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 Ex Libris 
 C. K. OGDEN 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 ^^
 
 ENCT0LOPM)IA METEOPOUTAM: 
 
 Sgstem of sanibetsal iSnotoletge 
 
 ON A METHODICAL PLAN 
 
 PEOJECTED BY SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 
 
 SECOND EDITION, REVISED. 
 
 /irst Sinisinti. ^hxt nmm. 
 
 MORAL AND METAPHYSICAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 LONDON AND GLASGOW: 
 EICHAED GEIFPIN AND COMPANY, 
 
 PUBLISHERS TO THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW. 
 
 1854.
 
 London: 
 
 Wilson and Ogilvy, 
 
 Skinner Street.
 
 
 MOEAL AND METAPHYSICAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OP THE FIRST SIX CENTURIES. 
 
 The Eev. FEEDEEICK DENISON MAURICE, 
 
 CHAPLAIN TO LINCOLN'S INN; 
 FBOFE8SOK OP ECOLESIASTIOAL HISTOEY, KING'S COLLEGE, LONDOV. 
 
 SECOND EDITION, REVISED. 
 
 1026490
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 The first part of this treatise on Ancient Philosophy was 
 published, in a separate form, three years ago. I said in 
 the preface to it that the second part must be entirely 
 rewritten, the original draft in the Encyclopaedia being as 
 unsatisfactory to the writer as it could be to the readers of 
 it. I did not at all know, at that time, what a task I was 
 undertaking, or how much the difficulties of it would be 
 increased by the brevity I had imposed upon myself, and 
 by my determination to give only what I had originally 
 projected a sketch of the progress of thought not a 
 report of systems, which would save the student of them 
 from the necessity of referring to Brucker or to Ritter. 
 Considering how poor the result is, I am ashamed to confess 
 how much trouble it has cost me to fix the form and method 
 of the treatise, or how often the prehminary portion of 
 it has been recast. I have no doubt that many will think 
 I have been more diffuse than my limits warranted ; that 
 many mil complain of me for neglecting writers whom I 
 ought to have noticed ; that the two classes of critics will 
 agree in the opinion that 1 have always chosen the wrong 
 occasions for compression or for dilation. I can oidy say 
 that I have endeavoured to present faithfully what appeared
 
 VI PEEFACB. 
 
 to me the aspect of each period ; that I have intentionally 
 passed over those who I thought (rightly or wrongly) did not 
 illustrate its character; that I have tried to make those 
 who did, speak for themselves, not (so far as I could help it) 
 through any modern interpreter. 
 
 As the task has been pursued in the midst of some not 
 congenial occupations, I have accomplished far less than the 
 publisher had reason to expect. The present part is an 
 instalment : it embraces six very important centiuies. I 
 trust I may be able more successfully to seize the charac- 
 teristic points in the Philosophy of the Middle Ages, and in 
 that which connects them with our own time. 
 
 Hay, South Wai^s : 
 
 September 1853.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 PAOB 
 
 1-4 
 
 FIRST CENTURY 
 
 Seneca 
 
 Epictetus 
 
 The Jews 
 
 The Christian Teachers 
 
 4-18 
 
 4 
 
 9 
 
 14 
 
 16 
 
 SECOND CENTURY 
 
 Plutarch 
 
 Emperor Trajan 
 
 Ignatius of Antioch 
 
 Satuminus 
 
 Justin 
 
 Emperor Marcus Aurelius 
 
 19-38 
 
 19 
 23 
 
 24 
 26 
 29 
 31 
 
 THIRD CENTURY 
 
 Numenius the Pythagorean 
 
 Tertullian 
 
 Panteenus 
 
 Clemens of Alexandria 
 
 Ammonius Saccas 
 
 Plotinua 
 
 Porphyry ... 
 
 Abammon or lamblichus 
 
 38-81 
 
 39 
 42 
 45 
 45 
 54 
 55 
 68 
 71
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 FOURTH CENTURY 
 
 Constantinc 
 
 The Arian Controversy 
 
 Athanasius 
 
 Julian 
 
 Auguptin 
 
 PAGR 
 
 .82-114 
 
 82 
 84 
 85 
 .86, 90 
 96 
 
 FIFTH CENTURY 
 
 Proclus 
 Bo^thiuB 
 
 115-139 
 
 . 116 
 .. 138 
 
 SIXTH CENTURY 
 
 Emperor Justinian 
 Pope Gregory I. 
 
 139-157 
 
 140 
 148
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 1. In the sketch of Ancient Philosophy, we spoke of different The Phiio- ] 
 nations which were busy in the search for Wisdom. The qS vvorid!^ I 
 Hindoo enquired whence the Thoughts which he found within i 
 
 him, whence the mysterious power of thinking, had flowed. 1 
 
 The Chinese found it hard to regulate his outward acts : he j 
 
 asked for some Rule or principle of Conduct. The Persian .. 
 
 perceived a war in himself and in the world between two ' 
 
 powers, one of which should be obeyed, one resisted : he 
 sought for the meaning of Grood and Evil. The Greek felt in ; 
 
 himself a power of Governing men who were physically stronger ; 
 
 than himself: he asked what this power was, and how he ] 
 
 became possessed of it. The Roman perceived that there was '| 
 
 an Order to which he, and aU persons, and all things must con- | 
 
 form : he asked what that Order was, what place he and 
 other men had in it. >. 
 
 2. Out of these questions, others arose which made the solu- its ', 
 
 tion of the first more difficult. The philosopher of each nation Perpi^ities. < 
 or race, whatever was the motive which led him to commence and ; 
 
 his search, aimed at some one object or principle. The pursuit I'oiytheism. j 
 of TJnity, or the one, became formally and consciously with some, j 
 
 really with all, the absorbing pursuit. But the traditions ot i 
 
 each nation had preserved the beKef of many objects demanding 
 the reverence of man. How to respect these traditions, and 
 yet faithfully to engage in that pursuit, became in every country 
 a most perplexing problem. The more earnestly men investi- 
 gated the problem with a real desire to solve it, and to fulfil 
 what they felt to be the duty of their lives, without forsaking 
 their respect for their fathers and their love for their land, the 
 more they felt the embarrassment. If they endeavoured to be 
 citizens as well as sages, to teach and act as well as think, the 
 freest and most tolerant of all states was most likely to 
 
 P B
 
 2 DIFFICULTIES OF THE OLD PHILOSOPHT. 
 
 condemn them a^ corrupters of youth, and despisers of the 
 Gods. 
 (2.) The 3, Another difficulty waa inseparable from this. The phi- 
 
 tidvuiWc losoplier evidently sought for something not visible, not 
 World. tangible. The source of Thoughts must be as impalpable as 
 tliemselves. The outward acts and forms of life might be 
 worthy of the most minute and devout obsenance, but the 
 Rule wliich was at the root of them could not be one of them. 
 The evils which he saw led the disciple of Zoroaster to crave 
 for a Good which he could not see. The very difference of the 
 Greek from other men was, that his Power did not lie in that 
 which had bulk, and could be measured. The Roman Order 
 was reverenced as that which surmounted all visible power 
 and authority. Hence the material world, with which men 
 generally seemed to be occupied, was certaijily not that with 
 which the seeker was occupied. He was looking into some 
 other. What had that world to do with this ? "Were they 
 under the same law, or under different and opposite laws ? So 
 long as the philosopher occupied himself as Confucius, Zoro- 
 aster, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle did, with the 
 actual conditions of society, he must try, by some means or 
 other, to reconcile the two spheres, to show that he was inves- 
 tigating the laws which concern the ordinary life of men. To 
 point out the method of this reconciliation, to prove this 
 fact, was the business of his life. But there was latent 
 in the minds of all these eminent thinkers a feeling which 
 frequently expressed itself in their words and acts, that 
 the region with which the philosopher had to do was in fact 
 altogether opposed to that with which the common man had to 
 do. AV^ith all his practical zeal, the Persiartrefornier could not 
 overcome the habitual conviction of his count^^^nen, that an 
 evil power had created tho visible miiverse. With all his wish 
 to prove that justice or righteousness is equally at the root of 
 society and of individual life, Plato could not sometimes help 
 thinking that the philosopher must have an Atlantis, not an 
 Attica, to work in. The theoretic man was the object of 
 Am)t;Qtle.'.8 profoundest admiration, in spite of his large and 
 rainiite acquaintance with the facts of the earth on which he 
 moved, and his deep interest in all the concerns of it. That 
 belief wliich Persians and Greeks in their vigour could not 
 escape, was the original and unchanging maxim of the contem- 
 plative iUndoO- Tor the most opposite reason, it became also 
 the maxim of the active Roman, when he began to receive 
 philosophy from the lips of Stoics, Academicians, and Epicu- 
 reans. The fixed and long-established forms of his national life 
 withstood the application of any new discoveries. When those
 
 THE E0MA5T EMPIEE, 3 
 
 forms decayed, and the vulgar strife of factions absorbed the 
 toUs of the most accomplished men, so far as they were 
 statesmen and men of action, they welcomed speculation as a 
 delightful region into which they might escape if ever they could 
 exchange the noise of the forum for their villas and gardens. 
 Cicero laboured diligently to bring his rhetorical and political 
 views into harmony with his philosophical. But the contrast 
 between them became more and more evident even to himself. 
 The administration of such a Republic as Eome could have 
 nothing to do with studies which he had conducted, or fancied 
 that he had conducted, in the school of Plato. 
 
 4. But if there was a world for the philosopher, and a world (S-) The rhi- 
 for the common man, how was the philosopher distinguished the^Mam** 
 from the common man ? Hindoos, Persians, Grreeks in the 
 
 time of Pythagoras even in the time of Socrates, would have 
 said, " The philosopher is an inspired man. Some divinity has -^. 
 taken him out of the crowd, and brought him to know secrets 
 which the crowd does not know." Much temptation to vanity 
 and imposture lay of course in this belief; nevertheless, those who 
 held it were less, not more, exclusive than their fellows. Their 
 s}Tnpathy with their disciples was cordial and fraternal ; they 
 felt that light was given them that they might descend into the 
 darkness to bring others out of it. Philosophical pride reaUy 
 began when this conviction departed. The Sophists and the 
 heads of the Latin sects felt that they were different from other 
 men, not in virtue of gifts and a calling, but in virtue of their 
 own native endowments. In proportion as philosophy became a 
 profession, the whole race of non-philosophers that is to say, 
 aU mankind, except the school or its chief members were 
 regarded with contempt, or with indifference, if so strong a feel- 
 ing as contempt was incompatible with the sage's ideal. 
 
 5. It may naturally be supposed that the difficulties of How did the 
 which we have spoken presented themselves in a new light to ment'or'the 
 the philosopher under the Roman Empire, especially under Roman 
 the first twelve Caesars. The seeker for Unity found the affBcrthese 
 habits, rites, Gods of aU nations, adopted into the same i"<i ">"? 
 society : if this reconciliation was that which he aimed at, his 
 
 object was attained. He found all the nations subjected to one 
 head. : if this was unity, his problem was resolved in the most 
 practical manner. What effect would it produce on the Roman 
 seeker after Order, to find himself and his law subjected to a 
 mortal will ? How would the Greek search for government, 
 and freedom thrive, when the Greek found himself a slave ? 
 AVould there be the dream in any heart, that the Gods be- 
 thought themselves of a world which Tiberius or Nero 
 governed, that such a world could have a moral and meta- 
 physical foundation ?
 
 4 L. ATirSXXIB BB5CA. 
 
 Tiip first 6. The records of the first century of the Christian Era 
 centur>. fm-nish interesting and valuable answers to these questions. 
 They give us clear and full portraits of a Eoman and a Greek 
 Stoic, "with an unfinished sketch of a reformer and enthusiast 
 in whom many Greek and Oriental qualities were mingled ; 
 they supply us with other facts, sometimes supposed to have 
 no connection with a history of philosophy, which throw light 
 upon these, and are necessary to the comprehension of the ages 
 wnich follow. 
 
 Seneca 7. Lucius Atcsxvs Sekeca was bom in Cordova. He in- 
 
 years Vt^- ^^erited from his father, Marcus Seneca, a considerable property, 
 died A. D. 65. and a great aptitude for rhetorical studies. There was much 
 in his education which might have led him to think the enlarge- 
 ment of his fortune and the study of words the main business 
 of life. But Seneca became a Stoic. He proposed to himself 
 the acquisition of inward contentment and self-satisfaction as 
 his end ; he looked upon philosophy, not the courts, as the 
 means to that end. He was, however, a Roman before he was 
 a Stoic. A pedantic contempt for wealth formed no part of his 
 profession ; if he could make it minister to his main object, he 
 was quite willing to hold it and increase it. It separated him 
 from the vulgar ; it allowed him leisure for self-cultivation. He 
 was as little anxious to alienate the other part of his patrimony 
 from any notion that barrenness and drjTiess of style are neces- 
 sary or becoming in the seeker of wisdom. He early found that 
 the forum was not the place in which a subject of the Caesars 
 was likely to realize the blessings which he especially desired ; 
 but the gifts which qualified him for the forum might, he thought, 
 be applied advantageously in the closet. 
 Hi* wealth 8. The contemporaries of Seneca, of course, were quick in 
 and Rheto- detecting what seemed to them the gross contradiction of a 
 incoiisistent Stoic dwelling in some of the finest gardens in Italy, and 
 with his patronized by an Emperor. Later times have been more busy 
 in their complaints of Seneca for his points and antitheses. 
 Neither, we conceive, have been just to him. He worked out 
 the problem which Zeno had set before his disciples, with as 
 much consistency as any of them had ever done. But he 
 worked it out in new circumstances. He tried to show that 
 the material objects in which other men placed their happiness, 
 did not necessarily hinder a philosopher from attaining that 
 which specially belongs to himself; that equanimity was pos- 
 sible in the midst of a society liable to hourly changes from the 
 will of a tyrant. His style may be called artificial, but it is the 
 perfectly natural expression of the mind of the man who used it. 
 No other could enable us so well to understand the continual
 
 THE OBJECT OF niS LIFE. 5 
 
 effort which he was making to keep himself steady while all was 
 reeling about him ; the skill with which he availed himself of 
 aU resources for this purpose ; the degree in which he was able 
 to subordinate aU other purposes to it- If self-concentration, 
 independence of mere circumstances, independence of other men 
 and their interests, an assertion of the position of the philosopher 
 as immeasurably higher than that of the ordinary man, be stoical 
 aims and characteristics, Seneca was in the very strictest sense 
 of the word a Stoic. He was a Stoic, too, ifl. his reverence t'oK, 
 physics. A brilliant essayist and historian of our day has His 
 alleged him as the most damning proof of the inutility and for physics, 
 barrenness of moral studies ; his Treatise on Anger being con- 
 trasted with those beneficial investigations of nature which have |ee the 
 led to the construction of various necessary and marketable the Xat. 
 articles. Seneca himself might have been quoted in support of ^^^^- lib. i. 
 this opinion, though he exalted natural above human studies, 
 not on the ground of their utility but their sublimity. He 
 valued even the knowledge which he could acquire of meteors 
 and volcanoes above all theories about Indignation and Consola- 
 tion. It may seem strange that so prolific a writer on ethics, 
 and one who connected ethics so much with the practice of 
 life, shoixld have taken such a view of the relative worth of 
 these pursuits. But, in truth, Xature fvirnished him, as well How ac- 
 as other Stoics, with their ethical standard. How nearly they '^"'^^^'' ^^' 
 might approximate to its fixed order, how far they might 
 cast aside the disturbing forces of impulse and affection, was 
 their question. Seneca went farther in finding the answer to 
 it than any of his predecessors. His Treatise on Anger is no 
 mere collection of well-turned sentences : it exhibits an ideal 
 of character which he set before himself habitually, and which 
 it cannot be denied that in a great measure he realized. The 
 miseries and oppressions of the earth did not disturb his peace. His 
 The crimes of the palace never led him to dream, as an old calmness. 
 Athenian might have dreamt, of Harmodius ; or to pray, as an 
 old Roman might have prayed, for a divine avenger ; or to mix, 
 like his kinsman Lucan, reverence for Pompey and Cato \vith 
 adulation of Nero. He was not inspired, as Juvenal was in a 
 somewhat later time, by mere indignation, to pour out verses. He 
 did not brood, like Tacitus, over the inevitable fall of his country's 
 glory when its virtue had departed, nor anticipate the possible 
 greatness of the untamed tribes in the forests of Germany,because 
 traces of old Roman virtue were to be seen in them. Seneca 
 was as much offended as so mild a man could be, by the dan- 
 gerous sentiment of Aristotle, that anger, though a bad master, 
 is a good servant. It is bad, he said, altogether. He disposed j,g j^jl, 
 rapidly and decisively of the objection that moral evil ought to lib. i. ix.
 
 6 HIS " BEST or THE PHTLOSOPHEE." 
 
 excite the displeasure of a philosopher, by urging that the phi- 
 
 T)p Ira. losopher in Rome who began to act upon that maxim must be 
 
 I.I), ii. vii. displeased all day long. 
 
 Treatise De J). Wliatever subject Seneca handled is treated in this spirit. 
 
 Sapientu. Some extracts from his fragment on the Best of a Philosopher, 
 addressed to Gallio, will illustrate the tone of his mind and of 
 his style. The reader will not fail to observe that the two 
 republics of which Seneca speaks in it explain his idea of the 
 philosopher's own world. It is not the ideal republic of Plato 
 into which he would transport himself, but into the largest con- 
 ception of this visible universe which he can frame. 
 
 c. xxviii. After some general copiments on the blessings of retirement 
 
 an XXXI. j^g ^ deliverance from the influence of opinion, from the dis- 
 traction of different objects, from the fluctuations and incon- 
 stancy which characterise us even in our vices, Seneca proceeds 
 to defend himself from a charge which he had perhaps heard 
 from Gallio himself, to which, at all events, he must have known 
 that he was liable from rival professors. 
 Allegation of " Tou will say to me, ' Seneca, what do you mean ? AVhen 
 Epicungni. y^^ praise idleness in this fashion you are deserting your party. 
 Your friends the Stoics say, ' Even to the very end of our lives 
 we will be acting ; we will not cease to work for the common 
 good, to aid individuals, to stretch out a kind hand even to our 
 enemies. We grant freedom from service to no age ; as the 
 saying is, we keep the hoary head pressed with the helmet. 
 "We are so impatient of rest before death, that, if it were pos- 
 sible, we would not have death itself a rest ! Why do you 
 mix the precepts of Epiciunis with the principles of Zeno? 
 If you are ashamed of your party, why not desert it rather 
 than betray it.' " 
 Coincidence Seneca answers that he does not hold himself pledged to all 
 J/ ^"^"'* the sentiments of Zeno or Chrysippus ; that he is a seeker of 
 truth as well as they ; that, however, he has not deserted either 
 their principles or their example. " The two great sects," he 
 says, " of Epicureans and Stoics differ in this matter, but they 
 arrive at my conclusion by different routes. Epicurus says 
 a wise man will not take part in the management of the state 
 unless there is some special reason for doing so ; Zeno says 
 he will take part in the state unless there is some special 
 hindrance. One seeks rest of purpose, the other from neces- 
 sity. But the necessity has a Ande scope. If the Eepublic is 
 80 corrupt that it cannot be aided, if it is completely possessed 
 with evUs, the wise man will not spend his strength for 
 nought ; he will not devote himself to a task in which he can 
 do no good. As a man would not go to sea in a damaged ship,
 
 THE TWO EEPUBLICS. COlWEMPLATIOIf. 7 
 
 as he would not enter military service when utterly out of Political 
 health, so he will not enter upon a political life which he ''^' 
 knows to be untenable. IS'o doubt it is demanded of him that 
 he shovild do good to many men when it is possible, if not, 
 to a few if not, to those nearest to him, if not to them, then 
 to himself. But if a man makes himself worse, he hurts besides 
 himself, all those whom, if he had been made better, he might 
 have benefited. So if any one deserves well of himself, he does 
 thereby good to others, in that he puts himself in a condition 
 to do them good. 
 
 " Let us present to our mind," Seneca continues, " the two Tiie two 
 different societies, one, that great republic in which gods ^l^xxxi. 
 and men are contained, in which we do not look at this corner 
 or that, but measure our city by the course of the sun ; the 
 other, that in which the condition of our birth hath enrolled ns. 
 Some devote themselves at the same time to both societies, the 
 greater and the less ; some only to the less ; some only to the 
 greater. To this greater republic we may be servants even Avhen 
 we are at rest, yea, I know not whether we cannot serve it 
 better at rest." 
 
 He goes on to mention some of the exercises in which a con- Questions 
 templative man may engage. " He may ask. What is virtue ? tempiative"' 
 Is there one \drtue, or are there many ? Is it nature or art that *"- 
 makes good men ? Is this a great unity which embraces seas 
 and lands, and whatever is in them ? or hath God scattered 
 through the Universe many bodies of the same kind ? Is the 
 matter from which all things are sprung, full and imbroken ? 
 or is it dispersed, and a void intermixed with the things that 
 are solid ? I)oth God sit still in thA -contemplation pf his own 
 wprk^ or. doth ha meddla wit|i it ? Is He diffused beyond it, 
 outside of it ; or doth He inhabit the whole of it ? Is the 
 world immortal ; or is it to be reckoned among perishable things, 
 things born for time" 
 
 Seneca proceeds, in an eloquent passage, to show what a c. xxxii. 
 multitude of objects Nature forces upon the mind of man; 
 how she stirs him up to acts of contemplation, for which the 
 time allotted to his life is all too short. Therefore he con- i 
 eludes " I live according to Nature if I have given myself \ 
 wholly to her, if I am her admirer and worshipper. ' But 
 Nature,' you say, ' would have me both act and have leisure Contempia- 
 for contemplation.' I do both, since contemplation implies act'ion! 
 action. * But,' you say, ' surely it makes a difference whether 
 one comes to this work for the mere sake of pleasure, seek- 
 ing nothing from contemplation but itself, which, however 
 purposeless, no doubt has its seductions. I answer," he 
 says, " it also makes a great difierence with what spirit you
 
 8 SENECA AND NERO. 
 
 Both may be engage in civil life, whether it is that you may always bo in a 
 K^orirood ^^^*^e, and never have any time left in which you may with- 
 end*. draw from human things to divine. The mere craving for 
 
 action, and doing works for their own sake, is not to be aj)- 
 proved, any more than the virtue which is wholly contemplative 
 and never exhibits what it has learnt. With what mind does 
 a wise man withdraw into leisure ? That he may ascertain 
 with himself what things he is to do by which he may benefit 
 those that come after. "I affirm," he says, "that Zeno and 
 Chrysippus did greater things than if they had led armies, had 
 borne civil honours, had laid down laws for one state, instead 
 of laying them down, as they have done, for the whole human 
 raee. 
 
 He argues that the supporters of pleasure and of action both 
 recognise the necessity of contemplation ; he, on his side, does 
 not affirm that it is the ultimate port, but only a place for lying 
 at anchor. " A man, according to Chrysippus, may not only 
 suffer but choose rest. The Stoics lay it down as a general rule 
 that he should concern himself in the affairs of the State, but 
 they do not admit that he should concern himself with everi/ 
 State. "Will you tell me, then, which it shall be ? Shall it be 
 the Athenian, in which Socrates was put to death and Aristotle 
 had to fly lest he should be condemned ? Shall it be the Car- 
 thaginian, in which there were perpetual seditions, the liberty 
 of which was dangerous to every good citizen, where there was 
 inhumanity towards enemies, nostility to friends ? If I chose 
 to go through them one by one, I should not find one which 
 could suffer a wise man, or which a wise man could suffer. But 
 if that state does not exist which we feign for ovu-selves, Eest 
 begins to be necessary for all ; because the one thing that might 
 have been preferred to Eest is nowhere. If I am told that it 
 is an excellent thing to go out to sea, but that I must not for 
 Conclusion, the world sail in a sea in which shipwrecks are wont to happen, 
 which carry the steersman where he would not go, I think I am 
 told plainly enough never to loose my ship from shore, though 
 sailing is so excellent a thing." 
 
 10. With the philosophical habits and convictions which this 
 extract discloses, Seneca was called to form the mind of an 
 emperor. His Treatise on Clemency, addressed to his pupil, is 
 probably a fair illustration of the method of his education. The 
 royal youth is reminded how like his position is to that of the 
 gods, now many millions are subject to his nod, how graceful 
 and divine kindness and forgiveness must be. Objections to 
 the value of a quality which presumes transgression are dexte- 
 rously suggested and dexterously taken off. Nero is congra- 
 tulated that he is exliibiting in the commencement of his reign, 
 
 Republics 
 tou bad to 
 mend. 
 
 Seneca tlie 
 tutor of 
 Nero. 
 
 Treatise De 
 Clementia. 
 
 c.ii.
 
 EPICTETTJS, THE SLATE. 9 
 
 in the hey-day of his passions, all the nohle qualities which 
 his predecessor, Augustus, only acquired after a series of crimes. 
 How great will be the maturity of exceUence of which the first 
 buds are so beautiful ! 
 
 11. It may not be fair for an Englishman, with Bacon's dedi- crimes of 
 cation of the " Advancement of Learning" before him, to com- Seneca, 
 plain of the pagan parasite ; it may not be fair to look upon See 
 the life of him to whom the " Treatise on Clemency" was n^^^caiJ. 
 addressed, as a commentary upon it and upon the views of the lib.ei. c.io. 
 writer. But if the tutor is not answerable for the acts of his 
 pupil, M'hat must be said of his own ? Though we may admit 
 that the censure of Dio Cassius upon the tenor of his life is Tacitus 
 malicious and false, though we may even force ourselves to Ann.iib'.xiv. 
 believe that the evidence of his privity to the death of Agrippina ^' ^^' 
 is not conclusive,* no one has ever doubted that he wrote the 
 apology for the matricide. Which crime was the greater must 
 always remaiu a question. Forgiveness has been asked for this ^*j^f 
 and other acts of the philosopher, on the plea that he was weakness, 
 exposed to temptations under which we might any of us have 
 fallen. We do not say that the atrocity of the offence is an 
 answer to such an argument ; certainly every one woidd wish 
 to accept it on behalf of a man who has so many claims upon 
 our gratitude as Seneca. But, before it can be admitted, there 
 should be some evidence of weakness, of reluctance, of shame. 
 None such are produced. We have not the least reason to 
 conclude that Seneca felt he was departing from the maxim 
 on which his life was regulated in this instance, any more than 
 when he submitted quietly and manfully to the sentence upon 
 himself. He had tutored himself to endure personal injuries 
 without indulging in anger ; he had tutored himself to look 
 upon all moral evil without anger. If the doctrine is sound, 
 and the discipline desirable, we must be content to take the 
 whole result of them. If we will not do that, we must resolve 
 that it is well to hate oppression and wrong, even at the cost 
 of philosophical composure. 
 
 12. Epictetus inherited no gardens, and learned no rhetoric ; Epictetus 
 he was the slave of a freedman of that emperor whom Seneca freedom!'^ ''^ 
 educated. The difference in their position affects the whole nature He lived till 
 of their philosophy. They were both Stoics ; they had both a Hadmn; 
 right to the name ; they both redeemed Stoicism from school- drfy^n from 
 men and nurses, and gave it a manly, practical character. But Rome as a 
 
 philosopher 
 * The words of Tacitus, Ann. lib. xiv. c. 7, only leave it uncertain byDomitian. 
 whether Seneca and Burrhus knew of the first plot of Anicetus ; the com- 
 pletion of the crime our philosopher seems to have suggested.
 
 10 
 
 HIS MAIN OBJECT AND PBINCIPLE. 
 
 Epictetus. 
 
 The philoso- 
 pher and the 
 man one. 
 
 ^ 
 
 His 
 
 philosophy 
 altofrether 
 practical. 
 
 a 
 
 Booki. 
 chap. 1. 
 What the 
 gods give 
 men power 
 over, and 
 why. 
 
 Seneca inquired after the secret of quietude, Epictetus after 
 the secret of freedom. The poor Greek slave in the Eoman 
 empire applied himself to the study of that problem which the 
 sophists, poets, statesmen of Athens, had been working out in 
 the days of Pericles : what is more, he found a solution of the 
 problem which justified all the aspirations of old Greece, and 
 explained their failure. 
 
 13. Viewed in this light, Epictetus becomes one of the most 
 striking figures in the history of philosophy. He has thrown 
 back a glory upon the early Stoicism which does not belong to 
 it ; his influence upon men's thoughts in later times has been 
 very considerable; what he has said upon the subject to 
 which his whole mind was devoted, had never been said in 
 language so distinct and brave by any Greek or Roman prede- 
 cessor. But the real grandeur of his work consists in this, that 
 he broke down the barrier which Seneca, and the comfortable 
 men of letters before and since his age, have been always 
 seeking to establish and perpetuate. The man and the philo- 
 sopher are not different persons with him ; the sole business of 
 the philosopher is to ascertain how he can be most a man. It 
 was not a question, how he could acquire a certain amount of 
 wisdom which would set him above his fellows ; it was the ques- 
 tion, how he could live when all his circumstances seemed to bid 
 him die. " Thou art a slave :" that was the fact presented to 
 him by his outward condition. " What makes thee one ?" was 
 the thought awakened in him, " Is it Nero ? Is it fate ? Is 
 it God ? None of the three," was the reply which by de- 
 grees came to him. " Not Nero, for he is a slave as well as 
 thou ; not fate, for thou art not bound to be a slave ; not God, 
 for He would not have thee a slave : it is thyself. Thou 
 fanciest that all these things, the accidents which surround 
 thee, over which thou hast no power, are necessary to thee : 
 therein consists thy slavery. When thou ceasest to desire these 
 things, and desirest to be what thou art meant to be, thy free- 
 dom begins." 
 
 14. Here is his view of the state of man and the divine pur- 
 pose respecting him : It will be perceived that he limits the 
 oinni j^ot^iftCj^o]^ tlie Goda. by .kind..o .a^aeaftij"^ ; but thaf'B'S' 
 dSsires to assert their Righteousness at all events. 
 
 " The gods have made that which is highest of all, and which 
 is the lord of the rest, alone dependent upon us, namely, the 
 right use of the objects which are presented to us ; but other 
 things not. Is it because they were not willing ? I, for my 
 part, think that, if they could, they would have committed even 
 
 thdse things to us Bvit what saith Jupiter ? * Oh, 
 
 Epictetus ! if it had been possible, I would have made that
 
 HUMAN GBEATJTESS BEOTHEEHOOD. ll 
 
 little body of thine, and that which thou possessest, free and 
 unencumbered. But do not forget that this is not yours ; it is 
 only a little mud skilfully moulded. Seeing I could not do this, 
 I gave thee a portion of that which belongs to us the power 
 of desiring and declining, the power of pressing into action 
 and turning from action, and, in general, the power of using 
 the images that are presented to thee ; of which power if thou 
 takest care, and placest thy well-being in it, thou wilt not be 
 hindered or interfered with, thou wilt not groan, thou wilt not 
 complain of anybody, thou wilt not flatter anybody.' " 
 
 Here is his view of human greatness, and the ground of it : 
 " If anyone hath been able worthily to enter into this doc- Book i. 
 trine, that we are in some very eminent sense bom of God, Men's reia- 
 that He is the father of men and of gods, I do not think tionship to 
 that he will have any grovelling or mean thoughts of himself. "^' ^'" 
 If the Csesar had adopted thee, how proud thy looks would be ! 
 and if thou knowest that thou art the son of Jove, will not 
 that elevate thee ? It is not so with us, however ; for these 
 two things have been mixed in our birth, the body, which is 
 common to us with the animals ; the reason and the mind, 
 which are common to us with the gods. Many decline to that 
 unhappy and dead relationship, while only a few ascend to this 
 godly and blessed one. Seeing, therefore, it is needful that 
 every person whatsoever should use each thing accordiug to his 
 conception of it, those few who think that they are born to 
 faith, and to modesty, and to safety in the use of the images that 
 are presented to them, cannot judge meanly of themselves. 
 But the majority cry, 'What am I? A poor miserable little crea- 
 ture ;' and ' This miserable flesh and bones of mine !' Miserable 
 enough, no doubt ; but you have something better than that 
 flesh and these bones. Why, then, letting the worse go, have 
 you not cleaved to the better?" 
 
 The following extract is perhaps even more remarkable : 
 When a certain man asked him how it is possible to eat in Book i. 
 a manner well pleasing to the gods, " If it is possible," he said, ho^w t(f* 
 "to eat justly, with an even mind, temperately, modestly ; is it not please the 
 possible also to eat in a manner pleasing to the gods ? WTien comm'on 
 you have asked for warm water, and the servant does not hear, things. 
 or, having heard, brings it a little tepid, or does not happen to 
 be in the house, not to be angry or break out, is not this pauence?^ 
 pleasing to the gods ? ' But how can one bear such things as 
 these ?' Poor slave ! will you not bear your own brother, who 
 hath Jove for his author, who, as a son, hath sprung from the 
 same seed and the same divine generation ? Because you have 
 been cast on some place which is a little higher than another, 
 will you straightway set yourself up as a tyrant ? Will you not
 
 12 
 
 THEOLOGY OP EnCTETUS. 
 
 How to read 
 Epictetus. 
 
 He was not 
 a pla^fiarist 
 nor an 
 inventor. 
 
 His 
 
 theology. 
 
 remember who you are and whom you rule, that they are 
 kinsmen, brothers by nature, Jove's offspring ? ' Aye, but I 
 have paid for them, and they have not paid ibr me.' ' Do you not 
 see where you are turning your eyes, that it is to the earth, to 
 the pit, to those miserable laws of the dead ; while to the laws 
 of the gods you have no regard ?" 
 
 15. "W^e have taken these extracts almost at hazard from 
 Arrian's reports, which are, on the whole, more valuable, be- 
 cause freer and more human, than the Enchiridion. They explain 
 the grand maxim of Epictetus, the one which lay close to his 
 heart, which he had tested and knew to be true. We shall 
 utterly fail to understand him if we make a digest of his opi- 
 nions upon ethics, physics, theology ; or busy ourselves with 
 inquiring which were derived from older authorities, which 
 were original. He derived nothing from older authorities, if 
 to derive means to receive as part of a traditional system. 
 There was nothing in his philosophy original, if by original is 
 meant that which is invented as an easy method of explaining 
 the phenomena of the Universe. Epictetus needed to be 
 free. Any one who would show him how he might take a 
 chain from off his neck, was welcomed as a benefactor. But he 
 knew that no precepts can break fetters which we forge for our- 
 selves. Stoicism became transformed in his hands, not because 
 he wished to alter it, but of necessity ; one who craved freedom 
 for his spirit as its first condition, must give a new aspect 
 to doctrines which prescribed a stern submission to fate. 
 Yet he did not contradict his masters, he understood them 
 better than they understood themselves. He asserted as 
 strongly as they did, that the course of the world is under a law 
 which man cannot alter ; it is his folly and calamity that he is 
 always complaining of things which are independent of him. 
 He asserted as much as they could do, that man himself is 
 under a law. Why does not he obey it, and so cease to be a 
 slave of things which have no rightful dominion over him ? 
 
 16. So with respe^ to. the tUeolfigy. of -Epictetiui ; it could 
 not be aiiy longei:^hysico-theolog);^.^]ich aa.Chr^Jwppu8r 
 propqulgated. The woniTcould not be God, nor could he worship 
 a collection of world-gods. There was an eye over him ; he 
 wanted a divine power to help him against the things which were 
 trj'ing to crush him. Seneca, in his gardens, conceived of a 
 (iistant Omnipotence, of which the Emperor was the living and 
 practical image ; Epictetus, the bondsman, came to believe in 
 One to whom a suffering man might look up for help and deli- 
 verance.'-:
 
 THE PTTHAG0EEA5J' KEFOBMER. 13 
 
 17. Supposing there was this possibility of freedom and Dreams of 
 greatness iu man, was it possible that the multitude of slaves, J^'orma- 
 rich and poor, in prisons and high places, could be awakened 
 to seek for emancipation ? How, and by whom, should they 
 be awakened ? These thoughts appear to have occupied Epic- 
 tetus scarcely more than they occupied Seneca ; but there were 
 philosophers in this time who aspired to be reformers, not of 
 themselves only, but of their age. The figure of Apollonius Apoiionius 
 of Tyana floats dimly before us in the traditions of the third and "' Tyana. 
 fourth centuries, when he had been changed into a model hero, 
 and when his name was needed for a polemical purpose. But 
 that there was such a man in the first century, and that he indi- 
 cates some of the stronger feelings that were at work in it, 
 cannot, we think, be doubted. His biographer, Philostratus, 
 belongs to the time of Septimius Severus. The distance of less 
 than 150 years is not so great that we need suspect any mistake 
 in the assertion that Apoiionius conceived an early admiration 
 for Pythagoras, and a desire to do for his own generation what 
 he supposed the old sage had sought to do for his. Pythagoras, 
 as we have seen, was distinguished from the later teachers by 
 the assured conviction of a divine inspiration ; by the acknow- 
 ledgment of an invisible power to be served in silence and awe 
 as the source of that inspiration ; by the belief that it was to be 
 used for the reformation of society. Apoiionius seems to have His admira- 
 felt strongly the difierence between such a philosophy and one pytha^goras. 
 which belongs to the schools, to be used for the purpose of 
 endless disputation. He felt even more strongly the difference 
 between the worship which Pythagoras had encouraged among 
 his disciples, and that worship of evil powers to be propitiated 
 by sacrifices, which was kept alive by the priests of various 
 nations and gods, in the Eoman and Parthian empires. That 
 a young man should encounter many of these priests, should 
 have proclaimed the pure philosophical devotion which he sup- ^ j^. 
 posed to be the substitute for their dark rites, is not, surely, an tcTpriests. 
 impossible, even an improbable, supposition. It is more con- 
 solatory to think Philostratus true than false, when he affirms 
 that supposition to be the fact. That he could not have entered 
 upon his gigantic task without a sense of a calling which he 
 had learnt from Pythagoras to regard as the characteristic of a 
 sage, and that he prepared himself for it by the methods of 
 silence and purification which his master prescribed, we may 
 also believe. That the sense of the impossibility of any radical Sense of 
 change in the laith of men and the order of society without a >"i""- 
 divine power should have grown upon him as he proceeded, was 
 most natural. The statements of his idolatrous admirers compel 
 us to think that he ultimately identified these powers with
 
 14 THE JEW IN ALEXAXDEIA. 
 
 himself; used the gifts which he had, and the opinion of his mis- 
 sion, for selfish and dishonest purposes; practised the ordinary 
 An tricks of the enchanters, who were then everywhere so nume- 
 
 encbanter. rous. The admission of this fact docs not oblige us to question 
 the sincerity of his origuial purpose, to deny that a better 
 "Wisdom than his own stirred him, as it stirs every reformer, 
 with a sense of the evils of his time, and a passionate desire to 
 cure them. Nor need we be at pains to refute his conclusion, 
 that some mightier agency than any which the philosophers or 
 priests of his time were dreaming of, must be at work to renew 
 the universe. 
 
 Relation of 18. There was one nation now reduced under the power of 
 the Jews to the Caesars, which had stood in a diiferent relation to philo- 
 "*"'' ^' sophy from all the rest. The Jew was not pledged by his faith 
 to reverence the multitude of sensible objects which interfered 
 with the search after Unity ; he was pledged to protest that 
 they were no gods, and to refuse them worship. The search 
 after "Wisdom did not contradict, in his apprehension, the fact 
 that the Divine Wisdom had revealed itself to him : the more 
 earnest his conviction on the latter point was, the more vigorous 
 and continuous did his search become. The belief that the 
 seeker of Wisdom was inspired, that he could not seek unless 
 Wisdom first sought him, was therefore deeply rooted in his 
 mind. But the seeker was also the prophet who was to com- 
 municate ; he could claim no part of his knowledge as his own ; 
 his privileges were those of an Israelite ; he could have no 
 greater. 
 Reference to 19. We have seen that an Alexandrian teacher living under 
 firfaii^'"'"' t^6 Eoman Government during this century, understood the 
 achool. advantage which his Jewish birth gave him, and asserted his 
 right on the strength of it to pursue Wisdom himself, and to 
 sympathise with the eftbrts which other men had made in various 
 directions to pursue it. Instead of condemning the Gentile 
 philosopJiiey-he referred their light to the same origin as his 
 own. / rhilo, js^hom we spoke of as in some sense winding up 
 the phi^osopBy of the old world, does also in a very important 
 sense introduce the new. We shall have to trace his injfluence 
 through several centuries, not in his own city, or among his 
 own countrj'men only. Tet Philo, we saw, regarded the philo- 
 sopher almost as Seneca regarded him. Chosen by God, 
 separate from other creatures, he has feelings, interests, hopes, 
 in which common men are not intended to share. How can 
 so zealous and enlightened an Israelite have w^andered so far 
 from the principles upon which the commonwealth of Israel 
 stood ? Evidently, because he has lost the sense of it as a com-
 
 THE PHAEISEE JiKD SADDTJCEE. 15 
 
 monwealth ; its homely facts have become allegories ; the history 
 has evaporated into a philosophy. 
 
 20. A strong practical protest against the Philonic tendency, The 
 still more against the mixture of Jewish with Heathen wisdom, 
 arose from the sect of the Pharisees. This sect could not be 
 accused of sacrificing the outward to the inward, of converting 
 letters into symbols, of substituting spiritual contemplations 
 for authoritative dogmas. But they were as little historical as 
 the Alexandrian school. Tradition stood with them for history ; 
 the living records which make the past a part of the present, 
 were exchanged for dead customs and rules, which make the 
 present merely the slave of the past. The past itself was the 
 indistinct echo of human voices; God was not heard in it. A 
 school of self-righteous men was as far removed from sympathy 
 with those who bowed to its decrees, confessed its divinity, 
 hated its inhumanity, as the professors of the most occult lore, 
 the aspirants after the most divine communion. 
 
 21. The Sadducee was a philosopher like the Alexandrian, The 
 
 but in the most opposite sense. For him there was no invisible Sadducees. 
 world. He scorned the formalities of the Pharisee, but he 
 substituted for them formalities of another kind, maxims of 
 conduct, the proprieties and decorums which separate the easy 
 and respectable from the multitude, the sagacity and experi- 
 ence which separate the civilized from the unlettered. Some 
 have called him an Epicurean, some a Stoic ; he may at times 
 have resembled both ; he had no natural affinity with either. 
 Bis sacred books supplied him with the hint of a morality 
 which is higher and deeper than all ceremonies and services ; 
 he had only to separate this morality from all relation to any 
 powers and influences beyond the visible world upon which it 
 was to be exercised, and there came forth a system compact 
 and manageable enough for all ordinary uses, capable of putting 
 forth some vigour as long as it had anything not more vital or 
 substantial than itself to fight with, turning that vigour into 
 ferocity when it had. 
 
 22. IX EfeiJi90fd)^..il.t^^6 pursuit .(^^^^^^ was as little Both 
 likely to thrive amidst these diViaea sects, as in any countries apposed to 
 which nominally professed, a divided worship. The hard in 'aii^y^r^ 
 dogmatism of the Pharisee made all search fruitless and pro- ^"*^- 
 fane. The dogmatism of the Sadducee kept enquiry within 
 
 limits, which nearly every philosopher of the old world had felt 
 it the first duty and necessity of his vocation to transgress. 
 The idea of spiritual guidance and inspiration, formally recog- 
 nised by the one, contemptuously denied by the other, was 
 equally alien from the heart and intellect of both. It was 
 incompatible with the 8la^^8h reverence which the one paid to
 
 16 THE CHBI8TIAK CHrBCH. 
 
 the dead letter of the sacred books, and the comments of the 
 elders upon it, w-ith the confidence which the other liad in his 
 own intellect, with his assurance that there could be nothing 
 of which it did not give him information. 
 
 The Chris- 23. It would seem at first as if the proclamation which 
 tian Gospel : called forth all the jealousy and bitterness of both these schools, 
 apparently was even more opposed to philosophy than they were. Por it 
 ihi^'l)hy. "'"^ ^ proclamation. Those who made it called themselves 
 heralds, not seekers. They said they had news for their nation 
 and for mankind of that which actually was, not hints of that 
 which might be. They spoke of a revelation of a hidden world, 
 and of Him who ruled it, not of a method of discovering it or 
 Him. This language is even more characteristic of the culti- 
 vated Saul of Tarsus, than of the Galilean fishermen ; there is a 
 more strong assertion in his writings than in theirs, that the 
 wisdom of the world must stoop to the folly of preaching. 
 What could be expected of such a fiiith, but that it should treat 
 all the questions with which pliilosophy had been occupied as 
 vain, or that it should pronounce decisions upon them so defi- 
 nite and precise, as to make past enquiries obsolete, future 
 enquiries needless or rebellious ? 
 It touches 24. The Christian teachers were not able to take the first 
 questions'of course ; for the Gospel which they preached treated of all the 
 PhiioBophy. questions in which philosophy had been engaged, and pro- 
 claimed them to be of transcendant importance. The thoughts 
 and movements of the mind and heart within, were as pro- 
 foundly interesting to the preacher of the cross, as they could 
 be to the Brahminical devotee. The acts which he does in the 
 common relations of life are as much connected with his faith 
 as they can be with that of the Chinese. All the facts which 
 he believes refer to the conflict between Good and Evil, and to 
 the question which is to triumph. How spirit is to be free from 
 the control of that which is merely material, and shall exer- 
 cise dominion over it, is a subject as carefully discussed and 
 elaborated by St. Paul as by Plato. The announcement of a 
 divine and spiritual Kingdom, which was the primary subject 
 of the new Gospel, at once appealed to all that desire for an 
 Order by which the Latin was possessed. 
 The 25. T^he Christian Church did not therefore occupy a ground 
 
 Suid not ^^ ^^^ ^'^'^^ difierent from that on which the philosopher had 
 oppose been working : it was his own ground. He had a right to say 
 aiHi*">nrch ^^at it was invaded. The Christian abandoned his position if 
 wifhoiit he denied the charge. He abandoned it equally if he took up 
 his'position. the other plea, and affirmed that he was furnished with certain 
 propositions which entitled him to put down the thoughts
 
 ITS PLACE Ilf A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 17 
 
 that were stirring in the minds of men already, to prohibit 
 the rise and growth of them. For he came declaring that the 
 eternal Grod who had made man in His own image, had sent forth 
 His Son to regenerate human society and human life in its first 
 root, and that His Spirit was given to men to awaten them out 
 of a dead sleep into a knowledge of their position as men, into 
 the apprehension and enjoyment of a spiritual world a kingdom 
 of righteousness and truth. Everything, then, of torpor and 
 death was at war with this faith, and with Him who was the 
 object of it. All desire, striving, effort, however confused and 
 likely to be abortive, was recognised as originating in a divine 
 source, was capable of being organized and directed to a divine 
 end. 
 
 26. Already during the first century all the principles of this The Church 
 faith had been developed. It had come forth in an actual centoy^^**^ 
 society. It had encountered the Sages of the Athenian market- 
 place, as well as approached the palace of the Caesars. But it 
 was still regarded, by both sages and Csesars, as the most insig- 
 nificant of the numerous sects of the most turbulent province 
 and incomprehensible religion of the empire, till the capital of 
 that province and religion fell before the army of Titus. Then 
 it came forth in a new character : separated from all local 
 associations, denounced by the race from which it had sprung, 
 it called upon all races of which the Eoman Empire was com- 
 posed, to acknowledge the God of Abraham. It affirmed that Xew 
 an actual kingdom, grounded not upon strength, but upon sub- the'^cond. 
 mission and sacrifice, was existing in the midst of those races ; 
 that all might claim the King of it, as their King; that 
 an actual invisible power had come I'orth, and was at work 
 to unite them in this fellowship. Sucli assertions had their 
 political, as well as their popular and their philosophical side. 
 Emperors, mobs, sophists, were equally boxmd to take notice of 
 them. We are not anxious to force this conflict upon the its place in 
 notice of our readers ; but it forces itself upon them even more philosophy.^ 
 when they are reading the civil history of Gibbon, than when 
 they are reading the ecclesiastical histories of Baronius or of 
 Mogheim. The historian of philosophy can pass it over less 
 tnaSeilter of them. Eor five centuries it presents itself in 
 different forms to his notice. If those five are disregarded, the 
 thirteen which follow become unintelligible. Upon this sub- 
 ject we now enter. The Christian Scriptures treat the years 
 previous to the destruction of Jerusalem, or the death of the 
 last apostle, as the winding up of a period, rather than as the 
 commencement of one. The same arrangement of epochs is 
 suggested by the circumstances of the Koman Empire. The 
 reign of Vespasian seemed to his contemporaries to mark a new 
 

 
 18 THE OBDEE OF THE HISTOET. 
 
 The first epoch. Domitian's reign revived the dark times of Tiberius and 
 transitional. !Nero. With Nerva an age commences which Gibbon rashly 
 calls the happiest in the annals of the world ; and which, though 
 famines, pestilences, wars, rob it of that honour, is certainly 
 illustrated by a series of princes who stand in the most marked 
 and brilliant contrast to the Caesars of the first century. We 
 are justified, therefore, in treating that century as transitional, 
 belonging equally to the old world and to the new. The new 
 world we divide into three periods. The first will embrace the 
 
 ?ears which elapse between the commencement of the reign of 
 'rajan, and the appearance of Mahomet.
 
 PAKT I. 
 
 FEOM THE EEIGN OF TEAJAN TO THE APPEAEANCE OF 
 MAHOMET. 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 The Second Centuet, 
 
 teom teajan to septimius seveeus. 
 
 1. The distinction between the Greek and Latin provinces of Greek and 
 the E-oman Empire becomes more strongly marked while other languages, 
 distinctions disappear. The two languages, by whomsoever 
 they were written or spoken, seem always to denote two essen- 
 tially different habits of mind. The great Latin writers after 
 Seneca did not cease to be philosophical, but they ceased to be 
 formal professional philosophers. Tacitus felt that it was a 
 more truly Eoman work to study the actions of men and the 
 condition of empires, than to acquire the art of being unaffected 
 by either. Quinctilian felt that he was a truer patriot when he 
 was doing his best to prevent rhetoric from becoming a trade, 
 by making it a science, than if he had used his rhetoric in the 
 construction of moral theories and apopthegms. On the other 
 hand, the great Greek writers who followed Epictetus all testify 
 that his thoughts had taken the direction which was most strictly 
 in accordance with the language which he used as his instru- 
 ment. They might derive great benefit from their Eoman posi- 
 tion and their Eoman masters ; but the tongue of Plato and 
 Aristotle, now especially that it was no more claimed by poets, 
 was the natural inheritance of those who made the search after 
 wisdom the end of their lives. 
 
 2. There was one writer of this time who clearly understood Plutarch of 
 that this was the vocation of his countrymen, but who perceived ^^'**- 
 also, more clearly than his predecessors or any of his cotempo- 
 raries, that the Greek mind and the Latin mind at this time were 
 needed to sustain and illustrate each other. To this conviction 
 we may fairly attribute the great services which Plutarch of
 
 20 
 
 PLUTAHCH OF CHEHONffiA. 
 
 Union of 
 Grek and 
 RomAn 
 qualities in 
 bim. 
 
 Objections 
 to him as 
 uncritical 
 and as a 
 plagiarist. 
 
 Cheronspa has rendered to mankind. It must have struck many 
 as a puzzling fact, that they owe the strongest and most 
 vital impressions which they have respecting the freest ages of 
 Athens and of Rome, to a writer who lived under Domitian and 
 Trajan. The obvious suggestion, that at no other time could the 
 lives of the heroes of each country have been so well compared, is 
 a help to the solution of the difficulty, but does not remove it. 
 Plutarch could not have understood enough of either to compare 
 them, if he had not united some of the higher qualities of both. 
 He saw in the old Koman the domestic affection, the reverence to 
 invisible powers, the subjection to law, which were the strength 
 of the commonwealth, the loss of which was its destruction. 
 His beautiful letter to his wife on the death of their child, his 
 practical treatises on all, even the minutest parts, of education, 
 nis eagerness to vindicate the old forms of religion from the dark 
 and maUguant superstitions with which they had been mingled, 
 show how much pains he had taken to train himself to those 
 habits which did not belong to the land of his birth. But the pas- 
 sion for libert}^ the love of the soil, the eagerness to discover the 
 principle that lay beneath outward facts, were as obviously the 
 causes of the past glorj- of Greece, the witnesses of its present 
 degradation. The interest which Plutarch compelled himself 
 to feel in polities when all polities seemed to have passed away, 
 his amusing vehemence against Herodotus for his libels upon 
 Boeotia, and his efibrts to understand the old philosophers, 
 show how thoroughly and heartily he was determined to make 
 his extraneous education a means of bringing out more fully 
 the sympathies and powers which belonged to the countrymen 
 whom he celebrated. 
 
