarchy—
1. Three Sacraments; Baptism, Eucharist, Oint-
ment.
2. Three Ecclesiastical Orders; Deacon, Priest,
Bishop.
342 NEOPLATONISM

3. Three Lay -Orders.; Non-communicants, Com-

municants, Monks. :
In each of these triplets the lowest member is put
first.
Right through the Hierarchies flows down the
triple grace of Purification, Enlightenment, and Perfec-
tion ; the higher links of the chain passing it on to
the lower. .
With Dionysius as with Proclus, philosophy has no
place at all in the religious life, The object of con- _
templation is purely ecclesiastical. Further it will be
observed, how between the superessential Saviour and —
man is interposed a long-drawn procession, on earth
of officers, symbols, rites; in heaven of angels in
interminable sequence. The object is to provide the
soul with a staircase, up which it may climb from
mystery to mystery, from star to star, till it reaches
the very fount of hght. The result is to shut out the -
penitent from his Redeemer, and to give the mystic
so much to dream about, that he has no time to do
anything. e
_ The length of the Upward Path, spun out through
‘““endless genealogies,” is acommon but not universal
feature of Mysticism. It has no justification, either
in Scripture or in philosophy. Nor has Mysticism
any necessary connection, direct or indirect, with
metaphysics properly so called. Sometimes, as in
Plotinus, it has a direct connection, growing naturally
out of the speculations. Sometimes it has a negative
or indirect connection; it is a recoil; pious souls me
>

grow weary of the debates of the schools, and take —

ae\
 INFLUENCE OF PLATONISM ON THE CHURCH 343

refuge in positive affirmations. But the great Mystics,

the Hebrew and Christian prophets, knew nothing
whatever about the perplexities of the intelligence.
In fact, Mysticism appears to have but two essential
features—the belief in the possibility of contact with
the personality of God, and the denial of evil, which
must be regarded, either as in itself non-existent, or
as practically abolished before the contact takes
place. Both the belief and the denial are common
to all religious people; the question is only, when
evil ceases to be.
_ The Areopagite starts with metaphysics, but only,
like Proclus, to kick down the ladder by which he
mounted. He is the prince of Mystics, because he
expounds the rationale of his belief with perfect
simplicity, without the least attempt to compromise
with theology.
_ God Himself is a Trinity, whose first manifestations
are Being, Life, and Wisdom (this again is a. Proclian
triplet). He is the Absolute, above all Essence, and
all Knowledge. Such knowledge as we have of Him
is derived entirely from Scripture. It has two branches,
according as it is directed to His operations or His
Self. Accordingly, we express our knowledge in two
ways—by position or by abstraction ; that is to say,
by analogies, as when we call Him Father, King,
Life, Iight, Reason; or by negations, as when we
call Him infinite, timeless, immaterial. The latter is
the higher and better method ; and the task of the
perfected believer is to rise up, above all symbols and
metaphors, to the bare idea, from ignorance draping
 344 NEOPLATONISM

itself in words to ignorance confessed, to penetrate

the “ darkness,’”’ in which God dwells on the secret
heights of Sinai. To Dionysius “ darkness” means
‘“formlessness” and is metaphysical, but with other
Mystics it often bears a moral sense, and expresses
the believer’s impatience with the confusions, not of
thought, but of life. The Upward Path is made
possible by Love, the Inner Light, and the word for
Love is no longer Agape, but Eros. Eros is a-
- Platonic term, but in the mouth of the Mystic it is
no longer purely ideal. It has become sensuous and
passionate, and expresses the desire of one personality
to merge into another. The change is marked by
the famous phrase of Ignatius : “‘ My Love is crucified,” —
which Dionysius quotes at the expense of an ana-
chronism ; but, more distinctly still, by the free use
of the Song of Songs, which inspired the Amazory
LTymns of Hierotheus, and was always a favourite
book with the Mystics.
Here we trace the same Syrian influences that
shaped the thoughts of Iamblichus and Proclus.
Hierotheus is probably to be identified with Bar-
Sudaili, an Edessan Monophysite abbot of the fifth
century. The yearning of the soul for the Risen
Lord is distinctively Christian ; at the same time, it is
the only result left of the Humanity of Jesus ; for in
the mind of Dionysius the sacraments, the Life, the —
Passion, are mere symbols. They belong to the —
Earthly Hierarchy, and must be left behind. This
belief, that it is possible to mount above all ordinances,
all law, all doctrine, is the common property of the
 INFLUENCE OF PLATONISM ON THE CHURCH 345

Mystics, and tended more and more, as discipline

grew stricter and the Church more corrupt, to embroil
them with the authorities. Indeed Mysticism is to
be regarded, almost universally, as a revolt, not
against difficulties of belief, but against the wickedness
of the times, and the inability of the Church to bridle
the world about her.
In Mysticism Eros is the only moral link left between
God and man, in other words, the one point on
which rests the personality of either. »
For Evil, and with it Justice and Responsibility,
are blotted out entirely from the mind of Dionysius.
There cannot, he says, be two principles. All is of
God ; the only difference is, that those things which
partake more of God are nearer to Him. Evil is
Nothing ; it cannot be, and therefore cannot act.
The Greek philosophers, from Heraclitus downwards,
thought that what we call physical evil might be
necessary to the sum of things. But Dionysius
denies this. Life may indeed be said to come out of
death; but, if you look closer, it is not the death, which
produces life, but the living force enduring through,
and fed by, the dissolution of the organism. ‘There
is no such thing as a bad nature. Take away from
the lion its ferocity, and you rob the creature of the
safeguard given to it by its Creator. Vice is mis-
taken virtue. All is good. What we call evil, is
merely inability to discharge the proper functions of
the divinely-fashioned nature. Hence Justice is that
whereby God preserves each essence intact in its
appointed station, and enables it to do its proper
346 NEOPLATONISM

work. ‘This is pure Platonism, and Dionysius treats

the theme without a single reference to the Atone-
ment.
Thus the Mystic, as Plutarch said, “jumps off
his own shadow.”
Indeed Dionysius, like Proclus, does not think it
possible that the Cross, or any other agency, can
change the mind of God. We draw near to him, but
: (
He never draws near to us, because He is everywhere
and changes not.. Hence, in a well-known passage,
Prayer is compared to a chain of light let down from
heavens As we climb up it, hand over hand, we
seem to draw the chain down, but really draw our-
selves up. Or again, to the cable of a ship. It is
fastened toa rock and, as the mariner hauls upon it, he
seems, but only seems, to pull the rock nearer to his
boat. The beautyof the Areopagite’s expression
must not disguise from us the fact, that his whole
view is Pantheistic.
Thus, by another road, we have come back to
Universalism. Origen insists upon freedom ; Dionysius |
abolishes it. Origen takes his start from Justice,
which to Dionysius has little or no meaning. But to
both God is End as well as Beginning, and the goal
coincides.
But these dry abstracts of thought are no better
than a hortus siccus, in which all the perfume of the
flower is evaporated. Mysticism is the paradox of
paradoxes. Nothing is easier to gibe at; yet, in all
its extravagances, there is something that lies very
close to the heart of Christianity. It seems so barren
 INFLUENCE OF PLATONISM ON THE CHURCH 347