 3. Only tliis combination could have enabled Plutarch to be 
 what he has been to modern Europeans, and to Englishmen^ 
 tlirough Shakspeare, more than to all others. It has been the 
 ungrateful fashion of some modem historians to speak of him 
 as an uncritical retailer of anecdotes ; it has been still more 
 the fashion with philosophers to treat him as a man without 
 originality, the mere reproducer of opinions which greater men 
 had held. The former pedantry is harmless enough if it does 
 not prevent children from reading Plutarch : were it to have 
 that effect, our interest in classical antiquity would speedily 
 disappear ; we should have a set of old heroes clad in unexcep- 
 tionable costume, not a single feature remaining which marks 
 them as individual men. The other affectation is connected 
 with the doctrine which has been so widely diffused among 
 the historimis of opinions, that a man's thoughts are good for 
 nothing till you can ascertain to what school they belong, and 
 that they must have been copied into his mind from books, if
 
 HIS KNOWLEDaE OF THE ANCIENTS. 21 
 
 he shared them vsith any more ancient teacher. Plutarch, His work as 
 instead of being a mere copyist, was, it seems to us, one of the pij^^*''^^''" 
 great restorers of life and originality to philosophies which had 
 become utterly dead. His genial habits of mind, his historical 
 spirit, his affectionate study of actual men, enabled him to 
 appreciate thoughts and feelings which some even of the 
 great teachers of the world had been unable to grasp. 
 Aristotle, we have seen, though living so near the time of 
 Socrates, could not in the least understand him ; for him he 
 was merely a teacher of Ethics, so standing in contrast with his 
 pupil, who dealt with Theology and Physics likewise. In the 
 schools of the Academics, full of disputation as they were, the 
 great disputer and confuter was utterly misrepresented, the 
 object of his life inverted. Cicero apprehended him only through 
 Xenophon, or through some of those splendid passages of decla- 
 mation in Plato which exhibited least of the master's character, 
 To Seneca he must have been an exceedingly disagreeable object, 
 always suggesting some topic to disturb the equanimity which 
 a sage desires. TBut Plutarch, in his " Platonic Questions," 
 entered at once mto the subtlest essence of the Socratic teach- 
 ing, ^that which belonged to the spirit of t^ man himself, 
 and in which lay the secret of his power. fWhj, instead of standinsr^o'f 
 boasting of his art as a generative one, he called it obstetric ; Socrates. 
 why he thought that the deepest wisdom was not invented, but 
 recollected ; lastly, how the Daemon gave the meaning to all 
 the deepest thoughts which he uttered, so that his philosophy 
 never could be understood apart from it,4-these are points 
 which Plutarch handles more courageously and successfully 
 than they perhaps ever have been handled before or since his 
 time, because he felt more to Socrates as a learner and as a 
 friend, than as a panegyrist or a critic. 
 
 4. If Plutarch holds a most important place as the reviver, Assists in 
 in the truest sense of that word, of lessons which had been overthrow- 
 
 . . inff the 
 
 mistaken or had become obsolete, he is not less important as the sects, 
 foreteller of a new philosophical era. From his time it became 
 quite clear that the age of the old sects had passed away. 
 We do not mean that Epicurseans, Stoics, and Academicians, 
 might not go on maintaining their different theses and collect- 
 ing bands of disciples around them ; such occupations or 
 amusements, if less animating than the games and shows in the 
 amphitheatres, were also less expensive and less bloody. But 
 the discovery that these questions meant something to the men 
 who engaged in them in the old world, that they bore upon 
 their business, that they had to do with the most serious 
 struggles of their lives, inspired thoughtful men with a disgust 
 for the abuse of them to mere purposes of talk or display, and
 
 22 THE INWABD TEACHEE. 
 
 Plutarch, with a Hope that there might yet be treasures lying very close 
 to humau beings which they had not discovered, and of which 
 His they did not suspect the existence. And secondly, no one did 
 
 wUdom! more than Plutarch to prove that, in some way or other, the old 
 belief in divine helpers, protectors, inspirers, must be con- 
 nected with the search for practical wisdom, with aU our 
 efforts after self-knowledge ana self-government. He may not 
 have succeeded in showing how the reconciliation was to be 
 effected ; but, at least, he makes us aware of some of the diffi- 
 culties which lie in the way of it ; and he leaves us in no doubt 
 that whosoever stifles man's questionings for the sake of assert- 
 ing a divine authority, blackens and blasphemes that authority ; 
 that whoever seeks to carry on such inquiries without referring 
 them to a deeper source and a superior guidance, makes them 
 feeble and abortive. 
 Hig 5. We should be glad, for other reasons, to give our readers 
 
 "DKraon of a sketch of the dialogue, which is entitled " The Daemon of 
 Socrates," though only a small portion of it bears directly upon 
 that subject. But there is one passage so important, not for 
 the illustration of Plutarch's mind, but of the whole philoso- 
 phical movement of this time, that we must translate it : 
 Not a visible "When we considered this question privately among our- 
 appearance. selves, the suspicion suggested itself whether it was a visible 
 appearance at all which Socrates spoke of, whether it might 
 not be the sensation of some voice, or rather the intellectual 
 recognition of a word coming, in some wonderful manner, into 
 contact with him, as even in sleep it is not a voice that is uttered, 
 but those who receive the impressions and perceptions of certain 
 His speech . words think that they hear people speaking. To these, this kind 
 addressed ^^ apprehension is in very deed a ^eam, coming to them in the 
 to the silence and serenity of the body while they sleep. [There is a 
 
 externaiear. -^qj.^ j^g^; ^^ ^}jg j^g^^ sentence, which leaves some doubt about 
 its meaning.] And having been stifled with the tumult of the 
 passions and the whirl of outward necessities, they cannot listen 
 and address the mind fully to the things which are signified to 
 The purified them. But the reason of Socrates being pure, not under 
 troe" ^''^ ^^ dominion of passion, nor mixing itself greatly, under the 
 listener. pretence of outward necessities, with the body, was quick and 
 sensitive in responding to that which encountered it ; and this, 
 one would conjecture, was not the voice, but the word of 
 a daemon coming in its signification, without voice, into con- 
 tact with the perceiver. For the voice, when we speak with one 
 another, is like a blow upon the soul, which opens by force to 
 receive the word through the ears. But the reason of the better 
 man leads the weU-matured soul, which needs no blow, 
 directing it to that which has been internally signified to it ;
 
 TEAJAN HIS EULES OF GOVEENMENT. 23 
 
 and it permits itself to be guided by the light gentle reins which 
 the reason uses, no violent passions champiag the bit, and 
 striving to be loose." 
 
 6. The student of philosophy vdll do well to consider the The import. 
 
 *- , ^. ^ &nt uistinc- 
 
 whole passage, from which this is an extract, attentively. It tions in thig 
 will afford him great Light respecting the distinction between Passage. 
 aiffBrjffi^ and voijcriQ, which is of such vast importance for the 
 understanding of the earHest as weU as the latest metaphy- 
 sics. Scarcely less valuable are the suggestions which the 
 passage offers respecting the relation of the Novc to the ^ux?), 
 of the teaching governing power which apprehends spiritual 
 objects directly, to that receptive faculty or principle which may 
 be either the victim and slave of the senses, or may obey a 
 higher guidance. But it is especially needful to remark, that 
 both these vital distinctions depend in Plutarch's teaching upon 
 the precious acknowledgment of some DjaeoAoii-or Spirit* who 
 addresses itself to an organ in man capable of communicating 
 with it, and to which that organ must yield itself freely if it 
 fulfils its proper function. He does not profess to define the 
 faculties (the beautiful language which he was using, not 
 with the perfect freedom and mastery of an old GTreek, but 
 perhaps with even a more critical apprehension of its powers 
 and distinctions, almost forbade him to do so) apart from the 
 power which moves them, and the object to which they are 
 directed. 
 
 7. It may be doubted whether the Emperor Trajan, to whom xhe 
 Plutarch dedicated his " Sayings of Kings and Generals," ever Emperor 
 troubled himself to read the dialogue on the Daemon of Socrates. '^"'*"* 
 In spite of his cultivation, he was probably too much occupied 
 with Dacian conquests, and the internal management of the 
 Empire, to have much time for what would have seemed to him 
 ingenious and somewhat difficult speculation. He was, there- His tolerant 
 fore, the less prepared to encounter a new and very startling **'' 
 form of the doctrine of an inward teacher and guide, which was 
 presented to him when he came to the city of Antioch, on his 
 way to an expedition against the Parthians. The ordinary 
 policy of the Empire, the habits of toleration which accorded 
 with the character of Trajan and which his intercourse with 
 Pliny had nourished, would have forbidden him to interfere with 
 any strange opinion, whether it took the shape of religion or 
 philosophy. Under his benignant despotism, all schools might 
 deliver their separate and contradictory oracles, all races whose 
 rites were not outrageously inhuman, might worship their 
 separate gods according to the traditions of their fathers. But 
 Trajan heard of a society in Antioch, which his very tenderness
 
 24 
 
 TBAJA.n'8 dialogue with IGyATTUS. 
 
 Apparent for the feelings and faith of its volatile inhabitants led him to 
 Trajan' * regard with dislike and suspicion. He understood that the 
 rules. members of it drew men away from the worship of their native 
 
 and proper gods, proclaiming, as the humbled Jewish nation 
 had done, one invisible Ruler of the whole earth, but inviting 
 men of all tribes, as the Jews had not done, to abandon their 
 divinities, and unite in confessing Him. He found that these 
 men spoke of themselves as parts of a kingdom ; a phraseology 
 altogether different from that of any sect or school. It might 
 have been the mere phraseology of harmless fanaticism ; but 
 there was evidently an organization in the Antioch com- 
 munity ; one, called a father, presided over it ; it was connected 
 Grounds of by mysterious bands with societies similarly organised in the 
 '' other cities of the Empire. To suppress such a body, as out- 
 
 raging the religion of Syria, as interfering with the polity of 
 Eome, was a most natural course for the Emj)eror to adopt. 
 He sent for Ignatius, the Mher of the Society or Family, 
 which was called Christian, in Antioch. It is to liis conversa- 
 tion with this father that we must for a moment direct the 
 attention of our readers. 
 
 8. ""When Ignatius stood before the face of Trajan the 
 king, ' Who art thou, poor devil, ' said the Emperor, ' who 
 art so wilfully transgressing our decrees, and moreover art 
 tempting others to their destruction ?' Ignatius answered, 
 * No one calleth him who bears a God within him a poor devil, 
 for the devils turn away from the servants of God. But if thou 
 meanest that I am evilly inclined towards the devils, and that I 
 give them trouble, I confess it. For having Christ as my hea- 
 venly King, I set at nought the plots of these evil spirits.' 
 Trajan said, ' And who is this that beareth a God within him ?' 
 Ignatius answered, ' He that hath Christ in his heart.' 
 Trajan said, ' Seem we not in our minds to have gods, seeing 
 that we use them as allies sgainst our enemies ?' Ignatius 
 said, ' The devils of the nations you call gods through a mis- 
 take. For there is one God that made the heaven, and the 
 earth, and the sea, and one Christ Jesus the Son of God, the 
 only begotten : of whose kingdom may I be a sharer !' Trajan 
 said, * Thou meanest Him who was crucified under Pontius 
 Pilate ?' Ignatius said, ' Him who hath crucified my sin with 
 the author of it, and hath put down all devilish error and evil 
 under the feet of those that bear him in their heart.' Trajan 
 said, * Dost thou, then, bear this crucified One in thyself?' 
 Ignatius said, * Tea, verily, for it is \ATitten, I will dwell in 
 them and walk in them.' Trajan exclaimed, ' We decree that 
 y Ignatius, who saith that he beareth the crucified One within him, 
 ibe led bound to Eome, there to be the food of wild beasts.' " 
 
 Ignatias of 
 Antioch. 
 
 The evil 
 spirit. 
 
 Tlie divine 
 teacher. 
 
 The 
 deliverer.
 
 IGNATIUS NOT CONVEESANT WITH PHILOSOPHY. 25 
 
 9. We have hesitated to introduce a passage at onc6 so theo- How this 
 logical and so sacred as this ; but it is impossible faithfully to bears^upon 
 exhibit the history of Christian, or even of heathen, philosophy, the history 
 during the first three centuries, if we pass it over. Even if we gophy!"" 
 had any doubt about the substantial veracity of the record (it 
 may of course have received additions from the reporter, but 
 the part which specially concerns us is not that which would 
 have been interpolated at a later time), we should still be 
 obliged to receive it as an important testimony to the opi- 
 nion which was entertained in Antioch respecting that which 
 was most characteristic in the belief of Ignatius. Its value oM^natius. 
 consists in this, that Ignatius was not a philosopher, that he 
 had apparently no communication with philosophers, that he 
 was acquainted with scarcely any book but the Jewish Scrip- 
 tures, that he resorted to them, not for the sake of any deep 
 lore, but to find warnings and examples for the time in which 
 he lived, of the dangers to which they were exposed from 
 envy, ambition, self-will, and of the way in which they might 
 escape those perils. Whatever be our judgment respecting his 
 epistles, our conclusion upon this point will be the same. They 
 stand out in the most marked contrast to the later apologetic 
 literature : they are simple, child-like, practical in the highest 
 degree. The dialogue vnth Trajan, therefore, must be taken for 
 what it appears on the face of it to be first, as the expression 
 of the simplest conviction of an aged Christian confessor looking testimony 
 death in the face ; secondly, as marking out the point of differ- signified, 
 ence which this confessor supposed to exist between him and 
 the heathen people around him ; thirdly, as explaining the 
 deepest and most radical ground of the punishment with which 
 the Emperor visited him. He believed that the King and 
 Lord of the whole earth did, in the strictest sense, dweU in 
 him ; he believed that the heathen world were doing homage 
 to evU powers, instead of to a perfectly good Being ; he be- 
 lieved that he was to proclaim Him who dwelt in him and ruled 
 over him to all men ; he believed that, when they acknowledged 
 Him, they would be delivered from their servitude to evil. That 
 there was such a Guide of the wise, the most thoughtful of them 
 had confessed. Even Trajan, in his military lloman manner, 
 claimed for himself a certain belief in such a Director. But why it 
 Ignatius affirmed that the Invisible Gruide had actually come "ed^to^hC'^ 
 upon earth, had borne a human nature, had died a human death ; condemna- 
 He was not a mere daemon, not a special teacher of the wise man 
 He was the Governor and Euler of men. To all races and 
 all classes, Syrians and Romans, masters and serfs, His kingdom 
 must be announced. Trajan perceived at once that such a doc- 
 trine had nothing of the quietness and harmlessness of a school
 
 26 GNOSTICISM THE PEESIAN FAITH. 
 
 dogma. Whatever affinity it might have to the teaching of any 
 Greek or Eoman sage, it went altogether beyond the limits 
 within which opinions might be safely tolerated; it united 
 the perils of the definite and the indefinite ; it carried you to a 
 depth which no plummet-line could sound, yet it bore directly 
 upon the common life and common relations of man. If we 
 fairly put ourselves into Trajan's position, we shall certainly 
 not be inclined to condemn his act as a strange or monstrous 
 one. It was that which, in his circumstances, the most tolerant 
 modern statesman might have adopted, if his toleration did not 
 rest upon that belief of a divine guide to Truth which Ignatius 
 proclaimed. 
 
 10. Not long after the death of Ignatius, there appeared in 
 the Church of Antioch a man namod Saturninus'.'":He is me- 
 The Syrian morable in history as the author of one of the so-called gpos- 
 Gnosis. ^jgal heresies. We shall not attempt a definition either of tlie 
 a^ective, ghbstical, or the substantive, heresy, till we have consi- 
 dered some of the particular appearances from which the names 
 were generalised. The ordinary assertion that Saturninus at- 
 tempted to connect Chri8tiaiithe.olo^ with-^erftia gh.ilpsophy, 
 is undoubtedly true ; but no power in the world can succeed in 
 connecting two things which have not some natural affin.ity. 
 Its relation The Persioflu . phiiQephy - was nothing except an attempt to 
 fiiUh and'*" inquire luto certain puzzling facts which present themselves to 
 philosophy, the minds of human beings, and which demand a solution. iThe 
 Christian theology did encounter those facts ; they were pre- 
 sumed in it. iThe single-hearted Imatii^. believed that there 
 were powers of evil which were seefi^ing to bring man's spirit 
 into captivity ; that the idolatry into which men had fallen, 
 the worship of this visible world, was the effect of the seduction 
 of these evil powers ; that there was a Deliverer of man's spirit, 
 One who dwelt with him, and in whom he was to trust. The 
 Thefrood ^r^iagj^recogniaed eril powers ; the Persian recognised a power 
 **"* *"g , whicti could overcome them, and which man might obey. He 
 * ' had suspected that the visible world,5?as especially'. ihg domain 
 perhaps the creation of Ahrimift4- thatvOrmuzd-feelonged 
 to a secret region of light ; that he is to be apprehended by 
 some higher faculty. ^ This distinction between mere animal 
 perception and the intuition, or higher knowledge, was not as 
 clear to his mind as it was to that of the Greek, for he had 
 not the same capacity for delicate and accurate distinctions ; 
 but it was implied in his belief. No one could doubt that 
 evil things, however secret might be the origin of them, ap- 
 pealed very directly to the senses, are tangible, visible, audible. 
 Only the good man seemed to have a perception of what was
 
 THE CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 27 
 
 beyond these. Surely he must perceive something that was not 
 tangible, visible, audible ; surely his perception must have some 
 affinity with goodness. Was this all that the Christian 
 disciple had been taught ? No ; he had heard that a spiritual 
 world, a spiritual kingdom, had been unfolded to man. Was 
 he not to explore that spiritual world ? Was not the knowledge 
 of it his highest privilege and blessing ? Had not St. Paul 
 told him so ? 
 
 11. But where can be the limit to this knowledge? Who 
 has a right to confine the exercises of the faculty by which it 
 
 is obtained ? It seemed, probably, to Saturninus that the The 
 Christian Church had diminished the range oTb'Bpcts which the Christian 
 Persian philosophy had embraced. In the Zendavesta a num- respectinff 
 ber of good principles were invoked : Zoroaster seemed to ^oj|5^* 
 suppose that many powers might have'(3orhe forth from the 
 source of Good as deliverers from the Evil. Was a new reve- 
 lation to contract this multitude ? Must it not rather make 
 some addition to it ? Why should not He of whom the 
 Church spoke have come forth as one, perhaps the last, the 
 highest, of these deliverers, to break the chains of the outward 
 world, the evil kingdom, and shed light into the midst of its 
 darkness ? 
 
 12. It was impossible to stop at this point. The QjifiS-JifJ, JJocetism. 
 however disposed he might be to enlarge the spiritual realm and 
 
 to discover new forms in it, could not. tolerate the notion that 
 any one who had proceeded from it was actually connected with 
 the evil which is inseparable from jVIatter ; He could but have 
 taken the appearance of a mortal body, He could but have 
 undergone an apparent death. Such in its outlines was this 
 early form of ^Sp-iac^ghJlosophized Christianity. 
 
 13. It was evident that siich a faith would provoke no Gnosticism 
 hostility of emperors. If the doctrine was expansive, it was 2* . 
 also safe ; for what was there in such a scheme which coidd be to the 
 the bond of a society, which could make that society suspicious ^P'' 
 to the Eoman state ? A theory of the spiritual world might be 
 permitted to any one ; the elements of which it consisted might 
 
 all be furnished by undoubted perceptions of the human spirit ; 
 names denoting virtues and principles which men had felt 
 to be precious and real might compose the new economy. 
 But each fresh traveller would suggest a new arrangement of 
 its provinces. The theory of visible and material evil was a 
 perpetual barrier and protection against its intruding into the 
 sphere of practical life. Above all, what centre was there, at 
 once divine and human, to scare the Caesar on his throne, and 
 to claim a dominion more extensive and permanent than his ? 
 
 14. Here was the real test. The new revelation was not a
 
 28 GNOSTICISM INTOLVES THE GHOWTH OF SECTS. 
 
 It can form revelation of a society for all kindreds and races, if this was 
 niuu!jito *^^ nature and form of it. The Gnosis would take its colour 
 infinite from every different locality, from every different thinker. 
 **** There must be a Syrian Gnosis and an Alexandrian Gnosis, 
 
 one of which the elements were chieflv Jewishj one of which 
 the elements were chiefly Gentile, ^asilides, Hermogenes, 
 Valentinus, Carpocrates, a hundred more, each must exhibit 
 his own skill in combination, his skill in tracing the genera- 
 tions of powers and principles, his capacity for spiritual archi- 
 tecture. Each of these men did exhibit talents of no vulgar 
 order ; their thoughts, however wild and monstrous they may 
 seem when they are presented together in a system, had each a 
 meaning. Ever and anon one can trace hints of relations be- 
 tween moral qualities which are suggestive, evident tokens that 
 the theorist had seen something of the world he professed to 
 describe, and had brought back a flower from its surface, or a gem 
 out of its recesses. But the members of the diflerent Churches 
 said with emphasis, " Tou are founders of heresies or sects ; 
 you are not adding to our treasures, but robbing us of those 
 we have already. Good news has been preached to man, and 
 you have none for man. A centre has been proclaimed, and 
 you say it does not exist. We felt we had a common fellow- 
 ship ; you substitute a set of notions which are sources of end- 
 less division. Lastly, you rob us of all sound morality ; you 
 moraMtv in '^o^^^*! have US despise our bodies, therefore we cannot keep 
 Gnosticism, them pure ; you would have us regard the world as necessarily 
 evil, therefore we cannot reform it ; you may be ascetics to-day, 
 grossly sensual to-morrow. Each extreme may be defended by 
 the same maxim. A Gaoetic is no doubt he that knows, and, 
 therefore, whose life is wholly intellectual, not animal: the 
 Gftostic may become the most animal of all creatures ; for why 
 should such a contemptible thing as the flesh not be suffered 
 to sink to the very lowest level which it can reach ?" 
 Mutual 15. The name of Qjiostic became for a long time specially 
 
 dislike of odious in the ears of all members of the Church who did 
 and the phi- not join One of the Gnostical parties. It was supposed that the 
 losophicai most gross of all the heretical schools that of Camgicjaifia_ 
 
 schools con- ,,,,"? , . , , i . i .- -/V^ i. mi 
 
 nected with held the name by a more pre-eminent title than the rest, i he 
 Gnosticism, intuition which the doctors of all the schools claimed was op- 
 posed on one side to Faith, on another to Action. And as the 
 acknowledgment of this intuition was the bond between the 
 Gnostics within and the philosophers without the Church, the 
 latter began to be more and more suspected as enemies of the 
 Gospel. They frequently justified the charge. The new king- 
 dom evidently interfered with them far more than the old reli- 
 gions were ever likely to do. Questioning seemed at an end if the
 
 THE JEW AND CHEISTIAX SEEKER. 29 
 
 Christian dogmatism was to prevail. Philosophical distinctions 
 were extinguished by a message to the ignorant and the evil. The The 
 rise of the class of men called Apologists tended to strengthen -^poios'^^^* 
 this mutual animosity. They were polemics by profession, 
 bound to make out a case against their popular as well as their 
 learned antagonists. It was a kind of necessity that they 
 should exhibit that which they were defending in the most defi- 
 nite and tangible form. In arguing with Jews, they of course 
 appealed to the Scriptures ; in arguing Avith Romans, they tried 
 to prove that their faith led to practical moral results. When 
 they met Greeks they might enter more into speculation ; but 
 they were always disposed to confute the schools by showing 
 that they had hold of something fixed and positive. 
 
 16. The earliest Grreek apologist who is preserved to us 
 illustrates this tendency in a very remarkable manner. Justin Justin, 
 was born in a viUage of Samaria. He must have conversed 
 much with Jews, though there is no reason to suppose he had 
 
 any direct affinity with them. He belongs to the crisis of 
 Christian history, when the Church, in consequence of the 
 war in which Barcochba was leader, had become completely 
 separated from the Synagogue. The passages which we shall 
 select from his dialogue with Trypho throw light upon the rela- 
 tion in which Jews as well as Christians of the second century 
 stood to philosophy. 
 
 17. If Justin is the hero of his own tale, he was accosted, as he 
 
 was walking one morning in the portico of a gymnasium, by a Hisdiaiog:ue 
 man, who hailed him as a philosopher, and presently joined him xrypho. 
 with several of his friends. When he asks their business, he is 
 told that his companion has learned from a teacher of the Aca- 
 demy always to reverence those who wear the philosophical garb, 
 and, if possible, to make their acquaintance, in hopes of learn- xiie Jew 
 ing something from them. The stranger announces himself as ^r^'k^ 
 one of the Hebrew race who has been a fugitive after the war. wisdom. 
 He spent most of his time in Greece, especially at Corinth. 
 Justin asks him what philosophy can help him as much as his 
 law-giver and the prophets ? Trypho defends himself by saying 
 that God, His unity. His providence, are the great objects of Knowledge 
 philosophical investigation. Justin admits this to be the of Goa tire 
 object of philosophy ; but he complains that phjlosophei;s, speak phiioso'uhy. 
 of God as caring for the.ljjiiyerpej. for genera and sge^eij^s, ng^ 
 for iniiividuals, not for you and me. And he does not see how, 
 with such a faith as that, " you and I are to be better or worse." 
 Trypho wishes to know what his own theories are on these 
 matters, to what school of philosophy he belongs. The ques- 
 tion introduces a narrative. Justin fully believes philosophy to 
 be a very great blessing, and one most honoured by God ; and
 
 80 
 
 THE IKTUITION OF GOD, HOW POSSIBLE. 
 
 Jnstin. 
 
 Trial of the 
 schools. 
 
 The new 
 teacher. 
 
 that those are, in the truest sense, holy who have given their 
 mind to it : but he does not believe that any of the sects 
 know what philosophy is, or for what reason it was sent to 
 men. " Knowledge," he says, " is one, but these opinions are 
 various." He had tried most of them. He began with the 
 S^oigs : of them he could leam nothing concerning God, 
 that was not the subject with which they specially occupied 
 themselves. A Peripatetic, to whom he next applied, a sharp 
 clear-sighted man, disgusted him by insisting on a rate of pay- 
 ment for the lectures he gave : no profit could be expected 
 till that point was settled. An eminent Pythagojean insisted 
 upon such a long preparation in music, astronomy, and geo- 
 metry, before he could give him any information upon the 
 Questions on which he was longing for light, that he left him in 
 despair. He stayed much longer with a Platonist, " for the 
 apprehension of incorporeal things delighted me greatly, and 
 the beholding of ideas gave wings to my intellect, and I thought 
 I had become wise in an incredibly little time, and I hoped 
 that I should presently have the vision of Grod, for this I knew 
 to be the end of the Platonic philosophy." Then he tells how, 
 when, for the purpose of converse with himself, he had retired 
 to a place not far from the sea, an old man of gentle and vene- 
 rable appearance entered into discourse with him, and declared 
 himself a Christian. The passages of the discourse which most 
 concern us are these : " How," said he, " can the philosophers 
 think rightly concerning God, or speak anything truly of Him, 
 not having the knowledge of Him, or having seen Him, or ever 
 heard Him ?" " But it is not with the e^e," said I, " that the 
 Deity is beheld ; with the reason only is it comprehended : so 
 Question ^flato says, and I agree with him." " Are there, then," he said, 
 u^^ *>^ an ^ ^^^^ reason of ours, powers so great and of such a kind ; or 
 be known, will the mind of man ev^r^e.^^^od, if it hath not been invested 
 wjtth.^. :feoly "Spirit ?" f^' Plato ^ays," said I, " that there is an 
 ,.eye of the mind Which Ts capable of seeing, and which has been 
 '^eii us for the very purpose of seeing purely and undisturbedly 
 that which is. This is the primary and original cause, ofjall 
 that is perceived by the intellect ; it hath no form, or colour, 
 or'size, none of those things which the eye takes note of; it 
 is above all substance ; it cannot be described or discoursed of ; 
 it alone is good and beautiful ; it enters into weU-constituted 
 souls, in virtue of their relationship to it and their desire to 
 behold it." ""VVTiat is our relationship," said the old man, 
 " with God ? Is it that the soul itself fs godly and immortal, 
 and a portion of that royal reason ? And when it sees God, is 
 it possible for us to embrace that Divinity which comes in con- 
 tact with our reason, and thereby to become blessed ?" " Cer- 
 
 >^- 
 
 The 
 
 intellectual 
 and moral 
 insight.
 
 THE CHEISTIAK SETTING UP A PHILOSOPHY OF HIS OWN. 31 
 
 tainly," said I. "Are the same souls," he asked, "in all justin. 
 animals, or is there one soul of a man and one of a horse or an 
 ass?" " The same in all," I answered. " Will, then, horses Those who 
 Grasses see, or have they ever seen, God?" "No," said I, jj^^g ^^t the 
 "nor will the great majority of men; only he who lives capacity to 
 righteously, purifying himself by the exercise of all virtues." ^^^ ' 
 " The mind, then, does not see God in consequence of its 
 relationship to Him, nor because it is mind, but because it is 
 temperate and just ?" " Tea," said I, " and because it has the 
 capacity of knowing God." "Why, then," said the old man, 
 " do not the animals see God, seeing they have done nothing 
 evil ?" " Their body is the hindrance," was the answer. 
 
 The next point discussed between them is the nature of punishment 
 punishment, and how the soul can be better for punishment in nd 
 another world or condition, if it does not remember what it has 
 been and has done. Thence the old man goes on to proclaim 
 the prophets, who were filled with a true and holy spirit, and 
 not the philosophers, as the true guides to wisdom. 
 
 The rest of the dialogue is addressed to Trypho's Jewish 
 feelings, and is an argument from the prophets to show that 
 his position is no longer a tenable one. 
 
 18. Justin called himself a philosopher, and wore the philo- Justin's 
 sophical cloak to the end of his days. Apparently he held no Po*'*i"' 
 recognised ecclesiastical office ; nevertheless, the simple Igna- 
 tius evidently approached more nearly, at certain points, to such 
 a thinker as Plutarch, than he did. The man who knew nothing 
 of what Greek sages had been saying, proclaimed, as part of his 
 baptismal faith, of his Scriptural lore, a conviction which stood 
 in wonderfvil afiinity to some of the thoughts which had been 
 awakened in them ; the other, who was conversant with all the 
 terms and methods of the old philosophy, felt a kiad of repug- 
 nance to it, partly from a conviction of its inadequacy to satisfy 
 his wants, partly from a desire to make the Gospel an anta- 
 gonist philosophy. The position he took up is a most natural 
 and intelligible one, but it prevented him from doing full 
 justice to those whom he had abandoned, perhaps from doing 
 full justice to the cause which he had embraced. 
 
 19. Justin's first apology was addressed to Antoninus m^^us 
 Pius, though 'it was intended also for his colleague in the Aureiius. 
 empire. His death* is usually, and on good grounds, assigned 
 to the reign of Marcus Aureiius. This Emperor opens a new 
 
 * It is commonly ascribed to the intrigues of Crescens, one of the 
 favourite court philosophers. There is no reason to doubt the tradition ; 
 the Sophists who basked in the Emperor's patronage seem to have been as 
 despicable as he was noble. That they should have availed themselves of 
 his dislike to the Christians to put down one who adopted their own cha- 
 racter, is most natural.
 
 82 HABCUS AUBELIVS. 
 
 Mtrcng page in our history. Like Plutarch, the Greek and Eoman 
 Aureiius. characters were in him remarkably blended ; but, unlike Plu- 
 tarch, the foundation of his mind was Roman : he was a student, 
 that he might more eftectually carry on the business of an 
 His relation Emperor. He was therefore not, like Plutarch, first of all a 
 and Epic- follower of Plato, but, like Seneca and Epictetus, a Stoic. 
 **'" Seneca we mention, however, much more for the sake of their 
 
 contrast than their resemblance : they were both busy about a 
 practical object, but Marcus Aureiius did not make his object 
 the acquisition of personal ease and quietness. He far more 
 resembled Epictetus in the character of his Stoicism : to him 
 he confessed great obligations. But their ends were diffe- 
 rent, as their positions were different : the slave inquired after 
 the secret of moral freedom ; the Caesar inquired after the 
 secret of Self-government. 
 
 20. It would not be easy to find any man in any period of 
 the world's history who pursued this enu more strenuously. A 
 Stoic was, in the judgment of Marcus, simply a man who sought 
 carefully and deliberately for the means of ruling himself; he 
 Glad to thought it, therefore, not a dereliction of his sect, but a fulfil- 
 Seip from "lent of its primary function, if he asked help from every other 
 ail quarters, quarter, as well as from the teachers of the Porch. He opens 
 his first book with an enumeration a little too formal and 
 Scto**^"^' sliiborate, perhaps, but exhibiting evident and sincere gratitude 
 of his different benefactors. His mother stands almost first 
 Meditations ^'"ong them ; to her he owes his reverence for that which is 
 lib. i. ' divine, a disposition to communicate, a restraint not only 
 upon his actions, but upon his thoughts. He thanks Rusticus 
 for keeping him from the love of sophistry, of rhetoric, of 
 poetry, of all display, whether in speech or in appearance. He 
 thanks xHexander, the Platonist, for teaching him not often, or 
 without necessity, to say to any one, or to write in a letter, 
 that he is busy. From his brother Severus he learned love of 
 justice, love of truth, love of kinsfolk ; he learned through him 
 to be acquainted with Cato, Dion, and Brutus, and to conceive 
 of a just polity ordered according to maxims of equality and 
 freedom, and of a kingdom that honours above all things the 
 liberty of the governed. These examples we take at random. 
 The other obligations which he confesses are even more directly 
 The gods. ^^^ lessons of self-government. The gods he thanks for all 
 kinds of benefits, but especially for good ancestors, good parents, 
 a good sister, good teachers, good members of his household, 
 good kinsmen, good friends. To them, also, he owes it that he 
 had a passion for philosophy, that he did not fall into the hands 
 of any sophist, that he did not waste his time among writers of 
 books, or in unravelling syllogisms, or in studying meteoro- 
 logy.
 
 THE D^MOK WITHIK. 33 
 
 19. These indications will, perhaps, suffice to stow that the His Roman 
 root of the Emperor's mind was to be found in the old Roman sympathies, 
 discipline of affections and relationships ; but that he grafted 
 upon this an amount of self-consciousness and reflection which 
 belong much more to the country whose language he used, than 
 to that of which he was a citizen and ruler. " Every hour think 
 strongly with thyself," he says, " that thou art, as a Eoman 
 and as a male, to do that which is before thee with accurate, 
 severe, and unfeigned gravity, -with kindliness, and freedom, 
 and justice. And take care to give thyself rest from aU sur- 
 rounding fantasies that may interfere with thy immediate work. 
 And this you will secure if you work each action as if it were care to 
 the last of your life, avoiding all precipitation and every influ- ^Y"''* 
 ence that would withdraw you from the word that has hold of 
 you (uTto Tov a'lpovvTos Xoyov) : avoiding also hypocrisy, self- 
 love, discontent with the things that are appointed for you. 
 You see how few the things are, by laying hold of which, a man*; 
 may live a tranquil and god-conformed life ; nor wiU the gods) 
 ask anything more from the man who is careful of these things.',',' Book 2, 
 " Nothing is more miserable," he says in another place, " than ^ "^' ^' 
 the man who is always moving round and round, and surveying 
 all things that lie about him, and prying into the things below 
 the earth and speculating upon that which passes in the soxils 
 of his neighbours, and not perceiving that it suffices to dwell 
 with the 4ggff^QJ0-^it'bitt.hiDiself, and to serve him manfully. 
 But the ser\dce of him is the keeping oneself free from passion Service of 
 and temerity, and from discontent with the things that come within!""" 
 to us from the gods and from men. Eor the things that come 
 from the gods are venerable ; those from men are dear because 
 of our relationship to them. Some things there are, no doubt, 
 which are sad, in consequence of our ignorance of wliat is good 
 and what is evil : this blindness is not less than the one which 
 deprives us of the power of distinguishing white and black." Discipline 
 " You must accustom yourself," he says, " only to set such thoughts. 
 images before yourself, that if any one should suddenly ask you, Book 2, 
 what you are now thinking about, you should be able to answer '^^"P' '^' 
 him immediately, with aU confidence, this or that ; so that it 
 may be clear at once that all is simple and gracious, and 
 becoming a creature that has fellowship with other creatures, 
 and is indifferent to mere pleasures of sense, and generally to 
 all images of mere enjoyment ; and has not rivalry, or envy, 
 or suspicion, or ought else in the mind at which you would 
 blush if you were discovered in it." " Let the god that is in Hook 3, 
 thee," he says, shortly after, " be the guardian of a creature *^^^p- * 
 that hath the qualities of a male and an elder, and of a political 
 being, and of a Eoman, and of a ruler, one that hath set himself
 
 84 
 
 THE GOOD MAir. 
 
 The body, 
 soul, and 
 reason. 
 
 Books, 
 rbap. 5. 
 
 What dis- 
 tinguishes 
 the Kood 
 man. 
 
 Books, 
 chap. 16. 
 
 Impres- 
 sions; hOVT 
 to govern 
 them. 
 
 Books, 
 chap. 16. 
 
 Social life ; 
 its dignity. 
 
 in order, one who is awaiting the summons out of life, ready- 
 to be set free ; one that needeth not an oath, nor any human 
 witness." 
 
 20. The following passage contains something more of formal 
 philosophy, yet combined, as always with practice and self- 
 examination. " Body, soul, reason, to the body belong sensa- 
 tions, to the soul impulses, to the mind or reason determi- 
 nations (?6y^ara). To receive impressions from outward 
 appearances belongs even to cattle ; nervous impulses may 
 belong to wild beasts, to Phalaris, to Nero ; to have the reason 
 as a guide in reference to the phenomena that present them- 
 selves, may belong to those who do not believe in the gods, 
 and to those who desert their country, and to those who do 
 acts which require that they should shut their doors. If, then, 
 all else is common to these we have enumerated, that which 
 remains as the special gift of the good man is the being con- 
 tent with and welcoming the things that befal him, and those 
 things that have been spun by the destinies for him ; the not 
 mixing or disturbing the daemon that is established in the 
 heart with a crowd of phantasies, but the keeping him propitious, 
 reverently submitting to him, speaking nothing that is contrary 
 to the truth, doiug nothing that is beyond the right. And 
 though all disbelieve that such a man is living a simple, and 
 reverend, and brave life, he is not angry with any of them, nor 
 does he turn out of the "way that is leading him to the goal of 
 his life, to which he mudt come pure, silent, ready for dis- 
 missiU, cheerfully fitted for that which is appointed him." 
 
 21. Marcus .jLurelius had a very strong feeling, like Epic- 
 tetus, "^Eat tKe management of the impressions which objecta 
 make upon us was the chief part of mental discipline. Hear 
 Bowh! Jippli'es'this to his own position, which was so'different 
 from that of Epictetus : " According to the impressions which 
 thou art continually receiving, will be the temper of thy mind ; 
 for the soul gets its dye from these impressions. Dye it then 
 with the continual repetition of such impressions as these : that 
 wheresoever it is appointed you to live, there it is possible to 
 live well ; that it is your appointed lot to live in a palace, then 
 it is possible to live well in a palace. And again, that each 
 thing is carried on towards that for the sake of which it has 
 been prepared and ordained. That in that point to which it is 
 bearing, you will find the end or purpose of it ; that wherever 
 is the end and purpose of it, there is the good of it ; that the 
 good of the reasonable creature is society^ That wc were bom 
 for society, has been shown long ago. For is it not evident 
 that the worse things exist for the sake of the better, the 
 better for the sake of each other ? But creatures that have
 
 THE GSEAT WHOLE. 35 
 
 life are better than creatures without life, and creatures that 
 have reason are better than those that have merely hfe." S 
 
 22. This idea of man as a social or political being enters 
 very deeply into the mind and philosophy of Marcus Aurelius. 
 "We are portions of the great whole " is a thought which ^^^^^j^y^' 
 coiitinually recurs to him. At times it gives a coldness to his how 
 speculations ; the man seems in danger of being lost in the ^e^'*^^*^- 
 universe. But quite as often it is urged as an argument, 
 apparently an effective one to the writer's mind, against selfish- 
 ness and self-exaltation. Unquestionably he was more inclined 
 than Epictetus was to follow the old Stoics,ift-idej]kti%ing..(xpi^ 
 with the. .world the world signifying not the earth or the 
 visible frame-work of things, but the order and eonstitution to 
 ^hich we belong. There was much, however, in his Roman 
 education, his devout temper, his personal affections, and his 
 watchfulness over himself, to counteract this tendency. He has 
 no idea of the universe as self-governed. The phrase " directing 
 reason," is one which occurs continually in connection with his 
 idea of the whole ; and to this " directing reason" he assigns 
 gracious and human qualities. " The being of the universe," The person- 
 he says, in the beginning of his 6th Book, " is easy to be en- divinitVhe 
 treated, and flexible. The reason that, directs it hath in. itseljf. worshipped. 
 .nojjiotiye tg il|,-fipiijg. Sfalice is not in it, nor is anyttiiiig 
 done by it maliciously, nor is anything injured by it. All things 
 come to pass and are accomplished in obedience to it."i The 
 ^first clause of this sentence may seem somewhat unintelligible. 
 The Emperor designs, we apprehend, to oppose the universal 
 substance to that which is the cause of all untractableness, the 
 feelings and passions of the individual. He would lead the 
 man out of these by bringing him to feel that he is not a sepa- 
 rate existence, but part of a scheme from which he cannot tear 
 himself without destroying himself. "All particular things," The aitema- 
 he says just after, " fulfil their end according to the nature *"^' 
 of the whole ; not in conformity with some other nature, either 
 inclosing it from without, or comprehended within, or existing conse- 
 apart from it and only accidentally attached to it. Either there i^"^"^ ^ 
 is in this universe only a mixture of elements, a strange 
 entanglement, to terminate in dispersion and dissolution, or 
 there is unity, order, providence. Supposing the first to be the 
 right view, why do I desire to meddle with such a ferment and 
 confusion of accidents ? What else have I to trouble myself 
 about than the how and when I am to become earth ? And in 
 that case why do I fret myself? The dissolution will come to 
 me whatever I do. But if the other is the case, I bow down 
 with reverence, I set myself in order, I put confidence in the g^^^ g^ 
 Director of all things." One extract ir:ore may set this point cc 9, 10.
 
 86 
 
 MA.RCU3 AUEELIUS AND THE CHUECH. 
 
 Book?, 
 chap. 9. 
 
 Relation of 
 Marcus 
 Aurelius to 
 the Chris- 
 tian Church, 
 
 Causes of 
 his dislike. 
 
 political, 
 rclirious, 
 philosophi- 
 cal. 
 
 clearer : f" All things are woven into one another, and it is a 
 holy comtrtJiation, and scarcely any two things are heteroge- 
 neous. For they have been put together, and together com- 
 pose the same harmony {avyKoemU rov avTov Koofiov). For there 
 is one harmony made up of all things, and there is one God 
 through all things, and one substance and one law, one word or 
 reason that is common to all reasonable creatures, and one truth ; 
 siuce there is also one perfection for all creatures of the same 
 kind, participant of that same word or reason.' V-, 
 
 23. This last sentence will so immediately recall to the 
 reader's mind one of St. Paul's, that the question naturally 
 tiuggests itself, What is the relation between them ? How 
 w as Marcus Aurelius likely to regard those who held the faith 
 of St. Paul ? How did he actually regard them ? On the last 
 ])oiut there is no doubt. The Church had far more to suffer 
 from Marcus, than from his son Commodus ; he deliberately 
 adopted the policy which Trajan had originated, he followed it 
 out with far greater severity than Trajan. All the arguments 
 which recommended it to the one Emperor, presented them- 
 selves with new force to his successor ; they were strengthened 
 by considerations peculiar to himself. As Marcus Aurelius 
 was more devout than his predecessors, as the worship of the 
 gods was with him less a mere deference to opinion and 
 tradition, he felt a more hearty indignation against those who 
 seemed to be undermining it. As he had more zeal for the 
 well-being of his subjects, and a stronger impression of the 
 danger of their losing any portion of the faith and reverence 
 which they had, the political motives which swayed earlier 
 emperors acted more mightily upon him. As he had cominced 
 himself that the severest course of self-discipline is necessary 
 in order to fit a man for overcoming the allurements of the 
 visible and the terrors of the invisible world, he despised and 
 disbelieved those who seemed to have attained the results with- 
 out the preparatory processes. As he wished to reconcile the 
 obligations of an emperor to perform all external duties with 
 the obligation of a philosopher to self-culture, and found the 
 task laborious enough, the strange mixture of the ideas of a 
 polity with ideas belonging to the spiritual nature of man, 
 which he lieard of among the Christians, must have made him 
 suspect them of aping the Caesars and the Eoman wisdom in 
 their government, as well as of aping the Stoics in their con- 
 tempt of pain. Such reasons, if we made no allowance for the 
 malignant reports of courtiers and philosophers, the prevalent 
 belief of unheard-of crimes in the secret assemblies of the 
 Christians, the foolish statements and wrong acts of which they 
 may themselves have been guilty, will explain sufficiently whj' 
 ^he venerable age and character of Poly carp, the beautiful fidelity
 
 GEITEEAL lirPEEElfCES. 37 
 
 of the martyrs of Lyons, did not prevent them from being 
 victims of the decrees of the best man who ever reigned in Eome. 
 
 24. Any notion, therefore, that the great principles and Affinity of 
 maxims vfhich are announced in the writings of Marcus trines with 
 Aurelius were derived from Christian teachers, or indicated Christian 
 even a partial allegiance to Christian maxims, must be at once how ac- 
 discarded, not merely as wanting evidence, but as refuted by it. counted for. 
 The question, what relation there is between his principles and 
 those which the teachers of the Grospel were promulgating, is 
 a very different one, and cannot be resolved by any hasty 
 inferences from the treatment which they received at his hands. 
 Those who think of the Christian Church as a mere human 
 society set up in the world to defend a certain religion against ^' 
 a certain other religion, will naturally try to prove that its 
 members were in possession of truth by proving that its 
 opponents were only asserters of falsehood. Those who believe The human 
 that it was a society established by God as a witness of the ami divine 
 true constitution for all human beings, wiU rejoice to acknow- 
 ledge its members to be what they believed themselves to be 
 confessors and martyrs for a truth which they could not em- 
 brace or comprehend, of which they often perceived only a small 
 portion, but which, through their lives and deaths, as well as 
 through the right and wrong acts, the true and false words, of 
 those who understood them least, was to manifest and prove 
 itself. Those who hold this conviction dare not conceal, or 
 misrepresent, or undervalue, any one of those weighty and 
 memorable sentences which are to be found in the meditations 
 of Marcus Aurelius. If they did, they would be undervaluing 
 a portion of that very truth which the preachers of the Grospel 
 were appointed to set forth ; they would be adopting the error 
 of the philosophical emperor without his excuses for it. Nor 
 dare they pretend that, by some means or other, the Christian 
 preaching had unconsciously imparted to him a portion of its 
 own light even while he seemed to exclude it. They will believe 
 that it was God's good pleasure that a certain great truth should 
 be seized and apprehended by this age, and they will see indi- 
 cations of what that truth was in the efforts of Plutarch to 
 understand the daemon which guided Socrates, in the courageous 
 language of the Martyr of Antioch, in the bewildering dreams 
 of the Gnostics, in the eagerness of Justin to prove Christianity 
 a philosophy, and to confute the philosophers, in the apprehen- 
 sion of Christian principles by Marcus Aurelius, and in his 
 hatred of th.e Christians. From every side they will derive 
 evidence that a doctrine and society which are meant for man- 
 kind, cannot depend upon the partial views and apprehensions 
 of men, but must go on justifying, reconciling, confuting those 
 views and apprehensions by the demonstration of facts.
 
 38 
 
 CHAPTEE II. 
 
 The Third Centuet. 
 
 from marcus atjeelius to constatfthfe. 
 
 Th 1. The miserable period from the death of JMarcus Aurelius 
 
 ^perors ^^ ^j^g accession of Septimius Severus, explains the difference 
 Marcus ; between the characteristics of the 2d and of the 3d centuries, 
 mon o^Mt. The effort to make despotism orderly and righteous, to give an 
 empire the form of a republic, had been continued with diffe- 
 rent degrees of earnestness, ability, and success, through four 
 reigns ; the climax of the experiment was in the last. The 
 Homan world saw that it had failed. Something was wanting 
 besides the honesty, self-restraint, philosophy, of the tem- 
 porary ruler. All these qualities, combined with a resolute 
 purpose of crushing what seemed hostile to the integrity of 
 the empire, and the belief of the people in its divine protectors, 
 had given the Roman world an appearance of stability which 
 the accession of one contemptible ruffian could at once turn 
 into a mockery. The meaning of the word Imperator, the 
 basis on which the imperial power was standing, the instru- 
 ments which must overthrow it, then made themselves evident 
 to all tolerably thoughtful obsen^ers. The question, how the 
 dissolution of the Society might be for the longest time averted, 
 became the only one which an intelligent ruler had to propose 
 to himself. Various answers were found for it during the 
 3rd century. Strive to preserve the traditional reverence for 
 Homan law, so you may at least impose some restraint upon 
 the power of arms, was the suggestion which the sage juris- 
 Poiicy of consults of the first Severus offered to him, and upon which he 
 8. Severus, endeavoiu*ed to act. An eclectical unity, resulting from a 
 tolerance and comprehension of different parties, seems to have 
 J.'f Alex. been dreamed of by Alexander Severus, and to have been carried 
 Phiiippus, out with more oi ambition and vanity by Philippus Arabs. 
 Stem discipline, and consequent restraint upon all novelties of 
 Of Decius, opinion, appeared to Decius, who saw the weakness of this last 
 attempt, the only remedy for the mischiefs to which it had led. 
 To divide the empire imder different heads, and to give it more 
 the character of an oriental government, was the policy of
 
 \ 
 
 MOSES A^"D PLATO. 89 
 
 Diocletian. These are the only distinct purposes which pre- Of 
 sent themselves in that age. The rest of the Emperors chose u*cietian. 
 one or other of them, or merely yielded to their passions, not 
 setting before themselves any end at all. 
 
 2. The preservation or pursuit of unity therefore marks and How the 
 defines this period much more distinctly than the last. What Jh^'^gchools 
 is true of the statesmen, is equally true of the philosophers, answer to 
 Each experiment in the world had one which corresponded to '^**^ * ^^^' 
 it in the schools, as well as in the hearts of human beings. 
 
 The 3rd century is eminently a philosophical century, for it is 
 one in which the great problem of philosophy forced itself upon ^ 
 men's minds, from whatever point they might start, into what- 
 ever lines of thought they might diverge. The ultimate ground 
 of unity, as well as the conditions under which men might 
 actually become one, alike engaged the thoughts of the soldier, 
 the lawyer, the solitary thinker, of the doctor and the disciple, 
 of the persecutor and the martyr. 
 