yet, directly or indirectly, what force there was in

Francis, or Bernard, or Bonaventura, or Grossetéte,
ora Kempis! Let us listen to the story of Carpus,
and see what the real Dionysius was. Here we shall
find the key to the contradiction.
Carpus was a man of Crete, so favoured by God,
that he never celebrated the Eucharist without enjoy-
ing a vision of heavenly bliss. Yet once the saint
had violated the law of love, and he told Dion sius
how he had been chastised for his sin.
One of his converts had been seduced back into
heathenism by an unregenerate comrade. There
must have been something peculiarly distressing in
the circumstances, for Carpus was so deeply shocked,
that instead of praying for the two sinners, as he
ought to have done, he was filled with wrath. In
this agitation of mind he retired to rest, and after
~-a brief and troubled slumber, rose at midnight to
perform his usual devotions. But his anger was still
hot within him, and on his knees he begged God to
blast with His thunderbolt both the tempter and the
tempted.
Scarce had he framed this dreadful petition, when
the house seemed to be riven asunder, and a blaze of
unearthly light shone all around. Raising his eyes,
he saw Jesus, seated on the ridge of heaven, en-
compassed by angels in human form. But, looking
down, he beheld the two wretches whom he had
cursed, staggering.on the brink of a hideous gulf.
Out of the pit came serpents, and shadows as of men,
who hauled and dragged, cozened and fascinated the
“ot ~
348 NEOPLATONISM

unhappy pair, so that, half-resisting, half-consenting,

they were tumbling into the abyss.
Carpus gazed on their peril with fierce delight, and
cursed them again, because they had not yet
perished. But once more he raised his eyes. Jesus
had stepped down from His throne in pity, and was
holding out His arms; the angels also were clinging
to the two sinners, and pulling them back from the
precipice.
Then the Lord spoke to Carpus: ‘Reach out thy
hand, and smite Me. For I am ready once more to
suffer for the salvation of men. Do thou see to it;
whether thou wouldest rather dwell with God, and the
good and merciful angels, or with the dragons in the
pit.”

The works of Dionysius were translated into Latin»

by Scotus Erigena in the ninth century, and- again by
John of Salisbury in the twelfth. From this date
his influence parts into two streams, one more philo-
sophical, the other more religious.
1. His work fell in with those other causes, which
produced the great Pantheistic outburst of the twelfth
century. These were the streaming in from Sicily,
and afterwards more fully from Spain, of the Arabian
and Jewish Aristotelianism, which, under the influence
of Neoplatonism and Orientalism, had assumed a
strongly Pantheistic cast. With Aristotle came the
De Causis, which is, in fact, the Rudiments of Proclus,
and the Fons Vitae of the Jew Avicebron. The
mixture of this perilous stuff with Mahomedanism
had led everywhere to violent explosions. ‘ The
 INFLUENCE OF PLATONISM ON THE CHURCH 349

doctrineof Avicenna,” says Makrizi, ‘‘ brought upon

religion disasters too terrible for words. It served
only to foster the errors of heretics, and added to
their impiety fresh impiety.” Gazali (Algazel) led
the revolt, as the champion of orthodox mysti-
cism, and succeeded in destroying philosophy in the
East. .
In Spain, the writings of Ibn-Rosch (Averroes) pro-
-voked another violent outbreak of persecution, and
here too the licence of thought was suppressed by the
- arm of the law. From Spain the cyclone moved on.
through Provence into the French schools. ‘Towards
the end of the twelfth century, David of Dinan and
Amaury of Chartres (or de Bennes) taught that God
is all, and that all is God ; a heresy which was traced -
back by Gerson to the audacious Scotus Erigena,
“who had borrowed it from a monk named Maximus.”
Maximus was the well-known commentator on
. Dionysius. Amaury himself professed to have learned
what he taught from the Epistles of St. Paul; but he
was the disciple not only of Dionysius, but of another
famous mystic, Joachim of Flora (Fiore in Calabria),
who spoke of Rome as the Whore of Babylon, and
prophesied the advent of the third age, the age of the
Holy Ghost, when all sacerdotalism was to be swept
away. The Pantheism of the Amalricians brought
them into direct collision with the Church. It taught,
that ‘the Holy Spirit was as truly in Ovid as in St.
Augustine,” and that all sacraments are dead forms.
Nine of the disciples of Amaury were burnt by the
Council of Paris in 1210, and the reading of the
 350 NEOPLATONISM