 3. In spite of the strong opposition which began to display Numenius 
 itself during the 2d century between the Christian preachers gorean!'^''" 
 and the Pagan philosophers, we have seen that there were ten- 
 dencies to approximation between them, and that the violent 
 efforts of the Grnostics to pour the new wine into the old 
 bottles, had been one main occasion of their repugnance. In 
 
 the latter part of that century, some feeling of the connexion ^unfo^n"*^ 
 began to manifest itself on the other side. If we had not heard between 
 of Philo, we might be disposed to wonder that the Judaical CMitlie^"^ 
 element in Christianity should be that which most attracted wisdom, 
 the notice and sympathy of a Pagan speculator. This appears 
 to have been the case with Numenius. We are bound to 
 speak with hesitation about him, because we derive our know- 
 ledge of him from the work of Eusebius, on the Preparation 
 for the Gospel, a work written with a special purpose, and by 
 a man with a strong Alexandrian bias. Still we have no rea- 
 son to suspect the Church historian of quoting unfaithfully, 
 and it is from his extracts, not from his comments, that we 
 may form our conclusions. The most important sentiment E'"*P;. 
 which is attributed to Numenius, we have on the earlier and Bookli, 
 higher authority of Clemens. " Numenius, the Pythagorean *^'^' ^' ^ 
 philosopher," he says, " plainly writes, what is Plato but 
 Moses talking Attic ?" Clemens apparently supposed Nume- 
 nius to hint at some historical relation between them, for in 
 the same paragraph he quotes Jewish authors, who held the 
 Greek philosophers, as they naturally would, to be copiers of 
 their books, or inheritors of their traditions. Numenius may 
 have indulged in guesses as random and uncertain as those of 
 Clemens, or of the Jews, upon this subject ; but his feeling
 
 40 THE ABSOLUTE GOD. 
 
 respecting the moral relation between Plato and Moses is not 
 in the least affected by them. P-lataiacertaiiily.no/Mo8e8 
 talking Attic No two great men were ever more unlike in 
 Ibe haoit of their thoughts, or in the work which they had to 
 The opinion do. But it is very important for the history of this period, to 
 "hniiaritv, know that there were men, reflecting and earnest men, who 
 instructive, were unable to perceive this difference, and who did perceive 
 an agreement between the two minds, which they could only 
 express to themselves in some phrase like that which we have 
 quoted. It is one of the signs of the craving for reconciliation 
 which was working in various directions, a craving which led 
 then, as it leads always, to a number of practical as well as 
 theoretical confusions, but which was pointing to deep prin- 
 ciples concerning the life of Man and the nature of God. 
 -'^' 4. The ground of the similarity which Numenius discovered 
 between Plato and Moses, is evident from an extract which 
 Eusebius gives from his book concerning the Good. " The 
 E^ng.book ^^^^S'" ^^ ^^J^j " is fixed and eternal, ever the same in itself, 
 11, chap. 10. and in the same, hath never perished, or increased or decreased, 
 is susceptible of no accidents, or movements, or locality." Here, 
 no doubt, he found the beginning and real object of the Platonical 
 search. The well-known passages which Eusebius quotes from 
 the Hebrew Scriptures, "I am the Lord who cliange not;" 
 " They shall perish, but Thou art the same, and Thy years shall 
 not fail ;" might well strike the Pythagorean as wonderful 
 anticipations of Greek discoveries. Probably he was much 
 more impressed by observing that these were not isolated 
 passages, but stood in the most intimate relation with the 
 whole record in which they occurred. At the same time, the 
 historical character of that record might be easily forgotten or 
 overlooked by one who was in search of principles rather than 
 of facts. The other greater distinction which was involved in 
 this, that in Moses the Being is speaking, acting, declaring 
 Himself, may not have been unobserved by Numenius ; but 
 he may have thought that this was implied, il' not expressed, in 
 the creed and enquiries of Plato, and he may have felt that for 
 his own age it was quite necessary that the omission, if it was 
 one, in the thoughts of the Greek, should be supplied, that in 
 some way or other the absolute ground of all things should be 
 confessed as a person, and should enter into communication 
 with his creatures. 
 Awfuinessof 5, How tliis could be he seems to have undertaken to explain 
 e mqu . j^ ^ ^^^^ memorable passage which occurs in the 11th book of 
 darVlod" Eusebius, out of all chronological order, as it follows a long 
 Praep. extract from Plotinus. The passage is written viith great 
 
 book si C.18. caution and reverence. Numenius begins with a prayer that
 
 THE GOD IIT COMMUNICATIOK WITH MATTEE. 41 
 
 God himself may be the standard and rule of his utterances, 
 that He will open to him the treasury of thought, since he is 
 convinced that whoever snatches at it eagerly and irreverently 
 will find it turn to ashes. Then he proceeds, " That primary or The great 
 Highest Grod being in himself, is altogether simple, conversing Paradox, 
 altogether with himself, nowise to be divided. But the god 
 who is the second and third is one. Moving about, however, 
 in matter which is dual, he unites it and yet is divided by it ; 
 seeing that it is fluxional, and hath a certain appetitive cha- 
 racter. Therefore, not being in direct communication with the 
 purely noetic for so he would be wholly occupied with him- 
 self by looking upon matter, he becomes occupied with that, 
 and as it were unobservant of himself. And he touches and 
 deals with that which is sensible, and draws it up into his own 
 proper character, stretching himself out to (or with a view to 
 stretch himself out so as to take up) the material." He goes on J^^ . 
 a little after to distinguish between the primary^Crod .ft^d-the 
 pemiurguSiOr xeatar. The first must be looked upon as the 
 father of the second, for of Him, the primary Being, it would 
 be impious to predicate any activity. "The primary Grod," he 
 says, " must be free from all works, and a king. But the 
 Demiurgus must exercise government, going through the 
 heavens. Through him comes this our condition ; through him "^^^ divinely 
 Reason being sent down in transit or efilux (h SiiEo^f) to hold cated Mind 
 communion vrith all that are prepared for it. God then looking "" ^^a^""- 
 down and turning himself to each of us, it comes to pass that 
 our bodies live and are nourished, receiving strength from the 
 outer rays that come from Him. But when God turns us to 
 the contemplation of Himself, it comes to pass that these 
 things are worn out and' consumed, but that the reason lives, 
 being made partaker of a blessed life." 
 
 6. The introduction to this passage is not less important The secret 
 than the doctrine which it contains. Serious men evidently '**^'P '"^' 
 began to tremble when they perceived into what awful depths 
 they were plunging. They felt that there was no shrinking 
 even from such questions as those which Numenius grapples 
 with here : some secret necessity was enforcing the study of 
 them : philosophy and practical life seemed both to have some 
 strange connection with them. But to enter upon them rashly, 
 with unhallowed unprepared hearts, how infinitely perilous 
 this must be ! how certainly the conscience and moral being of 
 the intruder into the sanctuary must suffer, even if he was not 
 permitted to deface or to destroy any of its treasures ! It is 
 difficult to measure the extent of this feeling in the 3d century. 
 Some of the truest and some of the falsest tendencies in the 
 Schools as in the Church had their origin in it. A Pythagorean
 
 42 
 
 THE LATIN AND OBEEK CITIES. 
 
 like Numenius was sure to feel with especial strength the duty 
 of meditating in silence upon principles lying so near to the 
 heart of man, and yet so far beyond his conceptions. He, of 
 j^ all persons, would be most likely to teach that only a band of 
 
 profkneneM carefully disciplined scholars should hear these topics broached, 
 chooi*. ^^ ^^ tempted to investigate them. No one seems to have felt 
 more strongly than Numenius, how much the different philo- 
 sophies had lost their relation to each other, as well as their 
 internal meaning, in their transmission through different gene- 
 rations of expositors and disputants. His history of the Platonic 
 school, part of which is preserved by Eusebius, seems to have 
 been written for the purpose of establishing this point, and of 
 reclaiming Plato for a true guide into those mysteries to which 
 the Samian teacher had pointed the way ; a worthy and noble 
 object, yet one which would almost inevitably give birth to a 
 kind of pride, different in form, but not in principle, from that 
 which it displaced. 
 Carthage 7. Numenius was a ^yri^.^ But we must turn to two other 
 AJexandria. portions of the Boman world before we can understand how 
 thoughts like his were likely to work, and what different fruits 
 they would produce, according to the minds with which they 
 came in contact. No countries ever presented so remarkable 
 a moral and intellectual contrast to each other as the African 
 province of which Carthage was the capital, and Egypt, as 
 represented in the city of the Ptolemies. Both these countries 
 (of course we do not refer to the rural districts in either) had 
 attained a high refinement and civilization. But the civiliza- 
 tion of the one was of the most strictly Latin, the other of the 
 most strictly Greek type. The victory of Rome over its ancient 
 rival was very imperfectly exhibited in the conquests of either 
 Scipio. The subsequent transformation of the whole Punic 
 mind, under the influence of Boman institutions and education, 
 was infinitely more wonderful. In Carthage we may see the 
 simple and naked effects of Boman discipline, not counteracted 
 nor modified by those strange elements which it met with among 
 the Gothic or Gothicized nations of modern Europe. Legal and 
 rhetorical forms had there their full sway over the mind. In 
 the school, almost in the nursery, the habits of the advocate 
 and the jurist were forming themselves, and giving the impulse 
 and direction to all the activity and vehemence of the African 
 character. In Carthage, as in all the great cities of the 
 Empire, the Christian Church found a home. Before the end 
 of the 2d centur}^ eminent -writers had appeared among its 
 members. The most illustrious of them suggests some curious 
 topics of reflection to the historian of philosophy. No man 
 TertaUian. could detest it more cordially than T ertullian . Platft_and 
 
 ^H
 
 THE DEIfOITKCEB OF PHILOSOPHY. 43 
 
 Aristotle were in his judgment the sources of every detestable De 
 dbcttrriewhieh had obtained currency among the heretics' of ^^^^^"^FVy 
 the-Chufch. " What communion," he asked, " could there be ipsa 
 "Between the synagogue and the porch ? How was it possible hirelesa 
 that men who had inherited a divine doctrine should turn Phiiosophia 
 again to be seekers and enquirers ?" In vain it was suggested tur, etc. 
 to him that the words " Ask and ye shaU receive, seek and ye 2"jjg*g^gt 
 shaU find," had proceeded from the highest of all authorities ; Hierosoiy- 
 he peremptorily decided that that sentence was only intended j** ^^' 
 for those who had not yet learnt the doctrine of the Church, Quaerendum 
 and was utterly inapplicable to any who had. No one ever fnve*nia8%t 
 possessed a more remarkable facility of appealing to authority credendum 
 for the purpose of silencing argument, or of flying to argument neris;\t 
 for the purpose of evadine: authority. Though he feared to be ^^^^\. 
 
 1 IT o > o rt . &Tnpliu8 
 
 indebted to Greek sages, he had not the least fear of incur- nisi custo- 
 ring obligations to Eoman lawyers. The maxim of the courts, qujjf " 
 that a certain term of uninterrupted possession is a bar to any credidisti : 
 adverse claim, was at once transferred by him to spiritual ^ ' 
 treasures ; a plea which was good for the defence of houses and 
 lands, must be good for the defence of moral and divine prin- 
 ciples. Always alive to the perils of the student, of which he 
 knew almost nothing, he never seems to have anticipated the 
 least danger from the temptations of the rhetorician, or of a 
 fierce African temper, both of which, one would fancy, must 
 have been besetting him every hour. He was ever on the 
 watch against some form of error, yet he never thought it an 
 error doubted that it was a virtue to suspect an opponent's 
 motives, or to impute intentions to him of which he may have 
 been innocent. And therefore it seems to have been permitted, 
 by a most righteous dispensation, and for a most useful warn- '^ 
 ing to after times, that the great denouncer of heretics shoidd 
 end by becoming a heretic. 
 
 8. It may readily be admitted we have all along asserted 
 that there is a most valuable side of truth presented to us 
 in the igfiijjau mind, without which the (jreek gide would be 
 utterly imperfect. Any one who looks upon the Christian 
 Church as intended to combine and reconcile difierent habits 
 and modes of feeling apparently opposed, must demand that 
 there should be in it representatives of each of these characters. 
 Were we contemplating Tertullian on his positive side, we Merits of 
 should speak gratefully of "EisTer\'i^ eloquence, of the light he I'ertuUian. 
 has thrown on various truths which Gnostics and Spiritualists 
 have disguised or denied, of the use of his labours in preventing 
 a society of men from becoming a school of doctors, of his ser- 
 vices in showing that old legal maxims do contain a moral 
 signification. It is not our duty nor our wish to disparage any
 
 44 
 
 THE TRUE GNOSIS. 
 
 Why he 
 must be 
 opposed. 
 
 The 
 
 Alexandrian 
 character- 
 istic. 
 
 one of his excellencies, nor to deal hardly with defects for which 
 his education and position offer so valid an excuse, and which 
 may, if we please, be salutary, not injurious, to ourselves. But 
 to the historian of Philosophy, he presents himself merely as 
 pugnacious and destructive. We must, in self-defence, sternly 
 resist Tertullian's denunciations, and any canons which he has 
 invented for the purpose of enforcing them. Unless we do so, 
 we must condemn a class of men, contemporaries of TertuUian, 
 his equals in every Christian gift, immeasurably his superiors 
 in the grace of humility, who followed a course as nearly as 
 possible the opposite of his. Nay, every after age, as well as 
 every section of Christendom, is interested in this opposition to 
 Carthaginian dogmas. Luther, and all who have followed him 
 in appealing to a higher and elder law than Tertullian's rule of 
 prescription, are not greater rebels against his authority than 
 Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas. If he was right, their dallying 
 with the questions in which the moralists and metaphysicians 
 of the old world took part, their reverence for Plato or 
 Aristotle, must degrade them from doctors to infiiJels. 
 
 9. The Christian Church in Alexandria had more temptation 
 than any Carthaginian could have had, to protest against the 
 old philosophers, for they had been brought into immediate 
 contact with the dangers which TertuUian contemplated from a 
 distance. Gnosticism, as we have hinted already, had esta- 
 bhshed itself verj^' early among them. For one sect or form of 
 it which appeared in Syria, they might reckon twenty. ,The 
 relation, too, in which these sects stood to the heathen sects, as 
 well as to the school of fhilp, was obvious. It did not require 
 polemical ingenuity to trace the affinity or the descent ; the 
 offenders would themselves have acknowledged it and boasted 
 of it. It was most likely that such a discovery should have 
 motiVe8"for produced in Alexandrian Christians a dread of all intercourse 
 Phlio."'^ with living teachers of philosophy, or with the books that con- 
 tained it. We have no facts which can enable us to refute that 
 supposition, for the history of the Egyptian Church is almost a 
 blank till nearly the end of the 2d century. But this we 
 can affirm confidently, that the moment it ceases to be a blank, 
 when illustrious teachers begin to appear in it, this reactionary 
 tendency has been entirely overcome, and a new course has 
 been commenced, entirely in accordance with the character of 
 the city to which this Church belonged. The Christian doctors 
 of whom we shall have to speak, did not tremble at the name of 
 Pljijo, but eagerly availed themselves of his wisdom ; did not 
 set up Dogmatism against Gnosticism, but affirmed that there 
 was a true Gnosis which was the only effectual antidote of the 
 false ; did not repudiate the thoughts and inquiries of former 
 
 Giristian
 
 CLEMENS ALEIANDEINF8. 45 
 
 generations of Greeks, but attributed them to Him from whom 
 the new covenant proceeded, and regarded them as preparations 
 for it. 
 
 10. Of Pantaenus, the first teacher of this school, there is The 
 little to record. The missionary activity which is attributed to p^^tj^g"^* 
 him by historians, must have been connected with that belief Alexandrian 
 in a Divine Guide of men, who was educating them through ^'=^''"^- 
 preparatory stages for the highest wisdom, which was afterwards 
 brought out in its clearness and fulness by Clemens. His 
 name is so memorable in connection with the movements of 
 this age, that we must speak of him at some length. And as 
 w^e have not the good fortune to possess biographical details 
 respecting him, like those which throw so rduch light upon the 
 writings of his successor Origen, we must confine ourselves to 
 such extracts as seem fittest to explain the purpose of his three 
 principal treatises. The shortest of them, which is especially The 
 addressed to Heathens, seems at first sight at variance with the to^hr*'^"'" 
 maxims which we have attributed to his school. It evinces Gentiles, 
 certainly a more intense repugnance to idolatry in its outward 
 forms and in its inward nature, than Tertullian can ever have 
 felt. The deliverance of the human spirit from idolatry, and all 
 the moral fruits of it, is that which Clemens regards as the 
 highest blessing which man can receive, as the great end of the 
 divine counsels respecting him. The legends of tba poets ^re 
 odious to him, because he supposes that they have been minis- 
 ters of idolatry, though he discovers in them certain adumbra- 
 tions of divine truths. The music of Orpheus^ and Amphion^ 
 3Q(J.jVrioii^. tG thinks only tended to excite the passions, and 
 seduce men by a certain enchantment into the worship of visible 
 things ; but it bore witness of a higher and more celestial 
 harmony, which has spoken to the heart and spirit, and drawn 
 them away from the objects and appetites to which they 
 naturally become enslaved. The different theories of the phi- The Poets 
 losophers respecting the gods, are not in general spoken of and Phiio- 
 with more respect. The search for elements by the Ionic ^'' ^^^ ' 
 school struck Clemens ^s simply materialistic. The resolution 
 of all things mtd the infinite, as well as the speculations respect- 
 ing space, terminated, he supposes, naturally in the Atheism of 
 the later schools. It is only when he comes tO"Pfa;tp^"T;"lTaT^iato. 
 Clemens pauses to express an admiration and sympalhy, which 
 ara^^ by no means rapturous or unqualified. 
 
 fl desire," he cries, " not the winds, but the Lord of the c. 6. The 
 wiW^ not the fire, but the Lord of the fire ; not the world, but nnli,? '* 
 the Artificer of the world ; not the sun, but Him who brings Timaeu?, 
 light to the sun ; I seek God, not the works of God. Whom 
 shall I have with me as my fellow-labourer in this enquiry r I
 
 46 THE EXHORTATION TO THE GENTILES. 
 
 cannot disclaim thee, Plato, if thou wilt go along with me. But 
 The "fji^ch tell nie, then, Plato, in what way we must trace the footsteps of 
 the Goti ? It is a mighty work to find the Father and Creator 
 of this great whole. And having found, to speak of Him to all 
 is impossible. Why so ? Because, thou safest, lie is in no wise 
 expressible in language. Kight, Plato ; thou touchest the 
 truth. But thou shouldest not have despaired. Join me in the 
 search concerning the good; for some divineefflux hath descended 
 upon all men whatsoever, especially on those who are occupied 
 about wisdom. "Wherefore even unwillingly they confess, that 
 there is one God, indestructible and . unbegotten ; that he is 
 somewhere behind the heaven, dwelling always in his own pro- 
 per habitation. ^'Tell me,' says Euripides, ' What kind of God 
 we are to conceive of Him that seeth all things, and Himself 
 is unseen.' J Menander was therefore evidently bewildered when 
 he said, ' O sun, for thee must we worship as the first of gods, 
 by whose light it is permitted us to see the other gods.' The 
 sun would never shew that true God. He is shewn as by that 
 pure Word who is the SiijjcOf- the aoul, by whose- rising within 
 m the depth of the reason, th%^e:;9fthfe.reaon itself is illumi- 
 nated Plato indicates Him thus : All things are about 
 
 the King of all, and He is the,ajithor'of-^tbaJt-4aL.gqod." 
 
 Having discovered this one memorable exception to the 
 idolatrous tendency of the surrounding world, Clemens proceeds 
 to notice others, both poets and philosophers, who bore at least 
 an miconscious testimony to the invisible God. " ^^fiUflpJlfin," 
 he said, " would have spoken openly, if he had not feareclTiis 
 master's hemlock." He repeats the hymn of Cleanthes, alludes 
 to the dogmas of the Pythagoraeans, extracts passages even from 
 poets, from Hesiod, Homer, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aratus, 
 affirming the principle which the popular creed denied. 
 Explanation ^^- There is no real contradiction between this treatise and 
 of this one of which we shall have to speak presently. They belong 
 *~'"'"" no doubt to different periods and states of Clejjiens's mind ; but 
 the principle in them is the same, and the growth from one to 
 the other orderly and natural. Clemens recognises a conflict 
 going on unceasingly in the minds of all persons in the old 
 world, consciously in the minds of its most conspicuous teachert;, 
 between a power of sense which the greater part obeyed, and 
 a divine teacher whom even in the midst of their slavery 
 they confessed. His business and vocation as a Christian 
 teacher is to proclaim to all this Guide and Illuminator of the 
 heart and conscience, to dechire the outward facts by which He 
 has made known His presence and His power, to invite all to 
 embrace His government. The belief of such a divine teacher 
 was in the judgment of Clemens the antidote to that Gnosticism 
 
 treatise.
 
 THE PEDAGOGUE. 47 
 
 which exalted the intuitions of man so highly, and made them 
 at the same time so precarious and contradictory. The man 
 was not exploring for himself; he was perpetually under ^ 
 guidance. There Mas not a separate revelation for each man ; 
 there was one divine truth, one object, the knowledge of whom 
 was the highest reward that could be granted to any. 
 
 12. The difference between Clemens and the pseudo-gnostic, 
 comes out most strikingly in the next treatise, O Ilatcaywyoc. 
 
 The whole of this very striking discourse is employed in point- xhe divine 
 ing out the gracious human discipline which the divine teacher discipline of 
 uses with men, in order to lead them to that highest knowledge spirit?*" 
 which he designs for them. The practical life which was so 
 divorced from the speculative by the gnostical teachers, is here 
 shown to be its necessary condition. The opening of the book 
 will explain the relation between this treatise and its prede- 
 cessor, the antlu-opology of Clemens generally, and the insepa- ^f'luls'" 
 rable connexion of that anthropology with his divinity. He discipline 
 describes man as a threefold creature, possessing habits or a wstory of 
 certain mould of character, practical or intended for action, pi"iosophy. 
 susceptible of affections or passions. The Divine Word he 
 speaks of as having a threefold office, corresponding to these 
 distinctions of the creature whom He undertakes to educate. 
 The discipline of the habits or character he would call pro- 
 treptic, of the actions hypothetic, of the passions paramuthetic. 
 By the first word, he appears to understand the giving a new 
 purpose or inclination to the man ; by the second the sugges- 
 tion of methods for accomplishing the end which he hath set 
 before himself; by the third the purifying imfluences whereby 
 the wovmds in the soul are healed, and it is made capable of a 
 higher love. His purpose in this treatise is not to speak of the 
 infusion of a new principle, so much as the cultivation of one 
 which has been already confessed. He proposes to consider 
 the Divine Word rather as a guide in practice than as an 
 instructor in doctrine ; to set Him forth as the conductor of a 
 moral rather than of a scientific training. It is not, he inti- 
 mates, that he in the least undervalues that training, or can 
 attribute it to any less than a divine school- master, but that his 
 immediate object is to contemplate Him in the other aspect. 
 
 13. The importance of this treatise to the ecclesiastical his- Relation 
 torian, and to the practical moralist, is, we think, very great. t/ga'JIse to 
 The historian of philosophy has not the same excuse as they phiiosopiiy. 
 have for entering into the details of it. But he would be guilty 
 
 of a great omission if he passed it over upon the plea that it 
 belongs more to the province of the divine than to his, or that 
 so much of it is occupied with questions of practice rather than 
 speculation. It will have been seen from the extract which we
 
 48 
 
 THE TEACHER 8 LOVE FOB HIS PUPIL. 
 
 chaii. 2. 
 
 have given out of Numenius, how much the thoughts of men 
 everywhere were exercised with difficulties respecting a primary 
 absolute Being dwelling in His own perfection, and one who 
 is cognisable by human faculties, though not by the human 
 senses ; who holds relations with matter, though for the purpose 
 Relation to of raising spirit above matter. This deep enquiry had been 
 onieat'hen^ suggested to heathen philosophers by the facts of their own 
 lives. It was connected with a long line of previous enquiries, 
 conducted by the most earnest and painful thinkers. Some 
 solution of the difficulty must be found. The demand for 
 unity, the great demand of this time, was seen to be involved in 
 it. The more philosophers sought for unity, the more dis- 
 contented they were with the reverence for divided objects ; the 
 more this duplicity presented itself to them, the more closely 
 it seemed to be involved with the very roots of their own being, 
 with the existence of man, and the foundations of the universe. 
 The attempt of Numenius to find his way out of the difficulty 
 may seem to us in many respects confused and unsuccessful ; 
 yet surely no one can consider it without wonder, and some 
 increased insight into the nature of the problem, into its 
 depth, and yet into its practical significance. It seems like 
 entering into a new world to pass from such a speculation to 
 such words as these of Clemens. " This teacher of ours, O my 
 children, is like to His Father, the God, of whom He is the 
 sinless Son, having His soul free from all passions, God un- 
 polluted though in human form, the Divine Word, He that is 
 in the Father, He that is on the right hand of the Father, and 
 in His form divine. He is that stainless image which is set 
 before us. Let us strive with all our might to biing our souls 
 to His likeness." Or this: " Naturally therefore is the man 
 dear to God, seeing that he is His handywork. And all things 
 else He only made by commanding them to exist ; but the man 
 He wrought by His own hands, and infused into him something 
 
 that belongs to Himself. The man, then, whom God hath 
 
 made is chosen for his own sake. But that which is loved for 
 its own sake is intimately related to Him by whom it is so loved, 
 and that is of all things most heartily welcomed and embraced." 
 The whole education of man being, according to Clemens, 
 grounded in this original love, and being carried on with the 
 most regular method in order to produce the reaction and reci- 
 procation of love in the creature who is the object of it, we 
 have something very different from the view of the P, ^ iuygy3. 
 whose connection with matter it was so hard to explain ; a very 
 difterent relation between him and the primary God, with whom 
 Numenius felt he must be united, and yet from whom, that he 
 jnight converse with matter, he must be separated. The con- 
 
 rhap. 3. 
 
 The divine 
 parentage 
 the ground 
 of an 
 education.
 
 DIEECT PHILOSOPHY OP CLEMENS. 49 
 
 trast is great, and yet who does not feel that both teachers are 
 occupied with the same mighty problem, and that if Clemens 
 has the glimpse and apprehension of a higher unity than 
 Numenius had, it is in a great measure because he looked at 
 the whole subject in a more practical light, and was able to 
 contemplate the Creator and Archetype of man as actually 
 engaged ia renewing His image in him ? 
 
 14. We wish to point out this relation between a treatise 
 which is not formally philosophical, and tlie philosophy of the 
 time, before we proceed to the largest work of Clemens, in. The 
 which he directly addresses himself to the subject of philosophy, ciemens* ^ 
 and defends himself from the charge of meddling with topics 
 which a Christian teacher would be wiser to pass by. The 
 Stromata, as its name indicates, is a collection of patch-work, 
 each piece of which, Clemens believes, has some duty of its 
 own, and some relation to the others, and which the truly 
 instructed Divine Artificer can bring together, so that they 
 shall form a consistent whole. Seeing that all the treasures of 
 Clemens' past readings were to be laid tinder contribution for 
 this work, it was needful that he should assert his right to deal 
 with those authors whom Tertullian would have banished 
 altogether from the di\dne republic. Against those who aiErm Lib. i. cap. 
 that philosophy has polluted life, being the artificer of false- ^' ^ ^' 
 hood and foul works, he boldly affirms it to be an evident 
 likeness or image of the truth, a divine gift bestowed upon the 
 Greeks. In studying it, he affirms that he is not carried away 
 by the enchantment of a deceitful art, but that he is engaging 
 in an exercise which is an ally and demonstration of faith. 
 He allows most readUy that there is a false philosophy, and 
 that " great is the danger of parading the unspeakable word of 
 the real philosophy before those who desire merely to argue 
 and contradict, who throw about words and names without 
 order or reverence. They who trifle thus," he says, " deceive 
 themselves, and play tricks with all who adhere to them." But 
 in direct opposition to the dogma of TertuUiaai, about asking 
 and seeking, he affirms that, " as the lover of the chase values 
 the animal which he has pursued long, tracked out, searched 
 for in holes and bye-places, followed with his dogs ; so that truth 
 appears .in all its sweetness when it has been hunted for and 26. 
 won by tod." He argues from the law and the prophets, that 
 all forms of wisdom and art are from God. " The wise in 
 mind," he says, " have no doubt some peculiar endowment of cap. 4, 26. 
 nature. But when they have offered themselves for their work, 
 they receive a spirit of perception from the highest Wisdom, 
 giving them a new fitness for it." He insists upon all laborious
 
 50 HIS VIEWS OF GUEEK PUTLOSOPHT. 
 
 cp. 5, { sj. study, as well as sympathetic feeling, as a proper exercise and 
 cultivation of this spiritual endowment. Having adopted from 
 Philo an ingenious and fantastic Scripture allegory in defence 
 of this proposition, he utters these memorable words. '* We 
 affirm then from hence, in plain words, that philosophy carries 
 on an inquiry concerning Truth and the nature of being, and 
 this Truth is that concerning which the Lord Himself said, 
 ' I am the Truth.'. . . . And when the initiated find or rather 
 receive the true philosophy, they have it from the Truth 
 itself" 
 stromata, 15. " It appears to me then," says Clemens, " that that 
 1 . 7, 37. vrhole discipline of the Greeks, with philosophy itself, came 
 down from God upon men, not according to a distinct pre- 
 ordination, but in the same way as the rains pour themselves 
 forth, both on the good ground and on the dung-heaps, and on 
 the house-tops. On all these grass and corn bud forth, nay 
 sometimes figs and some of the hardier trees spring upon the 
 very tombs. Those sown in the most careless way bend like 
 the truest specimens of their kind, because they have enjoyed 
 the same influence from the rain, but those which have not 
 had the advantage of good ground wither or are plucked up." 
 He applies the parable of the sower in illustration of this 
 
 Eosition, contends that all plants whatever which are good for 
 fe have the same sower and husbandman, as all arts and 
 sciences which are neiessary for their cultivation proceed from 
 
 5 30. the same wisdom. Philosophy, of course, in so large and 
 
 catholic a view, must take a very high place among God's gifts. 
 " And when I speak of philosophy," says Clemens, " I do not 
 mean the Stoic, or the Platonic, or the Epicurean, or the 
 Aristotelic, but whatsoever hath been said in each of these 
 sects well, teaching righteousness with reverejtticieoce. All 
 this I call PhUosophy ; to this I give the nam6_Eclectic.^ But 
 whatsoever they have cut out or cut off by their mere human 
 reasonings, these 1 should never call divine." 
 
 IG. These patches from Clemens, though they may give little 
 notion of the long and elaborate work from which they are 
 taken, may sufiice for the purpose of such a treatise as this. 
 They will at least show what place Clemens holds among the 
 thinkers of the early centuries after Christ. There are t%vo 
 passages, or rather two words, that have occurred in th6 course 
 of our extracts, to which we would direct the attention of our 
 readers before we part with this author. One is the word 
 
 ^fi ted " i^if^iSLted,^^ the other is ^^ eclectic." These are great and sig- 
 nificant expressions in the history of that time, and of sub- 
 sequent times. It is very necessary that we shovdd examine 
 into them if we would know anything of the Pagan or of the
 
 HIS IDEA. OF AN ESOTEEICAL DOCTEINE. 51 
 
 Christian philosophy of the 3d century, or of the relation in 
 which they stood to each other. 
 
 17. When we are told, as we so often are, by a certain class Was the 
 of commentators on ecclesiastical history, that the Christian "orrowed 
 teachers derived their notion of a lore which was not to be com- fr"^]'^^ 
 municated to the vulgar herd, but to be reserved for those who teans".""' 
 had passed through certain stages of discipline, from the Pytha- 
 gorean doctors, a half truth is uttered, which, like all half 
 truths, may lead us into decided falsehood. That this was a 
 time in which the Pythagorean discipline put itself forth with 
 a power which it had scarcely possessed even in the first days 
 of the political community in southern Italy, we might infer 
 from the cases of Apollonius and ISi umenius, if there were not 
 the additional and still more conclusive evidence of Lucian to 
 establish the opiuion. His ridicule had no doubt abundant and 
 most legitimate scope for its exercise in the quacks and mounte- 
 banks who practised mystifications, sometimes mischievous, 
 sometimes only foolish, under the name of mysteries, or 
 who made the glories of science the theme of continual prating. 
 Lucian, of course, never took the pains to distinguish these pre- 
 tenders from the truer men whom they counterfeited. Their 
 real awe and conscientious belief were quite unintelligible to 
 his lively, sparkling, clear-sighted incredulity. But that such christian 
 men as Numenius trembled, not at the shows and forms of ti^e"|ea^** 
 things, at the masks and phantoms of a degrading demoniacal 
 superstition, but at the actual presence of a Being whom they 
 adored and wished to love, seems to us unquestionable. Was 
 the Christian a plagiarist if he believed that he was to take his 
 shoes from off his feet when he was admitted into the same 
 presence ? AVhat did his faith mean, if he was not admitted 
 into it ? And yet could he hide from himself the fact that 
 there were numbers professing that faith, to whom it had no 
 such signification ; many entirely wrapt up in material pursuits, 
 who yet had committed no scandals that should exclude them 
 from the fellowship of the Church ; many with honest and 
 affectionate hearts desirous of light, and yet who seemed unable 
 to contemplate spiritual objects, except under sensual forms, 
 which contracted, often distorted, them ? The nature of the 
 difference which we have pointed out between the belief of 
 Numenius and that of Clemens, did not seem to involve a 
 difference between them in this respect. The divine and phi- 
 lanthropical Teacher, far more than the mere DegyuCfgus, 
 might desire to proportion the degrees of light which He 
 revealed to the organs which were intended to receive it. The 
 Perfect Love which casts out fear, may demand a reverence 
 greater than it is possible to feel for the mere absolute entity
 
 52 
 
 now FAR IT WAS GOOD OB EVIL. 
 
 Idea of 
 sacrifice. 
 
 Danirerg 
 ol the 
 ituciplima 
 arcani. 
 
 which haunted, though it did not satisfy, the reason of the 
 Pythagorean. 
 
 18. In this sense, then, the Christian who spoke of the 
 " initiated " disciple, used language which seemed even more 
 appropriate to him than it could be to the philosopher. Nor 
 must it be omitted that he had another claim to this mode of 
 speech, and to tiie thoughts which it expressed. The Pytha- 
 goraean had risen above the dark faith in the necessity of pro- 
 pitiations to an evil divinity. Sacrifice was to him little more 
 than a process of purification. The Christian had equally 
 abjured the traditional sacrifices, so far as they implied appeals 
 to any thing which is evU ; but he had recognised sacrifice as 
 importing reconciliation and renewed fellowship with a fiej,- 
 fectly good Being; not merely an act on the part of the 
 Worstltpper, iJUt as originating with the object of his worship. 
 Such a sacrifice could not but seem to him in the highest sense 
 a jMystery. In proportion as he was aware of the counterfeit 
 notions which surrounded the idea of sacrifice, and the tempta- 
 tions of uninstructed sensual men to substitute them for it, he 
 would have a motive to insist upon that name, and carefully to 
 guard this sacred truth from the intrusion of profane specu- 
 lators. 
 
 19. Thus the disdplina arcani which has been so much 
 spoken of in the early Church, touched at one point upon the 
 philosophical, at the other upon the religious, habits and feel- 
 ings of the surrounding world. It was not really derived from 
 either. It testified to the fact that the Christian Church had a 
 real relation to both those sides of truth which among heathens 
 had been almost inevitably separated. But it is impossible to 
 deny that there lay in one aspect of this discipline aU the 
 temptations to philosophical pride, in the other to religious 
 imposture, which had been at work in the old world. The 
 initiated disciple who was admitted into a higher region of 
 thought, into a more secret knowledge, than the body of his 
 brethren might share, would be exceedingly likely to regard 
 the humbler members of the Church as creatures so far below 
 himself in spiritual illumination, that there could not be any 
 actual communion with them. He who believed that the mystery 
 of sacrifice was only cognisable by the few, while yet it was a 
 fundamental part of his faith that the sacrifice itself was for 
 all, would gradually convince himself that only the sensual 
 exhibition of the truth was meant for the multitude ; would 
 begin with severing that from its signification ; would then im- 
 pute to the bare material a sacredness which he had himself 
 extracted from it ; and so would prepare the way for results in 
 which the student of theology and of philosophy are both
 
 THE EIGni AND WItOKG OF ECLECTICISM. 53 
 
 deeply interested, but in which the ordinary human being has 
 a deeper interest than either. If the Gospel had been left to 
 the mercy of Alexandrian doctors, it would have been in as great 
 danger of losing its human quality, its sympathy with publicans 
 and sinners, as it was of losing its finer and purer essence when 
 it fell among the rough dogmatists of Carthage. Much as '^^*''^ 
 there was in the gentle, pure, and humble mind of Clemens to checked, 
 coiinteract this danger, it required the stronger counteraction 
 of an opposing, and in itself perhaps a more mischievous ten- 
 dency, together with the discipline of persecutions, and a direct 
 antagonism from heathen philosophy, that it might not pass 
 into a mere system for novices and adepts ; husks being the 
 only food provided for the first, and an intoxicating mephitic 
 vapour being the nourishment of the other. 
 
 20. The phrase ^cl^titic suggests a series of reflections scarcely Eclecticism. 
 less serious, and even alarming. The sense in which it is used 
 by Clemens is obvious enough. He did not care for Plato, 
 Aristotle, Pythagoras, as such ; far less did he care for the 
 opinions and conflicts of the schools which bore their names : 
 he found in each, hints of precious truths of which he desired 
 to avail himself; he would gather the flowers without asking in 
 what garden they grew, the prickles he would leave for those 
 who had a fancy for them. Eclecticism in this sense seemed 
 only like another name for catholic wisdom. A man conscious 
 that every thing in nature and in art was given for his learn- 
 ing, had a right to suck honey wherever it was to be found ; 
 he could find sweetness in it if it was hanging wild on trees 
 and shrubs, he could admire the elaborate architecture of the 
 cells in which it was stored. The Author of all good to man 
 had scattered the gifts, had imparted the skill; to receive 
 them thankfully was an act of homage to Him. But once lose its perils, 
 the feeling of devotion and gratitude which belonged so remark- 
 ably to Clemens, once let it be fancied that the philosopher 
 was not a mere receiver of treasures which had been provided 
 for him, but an ingenious chemist and compounder of various 
 naturally unsociable ingredients, and the eclectical doctrine 
 would lead to more self-conceit, would be more unreal and 
 heartless, than any one of the sectarian elements out of which 
 it was fashioned. It would want the belief and conviction 
 which dwell, with whatever unsuitable companions, even in the 
 narrowest theory. Many of the most vital characteristics of 
 the original dogmas would be efiaced under pretence of taking 
 off their rough edges and fitting them into each other. In 
 general, the superficialities and formalities of each creed would 
 be preserved in the new system ; its original and essential 
 characteristics sacrificed. We shall have abundant illustrations
 
 54 
 
 THE NEW PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Ammonius 
 Saccas. 
 
 of these remarks as we proceed. Our present business is to 
 notice some of the contemporaneous raanit'erttations of that phi- 
 losophical temper, the Christian type of which is exhibited in 
 Clemens. 
 
 21. Among the sages of Alexandria at the end of the 
 2d century, and the beginning of the 3d, was one person who 
 has given occasion to much controversy. .^LaMaeHivi3acca8 
 has left no writings behind him from which we may judge whaf 
 he was, or wherein lay the secret o'' the influeuce which he 
 evidently exerted over men of great ability, and very differently 
 educated. In fact, one main part of our knowledge respecting 
 him is that he did not write, at all events, that he did not put 
 forth what he had written ; and that he exacted an oath of 
 secrecy from his hearers. No one, therefore, seems to have 
 carried the esoteric habit of this age farther than he did. The 
 question arises whether in doing so he started from the ground 
 of Numenius or of Clemens, whether his silence and reserve 
 rested upon maxims of the Church or of the Schools. Porphyry 
 claims him as a deserter from the Christian camp. The Chris- 
 tian historians of the next century do not admit the apostasy ; 
 but they do not chiim Ammonius as an ally. The dispute, 
 however it may be settled, is instructive. It shows that there 
 was a class of men who occupied a position which might easily 
 be misunderstood, men who seemed to have affinities with the 
 His proba- teachers of the Church, who probably listened to them, and 
 were listened to by them ; who on certain points came appa- 
 rently into the closest contact with them, and yet who, at some 
 period of their life, may have diverged very markedly and widely 
 from them, may have even come into collision with them. It 
 would seem exceedingly likely that Ammonius had heard the 
 historical facts which the preachers of the Gospel believed ; 
 that he had perceived how much less the Alexandrian Chris- 
 tians dwelt upon them than upon the principles which those 
 facts were said to embody, how readily they translated the fact 
 into a principle ; that he may have conceived the possibility of 
 dwelling exclusively upon the one without positively repudi- 
 ating the other ; that he may have spoken of the principles as 
 very profound and mysterious, fit only for the most prepared 
 and disciplined ears, and may have condemned the Christian 
 teachers tor profaning them in popular addresses ; that he may 
 have become more and more distinguished from them, and 
 opposed to them in so far forth as they were preachers, with- 
 out feeling any great repugnance to them as seekers and 
 students ; that he may have learnt at the same time from their 
 example, that principles do need to take some concrete form, 
 if they are to be made intelligible ; that he may have con- 
 
 ble relation 
 to the 
 Christians.
 
 TTS GREAT TEACHER. 55 
 
 sidered and talked with his disciples about the different forms 
 and media through which they might become apprehensible to 
 the vulgar ; but that at the same time he may have strongly 
 urged the possibility of a higher and diviner intuition through 
 which the philosopher might rise into converse with truth in 
 its essence and nakedness ; that the method which he pointed 
 out for this end, as well as his general views respecting the 
 other and lower method, may have been confined to the most 
 chosen circle of his followers, who will have been forbidden, not 
 so much from any jealousy which the master might have of his 
 own fame, as on account of the very nature of the doctrine, to 
 divulge. The concealment was, in fact, inevitable. A person 
 contemplating things from this point of view must demand it 
 if he is not inconsistent with himself. 
 
 22. While Ammonius was lecturing in Alexandria, there 
 came to it a young man in the 27th year of his age. He had 
 
 been smitten with the love of wisdom, and he wandered Piotinus. 
 from doctor to doctor to find the object of his passion. He 
 returned from each, disappointed and heavy-hearted. A friend 
 to whom he told his grief bade him visit the school of Ammo- 
 nius, whom he had not yet tried. " This," he exclaimed at the 
 first lecture, " is the man I was seeking for." The charm was 
 not worn out after eleven years. All our knowledge of the 
 teacher is derived from this pupil. We should have little 
 interest in Ammonius if it were not for the influence he exer- 
 cised over Plotinus. 
 
 23. When he had taken his fill of Alexandrian doctrine, this H'^ 
 ardent student entered the army of the Emperor Gordianus, 
 then starting for Persia, that he might acquaint himself with Life by 
 the science of the Magians, and perhaps come into converse Porphyry, 
 with the Brahmins. After the Emperor had been slain in 
 Mesopotamia, Plotinus escaped with some difficvilty to Antioch. 
 
 In his 40th year, during the reign of the Emperor Philip, he 
 went to Rome. All this time he had WTitten nothing. His 
 reverence for Ammonius and for his oath kept him from 
 divulging the secret lore which two of his fellow disciples, 
 Herennius and Origen, according to Porphyry, had already 
 betrayed. He allowed, however, different students to visit him, 
 and to ask him questions. Their various reports of his re- 
 sponses, as might have been expected, gave rise to no little 
 perplexity and misrepresentation. Aurelius, who had already His 
 written out or committed to memory all the dogmas of Nume- '^'^^p'^*- 
 nius, came to him in the fourth year of his stay at Rome, and 
 listened to him for twenty-four years. He made a collection of 
 scholia, or commentaries, the results of their interviews, which 
 grew to the number of 100 volumes. But he never ventured
 
 56 CHARACTEE OF PLOTINUS. 
 
 to write down the utterances of the master himself. When 
 Plotinus was above fifty years old, he began himself to be a 
 
 c. 4. writer. Porphyry joined him about nine years after; he had then 
 
 composed twenty-one books. He communicated them to very 
 few. But for Porphyry, they might never have seen the light. 
 In the following ten years, the conversation of his two disciples 
 brought out the books which exhibit, Porphyry thinks, the ful- 
 ness of his power. He afterwards wrote nine more when it was 
 in its decline. 
 
 A converser 24. Plotinus was therefore not chiefly a book-maker or a 
 
 writer. lecturer. His wisdom came forth in the better and more 
 natural form of conversation. His Enneads are resolutions of 
 difficulties which had occurred to himself or to others. There 
 is no reason to doubt that he was, what Apollo, in a somewhat 
 lengthy oracle faithfully reported by his disciple, and what that 
 
 CM. disciple, on the equally satisfactory evidence of his own expe- 
 
 rience, testifies him to have been " good and gentle and benig- 
 nant in a very high degree, and pleasant in all his intercourse." 
 
 g y He seems to have won the affection of many who could have 
 
 understood nothing of his teaching, to have given them sensible 
 
 c. 11. advice about mundane affairs, and even to have been a careful 
 
 steward of the monies which they entrusted to him. But of 
 his own body he was utterly negligent. No entreaties could 
 persuade him to allow a portrait of himself to be taken. " Was 
 not humiliating enough to be obliged to carry a shadow about 
 
 c. 1 & 2. with him, without having a shadow made of that shadow ?" He 
 declined all the natural remedies when he was afflicted with a 
 serious sickness, refused animal food, abstained from baths. 
 He was attacked with a pestilence which prevailed in Italy, lost 
 the use of his hands, his feet, and his voice ; his sufferings being 
 terribly aggravated, it would appear, from his rejection of all 
 alleviations. lie at last left the city, was taken to the estate of 
 a friend in Campania, and died, as Eustochius reported, exclaim- 
 ing, " I am striving to bring the divine thing which is in us, to 
 the divine which is in the universe." 
 
 ojqectof 25. Whether Plotinus uttered these words or not, as his 
 spirit was departing, they certainly express the effort of his 
 life, and the object of his philosophy. We have spoken of him 
 as in one respect resembling Socrates, that he conversed 
 rather than wrote. He himself supposed that he resembled 
 Socrates in most things, that he was, in fact, restoring to the 
 world the very spirit which had spoken in him when his friends 
 were gathered about his couch, and he was thanking the Athenian 
 dicasts for the emancipation which they were preparing for 
 him. Yet no two men were ever really more strongly con- 
 trasted with each other, not merely in their characters, but in 
 
 FiOtiDUB.
 
 PLOTINUS AND SOCRATES. 57 
 
 their -wliole method. If Socrates sought for the Beiug, for the TheSocratic 
 eternal substance which no images could present to him, and 
 which he could only truly embrace while he turned away 
 from shadows and phantoms, he hoped to attain this blessing 
 for himself, or to show his disciples how they might attain it, 
 by testing the words which they spoke, by entering into con- 
 verse with the tools of every ordinary craft, by acknowledging 
 the worth of the most vulgar and earthly things. Unless he 
 could arrive at the truth of each thing which presented itself 
 to him, he had no hope of arriving at the absolute truth. All 
 his genial habits of mind, his sympathy, his humour, became 
 thus the inseparable ministers of his philosophy, nay almost 
 constituted it. They kept him in communion with facts ; they 
 would not allow him to mistake that which is, for the creation 
 of his own mind ; they made him seek for a road by which every 
 man might rise to the height which he was climbing. 
 
 26. Plotinus was bom into an age when it was impossible, or why 
 
 at least unspeakably difficult, to begin where Socrates began. couilTnot 
 The Christian teachers had been asserting pertinaciously, for adoj t it. 
 two centuries, that there had been an actual revelation of the 
 most transcendent mysteries ; that princes and beggars might 
 have communion with the Divine jS^ature ; might be partakers of 
 it. Every sage was bound to say whether this was his end, and 
 how he hoped to attain it. He was forced to commence with a 
 theology, and to explain how he connected it with the condition 
 of humanity. Supposing he utterly discarded the doctrine 
 of God taking human flesh, he must find some substitute for that 
 doctrine ; his ethics, his physics, his dialectics, would all depend 
 upon it. If we forget those thoughts respecting the Absolute 
 Being, and the Being in contact with man or with matter, 
 which Numenius and Clemens have brought before us, the 
 processes in the mind of Plotinus will be quite unintelligible to 
 us. We shall suppose that he is wilfully and industriously 
 combining some old notions of divinity with his Platonism, 
 whereas the conjunction was inevitable. He could escape 
 neither the vagueness and impersonality which will often seem 
 characteristic of his highest speculations, nor those allusions to 
 secondary powers and divinities, to a race of inferior daemons 
 which may seem to us to contain the germs of a very gross super- 
 stition. How the mixture afterwards worked, what kind of in- 
 fluence it produced through two centuries, we shall have to con- 
 sider hereafter. The real key to all the subsequent developments 
 of the school lies in the writings of its illustrious founder. 
 
 27. Plotinus committed the arrangement of his books to The 
 Porphyry. He disposed them according to subjects, sacrificing ""^^ *' 
 the chronology of the writings which we might have been glad
 
 58 DISPOSITION OF THIS PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 to trace to philosophical symmetry. " I disposed them," he 
 Life, c. 34. says, " into six Enneads, gladly availing myself of the two per- 
 fect numbers (GandO)." He hoped that the reader would 
 rise to the more difficult problems by a regular gradation. 
 The Ethical. His first Enneas contains what he calls the more purely ethical 
 discussions. It embraces such topics as these What is the 
 Animal and what is the Man ? On Virtues On Dialectics 
 On Happiness Whether Blessedness consists in the lengthen- 
 ing out of Time On the Beautiful On the Primary Good and 
 the other goods Whence spring Evils On a reasonable De- 
 parture out of Life. 
 The The next Enneas is on physical questions Of the World 
 
 ysica . Q. Qjj.(,^jg^j. JVXotion Whether the Stars have any activity On 
 the Potential and the Actual On Quality and Form or Species 
 An answer to those who think the Maker of the World, or 
 the World itself, to be Evil. 
 
 As this division includes several topics which Aristotle would 
 certainly have assigned to metaphysics rather than physics, 
 so it is not very obvious where Porphyry draws the line between 
 it and the succeeding one, which he says still treats of the 
 Koff^oc, but includes those subjects which have relation to it, 
 not merely those which are embraced in it. This Enneas dis- 
 cusses Fate Providence Of the Daemon to whose lot we have 
 fallen (row Et\/x'oc V"C ^at'/xo>'oc) Of Love Of Eternity 
 and Time Of Nature, Contemplation, and the One. The 
 editor excuses himself for introducing some of these titles here ; 
 his defence is scarcely satisfactory. The fourth Enneas treats 
 entirely of the Soul On the Substance of the Soixl On 
 Sensation and Memory On the Lnmortality of the Soul On 
 Ontology, the Descent of the Soul into Bodies. The fifth ascends into the 
 transcendent region : it treats of Eeason, and Being, and Ideas. 
 The last speaks of the kinds of Being Of the Identity of 
 Being, and Unity Of Numbers How there comes to be 
 Plurality of Ideas Of the Good. 
 
 Porphyry regards the first three Enneads as forming one 
 section of the work, the fourth and fifth another, the sixth com- 
 plete in itself. 
 
 28. Union with the Divinity being the one object of Plotinus, 
 various questions suggest themselves to him, in which ethics 
 v'rtue, *nd theology are intimately combined. The second book of the 
 whether first Eunead, " On Virtues," brings these especially before us. 
 It is doubtless by virtues that we are to be assimilated to the 
 divine nature. But can virtues be predicated of that nature ? 
 Can there be courage in a Being who has nothing to fear ? 
 self-restraint in one who has nothing to desire ? Perhaps a dis- 
 tinction might be drawn between the noetic and the political
 
 YIETTJES. 59 
 
 virtues, between those which have reference to the pure objects 
 of the intellect, and those which have reference to the condi- 
 tions of human society. Perhaps too there might be some god 
 to whom such qualities might be ascribed ; say the Soul of the 
 world, or the presiding principle in it. Still such explanations The 
 hardly satisfy the enquirer. Is it possible, then, that there may st^ed and 
 be obtained through virtue some likeness to One who himself does resolved, 
 not possess it, or possesses it under quite difterent conditions ; 
 as it is not absolutely necessary to suppose that a substance 
 from which heat is received has itself the sensation of heat. 
 If one examines that illustration more deeply, Plotinus thinks 
 it may suggest another inference, that the heat is innate in 
 that which communicates the heat ; in that which receives it, 
 derivative ; and that similarly there ought to be, if not virtue, 
 yet something higher than virtue, in him from whom man pro- 
 ceeds. The actual visible house, he says, is not the same with 
 that which is in the mind ; yet one has the likeness of the 
 other, and derives from it its order and harmony. These 
 qualities of the building cannot be said to exist in their noetic 
 or spiritual counterpart. So, though there may be no need of Virtue a 
 what we call virtue in Grod, the possession of it may be that attainluK 
 which brings us into consent with his nature. The result at sodhead. 
 which the discussion arrives is this : that virtues are purgative, 
 that the worth of them is to separate that in man which is 
 capable of converse with the noetic, the essentially pure, from 
 that which is animal and earthly ; that by this process they pre- 
 pare the reason to come into contact with its highest object. 
 Virtue being in the Soul which is in connection with the body, 
 and liable to its influence, not in the pure Eeason, or in that 
 which lies beyond it, is a perpetual exercise of restraint and 
 cleansing for the purpose of disengaging the man from his 
 lower companion, and fitting him for the question cannot be 
 avoided for what ? Plotinus answers, for becoming a god. 
 Supposing him to reach such a point as that he shall be wholly 
 free from voluntary transgression, but shall still be exposed to 
 assaults from anger, desire, and the like, he may be only a 
 Daemon, possessing still a twofold nature, in which the higher 
 is supreme. But if he could overcome his propensities entirely, 
 then he would be simply a god, " one of those that follow the 
 Highest God." 
 