Physics and Metaphysics of Aristotle was for a time

prohibited. But Joachitism lingered long in the
South of France, and the infection clung to the
schools of Paris. As late as 1276 Etienne ‘Tempier,
- Bishop of Paris, complains that some of his students
maintained, ‘‘ that things might be true in philosophy,
though not true according to the Catholic faith ; as if
there were two truths, and as if, against the truth of
scripture, there were truth in the sayings of damned |
Gentiles.” |
The danger to the Church was undoubtedly very
great, and the danger to philosophy was hardly less.
But it fell in the thirteenth century, an age not of
decay but of regeneration, most fruitful in great men
and great achievements. It was averted for the time,
not by sword or fagot, though both were freely em-
ployed, but by the stirring life, which brought forth
the great Dominican teachers, Albert and Thomas,
‘and the powerful orders of the Friars. But those who
_wish to pursue the interesting, and in England little
known, history of scholasticism, must be referred to
the works of Vacherot, Jourdain, Hauréau, and
Renan. (See also History of the Inquisition in the
Middle Ages, by H. C. Lea. New ‘York : Harper
Brothers, 1888.)
2. Nor can we do more than point out authorities
for the history of Mysticism. From the days of the
New Testament prophets it has never been wholly
absent from the Church. It has manifested itself at
times in wild revolt. But for the strong hand of St.
Paul the Corinthian prophets would have rent the
 INFLUENCE OF PLATONISM ON THE CHURCH 351

Church into pieces ; and the history of the Montanists,

of the Fraticelli, of the Anabaptists shows how fiery
and explosive the Inner Light may be, when heated
by contagion and opposition. Mysticism is always a
protesting spirit. But in our Western world it has
shown, upon the whole, neither the taste nor the
capacity for organizing multitudes; it 1s too fastidious,
too sensitive, too fond of reverie. The Church would
be nothing without it; for it is the spint of the
prophet and of the saint; but it can neither form nor
sustain a church, for this is the work of the priest.
There is, properly speaking, no history of the Mystics;
only biographies. They are like a chain of stars, each
separated from the other by a gulf. We can trace
resemblances, even connections ; but they themselves
tell us, that the light comes direct from the sun, and
is not passed on at all. Yet the Mystic usually reads
books; and the beacon of Dionysius, or Joachim,
or Tauler wakes the kindred soul across seas or
centuries.
A dry history of the French Victorines will be
found in Hauréau. The troubles of the spiritual
Franciscans are recorded by Milman, Neander, and
Lea. German Mysticism is the theme of many
learned works which are enumerated in the Daog-
mengeschichte of Dr. Harnack; and the lives of St.
Bernard, 4 Kempis, Fénelon, Madame de Guyon, and
Swedenborg are readily accessible. Those who are
interested in the subject will not fail to read Vaughan’s
Flours with the Mystics. Two books within easy reach
of English readers are the Dark Wight of the Soul, by
352 NEOPLATONISM.

St. John-of the Cross, and the immortal De Jmitatione ,;

the former shows us Mysticism at its worst, the latter
is above all praise. A good account of the relation
of a Kempis to earlier Mystics will be found in the
Story of the Imitatio Christi, by Mr. Leonard A.
Wheatley.
 INDEX
(For names ofprincipal philosophers, see list of chapters.)