 29. The book on Dialectics, which follows this on Virtues, Dialectics of 
 should be read in connection with the Platoaic- Phae^JUS, that ''**'"*' 
 the student may appreciate the difference between the ancient 
 teacher and the reviver, and may acquit Plotinus of any servile 
 imitation. He is not open to that charge ; what he inherited 
 he certainly reduced into possession, and yet no one more
 
 60 
 
 DTALECTTO. 
 
 Process of 
 accent to 
 the divine. 
 
 The 
 
 Musician. 
 
 The Lover. 
 
 The 
 Philosopher 
 
 reverently and frankly confesses his obligations. The question 
 is, by what process we are to ascend into that region of the 
 good, to that original principle, which has been showii before to 
 be the right goal of our pilgrimage. The man may be looked 
 upon in three stages of progress, or rather he may be said to have 
 originally descended into three types of being, out of which he 
 is gradually to rise. " First, the Musician, easily impressed and 
 carried on towards the beautiful, but without the power of 
 being directly moved by it ; readily affected towards sounds, as 
 cowards are by noises, and catching at the beautiful, which lies 
 close at hand in them ; ever flying from the discordant, and 
 seeking for the harmonious and tJie proportionate ; may be lifted 
 above the sensible sounds, and measures, and forms, to the 
 beauty that is above them ; may be taught the noetic harmony 
 which lies beneath the things towai'ds which he is carried 
 away ; may attain, not to some beautiful thing, but to the 
 Beauty." Plotinus intimates that there may be yet a further 
 passage for him out of thif* region into the truths of pure 
 science, of which he is ignorant, though in a manner he possesses 
 them. " Next the Lover, into whom the musician may very pro- 
 bably be converted. He has a certain recollection of beauty ; 
 but being outside of it, he is not able to learn what it is. But 
 being stricken by the beautiful things which come under his 
 sight, he is carried about them. Tou must teach him not 
 to fly round and round about one body, with the danger of 
 always descending lower towards it ; you must bring him by 
 reason to compare bodies together, pointing out to him that 
 which is the same in all ; and you must tell him that it is 
 different from the bodies, and that it comes from elsewhere, and 
 that it dwells in others more than in these ; shewing him how 
 beautiful Studies may be, and how beautiful Laws may be. Thus 
 the Lover may become habituated to that which is without body, 
 discovering it in arts and sciences, and virtues. Then you 
 must make him feel that there is one Beauty in all things, and 
 you must teach him how they arise out of it. " Then, from the 
 virtues, teach him how to ascend to the pure Reason, and after 
 into Being itself, and there he may move along on his upward 
 journey. Last of all, the Philosopher : ready by nature, and as 
 it were already furnished with wings ; not needing to sever them 
 from matter like the others ; disposed already to ascend to that 
 which is above ; but still being perplexed, he wants some one to 
 point the way. To him you must give mathematics, for the 
 discipline of his intellect and of his incorporeal faith. These 
 he will readily receive, being greedy of knowledge, and seeing 
 that he has a natural aptitude for virtue. And after mathe- 
 matics you must give him dialectics; you must make him
 
 GLOET OF IT. 61 
 
 thoroughly a dialectician. But what is this dialectic which 
 must be given in some proportion to the musician and the lover 
 also ? " It is," answers Plotinus, " the habit which enables i)iiectic 
 one to say about each thing what its peculiarity is, wherein it ^ '* ' 
 differs from other things, what there is in common between 
 them, and where each of these things is, and whether that is 
 which is, and how many are the things that are, and again the 
 things that are not, and how they differ from those that are. 
 It discourses," he says, " also concerning the Good and con- 
 cerning the Not-good, and how many things fall under the 
 Good, and what is manifestly Eternal, and what is not so. It 
 aims in all things at science, not at opinion, restraining the 
 soul from its wanderings after sensible things, disciplining it to 
 the noetic ; there lies its whole occupation. And whence," 
 he asks, " has this science its principles ? The answer is, that 
 the pure reason gives them, and the soul, by different processes 
 of discipline, is made capable of receiving them. The dialec- 
 tical habit is the highest and most honourable of all that man 
 can possess, and it is exercised about the highest and noblest 
 things. It results from the combination of the prudential 
 faculty with the pure reason, the one referring to Being, the 
 other carrying you beyond^Being. Is it, then, the same thing 
 with philosophy ? No ; but it is the most essential and glorious 
 part of philosophy. It must not be imagined to be a mere in- 
 strument of philosophy. It does not invent propositions about 
 things, but it deals with the substances themselves. ^,!^i^e_ 
 Being, if we can bear the contradiction, is the material with 
 wETcn it works." 
 
 30. If we suppose that there is a point at which the master Relation of 
 of Plotinus was in contact with the Christian teachers of Alex- cbr/g^ans! 
 andria, the passages which we have selected from the Enneads 
 may perhaps assist us in understanding and feeling the reason 
 of their divergence. The necessity of emancipation would be 
 recognised alike by both. One as much as the other might 
 describe it as the emancipation of a spirit from the chains 
 of sense : one as much as the other might think that the 
 man was gradually to ascend into the region which was in- 
 tended for him out of a material world in which he was sunk, 
 and the phantoms of which were continually misleading and 
 detaining him. But the moment tlie Church teacher spoke 
 to the man, not of an oppression that was arising from a 
 lower nature attached to him, but of an evil that dwelt in him- 
 self, his language would become partly disagreeable, partly un- 
 intelligible to the new school. A dialectician, even a lover or a 
 musician, who has a perception of some beautiful and trans- 
 cendent object, will meet with a certain sympathy from Plotinus. 
 He will help him to rise into a more ethereal, one would fancy
 
 62 
 
 TEKDENCT TO nCHUMAlHTT. 
 
 Smseof 
 evil, of self. 
 
 Philoso- 
 phers still 
 men. 
 
 abo, into rather a colder region, than that from which he has 
 escaped, one in which his attachment to every thing distinct 
 and particular would be lost in the vision of the absolute and 
 universal. But if the highest of these forms of being, or either 
 of the subordinate ones, besides being philosophical, or loving, 
 or musical, should chance to be human, and to be conscious of 
 certain inward torments and distempers, which, though very 
 closely mingling with all his passions and pursuits, have 
 nevertheless a character and root of their own ; if any one of 
 them should ever be brought to feel " it is myself that is my 
 torment ; it is from that, I want to be delivered," one cannot 
 help fearing that the prescriptions of Plotinus would be found 
 not quite adequate to the seriousness of the emergency. The 
 inevitable result of them, one must think, is to re-establish that 
 barrier between the man and the philosopher which it seemed 
 to us that all the better and more earnest teachers of the old 
 world had wished to remove, and to which they only submitted 
 through a hard necessity ; a distinction which, however plausible 
 and hopeful, does, in fact, quite as much injury to the select 
 band whom it glorifies, as to the mass whom it scorns, making 
 the highest point to which they reach, one where there is pure 
 light without the slightest warmth. It is most satisfactory to 
 think that neither Plotinus himself, nor perhiips any of his 
 followers, ever succeeded in reaching this point. They con- 
 tinued to be men, not such Daemons or Gods as they dreamed 
 they might become. ' 
 
 31. In saying this, we do not in the least design to disparage 
 the dialectic of which Plotinus speaks so ably, and of which 
 Dialectician. Plato had spoken with immeasurably more freedom, precision, 
 and practical sense, before him. To cultivate that habit of 
 which he speaks, that wonderful habit of distinguishing the 
 substance within from that which encircles it, the reality from 
 the counterfeit, must be indeed the highest effort of a sound 
 and practical education. The complete possession of it must 
 be the greatest gift which can be conferred upon a man. None 
 of the means for obtaining it which Plotinus has suggested, 
 ought to be slighted by those who can avail themselves of them. 
 AVhat we venture to doubt is, whether those means will be 
 found sufficient, whether we shall ever have a consummate 
 dialectician, in this sense of the word, who has not been 
 engaged in a much more close death embrace witli evil than 
 a Neo-Platonist would have thought desirable or graceful; 
 whether he must not have much more understood tlM evils of 
 other men as his own, than could be right for tho.se who Mere 
 striving to be gods ; whether a simple clownish man, who had 
 entered heartily into this strife, would not have a dialectical 
 discernment which a person well trained in mathematics, and 
 
 True 
 education 
 of the
 
 DOCTRINE CONCEENING EVIL. G3 
 
 thfit excellent discipline which Plotinus recommends, might 
 after all utterly want. Meantime, though these observations 
 are needful to connect the different sides of our history together, 
 let no one make them an excuse for not profiting by the lessons 
 which an eminent man, who has worked zealously in one direc- 
 tion, can give us. It would certainly be a poor evidence of any 
 one having acquired greater humility in another school, that he 
 had been brought to.despise Plotinus. 
 
 32. It must not be inferred from what we have said of his His theory 
 internal sense of evil, that we think he has treated the subject ^^* " 
 of evil less successfully than other moralists, or that we regard 
 this as the weak part of his discourses. There is no book we 
 should more recommend to the attention of our readers than 
 the eighth of the first Ennead, in which he grapples with the 
 question, What is e\ril, and whence comes it ? Plotinus states 
 fairly and honestly the different suggestions which present 
 themselves to all serious and reflecting minds when they 
 approach this abyssX^ Is it positive ? Is it only a failure and 
 eclipse of good? Is it in matter? Is it in the soul? Must 
 there not be an original archetypal evil, from which the dif- 
 ferent forms of it have proceeded, and wherein they terminate ? 
 What is the real conflict of life ? What is the victory ? What 
 is the ultimate defeat? No one, we think, can follow him 
 through the discussion of these questions without thankfulness 
 for the light which he has thrown on them, and a feeling that 
 some further solution may be and must be had. We should be 
 doing little justice to Plotinus if we stated the formal results 
 to which this inquiry led him. The interest of the book, and 
 that which is the most agreeable characteristic of the writer, is, 
 that he does not put forth a set of dogmatic resolutions, but 
 talks over the different points with himself, giving us glimpses 
 into the processes of his mind, and enabling us to see that it has 
 earnestly fought with a number of intellectual giants, though he 
 may not have been in that thickest and hottest part of the fight 
 where the question is, whether the man must not part with him- 
 self in order that he may part with evil. 
 
 33. Oftentimes the reader may be inclined to suppose that His dislike 
 Plotinus must have had some sympathy with the Christian Gnosdcs. 
 Gnostics. He feels so strongly that the fall of the Soul consists 
 iii"fts~t)ecoming subject to matter, that it is lost when it is com- 
 pletely immersed in matter, that it only rises into communion 
 with the perfect good when it becomes separated from matter ; 
 that we might suppose him to agree with them, that the source 
 of evil lies in matter. This would itself be a false inference. 
 He believes that the tendency of the soul to sink into that 
 which is below itself, is not derived from that into which it
 
 64 THE WOBLD. 
 
 sinks ; that tendency has its root somewhere else ; where, he 
 does not distinctly affirm. But even supposing he had agreed 
 with the Gnostics so far, he would not have been at all nearer 
 to their assertion that the World or Order is evil. He does not 
 look upon this Order as material ; nothing seemed to him so 
 utterly shocking, as the notion that it could be anything 
 The world less than perfect, dinne, eternal. The ninth book of the 
 divine. second Ennead is devoted to the confutation of the Gnostical 
 dogma upon this point. "The men," he says, "who complain 
 of the nature of the world, know not what they are doing, and 
 whither their boldness is carrj'ing them. This is because they 
 know not the arrangement of the different portions of this 
 order, its first and second and third degrees, down to the 
 lowest of all, and that it does not become us to find fault with 
 those things that are worse than the first, but meekly to conform 
 ourselves to the universal nature, pressing on still towards the 
 best, and casting aside those empty terrors, such as some are 
 possessed with when they contemplate the great circles of the 
 world, which in truth are procuring all blessings to them. 
 What have these really terrible, as they terrify those who are 
 ignorant of true reason, and who have not submitted themselves 
 to the discipline of science ? For what if these forms which 
 they behold are of a fiery nature ? We do not therefore need 
 to rear them, seeing that they are in harmony with the nature 
 of the universe, and with the earth. But it behoves them 
 rather to look to those souls, in virtue of which they deem them- 
 selves estimable, though they ought to know that their bodies 
 too, excelling as they do in greatness and beauty, are servants 
 and fellow-workers in the scheme of nature, rightly following 
 those things which have rightly the pre-eminence, filling up the 
 universe, and being great elements of it. And if men have an 
 honour beyond all other animals, much more should these things 
 have their honour which exist in the great whole, not as rulers 
 of it, but as supplying to it grace and order. And we are not 
 to demand that all in the world should be good, and to fall into 
 grumbling because this is not possible at once, nor to call the 
 imperfect and lesser good an evU, If one calls nature evil 
 because it is not sensation, and sensation because it is not the 
 reasoning power of the soul, one must call that enl too, seeing 
 that the soul is lower than the pure mind, and there is something 
 higher than that." 
 
 This is a summary of the general argument. '4J1 things 
 are good in the Order. They become evil when t*hey fall 
 out of it, losing their relations, proportions, sequences. To 
 speak of an evil world, or an evU order, is therefore a con- 
 tradiction. \
 
 PROJECTS OF NEO-PLATOXISM. 65 
 
 34. A faithful disciple of Plotinus would say that we had 
 only touched the outskirts of his doctriue, and not ascended 
 into its more mystical heiglits, unless we spoke more distinctly 
 
 of those passages which refer to the pure and essential One, the The One 
 object towards which the emancipated philosopher is continually 
 moving. But we have given our readers hints which will enable 
 them to perceive how necessarily this was the end which every 
 thinker of the third century set before himself, Plotinus, 
 more than others, only so far as he more distinctly apprehended 
 that which others mixed with various intermediate and subordi- 
 nate purposes. The last extract will prove that he recognised 
 these subordinate purposes as being good for themselves, and 
 the other as only attainable by the illuminated few. It was but 
 twice or thrice in his life that Plotinus claimed to have had a 
 direct vision of the perfect and absolute One. In general, it 
 was only some daemon or lower god whom even he was enabled Daemons, 
 to contemplate. The existence of such daemons, and their posi- 
 tion in the great economy of the universe, was a subject which 
 forced itself continually on the Neo-Platonist and his disciples. 
 The gods whom the old Athenian had accepted from his coun- 
 try's traditions, but which he tried to divest of the corrupt 
 qualities which had been imputed to them by the minds of their 
 worshippers, must be reproduced in this later age of the world 
 as the uecessaiy completions of a philosophical theory, as the 
 only steps of a ladder between earth and heaven. Each of 
 the old gods had a place in the new philosophical Pantheon ; 
 but it was a most insecure place, which he owed confessedly to 
 the inability of men to divest themselves of accidents, and 
 localities, and affections ; to their want of that highest perception 
 which would have made them content with a mere spiritual 
 essence. The Platonist, however, was soon obliged to give them 
 a more tangible existence, othenvise he would have had no 
 standing ground against the Church, which he more and more 
 felt to be the most serious obstacle to the general recognition, 
 even to the secure and comfortable maintenance, of his doctrine. 
 
 35. There are one or two facts concerning Plotinus recorded The new 
 by his biographer which we have reserved for a separate consi- WepubUc. 
 deration, as they greatly illustrate the history of his time and 
 
 of his school. The first is this. Plotinus was greatly honoured 
 by the Emperor Grallienus and his wife Salolina. Avaihng 
 himself of this friendship he besought him to rebuild a city in 
 Campania, said to have been formerly a resort of philosophers, 
 but now in decay ; to associate with it the surrounding country ; 
 to permit the future citizens to be governed by the laws of 
 Plato, and the city itself to be called Platonopolis. There he 
 had promised that he would retire with his companions ; and 
 
 f
 
 66 
 
 CHUBCH AKD BIBLE OF PLOTINUS. 
 
 the wish of the philosopher would have been speedily accom- 
 plished, if some of those who were familiar with the Emperor, 
 through envy, or dislike, or some other bad motive, had not 
 prevented it- 
 Attempted 36. How much does Neo-Platonism owe to these ill-natured 
 imitatiou of courtiers of Gallienus ! A more fatal experiment than the 
 Campanian one could scarcely have been made ; one which would 
 have more exposed all the practical weakness of the system. 
 No doubt, Plotinus fancied that he had his master's example to 
 guide him in this case as in all others. Did not Plato hope to 
 realise his Kepublic by the help of Dionysius ? If he ever had 
 so wild a dream, the dispersion of it is recorded in the same 
 tradition which imputes it to him. Plotinus need not have 
 taken the first part of the story and forgotten the sequel. But 
 the fact that a copy of that weakest and most disastrous portion 
 of Plato's life was attempted, is an evidence, we conceive, first, 
 that Plotinus perceived that a Republic was a necessary comple- 
 ment of the Platonic philosophy ; next, that he entirely mistook 
 what the relation was between his dialectics and his politics. 
 Plato, as we tried to prove in the sketch of ancient philosophy, 
 was a scientific enquirer into the nature and conditions under 
 which all society must exist, not the inventor of a particular 
 society. All that Plotinus meant, so far as we can gather from 
 his faithful and intelligent disciple, all that he certainly would 
 have accomplished, if his success had equalled his highest aspi- 
 rations, would have been to construct a city with a fine name 
 which should have been a fit refuge for philosophers who wanted 
 a world of their ovm unlike that in which ordinary mortals were 
 dwelling. Platonopolis was to have been a place for the elite of 
 the universe a place in which they would have tried to rule 
 and legislate where doctors would have been kings, and school 
 formulas would have invented sanctions for themselves ^where 
 old rivalries and old crimes would speedily have shown that 
 sages are men, and that they would be much more sage if they 
 admitted the fact boldly, and considered what is involved 
 in it. 
 
 37. If Plotinus hoped in this way to establish something 
 which would be far better and more sublime than those churches 
 into which he and Ammonius had seen so many vulgar men 
 admitted, he found also a substitute for the records or sacred 
 books to which those churches appealed. Our readers must be 
 aware by this time that the difierence between the Neo-Platonists 
 and the Christians did not consist in any independence of judg- 
 ment which was claimed by the former. No Father could quote 
 St. Paul or St. John with more absolute or child-hke deference 
 than that with which Plotinus habitually quotes Plato. Hia 
 
 Why un- 
 successful. 
 
 Implicit 
 faith of 
 Plotinus
 
 HIS MIBACLES. 67 
 
 name is not often mentioned, but you find sentence after sen- 
 tence beginning " He says ;" and you never doubt for a moment 
 that an oracle is appealed to, which may require elucidation 
 but from which there is no dissent. We shall find, the further 
 we proceed with our history, continual instances of the same intellectual 
 kind of subjection on the part, not of weak men, who can- freedom, 
 not and dare not think for themselves, but of the most 
 coherent and courageous thinkers. The discovery ought to 
 make us pause before we adopt some very current and popular 
 notions as to the nature and limits of freedom in speculation. 
 If we suppose freedom to be impossible, or not desirable for 
 men, we should commit one huge blunder. If we suppose 
 that a guide or a text-book is necessarily unfavourable to it, we 
 may commit as great a one. 
 
 38. One Olympijiis, an Alexandrian, Porphyry tells us, who Maarichas 
 was for a short time a disciple of Ammonius, despised Plotinus, ^^*'*''''^- 
 aspiring to the first dignity in philosophy. Nay, so far did he 
 go in his enmity, that he strove to crush him with magical arts. 
 But he soon found that the experiment turned against himself; 
 and he told his associates that the soul of Plotinus had such 
 mighty power that it caused all assaults upon him to react upon 
 those who were hurting him. In fact, all the limbs of Olympius 
 became contracted. Miracles, therefore, we see were closely 
 allied with the new philosophy. Whether there was to be a 
 whole system of Magic and Astrology connected with it, was a 
 question to be considered afterwards. But the power of the 
 man who was approaching the condition of a god to act upon 
 the souls or bodies of other creatures, was not a matter of doubt 
 with those who held the least exaggerated opinions on this 
 subject. The power rested in that communion with higher 
 natures which the philosopher had attained ; nor does he seem 
 to have felt that there was any thing strange or awful in such a 
 power, or that it might not be used for mere personal ends. On 
 another occasion, an Egyptian priest, who had come to Rome 
 and desired to display his wisdom, persuaded Plotinus to call into 
 biri presence the daemon who was holding familiar converse with, 
 him. The Temple of Isis having been chosen for the invoca- 
 tion, at the summons of Plotinus, to the admiration of the 
 Egyptian, a god instead of an inferior daemon appeared. This Divine 
 fact, hke the other, is related without timidity, or any attempt ^pp*" 
 to confirm it by evidence. It is worthy of being remembered, 
 not merely as illustrating the theology of the school, but as 
 showing how soon that theology which aspired to be so ethe- 
 real and spiritual might become mixed with all the sensible 
 apparitions of ordinary superstition. 
 
 39. Porphyry was not naturally inclined to dsemonology. A
 
 G8 BEGINKiyGS OF SCHISM. 
 
 story which he tells of a discourse which he made in answer to 
 a philosopher who had maintained the most grovelling notions 
 Difficulties respecting love and self-indulgence a discourse which won for 
 ofPorphyry. j^jj^^ ^^^ highest reward he could receive, the approving smile 
 of Plotinus shows that he had strong and healthy moral 
 instincts. His dislike of the common herd, probably the 
 secret of that dislike to Christianity which became so much more 
 definite and vehement in him than it had been in his master, 
 was gratified by all his philosophical studies ; he must have 
 been, therefore, very unwilling that they should minister to 
 vulgar tastes and to the passion for the marvellous. Tet to 
 separate the communion with divine natures, wherein consisted 
 the prize and consummation of the new philosopliy, from the prac- 
 tices of the magician, which had been hard at all times, was never 
 harder than in the third century after Christ. Was the ascent 
 of the man into the divine region to produce no eflect upon 
 himself or upon the world ? Was the spiritual in no way to 
 assert its right to control and govern the material as well as to 
 be emancipated from its dominion ? The suffering man, of 
 whom the ignorant Christians spoke, was alleged to have healed 
 the sick and cast out devils : must not the divine sage be able 
 to show that he can work greater, of course less common and 
 useful, miracles than these ? Porphyry wavered between the 
 necessity of asserting such a power for him that he might prove 
 his elevation or confound adversaries, and the imminent danger 
 of introducing all those dark imaginations and practices against 
 which ancient philosophers had protested, which their modem 
 disciple Apollonius, at least in the commencement of his career, 
 had set himself to encounter. 
 The 40. Like other seekers of middle ways. Porphyry soon found 
 
 or"scepticai himself hardly pressed on the right hand and on the left. No 
 school. century has been without its school of experimental as well as 
 of mystical philosophy. The third had physicians, who studied, 
 as well as they could, the facts of nature, who were led by the 
 observation of them to protest against the traders in mysteries 
 who graduaUy were led on to disbelieve all mysteries. The 
 time is not come for speaking of them ; the influence of their 
 physical speculations on the history of moral philosophy can 
 only be understood in a later age. The Platonic doctrine is the 
 characteristic one of the period with which we are occupied. StiU, 
 it is necessary to allude to the empirical school, that we may 
 imderstand why Porphyry, who must have been unable to under- 
 stand many of its arguments, would have despised its facts, 
 would have been shocked at its incredulity, might be tempted to 
 crave help even from it (if he had known how to use the help) 
 against a more popular and dangerous class of foes which he
 
 THE LETTEE TO ANEBON. 6 
 
 discovered in his own camp. Merely to argue against the Chris- Piatonism 
 tians, merely to show how portions of the old mythoiogy might mytho-"" 
 be made to give out a philosophical meaning, could never satisfy logical, 
 the Greek and Eoman, still less the Egyptian and Oriental 
 sages of the empire. Philosophy must resuscitate Paganism, or 
 it would not fulfil its mission. If it did not explain and justify 
 the operations of the old priest, if it could not establish an offen- 
 sive and defensive alliance with him it could not maintain its 
 own ground, it would have to be cast aside as a mere dry unge- 
 nerative speculation. Such was the language which began to 
 be heard more and more distinctly in the schools which adopted 
 the theories of Ammouius or Plotinus ; such was the tendency 
 which Porphyry, after dallying with it for a time, at last girded 
 himself to encounter. 
 
 41. The form in which he expressed his objections was Letter to 
 cautious, but perhaps the more offensive on that account. His 
 letter to Anebon, an Egyptian prophet, or priest, is a clever, 
 sagacious, well-digested statement of the difficulties which a 
 philosopher discovered, as well in the popular conceptions respect- 
 ing the gods and daemons, as in the whole mysteries of Theurgy. 
 
 This letter, and the answer to it, form so memorable an event 
 in philosophical history, that we think they are entitled to more 
 attention than many larger works written by much greater men 
 than Porphyry or his correspondent. 
 
 42. ^OTphyry starts from the assumption that there are The 
 gods. But he wants to know their distinctions and peculiarities, of rocb.'" 
 Does the distinction arise from their actions or their passions ; 
 
 or from their relation to different bodies, according to a 
 maxim which seems to have been then recognised, that the 
 gods had ethereal bodies, daemons aerial, souls terrestrial ? The 
 next question refers to the attribution of place to the gods : 
 how is this compatible with their infinity ? Next their liabi- 
 lity to passions, upon which the whole doctrine of Theurgy 
 would seem to depend ; since how can those be conciliated or 
 appeased who are not susceptible of impressions from without ? 
 And since invocations are addressed to the higher as weU as the 
 lower gods, since sacrifices are especially directed to them, 
 they must be treated as subject to passions like the rest, not 
 as pure minds or intellects. Are gods and daemons distin- 
 guished by the possession or absence of body ? How is it that 
 some of the gods are beneficent, and some malevolent ? In 
 what way does a hero differ from a daemon or from a soul ? 
 How do you distinguish the appearance of a god, of an angel, 
 of a daemon, of a soul ? For the very highest gods are pre- 
 sented to us in images and sensible forms. 
 
 43. These questions Porphyry considers profoundly important,
 
 70 A SERIES OF DOUBTS. 
 
 seeing that all good lies in the knowledge of the gods, all dark- 
 ness in the ignorance of them. There are a set of subordinate 
 questions arising out of these. The first refers to prophecy. 
 "Putting aside the knowledge of the future which comes through 
 dreams, wherein the mind and body are passive, how can all those 
 Prophecv' ccstasics which are produced by noises or mepliitic vapours, or 
 what 18 it? how can the knowledge which is obtained from the flights of 
 birds, or the entrails of beasts, be esteemed divine ? Is a god, 
 or an angel, or a daemon, the author of prophecy and appari- 
 tions ; or may they originate from the soul itself : or may 
 they be attributed to a substance compounded of the soul 
 and of some divine inspiration ? May there not be certain 
 affinities and relations between bodies, and may not these bodies 
 produce some mutual pre-cognitions ? ;!And may not Nature 
 itself, or Art, working with these, produce the results which are 
 attributed to daemons or godsT Is there any truth in the 
 notion that there may be a spefcies of deceiving natures assuming 
 various forms which counterfeit the gods and daemons and the 
 souls of the departed, which can work no good, but hinder those 
 who are aiming at virtue, which are full of pride, and rejoice in 
 Mynot incense and sacrifices? The next question touches the very 
 Art arcount heart of Egyptian worship and divination. "VVe call for the 
 for it? help of those whom we esteem more august and divine than 
 ourselves ; yet they obey the call of those who are lower and 
 worse than themselves. The contradiction is expanded through 
 a number of particulars ; well-known practices, or statements of 
 priests of high authority, being alleged to prove that not only 
 some common da?mon or departed spirit, but that sun, moon, 
 and stars, were treated as obnoxious to the threats as well as 
 the petitions of the priests. No doubt, suggests the questioner, 
 all these things may have a symbolical force, they may indicate 
 the various powers and changes of these bodies ; but then the 
 explanation should be produced, and it should be shown what 
 the influences and changes of the sun and moon had to do with 
 the incantations ; and particularly why those incantations should 
 be couched in peculiar, commonly barbarous phrases. For sup- 
 posing the Deity attends to the signification of that which is 
 said, the thought expressed in the words would be sufiicient for 
 Oriein of ^^"^ ^^ whatever terms it were couveyed.,.^ JN^ext, A ngfeflnis asked 
 things. whether the Egyptians consider thej^?ir^t^Caus(|^[^^/ir some- 
 thing above it ; whether it is alone or fffiiteS wilEE any other or 
 others ; whether it is corporeal or incorporeal ; whether it is 
 the same with the Demiurgus or before him ; whether all things 
 came from one or from more ; whether they acknowledge 
 matter or not ; whether it is generated or eternal ; what 
 are the primary bodies. Next, he desires to hear about the
 
 abammok's answee. 71 
 
 daemon who belongs to each man ; whether he is an efflux, or a 
 life, or a power ; whether he may be known, or whether it is 
 impossible to discover him. Are there different daemons, one The daemon 
 presiding over our health, another over our beauty, and so forth ? ^' " "^" 
 If so, is there one common superintendent of them ? May 
 there be one of the mind, another of the body ? May there be 
 one beneficent and one malevolent ? Is it not possible that the 
 daemon may be part of the mind itself, and that the evcai^toy 
 is the man who has a wise mind ? Waxing bolder, he asks, in 
 conclusion, whether there may not be another way to blessed- 
 ness besides theurgy; nay, may not the whole business of 
 theurgy be somewhat deceptive, seeing that people may have the 
 possession of di\dne prophecy without being blessed, and may 
 know of things to come without knowing how to make use of 
 them ? And certainly, if the god or the daemon does not help 
 us to blessedness, but only to the knowledge of the future, he , 
 is not a good daemon or god, and the whole looks like an inven- f 
 tion of mortals. 
 
 44. The person who answers these questions of Porpyhry's Abammon 
 calls himself Abammon, the teacher of Anebon. Who he was lambiichu*. 
 must be left among the mysteries of which he treats. It has 
 
 been assumed that he was lamblichus, because lamblichus 
 became ultimately the head and representative of that division 
 of the Neo-Platonists which made Theurgy an essential part; of 
 philosophy. For practical purposes, Abammon is of more im- 
 portance to us than his successor, for he has gathered together 
 and reduced into method all that can be said in favour of the 
 principle which Porphyry had sought to undermine, and which 
 was destined to triumph over his objections. 
 
 45. The authorities from which the advocate for the priest The book 
 proceeds, are the traditional theological dogmas of the Asgy;c:i;ang "^l^^^p^^^ 
 and Egyptians, with the speculations of Hermes, these being the c. i & 2. 
 sources from which Pythagoras and Plato are assumed to have 
 drawn their wisdom. The author proposes to discuss each 
 subject according to its proper nature ; theological questions 
 theologically, theurgical thourgically, philosophical philosophi- 
 cally. An exception is taken at the outset to Porphyry's 
 language, which involves the most important consequences. Ton 
 admit that there are gods. Tou have no business to speak so. 
 
 It is not a question for a man's judgment whether there are or 
 not. There is an innate knowledge concerning the gods which 
 is beyond all judgment and every exercise of our will, which 
 precedes reason and demonstration. It is united from the 
 beginning to its own proper cause, and is implied in that eifort 
 of the soul after the good which is part of its substance. There 
 is a divine contact of the man with the Diviuity, which, in fact,
 
 72 
 
 THE IKWABD CONTACT WITH THE GODS. 
 
 Theology 
 abovpLofrJc 
 C. 3 & 4. 
 
 c. 5, 6, 7. 
 
 Dsmons, 
 
 Heroes, 
 
 Souls. 
 
 Material 
 division, 
 c. 8. 
 
 supersedes knowledge ; the knowledge is lost or extinguished in 
 the thing known. This principle does not onlv apply to the 
 first or fundanental Being ; it applies also to the daemons and 
 heroes. The notion of opposition, of that which is supplied in 
 our logical forms of affirmation and denial, has nothing to do 
 with their nature, or with the relations in which they stand to 
 man. An objection growing out of this is taken to the second 
 question about the properties of the different gods. Porphyry 
 is applying notions of property and accident where they cannot 
 apply ; viz. to things uncompounded. To them sequence does 
 not belong. All things that have to do with the higher natures 
 must be contemplated in reference to their being. They 
 must be judged by themselves; not by the condition of other 
 natures which are below them. The question of Porphyry 
 must be answered by an examination, no.t of individuals, but of 
 jij^yfjjji. We can distinguish various liinds of gods, of diemons, 
 of heroes, of souls ; we can affirm wherein the differences be- 
 tween them consist. To this task Abamnion proceeds. There 
 is an absolute super-essential Good, and there is a Good which 
 is according to the essence or the nature of the thing which 
 
 i)ossesses it. The former is the special characteristic of the gods. 
 [t belongs to each order of the gods, it presen'es their proper 
 ranks and distributions, it is not to be severed from their nature, 
 it is the same in all. Souls, even those that rule bodies, and 
 which before their birth were constituted eternal, possess neither 
 the essential Good nor the super-essential ; but there comes 
 upon them a sort of efflux and habit proceeding from it. These 
 being the two extremes, the order of heroes lies between ; closely 
 connected with human souls, but far excelling them in power and 
 virtue. Still above these, in nearest relation to the gods yet much 
 beneath them, are the daemons, who bring forth into action their 
 invisible good, and accomplish the works which are in confor- 
 mity with it. That which is unspeakable becomes in them 
 pronounced ; what is without form they show forth in forms. 
 We attribute to the gods unitj^ ; divisibility to souls. Heroes 
 and daemons then have a relation both to gods and to souls ; 
 they have fellowship with both, but they are liable to incline 
 and turn aside to those inferior things which they produce and 
 govern. 
 
 46. The whole question of Porphyry respecting thejethereal, 
 aeral, and teri;e;3,tfiinl .gods, is thrown aside with indignation 
 anH contempt ; all suth corporeal divisions and limitations being 
 utterly inconsistent with the divine nature So far from looking 
 upon these as necessary to theurgy, they are declared to be 
 incompatible with it. How could we invoke oeings who live in re- 
 gions altogether remote from us, vaih whom men have nothing
 
 THE GODS NOT SUBJECT TO PASSIONS. 73 
 
 to do, by whom the world has been deserted ? In truth all 
 things are full of the gods. The Divinity illuminates heaven 
 and earth, holy cities and places, divine shrines, just as the 
 sun iUurainates all the corners of the universe which he looks 
 upon. The author of the book on Mysteries rises into real 
 eloquence wliile he denounces the notion of comprehending and 
 dividing the divine essence as absolutely monstrous, profane, 
 and irrational. 
 
 47. Abammon equally rejects Porphyry's notion that the Passions in 
 gods must be subject to passions if they receive sacrifices and c. loi u, i3, 
 are moved by prayeis. He denies that even souls considered 
 in their pure essence have anything to do with passions. 
 Nevertheless he does not shrink from defending even the 
 grosser and more impure symbols of Egyptian worship. The 
 general ground of apology for ofierings is, that they are medi- 
 cinal to the human spirit, and help to emancipate it from the 
 evils to which its connection with the body subjects it. The 
 particular excuse for the symbols which presume evil and cor- 
 ruption, is, that they serve the same purpose as the sight of 
 other men's offences or sorrows in the drama, they help to 
 deliver us from our own, affording besides an outlet for passions 
 which would be more dangerous and virulent if they were 
 wholly repressed. The defence of prayers and invocations 
 rests on a far deeper principle, and has less the character of 
 special pleading. It is not because the gods are subject to *'* ' 
 passions, that invocations unite the priest to them ; but through 
 the mysterious friendship or affinity which holds the universe 
 together, they produce a community of indissoluble harmony. 
 They do not incline the mind of the gods to men, but they 
 make men fit for converse with the gods. Still more remarkable 
 is the explanation of the di\'ine auger and of propitiation. 
 ' We ourselves," he says, " turn away the care of the gods from 
 us, hiding ourselves in the noon-day, bringing darkness upon *^' '' 
 ourselves, depriving ourselves of the good gift of the gods. 
 Propitiation restores us to the divine communion ; instead of 
 presuming passion in the gods, it delivers us from it." The c. u. 
 alleged necessities of the gods are explained in an equally 
 courageous and noble manner. There is a necessity in a per- 
 fect and gracious Being of love and companionship ; that neces- 
 sity does not belong only to beings subject to change and pas- 
 sion, but most to those who are freest from them. Every thing 
 being grounded upon this fellowship and sympathy of men with 
 the gods, it is a mistake to say that animal ofierings imply an 
 animal nature in them. The use of particular sensible objects 
 may betoken and satisfy that connection, and may contain a 
 divine, not an earthly significance.
 
 74 
 
 EVIL PABTICULAB NOT imiTERSAL. 
 
 c. 17. 
 
 Goodness 
 inherent in 
 godhead. 
 
 c. 18. 
 
 Causes of 
 error in 
 worship. 
 
 c. SI. 
 
 Section II. 
 oe. 8. 19. 
 
 48. To Porphyry's question, how the sujti.jmd -moon- should 
 be gods, if gods are incorporeal, the answer is, that the gods 
 Being^ure iiitelligences, can assume bodies without injury to 
 their intellectual natures, and that there are celestial bodies 
 which are specially cognate to the incorporeal substance of the 
 gods, bodies which express their energies and imitate the 
 regularity and luiiformity of their substance. To his still more 
 serious demand, whether some gods are benevolent and 
 some malevolent, the reply is decided the gods are per- 
 fectly good. The virtues of the inferior gods derived out of 
 the primary essence are however ditierent, and may often seem 
 to be of opposite kinds. The virtue of Chronos, for instance, 
 is contractive ; that of Ares motive. When these powers are 
 brought to bear upon bodies, cold may be the effect of one, heat 
 of the other: but evil only begins when these different powers 
 come into connection with divided and material natures. A 
 weak body may be grievously affected by the heat of the sun, 
 yet the heat of the sun is good ; all evil, therefore, belongs to 
 particulars, not to the universal. The author proceeds to explain 
 the relation between the purely intellectual gods, and those to 
 which bodies are attached, making the former the ground and 
 origin of the latter, affirming their perfect unity, and tracing 
 the process by which the lower, perceiving that unity, ascend 
 into the condition of the higher. 
 
 49. Having admitted fully that there are forms and modes of 
 worship which do assume imperfection and passion in the gods, 
 he lays down the important maxim that these have arisen from 
 men attributing their own passions to the gods, instead of 
 seeking the gods to deliver them from their passions. Hence 
 all modes of adoration and sacrifice are justifiable upon the 
 very ground upon which Porphyry would condemn them. They 
 express " a venerable steadfastness, an intellectual joy, a wonder 
 that cannot turn from its object, a fixed purpose of mind." 
 Hence it becomes necessary to describe the orders and operations 
 of the divine powers, that we may base our reverence and worship 
 upon them. This is the subject of a large portion of the treatise. 
 "We can only seize a few particulars of this elaborate theogony 
 and theophany, from which our readers may judge of the rest. 
 The appearances of the gods are simple ; those of the daemons 
 various : those of the angels more simple than these, but inferior 
 to the purely divine ; those of the archangels approaching 
 nearer to those of the primary gods ; those of the riders of the 
 world who direct elements very various and complex, though all 
 marshalled in due order. Those who preside over matter still 
 manifest themselves in greater varieties than these : souls in all 
 manner of forms. The appearances of the gods are satisfactory
 
 DiyrtfE APPAEITTOKS AND AFFLATUS. 75 
 
 to tte vision ; those of the archangels at once mild and awful 
 but more gentle than those of the angels ; those of the dsemons 
 terrible. The appearances of heroes are more gentle than those 
 of the dsemons ; those of the rulers of the elements painful and 
 grievous ; those of souls like those of heroes, but vreaker. It is 
 impossible not to trace a Jewish element in these distinctions. 
 The Eabbis have evidently conversed with the priest, as in Egypt 
 they were likely enough to do. Something of the old Jewish 
 feeUng, that the Lord of All must not onh' be the mightiest, but 
 the most gracious of all, is traceable through his refinements. 
 The philosopher of course has also his own word to contribute 
 to the exposition. What it is, Abammon will tell us presently. 
 
 50. He fully admits the assertion of Porphyry that knowledge Knowiedse 
 of the gods is the highest of all blessings ; iguprappe the greatest ^ '^ ^" ** 
 curse. That, he says, is a commonplace in which all are agreed. 
 Nor does he doubt that intellectual effort or meditation is a 
 necessary condition of communion with the gods. But it is 
 not the only condition ; the philosopher, as such, may perceive 
 the need of communion, but he does not attain it. Something 
 else is required. ]S"ot tricks or deceptions inconsistent with 
 philosophy, as Porphyry supposes. Truth does not proceed from 
 our minds, but from the gods. Priests do not invent ; they are 
 the channels of communication. Hence we are introduced to 
 the whole subject of divination. Fore-knowledge, we are told in iii. c. i, 
 the outset, is not physical, not artificial, not human, altogether 
 divine and supernatural, sent down from above. First of dreams. Divination. 
 There is a divine dreaming, a state between sleeping and waking, 
 in which divine voices are heard and divine visions perceived, 
 which is to be wholly distinguished from the dreaming that is 
 dependent upon bodily impressions and earthly recollections. 
 The difference turns upon the great doctrine that souls have a two- 
 fold relation, one to the Divinity, one to the body. Xext the 
 divine afilatus is explained, and the test of it laid down. Those ^i^ ^- 2 
 who have it have surrendered their whole lives as mere instru- 
 ments and organs to the inspiring gods. They either obtain 
 the divine life instead of their human life, or they waste their 
 own life in obedience to the god. Such persons may touch 
 fire and not be burnt ; may be struck with axes and knives 
 an their backs or arms and not perceive it. Their actions c.4,s.6,7,8. 
 are no more human ; they may trample on fire or walk through 
 water. There are various forms of this inspiration : it may 
 possess some of the limbs, or the whole body. Some are agi- 
 tated ; some are preternaturally quiet. The whole process of the 
 divine enthusiasm is then described. It must not be called 
 ecstasy, for it translates the mind to something higher, not 
 merely carries it away, it might be into a lower or more animal
 
 76 ENTHUSIASM FOEESIOIIT. 
 
 state. The true enthusiasm does not come from soul or body : 
 it is wholly divine. The man who ha it is simply possessed by 
 the godf. Porphyry had inquired into the effect of music in 
 producing this enthusiasm. He is answered that sounds as such 
 III. C.9. can have no influence in bringing about a state which is so en- 
 tirely divine ; that the sounds indicatethat inner harmony which 
 there is between the soul and the gods. In them it recognises 
 5 III c c ^'"^ harmony, through them may ascend towards it, and so may 
 loteii. be ready to receive the full inspiration. All the different 
 agencies which have been connected with divination are to be 
 accounted for upon this same principle. The vapour which 
 the Delphic priestess inhales is not the inspiration of the god ; 
 but it is a symbol or instrument which the god may use for 
 the purification of the man, and for fitting him to receive his 
 divine gifts. 
 Causes of 51. We need not enumerate the number of inferences and 
 led^e.""*' applications of this doctrine into which Abammou enters : the 
 one law being that all divination is directly and purely from 
 the gods, the intermediate agencies are treated as entirely 
 ministerial. Neither the birds, nor the entrails, nor the air, 
 nor the prophet, nor the human soul itself, nor the soul con- 
 sidered as mixed of the human and the divine, nor any passion 
 or affection of it, nor any disease or madness, can be its origin. 
 III. c. n The power of foretelling is not a natural instinct, such as 
 ~27- belongs to animals ; it has nothing in common with the fore- 
 
 sight of the sailor or the physician ; it is no effect of chance or 
 magical art ; it cannot be attributed to some sympathy between 
 cc. 28,29, 30. different bodies, so that we may talk of the seeds of prophecy 
 being in us. Further, our author not only derides the notion 
 that idols can be of any avail to the prophet, but he denounces 
 them as worthless and mischievous ; he declares that the human 
 maker of the idols is himself better than all the works of his 
 hands ; he affirms that nothing which has been compounded by 
 human art can be simple and pure ; he declares that the divine 
 light will not shine into the soul of the man who looks upon 
 these as gods. Porphyry had hinted at the existence of evil 
 and deceptive spirits. His opponent does not question their 
 III. c. 31. existence ; bad men indulging evil passions draw such evil 
 spirits through sympathy towards themselves. But the true 
 priest is their great antagonist : so little does his inspiration 
 proceed from them, that it arises from that submission of mind 
 to the pure Being which puts all evil thoughts and tempers, and 
 all evil spirits, to flight. 
 Defence of 52. The tvTO .grijiciple^ .which Abammon has put forward, that 
 Providence. ^ prayer to the gods rests upon an internal affinity between them 
 and their worshippers, and that all evils belong to the partial,
 
 SACBIFICE. TIP 
 
 not to the universal, are further pressed in answer to Porphyry's 
 awkward questions respecting tlie power which the inferior being 
 appears to exert over the superior, and the moral evils which are ^ ^^' *^' * 
 ascribed to those who demand at least an outward purity from 
 their ministers. On this last point our Egyptian theurgist 
 stammers somewhat more than he is wont to do ; he hints at 
 the old and modern plea, that our justice and the justice of the 
 gods may be different ; that our partial laws cannot bind them ; 
 that they see into the heart of things, while we only see a little 
 way, &c. &c. But, then feeling the inconsistency of tliese *^- ^ ^^ ^ 
 propositions with his main doctrine, he professes out of mere 
 grace and courtesy to discard them, and returns to the maxim 
 that nothing but what is good can originate from the gods ; 
 that their sublime and mysterious loves may be misinterpreted 
 when they are looked at through the divided and partial lights 
 of human judgment ; and that the authors of corrupt and im- 
 moral acts, among men, must be the evil daemons. 
 
 53. In the next section Abamman enters at large upon the section v. 
 whole subject of sacrifice. The question, he admits, is a very 
 great one, liable to errors on various sides. Sacrifices cannot Sacrifice, 
 be resolved into mere acts of adoration or thank-offerings, nor 
 into certain necessary relations between the difterent portions 
 of the world, which certainly exist but do not determine the 
 acts and purposes of the gods, who are above nature. AU 
 supposed physical analogies between lower natures and the 
 higher celestial natures, such as the animal worshippers of^^^"^- 
 Egypt imagined, are discarded for the same reason. The origin 
 of sacrifices must be drawn from the gods themselves, from a 
 friendship and sympathy between the creators and the things 
 created, the begetters and those who are begotten. The gods 
 do not feed upon the matter of sacrifices ; the fire burns that '^' ^^- 
 up. That fire is the counterpart of a divine fire, which has the 
 effect of separating the corrupt elements in the man from the 
 divine and celestial. (This meaning is certainly contained in 
 the words, but, by a natural and sufficiently common process of 
 thought, the material and immaterial fires become so blended in 
 Abammon's discourse, that the distinction between them is 
 not always perceptible to us, nor perhaps to himself.) The 
 kinds of sacrifices are then shown to correspond to the different 
 kinds of the Gods, to the character and state of the worshipper, 
 to the threefold division of human life, into the purely intellec- 
 tual, the physical, and that which is compounded of both. sacnfic. 
 Seeing that there is this proportion and relation, there must be *^- ^^' 
 a theurgic science to ascertain the number and orders of the 
 gods, and the satrifice which is appropriate to each. The 
 greatest damage may accrue to man from leaving any one of
 
 78 
 
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 VI. c. 5. 
 c. 7. 
 
 Theosophjr. 
 
 $ VII. 
 c. 16. 
 
 Sect. VIII. 
 1-8. 
 
 the superior beings unheeded, or not heeded in his own proper 
 method. Then comes out the very essence of the whoJe-j^eo- 
 ^latoiiic -divinity. - Might not the sacrifices be better if they 
 were directed to Mtf""dti6, and if in him all the various substances 
 and powers were worshipped together ?'^*lNo doubt. But this 
 possibility comes very late, and to a very, very few ; a man may 
 be glad enough if it happens to him at the end of his life. And 
 since the universe is composed of a number of difterent orders, 
 we must try by the number and variety of sacrifices to com- 
 prehend them all. 
 
 54. In the next section he defends the different usages of 
 Egyptian worship, apologising for the threats which the theurgist 
 uses as being directed to the inferior daemons, who are entrusted 
 with some of the secrets of the universe which they might 
 reveal. They maybe held in check by the terrorsof. the priestly 
 authority^ which is wielded in the name of the higher gods. 
 The Ilgyptians, he intimates, whose worship is more addressed 
 to the djemons, occasionally introduce these threats into the 
 higher worship. This is an error from which the^CJb/^Wapans, who 
 address themselves more to the higher gods, are free. Abainmon 
 then enters upon an explanation of the ^Egyptian tlieosoghv p 
 affirms its general principle to be, that ihe gods delight m 
 making all lower things typical of the higher ; touches upon the 
 l4itii^.,jind- the Zodiac;.. defends the use of barbarous names 
 rather than of Greek the former being original and of divine 
 institution, and especially dedicated to divine mysteries and 
 communion the latter having been altered according to human 
 art and pleasure. > Entering further into the belief of his 
 countrymen, in reply to Porphyry's question respecting their 
 notion of a primficy cause, he declares the doctrine of Hermes 
 to be, that, before all sul&stances and the principalities of the 
 world, there is one God, earlier than the first god and king, 
 remaining unmoved in the singleness of his own unity. Eor 
 neither is the intellectual interwoven with liim nor anything 
 else. He is his own archetype, his own Father, begotten from 
 himself, the good. For he is greatest and first, and fountain of 
 
 all things, and root of all the intelligible forms He is the 
 
 beginning and the God of gods, a monad out of the one, the 
 first substance and the beginning of substance. He is the ruler 
 of the poetic principalities-, which are the oldest of all, above 
 the empyreat, 'and iftlierial, and celestial. Next to this being 
 comes Eicton, the first of the intelligences, to be worslapped in 
 silence : then Emeth, Ammon, Osiris, and so forth. I Matter 
 was produced by dividing the essence from that in which it 
 inheres ; or, as the author says, despising the obvious jokes of 
 scoffers, by dividing materiality from essentiality. Hermes
 
 TJSE OF THIS TEEATISE. 79 
 
 taught the Egyptians how to ascend from the natural and fatal 
 to the divine. It is a mistake to say that they subject the 
 human wiU to the movement of the stars ; the gods are 
 above fate, and men ascending to the gods partake of their 
 freedom. 
 
 55. Touching for a while upon the astrological speculations of Thf dsemon 
 the Egyptians, Abammon denies that the daemon who rules over within. 
 
 a man's life and destiny is to be ascertained from any obser- ix. 1-9. 
 
 vation of the stars. The daemon who rules in a man existed 
 
 before the soul came down to birth, he is present with the soul, 
 
 he rules its proper life ; all our thoughts have their origin from 
 
 him ; all we do he puts into our minds, and leads us on till by 
 
 tlie help of the priestly theurgy we acquire a god instead of 
 
 a daemon as leader of our souls : then he gives place to one 
 
 higher than himself. The writer concludes with asserting the 
 
 high and pure motives of the theurgist. He finds man fallen 
 
 from the vision of God, he knows that he can only be blessed 
 
 by recovering that vision : his whole business is to lead him up 
 
 by gradual steps till he connects his spirit, freed from all matter, 
 
 with the eternal word. The perfect good is God himself; the 
 
 good of man is unity with him. Abammon prays the gods, 
 
 for himself and correspondent, that they would grant them to 
 
 hold fast all right thoughts ; that they would infuse into them 
 
 and keep within them the truth for ever ; that they would Concluding 
 
 vouchsafe them a more perfect participation of divine knowledge, '"^^^"* 
 
 wherein consists the blessed accomplishment of aU other good ^- *^- ^* 
 
 things ; and would grant them the enjoyment of sympathy and 
 
 fellowship with each other. 
 
 56. Long as has been our report of this celebrated treatise, The views of 
 we beUeve we have saved our readers' time by our copious ^^^ Church, 
 analysis of it. For it anticipates so much of aU the arguments, 
 
 good and evil, by which theurgy has been defended from that 
 day to this ; it is so very much abler than most of the imitations 
 of it which have been produced in later times ; the depth and 
 truth of some of its principles serve so admirably to expose the 
 abuse of them ; that we shall have but to refer back to Abammon 
 as having already told us all that can be told of the subject. 
 The one question we have to consider, before we leave the third 
 century and enter upon the more stirring subjects which present 
 themselves to us in the fourth, is in what relation the Christian 
 Church stood to this philosophico-theological party, whether it 
 had anything to do with the questions which were discussed 
 between Porphyry and Abammon, to which side of the cour 
 troversy its weight must have inclined. 
 
 57. No one, we suppose, can doubt for an instant that the 
 debate was one which concerned the Christian student most
 
 80 THE FEELINGS OF THE CHUECH. 
 
 deeply, or that he had many motives which must have drawn 
 him each way. How gladly might he hail the keeu and searching 
 "f^ tr interrogations by which Porphyry seemed to lay bear tlie whole 
 theory of polytheistic worship, making its hollowness evident ! 
 Inclinations What a satisfaction to claim the skilful antagonist of the 
 to each Church, as its \ntness against the Heathen world ! But, on 
 the other hand, how much of Abammon's doctrine coincided with 
 the most sacred and precious portions of their own ! How 
 entirely he was at one with them, as to the end for wliich man 
 lives and which he is to pursue ! How well he had defended 
 their own great principle that God himself is the author of 
 all the good that comes to men ; that tlie prayers and sacrifices 
 which ascend to Him must themselves originate with Him I 
 How clearly, too, he had asserted a direct affinity between God 
 and His creatures, and had made this and not some external 
 edict the foundation of worship ! Surely such views had more 
 of the Christian savour in them than the proud negative cri- 
 ticism of the mere philosopher. 
 for"nia^raa- ^^' -^^ must it be concealed that the Christians of this age 
 torgy. had another point of attraction to the school of Abammon and 
 lamblichus. The love of theurgy, or thaumaturgy, was as 
 natural to them as to any other men in the empire. They 
 believed that their Master had asserted his control over the 
 powers of nature, and over the life of man. They believed that 
 His followers were to do greater works than even He did upon 
 earth. It was only at times that they could see that the start- 
 ling and the prodigious did not belong to the essence ol His 
 works, was scarcely an accident of them ; that they were calm, 
 regular, restorative, asserting God's control, and, in a subordinate 
 sense, man's control over the influences and energies of nature ; 
 vindicating laws rather than producing exceptions. It was 
 not to be expected that that which looked wonderful to a 
 sensual, magic-ridden people, should not seem most wonderful 
 to them, and the highest sign of Christ's dominion. Bitter 
 experience was needful to prove how quickly such an apprehen- 
 sion might lead them back into the heart of the idolatry from 
 which they believed that miracles and all other divine manifes- 
 tations had been intended as the deliverance. Other aspects of 
 the priestly doctrine closely connected with these, also would be 
 welcomed with only too much readiness. Mutatis mutandis, 
 Abammon had put forth more clever pleas for the honouring 
 of relics, for the respect which was just beginning to be paid 
 to local saints, for speculations about the angelic host and 
 their relationship to men, than any refiner of their own could 
 have supplied ; a plea just as much qualified as theirs could have 
 been by protests against vulgar, materialising idolatry. Where,
 
 IJfADEQTJACT OF THEOEIES. 81 
 
 then, was their standing point ? Might some of them be Por- 
 phyrians, and some of them lamblichans ? Or, did their faith 
 hang in an \incertain balance between the two ? 
 
 57. These who speak of Christianity as a religion, or a col- General 
 lection of dogmas, and of the Church as at set of doctojs, will, if "" ' 
 they are faithful to the facts, return the most various answers 
 to these questions. Those who regard the Church in the light 
 in which it presented itself to the Eoman Emperors, and in 
 which it was proclaimed by Christ himself and his apostles, 
 as a kingdom, can understand why it was possible that its 
 subjects should have been utterly unable to represent their 
 position adequately in a theory, and should have exhibited in 
 their writings many of the confusions which were incidental to 
 all existing theories, yet should have maintained their ground 
 and enlarged their borders in the midst of the most tremendous 
 persecutions from without, and of their owa imperfections and 
 contradictions within. The root, it would seem, of Porphyry's 
 inability to reach to Heaven by philosophy, the warrant for the 
 theurgy of Abammon, and for the infinite superstitions which 
 lay within it, was the same. If there was no one living person 
 in whom the Creator and the creatm-e met, one of these schemes 
 was inevitable, neither could attain its result. If there was, the 
 history of the world would shew, what Christian as little as 
 Heathen teachers could shew, where the philosophical and 
 theological methods really coincide, how impracticable and how 
 useless to mankind are any artificial experiments for bringing 
 them into harmony.
 
 82 
 
 mn 
 
 CHAPTEE III. 
 The Fourth Centuet. 
 
 The new ! The transition from tlie reign of Diocletian to the reign of 
 Constantine strikes the ecclesiastical historian as the most violent 
 in history. He speaks of the age of persecution as terminating in 
 the age of patronage, the most violent and systematic effort ever 
 made to exterminate a society in the acknowledgment of it to 
 the exclusion of every other. The civil historian finds more 
 points of resemblance between the periods ; Diocletian had 
 weakened the prestige of the ancient capital befoi*e Constan- 
 tine established the new one. The forms of the Kepublic were 
 already giving place to oriental habits and arrangements which 
 were to be adopted and consecrated by the new faith in Byzan- 
 tium. The historian of philosophy finds the later period evolv- 
 ing itself very naturally out of the previous one ; yet no one 
 is more compelled than he is to take notice of the great crisis 
 which separates them. 
 _ 2. The Neo-Platonic philosophy has been called in of late 
 fcowSr a years to explain some phenomena in the life of the first Christian 
 FiatoDist. Emperor. It may serve that purpose if we are careful to recollect 
 that Constantine was a Roman and not a Greek, a soldier and 
 not a sophist. AVhatever influence he received from the schools, 
 came to him changed and transformed by the world's atmo- 
 sphere. He probably believed, as the teachers of the new 
 sect believed, that there was a supreme and universal God ; he 
 believed that that supreme God had subordinate gods and 
 daemons through whom his power was exercised, his existence 
 and character manifested to men. But there is no reason to 
 suppose that he had e.er formally embraced these tenets, or 
 that he knew that tliey were maintained by any celebrated 
 teachers, or that he had remoulded his traditional Paganism in 
 conformity with them. They were in all probability the common, 
 prevalent notions among men of ordinary education, who were 
 capable of receiving the impressions of the age to which they 
 belonged, and who, without comparing them or reducing them 
 into system, had eyes open to read the commentaries upon them 
 which experience supplied. The old Ibrms, simply as forms, had 
 lost their hold upon men of this character. Galerius or Maxi- 
 
 Constantioe
 
 CONSTANTINE. 83? 
 
 mianus might uphold them as part of the military code which it 
 was a breach of discipline to transgress ; Diocletian might sup- 
 port them as an imperial theory : but a young man bred under the 
 moderate and liberal Constantius, observing the failure of their 
 experiments though made on so large a scale, and on the whole Tobejudged 
 with so much skill, might, even if his personal feelings had not ordinary 
 been disgusted, have arrived gradually at the conclusion that Roman, 
 they were pledged to a hopeless cause. Yet no doctrine, we 
 may be sure, could ever commend itself to his mind as having a 
 special claim upon his devotion and sympathy ; he never could 
 have exchanged that belief which Avas bound up with the history 
 of his country and of the world, for the most reasonable theosophy 
 or dsemonology. He was only discontented with that belief 
 because it was evidently weak, too weak to uphold a polity such 
 as Rome ought to be ; he tried it by such a standard, not because 
 he wan insincere, or regarded religious sanctions as the inven- 
 tions of priests or sages, but because be had no other proof that 
 they were more than this, that they were fixed and divine, except 
 so far as they sufficed for the political end. 
 
 3. To suppose all these processes for a long time at work in 
 his mind, is not to pronounce an opinion whether he actuaUy 
 saw the vision which he spoke of in his later years, on the eve 
 of his battle with Maxentius ; far less is it to suggest the thought 
 that he did not really arrive at the conclusion that the cross was His 
 
 the sign in which he must conquer, or that he was not led to g^aduall*^* 
 that conclusion by the highest of all teachers. What we wish 
 to intimate is, that the conviction, however suddenly brought 
 home in its full power to Constantine and it may be quite con- 
 sistent with reason and experience that there should have been 
 a critical moment which decided his whole after-course tliat 
 the eagle must stoop to the symbol of ignominy and crime, had 
 been working itself out in the mind of a man, by all the experiences 
 of his life, and in the mind of a people by the experiences of several 
 generations. What we would wish Christians, and those who are 
 not Christians, equally to consider, is whether all such thoughts, 
 and the circumstances which suggested them, do not more 
 imply a spiritual guide of man, and one who uses events for man's 
 education, than the appai'ition of the Labarum, Avei-e it authenti- 
 cated by the most absolute evidence, could possibly do. 
 
 4. Henceforth, then, that polity which confessed a moral and 
 metaphysical basis which afiurmed that there was a supernatural The Churci* 
 Will and a righteous ^V ill, who was holding its members together ^n.\A^K in 
 and binding them into ouc was acknowledged by the polity tb.jir ui.um. 
 which seemed to rest on a mere arbitrary and earthly will, as 
 necessarily yoked with it, as in some sense its superior. The 
 Empire which could not gratify the modest ambitiou of Plotiuus
 
 84) 
 
 THE ITEW OBDEB OF SOCIETY. 
 
 Its elTects 
 on the 
 Platonic 
 scbool. 
 
 by allowing him to set up a Platonopolis in Campania, had de- 
 liberately conceded to a set of men whom they had persecuted 
 perseveringly for ten years, and at intervals for two hundred, the 
 right of establishing ih^ir city in every province of the Empire ; 
 of reorganising the institutions of Kouie, and of introducing 
 their own at its very outset into the new Constantinople. The 
 blow to the tottering idols of the east and west was tremendous ; 
 but it was scarcely a less severe blow to the rising philoso- 
 phy. For Ammonius, if not a deserter from the Christian ranks, 
 had at least hoped that his occult philosophy would have under- 
 mined its broad and popular statements: Plotinus had sub- 
 stituted the ascent of the divine man into the original and 
 absolute divinity, for the idea of the Son of God stooping to 
 take Man's nature. Porphyry had felt and expressed the 
 opposition which was latent in his master ; lamblichus, and the 
 school most opposed to Porphyry, were deliberately trying to 
 resuscitate Polytheism, and to make its notions of divine de- 
 scents into earthly natures harmonise with the Greek wisdom, 
 which they said had originally been borrowed from the Egyptian 
 Hermes. By the middle of Constantino's reign, Licinius had 
 gathered together some of the ruder elements of Paganism, and 
 had engaged them in a religious war. But it needed some other 
 head to associate polytheism, Greek philosophy, the dream of old 
 Eoman glory, in one valiant effort against the new faith : nor 
 could such a person appear till that faith had already been 
 mightily shaken from within, and till some of the strange effects 
 of the union of the Empire and the Church had made themselves 
 apparent. 
 Connection 5. The Arian controversy, which affected so seriously the civil 
 con?roversy condition of the Empire, is no less involved with the history of 
 with philosophy. We have seen how much all questions of this time 
 
 p I osop y. ^jjpj^g^ upon the relation between the highest being and some 
 power or powers at some distance below him, more nearly 
 related to man. The faith of Constantine had probably assigned 
 some indistinct place of this kind to Him whom he nevertheless 
 had acknowledged as supreme over himself and the Eoman world. 
 When Arius, in language not very intelligible to the Emperor, 
 afiSrmed the inferiority of Christ to the Father of All, he 
 could feel no serious objection to the statement, though he was 
 anxious that the subject should not be stirred. When the 
 earnestness of the combatants made his mode of reconciliation 
 ineffectual, he wisely appealed to a council, and enforced its 
 decrees though they asserted the consubstantiality of the Son 
 with the Father. But he repented of that course when he perceived 
 that the dispute was not at rest, and readily embraced the 
 dexterous suggestion of Eusebius, so well fitted for the temper
 
 JULIi.j!f. 85 
 
 of the monarch, and indicating such an accurate judgment of 
 the desire for quiet in the better sort of the Clergy of promotion 
 in the worse that the addition of a single iota to the formula 
 would satisfy the minds of all reasonable people. Athanasius Feelings of 
 had courage to resist that proposition, believing that it involved Athanasius. 
 nothing less than the inroad of all the Neo- Platonic daemonology 
 and with that, of all Heathenism ; believing that the church 
 stood as a Society and a Kingdom upon the acknowledgment of 
 a person in whom the Godhead and Manhood were actually re- 
 conciled. The Emperor and his son Constantius treated him as 
 an enemy and as the disturber of the world. A majority of 
 the Eastern Bishops agreed with them, and Semi-Arianism 
 triumphed in the palace of the Caesars and in the councils of the 
 Church every where except in the deserts of the Thebais and 
 amidst some, not all, the Bishops of the West till the time of 
 Julian. 
 
 6. That young man had enough of reason for hating the memory 
 of his uncle, and the acts of his cousin ; enough of excuse for 
 regarding the prelates of Constantinople with contempt. He 
 might have dreamed, he probably did dream, while he was yet in 
 the court where his nearest relations had been murdered, that 
 the days of the older Caesars would return, if the faith which 
 they professed returned also. He might have the most plau- 
 sible reasons for thinking that the house which seemed to 
 him to stand on such a new and feeble foundation, wovdd 
 not stand now that it was divided against itself. Athens 
 
 was needed to ripen these thoughts into maturity ; Julian Education 
 had enough of knowledge to recall something of its ancient "' Julian, 
 greatness, enough of imagination to feel that that glory 
 was not departed while there were still philosophers to teach in 
 its gardens. These philosophers opened to him the jSTeo-Platonic 
 mysteries ; mixed with them lay the brilliant forms of the old 
 Mythology, which they could again bring to light. His strength 
 might have evaporated in these visions ; his commission to Gaul, 
 and his campaign there, made him conscious of more active 
 powers, and shewed him that he was qualified to rule an army 
 or a people. The three conditions which were necessary for the 
 representative and champion of the world that had fallen, met in 
 him. He entered all armed with the sympathies of a great mul- 
 titude, with the abilities of a man of letters, and with the com- 
 mand of an Empire, upon the task which he had assigned himself. 
 
 7. Julian lived only thirty-three years, and reigned only importance 
 two. But a great part of the thought and mind of his age is ex- of his 
 pressed in that brief life. The experiment which philosophers 
 
 had been making in their closets, and continued to make for 
 two centuries, began to be tried on a scale commensurate with
 
 86 
 
 ATHANASirS, JULIA-X, AUCrSTtN'E. 
 
 Pro(freM of 
 the histnry ; 
 chsracter 
 of the 
 niperors. 
 
 The three 
 men of this 
 time. 
 
 Extract 
 from 
 
 Athanasius 
 Aoyof Kara 
 
 its importance, when he arrived at Constantinople and found 
 himself in possession of the empire ; was terminated when 
 he fell in Persia. No one has ever questioned his ability, the 
 steadiness of his purpose, or the greatness of his zeal. He had 
 too full a share of prudence. He concealed his attachment to 
 the old gods tUl he could assist effectually in re-establishing 
 their worship. His measures for that purpose had all the air 
 of being tolerant measures, while yet they efTectually crippled 
 the Christians, and would soon have deprived them of what was 
 infinitely more precious than court patronage, the means of 
 obtaining education. "What is important for our purpose is, 
 that Julian fancied himself primarily a philosopher, that his 
 devotion to the Sun, and Minerva, and Serapis, seemed to him 
 a part of his philosophy ; that he valued his imperial position 
 mainly because it enabled him to do the work which he supposed 
 wasdemandedbyphilosophy. Jovian, who followedhim,wa88imply 
 a soldier. Valens, his successor in the East, was a theological 
 dogmatist ; Valeutinian, a Roman, who looked upon Christian 
 orthodoxy in the way Decius and Aurelian had looked upon 
 Pagan orthodoxy, as that which it behoved well-disciplined 
 soldiers to uphold. Theodosius, something in the same spirit, 
 but with a character of greater breadth formed in a school of 
 suffering, deliberately trampled upon Arianism with one foot 
 and on Paganism with the other, leaving the first, when it 
 could no longer rule in the palace of the Caesars, to find a home 
 among the Gothic tribes ; the other, when its Greek, Egyptian, 
 Italian temples were overthrown, to intrench itself secretly and 
 securely in the heart of the Catholic church. The miserable 
 reigns of Arcadius and Honorius link this century to the one 
 which saw the downfall of the western empire. 
 
 8. There are many names in this century which are dear to 
 the ecclesiastical biographer; a few on which the ordinary 
 annalist may dwell. There are three men wliom the student of phi- 
 losophy must pause to contemplate, the two we have mentioned 
 already, Athanasiusand Julian, the third, Augustine. The theo- 
 logian may consider this last thinker under the fifth century, 
 which contains the period of his episcopacy, and of his battles 
 with Donatists and Pelagians. But the time in which his mind 
 was formed, the IVJtiJjoiichaean portion of his history, is the one in 
 wliich we are mainly interested. We shall endeavour to give 
 our readers just so many extracts from the writings of each 
 of these men as may explain why we introduce them, and how we 
 suppose they illustrate their time. 
 
 9. In the oration against the Gentiles, Athanasius speaks 
 thus : In the beginning Evil was not, even as now it is not in
 
 OBlGtN OF EVIL. 8T 
 
 the saints, nor hath any substantial existence in res|)ect of 
 them. But afterwards men conceived it, and, to their own injury, 
 put it into forms.' Wherefore also they conceived the notion of 
 idols, counting the things that are not as though they were. For 
 God, the Former of all, and the universal King, He that tran- 
 scends all substance and human knowledge, being good and 
 superlatively excellent, by His own Word our Saviour Jesus 
 Christ made the human race in His own image, and fitted him Proper 
 (man,) through this likeness to behold and take cognizance of pf^an?" 
 the things which are ; giving him also the perception and 
 knowledge of his own eternity; that preserving this resem- 
 blance (or identity, rqv ravTOTriTa) he might never at any time 
 withdraw from the vision of God, nor depart from the fellow- 
 ship of the saints ; but holding fast the grace of Him that be- 
 stowed it, and that proper power which he received from the 
 Word of the Father, he might rejoice in the Divinity, and hold 
 converse with Him, living a harmless and truly blessed and 
 immortal life. For having nothing to hinder his knowledge of 
 the Godhead, he beholds always through his own purity the 
 image of the Father in whose image he Tvas made. And he 
 wonders as he contemplates the providence over the universe, 
 which comes through Him, being made far above the sensible 
 things and all bodily phantasy in contact through his noetic 
 faculty with the divine and noetic things. For when the Man's 
 reason of men doth not converse with bodies, then hath it not ^?"h^u e^" 
 any mixture of the desire which comes from these, but is wholly spiritual 
 at one with itself, as it was from the beginning. Then passing '^'^^'^ 
 through sensible and human things, it becomes raised up, and 
 beholding the Word, sees in Him also the Father of the Word, 
 delights itself vrith the contemplation of Him, continually I'enews 
 itself afresh with the longing after Him ; even as the Holy 
 Scriptures say that man (who in the Hebrew tongue was called 
 Adam), with unashamed boldness maintained his mind towards 
 God, and had intercourse with the saints in that contemplation 
 of noetic things which he held in the place figuratively named 
 by Moses Paradise. For the purity of the soul is such that 
 through it one may even see God ; as our Lord says, in his 
 beatitudes. Well, the Architect thus prepared man, and wished 
 him thus to remainT" "But' iil^ii having despised the nobler 
 substances, and having become wearied of pursuing these, sought 
 rather for those that were nearer to themselves. The nearer Declension . 
 things were the body and its sensations ; whereby men with- 
 drew their reason from noetic things ; contemplating themselves 
 and occupying themselves with the body and other sensible 
 objects : beguiled as it were in that which was their own, 
 they fell into the love of themselves, preferring that which was 
 theirs to the contemplation of that which is God's. And
 
 88 THE FALL OF MAN IKTO THE SENSIBLE. 
 
 having become thoroughly engaged with these, and not being 
 willing to withdraw iroin those things which were close at 
 hand, they shut up in the pleasures of the body their soul, 
 which was disturbed and confused with all manner of lusts. At 
 Th last they forgot altogether that faculty of theirs which they hud 
 
 Va?!. from God. And this truth one might see from that which the 
 
 Holy Scriptures speak concerning the first man that was formed. 
 Por he who had his mind towards God, and the contemplation 
 of Him, withheld himself from that contemplation which turns 
 downwards towards the body. But when, through the counsel 
 of the serpent, he withdrew from that reason which looks towards 
 God, and began to take account of himself, straightway he and 
 his wife fell into the lust of the body, and knew that they were 
 naked,and in consequence of that knowledge wereashamea. They 
 knew themselves naked, not so much of clothes, but that they 
 had become naked of the vision of divine things, and had turned 
 their miud toward that which was contrary to these. When 
 The conse- they had apostatized from that knowledge which has respect to 
 Evtuo^the ^^^ ^ ^^^ *^ living Being, I mean God, and from the love 
 man. which is towards Him, they rushed thenceforth into the divided 
 
 and partial lusts of the body. Then, as is wont to happen, 
 having embraced the desire of each thing, and of many things, 
 they began to be so bound and fastened to these, that they 
 feared to let them go. Hence there came to the soul cowardly 
 anticipations and terrors, and all thoughts that savour of mor- 
 tality. For not wishing to part with its desires, it fears death 
 and the separation from the body. And coveting again and not 
 being able to obtain things answering to its desires, it learnt 
 violence and murder. How it doth these things it may be right 
 as far as we can to explain. Having revolted trom the contem- 
 plation of noetic things, misusing the partial energies of the body, 
 Pleasure pleased with the contemplation, and fancying pleasure to be 
 becomes the good for it, it abuses in its confusion that name of the good, 
 ^^ ' and thinks pleasure to be the actual good. Just as a madman 
 
 asks for a sword to strike every one he meets with, and con- 
 vinces himself that he is playing the part of a wise man. And 
 being enamoured of pleasure, the soul began to use its energies 
 in various ways. For being by nature quick and free of move- 
 ment, it must retain this quality even after it has withdrawn 
 from the good ; only it is moved no longer according to virtue 
 nor so as to see God, but prizing the things that are not, having 
 free-will either to turn to the good or to turn away from it, it 
 misuses all the power which belongs to it for the gratification of 
 those lusts which it has conceived. And it finds in virtue of 
 this free will that it can direct the different portions of its body 
 both ways, either to the things that are or the things that are 
 not. The things that are, are the good, inasmuch as they are
 
 OBJECTS 01" ATHAKASIUS. 89 
 
 the likenesses of the God who is. The things that are not, I 
 call the evil things, inasmuch as they have been fashioned by the 
 thoughts of men." Athanasius then proceeds to point out how 
 each member and energy of the body is turned away from the 
 special good for which it was formed, and to the evil which is 
 the perversion of it, winding up with the words : " All which 
 things are the soul's corruption and sin. But of these there is 
 no other cause save the revolt from the higher and better things. Ground of 
 As if a charioteer should be utterly careless of the goal towards that^Evnls 
 which it behoves him to drive ; should merely urge the horses just part of 
 as he can (and where he can, means where he likes) ; and so oft- "^ '* 
 times he falls foul of those who meet with him ; oft-times he is 
 carried down precipices, whither by help of the swiftness of the 
 horses he has conveyed himself, all the time not thinking that he 
 has erred from his aim ; he looks only to the chariot." Then, after 
 quoting the passage from St. Paul, respecting the prize of his 
 high calling, he adds : " Certain of the Greeks having wandered 
 from the right way, and not having known the Christ, have 
 aifirmed evil to be in substance, and to have an actual existence 
 of its own, grounding this opinion upon one of two errors. 
 Either they deny the ^^mj^j^uaio be the creator of the things 
 that are, or they say, because He is the creator of the universe 
 He must needs be the creator of evil. Eor evil, according to 
 them, is among the things that are. But the evil does not come 
 out of the good, nor is it in it, nor is it through it. For that 
 would not be good which had a mixed nature, or which was the 
 cause of evil. The heretics, too, who have fallen from the 
 Church's teaching, and have made shipwreck of faith, they also 
 fancy evil to have a substance. And they feign to themselves 
 another God besides the true Father of the Christ, and make 
 him the unbegotten author of evil, the introducer of mischief, 
 tlie Demiurgus of the creation." These he proceeds to confute 
 from the Scriptures. 
 
 10. Much we think is to be learnt from this extract respecting 
 the character and purpose of its author, and also respecting the 
 movements of his time. Many who have only heard of Athanasius Athanasius 
 as a theologian, or who have heard that he had far less of intellec- " Pj^g^" 
 tual training than other churchmen of the century, such as Basil 
 and Gregory, or who rightly conceive of him as a man mainly 
 remarkable for energetic action and that power of writing letters 
 cm business for which Gibbon gives him abundant credit, will be 
 surprised to find how much of the Alexandrian habit of thought 
 belongs to him, how naturally he uses the philosophical dialect, 
 how much there is to connect a work so professedly Christian 
 and polemical as this with those which are ostentatiously 
 Platonic. Even the specunen we have given will prevent them
 
 90 
 
 THE BATTLE OF THE CHUBGH AND PAGANISM. 
 
 Connection 
 of hid 
 philosophy 
 Mjth his 
 pnictical 
 object*. 
 
 His life a 
 Btu^gle 
 aniinst 
 idolatry. 
 
 from supposing that these characteristics are owing to any pro- 
 pensity which Athannsius had for heathen teachers, from any 
 want of readiness to follow TertuUiau in connecting the heretics 
 of the Church with them. It was for the most thoroughly 
 
 f)ractical purpose that he betook himself to what some of our 
 ater divines and ecclesiastical historians delight to call ' mystical 
 refinements.' He found that idolatry, the whole scheme of 
 outward and sensual worship, could only be resisted by a de- 
 cided pertinacious assertion that man is a spiritual being, and in 
 that character has a distinct relation to a spiritual author and a 
 spiritual object. Had he disowned what is called Mysticism, 
 merely regarding the Scriptures as the revelation of an outward 
 economy, of certain doctrines to be held, of certain precepts to 
 be followed, the magnificent outward economy of the Roman 
 empire, the doctrines so subtle and ingenious touching human 
 experience on so many sides of the new philosophical school, 
 the various precepts for good or evil which had descended as 
 heir-looms from the past, or were struck out by sage moderns, 
 would certainly have prevailed. It was only if he could show 
 that what he held to be a revelation from God actually disco- 
 vered the true constitution of Man ; only if he could show that 
 it was by resisting and breaking loose from this constitution 
 that men had become disorderly, evil, idolatrous ; only if he 
 could show that the Christian economy or church involved the 
 recognition of this true constitution, and was based upon it, and 
 that any world-system, however compact and coherent, which 
 assumed any other basis, which rested upon the worship of 
 visible things, and derived its sanction from that worship, must 
 be rotten and inhuman, only then could he hope that Paganism 
 would really fall, by whatsoever powers, visible or invisible, it 
 might be upheld. How well founded the conclusion was, we 
 think is made sufficiently clear by the writings which interpret 
 the acts, and the acts which interpret the writings of the 
 Emperor Julian. 
 
 Lost books. 
 
 11. It seems to us that in general too many lamentations are 
 wasted over lost books. Without attempting to controvert the 
 extravagant conceit of Bacon that only the lightest treasures 
 have floated down the stream of time while the heaviest have 
 sunk by maintaining the opposite doctrine, which might be 
 equally unreasonable, we may question whether chasms in books 
 of history have not awakened a diligence and spirit of investi- 
 gation for which the lost documents would have been a very 
 feeble compensation, whether the books of poetry which have 
 disappeared might not rather have disturbed than completed our 
 image of the artist from whom they carae. We certainly have 
 no such transcendant opinion of Julian's writings as to make
 
 JULIANAS LETTEES. 91 
 
 him an exception from this remark, and to wisli very earnestly The booksof 
 that certain lost volumes which the industry of Christian divines a"i'in"t 
 is said to have suppressed, should have survived. And yet Christianity 
 that act, however well intended, seems to us so exceedingly 
 faithless, and has evidently left such a strange suspicion on 
 many minds of something having beeu uttered by him which 
 was especially profound and dangerous, that we may confess a Poiiy of 
 stronger temptation to regret this actof violence than many others JJ^gfroyed 
 which have deprived us of possessions more intrinsically valuable, them. 
 It might have been exceedingly instructive to have every pos- 
 sible help for ascertaining the habit and course of thinking in 
 such a man. It might have enabled us to understand much 
 better wherein lay the weakness of that society which he was 
 seeking to undermine ; what that strength was which prevailed 
 against him. 
 
 12. The books which remain to us may, however, be sufficient Letters of 
 for our purpose. Nothing can exceed the vehement affection uVanius. 
 with which Julian, in his epistles, addresses his philosophical 
 Iriends. Libanius is always his " most sweet and beloved 
 brother." On receiving one of his orations, he falls into a rap- 
 ture. " What a style ! What composition ! What divisions ! 
 Wliat arguments! What order! What harmony !" &c. He 
 implores Aristomenes to come to him ; for though he has never 
 seen his face, he loves him, and wants him to show in Cappa- 
 docia what a true Greek is. He reads over the letters of 
 Maximus as Alexander went to sleep with the poems of Homer ToMaximas 
 under his pillow. He entreats him with the profoundest 
 humility to take his writings under his care, not because he is 
 sure they are worth any thing, but because, like an old eagle, 
 he may carry up the unfledged eaglets into the air, that the rays 
 of the sun may ascertain whether they are genuine or bastard. 
 Just at the time when he has been proclaimed Emperor by the 
 legions in Graul, he writes to the same friend expressing the 
 intense anxiety he has felt for him, and calls Jupiter and the 
 Sun to witness how he invoked them (not openly, for that would 
 not have been safe), to know whether there were any calamities 
 likely to befall him. Now, he tells him, he publicly and openly 
 worships the gods intimating clearly that he owed to Maximus 
 some of his strongest impulses to this service, and that he 
 looked upon the obligation as the greatest which any man could 
 incur. But his profoundest admiration is reserved for lamblichus. lambiichuB. 
 As soon as he saw a man who he supposed was bringing letters 
 from the philosopher, he says he leapt up, embraced him, and 
 wept for joy. When he had the letters themselves, he kissed 
 them, put them to his eyes, held them fast, for fear lest the 
 image of his countenance should depart while he was reading
 
 92 
 
 JULIAN NOT NATUHALLT A PHILOSOPHEE. 
 
 These 
 professions 
 not 
 dishonest. 
 
 Their extra 
 vaaraiice 
 accounted 
 for. 
 
 the lines. He tells him that not only Pindar and Democritus 
 and old Orpheus, but the whole body of Greeks who have 
 attained to the height of philosophy, have been brought by 
 him into the most perfect musical symphony ; that he has the 
 hundred eyes of Argus to guard the pure form of virtue, that 
 his wisdom can take all the various forms which Proteus as- 
 sumed ; but that instead of hiding himself like Proteus, he 
 sends forth rays of light like the sun which illuminates those 
 near and those afar oft'. 
 
 13. These rhapsodies we firmly believe to be honest. Extra- 
 vagant as they sound, they are not unnatural in a young man 
 escaping from teachers whom he utterly loathed, and whose 
 gross inconsistencies and worldliness offered great excuse for 
 his dislike ; to men who told him things which sounded most 
 wonderful, and carried with them an air of demonstration, who 
 led him into what seemed to him a newer and freer world, yet 
 one which he recognised as the old world wherein his fathers 
 had dwelt. Most of us have been too familiar with emotions 
 not very dissimilar the result, alas ! of causes not at all dissi- 
 milar in men of our own time, to be incredulous when we hear 
 words of this kind from an enthusiast of the fourth century. 
 But while we regard these utterances as in themselves sincere, we 
 do not believe that they belong to the since rest part of Julian's 
 mind. He is evidently gazing at philosophy as a distant pro- 
 digy with which naturally he has very little to do, and which 
 overawes him because he cannot approach it or closely grapple 
 with it. It would be as unjust to compare him with Caliban, as 
 to compare Maximus or Libanius with Trinculo ; yet his pros- 
 trations and exclamations at the taste of the liquor they present 
 to him, make us feel that it was as strange to the lips of the 
 imperial youth as the wine was to the savage. It was not, 
 however, for its own sake chiefly that he delighted in it. His 
 clever, lively, and instructive book on the festival of the Caesars, 
 explains to what use he believed it might be turned ; how 
 seriously he hoped that the doctrines of the Pagan sage would 
 save the empire which he thought that the Church was de- 
 stroying, which he had good right to think that it would not 
 be permitted to save. 
 
 14. The Caesars of Julian were written during the Saturnalia. 
 He is not given to joke, he says, but since he wishes to preserve 
 the rites of that season, he will try to compose something which 
 shall be profitable -without being too grave. He fulfils his 
 promise. His humour, though not rich or various, is easy and 
 pleasant. The different Caesars of the old time are invited to a 
 
 n!ethod*o"*^ feast with the gods Quirinus and Hercules introducing them, 
 the book. Some two or three are rejected as too odious even for the lowest 
 
 Julian's 
 Oesars.
 
 THE DIFFEBElfT C^SARS. 93 
 
 places at sucb a repast ; the others are encouraged to produce 
 
 their different merits, that the gods may judge between them. 
 
 Silenus sits by, acting the licensed fool at the divine court, and 
 
 suggesting various topics of accusation against the past lives of 
 
 the Emperors. By special favour, Alexander is aUowed to 
 
 appear, that Grreece may have its own representative. The acts 
 
 of the candidates are first proclaimed, Silenus always reminding 
 
 them of some that had escaped their memory. But the gods xiie seekers 
 
 observe that acts may be owing in a great degree to fortune ; ^ fa"' ^ 
 
 the purpose of the actors is far more important. Alexander is 
 
 asked what he thought the most excellent of aU things, and to 
 
 what intent he worked and suffered. " That he might bring all 
 
 things into subjection," he answers. Mercury asks him whether 
 
 lie thinks he succeeded. Alexander believes he did. " Ah ! no," 
 
 says Silenus, " my daughters, the grapes, conquered you." 
 
 Alexander being well skilled in Aristotelian logic, replies that 
 
 his battle was not with inanimate things, but with the race 
 
 of beasts and men. " Consummate dialectician ! in which conquest 
 
 class do you place yourself," enquires the scoffer. " Are you "^ ^^'f- 
 
 one of the inanimate things ? For you were beaten continually 
 
 by yourself, by your own anger or grief." " I was not thinking 
 
 about myself," says Alexander. " When you talk of conquering 
 
 yourself, you use an equivocal expression." " Capital logic 
 
 again !" cries Silenus ; " but that Indian w^ho wounded you, had 
 
 not he the better of you ?" " Stop," cries Dionysus, seeing that 
 
 Alexander is becoming furious, " or he will deal with you as he 
 
 did with Clitus." Upon which Alexander is so abashed that he 
 
 retires from the contest. Each of the Romans gives an answer 
 
 different from that of Alexander, but in the same spirit : a slight 
 
 cross-examination demolishes it. No one comes off so badly as Character of 
 
 Constantino. His highest ambition, according to Julian, was Co^st^n""*- 
 
 to get many things to himself, then to give many things away ; 
 
 ministering first to his own lusts, then to those of his friends. But juiian's 
 
 when Marcus Aurelius was called he answers that the purpose hero 
 
 of his life was to imitate the gods. He is asked what that Aurelius. 
 
 imitation consisted in. He answers, " to want as few things for 
 
 himself as possible, and to do as much good as possible to the 
 
 greatest number." Silenus raises the usual objections; valid 
 
 ones on the ground of his indulgence of Faustina and Com- 
 
 modus, which Marcus rather sophistically takes off. Another, His maxim* 
 
 on his little care for his own body, he affirms to be part of his ' '''^^ 
 
 imitation of the gods. 
 
 15. We have given a summary of Julian's best work, not 
 only for the sake of doing him justice, but because it throws a 
 light upon his scheme of life. Marcus was to be hia model. HowjuUan 
 He had sought to preserve the Empire by exalting philosophy il^ftatehim.
 
 94 JULTAW'S PBITILEGE. 
 
 aji^Jiinst Christianity ; Julian would make the same experiment. 
 He had motives of indignation which Marcus had not. He had 
 seen Christians tried in a new position, and had reason to know 
 how large a portion had disgraced themselves in the trial, 
 lamblichus ana Maximus were greater than any of the stoics 
 who surrounded Marcus. Besides, they had been proved in this 
 very conflict. The new Platonism had come foi*th expressly to 
 Hopes from resist and supersede Christianity. It had not triumphed yet. 
 PiatoaiMn. ^^^ ^'^^^ ^o^ little encouragement it had received from tliose 
 Pagan emperors who were most earnest to put down the church ; 
 how it had been frowned ui>on by the recent protectors of the 
 church ! What might it not do if it were only supported by 
 Julian's one who was ready to carry out its precepts even more 
 tobodu'y*** thoroughly than Marcus had carried out the precepts of 
 decencies, stoicism ; who, instead of craving for the indulgences which 
 ikif&n[H)<(on, Christian monarchs had thought necessary, was as indifferent to 
 p. 39. E<i. food, sleep, cleanliness, as any Christian monk could possibly 
 ' ' be ; who detested the theatres and the circus as much as any 
 
 one of the Galileans ; who could adopt those charitable practices 
 which had made them so much reverenced in the days of their 
 poverty ; who could reform the heathen priesthood upon the 
 model of their austerer men. 
 Julian's l^- ^ut though this political end was, we apprehend, pre- 
 
 loveof dominant in Julian's mind over any passion for philosophy 
 * "^^' merely as such, we should be wrong to overlook another ten- 
 dency which is apparent in all his writings. The most genuine 
 See the and most pleasant passages in his letters, as well as in his more 
 fiM^e^^ formal treatises, are certainly those which refer to outward 
 Misopogon nature. When he speaks of a beautiful country or a pleasant 
 *^ail^^ climate (like that of his dear Paris, though this city he loved 
 yxfo?<-' also for the contrast which its rude Celtic inhabitants afforded 
 JS^k"** to the gay theatre-loving citizens of Antioch) he seems to 
 Aevmrwu^ forget himsclf moro than at any other time, and to be more carried 
 away by the recollection of sounds and sights, and by his own 
 emotions. One of his longest letters is about the growth and 
 The letter to beauty of the fig-tree, and any topic of the kind has evidently 
 p*Mo"'Ed. ^'^^ more true charm for him than the noetic speculations in 
 Paris.' which he fancied that he took so great an interest. A considera- 
 
 ble part of his affection for the old idolatry seems to have arisen 
 Not a uste from this cause. It was a gratification of that admiration for 
 in the visible things which the teaching in the Christian schools may 
 
 Christian ygj.y possibly have chilled rather than cultivated. Though there 
 are traces in the letters of Basil, and Gregory of Nazianzum, of 
 the same feeling, for their education had been in many respects 
 similar Athens had been a foster-mother to all three yet in 
 general the metai hysics of the di\ ii.es of that century would
 
 THE NATUEAL AND THE 8PIE1TUAL. 5 
 
 seem to one very ardent in his sympathies with nature, cold and 
 repellent. AVe may well conceive, if other counteracting influ- 
 ences were not strong, how ardently he would rush into a wor- 
 ship which clothed all outward powers and objects with that 
 divinity which the Christians claimed for the invisible Father, 
 the only-begotten Word, and the Divine Spirit. 
 
 17. Great evidence for this observation is to be found in 
 Julian's " Hymn to,^tb^>,.Su^-" A considerable part of that 
 eeTehrale3''cbmposition, in which the author talks of the noetic 
 and spiritual principles, the primary good, and so forth, is merely 
 adopted from his teachers, as the "EssavonMan"was adopted from to'the Sun. 
 Bolingbroke. The part which Ts really his own is that wherein '** 
 
 he tells us that there had been in him ,from childhood upwards, 
 an intense love of the eyes of this god, and that he had been 
 raised up in his mind towards that ethereal light, and had longed 
 to look steadily at it, and that all the beauties of the heavens had 
 had an attraction for him, so that on a cloudless and clear night 
 he became wholly occupied and absorbed, and could not under- 
 stand what any one sjjoke to him or did to him ; for which reason 
 he was mistaken for a beardless astrologer, though he declares 
 that no book of astrology had ever come into his hands, nor did introd. 
 he know what manner of thing it was. All these signs, he p*^ 23*, e^"' 
 says, made him a follower and n'orshipper of the sun before he ***"> '583. 
 knew any thing about philosophy. Afterwards he presented him- 
 self to him as the glorious visible light in which all the intel- 
 lectual and invisible was represented. 
 
 18. If the reader compares this last statement with the doc- The 
 trine of Athanasius concerning the Light of Light, the very Athanafius. 
 God of very God, he will, we think, have a key to the nature of 
 Julian's idolatry, and indeed of all the philosophical idolatry of 
 
 this century. The outward luminous object took the place of 
 the Person in whom the Christian creed affirmed that the full How related 
 divine glory was gathered up and manifested ; the image to the \lJing^of 
 eye was exchanged for the divine image of the invisible Father. Julian's. 
 The whole conflict was here. Julian perceived most clearly and 
 rightly that it lay more between himself and Athanasius than 
 between any other two men ; that no earthly antagonist stood 
 as much in the way of the restoration of the natural worship 
 which he loved as the Bishop of Alexandria. And hence, we 
 understand, too, the other cardinal diflference between these two 
 men, a difterence inseparably involved with this, which the 
 extract we chose from Athanasius disclosed. While it would J"''*"'* 
 be exceedingly wrong to deny to Julian the honour of putting tie conflict 
 down many abuses and corruptions in the court of Constanti- ^'''^ *^''' 
 nople, and in the empire generally, which Christian Caesars to 
 their shame had tolerated, it is equally impossible not to see
 
 96 
 
 AUGUSTnf. 
 
 SuCurMUn *^^^* ^^^^ never presented itself to his mind in its own nature 
 and tenor, as something cleaving close to man, and from which 
 he needs emancipation. The goodness, therefore, wliich Julian 
 adored in the gods was not a power to which he fled from 
 an enemy that was assaulting his own being. The gods were 
 general divinities to whom he paid a homage which satisfied 
 partly certain devout instincts of his own mind, partly the 
 traditions of old Home, partly his Athenian culture, partly his 
 dislike of the faith which his uncle and his cousin had pro- 
 fessed. On such foundations the edifice which had been thrown 
 down was to be rebuilt. That on such a foundation nothing 
 can stand that the grounds of every faith, polity, philosophy, 
 must be laid in the acknowledgment of a conflict between 
 good and evil, and on the eternity and victory of the former 
 the life of the next man of whom we have to speak, illus- 
 trating as it does the experience of that age, and of many after 
 ages, we think will sufficiently demonstrate. 
 
 Carthage. 
 
 Aiifirustin 
 without 
 Greek 
 culture. 
 
 19. When last we heard of Carthage and the African Church, 
 it was in contrast with Alexandria. The Christian hatred of 
 philosophy and love of law and rhetoric were represented in the 
 person of TertuUian. The education of Augustin might have 
 fitted him to be as much of a rhetorician as his eminent country- 
 man ; there were many qualities of his mind which such a disci- 
 pline would be likely to call forth. If he became one of the 
 class which Tertullian dreaded, it was not because his father 
 was a heathen, or because he remained so long out of the 
 bounds of the Church; still less was it because he received any ex- 
 traneous Greek culture. If he did not take up philosophy for the 
 sake of Christianity, he owed his Christianity in a great measure 
 to his philosophy. And he was most thoroughly a Latin, attain- 
 ing to Greek books, it would seem, chiefly through translations ; 
 his language and modes of thought belonging strictly to the West. 
 
 20. Of no one can it be so truly said as of Augustin, that 
 he received his lore from within and not from without, that 
 all his knowledge was purchased by the fiercest personal strug- 
 gles. Whether here sorted to the M-aBicheea,ijr to Plato, or to 
 the Bible, it was that he might find an interpretation of himself. 
 He had no doubt a craving, felt in his youth and never lost, for 
 a very definite system of opinions. But the influences which 
 
 Driven from crossed this desire and drove him in search of another object 
 sygteras. -vrere really the blessed influences of his life, those to which he 
 owed all the strength of his own belief and aU his power of 
 teaching others. When he had got his system nearly complete 
 under the voice which asked him, " What art thou?" and forced 
 him in the heights or in the depths to find an answer to the
 
 EARLY DATS OF AUGUSTUS'. 97 
 
 question, broke the thread of his speculations and forced him to 
 begin anew. The oftener in his after life he heard that voice, 
 and believed that it was the one which he was to make others 
 hear, the more fresh and living and full of instruction for all 
 ages did his words become. When he forgot it, and sought to 
 build earthly tabernacles for Moses and Elias and his Divine 
 Lord, his spirit became confused, and he forged afresh for man- 
 kind some of those very chains from which he had been set free. 
 
 21. " 'Hig.lC.pnfessions," though not the book to which any one Philosophy 
 would turn for the formal philosophy of Augustin, is really fessions. 
 the_key to_it,4dL The book must be studied throughout, if 
 
 we woul3^understand those portions of it which bear directly 
 upon our OAvn subject : indeed, its whole meaning is lost if we 
 suppose that the passages in it which concern philosophy are 
 not as intimately connected with Augustin himself, as those 
 which describe his first joyful discernment of the meaning of 
 the New Testament : he never separates them himself. Our 
 extracts will illustrate this remark, and may help the reader to 
 appreciate the real significance of a book which is much read, 
 but little known. The following passage is from the third book ; 
 it refers to the time when he was in the rhetorical school 
 of Carthage, where he was surrounded by a reckless band of 
 libertines : 
 
 22. "Among such as these, in that unsettled age of mine, learned 
 I books of eloquence, wherein I desired to be eminent, out of a 
 damnable and vain-glorious end, a joy in human vanity. In the 
 ordinary course of study I fell upon a certain book of Cicero, 
 whose speech almost all admire ; not so his heart. This book of 
 his contains an exhortatiQiL..tp,philQsop}iy, and i3.^gji^igj^J,iiswtrt:.- . 
 
 k5 ?*.%%' -^^^ ^^^^ book altered my aftections, and turned my jjorteasius. 
 prayers to Thyself, Lord ; and made me have other purposes 
 and desires. Every vain hope at once became worthless to me ; 
 and I longed with an incredibly burning desire for an immor- 
 tality of wisdom, and began now to arise, that I might return 
 to Thee. For not to sharpen my tongue, (which thing I seemed 
 to be purchasing with my mother's allowances, in that my 
 nineteenth year, my father being dead two years before), not to 
 sharpen my tongue did I employ that book ; nor did it infuse 
 into me its style, but its matter. 
 
 " How did I burn then, my God, how did I bum to 
 re-mount from earthly things to Thee ; nor knew I what Thou Cicer* 
 wouldest do with me. For with Thee is wisdom. But the Teacher, 
 love of wisdom is in Greek called 'philosophy,' with which 
 tliat book inflamed me. Some there be that seduce through 
 philosophy, under a great, and smooth, and honourable name 
 colouring and disguising their own errors : and almost all who 
 
 TOL. II. H
 
 98 
 
 SEABCn AMIDST FORMS. 
 
 The 
 beautiful. 
 
 Heauty in 
 the Visible 
 
 in that and former ages were such, are in that book censured 
 and set forth : there also is made plain that wholesome advice 
 of Thy Spirit, by Thy good and devout servant ; Beware lest 
 any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the 
 tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after 
 Christ. For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead 
 bodily. And since at that time (Thou, O light of my heart, 
 kuowest) Apostolic Scripture was not known to me, I was 
 delighted with that exhortation, so far only, that I was thereby 
 strongly roused, and kindled, and inflamed to love, and seek, and 
 obtain, and hold, and embrace not this or that sect, but wisdom 
 itself whatever it were ; and this alone checked me, thus en- 
 kindled, that the name of Christ was not in it. 
 
 22. The following passages from the 4th Book illustrate an 
 important stage in his experience, and introduce us to his ear- 
 liest work. 
 
 " These things I then knew not, and I loved these lower 
 beauties, and I was sinking to the very depths, and to my 
 friends I said, ' do we love anything but the beautiful ? What 
 then is the beautiful ? and what is beauty ? "What is it that 
 attracts and wins us to the things that we love ? for unless 
 there were in them a grace and beauty, they could by no means 
 draw us unto them.' And I marked and perceived that in 
 bodies themselves, there was a beauty, from their forming a sort 
 of whole, and again, another from apt and mutual correspon- 
 dence, as of a part of the body with its whole, or a shoe with a 
 foot, and the like. And this consideration sprang up in my 
 mind, out of my inmost heart, and I wrote ' on the fair and fit,' 
 ] think two or three books. Thou knowest, O Lord, for it is 
 gone from me ; for I have them not, but they are strayed from 
 me, I know not how." 
 
 " But I saw not yet, whereon this weighty matter turned in 
 Thy wisdom, O Thou Omnipotent, loho only doest wonders ; 
 and my mind ranged through corporeal forms ; and ' fair,' I 
 defined and distinguished what is so in itself, and ' fit,' whose 
 ^beauty is in correspondence to some other thing : and this I 
 supported by corporeal examples. And I turned to the nature 
 of the mind ; but the false notion which I had of spiritual things 
 let me not see the truth. Yet the force of truth did of itself 
 flash into mine eyes, and I turned away my panting soul from 
 incorporeal substance to lineaments, and colours, and bulky 
 magnitudes. And not being able to see these in the mind, I 
 thought I could not see my mind. And whereas in virtue I 
 loved peace, and in viciousness I abhorred discord ; in the first 
 I observed an unity, but in the other a sort of division. And in
 
 MOJfADS AXD DIIADS. AEISTOTLE. 99 
 
 that unity, I conceived the rational soul, and the nature of 
 truth and of the chief good to consist : but in this division I 
 miserably imagined there to be some unknown substance of 
 irrational life, and the nature of the chief evil, which should not 
 only be a substance, but real life also, and yet not derived from 
 Thee, my God, of whom are all things. And yet that first I 
 called a Monad, as it had been a soul without sex ; but the latter 
 a Duad ; anger, in deeds of violence, and in flagitiousness, lust ; 
 not knowing whereof I spake. For I had not known or learned, 
 that neither was evil a substance, nor our soul that chief and 
 unchangeable good." 
 
 23. The following passage shows how little the,Jtristotelian 
 IiQgic,5sas.^le! to satisfy the cravings of the young student for 
 absolute Goodness and Truth : 
 
 " What did it profit me, that scarce twenty years old, a 
 book of Aristotle, which they call the ten Predicaments, falling 
 into my hands (on whose very name I hung, as on something 
 great and divine, so often as my rhetoric master of Carthage, 
 and others, accoimted learned, mouthed it with cheeks burst- 
 ing with pride,) I read and understood it unaided ? On my 
 conferring with others, who said that they scarcely understood 
 it wnth very able tutors, not only orally explaining it, but 
 drawing many things in sand, they could tell me no more of it Jkaments. 
 than I had learned, reading it by myself. And the book ap- 
 peared to me to speak very clearly of substances, such as ' man,' 
 and of their qualities, as the figure of a man, of what sort it is ; 
 and stature, how many feet high ; and his relationship, whose 
 brother he is ; or where placed ; or when born ; or whether he 
 stands or sits ; or be shod or armed ; or does, or suiFers any 
 thing ; and all the innumerable things which might be ranged 
 under these nine Predicaments, of which I have given some 
 specimens, or under that chief Predicament of Substance.' 
 