_ ACADEMICS, 10 sgg. Aedesius, 309, 315. Aestheticism, 25,

34, 54, 59, 77 5997-, 273 sgg- Agathion, 61. Agnosticism,
199, 288. Albertus Magnus, 350. Albinus (or Alcinous),
47, 121, 123 sg., 195,205. Alexander of Abonoteichos, 52,
1oI, 106, Alexander Polyhistor, 30. Alexis, 28. Amaury,
349. Aimelius, 147, 186, 188. Ammianus Marcellinus, 315.
Ammonius the Peripatetic, 82, 91. Ammonius Saccas, 47,
- 162, 182, 189, 297. Angel, 45, 306, 324, 341. Antiochus,
46. Apathy, 168, 175 sgg. Apprehension, 239. . Arab |
philosophers, 348 sgg. Archytas, 29. Aristotle, 30, 48
sgqq-, 88, 122, 155, 171, 195, 198, 335, 348. Aquinas, 146,
350. Asceticism, 28, 34, 149, 181, 269, 297. Asclepigeneia,
318. Athanasius, 60, 115, 142, 157, 167, 173, 336. Atone-
ment, 43, 53 579-, 149, 170, 333, 346. Augustine, 157, 295,
300, 310, 314, 332, 337.
BAR-SUDAILI, 344. Berkeley, 12, 197. Bernard, 142, 347.
Blandina, 24, 108. Buddhism, 21, 40.
CALLISTUS (Pope), 108. Calvisius Taurus, 64. Carlyle, 23,
84, 197. Carpus, 347. Castricius Firmus, 188, 297. Cathol-
eicisim,: 102," 141, I51,- 156, 173. °Chastity, 38, ‘74, 84,5128,
149, 297. Chrysanthius, 310 sg. Chrysippus, 20, 24. Cicero,
30,735. City of God,: 23, 74,,.108. :Cleanthes,~ 18, 20;
Clement of Rome, 108. Co-perception, 239. Creatien,
not eternal in earlier Platonists, 91, 93 ; eternal in later, 29,
247; work of evil God, 148; mode of, 234 sgg., 243, 247 ;
cannot be understood, 304. Cyprian, 174.
_DAMASCIUS, 326, 328. David of Dinan, 349. Deification of
Z
354 INDEX

men, 52, 61, 137. Deism, 50, 76. Demonax, 52. Demons,
agents of Providence, 19, 33, 41, 90, 95, 117 ; mediators of
pagan atonement, 53, 93; devils, 60, 299, 308; prophets,
95, 132; casting out of, 149, 327. Diogenes Laertius, 27,
34, 37. Dionysius of Alexandria, 171. Dionysius the
Areopagite, 340 sq.
EBIONITES, 154. Ecstasy, 42, 91, 133. Empedocles, 115.
Ennius, 29. Epicharmus, 29. Epictetus, 10 sgg., 46, 87,
108, 155. Epicurus, 10 sgg., 50. Erasmus, 14. Erennius,
186. Essenes, 29, 137. Eudocia, 181. Euphrates, 40, 69.
Eusebius, Christian, 41, 48, 160. Eusebius, Pagan, 311,
327. Evil, in Stoicism, 23; evil god, 96, 147; theory of
Plotinus, 256; of Proclus, 323; of Dionysius, 345; of
Amaury, 349. Evolution, 113, 115, 136, 262.
FEAR, 58, 80,.175, 299, 345. Form, 202. ¥Fraticelli, 35%.
Future State, 95, 171, 271, 296.
GNOSTICISM, 97, 102, 127, 146, 255. Golden Verses, 29, 32.
HEGEs!Ippus, 160. Hellenism, 63, 134 sgg. Heraclitus, 153,
192. Hermas, 108, 147. Hermes Trismegistus, 127, 308.
Herodes Atticus, 61, 72. Herodotus, 28, 82. Hierocles,
39, 105. Hierotheus (Bar-Sudaili), 344. Htppolytus, 147, —
160, Human Sacrifice, 60, 95, 300. Hypostasis, 241.
IDEA, 119, 123 sg., 132, 202, 21459. Idealism, modern, 135.
Idolatry, 77, 117, 254, 310. Incarnation, 36, 104, 113, 248,
254. Inspired peoples, 35. Irenaeus, 147, 150, 151, 153,
157, 166. Isidorus, 326, 327. Isis, 56.
JoacHIM of Flora, 349. John, St., 145, 157, 161, 177, 248,
337. John Chrysostom, 316. Justin Martyr, 19, 64, 109,
122, 153, 17%
LAws, against Magie, 301, 312, 315; against heathenism, 313,
327. Locke, 14, 20. Logos, Stoic, spermatic or seminal,
38, 20. Platonic, 93, 128, 203, 242. Christian, 145, 153,
367... Lové, Stoic, 24. - Platonic, $5, -#28,. 24d) 273.
Christian, 168, 172, 177, 269, 332, 337, 344. Lucian, 52,
65. Luther, 170, 174, 178, 337.
~MAGIC, 40, 60, 149, 249, 257, 300, 303; 307, 315, 321. Makrizi,
349. Man’s place in Nature, 111, 257. Marcus Aurelius,
20, 24, 25, 85. Marinus, biographer of Proclus, 317—326.
Matter, 93, 194, 205, 323. Maximus, 310. Maximus the
 INDEX 255