 " What did all this further me, seeing it even hindered me ? and 
 when, imagining whatever was, was comprehended under those unity not 
 ten Predicaments, I essayed in such wise to understand, my o? Go(i'"Na- 
 God, Thy wonderful and unchangeable Unity also, as if Thou ture, but 
 also hadst been subjected to Thine own greatness or beauty ; so Nature^ 
 that (as in bodies) they should exist in Thee, as their subject : 
 whereas Thou Thyself art Thy greatness and beauty; but a 
 body is not great or fair in that it is a body, seeing that, 
 though it were less great or fair, it should notwithstanding be 
 a body." 
 
 24. His addiction to thejfegi^ygjlfll, his longing for Paustus, 
 the promise of unbounded'Tnmnmation from him on questions 
 which the other members of the sect had not been able to 
 resolve, and his grievous disappointment, are memorable and
 
 100 THEORY OF ETIL. 
 
 well-known facts in his historj-. The following extract from 
 the 5th Book explains the relation of his theory of Evil to the 
 Christian Theology which he had partly received from his 
 mother. 
 Kvii sup. " For hence I believed ^^yj^^lsQ^tp bp^ so|(if siich kind of 
 
 !ve'')uik substance, and to have its own foul, ancl hideous DutR'; Vtliether 
 ^osS, which they called earth, or thin and subtile, (like the 
 body of the air,) which they imagine to be some malignant 
 mind, creeping through that earth. And because a piety, such 
 as it was, constrained me to believe, that the good God never 
 created any evil nature, I conceived two masses, contrary to 
 one another, both unbounded, but the evil narrower, the good 
 more expansive. And from this pestilent beginning, the other 
 sacrilegious conceits followed on me. For when my mind en- 
 deavoured to recur to the Catholic faith, I was driven back, 
 since that was not the Catholic faith, which I thought to be so. 
 And I seemed to myself more reverential, if I believed of Thee, 
 my God, (to whom Thy mercies confess out of my mouth,) as 
 unbounded, at least on other sides, although on that one where 
 the mass of evil was opposed to Thee, I was constrained to con- 
 fess Thee bounded ; than if on all sides I should imagine Thee to 
 be bounded by the form of a human body. And it seemed to 
 me better to believe Thee to have created no evil, (which to me 
 ignorant seemed not some only, but a bodily substance, because 
 1 could not conceive of mind, unless as a subtile body, and that 
 diffused in definite spaces,) than to believe the nature of evil, 
 such as I conceived it, could come from Thee. Yet, and our 
 Saviour himself. Thy Only Begotten, 1 believed to have been 
 reached forth (as it were) for our salvation, out of the mass of 
 Thy most lucid substance, so as to believe nothing of Him, but 
 what I could imagine in my vanity. His nature, then, being 
 such, I tliought could not be born of the Virgin Mary, without 
 being mingled with the flesh : and how that whicli I had so 
 figured to myself, could be mingled, and not defiled, I saw not." 
 25. His ^fff i^jgi'SJiJiiilfi^flAaggi.flf is strikingly described in 
 
 the 7th book : 
 ThoCorrup- "I? a man, and such a man, sought to conceive of Thee 
 tifjifnnrtin. ^}^q sovereign, only, true God; and I did in my inmost soul 
 believe that thou wert incorruptible, and uninjunible, and 
 unchangeable ; because though not knowing whence or how, 
 yet I saw plainly and w/is sure, that that which may be cor- 
 rupted, must be inferior to that which cannot ; what could not 
 be injured I preferred uuhesitatingly to what could receive 
 injury ; the unchangeable to things subject to change. My heart 
 passionately cried out against all my phantoms, and with this 
 pne blow J sought to beat ftway from the eye of my mind all
 
 CONCEPTIONS Ot GOD. 101 
 
 that unclean troop W'liich buzzed around it. And lo, being 
 scarce put olf, in the twinkhng of an eye they gathered again 
 thick about me, flew against my face, and beclouded it ; so that 
 though not under the form of the human body, yet was I con- 
 strained to conceive of Thee (that incorruptible, uninjurable, 
 and Unchangeable, which I preferred before the corruptible, and 
 injurable, and changeable) as being in space, whether infused 
 into the world, or diffused infinitely without it. Because what- 
 soever I conceived, deprived of this space, seemed to me nothing, 
 yea altogether nothing, not even a void, as if a body were taken 
 out of its place, and the place should remain empty of any body 
 at all, of earth and water, air and heaven, yet would it remain a 
 void place, as it were a spacious nothing. 
 
 " I then being thus gross-hearted, nor clear even to myself, u'''"5^*V" 
 whatsoever was not extended over certain spaces, nor diffused, under the 
 nor condensed, nor swelled out, or did not or could not receive lf'^'| ^ 
 some of these dimensions, I thought to be altogether nothing. 
 For over such forms as my eyes are wont to range, did my heart 
 then range : nor yet did I see that this same notion of the mind, 
 whereby I formed those very images, was not of this sort, and 
 yet it could not have formed them, had not itself been some 
 great thing. So also did I endeavour to conceive of Thee, Life 
 of my life, as vast, through infinite spaces, on every side pene- 
 trating the whole mass of the universe, and beyond it, every- 
 way, through unraeasurable boundless spaces ; so that the earth 
 should have Thee, the heaven have Thee, all things have Thee, 
 and they be bounded in Thee, and Thou bounded no where. For 
 that as the body of this air which is above the earth, hindereth 
 n- 1 the light of the suu from passing through it, penetrating it, 
 not by bursting or by cutting, but by filling it wholly : so I 
 thought the body not of heaven, air, and sea only, but of the 
 earth too, pervious to Thee, so that in all its parts, the greatest 
 as the smallest, it should admit Thy presence, by a secret inspi- 
 ration, within and without, directing all things which Thou hast 
 created. So I guessed, only as unable to conceive aught else, 
 for it was false. For thus should a greater part of the earth 
 contain a greater portion of Thee, and a less, a lesser : and all 
 things should in such sort be full of Thee, that the body of an 
 elephant should contain more of Thee than that of a sparrow, by 
 howmuch larger it is, and takes up more room ; and thus shouldest 
 Thou make the several portions of Thyself present unto the 
 several portions of the world, in fragments, large to the large, 
 petty to the petty. But such art not Thou." 
 
 26. The question of EvU. was still the all-absorbing one, what- 
 ever others might gro\^3t^f it. The following extract shews 
 how he began to connect it with himself:
 
 102 FEEEWILL. 
 
 " Whatever it were, I perceived it was in such wise to be 
 souglit out, as should not constrain me to believe the im- 
 mutable God to be mutable, lest I should become that evil I 
 was seeking out. I sought it out tlien, thus far free from 
 anxiety, certain of the untruth of what tlie ^^niplj^i^^eld, from 
 whom I shrunk with my whole heart : for I saw, that through 
 enquiring the origin of evil, they were filled with evil, in that 
 they preferred to think that Thy substance did suffer ill than 
 their own did commit it. 
 Ceruinty of "And I strained to perceive what I now heard, that .firee- 
 a Will. ^11 ^-as the cause of our doing ill, and Thy just judgment, of 
 "(SWTSuffering ill. But I was not able clearly to discern it. So 
 then endeavouring to draw my soul's vision out of that deep 
 pit, I was again plunged therein, and endeavouring often I was 
 plunged back as often. But this raised me a little into Thy 
 light, that I knew as well that I had a will, as that I lived : when 
 then I did will or nill any thing, I was most sure, that no other 
 than myself did will and nill : and I all but saw that there was 
 the cause of my sin. But what I did against my will, I saw 
 that I suffered rather than did, and I judged not to be my 
 fault, but my punishment ; whereby, however, holding thee to 
 be just, I speedily confessed myself to be not unjustly punished, 
 But again I said, Who made me ? Did not my God, who is not 
 only good, but goodness itself ? Whence tlien came I to will 
 evil and nill good, so that I am thus justly punished ? who set 
 this in me, and ingrafted into me this plant of bitterness, seeing 
 I was wholly formed by my most sweet God ? If the devil 
 were the author, whence is that same devil ? And if he also by 
 his own perverse will, of a good angel became a devil, whence, 
 again, came in him that evil will, whereby he became a devil, 
 seeing the whole nature of angels was made by that most good 
 Creator? By these thoughts I was again sunk down and 
 choked ; yet not brought down to that hell of error, (where no 
 man confesseth unto Thee,) to think rather that Thou dost 
 suffer ill, than that man doth it. 
 Tiie world 27. This discovery that Evil was close to the seeker of it, and 
 withUi" *"*^ ^^^^ ^'^ ^^^ projecting it from himself into the circumstances 
 in which he was placed, and into the nature of the Being who 
 had ordained them, is brought out more fully afterwards. 
 
 " I sought, * whence is evil,' and sought in an evil way ; and 
 saw not the evil in my very search. I set now before the 
 sight of my spirit, the whole creation, whatsoever we can 
 see therein, (as sea, earth, air, stars, trees, mortal creatures ;) 
 yea, and whatever in it we do not see, as the firmament of 
 heaven, all angels, moreover, and all the spiritual inhabitants 
 thereof. But these very beings, as though they were bodies,
 
 WHAT HAS DISTUEBED THE UNIVERSE? 103 
 
 did my fancy dispose in place, and I made one great mass of Thy 
 creation, distinguished as to the kinds of bodies ; some, real 
 bodies, some, what myself had feigned for spirits. And this 
 mass I made huge, not as it was, (which I could not know,) but 
 as I thought convenient, yet every way finite. But Thee, O 
 Lord, I imagined on every part environing and penetrating it, nite 
 though every way infinite : as if there were a sea, every where, ^'^^^^^'iip 
 and on every side, through unmeasured space, one only boundless 
 sea, and it contained within it some sponge, huge, but bounded ; 
 that sponge must needs, in all its parts, be filled from that 
 unmeasureable sea ; so conceived I Thy creation, itself finite, 
 full of Thee, the Infinite, and I said. Behold God, and behold 
 what God hath created : and God is good, yea, most mightily 
 and incomparably better than all these : but yet He, the Good, 
 created them good; and see how He environeth them, and 
 ful-fills them. Where is evil then, and whence, and how crept 
 it in hither ? "What is its root, and what its seed ? Or hath it 
 no being ? Why then fear we and avoid what is not ? Or if 
 we fear it idly, then is that very fear evil, whereby the soul is 
 thus idly goaded and racked. Yea, and so much a greater evil, 
 as we have nothing to fear, and yet do fear. Therefore either is 
 that evil which we fear, or else evil is, that we fear. Whence ie 
 it' then ? seeing God, the Good, hath created all these things 
 good. He indeed, the greater and chiefest Good, hath created 
 these lesser goods ; still both Creator and created, all are good. 
 Whence is evil ? Or, was there some evil matter of which He 
 made, and formed, and ordered it, yet left something in it, 
 which He did not convert into good ? Why so then ? Had 
 He no might to turn and change the whole, so that no evil 
 should remain in it, seeing He is All-Eighty ? Lastly, why 
 wovdd He make any thing at all of it, and not rather by the 
 same Allmightiness cause it not to be at all ? Or, could it then omnipo-"' 
 be, against his will ? Or if it were from eternity, why suffered tence. 
 He it so to be for infinite spaces of time past, and was pleased 
 80 long after to make something out of it ? Or if He were sud- 
 denly pleased now to effect somewhat, this rather should the 
 AUmighty have effected, that this evil matter should not be, and 
 He alone be, the whole, true, sovereign, and infinite Good. Or 
 if it was not good that He who was good, should not also frame 
 and create something that were good, then, that evil matter 
 being taken away and brought to nothing, He might form good 
 matter, whereof to create all things. For He should not be 
 Allmighty, if He might not create something good without the 
 aid of that matter which Himself had not created. These 
 thoughts I revolved in my miserable heart, overcharged with 
 most gnawing cares, lest I should die ere I had found the truth ;
 
 104 
 
 THE MAJT RETURTTI>'0 HOME. 
 
 Anirustin 
 roming to 
 quietness. 
 
 yet was the faith of Thy Christ our Lord and Saviour, professed 
 m the Church Catholic, firmly fixed in my heart, in many points, 
 indeed, as yet unformed, and fluctuating from the rule of doc- 
 trine ; yet did not my mind utterly leave it, but rather daily 
 took in more and more of it." 
 
 28. The result of his struggles, after the scripture revelation 
 had become intelligible to him, is contained in the following 
 extract : 
 
 " And being thence admonished to return to myself, I entered 
 even into my inward self, Thou being my Guide : and able I 
 was, for thou wert become my Helper. And I entered and 
 beheld with the eye of my soul, (such as it was,) above the same 
 eye of my soul, above my mind, the Light Unchangeable. Not 
 this ordinary light, which all flesh may look upon, nor as it were 
 a greater of the same kind, as though the brightness of this 
 should be manifold brighter, and with its greatness take up all 
 space. Not such was this light, but other, yea, far other from 
 all these. Nor was it above my soul, as oil is above water, nor 
 yet as heaven above earth : but above to my soul because It 
 made me ; and I below It because I was made by It. He that 
 knows the Truth, knows what that Light is ; and he that knows 
 It, knows eternity. Love knoweth it. O Truth who art Eter- 
 nity ! and Love Who art Truth ! and Eternity who art Love ! 
 Thou art my God, to Thee do I sigh night and day. Thee when 
 I first knew thou liftedst me up, that I might see there was 
 what I might see, and that I was not yet such as to see. And 
 Thou didst beat back the weakness of my sight, streaming forth 
 thy beams of light upon me most strongly, and I trembled with 
 love and awe : and I perceived myself to be far off from Thee, 
 in the region of unlikeness, as if I heard this Thy voice from on 
 high : ' I am the food of grown men ; grow, and thou shalt 
 feed upon Me ; nor shalt thou convert Me, like the food of thy 
 flesh, into thee, but thou shalt be converted into Me.' And 
 I learned, that Thou for iniquity chastenest man, and Thou 
 madest my soul to consume away like a spider. And I said, ' Is 
 Truth therefore nothing, because it is not diffused through space 
 finite or infinite ?' And thou criedst to me from afar ; ' Yea 
 verily, I AM that I AM.' And I heard, as the heart heareth, 
 nor had I room to doubt, and I should sooner doubt that I live, 
 than that truth is not, which is clearly seen being understood by 
 those things which are made. 
 
 " And I beheld the other things below Thee, and I perceived, 
 is and is not. w^g^^ they neither altogether are, nor altogether are not, for they 
 are, since they are from Thee, but are not, because they are not, 
 what Thou art. For that truly is, which remains unchangeably. 
 It is good then /or me to holdfast unto God ; for if I remain not 
 
 Fear and 
 Wonder. 
 
 That which
 
 DISCOTEEIES. 105 
 
 in Him, I cannot in myself; but He remaining in himself re- 
 neweth all things. And thou art the Lord my God, since Thou 
 standest not in need of my goodness. 
 
 " And it was manifested unto me, that those things be good, 
 which yet are corrupted ; which neither were they sovereignly 
 good, nor unless they were good, could be corrupted : for if 
 sovereignly good they were incorruptible, if uot good at all, there 
 were nothing in them to be corrupted. For corruption injui-es, 
 but unless it diminished goodness, it could not injure. Either 
 then corruption injures not, which cannot be ; or which is most The loss of 
 certain, all which is corrupted is deprived of good. But if they G<"^- 
 be deprived of all good, they shaU cease to be. For if they shall 
 be, and can now no longer be corrupted, they shall be better 
 than before, because they shall abide incorruptibly. And what 
 more monstrous than to affirm things to become better by losing 
 all their good ? Therefore, if they shall be deprived of all good, 
 they shall no longer be. So long therefore as they are, they are 
 good '. therefore whatsoever is, is good. That evil then which 
 I sought, whence it is, is not any substance ; for were it a sub- 
 stance, it should be good. For either it should be an incorrup- 
 tible substance, and so a chief good : or a corruptible substance ; 
 which unless it were good, could not be corrupted. I perceived 
 therefore, and it was manifested to me, that Thou madest all 
 things good, nor is there any substance at all, which Thou madest 
 not ; and for that Thou madest not all things equal, therefore 
 are all things ; because each is good, and altogether very good, 
 because our God made all things very good. 
 
 " And to Thee is nothing whatsoever evil : yea, not only to ^ood in 
 Thee, but also to Thy creation as a whole, because there is ^^' 
 nothing without, which may break in, and corrupt that order 
 which Thou hast appointed it. But in the parts thereof, some 
 things, because unharmonizing with other some, are accounted 
 evil : whereas those very things harmonise with others, and are 
 good ; and in themselves are good. And all these things which 
 harmonise not together, do yet with the inferior part, which we 
 call Earth, having its own cloudy and windy sky harmonising 
 with it. Far be it then that I should say, ' These things should 
 not be :' for should I see nought but these, I should indeed 
 long for the better ; but still must even for these alone praise 
 Thee ; for that Thou art to be praised, do shew from the earth, 
 dragons and all deeps, fire, hail, snow, ice, and stormy wind, which 
 fulfil Thy word ; mountains, and all hills, fruitful trees, and all 
 cedars ; beasts, and all cattle, creeping things, and flying fowls ; 
 kings of the earth, and all people, princes, and all judges of the 
 earth ; young men and maidens, old men and young, praise Thy 
 Name. But when, from heaven, these praise Thee, praise Thee,
 
 106 CREATION AS A WHOLE. 
 
 
 
 our God, in the heights, all Thy angeh, all Thy hosts, tun and 
 moon, all the stars and light, the Heaven of heavens, and the 
 waters that be above the heavens, praise Thy Name ; I did not 
 now long for things better, because I conceived of all : and with 
 a sounder judgment I apprehended that the things above were 
 better than these below, but all together better than those above 
 by themselves. 
 AH thingB " There is no soundness in them, whom aught of Thy creation 
 * displeaseth : as neither in me, when much that Thou hast made 
 
 displeased me. And because my soul durst not be displeased 
 at my God, it would fain not account that Thine which dis- 
 pleased it. Hence it had gone into the opinion of two substances, 
 and had no rest, but talked idly. And returning thence, it had 
 made to itself a God, thi'ough infinite measures of all space, and 
 thought it to be Thee, and placed it in its hCart, and had again 
 become the temple of its own idol, to Thee abominable. But 
 after Thou hadst soothed my head, unknown to me, and closed 
 mine eyes that they should not behold canity, I ceased somewhat 
 of my former self, and my frenzy was lulled to sleep ; and I 
 awoke in Thee, and saw thee infinite, but in another way, and 
 this sight was not derived from the flesh. 
 
 " And I looked back on other things, and I saw that they 
 owed their being to Thee, and were all bounded in Thee, but 
 in a different way ; not as being in space, but because Thou 
 containest all things in Thine hand in Thy Truth ; and all things 
 Substance, are true so far as they be ; nor is there any falsehood, unless 
 when that is thought to be which is not. And I saw" that all 
 ^' things did harmonize, not with their places only, but with their 
 
 seasons ; and that Thou, who only art Eternal, didst not begin 
 to work after innumerable spaces of times spent ; for that all 
 spaces of times, both which have passed, and which shall pass, 
 neither go nor come but through Thee, working and al^iding. 
 
 " And I perceived and found it nothing strange, that bread 
 which is pleasant to a healthy palate is loathsome to one dis- 
 tempered ; and to sore eyes light is offensive, which to the sound 
 is delightful. And thy righteousness displeaseth the wicked ; 
 much more the viper and reptiles, which Thou hast created 
 good, fitting in with the inferior portions of Thy Creation, with 
 which the very wicked also fit in ; and that the more, by how 
 much they be unlike Thee ; but with the superior creatures, 
 by how much' they become more like to Thee. And I inquired 
 what iniquity was, and found it to be no substance, but the per- 
 version of the will, turned aside from Thee, God, the Supreme, 
 towards these lower things, and casting out its bowels, and 
 puffed up outwardly. 
 
 " And I wondered that I now loved Thee, and no phantasm 
 
 Evil no
 
 DELIGHT IN IT. 107 
 
 for Thee. And yet did I Bot press on to enjoy my God, but Love of God. 
 was borne up to Thee by Thy beauty, and soon borne down from 
 Thee by mine own weight, sinking with sorrow into these infe- 
 rior things. This weight was carnal custom. Yet dwelt there * 
 with me a remembrance of Thee ; nor did I any way doubt that 
 there was One to whom I might cleave, but that I was not yet 
 such as to cleave to Thee ; for that the body which is corrupted 
 presseth down the soul, and the earthly tabernacle weiyheth down 
 the mind that museth upon many things. And most certain I 
 was that Thy invisible works from the creation of the world are 
 clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even 
 Thy eternal power and Godhead. For examining whence it was 
 ths^t I admired the beauty of bodies celestial or terrestrial, and 
 what aided me in judging soundly on things mutable, and 
 pronouncing, ' This ought to be thus, this not :' examining, 
 I say, whence it was that I. so judged, seeing I did so judge, I 
 had found the unchangeable and true Eternity of Truth, above 
 my changeable mind. And thus, by degrees, I passed from 
 bodies to the soul, which through the bodily senses perceives ; 
 and thence to its inward faculty, to which the bodily senses 
 represent things external, whitherto reaches the faculties of 
 beasts : and thence again to the reasoning faculty, to which 
 what is received from the senses of the body is referred to be 
 judged. Which finding itself also to be in me a thing variable, 
 raised itself up to its own understanding, and drew away my 
 tho\^ghts from the power of habit, withdrawing itself from those 
 troops of contradictory phantasms ; that so it might find what jv ^ . 
 that light was whereby it was bedewed when, without all doubt- He who is. 
 ing, it cried out, ' That the unchangeable was to be preferred to 
 the changeable' ; whence also it knew That Unchangeable, which, 
 unless it had in some way known, it had had no sure ground 
 to prefer it to the changeable. And thus with the flash of one 
 trembling glance it arrived at That^ Which Is ; and then I saw 
 Thy invisible things understood by the things which are made. 
 But I could not fix my gaze thereon ; and my infirmity being 
 struck back, I was thrown again on my wonted habits, carrying 
 along with me only a loving memory thereof, and a longing for 
 what I had, as it were, perceived the odour of, but was not yet 
 able to feed on." 
 
 29. These passages concern the growth of his belief. There . 
 are others of very great significance, which embody some of his 
 later discoveries. Strictly speaking, they should be postponed" 
 to those philosophical treatises of which we propose to speak 
 presently ; but as they occur in the " Ggflfesaiops," we cannot 
 be blamed for inserting them here. The following on Jltcriiifcy 
 and 'X^vdQ is particularly profound and suggestive :
 
 108 BEST IN THAT WHICH WE CAK50T COMPUEHE>'D. 
 
 Eternity 
 aiid Time. 
 
 Yesterday 
 and to-day. 
 
 " Who speak thus, do not yet undeivstand Thee, Wisdom 
 of God, Light of souls, understand not yet how the tilings be 
 made, which by Thee and in Thee are made : yet they strive to 
 compreliend things eternal, whilst their heart fluttereth between 
 the motions of things past and to come, and is still unstable. 
 Who shall hold it, and fix it, that it bo settled awhile, and 
 awhile catch the glory of that ever-Hxed Eternity, and compare 
 it with the times which ate never fixed, and see that it cannot 
 be compared ; and tliat a long time cannot become long, but out 
 of many motions passing by, whicli cannot be prolonged alto- 
 gether; but that in the Eternal nothing paaseth, but tlie whole 
 is present ; whereas no time is all at once present : and that all 
 time past is driven on by time to come, and all to come followeth 
 upon the past ; and all past and to coine is created, and flows 
 out of that which is ever present ? Who shall hold the heart 
 of man, that it may stand still, and see how eternity ever still- 
 standing, neither past nor to come, nttereth the times past and 
 to come ? Can my hand do this, or the hand of my mouth by 
 spee'ch bring about a tiling so great?" 
 
 " Nor dost Thou by time precede time : else shouldest Thou 
 not precede all times. But Thou precedest all things past, by 
 the sublimity of an ever-present eternity ; and surpassest all 
 future because they are future, and when they come they shall 
 be past ; but Thou art the Same, and thy years fail not. Thy 
 years neither come nor go ; whereas ours both come and go, 
 that they all may come. Thy years stand together, because 
 they do stand ; nor are departing thrust out by coming years, 
 for they pass not away ; but ours shall all be, when they shall 
 no more be. Thy years are one day ; and Thy day is not daily, 
 but To-day, seeing Thy To-day gives not place unto to-morrow, 
 for neither doth it replace yesterday. Thy To-day is Eternity ; 
 therefore didst Thou beget The Coeternal, to whom Thou saidst, 
 This day have I beyott^n Thee. Thou hast made all things ; and 
 before all times Thou art ; neither in any time was time not. 
 
 " At no time then hadst Thou not made any thing, because 
 time itself Thou madest. And no times are coeternal with 
 Thee, because Thou abidest ; but if they abode, they should not 
 be times. For what is time ? Who can readily and briefly 
 explain this ? Who can even in thought comprehend it, so as 
 to utter a word about it ? But what in discourse do we men- 
 tion more familiarly and knowingly, than time ? And, we 
 understand, when we speak of it ; we understand also, when we 
 hear it spoken of by another. What then is time ? If no one 
 asks me, I know : if I wish to explain it to one that asketh, I 
 know not : yet I say boldly, that I know, that if nothing passed 
 away, time past were not ; and if nothing were coming, a time
 
 LONG AND SHOBT TIME, 109 
 
 to come were not ; and if nothing were, time present were not. 
 Those two times then, past and to come, how are they, seeing 
 the past now is not, and that to come is not yet ? But the pre- "^'^' 
 sent, should it always be present, and never pass into time past, 
 verily it should not be time, but eternity. If time present (if 
 it is to be time) only cometh into existence, because it passeth 
 into time past, how can we say that either this is, whose cause 
 of being is, that it shall not be ; so, namely, that we cannot 
 truly say that time is, but because it is tending not to be ? 
 
 " And yet we say, ' a long time' and ' a short time ;' still, 
 only of time past or to come. A long time past (for example) 
 we call an hundred years since ; and a long time to come, an 
 hundred years hence. But a short time past, we call (suppose) 
 ten days since ; and a short time to come, ten days hence. But 
 in what sense is that long or short, which is not ? For the 
 past, is not now ; and the future, is not yet. Let us not then 
 say, 'it is long;' but of the past, 'it hath been long;' and of 
 the future, ' it will be long.' O my Lord, my Light, shall not 
 here also Thy Truth mock at man ? Por that past time which 
 was long, was it long when it was now past, or when it was yet 
 present ? Por then might it be long, when there was, what 
 could be long ; but when past, it was no longer ; wherefore ^^^^ ^"*^ 
 neither could that be long, which was not at all. Let us not 
 then say, ' time past hath been long :' for we shall not find, 
 what hath been long, seeing that since it was past, it is no 
 more ; but let us say, ' that present time was long ;' because, 
 when it was present, it was long. For it had not yet passed 
 away, so as not to be ; and therefore there was, what could be 
 long ; but after it was past, that ceased also to be long, which 
 ceased to be." 
 
 " What now is clear and plain is, that neither things to come 
 nor past are. Nor is it properly said, ' there be three times, 
 past, present, and to come :' yet perchance it might be properly 
 said, ' there be three times ; a present of things past, a present 
 of things present, and a present of things future.' For these 
 three do exist in some sort, in the soul, but otherwhere do I not 
 see them ; present of things past, memory ; present of things 
 present, sight ; present of things future, expectation. If thus 
 we be permitted to speak, I see three times, and I confess there 
 are three. Let it be said too, ' there be three times, past, pre- 
 sent, and to come :' in our incorrect way. See, I object not, 
 nor gainsay, nor find fault, if what is so said be but understood, 
 that neither what is to be, now is, nor what is past. For but 
 few things are there, which we speak properly, most things im- 
 properly ; still the things intended are understood."* 
 
 * The cxtriicts from the "Confessions" have been taken from the translation 
 in tie Oxford Library of the Fathers.
 
 110 CHBISTIAN PHILOSOPUT. 
 
 _ . . 30. Sliortly before his baptism Auffiwtin wrote three books 
 
 The book ^ ^l j i > mi -'*';*>-,> j i- i i.i> i 
 
 Contra ^^ Against the Academics. Ihey give us a very dehghttul pic- 
 AeademUo*. ^.y^g ^f jjjg ju^ei. mihd and of his social life at this crisis of his 
 history. His new discoveries have not carried him into violent 
 hostility with the thoughts or the friends of earlier days : they 
 have given him a deeper and livelier interest in both. Augus- 
 tin is still the Philosopher ; nay, is urging all over whom he 
 g 3^ has influence to becoriie philosophers. He speaks of the pursuit 
 
 Mundi of Wisdom as that into which be has been gradually led out of 
 qn iiu'tp' ^ mere windy profession by grief of heart ; and he addresses his 
 um rapere books to Romanianus, a man, it would appear, of highly culti- 
 qnotf<iie"i8ta vated tastes, who had plunged into the luxury of the capital, 
 cantanteni yf\^Q ha(j been the most sumptuous and popular of citizens, but 
 toris dolor " who, " as he cared to be liberal rather than rich, as he never de- 
 professi'" sired to be more powerful than just," has been brought under 
 nemahjicere the discipline of suffering that he might be led into a love o- 
 ophile'^ere- *^ truQ^ and .not merely of. the besautifiiJ:. Augustin speaks 
 miurn con- of this treatise in the " Retractations as written " when he 
 ^sset.*^" had betaken himself to the rest of the Christian life." It was 
 natural that in looking back upon it after many years, and in 
 Retract, lib. very changed circumstances, he should find something to com- 
 ereo rei?-'*'" plain of in it, and that he should not be able quite to reproduce 
 quissein vei his then State of feeling. But his self-accusations are not 
 ?uerara^'ri"* serious, and need not expose him to any very severe judgments 
 cnpiditati- from US. He thinks that he used the word "fortune" too care- 
 mund^vei lessly, and too like a heathen, though he hinted that it was 
 qnaeadipisci only a name for some secret order of providence : he speaks of 
 meadciiris- a fable, in the second book, from which we must confess that 
 Mlnm c'oB- ^ ^SLve received much profit and encouragement, concerning 
 tuiissem the two sisters, Philocalia and Philosophia, as silly and imperti- 
 bapfizSus ^^"* ^^^f ^^ might perhaps be expected and feared, lie thinks 
 etc. ' his language respecting the Academics was too courteous, and 
 Id. cc. 2, 3. the reverence he expresses for Plato a little dangerous. As 
 C- 3; Pror- there are no other censures, we may presume that he considered 
 estetinsuiRa the substance of the dialogues sound and profitable. 
 PA//ca/i^'l< ^^* Their main object, as we might infer from the persons 
 PhUotophia. against whom they are directed, is to show that investiga- 
 object of tion, however interesting and worthy of all zeal when there is 
 lo^ues. '* something to be investigated, cannot be an ultimate object, 
 that uncertainty and a perpetual equilibrium of mind are not 
 desirable, that Truth is to be sought because it can be found. 
 Here, no doubt, is the link between Auguatin's Philosophy 
 and his Divinity ; between his energy in study and his confi- 
 dence of a revelation from above. The Acac^ffiical theorj^ or 
 rather the Academical tendency, had been to himsell^nd was, "he 
 saw, to a number, the greatest hindrance to practical belief, 
 precisely because it was the hiudrance to manly and hopeful in-
 
 AUGUSTUS AT HOME. Ill 
 
 quiry. Acquiescence in doubt is only another name for acqui- 
 escence in sensual gi^atifications. If the mind' has nothing 
 actual to grasp, the body which has, must maintain its superio- 
 rity : the repose of the Epicurean dogmatist lies very near to 
 the restlessness of the pseudo-Platonical sceptic. Augustin, 
 therefore, might well feel that this was to be his first battle ; 
 that unless he could shake the doctrine which affirms that 
 nothing can be known, a Gospel professing to enunciate the 
 highest knowledge would be always pronounced impossible. 
 
 32. But the method which he adopts for this purpose is as Aupistin 
 unlike that of a dogmatist of the TertuUiaa school as can well "* a school 
 be conceived. Licentius, the son of Eomaniauus, and Trj'ge- 
 tius, are pupils of Augustin. The former he holds up to the centra Aca- 
 example of his father, as an earnest and devoted student ; the demicos, 
 latter had for a time betaken himself to the army, but had re- ' ' '' *" *' 
 turned wdth fresh zest to the kind of warfare into which Augus- 
 tin was so well able to initiate him The Christian neophyte, . . 
 it might be supposed, would rather deter these youths from 
 debates and arguments, and treat them as only fit to receive 
 what he gave them. On the contrary, he himself puts them 
 upon a trial of strength, urging them to canvass the whole 
 question which was at issue between the Academicians and their 
 opponents. The boys enter the lists with hearty good-will, their 
 master from time to time interfering, not to check their ardour 
 but to encourage it, to help either party in recovering any 
 ground which he had unwittingly lost, to hinder them from 
 taking any unfair advantages, to show them the duty of making 
 sacrifices of favourable positions for the sake of attaining the 
 ultimate end, which is not victory but truth. As a specimen of 
 a kind, and a very valuable kind, of practical education, the book 
 may take its place by Milton's Letter to Mr. Hartlib, or the 
 treatises of Mr. and Miss Edgeworth. But it is also exceedingly 
 instructive as showing that the Academicians could be most 
 efliectively answered by one who understood their method best. 
 Long before the final result is attained, we feel that the young 
 men are in training to be believers in Truth, that they have 
 learnt how well that is worth fighting for, and that nothing 
 else is worth fighting for. 
 
 .33 Throughout this lively and interesting discussion the S^r^vY-^* 
 question is always recurring, whether a blessed life can be sepa- 
 rated from the knowledge of Truth. It was the characteristic 
 doctrine of Augustin that one was involved in the other, that 
 the knowledge of truth, however obtained, did not procure 
 blessedness, but was blessedness, that without it man is mise- 
 rable. There is a special book on the blessed life. It was 
 written at the same time with those on the Acadcitiics The
 
 112 
 
 KNOWLEDGE AXD LIFE. 
 
 DeBeat& 
 Vitft, c. 6. 
 
 c. n. 
 
 The books 
 De Ordine. 
 
 c. I. 
 
 ver6 vitupe- 
 ratio multo 
 est quam 
 malitite cru- 
 (lelitatisque 
 pur;;atior. 
 
 Retract, lib. 
 i. c. 3. 
 
 occasion of it is stated thus in his dedication to Theodoras : 
 " In the ides of November was my birthday. There were pre- 
 sent, first, my mother JS^gnnica^ my brother Navigius, Trygetius 
 and Licentius my feltow-ciizens and disciples, and I would not 
 have my cousins La.stidianus and Kusticus away, for though 
 they cannot endure the schools, I thought their common sense 
 would be of great lielp in the subject I proposed to discuss. 
 Lastly, there was one among us, the youngest of all, but with a 
 disposition which promises, if love does not deceive me, some- 
 thing very great, my son Adeodatus." The discussion which 
 takes place after a light repast opens with the question, "whether 
 the soul does not require food as well as the body ?" Thence 
 comes the inquiry, " what the appetite of the soul is what is 
 its satisfaction ?" The appetite is shown to be, for the Jjq^ite 
 ani^Efgrnal. He is blessed then who has God. But of whom 
 can that be affirmed ? Licentius answered, " He possesses 
 God who lives well." Trygetius answered, " He possesses God 
 who does what God wills to be done." The boy said, " He 
 possesses God who hath a pure heart." Monnica approved all 
 the sentiments, this last most. Navigius and Rusticus were 
 silent ! These solemn and reverent utterances do not pre- 
 vent Augustin from introducing again some of those philoso- 
 phical topics which occupied us in the former dialogues. The 
 discourse, with all its depth and earnestness, is often pleasant, 
 even humorous. There is evidently a sense in the mind of all 
 the guests at Augustin's feast, that the blessedness which they 
 seek for is within the reach of all, and that each is helping the 
 other to attain it and enjoy it. A divine conversation has 
 seldom been carried on with more of human friendliness and 
 grace, or with a more evident feeling that all outward and sensible 
 beauties ought to be relished and enjoyed by him who has the 
 highest and the most inward. 
 
 34. "We can but allude to two books on Order which follow 
 these. Why Augustin should have entered upon such a sub- 
 ject will be sufficiently intelligible to those who have traced the 
 growth of his mind in the " Confessions." He found one of 
 two perils threatening him : either God's Providence did not 
 descend into the deepest and minutest things ; or else, evU was 
 to be ascribed to Him. Augustin bravely declares, that though 
 the first error is a very great one, the other is mucli more 
 terrible. It is better to charge Him with negligence than with 
 malice and cruelty. The question, then, as he expresses it in 
 his " Eetractotions," " whether the Order of Divine Providence 
 containeth all tilings good as well as evil," is one which the 
 author of the book on tlie Blessed Life was almost obliged to 
 set before himself and his disciples. But he adds, " "When I
 
 EAETHLT AND SPIEITITAL MEASUBES. 113 
 
 8a\^ that tliis matter, difficult to be understood in itself, could 
 scarcely be brougbt at all to tbe perception of those with whom 
 I had to do, by any process of disputation, I preferred to speak 
 about the order of study whereby we may advance from corpo- c. 22, &c. 
 real to incorporeal things." This explanation will account for 
 some disappointment which the reader may experience when J^ib. " <=. ^2, 
 the author digresses into stories respecting Licentius and 
 Monnica, and passes from high considerations of Divine 
 Providence into questions about grammar, music, poetry, dia- 
 lectic, rhetoric, geometry, astronomy, valuable and important 
 in themselves, but not exactly what the title of the book had 
 led us to expect. 
 
 29. The two books of Soliloquies exhibit the deep conviction Thebooksof 
 in Augustin's mind, that the eternal life of man's spirit and ^i>'<'<i"'-- 
 the knowledge of truth are inseparable. The passages at the 
 close of the second book, concerning the Memory, lead us into 
 the very heapfc.^f JElatonical doctrine. We should be Luclined 
 to doubt whether any Latin, before or since, ever entered iuto 
 it so deeply. The treatise, both for its method and its results. Cap. 20, 34 
 is worthy of the most serious meditation of any student, as *^ ^^' 
 a commentary upon the ancient wisdom, and as an induction to 
 that of the Middle Ages. The book on the Immortality of the De immor- 
 Soul, Augustin says in his " Retractations," is so obscure, ^''.i^'e 
 from the contortion of the thoughts and its brevity, that he Retract. lib. 
 could scarcely understand it himself. The account ia the same !<=*? ^ 
 honest record, of the book De Quantitate Animse, will best ex- 
 plain its object : " In the same city I wrote a dialogue in which Thebook De 
 there are many questions and discussions concerning the soul : Anfmle!'"'^ 
 whence it is, of what nature, what its greatness, why it was Retract, 
 assigned to a body, what effect is produced upon it by its con- * ' '" ^*^' 
 junction with a body what effect by its departure from the 
 body. But seeing that the question how great it is is dis- 
 cussed there with much diligence and subtlety that I might 
 show its magnitude not to be a corporeal magnitude, and yet 
 that it has a magnitude of its own, therefore from this single 
 inquiry the whole has taken its name." A criticism upon 
 a passage in this treatise, " that the soul seems to have 
 brought aU arts with it, and that learning is nothing else than 
 recollection," shows that the old Bishop had not abandoned aU 
 the thoughts of the young student, though he feared to indorse 
 them and to sanction all the iaferences which might be drawn 
 from them. The great question of the treatise how to connect 
 the thoughts of length, of breadth, of height, all that we attri- 
 bute to mathematical figiu-es, with spiritual substances is one 
 which has occupied serious men at all times, and which does 
 not cease to occupy us when we forget it. Tew doubt 
 
 VOL. II. 1
 
 114 AUOUSTIK A GUIDE TO LATEB TIITES. 
 
 that language expresses a connection between the two worlds : 
 what it indicates respecting the nature of the connection is the 
 difficulty which all in some way or other have been trying to 
 solve. If Augustin does not solve it, he at least makes us feel 
 how it arises, how it is involved in all our common speech, how 
 it may beset those who take most pains to give an account of 
 their thoughts and their words. When we say that Augustin 
 discusses the relation between Reason and Ratiocination, and 
 
 C. 27 and 29. between Sense and Science, that he inquires how far science 
 and reason exist in beasts, whether the soul knows of itself, 
 whether it is said to grow really or metaphorically, we have 
 indicated how near he has touched many of the controversies of 
 
 c. 20 and 21. the most modern world. And his description of the seven 
 degrees of the soul's ascent is a preparation for some of the 
 most curious parts of the practical divinity as well as of the 
 moral philosophy of the later Church. 
 
 The books 30. Loug as have been our commentaries on Augustin, we 
 
 on Aiusic. cannot quite resolve to pass unmentioned the six books on 
 ]VJ[u8ic, because it is evident that the thoughts which are 
 expressed in them soothed the mind of the writer after 
 the conflicts of his earlier years, and because he looked back 
 upon them with great tenaemess in his mature life. These 
 six books, he says, are on Rhythm ; he should have added six 
 more on Melody, if the burden of his ecclesiastical duties had 
 not made all such delights impossible. He is sure there is a 
 passage by regular stages from these corporeal and changeable 
 numbers, to the imchangeable which are in the immutable 
 Truth itself ; that through them we may strive after those inmost 
 mysteries where Wisdom joyfully meets those who love her." 
 
 The Master. Nor can we forget the little book on " the Master," which is so 
 much the more interesting and striking, because it is a conver- 
 sation with the child who reminded him of his youthful errors, 
 and for whom he so frankly and courageously at all times ex- 
 presses his affection ; and because it exhibits the method of his 
 own teaching as well as his idea of the highest teacher. These 
 
 Later are his properly philosophical books. Those " On Free-will," 
 
 Treatises. q^ ^^^ Manners of the Churcli, and the Map^heans," and 
 the more elaborate and better-known treatise " On the City of 
 God," though strictly theological, are fuU of passages which 
 throw light upon his philosophy, and ought to be considered by 
 all who wish thoroughly to imderstand it.
 
 THE SCHOOLS AND THE WOELD. 115 
 
 CHAPTEE V. 
 
 TwE Fifth Centtjet. 
 
 1. A CENTUET wliicli opens with the reigns of Arcadius and Tiieoio^icai 
 Honorius holds out small promise of blessings to mankind in fh|''fifth "^ 
 the east or in the west. Yet it is one rich in the materials of century, 
 history, if not in history itself, one which no philosopher can 
 pass over, whatever he may think of its contributions to philo- 
 sophy. The theological battles of the Greek church and the 
 Greek empire, which aroused the most violent and the pettiest 
 passions of Egyptians, Syrians, and Byzantines, pointed to 
 principles in which all ages and countries are alike interested. 
 J^estorius and Eutyches may be treated by many merely as 
 movers of subtleties which have no significance for the world ; the 
 councils which strove to silence them, merely as haughty and 
 ferocious dogmatists. There is excuse enough for each charge. 
 But the question, whether there is a divine foundation for man's Phiioso- 
 life, and whether that is also a human foundation, was involved en^a^ed in 
 in these controversies ; the philosophers who most hated and ^^^"^ ""eaiiy 
 despised the Church were reaUy engaged in them as much as directly, 
 its members could be. We cannot interpret Proclus any more 
 than Cyrd, if we overlook them, or do not remember what mul- 
 titudes of hearts were occupied with them. How such debates 
 should have anything to do with the stirring events which were 
 changing the condition of society in western Europe, with the 
 sacking of Rome, the occupation of the different provinces by 
 Visigoths or Vandals, the overthrow of the Western Empire, Outward 
 the establishment of Paganism in Britain, of Prankish orthodoxy thellme*^ 
 in Gaul, we may find it hard at first to discover. And yet the 
 schools and the world were in this time, as in all times, inter- Elation to 
 preters of each other. The principles which men were acting philosophy, 
 out in one sphere were those on which they were tormenting 
 their thoughts in the other. We must understand what con- 
 cerned the people if we would know what is meant by the 
 speculations of those who strove most to keep aloof from them, 
 and affected most to despise them. 
 
 2. The struggles between the Neo- Platonic school and the 
 Christian Church belong as much to this century as to the last. 
 But the Church has won an outward triumph. The sages can
 
 116 
 
 THE TWO CITIES. 
 
 War of the 
 
 Churrhwith 
 the Neo- 
 Platonists. 
 
 Chancre in 
 the position 
 and 
 
 character 
 of the 
 combatants. 
 
 The Church 
 j^veruing^. 
 
 Alexandria. 
 
 Hypatia. 
 
 Athena. 
 
 Proclus, 
 A. D. 
 412-485, 
 
 have little hope of finding another imperial champion. When 
 the temple of Serapis was thrown down by the Christian zealots 
 in Egypt, stirred up by the unprincipled Bishop Theophilus, a 
 sign was given that the rites of Paganism belonged to the past 
 and not to the present. They might be loved all the more by 
 the antiquarian and sentimentalist, but a leader of armies, even 
 if he had all Julian's natural taste and acquired cultivation, 
 could scarcely seek to re-establish them. Hence an evident 
 change is vi8il)le on both sides. A predominance of mysticism 
 over every other tendency is characteristic of the Heathen 
 devotee. Practical wisdom, degenerating in most cases into 
 worldly wisdom, becomes characteristic of the Churchman. The 
 one asserts the invisible as his possession, and only now and 
 then dreams that he may master tne visible. The other begins 
 to think that that is given to him to use and to rule ; the 
 spiritual region, the Kingdom of Heaven, he claims as his too, 
 but often chiefly that he may exclude the rest of men from it. 
 The noble-hearted Chrysostom is as essentially a practical and 
 governing man as the proud and unscrupulous Cyril. Even 
 Augustin in this century becomes more occupied with the 
 management of the African Church, and with Donatist quarrels, 
 than with the transcendant thoughts of his earlier years. 
 
 3. We have spoken much of Alexandria in former centuries. 
 This city was still to be the focus of philosophical thought and 
 philosophical contentions. There it was that the Church and 
 the Schools stood out in formal opposition to each other ; there 
 both were exhibited in their glory and their humiliation, there 
 the practical power of the Christian faith as a ruler of the 
 world, there the detestable crimes of many of its professors, pre- 
 sented themselves in glaring contrast to the social impotence of 
 the Neo-Platonists, to the high mms of one or two among their 
 teachers. The tragedy of -Jiypatia ibrings all these aspects of 
 the fifth century together, and prepares us for the downfall of 
 the antichristian sages, for the temporary triumph of something 
 scarcely less antichristian, for the great judgment upon the 
 eastern world, when Alexandria stooped to Mecca. But Athens 
 is the place in which Neo-Platonism flourished comparatively 
 undisturbed by ecclesiastical influences. There philosophy in 
 its nakedness, or as some say in its purity, put forth its last 
 eflforts, and endeavoured to crown and unite all the past 
 achievements of Greek schools. 
 
 4. A verj' high authority, M. CQU^iaupposes this attempt to 
 have been perfectly successful. 'Tifesacred Platonical succession 
 he believes was faithfully and religiously preserved ; the torch 
 was transmitted in undimmed lustre from hand to hand ; it never 
 hi'rped o hripfhtly as when JlStttfiw*^ resigned it. The following
 
 THE ANCIENT AND MODEEN ECLECTIC. 117 
 
 is but a specimen of the language in whicli he speaks of him. 
 " He was illustrious as a mathematician and an astronomer ; he ^j*^"^'?'*# 
 was the first among existing philologers ; he had so compre- him : 
 hended all religions in his mind, and paid them such equal re- operai'etc. 
 verence, that he was as it were the priest of the whole universe : iiiustrkvit ' 
 nor was it wonderful that a man possessing such a high cousin : 
 knowledge of nature and science should have this initiation into Parisiis, 
 
 all sacred mysteries." "As he was the head of the praefatio 
 
 Athenian school and of all later philosophy, so I venture to K^neraiis, 
 affirm that all the earlier is found gathered up in him, and that p ^i 
 he may be taken as the one interpreter of the whole philo- 
 sophy of the Grreeks." I shall set it down as an esta- P. 25. 
 
 blished fact that nothing great was thought out by lamblichus, 
 Porphyry, and Plotinus, either in ethics, in metaphysics, or in 
 physics, which is not found expressed more clearly and methodi- 
 cally ia Proelus." "The three-fold division of Greek P. 25 and 26. 
 
 philosophy may be reduced at last to one, which being the same 
 always, by a natural and certain progress enlarges and unfolds 
 itself, and moves on through three stages intimately connected, 
 the first being contained in the second, the second in the third, 
 so that the man who after the lapse of ages finds himself at the 
 end of this gradually evolving series, on the highest apex of that 
 third age, as he embraces all the accumulations of former times unites all 
 in himself, stands as the representative of each sect of Grreece, Greek 
 emphatically the Grreek philosopher. Such a man I say was mmseif.*" 
 Proelus, in whom it seems to me are combined and from whom 
 shine forth in no irregular or uncertain rays all the philosophical 
 lights which have illustrated Greece in various times ; to wit 
 Orpheus, Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, Plotinus, Porphyry, 
 and lamblichus." 
 
 5. Besides the weight which this testimony acquires from the strangeness 
 learning and genius of M CiftHMTijit is more impressive from opinion in 
 the country to which he belongs and which he represents. We, French 
 and still more our diligent German brethren, are generally sup- ^'"'*^''* 
 posed to be capable of enduring a considerable amount of tedi- 
 ousness with the tolerance which results from our consciousness 
 of needing the like for our own compositions. But that excel- 
 lence must be very great indeed which can induce a Prenchman, 
 with his natural liveliness and sense of the ridiculous, to suffer 
 the elaboration through long pages of points which his wit must 
 have reached by a single spring. This, and far more than this, 
 had M. Cousin to bear while he was ascertaining for himself 
 that Proelus was a compendious Orpheus, Pythagoras, Plato, Xediousness 
 and Aristotle. Thus, for instance, one of the most celebrated of ^ Pi'o<='"*- 
 his works is a commentary on the first Alcibiades of Plato. It 
 was evidently a lecture to his class. It aims of course at exhi-
 
 118 PEOCLirS TETmO TO BE SOOEATIC. 
 
 biting the particular worth of the dialogue under discussion, but 
 that only for the purpose of elucidating the method and prin- 
 ciples of Plato, and of all science. The dialogue opens with these 
 Commen- words, " ! son of Cleinias, I think that you sometimes wonder," 
 the tint &C' Considering the great field which the commentator has 
 Aicibiades. before him, a dialogue of some compass in itself, and then the 
 Kd. Paris, gathering together in one the three periods of Greek wisdom, 
 >oi. a, p.49. yjjg would have supposed that these words might have been dis- 
 missed with some rapidity ; that at all events the teacher might 
 have told his pupils at once what Socrates supposed would 
 cause the wonder of Alcibiades. The Athenian youths were 
 in great error if they looked for any such superficial treat- 
 ment of the subject from Proclus. First of all we have a dis- 
 cussion on the importance of the openings of the dialogues. It 
 must never be supposed that they are mere easy dramatical 
 Examina- introductions to what follows. All great principles are involved 
 wor'doVot, in them. But, secondly, Socrates aaya " I think " Why does 
 p. 5764. ]jg gay J think" ? Is it not his great object to lead us into 
 science or knowledge, and could he who was guiding other men 
 out of uncertainty and mere opinion be himself subject to such 
 P. 61. uncertainties ? This great difficulty must be cleared up. It must 
 
 EiTociT/i/Kai be shewn that there are variable subjects as well as fixed and 
 t^^i^^ constant. Aristotle must be quoted to prove that the geometer 
 ~r T* ^'' is not to use rhetoric in his study, nor the rhetorician to apply 
 ixotrruv geometry in persuasion. Necessary things are to be spoken of 
 M(]^fvmv ^^ necessary language, probable in probable. Moreover, Alci- 
 ai oi xoyoi biadcs was a hasty and presumptuous youth. It was a pecu- 
 i^^xo^^" li^^'ly winning and graceful method of addressing him, to begin 
 iia/jMYhv, ^vith a somewhat doubtful expression of this kind. So that 
 i^^Tara toU altogether Proclus seems to have proved in the most irrefragable 
 iiiv oAXa manner, taking the subiect out of the region of mere doubt and 
 Se oAAa- probability, and bringing it very near to demonstration, that 
 Yi t^T"^^ Socrates might consistently with the general maxims and objects 
 2/cparns of his philosophy use the word " I think" in familiar convesation. 
 ^<t>^toK B^itj next, why does he say " Son of Cleinias," when he might 
 otrraTov havecallcdhim simplyAlcibiadcs ? The propriety of this language, 
 T^j^w**^ too, is established after painful and accurate enquiry. The 
 KaTexp>j<roTco pjiraso admits of a partial justification on the grounds that 
 children are advantaged by reflection on the glory of him who 
 begat them, and that Cleinias had distinguished himself in an 
 Athenian war ; that Homer is fond of patronymics ; that it is 
 p- 62. an old Greek custom to use them. But there is a far deeper 
 
 motive: Alcibiades might think of the diione reason from 
 p. 6573. which souls issue, when he was reminded that he was the son 
 of somebody. 
 6. We do not quote these passages as if they were conclusive
 
 niS BETTEH SIDE. 119 
 
 against the opinion of M. Cousin. On the contrary, we believe Merits of 
 that opinion to be justified by evidence which must have seemed ^*^'"*- 
 to the greatest of modern Eclectics quite irresistible. It is not 
 the mistake of a partial admirer that Proclus gathers up the 
 threads of former Greek enquirers, and weaves them into one 
 woof. It is not a mistake that his intense devotion to Plato, to 
 the intermediate commentators upon him, but especially to his 
 own master Syrianus, is often rewarded by apprehensions 
 which justify themselves to every student, and for which 
 we should be very grateful. Nor is there the least doubt that 
 though Proclus talks an infinite deal of nothing, more 
 than any man in Athens, he not unfrequently enunciates a 
 proposition of great worth with a neatness, sharpness, and 
 perspicuity, such as can scarcely be found in the citizen of any 
 city but his. If the conclusion to which we arrive respecting 
 him must be ultimately something very difierent from that 
 which M. Cousin's eulogium suggests, we are most willing that 
 our readers should know what plea there is for that eulogium, 
 and should admit the claims of Proclus to canonisation in spite 
 of our devil advocacy. 
 
 7. The lectures on the Alcibiades, of which we have given one idea of Love. 
 or two rather disadvantageous specimens, are not so wholly 
 occupied with transcendental questions that they overlook the 
 characteristics of Alcibiades as a notable historical figure. With 
 some formality and many unnecessary words, but not without real 
 beauty, Proclus developes the character of the love which 
 Socrates bore to him, how different it was from that of all who 
 admired and flattered him, how its whole aim was to draw him See espe- 
 away from the restless pursuit of a multitude of objects, and to 88109^"* 
 fix his mind on the real and the abiding. Eight centuries had 
 not passed awaj"^ without giving even the ordinary commentator 
 certain perceptions on this subject, a certain power of understand- 
 ing how the higher being stoops from his glory to draw up the 
 inferior after him, how this is effected by sympathy with his 
 weaknesses, by contemplating objects as he contemplates them 
 while yet he retains that elevation of which he wishes his scholar 
 to partake. The abUity of describing this as the peculiarity Love divine 
 of the best man because it is also the quality of the gods, ^^^ human, 
 belongs to the Neo-Platonist more than it did to those at ^oMo"li** ^ 
 whose feet he sat, and from whom he professed to derive his ^"j^?*^, 
 wisdom. Here especially we discover that change which we TxotTpl^" 
 have pointed out already as the distinguishing one of the new '^!'x",' 
 
 , *- 00 WOO? Toy 
 
 philosophy, not only that it could not stand apart from theology AAict^i<i3T|^ 
 (for the old Platonism had never tried to do that) but that it '"^tVei^- 
 assumed theology as its ground and starting-point, not merely o^Tbr 
 as its termination ; that it supposed the higher world to have i(^p^cr,os
 
 120 
 
 THE AIM OF THE NEW SCHOOL. 
 
 icai tbpovpiiy 
 
 avTov naaai 
 cVtiTKOircii', 
 
 .T.A. 
 
 'I'heoloeical 
 character of 
 t!ip love. 
 [Examine 
 particularly 
 the strikini; 
 passagf, 
 162, last line, 
 to 173.J 
 
 The 
 
 Christian 
 love mixes 
 with the 
 Platonic. 
 
 Our 
 
 obligations 
 to Proclus. 
 
 Harmony of 
 love and 
 
 condescended to the lower, not merely the lower to be in a pro- 
 cess of ascent towards the higher. We have seen how Plotinus, 
 and still more Porphyry, struggled, the one to restore philosophy 
 to its purer and colder position, the other to preserve it in that 
 position ; how inconsistent each was in this experiment, how 
 inevitably the hierophantic doctrines of lamblichus triumphed 
 over theirs. In the time of Proclus it was no longer a matter 
 of controversy. The war between mythology and philosophy 
 had terminated. Each was acknowledged as necessary to the 
 other. In their battles with the Christian Church, the Neo- 
 Platonists adopted much of its language. Their theory was that 
 its ideas belonged to them, that they were in fact ideas of the 
 old world implied in all that had been written about heroes and 
 philosophers, and the relations between gods and goddesses ; 
 that their function was to restore them to their proper owners, 
 at the same time making use of their philosophy to hinder the 
 ideas from being lost in the stories which had embodied them. ^ 
 8. Although, therefore, Athens was not the battle-field between 
 Christianity and the new philosophy, and although it would be 
 unjust to impute to Proclus any directly polemical purpose in 
 his commentaries upon Plato, there can be no doubt that he 
 wished his pupils to understand that the Christian idea of love, 
 and all that was connected with it, had already been practically 
 exhibited in the conduct of the earlier philosophers, as well as 
 expressed in the Pagan divinity, and could now be set forth in 
 its most refined and perfect form by those who harmonised 
 them in their all-embracing Eclecticism. It was in this way 
 that Proclus strove to establish "his title to be the pries fc as well 
 as the dialectician of the universe. It was thus that looking 
 back upon aU the teachings of the past, and around upon all the 
 faith and superstitions of the present, he sought to extract the 
 essential oil from them, discarding their superfluous materials. 
 The question is, what was the result of the process, how much 
 of this quintessence has he been able to bequeath for the nourish- 
 ment of mankind ? Something unquestionable, as we have said 
 already, we do owe to him. This especially. It might be fancied 
 that the love of Socrates for Alcibiades was a mere sentimental 
 addition to his philosophical reasonings, that a mere personal 
 interest attaches to the one which must be kept as distinct as 
 possible from that stern and severe method which he continually 
 aimed at in the other. We think Proclus has very clearly 
 shewn this conclusion, however just it might be if applied to 
 Aristotle or Zeno, is entirely false in reference to his master. 
 The chief obligation, if we are not mistaken, and it is a very 
 great one which the disciple and admirer of Plato is under to 
 this commentator, is that he has shewn the elenctic or dialec-
 
 LOYE AlTD SCIENCE. 121 
 
 tical processes for whicli Socrates is so famous, to be connected 
 by close and inseparable links not only with a moral purpose 
 but with his affections. The value of his testimony and of his 
 proofs on this point is greatly enhanced by the dryness and 
 formality of his own disposition. His faculty is entirely of the 
 logical kind. Here and there one may find a phrase, or even a 
 sentence, which has a kind of poetical illumination in it ; but it 
 shines with an altogether reflected light, and one could scarcely Prociu ? not 
 imagine any one so continually in communication with Plato *ig>Ji*ve. 
 who has so little of vitality or of humour. His homage to Love, 
 then, is a homage to Science. He may be quoted as the most 
 satisfactory of witnesses to a truth which we believe all in- 
 creased study of philosophical history will demonstrate more 
 fully, that the highest science is not merely compatible with the 
 most divine and most human love, but that they cannot exist 
 apart. Admitting this as a result which is so important that Procius a 
 Proclus or any man may well have been sent into the world to a^bstractions 
 illustrate it, and that no fatigue should be grudged by the 
 listeners which helps to fix it in their minds, we must yet remark 
 that it is a very great effort to believe in Socrates or in Alci- 
 biades, or in any living creatures at all, while we are perusing 
 this most ingenious and elaborate commentary upon their rela- 
 tions to each other. The quintessence we have, no doubt, 
 if it consists in refined disquisitions, or in the transla- 
 tion of human beings into the ideas which they embody. 
 But if this is the best thing which the man can do for us 
 who contains Orpheus, Plato, and Aristotle in himself, we 
 should for our own parts be glad to have him reduced again into 
 his original elements, and to get the very tiniest of them in 
 place of the entire compound. If it is asked, then, whether we Need of an 
 are content with the hints of a higher and purer love which shall not*^ 
 these men of the old world give us, whether we do not want a ^* *" ,. 
 Proclus to exhibit, even if it be in a less striking and vital form 
 the complete ideal at which they are aiming ; if M. Cousin, or 
 any of his disciples, will force these questions upon us, we must 
 at all hazard of appearing very ridiculous in their eyes answer 
 " We look for the Ideal of that which is personal in a person. 
 We cannot understand either the pure affection of any man of 
 the old world towards a disciple, or his zeal for truth, unless 
 that affection and that zeal are more perfectly embodied than 
 he exhibited then. It seems, therefore, to us that the 
 effort of Proclus was to get rid of that which explains the 
 mysteries of the old world, and to substitute for it a theory 
 which is obliged to sustain itself by the traditions which that 
 world found untenable. Proclus certainly has detected the 
 secret principle which is implied in the dialogue of Alcibiades,
 
 122 
 
 EUT8, PAGAir AND CHEISTIAF. 
 
 Mixture of 
 loyalty and 
 slavery in 
 Froduo. 
 
 and more or less in all the Platonical dialogues. But he has 
 left it as he found it, only adding to it a ponderous daemonology, 
 which, if it is true, demands the interpretation wliich the dia- 
 logues demand, and which, if true or false, aifords no help to any- 
 mortal creature in becoming what Socrates and Plato would 
 have him become." 
 
 10. We are fully aware that we shall be accused of leading 
 our readers back into an old and customary rut when we ven- 
 ture remarks of this kind. But let those who dread ruts fairly 
 give themselves to the study of Proclus ; let them find, if they 
 can, among all the slaves of tradition, one who bound himself so 
 entirely to the yoke of a master as he did, one who so little 
 dared to walk alone. We do not find fault with him for his 
 addiction either to the old teacher or to the members of the 
 sacred succession. Whatever there is good in him arises from 
 his loyalty. He would be far less original than he is if he had 
 trusted more to his native wit. By faithfully endeavouring to 
 understand others, he rose by degrees into some strong and dis- 
 tinct convictions of his own ; in trying to bring their thoughts 
 together and present them to his class, he attained to some know- 
 ledge of what was going on in himself. Many may have gone 
 through the same process. We have no right to pronounce it 
 an illegitimate one. But for those who afiect a particularly free 
 habit of mind, and who scorn the fetters of the past, to take 
 Proclus as their hero and guide, is the most surprising of all 
 contradictions. 
 
 11. The passages in the commentary which refer to thajdeemoji 
 pf 182 2?2?^ of Socrates, though mixed of course with the later daemonology 
 Daemon of of H^hitth Soccatos knew nothing, are perhaps the most instruc- 
 tive in this part of the writings of Proclus, both historically and 
 philosophicsdly. We prefer, indeed, to take Socrates as the 
 interpreter of his teachings and inspirations, and much of 
 what Proclus says about the natural bias of the old Athenian 
 towards good which made it necessary that he should have a 
 
 Eower to restrain him, not one to urge him on, is to us unintel- 
 gible, and is quite inconsistent, we think, with his own state- 
 ments. Still, the hints which the lecturer supplies on this topic 
 serve very strikingly to connect the former with the later world, 
 and suggest thoughts to each man respecting the government to 
 which he is subjected, that should profit us more than they did 
 his disciples. There are also observations strangely introduced, 
 which, if they are not quite new, are nevertheless such as time 
 can never make old. Thus, for instance, the mention of the 
 crowd of lovers or admirers by whom Alcibiades was surrounded 
 suggests the enquiry " What, then, is this crowd ? Every one 
 must see that it is a multitude, but a multitude undefined, con- 
 
 General 
 
 Socrates, 
 p. 312233, 
 
 P. 213. 
 
 OVK eSeiTO 
 
 T^S aVTOV 
 
 irpOTpoirrii' 
 upixriTO yap 
 i.4>' eavTOV, 
 ic.r.A. 
 
 Political 
 hints. 
 
 P. 157.
 
 MTSTEEIE8. 123 
 
 fused, unorganised. It is not a multitude in the sense in which 
 a choir is a multitude, nor in which a people is. For a people 
 is a multitude bound together within itself, but a crowd is a 
 multitude merely consisting of loose elements. Hence it is 
 commonly said that in politics ochlocracy differs from demo- 
 cracy, in that the one is out of measure and tune, the other is 
 established under laws. Evidently, therefore, in this crowd, we 
 have the tokens of a scattered dissipated life, one that draws 
 down the object of its love into the material and divided and 
 complex image of the different passions. Thus, Tjynaeus called 
 by this name all that which was reduced to no law of reason, 
 the immodulated and disorderly chaos that proceeded from the 
 different elements of fire, and air, and earth, and water." Our 
 readers, we hope, will discern something of an order emerging 
 out of this chaos, and wUl admit that Proclus has made the 
 most of the hint which Socrates has given him. 
 
 12. A far deeper subject, connected with all the thoughts of The 
 this time, and deserving the most careful attention of the his- Triad, ' 
 torian, is brought before us in the following sentences. Proclus p- 138-142. 
 had been saying that Love camiot be reckoned among the 
 highest or among the lowest classes of Beings. The reason 
 given is that the thing loved {to kpaarov) must be beyond Love 
 itself; but that Ijiove cannot be severed from the Cfogd or 
 Beautiful, of which it participates ; it is therefore not trans- 
 cencTaht but mediatorial. He then proceeds " In what, then, 
 has it its first subsistence (ttou li] oZv vTriarri Trjv Trpwrj/v), and 
 how goes it forth towards all things, and with what monads has 
 it sprung out into activity? There being three substances 
 (i/TTooraffewv) in the noetic and hidden gods ; the first denoted 
 by Groodness (r^ aya^w yapaKTiipi^ofxevriQ) perceiving the essen- 
 tial Good, which is, as the oracle declares, the Paternal Monad 
 (irarptici) /uovac) ; the second denoted by Wisdom (to <T0(p6y), in 
 which dwells also the primary Intelligence (vorjaig) ; the third 
 denoted by the Beautiful (to KaXof). Corresponding to these Goodness, 
 noetic principles there subsist three monads, dwelling together, Love.^the 
 when contemplated as the principle or cause of noetic things in w""^^ 
 one form or kind ; but first of all shining forth in the unspeakable 
 order of the gods, as Paith, Truth, Love. Paith that establisheth 
 all things, and settleth it in the Good ; Truth that unfolds all 
 the knowledge that is in any beings ; Love that converteth all Passage 
 things, and draweth them into the nature of the Good. And ineffable 
 this Triad proceedeth forth to all the orders of gods, and * the 
 causeth the unity so to shine forth as to come within the " '* 
 scope of Intelligence ; but in each order it has a different mani- 
 festation, uniting its own powers with the idiosyncrasies of the 
 gods .... Por aU things, says the oracle, in these three,
 
 124 THE OODS, JLSQEJjSf HES0E8, AND STBIAKTS. 
 
 are governed and are ; and for that reason the Gods command 
 the Theurgists by these three to unite themselves to the God." 
 13. We shall not stop now to comment on this passage, 
 though we are not insensible to its importance as condensing 
 If the thoughts of many generations of Platouists on this subject, 
 as supplpng hints on philosophical and theological terminology, 
 and as marking the ditferences and resemblances between the 
 Christian and Platonical schools. But all these points will come 
 more properly under our consideration hereafter, and in the 
 meantime we must speak of that work to which Proclus himself 
 and his disciple considered the lectures on the Alcibiades only 
 the vestibule his discourses on the FsuoKiiiiudem. What he 
 thought of this task, when he entered upon it, may be judged 
 from the solemn prayer with which the first book opens : 
 Openinjf ** I pray to all the gods and all the goddesses to guide my 
 p!T sV""' reason in the speculation which lies before me, and having 
 kindled in me the pure light of truth, to direct my mind upwards 
 to the very knowledge of the things that are, and to open the 
 doors of my soul to receive the divine guidance of Plato, and 
 having directed my knowledge into the very brightness of being, 
 to withdraw me from the various forms of opinion, from the 
 apparent wisdom, from the wandering about things that are 
 not, by that purest intellectual exercise about the things that 
 are, whereby alone the ^e. of the soyl, is nourished and 
 ivSmvain brightened, as ^jcraJbes^ggjCfri^JlbfiTEtia&fly^s, and that the ruieJOP 
 TiXiov" '^ S8.^^ ^'i^^ S^^^ ^ ^^ ^^ pet^fe jiou3,-and the noeric gods the 
 Tou voriToix! power that leads up to this, and that the rulers of the universe 
 S''7Ly<!^v'' above the heaven will impart to me an energy unshaken by ma- 
 Toi-s wwpovs. terial notions and emancipated from them, and those to whom 
 the world is given as their dominion a winged life, and the 
 angelic choirs a true manifestation of divine things, and the 
 good daemons the fulness of the inspiration that comes from the 
 gods, and the heroes a grand and venerable and lofty fixed- 
 ness of mind, and the whole divine race together a perfect 
 preparation for the participation in ^la4*l'Ja,;Q^y;tiP3i,^8ftd.. 
 f^-seeing speculation^* yrhich he declares to us himself in the 
 Parmenides with the profundity fitting such topics, but which 
 he (i. e. his master Syrianus) completed by his own most pvu-e 
 and most luminous apprehensions, who did most truly share the 
 oToinAaTMi'i Platonic feast, and was the medium for transmitting the divine 
 pZc^<Taiii>i truth, and was the guide in ovu" speculations and the hierophant 
 aXr)ei>f, KaX gf thcso diviuc words ; who, I should say, came down as a type of 
 lar^^i philosophy of men to do good to the souls that are here, in 
 T^e<iai place of images, sacrifices, the whole mystery of purification, a 
 '' *"*** leader of salvation to the men that are now and that shall be 
 hereafter. And may the whole band of those that are above us
 
 THE ONE. 125 
 
 be propitious, and may tlie whole force that they supply be at 
 hand, kindling before us the light which proceeding from them 
 may guide us to them." 
 
 14. This somewhat inflated invocation, which will shew the ReTerence 
 reader what reverence the Athenian doctors bestowed upon 
 each other, as well as upon the heroes and the choirs of angels, 
 is still a satisfactory evidence that Proclus regarded the ques- 
 tions which philosophy raises with an awe which has been 
 greatly wanting in some of its later professors. He was surely 
 right in considering that when Parmenides spoke of the One, he 
 must have had an awful sense that he was approaching the 
 ground and root of things, an abyss deeper than his own spirit, 
 one which that spirit could only contemplate when it had under- 
 gone a moral purification. He is certainly right that Socrates, 
 young man as Plato represents him to have been when he con- 
 versed with Parmenides and Zeno, felt the dignity and dread- 
 fulness of the enquiry in which they were engaged, though he 
 did not shrink from courageously entering upon it himself, and 
 though the object of his life was to clear a road by which others 
 might travel in the same direction. And we cannot conceive 
 that he was wrong in holding that each new student must 
 tremble as much as his predecessors have done, confessing that 
 he is on holy ground. It is the great redeeming point in His great 
 Proclus, that while he looks upon the search for absolute unity ' ^^^^^' 
 as the search of the philosopher, he does not wUlingly reduce 
 this unity into a dead abstraction, that he tries to identify it 
 with a living Being, The effort is unspeakably difficult to him, 
 for the Creatpj.pf ,tht uniyerge and he fully admits a Creator 
 of the universe must, he thinks, be secondary and inferior to 
 the one pure unutterable essence. To mix Him with his works 
 or even -with any working, is a kind of impiety. Hence, as we 
 have seen in the preliminary invocation, and as we found was 
 the case with the author of the ]NIy,aififj.es, the primitive and 
 eternal Nous soars above aU the efficient and energising gods ; 
 a vision of supreme goodness rises above even that ; a transcen- 
 dant unity is still perceivable through this goodness. Through 
 tiers of beings does the poor overwhelmed seeker ascend towards 
 this distant effulgence; or is it an opaque substance from 
 which all effulgence has departed ? And the while he feels as 
 if this mysterious unity could not be far from him, as if it were 
 implied in all he speaks and does, as if it were pre-supposed in 
 the multitude of things which his eye beholds, still more in 
 every act of his mind when he thinks of those things. He 
 feels also as if the absolute and eternal One must in a direct 
 tmd mysterious way be acting upon him, and as if there must be
 
 126 PBOCLUS BPEAKIKG LATIK. 
 
 gome nearer passage to it than through those orders of beings 
 who, howsoever his intellect may arrange and compose them, 
 introduce plurality into his thoughts, and disturb his efforts to 
 dwell in a region that is above it. We will frankly own, that 
 if we had not travelled this road before with Augustin, and had 
 not learnt by what a painful and practical method he was led to 
 behold the absolute Good, the absolute One, as inseparable 
 from a Person in whom he lived, and moved, and had his being, 
 if we had not learnt how he found in Whom this Unity and 
 Goodness might be approached and apprehended, these enqui- 
 ries of Proclus would seem to us utterly interminable, full of 
 Auruitin ^l^Q profoundest interest and the profoundest despair, each step 
 The highest involving a new contradiction, with the perpetual fear that k 
 vision of ^jjg niists ever shovdd disperse, and the different forms which 
 Good won perplexed the vision while it was beset by them disappear, 
 exTCrfence^ nothing would remain but vacancy. When the Commentary is 
 of sorrow read along with the Confessions, a light falls on it ; all the hints 
 and evil. ^^ ^ philosophical method whereby a man may disengage him- 
 self from the phantoms of sense, and begin to see things as they 
 are, to recognise a unity in them, to see a irnity above and 
 beyond them, for which Proclus is indebted to Socrates, pro- 
 mise to become practically helpful. The Theurgy which was 
 derived from his own immediate masters, is translated from a 
 vague, half believed superstition, necessary to fill up the blanks 
 in philosophy, into a divine science which is at the root of it, 
 and which quickens it. Even the pettinesses and paltrinesses 
 of the sage give us a kind of interest in him, as witnesses that 
 he shared our frailties, and that a complete system never shall 
 be wrought out in God's living uuiverse, which shaD not betray 
 its own feebleness, and let in tlie light and air of heaven through 
 a thousand cracks and fissures. 
 Prorhis 15. There are three treatises by Proclus, the original of which 
 
 "ccordintrto jg jgg^^ ijut of which the substance is preserved in a Latin 
 translation by a Corinthian Archbishop of the twelfth century. 
 Por the easy and tolerably flowing Greek of the Athenian 
 scholar we have the uncouth version of a man who was trying 
 to render philosophical thoughts into a language which he im- 
 perfectly understood, and which he must have considered more 
 unfit for the purpose than it actually was. Yet we have the 
 bad taste to think these on the whole the most valuable com- 
 positions which Proclus has bequeathed to us ; valuable partly 
 for the very cause which makes the reading of them painful. 
 Merely to a philologer, the spectacle of a Greek struggling to 
 find Latin equivalents for his words, or when that task is hope- 
 less, giving them Latin terminations, is amusing and not unin-
 
 THE MECHANICAL THEOBT. 127 
 
 structive. But to the historian of philosophy, who is about very Vaioe of the 
 shortly to leave the original home of science, where all the e"pais*"*' 
 finest shades and distinctions of thought and speculation voi. i. 
 had become familiar and conventional, to see a set of hardy 
 Latinised Groths awakening to a new world of invisible things, 
 and trying to make the visible world which they were subduing 
 with sword and ploughshare, furnish them with instruments for 
 expoundiug the secrets of it, books are of immense value which 
 connect the perishing cultivation with the fresh and hopeful 
 barbarism. Morbeka's translation serves this purpose. And 
 as the works with which he has presented us are not lectures, And of the 
 but letters or essays, Proclus appears less in the character of a Treatises 
 verbal critic ; his worship of Plata does not afford him the same 
 excuse for endless gossiping. Not that Plato is ever forgotten. 
 In the opening of tlie second of his treatises on Providence, he Etenim 
 boldly affirms that the preservation of the sacred Platonical oracuioium 
 oracles, and the handing down of them from age to age, through trafiitionem 
 a series of worthy auditors, is itself a demonstration of Provi- Deorum ^ 
 dence, were others wanting. At the same time he declares with auditores 
 much truth, as we have already intimated, that the study of aper- 
 Plato had awakened and not stifled his self-reflection, and that proifentia; 
 Mercury being their common teacher, it signified little whether demonstra- 
 the words had been first uttered by the ancients or elaborated p.^'gf"'' ^*^' 
 by himself. 
 
 16. The first of these treatises is " On Providence and Pate, opinion of 
 and that which is in us ;" the second resolves ten doubts about Theodoras. 
 Providence ; the third treats of the subsistence of evil things. ' 
 Theodorus, to whom the first of these treatises is addressed, had 
 adopted a theory of the universe which he was certainly not the 
 first or the last to maintain. Looking at the various tragical 
 and comical connections of human events, he supposed them to d^nlfam"^'' 
 be held together by a certain mechanical law or iate. Tliis he hymnizasti 
 was disposed to call Providence, and to endue with free-will, modo*""" 
 But that which is called free-will in man, he rejected as merely ^f^ov<nov. 
 nominal and imaginary. Pate, then, and Providence differed autem ' 
 according to Theodorus, in that the first expressed a series of yuj^a^yn, 
 antecedents and consequents, the latter the necessity which pro- auTfduo-iw 
 duces these. Proclus, on the contrary, proposes to show, 1st. soium"esse. 
 That Fate and Providence are both causes of the world, and of 
 the things which come to pass in the world, but that Providence q,"den 
 is antecedent to Pate, that all thmgs which happen according to causas 
 Pate come to pass by a much earlier law from Providence, but eomm qua 
 that the converse is not true, for that the whole order of things '" mundo 
 depending directly on Providence, is diviner than Fate, praeexistere 
 2nd. That there is one soul which is separable from the body, vldentiam*
 
 128 PEOTIDEirCE AND FATE. 
 
 Fato et and comes down from above from the gods into this mortal 
 **uide*m Sphere ; that there is another dwelling in bodies which cannot 
 uuKcunque be separated from the things that are lying about it and beneath, 
 swmndiiin *^^^ ^^^ latter indeed depends upon Fate, but the other upon 
 Fatura Providence, in virtue of its own substance. 3d. That there is 
 l"prov?-""* one kind of knowledge and truth in souls brought under the 
 dentii fieri, jaw of generation and birth, even though they be spotless in 
 ^" . . life, another to those who fly from this mortal sphere and have 
 Veritatem established themselves in that place whence they first fell and 
 "'h "em descended hither. If these distinctions are fully recognised, he 
 inexistere thinks that all the difficulties of the subject will be cleared 
 fn'itenera- away. It will be evident in what wise many things escape 
 tioneversis Fate, but Providence nothing. It will be evident from the 
 unraacuiata second proposition, how truly there is a free-will in that prin- 
 eecundCim ciple which is within us, but how when this obeys necessity, 
 aiiam autem and is led by Fate, its freedom becomes languid and dead, in 
 bu'^ejThoc consequence of an evil life, though it still participates in a 
 loco et factis certain phantom of choice in virtue of the better soul which 
 unde'prhis* i^ i^s neighbour. From the third position we discover what 
 casus, et qui Parmenides, Socrates, and Plato meant when they said that the 
 mo'rtaiem soul, after it is purged from earthly passions and mixtures, may 
 locum eyen here perceive truth, and will enjoy a nobler and purer 
 
 page 12. ' science after it has been released the laws of birth and matter. 
 Paiam erit I7. Our readers will not be surprised that Proclus should 
 quaiuer devote his chief diligence to the illustration of the second of 
 diffugiunt these principles, or that the really valuable part of his treatise 
 vfdentiam"" should be that which treats of the principle in us that which 
 autem nihil ; ig immediately under the divine direction, which i? free while it 
 (pp. 12, 1 ). a(.]^nowledges that direction, which becomes slavish by acknow- 
 ledging itself merely as a part of nature, and therefore subject to 
 necessity, and yet which can never lose the tokens of a higher 
 origin and life. We must express our gratitude to him for 
 That which having untied with great dexterity some of the knots in 
 is in us. .j.|j-g jjjQg^ difficult and interesting of all questions : untied 
 them, we mean, so far as to make the logical statement of the 
 problems of human life more precise and clear. The problems 
 themselves have to be worked out by other aid, and under other 
 guidance, than that which he can afford us ; but quod dat acci- 
 pimus, not without some shame for having perhaps undervalued 
 other presents of his by which we might have profited. 
 TheDoubu 17. The tjQjDoubts ort^^pvidejice have been in most of our 
 vrovidence iii<is, and on the greater part of them Proclus has something 
 p. ai 179. ' to say which is worth listening to. The first (a) is, whether Pro- 
 ia>p.92 as. .yjj^^gg takes account of all things, of wholes, of parts, even 
 down to the most individual things in the heavens and under
 
 ETIL SUBSTANTIAL OE NOT ? 129 
 
 the heavens, eternal things and corruptible. The second (b) (j) 98100. 
 
 is, whether Providence takes cognisance of contingencies. The 
 
 third (c), if Providence is the cause both of things determinate (c) 100116. 
 
 and things indeterminate. Is it the cause of both in the same 
 
 way or in a different way ? The fourth (//), is on the question (f?) 116-123. 
 
 how it is possible to participate in the nature of the gods. 
 
 The fifth (e) is the more .terrible c^uestioji, hovr, e\il can have (e) 123 im. 
 
 place among beings while there is a Providence. The sixth (/) {/)i3i H4. 
 
 concOTns the inequality of the lives of men in the universe. 
 
 The seventh (g) refers to the differences of condition in inani- (g) 144153. 
 
 mate creatures apparently not susceptible of moral evil. The 
 
 eighth (A), refers to the delay of punishments and the apparent (*) 153-168. 
 
 disconnection between crime and punishment. The ninth (i), () 168174. 
 
 is on the question how the evils of one generation can be visited 
 
 upon another. The tenth (k) is in what sense, seeing that Pro- (ft) 174179. 
 
 vidence has been connected with the unity and with the perfect 
 
 good, angels, and daemons, and heroes, can be said to exercise it. 
 
 The statement of these difficulties may shew us with what awful 
 
 questionings of the human spirit the I^eo-Platonist was willing 
 
 to engage. Are we to mourn that he did not provide us with 
 
 formulas for the settlement of them which could save us from 
 
 the necessity of encountering them ourselves ? 
 
 18. The questions mooted in the third treatise are these. Tiiird 
 Whether Ev^_.ia or not. If it is, whether in things intellectual p^Tg;!*' 
 or not. Tria thiags sensible, whether in virtue of that which 
 is their original cause. If not, whether substance is in any 
 wise to be ascribed to it, or it is to be set down as wholly un- 
 substantial. K it has subsistence, in what wise it subsists, 
 and whither it tends : how, there being a Providence, Evil 
 is and whence it is. On all these points he says, and before 
 all, he must adhere to the doctrine of jPlato ; he can do nothing Nihil 
 if he departs from him. As we have already made copious [^^"tasse""'^ 
 extracts from the book of Plotinus which refers to this subject, nobis ab 
 we shall not trouble our readers with a discussion proceeding j',]g"^- ,jppj. 
 from what, in spite of 1^. CousiUj we must consider an infe- dent bus, 
 rior mind. Both sages amve'at "the same conclusion. The ^' ^ ^' 
 following passage will perhaps assist us as much in under- 
 standing the object and the result of the treatise as any we could 
 select. " Of aU things it would seem to be the most difficult 
 to know the nature of Evil in itself, seeing that all knowledge P. 273-274, 
 is the knowledge of species or form. But Evil is without ^ *' 
 form, and, so to speak, privation. Perhaps, however, we may 
 arrive at some satisfaction on this point, too, by contem- 
 plating Good in itself, and the nature of things which 
 are good. For as the primary good is beyond and above 
 all things, so Evil in itself is that which is divested of all 
 
 VOL. II. K
 
 130 LEAVE TAKING. 
 
 good. In 80 far forth as it is evil, it is the defect and priva- 
 tion of this. In what wise Good subsists, and what degrees it 
 has, has been set forth elsewhere. But Evil, as Evil, is that 
 which is separated from the fountain of Good ; separated in so 
 far as it is objectless and vague from the primary object ; in 
 so far as it is weakness, from the power which dwells in that 
 object ; in so far as it is want of harmony, falsehood, or 
 baseness, from beauty and truth, and that by which things are 
 united ; in so far as it is restless and unstable from the abiding 
 injugtitiam ^'^^ eternal unity ; in so far as it is privation and unvitality, 
 'Pn" from the first J^onad and the life which is in it ; in so far as it 
 
 sed"hiiem teuds to corrupt, smd divide, and make imperfect, the things 
 ewe ait'*" ^^^^ which it hath to do, from the goodness which is bringing 
 justitiie' the universe to perfection. For the corruptive draws from that 
 praJentia et ^^^^ch is to that which is not ; the divisive destroys the conti- 
 potentiam nuity and union of being ; the imperfect takes from each thing 
 ^efe daci''^ the perfection and order which belongs to its own nature." 
 non He goes on to explain with considerable skill and subtlety, 
 
 in iiu1"ip^u8 though Confessing that all he says has been said before by Plato, 
 neao^^' how that which is evil and unjust while in itself it is only nega- 
 aifa tive, yet derives a kind of positiveness and reality from the 
 
 801!'^ presence of the goodness and justice to which it is opposed, 
 iiuon.a'm et And thus it is intelligible how might should belong essentially 
 fpfum vu\ie *o rig^*> ^d ^6 inseparable from it ; the very power which seems 
 ensdatet to belong to wrong being in fact derived from the fellowship of 
 p'artkipaiio- that which it is weakening and undermining, 
 nena, p. :i76. 19, "W^ith this precious moral truth upon his lips we take a 
 friendly farewell of Proclus. The parting is somewhat more 
 practioiiiv solemn, because, as our readers must have gathered from our 
 the last of previous remarks, it is not from a man merely but from a period. 
 n age. Whatever be the merits or the defects of this Platonical teacher, 
 it is with him the Greek philosophy, as such, closes its records. 
 We do not mean that he left no successors. It was in the next 
 century, not in this, that the Athenian schools were closed. 
 But it had done whatever it had to do when Proclus delivered 
 his last lecture. Our friend the Corinthian Archbishop, in his 
 barbarous Latin-Greek lingo, signifies to us that whatever had 
 been once spoken in the proper tongue of the wise men, must 
 undergo a transformation before it could live again. And, 
 therefore, we must stand still for a moment, though we have 
 studied the different parts of the landscape with some care, that 
 we may consider it as a whole before it vanishes from us. 
 Recapitula. 20. We spoke in the former part of this treatise of the 
 ''' Platonical dialogues as treating of n^j^^ or that which is and 
 
 which may be detected amidst all the confused appearances of 
 things ; of Ideas, which could neither be said to exist in the
 
 Plato's opiJfioNS and his philosophy. 131 
 
 thinker nor in that of which he thinks, which are substantial, 
 not forms of our minds though implied in all the forms of 
 our minds, not subject to the conditions of time and of space 
 but unchangeable and eternal ; finally, of Unity, or the One which Piatonicai 
 is implied in all the thoughts of man, in the arrangements and ^" 'p'^'*' 
 existence of human society, in the order of the visible universe, art. Plato.' 
 We pointed out why, as it seemed to us, Plato had been least 
 successful in handling this last subject, most profound and in- 
 structive when he was treating of that Unity which the politi- 
 cian is obliged to recognise and assume, and that which the 
 dialectician seeks after when he is examining what is implied 
 in the discourse and reasonings of man. In these two cases he 
 was starting from data which his own experience and the expe- 
 rience of his country furnished him with ; he was proceeding in 
 a safe, cautious, experimental method, to discover what prin- 
 ciples lay beneath facts which could not be gaiasayed. In the 
 other case he was starting from hypotheses, he was considering 
 how the world might have been formed ; he had not yet learnt 
 how to question its phenomena and to extract from them their 
 law, as he questioned those which had to do directly with him- 
 self and with mankind. Hence, we said, it had come to pass 
 that the Timseus, though the great armoury for those who wish 
 to make out a system of Piatonicai opinions, is the worst guide 
 of all to the Piatonicai philosophy, which is nothing else 
 than a method of emancipation from Piatonicai opinions and 
 all other opinions, a search after a ground of reality that 
 lies beneath all opinions. 
 
 21. Now, if we are asked how far this philosophy was pur- The to o^ 
 sued by the spiritual descendants of Plato how far a Piatonicai 
 system was substituted for it we have endeavoured in several 
 particular cases to indicate the answer. The pursuit after 
 egging, or that which is, in the Socratic sense and Socratic 
 method, was, we have remarked, abandoned by Plotinus not 
 entirely, for he was a self-questioner, but to a very great extent 
 because he had none of the practical habits of Socrates, none of 
 his sympathy with common life. When the Tamblichan the- 
 urgy permanently established itself in fellowship with his more 
 pure philosophy, there was no doubt a greater mixture of the 
 popular element with the philosophical; but it was just that J^^JJ^^t'"'-'' 
 popular element of which Socrates was trying to get rid, just popular, 
 that which checked his own pursuit after the reality of things. 
 The reader is not at first aware how much this is the case, 
 because he finds Socratic phrases, respecting the things that are 
 and the things that are not, continually in the mouths of the 
 mythological doctors, and because he finds as frequent allusions 
 to mythological fables in the Piatonicai dialogues themselves as
 
 132 IDEAS BECOMIKG ACTUAL 
 
 Theinquirer iu their Commentaries, But if he looks carefully, he will 
 lecturer observe this most striking difference, that Socrates is feeling his 
 way to a substantial truth through the story, that the others 
 are trying to justify or reconstruct the story merely as the 
 vehicle or instrument for enunciating some principle. Proclus, 
 it may be admitted, is less busy in this work than some of the 
 more polemical teachers of the preceding century. His intense 
 and slavish addiction to Plato, and his want of imagination, 
 make him prefer the dry letter to the ornamental illustration. 
 But it cannot be said that he comes nearer to the simplicity of 
 Socrates when he forsakes the declamatory style. He is always 
 the lecturer who lays down principles, never the free and 
 Mendlv inquirer who is working them out. 
 Ideas. 22. The next department of the Platonical philosophy, that 
 
 which we spoke of as belonging more to the disciple than to the 
 master, to the profound thinker than to the homely questioner, 
 the doctrine ..of Idea^^ is one on which the New Platonista 
 believe^'ttaat they had especial illumination. They thought that 
 How treated if Ideas were, as Plato said^iyjjstan^l, not mere notions of our 
 school "^* minds, they must come to lis in some real actuaLiorm ; they 
 must come for^^rom the primagrubstan.qe, and present them- 
 selves to us. ^Ims the Platonic Ideas or ideals are transformed 
 into that host of spiritual persons, secondary Gods, Angels, 
 Dajmons, Heroes, Souls, wMcn are everywhere flitting before us 
 in the writings of the later doctois. 'You are never quite cer- 
 . 4;ainwhat guise these personages may put on. You are listen- 
 ing to Syrianus or Proclus in his chair ; it is a world of Ideas 
 to which you are introduced, ideas immeasurably less substan- 
 tial than those with which one has been familiar in Plato's own 
 writL'igs. But the professor has slipped off his cloak, and has 
 clothed himself in the robes which become him as priest of the 
 Their universe. In, a jfloment the ideas hj^e,h.!ee...jpgjj.yerted into 
 
 uncertainty, li^^jj^ creatureSj^ jnedia,tQrs between the trauscendant Unity "and 
 tlie human sa^e still Djixing^\v4th the. clods of. paxth^^ We are" 
 ^ar from wisliing to impute tKis apparent uncertainty as a crime 
 
 to the new schoo}.,... -^iKft.Jxave ,t.a,ted.jalf^aclX-J^|jXJ^fi.^iiS^Sil 
 t Plato's statement of the law unSCTwhicH^ 
 
 ,n perceives that which is absolute and eternal is the true v 
 one, if any conception which we form of the absoluLte Essence | 
 must be idolatrous and imperfect because it is our concepti6ri7 i 
 if yet the spirit of man is created to receive the knowledge \ 
 of this highest Essence, and must receive it in order that it \ 
 ay reach its highest blessedness, the Platonist can never have | 
 een content until the divine Ideal proved itself not to be j 
 Xecessity of Aie work of his intellect or imagination, and yet proved itself / 
 *ogy." W have the most intimate relation with both, with his very |
 
 UNITY. ' 133 
 
 ifseif. Either philosophical anticipations had nothing corre-l 
 isponding to them in reality, which Plato assumes that they | 
 ] must have, or this anticipation must meet some time or other 
 yts counterpart. And then how would it be possible to go on 
 l^erely speaking of the Ideal ? :^^he JSTew-Platonist said that 
 wSeii lEhe Christian church talked of the divine Ideal as mani- 
 fested, they talked nonsense. The only sense that could be 
 substituted for that nonsense was that in which Julian, lam- 
 bUchus, and Proclus so firmly believed. 
 
 23. The subject of Unity, in so far as it has to do with Unity 
 dialectics, that is to say in so far as the question is by what ** ^^ '*^* ' 
 process man may obtain to the knowledge of the pure and 
 absolute Unity, has been spoken of already in our remarks 
 upon the Parmenides, as treated by Proclus. That the neces- 
 sity of such a Unity had become more obvious to the com- 
 mentator, even than it was to the master, is sufficiently 
 evident. That a mere abstract Unity, apart from a living 
 Being, was a vision from which the elder sage revolted, which 
 the later felt to be impossible, we have joyfully confessed. 
 That Proclus had even more difficulty than Plato in recon- 
 ciling his conviction with the fact, we have been obliged to 
 admit. By some means or other the belief of a One living 
 ground of man and of the universe had established itself and 
 got root. The philosopher did willing, but somewhat per- 
 plexed, homage to a truth which was sweeping a whoie world 
 before it ; though the philosopher was shewing at the self- 
 same time how much he resembled tlie crowd in its unwilling- 
 ness to abandon that old world, in its readiness to rebuild its 
 idolatries upon a new foundation. 
 
 24. But if the unity of the Parmenides was partially as- unity 
 serted by the new school, what could they do to assert the political- 
 unity of the Republic ? Proclus could see the difference be- 
 tween a democracy and ochlocracy. Old Athenian wisdom 
 served him so far. But could the great speculator on all 
 human things throw the least light upon the question how 
 men of different races, tribes, languages, might be one ? how 
 the divine pattern in the heavens which Plato saw might be 
 a kingdom for the groaning and starving myriads upon earth ? The great 
 Not one syllable upon this subject, we do not say which fa*'"'^- 
 could be intelligible to ignorant multitudes, but which could 
 guide the thoughts of the man who believed in a higher 
 destiny for his kind, and was willing to suffer with it, came forth 
 from the sages of Athens or Alexandria, who proclaimed each 
 other to be inspired. If what they said was true, a multitude of 
 divine words had been spoken upon this earth, but nothing ever 
 had been upon it for its deliverance. G,ods-Betien<i noeric,
 
 184 POLITICS; PHYSICS. 
 
 dsemons, heroes and divine souls, had all taken a mighty in- 
 terest in some of its inhabitants ; and it was hastening on to the 
 abyss. We do not, indeed, deny that the earnest and instructive 
 discourses of Proolus on the subject of evil, have a very direct 
 Vsiuabie bearing upon political life. The principle which he asserts that 
 'i"* "" '*' that which is one is good, that evil breaks, divides, disperses, 
 contains within it the great maxim of social order, the indication 
 of the causes which interrupt it, the encouragement to all hope 
 in those who seek after it. But why was so precious a truth 
 so ineffective a one ? Where was the living uniting power that 
 could hold society in one, despite of the power apparent power 
 it might only be in the eyes of the philosopher, but tremendously 
 real for those who were crushed by it that was ever threatening 
 to tear it in pieces ? Who could tell men of this, and where it 
 dwelt ? If not, what is the use of settling, even in the most 
 satisfactory manner, whether Evil is or is not ? 
 Unity in the 25. The unity of Nature was still left. The Timaeus could 
 Cosmos. supply plentiful theories to those who had never found the 
 Atlantis of which it speaks. Proclus, we are told, wrote against 
 flie IMfosaic account of the creation. Christian priests and 
 Christian emperors, with their accustomed folly, wished to con- 
 fute or to silence him. They represented, it would seem, that 
 he believed in the eternity of the world, or that he confounded 
 it with its Author, The charge is not true. We have given 
 our readers proof enough out of his writings, in extracts cer- 
 tainly not selected for the purpose of glorifying him, which 
 positively confute it. There was nothing in the tenour or habit 
 of his speculations which inclined him to invest matter with 
 any glory ; everything which inclined him to disparage it. And 
 though, like Plotinus, he carefully distinguished the Cosmos 
 from matter, this had never the divinity in his mind which it 
 had in the speculations of the Stoics. At the same time it was 
 Mosfs and absolutely impossible for Proclus to understand Moses. The 
 Proclus. resemblance which Numenius had discovered between him and 
 Plato had become every day since less visible to the school ; 
 the Hebrew had become more hopelessly untranslatable into the 
 Attic. For the facts of light and darkness, of the firmament 
 above and below, of earth and sea, of sun and moon, of birds, 
 beasts, fishes, of man and woman, are those in which Moses 
 finds his order, and which he refers directly to the creative 
 Word ; man being in the nearest relation to it. The simple 
 institution of the week, with its day of rest and its days of work, 
 is to the Jew the expression of God's rest and work, of man's 
 rest and wor]^,;; of the relation of God to man, and of man to 
 the world. fSuc h an interpretation of the actual universe, as it 
 presents itseu to the eye of every peasant, such an assertion
 
 THE ECCLESIASTICS. / / 135 
 
 that the highest Grod is providing for the ordinary wants of The Jew 
 every peasant, and claiming him as the inheritor of the most Greek.^ 
 mysterious blessings, was of course utterly vulgar and intolerable 
 to a great theological cosmogonist who had discovered a multi- 
 tude of other links and gradationsjjjetween the divine and the 
 human, the heavenly and the earthlyj.^*And how cpuld a priest 
 of the universe like JProqlus, who wal to eclecticise and harmo- 
 nise aH mytholbgies, endure the stern Jew who called upon all 
 na^oiiS to confess the Lord of a few Syrian outcasts as their 
 king ? 
 
 26. Was it then because the Church was becoming specially The ciiurch 
 Hebrew in its character in the fifth century, that it could not " -t,^^** *^^ 
 endure the contact of Neo-Platonism, and that the struggle siiecuiations 
 between them was approaching its final crisis ? Apparently 
 
 there was no time in which the Hebrew characteristics were 
 becoming weaker, or were more threatening to disappear. In 
 their character of priests of the universe, the bishops and doctors 
 of the Christian (3Kurch were practically admitting the old 
 mythological notions to come and dwell within it, as the Plato- 
 nists were incorporating them in their philosophy. Nor can it 
 be said that they were less busy with hypotheses about the unir 
 versCj^ with QQ3r]Li.ogoxdcal theories, than their opponents. The 
 iext of Moses was rigidly adopted ; but it was overlaid with in- 
 ferences and speculations which destroyed all its character, and 
 made it just as artificial, just as far off from facts, as the Timseus, but Hebrew 
 or as the Hindop. P.urajias. But if the document was disguised, of their**''* 
 the institution which was the true commentary upon it had position, 
 become a part of the life and order of Christendom. Moreover, 
 men did wake in the morning to the perception that there was 
 day, and were reminded, before twenty-four hours were at an 
 end, that there was night. Summer and winter, seed-time and 
 harvest, were discovered to be parts of the economy of life. 
 And therefore plain people acknowledged a tie between them 
 and the old narrative, and left the doctors to settle their ques- 
 tions as they liked. The Church was Hebraic in spite of itself. 
 /it was trying to construct a religion and a philosophy which 
 should expel all other religions and philosophies, and should 
 make the thoughts and inquiries of men needless or sinful. It 
 was, in fact, standing on the proclamation of a one living God, 
 who had created the universe, had revealed Himself to man, and 
 who was awakening man to thoughts, aspirations, and hopes 
 which would have been equally crushed if the patriarchs or the 
 philosophers of Alexandria, of Constantinople, or of Athens, had 
 been able to establish their dominion.^' 
 
 27. It is necessary to press these remarks upon our readers 
 at this time, though we may have hinted them often before, lest
 
 130 PLATO NOT DEAD. 
 
 TbeCbiircb the fall of the schools of Neo-Platonism should awaken any 
 occasioirfor shout of triumph among Churchmen, as if they had succeeded 
 triumph, in treading down a dangerous adversary ; or lest philosophers 
 should complain that some great and hideous injustice^w^ com- 
 mitted, or some great loss sustained by the universe. AT here is 
 no cause for shouting among Churchmen : first, becaiw^mo true 
 principle whicli Platonism had asserted could by possibility die, 
 no vital distinction which it had proclaimed could be effaced, 
 though all the statesmen and the Churchmen in the universe 
 should conspire to produce such a result. There had been true 
 principles asserted by Plato : if they were forgotten or buried 
 under theological theories, theologians in later days would have 
 to seek them again, and reassert them as the justification of the 
 facts and promises of the Gospel. There were vital distinctions 
 established by Platonism, the distinctions between the eternal 
 and the temporal, the spiritual and the sensual, heaven and 
 earth : if these were denied or made light of by Christian doc- 
 tors, the humble members of the Christian Church would have 
 to demand them again, that St. Paul and St. John might not be 
 accused of deceiving them, that they might not be robbed of 
 treasures for which none that can be weighed in earthly balances 
 are any compensation. / And, such a shout of triumph over a 
 fallen foe is most idle and uncalled for, because the confusions 
 and perplexities of the Platonical school, and the phantasies and 
 superstitions which overwhelmed it, belong to human nature. 
 "We shall have to trace the reappearance of them, under different 
 forms, in all periods. The Christian doctor and priest is not 
 more safe from them than anoffier man. If he does not notice 
 the forms which they have taken, and supposes thatjthey belong 
 to others, not to him, he will certainly fall into them/ 
 The fall of 28. But the philosophical dirge is as little reascftf^ble as the 
 no cause for ecclesiastical paean. The work which Platonism had to do in 
 lamentation, the world, it had accomplished. K philosophers wish for a 
 recognition of its worth from those whom they suppose are its 
 enemies, the Christian literature of four centuries will supply 
 it. If we compare Athanasius or Augustin with those who 
 worshipped their names in later days, we shall know how, con- 
 sciously or unconsciously, they were helped by Plato to do a 
 work which their successors could not have done. And if this 
 is not the kind of homage which the modem admirers of Piato. 
 would desire, they may trace through all the history of the 
 time, indications how much the thoughts of which he was the 
 utterer were at work in minds which knew nothing of him, 
 how much Society was receiving its outward character and 
 form from certain great spiritual principles that could only be 
 expressed in language speaking of Bemg, of Unity, of a
 
 OTHER TEACHING NECESSAET. 137 
 
 human and divine Ideal. If these principles present them- 
 selves in history not as abstract forms, but as living facts, this 
 is certainly" what Socrates and Plato would have expected. This 
 explains why the former clung so tenaciously to the wood of 
 the carpenter and the last of the shoemaker ; why the latter 
 could ask even a tyrant of Syracuse to find himan actual world 
 in which he might work, that he might escape from the abstrac- 
 tions which he hated. 
 