Monk, 349. Maximus Tyrius, 47, 249. Melito, 166.

Mithraism,155. Moderatus, 44, 47. Musaeus, 28. Musonius
Rufus, 13. Mysteries, 55 sgg., 126. Mysticism, 176, 279
S9J- 340 S99.
NATURE, 251 sgg. Nicomachus, 44, 90. Numenius, 47, 123,
162, 189.
OcELLUS LUCANUS, 29. Olympius, 185. One, 33, 41, 52,
Sie 107,121,124, 160,185, 189, 220,' 22%; 233; 279, 340.
One and Many=Soul, 242. One-Many= Intelligence, 213
$9J+y 233 Sgg., 242. Oracles, 52, 70, 94, 312. Orgies, 55
sqqg. Origen, heathen, 186. Orpheus, 28.
PANTAENUS, 161. Pantheism, 17, 31, 33, 86, 127. Paul, St.,
25, 84, 115, 142, 145, 157, 161, 178, 183, 289, 350. Pere-
grinus, 53. Pheidias, 76 sgg. Philo, 47, 122, 123, 162, 289.
Pius, pope, 108. Plato, 10, 49, 98, 118, 232. Plutarch of
Athens, 318. Prayer, 41, 89, 249, 257, 298, 309, 346.
Priscianus, 328. Providence, 50, 90, 95, 117, 249.
REALISM in Art, 278. Resurrection of Body, 115, 271, 296,
307, 339. Ritschlianism, 138 sgg. Rogatianus, 184. Roman
religion, 54. Ruskin, 200,
SCEPTICISM, 11. Schools closed, 327. Scotus Erigena, 348.
Seneca, 25. Sensationalism, 15. Simplicius, 326, 328.
Socrates, 25, 106, 153, 318. Soul, Stoic view, 19. Pytha-
gorean, 32, 263. Aristotelian, 51, 264. View of Plutarch,
Sock Piotinus,, £24," 212) 219, .222, 226, 243, 257. 50F
Apuleius, 129 sgg. Of Porphyry, 296. Of Iamblichus,
307. Of Proclus, 325. Coming down of, 2543 creates
body, 205, 227, 244, 253, 259. Immortality of, 20, 51, 89,
259. Higher and lower soul of man, 253, 258, 2715; not
in body, 255. Space, 207. Spinoza, 17. Superstition, 89.
Synesius of Cyrene, 338. Syrian Goddess, §7. Syrianus,
318, 320.
TARSUS, 25. Tempier, Bishop of Paris, 350. Tertullian, 166,
Time, 210, 240. Transmigation, 33; into brutes, 36, 254,
271, 320; not into brutes, 296. ‘Trinity, Platonist, 119
$99) 293, 323. Christian, 166, 221, 335, 341, 343. .
UTILITARIANISM, I0, 76.
VISION, of different kinds, 279 sgq., 320, 347.
WILL, 24, 155, 174, 193, 266, 345.
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