 29. If indeed Plato had been the only teacher of the old why piato 
 Greek world who had worked out important principles, or dis- continue to 
 covered a valuable method, if there was no region besides the be resanied 
 one to which he pointed the way there might be some reason in philosopher. 
 the complaint that it could not last beyond the fifth or sixth 
 century, and that a Church which had its foundation in Palestine, 
 and received its lore from Semitic teachers, extinguished that 
 which interfered with their supremacy. But we have always 
 maintained that the field of thought in which Aristotle worked 
 is one which requires and rewards cultivation, as well as that 
 which his master tilled. Each, we have contended, in opposition 
 to the pretensions of their respective schools, did what the other 
 could not do. The disciples of Plato made him the systematiser 
 which he was trying not to be, when they sought to bring the 
 universe under his government. The great danger of Aristotle 
 arose from the encyclopaedic character of his mind, which made 
 him suppose that he had comprehended all things because he 
 had succeeded in discovering the formulas under which man 
 conceives of all things. The proximate cause of the loiin of the 
 Neo- Platonic school was that they fancied they could include 
 Orpheus, Plato, Aristotle, in themselves, that the universe had 
 been in travail for nearly 5000 years only to bring them forth. 
 If they were good Platonists, they could not be also good 
 Aristotelians. They might honour Aristotle sincerely and pro- 
 foundly, but it was mere arrogance to pretend that they could 
 deal with the class of facts which he understood better than any 
 man, upon their method. It was all very well for Cicero to 
 unite the Academician and the Peripatetic. Mere artificial 
 schools may always be accommodated, though they cannot be 
 reconciled. But in the history of the world philosophies will 
 either go for nothing, or they will prove their worth by connect- 
 ing themselves with some distinct region of human experience 
 which is demanding interpretation. We often hear of ^ti^jcgjajjiy: phiiosophi- 
 of Aristotle which succeeded to the tyranny of Plato. Such ^J^tyj^an^^'e* 
 ISciguage may have an important truth in it which we shall have signify. 
 to examine and to confess. But a tyranny does not establish 
 itself for centuries upon an earth which is subject to an order, 
 by mere accident. A man who has been in his grave a thousand
 
 188 
 
 CBISIS AT BJlKD, 
 
 Aristot'e. 
 
 Indications 
 OF a new 
 epoch. 
 
 B^etliius, 
 A. D. 
 470-524 
 
 The place 
 assiji^necl 
 him by 
 scbolairs. 
 
 years does not, in despite of a multitude of living obstacles, 
 spring to a throne over the most thinking minds for a series of 
 ages, merely because they have a mad propensity for being in 
 bondage. It is not that propensity, but the desire for deliver- 
 ance, for illumination, upon subjects on which darkness is in- 
 tolerable and unsafe, which has led men to seek for one or 
 another guide to their footsteps. We must understand through 
 what path they were travelling, what the surrounding atmo- 
 sphere was, before we can pronounce that they chose amiss. It 
 may be that their temporary chief is the very one that has been 
 appointed for them ; that it would have been as perilous for 
 them to have been without him, as it was to follow him, when 
 they entered a new track which he had not trodden, or in which 
 he had gone astray. 
 
 30. Before the fifth century closed, there were very clear indi- 
 cationsof the approach notof an Aristotelian school but of anAris- 
 totelian epoch. We will point out in what direction these traces 
 are to be sought. But when we have done our duty to chronology, 
 by denoting the man who was to be the commencement of the new 
 period, we shall reserve the consideration of his thoughts, which 
 were to have so great an influence upon it, till it has actually 
 commenced, ^o^thius is commonly spoken of asftlie swan from 
 whose throat the ^ying notes of old classical ^(S^uence pro- 
 ceeded I as the man who preserved the tradition of the age of 
 CicerOj or at least of Pliny, in the days of the Ostrogoth. 
 That honour may doubtless belong to him, and it is the one on 
 which the scholar is most likely to dwell. The cruel sentence 
 of the hitherto just ruler, upon the Roman Senator, the fact that 
 he occupied his prison hours in vsriting the " Consolations of 
 Philosophy," that, Christian as he was, he clung to that word as 
 fondly as Augustin had done, the somewhat pedantical attach- 
 ment with which he held by the old forms of the republic, like 
 the Arnolds and Rienzis of after days, offer a sufficient excuse 
 for that classification which connects him with the world that 
 had been, rather than with that which was to be. But those 
 who love to watch the birth more than the death of things who 
 welcome Theodoric's government as the sign that a modern 
 Europe was bursting from a shell which it had taken 500 years 
 to break have a right to claim the honourable name of his victim 
 as most properly belonging to them. As Englishmen we might 
 insist that when Saxon and Roman wisdom first began to mingle 
 and understand each other under the auspices of Alfred, the 
 " Consolations of Philosophy" was chosen to express their 
 union, or the transition from one to the other. But the student 
 of the history of European philosophy is under a much stronger 
 obligation not to treat Boethius as a mere relic of the past.
 
 THE END OF THE PEBIOD. 139 
 
 The continual references to him in the Middle Ages are not He occupies 
 chiefly to his ethics but much more to his logic. It is in his otfe hrphuo- 
 character as a logical writer that he shews what the tendencies sophicai 
 of the coming time were, with what kind of questions it would be '^*'>'- 
 occupied. Augustin, Latin as he was, is emphatically the 
 Latin Platonist : his divinity, as much as his philosophy, is con- 
 versant with the eternal, and with man's relations to it. The 
 forms in which men speak and reason are interesting to him 
 only as he contemplates them from this higher ground, 
 Boethius on the contrary is the Latin ^Aristotelian, and the 
 one who showed how much more naturally the Latin mind, The Latin 
 when left to itself, and out of the reach of Greek influences, Aristotelian, 
 sympathises with the Aristotelian than with the Platonic temper. 
 Under what modifications this is true, to what apparent and to 
 what real exceptions it is liable, to what degree other influences 
 besides the purely Latin were at work in the Middle Ages, how 
 the Grothic, the Hebrew, the Arabic, the purely Christian in- 
 fluences conspired or counteracted each other, these are ques- 
 tions which we shall have to consider hereafter. And that we 
 may consider them more satisfactorily, we hasten to conclude 
 our narrative of the properly Greek school, by glancing at the 
 events of the sixth century, which was to prepare the way for 
 the future philosophy of Europe, though it may have supplied 
 no names on which it behoves us to dwell. 
 
 CHAPTEE VI. 
 
 The Sixth Centuet. 
 
 1. "We said that no great philosophical names would cause us to Tiie leading 
 linger over the records of the Sixth Century. There are two ^jxth"' *''^ 
 unphUosophical names which every one recollects who thinks of Century, 
 it : perhaps we may have more to say of these than of many 
 who have founded schools and composed systems. They are 
 both of them far more memorable for what they did by them- 
 selves, or through others, than for what they thought ; yet they 
 have both, consciously or unconsciously, affected speculation as 
 much as action. When they sought to hinder or direct its 
 course, their movements were often feeble, sometimes mis- 
 chievous, and ultimately led to results which they did not fore- 
 see and might have wished to avert. But a mightier power 
 than their own was using them as instruments in buUdiog up 
 the social and spiritual life of Christendom, as weU as in pre- 
 paring the way for its greatest disruption. We speak of the 
 Emperor Justinian and the Pope Gregory I.
 
 140 
 
 CONSTATTTIN'OPLE IN GLOET. 
 
 his reiKu 
 connected. 
 
 Justinian. 2. The life of Justinian is directly connected with our subject, 
 inasmuch as it was his decree which closed for ever the lips of 
 those Athenian teachers with whom we were so much occupied 
 in the last chapter. But after the remarks which we made on 
 the waning of Neo-Platonism even in its great representative, 
 Proclus, and on the evident tokens which his writings furnished 
 that it had fully delivered its message to mankind, this event, 
 taken by itself, would not seem to be of any great im- 
 portance. Romulus Augustulus stands as the representative of 
 the death of an empire, and the moment of its extinction has a 
 certain solemnity in it ; but we feel that it was doomed, and 
 only wonder that it lasted so long. To know exactly when the 
 The outward last Platonist of the Empire fled from it to try his fortune in 
 history of another region, is not uninteresting ; but the interest is rather 
 sentimental than practical. If, therefore, this had been a soli- 
 tary act of the Emperor ; if the rest of his doings, though appa- 
 rently most unconnected with it, had not been a commentary 
 upon it, and had not received illustration from it ; we might have 
 passed it by with a very casual notice. But there is no great 
 transaction of this memorable reign ; no proceeding of the 
 monarch, however paltry as to the motive in which it originated, 
 or its immediate object ; no war that was waged with other 
 nations ; no striving in the Church, or the Circus of Constanti- 
 nople ; which has not a clear internal relation to this decree, and 
 wluch is not, like this, an index to the moral and intellectual 
 condition of a period. 
 
 3. If we contemplate Justinian in that aspect in which his 
 panegyrists would like best to exhibit him, as the man at whose 
 bidding Tribonian and his associates compiled the Institutes, 
 the Pandects, and the Code, we discover the character of his 
 reign and the kind of influence which it was to exercise. Con- 
 sidering that this was the time in which Constantinople most 
 pretended to dominion over the world, most vindicated the 
 design of its founder, by proving itself to be the Capital, one 
 cannot but be struck with the strange fact, that just then the 
 Greek should have paid the profoundest and most permanent 
 homage to the Latin wisdom. There is, no doubt, mixed in the 
 Corpus a certain Greek element ; but how weak and inconsider- 
 able compared with the contributions of the old jurists of the 
 Roman world ; how clearly they prove their language to be the 
 one that was fittest for expounding rights and obligations ; the 
 function of their race to be that of organising bodies of men, of 
 ascertaining by what covenants and contracts they are held to 
 each other, of fixing the method and limits of punishment! 
 Justinian's compilation is the most frank and childlike confes- 
 sion of this superiority, a declaration that Constantinople could 
 only govern the world through the influences bequeathed to it 
 
 The 
 legislator. 
 
 Bows to 
 
 Latin 
 wisdom.
 
 YIELDS TO EOME IK WEAKNESSS. 141 
 
 by that city whicli seemed no longer capable of governing itself, 
 scarcely of maintaining its existence. 
 
 4. It would be sufficiently clear from this document, were The 
 there no other facts to sustain it, that this treasure had passed not kn^ow*^'^ 
 to heirs who, even when they possessed it, could not use it. whence the 
 Laws might be adopted or enacted by a Greek Emperor, but he is derived.^* 
 did not know wherein their force lay : he fancied they proceeded 
 
 from his own will : that which had established itself by centuries 
 of struggle between opposing wUls, which could control, as 
 long as anything could, the wHd impulses of Italian tyrants and 
 Italian legions, seemed to the Byzantine the creature of his 
 own despotism. He had not even skill to hide the contradiction 
 from his subjects ; still less had he skill to inspire them with 
 any settled reverence either for edicts written in letters, or for 
 the person who sanctioned them. The volatile mob of his 
 Capital was never more prone to tumults, more impatient of 
 authority, than under the man who clothed himself with the 
 justice of foregone centuries, and assumed that it proceeded 
 from his mouth. 
 
 5. But it was not only to the Home of other days that Con- His homage 
 Btantinople, in the person of Justinian, paid obeisance. His * *^^ Popes, 
 predecessors, like so many of his successors, maintained the dig- 
 nity of the Patriarchs, as well as that of the Empire, against the 
 spiritual authority which a series of strange events was making 
 
 the only one in the old city of the Caesars. Justinian appearing 
 to have a mightier empire than any Byzantine monarch had ever 
 enjoyed, confessed the dominion of the Popes when it looked 
 most weak and in the greatest peril. Eor them he legislated, 
 for them he conquered. By whatever means they had won 
 their authority, he felt it to be more substantial than his own, 
 for it was establishing itself over the minds and hearts of men 
 of various tribes, and these, even within his very palace, proved 
 refractory to him. 
 
 6. No doubt there were strong and obvious motives which Poiicyofthis 
 influenced the monarch in taking this course. The immediate ^ ^""* 
 opposition was greater in his eyes than the distant one : Greek 
 
 and Egyptian bishops, or (if these could be tamed by Court 
 favours) monks, might be a more perilous disturbance to his 
 power than an Italian bishop could ever be. If he could secure 
 their allegiance by enlisting a ruler on his side whom they would 
 honoiu* because he was ecclesiastical, however they might be 
 offended at him because he was Latin, the concession of a 
 nominal supremacy would be a cheap sacrifice. So Justinian 
 probably argued with himself: the frightful consequences of 
 theological controversies to some recent Emperors added the 
 greatest practical weight to the reasoning. But the policy of
 
 142 
 
 CATHOLIC TICTOEIES. 
 
 Coni|uest8 
 ot Justinian. 
 
 Defeat of the 
 Ariai>8 in 
 Africa. 
 
 The 
 O.-trogoths. 
 
 Connection 
 of these 
 victories 
 with the 
 <Rith of 
 Christians. 
 
 Justinian was determined by causes far mightier than his 
 powers of seeing or foreseeing. He was yielding to a hidden 
 force which he could not control. He submitted to the Papal 
 ascendancy, for he had no might in his own world which could 
 be matched against it. 
 
 7. And yet it seemed as if the hosts which Belisarius led into 
 Africa and Italy, and which effected such triumphs there, had 
 a might like that which once belonged to the legions of Pompey 
 or of Trajan. The nature and consequences of these victories 
 concern our subject more nearly than we might at first fancy. 
 The death-bed of Augustin was saddened, his faith called forth, 
 by the news that Hippo was besieged by the Vandals through 
 the crime of his friend Boniface. Prom that time the Arians 
 had been rulers of the African province ; the believers in the 
 Trinity had been exposed to the crudest persecutions. Justinian 
 sent forth his troops more to put down heretics than to win new 
 provinces for the Empire. The work was a complete one : the 
 Vandals were exterminated. The temporary rule of Constanti- 
 nople was connected with the reappearance of an indigenous 
 African population. The most signal victory of the Cross, as it 
 appeared to that generation, prepared the way for the triumph 
 01 the Oescent a little more than a century afterwards. 
 
 8. The more tremendous and equally balanced war with the 
 Ostrogothic kingdom was also a struggle with Arianism. Here 
 the consequences were different, but not less serious, not less 
 affecting the after destinies of the world ; for here the Greek 
 and the Latin, while apparently fighting on the same side, were 
 taught to understand their different powers and their different 
 weaknesses, were taught to feel how impossible it was that they 
 should exist together in Italy, unless they were combined by 
 the terror of some third power, or were seeking to destroy each 
 other. Here it was proved how the petty intrigues of a palace 
 might destroy the hard-won fruits of a campaign, and make new 
 conquests, new depopulations, new wastings of the soil inevitable. 
 Here it was proved how those intrigues and the revenge which 
 they provoked might ultimately, through the mercy of God, 
 lead to results the most necessary for the well-being oi mankind. 
 How different would have been the condition of the world if the 
 courtiers had not tempted Narses to invite the Longbeards to 
 supply the place of the enfeebled Ostrogoth, if Italy had been 
 entirely given up to the Exarchs and the Popes ! 
 
 9. These may be described as victories of the Trinitarian over 
 the Arian faith. The ordinary phrase that they were triumphs 
 r>f orthodoxy, expresses the character of them far more correctly. 
 If we are asked how we distinguish between two modes of 
 speech which are commonly regarded as synonymous, we should
 
 FAITK AKD OPINION. 143 
 
 answer that to understand the difference between them is the 
 greatest possible help in understanding the age of Justinian. 
 No doubt his name stands with a very doubtful mark upon it 
 among orthodox historians. No one who laboured so hard to 
 acquire the reputation by words and arms, and who was so 
 vehement in his condemnation of others for wanting it, more 
 entirely missed his aim. This is one of the facts in his life on 
 which it is most instructive to dwell. The secret of his failure 
 may perhaps be found in the object of his ambition. The 
 Trinity with him was not a belief, but an opinion. Men were 
 to hold right opinions upon it and upon all other subjects. If 
 they did not, they were to be coerced. But, like everything 
 else in Justinian's mind, this doctrine belonged to the region of 
 decrees. It was true because certain councils, and he the 
 Emperor, who was or ought to be higher than they, had said 
 it was true. Why shoidd men not accept it as much as any 
 edict concerning services or the price of provisions ? 
 
 10. Herein consists the amazing difference between the comparison 
 struggle for this doctrine as it was maintained in the fourth ofthefonrth 
 century by Athanasius, and in the sixth by Justinian. The the sixth, 
 extracts which we made from the writings of the Bishop of 
 Alexandria showed us what principles affecting the moral being 
 
 of man he supposed were involved in the theological principle 
 for which he contended ; how, in asserting it, he adopted the 
 method which had been a long while familiar to the inhabitants 
 of his city, which had been marked out by Clemens and unfolded 
 by Origen. The more mascvdine and practical mind of Athana- 
 sius might not be prone to the allegories into which their fancy 
 and their comparative leisure had tempted them ; the hard 
 worker might have escaped from some of the idols of the cave 
 to which the student had bowed down. But in all essentials he piatonismof 
 was, and never shrunk from confessing that he was, their pupil, Athanasius. 
 If what are called the Platonical distinctions were found in 
 them, he inherited them. Had they looked like school refine- 
 ments, he would have cast them away with scorn : believing the 
 whole world to be interested in them, he clave to them. Arius 
 seemed to him to be confounding the temporal with the eternal 
 the relations which belong to change, and accident, and cir- 
 cumstance, with those which belong to the divine mind. How- 
 ever he might be charged with indulging in philosophical subtle- 
 ties, he must maintain that which was needful to vindicate the 
 substance and unity of God, that which showed how it was 
 possible for the creature to hold converse with the Creator, 
 
 11. But what was all this to the husband of l^odora ? With Anti- 
 
 a feverish, restless intellect; always longing to be busy about j^un'an!"' 
 invisible as well as visible things, to be making decrees for
 
 144 JtrSTINIAN's COTJBJLOE. 
 
 heaven, and earth, and hell, to be fixing what men should 
 think as well as what they should do, he never seems to have 
 bad the belief, scarcely the dream, that anything is, that man 
 can know it, or God can reveal it. Arianism was to him partly 
 the disturbing element in a world whicli he hoped to bring 
 luider the Byzantine rvde, partly the disobedience to different 
 maxims which were contained in the Responsa prudentum, or in 
 the rescripts of former Emperors, and which might be now 
 embodied in the Digest. Such a man may or may not be a 
 supporter of truths. But Truth is odious to him. He looks 
 upon it as a kind of impossibility. He has a spite against aU 
 who have sought after it. If he can detect them in having failed 
 or blundered in the pursuit, his triumph is excessive, his eager- 
 His hatred ness to pass judgment upon them unbounded, his confidence in 
 seekereT*' ' ^^^ ^^^ ^^^^^ ^ pointing out the source and necessary conse- 
 quence of their real or supposed mistakes, imperial. Hence it 
 came to pass that the men in whose school Athanasius had learnt 
 the wisdom which he used against the Arians, were the men on 
 whom Justinian, the overthrower of Arians, invoked such horrible 
 judgments as his generals and armies could not bring upon those 
 whom he thought himself appointed to destroy. 
 Justinian's 12. There was a characteristic difference, too, in the kind of 
 V^d^'^d 6^ei6s with whom the poor Alexandrian and the mighty 
 Constantinopolitan waged war. Athanasius defied the living, 
 the men who had broached the newest and most favouriie 
 opinion, the men who were likely to have the patronage of 
 Eusebius and of Constantine. Justinian, more judicious, sought 
 the champions with whom he fought, in their graves. With 
 passionate piety and heroism, the ruler of the East, the conqueror 
 of the West, poured out his anathemas upon Origen who 
 had aspired to be a martyr in his boyhood, and had lived the life 
 of a martyr to his grey hairs. The man who had done more 
 than aU others to promote the study of the divine oracles, the 
 teacher of Pagans, the strengthener of Christians, the converter 
 of nations, of whom his contemporaries could not speak without 
 love, who was most admired by those who were brought nearest 
 the circle of his influence, was pronounced accursed by this pro- 
 found theologian, for opinions which he supposed he had detected 
 in his writings, of which, whether they were there or not, 
 he certainly understood nothing but the mere outside, and the 
 very worst and most confused of which proved Origen to be a 
 wiser and better man than his persecutor ever showed himself 
 to be in the most creditable acts of his life. The comments of 
 tlie infidel historian upon Justinian and upon the Bishops of 
 the Fifth Council of Constantinople, who registered his edicts 
 against Origen, Theodore, Theodoret, and Ibas, are instructive
 
 THE GEOUND OF THE UNIVERSE. 145 
 
 and valuable. " If these men," he says, " were already in the Gibbon, vol. 
 fangs of the daemon, their torments could be neither aggravated ^i^i' ^^' ^**' 
 nor assuaged by human industry. If in the company of saints 
 and angels they enjoyed the rewards of piety, they must have 
 smiled at the idle fury of the theological insects who still crawled 
 on the surface of the earth." We may venture, perhaps, to ask 
 whether in such company thej/ will not rather have wept to 
 think what work these theologians were sent upon the earth to 
 do, and what they were actually doing, to think, supposing 
 them endued with the gift of foresight, what miseries were pre- 
 paring for the Church, which was at this moment so inflated 
 with pride and cruelty. 
 
 13. These observations are a proper and necessary introduc- The schools 
 tiou to the subject of Justinian's dealings with the Platonical gophy'"' 
 school. We quoted in the last chapter a memorable passage 
 
 from Proclus respecting the Platonical Trinity. We purposely 
 abstained from any comments upon it, because it is a subject 
 which should be approached, if it is approached at all, in its 
 relation to the life and history of six centuries, not to the opi- 
 nions of a particular teacher. We avoided this topic even in 
 our general review of the philosophy, lest our readers should 
 think that it merely formed a section or chapter of that philo- 
 sophy. It behoves us now to say what we have to say respecting 
 it, premising that it would have been regarded as inseparable 
 by Proclus, by his brethren, and by Plato himself, from that 
 great subject of Unity which " The Parmenides" and " The 
 Bepublic" bring before us. 
 
 14, The passage from Proclus can only be looked upon as The 
 containing the hint of a principle which presented itself under xriad?"^*' 
 the most different aspects at different times to him, and to those 
 
 who were engaged in his class of speculations. His words will 
 teach us that he looked upon a Triad as implied not only in all 
 acts and manifestations of the Divinity, but also in all the 
 deepest thoughts of man and conditions of human life. Faith, 
 Truth, Love, constitute in his judgment a trinity for man. In 
 all the orders of daemons and heroes such a trinity, or one of 
 which this is the counterpart, is presumed. Proclus takes it 
 for granted always, at times he directly affirms, that if such a 
 triad exists in' all the divine manifestations, and in all the sub- 
 ordinate ranks of beings, it must exist in the highest nature 
 itself Such had been the belief which had been growing deeper 
 and stronger from age to age in the minds of these men ; which 
 they thought they could distinctly trace in their original master ; onfirma- 
 and which received abundant confirmation as they became better |j,'ir {,'^jjpf 
 acquainted with the religions and philosophies of the East, and 
 perceived under what various forms, in countries widely sepa- 
 TOL. II. L
 
 146 
 
 SCIENCE AND HUMAWITT. 
 
 How it 
 
 aflected 
 tlipir 
 relations 
 with the 
 Church. 
 
 rated by space and circumstance, this idea had presented itself; 
 how unconsciously it seemed to have pervaded popular mytho- 
 logies which were setting it at nought by the multiplicity of 
 their idols ; how it had started up again and again in the con- 
 sciousness of the students who were most embarrassed by it 
 because it looked like a hindrance to their craving for absolute 
 oneness. 
 
 15. Of course in the polemic of the Platonical school with 
 the Christian Church it was a great object to insist upon their 
 possession of this idea. In this case, as in every other, they 
 desired to show that the essential truth was theirs which had 
 been deprived of all its idealism, and adapted to the necessities 
 of the most unspiritual, in the Christian creeds. But how^ever 
 frequently such observations might have been made in the lec- 
 ture-room, the more intelligent teachers must have been aware 
 that the only hope of victory for them must come from the dili- 
 gence with which they made it evident that they had hold of a 
 substance and not a shadow. In so far as they devoted them- 
 selves steadily to this object, in so far as they worked with 
 honest scientific diligence to prove that the law which they had 
 recognised was one which governed the facts of the world, 
 and could be discovered in them, they were entitled to the 
 kind of honour which in another region we now render to 
 Davy or to Faraday. But here too they exhibited the uneasy 
 consciousness that human life demands something more than 
 mere laws to regulate it ; that faith, truth, and love, if they 
 constitute a trinity, cannot become mere algebraical symbols, 
 that they imply a believer and an object believed in, a seer and 
 that which is seen, a lover and that which is loved. It was im- 
 possible for them to retain a merely scientific position. For 
 what were they to abandon it ? The answer has been given 
 already. Their philosophical dignity would have been violated 
 by acknowledging the Christian doctrine. Nay, it ought not to 
 be concealed, there were other hindrances less dishonourable to 
 The Church them than their pride. As the doctrine of the Cliurch became the 
 ^ecomes established and persecuting one, its most vigorous followers 
 scientific became not only imscientific, but anti-scientific. They were 
 secular. uot, like Athanasius, or Basil, or Gregory of Nazianzum, earnest 
 in exhibiting tlieir principle as a foundation for human life. 
 
 J hey were merely earnest in asserting ifc as an accepted dogma, 
 hey protested against the Platonists, not because they reduced 
 ^g.tr.iitii3.iataabatmctix)li8 that they were doing themselves; 
 ^ot because legions of intermediate powers were shutting out 
 ihe Divine Being from His creature that charge might be 
 )roved as clearly against them ; not because they were a band 
 )f exclusive sages hostile to the rights of the people, they too 
 
 How far a 
 part of 
 science : 
 how far 
 distinct 
 from it.
 
 THE END. 147 
 
 were busy in asserting their own rights, their own notions, their 
 own more paltry and worldly supremacy. The consequence The idea of 
 was, that Platonism grew more determined to have a religion of guftafned ^ 
 its own, while it grew more incapable of producing or supporting amons: the 
 one, more desirous of asserting its own philosophical idea of a by^supe^r" 
 Trinity, while that idea was dwindling into a lifeless notion stitions that 
 which had neither outward patronage nor inward force to keep Tolt^ ^^"^^^ 
 it from sinking into the grave to which all mere notions are 
 destined. 
 
 16. From the other tasks in which we have seen Justinian Justinian 
 engaged, we may judge how fitting it was that he should dig the di^ger!^^' 
 grave for this corpse, and deposit it in its native earth. His 
 business had been with the dead "man and boy for thirty 
 years" either to preserve them as mummies in digests, to 
 trample upon them if they had offended him by their specula- 
 tions, to bury them with all possible indignity if they had no 
 friends to celebrate their obsequies. In the year 529 the edict The last 
 went forth which drove Diogenes, Hermias, Eulalius, Priscian, ^^^*- 
 Damascius, Isidore, and Simplicius, from Athens into Persia. 
 
 The reader is probably familiar with the short history of their 
 
 fortunes, as it is given byj&ibbon. As Chosroes was the great Gibbon, vol. 
 
 antagonist of the Greek empire, as he represented not only ^i'- 
 
 the old Persian empire, but that Persian religion which had 
 
 been often so closely associated with philosophy, and was always 
 
 80 powerful a rival of Christianity, these teachers hoped that 
 
 they should have found a friend, if not a patron, nay, perhaps 
 
 that they should discover the Platonopofis which Plotinus had 
 
 been unable to establish in Campania. But they returned to Their return 
 
 the Christian world finding it actually less bigoted and less *'' P''"'"- 
 
 intolerant than that in which they had trusted they should live 
 
 under the rule of Cyrus or of ^r^astgr. Chosroes, however, 
 
 who, if not the chief of a divine republic, was at least a far better 
 
 man than the head of the rival empire, stipulated with Justinian 
 
 that they should live and die in peace. That the history of 
 
 Greek philosophy may be complete in outward form as well as 
 
 in spiritual essence, it is made to close, as it was supposed to 
 
 begin, with a mystical seven. 
 
 17. The historian of the Decline and FaU happily connects Abolition 
 the abolition of the consulship with the banishment of the^f^''*^ 
 philosophers. An interval of only twelve years passed between 
 
 the two events, and they are both, though not equally, illustra- 
 tive of the character of this epoch. The symbols of lioman 
 greatness in government, as of Greek greatness in thought, were 
 to be swept away ; the reality of them having long disappeared. 
 But Justinian, as we have partly perceived already, as we shall 
 see more clearly soon, could only sweep away the vestiges of old
 
 148 ' THE LATINS AJSTD GEEEKS. 
 
 institutions in Home that he might clear the ground for a more 
 powerful native despotism there ; whereas his acts in the Greek 
 h^ve^I" "** world denoted that all its distinctive features were obliterated, 
 dirierent that all its peculiar glory was at an end. Justinian existed, 
 siffnification ^^^ ^^ destroy, but to declare that the Greek Church and the 
 Greek Empire were withered and ungenerative stocks, from 
 which no more good could be expected for humanity unless some 
 surprising devastation, mocking and subverting all their apparent 
 prosperity, should once more awaken the energy of churchmen 
 and statesmen, and show them that they existed for some other 
 purpose than to debate, to curse, and to lie. 
 Transition ig. The famous battles of Belisarius had left Italy feeble and 
 world. wretched. The Catholic Church, through its heretical champion 
 of Constantinople, had won an apparent triumph in the destruc- 
 tion of an Arian empire which was growing feeble of itself: it 
 sustained a heavy shock by the establishment of a more powerful 
 race of which the king might be an Arian, but of which the sub- 
 jects were commonly Pagans. If the people of Rome were 
 doubtful whether these barbarians, or the Greek exarchs, were 
 more intolerable, their spiritual rulers at least turned to the 
 monarchs of Constantinople for help and deliverance. But 
 those who had succeeded Justinian were gathering in the harvest 
 of which he had sown the seed. The land which had aspired to 
 conquer the West could scarcely maintain its existence against 
 the Persian. The groans of the Eomans, though Popes might 
 utter them, and the Archdeacon Gregory might carry them to 
 Constant!- Constantinople, were as little heeded there as the groans of the 
 to sifccour'^ Britons had been, a century before, in the now prostrate capital. 
 Rome. They might complain of desertion, but what could their feeble 
 masters do but resign them to struggle as they might with 
 Lombards, with their own oppressive emissaries, with pestilence 
 and famine ? 
 Greftory the 19. These well-known facts prepare us for the real separation 
 Great. ^^ ^-^q Latin from the Greek world, for the growth and con- 
 solidation of the one under circumstances apparently the most 
 unpropitious, whilst the other was sinking more and more 
 rapidly from prosperity into feebleness and ruin. Gregory 
 stands as the representative of this great crisis in the history of 
 Italy and of Western Europe. From his time the language, 
 however insolent and presumptuous, which identifies the Western 
 world with Christendom, acquires a meaning and a justification : 
 we fall into it unawares, even while we protest against it. We 
 feel that it is the organic part of Christendom : and the con- 
 sideration of the influences which helped or retarded its organi- 
 sation ; attempts to seize the principle which governed it ; hasty 
 generdisations which assume that one part of it explains all the
 
 QUALITIES OF THE LATOT MIND. " 149 
 
 rest ; and exposures of the fallacy of these generalisations, may ^^^ ^^^ 
 be said almost to constitute modern history. !Xo doubt the western 
 annalist is recalled continually to the East ; but he is recalled ^^^ *^*"** 
 by the report of convulsions which are dismembering it, or that regarded as 
 he may observe what wild vigour, what a strong united purpose, dom! ^"' 
 is awakened in the nations of the West by the desire to conquer 
 or to restore it. And as it is in the world of action, so, we have 
 hinted already, it is in the world of thought, with which that is 
 in such close contact. The care of documents, the cultivation 
 of a refined antiquarian scholarship, the preservation of the fossil 
 remains of an earlier generation, are duties which the Greek 
 imposed upon himself, which in the main he fulfilled faithfully, 
 and for which we owe him hearty gratitude. The Odyssean 
 gift still remained to him, changed in its objects, but scarcely 
 less strong under the lower empire than in the days of the 
 heroes. He was still, when occasion called for it, the subtlest 
 and craftiest of men. The ambition of governing men, with all 
 the skill ia supplanting rivals which accompanies it, may be as 
 much traced among patriarchs as in the clever tyrants in the 
 Ionian colonies. But the energy which grapples with iutellec- 
 tual as with physical diflBculties, the hope which always points 
 to the end of an enterprise, and yet which makes the enterprise 
 delightful for its own sake, the eagerness to combine and 
 reconcile things which seem most incongruous, the stubborn 
 toil, ^the passion for building, the readiness to begin again when 
 one edifice after another has tumbled for want of a fovmdation, 
 ^the patience which can dig for one through hard rock and 
 amidst frequent inundations ; these are qualities for which we 
 look in vain to the successors of Solon and Thales, and which 
 we find, with all their accompanying extravagances, follies, 
 tyrannies, rebellions, in the world which rose out of the ruins of 
 the empire of Augustus. 
 
 20. The accomplished historian of the Middle Ages, in his 
 work on the Literature of Europe, speaks of Grregory I. and moraine. 
 Nicholas V. as aptly represented by the Night and Morning of see HaUam, 
 the great Artist. Such a comparison comes naturally and Li'tg^^ature 
 gracefully from a refined scholar, who not only sees in the vol. i. 
 banishment of Greek literature from the Western nations an 
 unspeakable loss, but connects with it the formation of a bar- 
 barous Latin tongue, and an incapacity to appreciate those who 
 had spoken it in its purity. Still more naturally does it belong 
 to a defender of moral and intellectual freedom, who has good 
 reason to think that it was crushed under a system of govern- 
 ment and dogmas which Gregory inaugurated, and that the 
 surest pledge of its recovery was the revival of that classical 
 tone of feeling which Nicholas patronised and helped to diffuse.
 
 150 geegobt's tastes. 
 
 But as annalists of philosophical inquiries, we must demur to 
 the sentence which to a judge who contemplates the subject 
 from Mr. Hallam's point of view appears so reasonable. It is 
 not our present business to canvass the meiits of Pope Nicholas. 
 We hope we shall never be found disputing the necessity or the 
 ultimate blessing of the social change which he and the Pontiffs 
 who succeeded him deemed it judicious to encourage. But it is 
 important that we should state our reasons for twt believing 
 that Pope Gregory was an instrument in shutting out daylight 
 from Europe, and plunging it in darkness. 
 Proiiabiiitv 21. We should wish our readers to understand that they are 
 disiikeii not bound to agree with Mr. Hallam on this point because they 
 letters; jjj^y entirely agree with him in his opinion that Gregory was 
 an enemy to classical literature in general, and to Greek 
 literature in particular. Controversies on this subject have 
 been raised by learned countrymen of Gregory, jealous both for 
 his reputation and for the cause of letters. But without con- 
 sidering the special pleas which they may urge on his behalf, 
 we may admit that those who, with Mr. Hallam, reject them as 
 unsatisfactory, have the strongest jiriina facie evidence on their 
 side. It is in keeping with all we kjiow of the character of 
 Gregory that he should be jealous of Pagan teaching, willing to 
 substitute the legends of saints not only for the most living 
 fictions, but for the best histories which they had bequeathed. 
 As a man of business, occupied in raising his city and country 
 out of physical and moral degradation, he could have had 
 little leisure for any, studies but those which directly belonged 
 to him as a priest, or a priest-legislator. His unfriendly 
 relations both with Greek emperors and Greek patriarchs 
 were certain to confirm his Latin prejudices. As a converter 
 of Pagans he would be anxious that the lore which they 
 received should be that which was contained in the Scriptures, 
 or had originated in the Church. As the organiser of forms of 
 worship which were to bind the different parts of Christendom 
 together, he would wish that they should have as little as pos- 
 sible to remind them of other kinds of worship which civilised 
 nations had adopted, and which had given a colour to their 
 thoughts and writings. It miist require some very decisive 
 documents indeed, to show that a man with all this internal 
 bias, and all this power of outward circumstances driving him in 
 one direction, did in fact take the opposite one ; that in spite of 
 himself and of his age he encouraged studies which he had every 
 motive to discountenance, 
 and yet was 22. Still bis intelligent apologists must have felt that they 
 tnstrumeTit ^^^ some reason for their opinion. They must have thought 
 
 oforomoting that Gregory did in some remarkable way contribute to the 
 education.
 
 HIS DOINGS. 151 
 
 intellectual education of Europe, that they should be guilty of 
 ingratitude for all their own advantages if they denied it, that 
 they were bound even to strain facts that they might establish 
 it. Without any straining of facts, we think their position, when 
 80 stated, is capable of the most satisfactory defence. Was it 
 not necessary for the education of the West, that it should be 
 left to work out a course of thought for itself? Could the 
 classical writers have been worth anything to it at this time ? 
 Was the enthusiasm with which they were welcomed in the 
 fourteenth and fifteenth centuries merely the rapture at the 
 discovery of a lost treasure ? Was it not the consequence of a 
 discipline and preparation which enabled them to perceive a 
 living sense in that which was actually dead to the Greeks, who 
 could construe, admire, and criticise ? What that discipline 
 was, we hope we may be able to point out hereafter. We have 
 hinted already, that a portion of it was such iis amply to revenge 
 any injury that was put upon the old Greek masters, seeing what 
 that it was under one of them, even in the most imperfect and Ij?"??^.']?^ 
 distorted medium, that the Western scholar imbibed the know- paid to " " 
 ledge which he thought most precious. But our present p^eece. 
 business is to show how Gregory led the way to those philo- '. 
 sophical pursuits which he would himself perhaps have regarded 
 with more jealousy than even elegant literature. 
 
 23. The first feeling when one contemplates a man who, Apparent 
 becoming Pope at the moment when Rome had reached its s^^reatness of 
 lowest point of depression, succeeded by his gracious and un- " 
 selfish government in leading the people to hail him as their 
 deliverer, and the best of all civil rulers, who, finding so large 
 a portion of Europe Arian, brought it into a united fellowship, 
 who began to draw into that same circle so much of what had why 
 been previously heathen, who, without the command of any of dispute it. 
 the swords which Justinian wielded, won triumphs for the 
 Church far more extensive as well as far more durable than his, 
 is certainly one of wonder, if not of gratitude. But this 
 feeling is quenched in the minds of a number of Protestants 
 by the conviction that Gregory was establishing a uniformity 
 01 opinion, of government, of language, in countries which 
 could onh expand while they realised their distinctness ; that 
 the opinions were such as concerned the deepest mysteries, and 
 therefore, whether true or not, could have no practical hold on 
 the people of the countries in which they were established, and 
 could contribute nothing to their moral development ; that the 
 government, nominally paternal, was of that worst kind which 
 rests neither upon the worth of the man nor upon the dignity 
 of the family, but only upon sacerdotal assumption and the 
 ignorance which upholds it ; that the language was one which
 
 152 
 
 UlflFOEMITT. 
 
 Gregoo's 
 orthodoxy 
 not the same 
 in kind with 
 Justiniau's. 
 
 His leading 
 idea. 
 
 The 
 
 objection 
 that his 
 faith was 
 mysterious, 
 
 had not the least pretension to be universal, which was hard 
 and ungenial, adapted to laws and forms, unfitted for the seeker 
 of truth, prized only because it excluded that one which was 
 richer and freer, because it would submit to all barbarous inno- 
 vations from the theologians who wielded it, or from the native 
 dialects which it held down. 
 
 These are heavy suspicions ; some of which at least we must 
 have a strong disposition to entertain ; each of which requires to 
 be seriously considei-ed before we can know whether Gregory 
 was a benefactor or a curse to mankind, and before we can 
 advance many steps in the philosophy of the Middle Ages. 
 
 24. Wlien it is said that Gregory sought to establish a 
 uniformity of opinion in Western Europe, and that to a great 
 extent he succeeded, the words should be carefully weighed, or 
 they will lead to serious confusion. He was not occupied about 
 opinions, as Justinian was. He did not habitually look upon 
 Truth as the sum of his tenets or holdings. He might very 
 often, indeed, act and speak as if he did. But those experi- 
 ments which he made to produce a common worship in Europe, 
 expressed his true mind much more than any dogmas which he 
 uttered. He desired that the Name into which Christians 
 were baptised should be the object of their common adoration. 
 To unite them in this, not in certain intellectual conclusions 
 and definitions, was assuredly his main object. He sent his 
 missionaries to tell pagans that an invisible mysterious Being 
 was calling them from their difierent idols to serve Him. He 
 bade the Arians acknowledge that there was an Eternal Son, 
 one with Him, in whom they might approach Him. He declared 
 that the whole family was united by one Spirit. Whatever 
 theories he might add to these proclamations, here was the root 
 and substance of them. Whatever superstitious importance he 
 might attach to the forms in which he enjoined that the worship 
 should be celebrated however much he might sometimes over- 
 look the diversities of character in his old or new disciples, this 
 was certainly the idea to which everything else in his mind was 
 subordinate. 
 
 25. Hence we think it is obvious why the faith which Gregory 
 proclaimed was necessarily in mysteries. It was not that his 
 own mind had any natural affinity for the mysterious. It was 
 hard and practical. Whenever he invented or decreed, he 
 showed how much he clung to the visible, how ready he was to 
 indulge the pagan propensity for it, how much he was disposed 
 to reduce the Eternal and Infinite under the conditions of Space 
 and Time. But by making the worship of the Divine Trinity the 
 foundation of the Christian society which he was doing so much 
 to build up, he was counteracting this tendency of his own
 
 ^ 
 
 HEEO-WOESHIP. 153 
 
 Character, he was making the difference between the old His 
 Heathenism and the Gospel which he diffused, to consist in this an^tu**'" 
 mainly, that Pagans were scaling Heaven by different earthly mysterious, 
 ladders, making heroic men the grounds of their conception of 
 the divine; that he was putting forth the divine JS^ame 
 revealed in Christ as the mysterious foundation of a Catholic 
 society. The question whether in doing this he was checking 
 human thought and inquiry, or whether the hindrances which he 
 and his successors certainly threw in their way, did not arise from 
 their doing something different from this the direct opposite 
 of this from their canonising the old Heathen methods, revers- Mysterv his 
 ing the one which they confessed to be the Christian one safety ;' love 
 inust be determined by the facts of the history. Some negative hls'dimgerl^ 
 help has been afforded us already for the formation of a judg- 
 ment on this point. Without resting overmuch weight on the 
 fact that the most enlightened and tolerant of Arian monarchs 
 was the persecutor of the mild philosopher Boethius, we have ^^g Anans 
 sufficient evidence that the Gothic and Vandalic monarchs, unfavour- 
 though often far more generous and truthful than their orthodox philosophy, 
 opponents though supplying an element in European society 
 which it could ill have dispensed with, were not favourable to 
 intellectual cultivation. Deriving from the teachings of the 
 excellent Ulphilas, whose simple mind had been formed under 
 the influences of the age of Valens, an impression that Christ 
 was a highei'Qdin^'an illustrious demigod, they probably accepted Their merits 
 as much of ra- Christian faith as they were able to bear, and in 
 the way that was most suitable to their previous discipline. 
 The effects were genuine. The best side of the old character, rpjjg 
 the love of truth and plain dealing, was brought out. If the Christianity 
 new faith did not displace the sottish habits of the old savage, and ^ 
 if sometimes it threw a darker glare over his crimes, at least it Vandaiic 
 made him feel the majesty of law, confess the might of weak- 
 ness ; at least it enabled him to quicken the corpse of Roman 
 civilisation. But the belief in heroes, even in. a, tranacendant Hero- 
 hero, if it gives energy to action, does not lead to meditation. f^vom-Tbie*' 
 Hie visible world fills the Goths with a wild wonder, and they to thought 
 long to conquer it. The battle brings forth a number of reflection, 
 thoughts greater than they can master, respecting an invisible 
 world which is about them, and one to come which must be the 
 counterpart of this ; the confusion may be expressed in legends 
 and poems, in which the critics of after days try in vain to 
 separate the Pagan from the Christian elements. But the hope 
 of any clear light upon the mysteries of our own life and being, 
 the desire to explore them and arrange them, has been the result 
 in Western Europe of another faith than the "^j^^g^^^^ll^ faith, 
 or than any modification of it.
 
 154> 
 
 THE IMPULSE TO PniLOSOPHT. 
 
 Schools in 
 Eni^laiul the 
 result of 
 A'ncHstin's 
 mission. 
 
 Philosophy 
 occui)ied 
 with the 
 Trinity, 
 thoiii;h not 
 as in the 
 Platonical 
 
 Awakens 
 inquiry not 
 less because 
 it is accepted 
 as true. 
 
 The philo- 
 sophical 
 impulse 
 conld not be 
 checked. 
 
 26. To show that Gregory, with all his own alleged indiffer- 
 ence to letters, was a greater instrument in promoting educa- 
 tion, in the strictest sense of the word, than all his contempo- 
 rai'ies or predecessors, we need only examine the condition of 
 England in the century after it had been brought under the 
 influence of his missionaries. Schools seem to rise as by en- 
 chantment ; all classes, down to the poorest, (Bede himself is the 
 obvious example,) are admitted to them ; the studies beginning 
 from theology, embrace logic, rhetoric, music, astronomy. But 
 these facts, though decisive as to the awakening influence of 
 that faith which it is sometimes assumed must have put the 
 worlQ .o sleep, concern us less than the directly philosophical 
 impulse, which we must trace, if we follow plain evidence, to 
 the acknowledgment in Western Europe of the mystery that 
 had formed the subject of conflict for six centuries in the East. 
 The questions to which it had given birth during that strife 
 would naturally take another form ; there were no longer Neo- 
 Platonists to speak of a Trinity as ideally true, implied in the 
 existence of man and of the universe, while they disputed the 
 actual revelation of a Trinity; no longer eminent Christian 
 teachers to vindicate the doctrine, both as law and fact, from 
 the inipugnersof it among themselves and in the outlying world. 
 It had taken its ground among recognised principles embodied 
 in common acts in which king and peasant had an equal 
 interest, asserted by edicts though not deriving its authority 
 from them. But because it had this position it awakened 
 questionings just as the sight of an actual firmament, and the 
 presence of an actual sun, lead to astronomical inquiries which 
 Avould scarcely be pursued if men had only the dream of a 
 possible firmament or a possible sun. \ Whatever we may sup- 
 pose a 2>riori might or must have been the case, our a posteriori 
 experience enables us to affirm that the Trinity did become the 
 starting-point for all the metaphysical and all the moral philo- 
 sophy of modern Europe. ^What diflferent forms these inquiries 
 took ; what fears they eicited ; what efforts were made at 
 different times to suppress them ; why these efforts necessarily 
 failed, we shall have to explain hereafter. What we say here 
 is, that no uniformity which Gregory was the instrument of 
 producing, or which he wished to produce, in the least availed 
 to hinder all possible ethical controversies and all metaphysical 
 controversies from arising in the most or in the least reverent 
 minds ; in those who were most disposed to acquiesce in the 
 decrees of Popes, or in those who were most fretted by them. 
 What we say further is, that the mystery which lay beneath his 
 desire for uniformity, because he believed it the basis of unity 
 among men, acted as a counterbalancing power to the Latin
 
 THE PAPAL GOTERyMEIfT. 155 
 
 love of rules, forms, dogmas, and compelled him to ask with Ethies and 
 as much ardour as the Greek had ever done, what constitutes connecteii" 
 right, order, obligation among men ; under what eternal laws with 
 they live, think, speak, act ; how they are connected with the ^ '^^' 
 physical world ; in what respect they differ from all the other 
 portions of it. 
 
 27. We may be suspected of greater reluctance to deal with in what 
 the second subject to which we referred, that of the government ^"/^ory 
 whicli G regory was the instrument of binding on the neck of established 
 the Western nations. We do not for a moment dispute that popedom on 
 he, more than any other man, consolidated the Papal power, new basis. 
 and defined the limits within which it could be exercised. We 
 are willing enough to use the favourite argumentum ad hominem 
 of Protestants, that he denounced the title of Universal Bishop 
 as profane, but we cannot forget the occasion of that denun- 
 ciation; that he quarrelled with the assumption when it 
 was put forth on behalf of the Patriarchs by John the Paster ; 
 and that therefore his very protest was a link in the chain 
 which was to hold the Latin nations together, and to fasten 
 them to the chair of the successor of St. Peter. That protest ; 
 the separation from Constantinople, of which it is one among 
 many indications ; Gregory's earnest faith ; his deliverance 
 of Kome ; his missionary zeal ; his freedom from the ambition 
 and secularity, to a considerable extent from the arrogance, of The Papal 
 earlier and later Pontiffs ; tended, beyond all doubt, to make expenment. 
 the assumptions which they might only have been able to ex- 
 press througli bulls and anathemas, veritable facts in European 
 history which |cannot be gainsay ed, whatever may be our judgment 
 about them. That judgment, we believe, will be distinct and 
 satisfactory only if we are willing to acknowledge the experiment 
 to establish a fatlierly or patriarchal government over the nations 
 as the most important and interesting of which there is any 
 record, an experiment which could but involve the deepest 
 truth and the direst contradiction if there is such a fatherly 
 government already existing, and if there is a struggle in man 
 not to acknowledge it. The records of the way in which that its place in 
 truth and that contradiction gradually made themselves manifest '***""y' 
 through the struggles of the ecclesiastical power with the civil, 
 of the catholic body with the particular nations, belong to 
 general history. But the schools, as always, in their own way 
 represented the world. The subtlest metaphysical questions 
 respecting the individual were involved with questions concern- 
 ing the social and political, condition of mankind, which after- 
 ages would have to unravel. The limits of Obedience and Free- 
 dom, of tlie Universal and the National, of that which is and 
 that which is enacted, of Faith and Keason, were forced upon
 
 156 
 
 THE LEAENED LANGUAGE. 
 
 politics. 
 
 The one 
 language. 
 
 Uses of a 
 
 sacred 
 
 language. 
 
 itspffectsonthe minds of men by that mighty effort to create a sacerdotal 
 nietaphysics tyranny, which Papists and Protestants seem agreed to confess 
 ethic*, and was almost entirely successful ; while the documents to which 
 both appeal prove that no spiritual or secular terrors and punish- 
 ments could in the least quell the opposition which it excited, 
 and that it took its shapes of good or evil from those who 
 apparently submitted to it. 
 
 28. Finally, when we speak of the one language which Gregory, 
 by the forms of devotion which he sanctioned, and by the general 
 character of his missions, did so much to establish as the organ 
 of spiritual communication in the world over which he reigned, we 
 must crave liberty to notice one or two points which Protestant 
 polemics and classical scholars are disposed to forget, but which 
 for our purpose (and, we think, for theirs also) require to be 
 seriously considered. 
 
 29. It was the existence of a language which did not belong to 
 the market, which represented higher thoughts and feelings than 
 those with which men were commonly occupied, that made the 
 tribes of modern Europe conscious of their spiritual necessities, 
 and of the powers which there were in their own native tongues 
 to express them. The idea of a school, of instruction and edu- 
 cation at all in the higher sense, was inseparable from the exist- 
 ence of such a medium. Moreover, the Latin operated con- 
 tinually as the third power which mediated between two con- 
 tending tribe languages, and ultimately enabled to mingle in 
 some higlier. The law courts and the palace did not succeed in 
 making the French of the Normans or the French of the Planta- 
 genets triumphant over the Saxon of our people. The ecclesias- 
 tical Latin was a common object of reverence and fear to both. 
 Ultimately it helped to bring the strong elements which suited 
 the immature life of our forefathers, into an organic English. 
 Its despotism, then, however severe, however mischievously pro- 
 tracted, was not reaUy injiu-ious to any people who had native 
 strength to encounter it ; their old language received its impres- 
 sion, and grew to be a living one, adapted for the highest moral 
 and intellectual purposes, by means of it. But what chiefly 
 concerns us is this : It was the prevalence of this school lan- 
 guage, though uncouth, distasteful to the modern man of refine- 
 ment, hard to manage even by those who wielded it as their 
 ordinary instrument, nay, by reason of these very qualities, 
 which determined the peculiar direction of the philosophy of the 
 
 Character of Middle Ages. The familiarity with which we speak our own 
 ph'iiosoph^y dialect makes us forget to ask ourselves about its words, to 
 rtetermined inquire how far they are distinct from the visible things or the 
 theLat*in^ invisible realities which we connect with them. They become 
 tongue. dangerously identified with that which they express at one time, 
 
 The Latin 
 
 cultivates 
 
 and 
 
 preserves 
 
 the native 
 
 languages.
 
 GIFTS OP THE MIDDLE AGES. 157 
 
 dangerously separated from it at any other. But we do not 
 question them to know how they are related, or how they are 
 separated ; we can scarcely put them at a sufficient distance 
 from us ever fairly to present the puzzle to ourselves. The 
 schoolmen of the Middle Ages had these questions thrust upon The realist 
 them : they could not evade them. After ages might lauarh at "** . ,. 
 
 .. ..^ noiiiin&,iist 
 
 their folly for raising such doubts. But they did not raise them, discussions 
 There they were, demanding resolution. To pass them by ^ij^djfie 
 would have been ignominious cowardice : they could have no Ages, 
 satisfaction on other points till these were settled. And they 
 had this compensation for the sneers of their descendants : they 
 were contributing in innumerable ways to clear difficulties out 
 of our way ; to make it unnecessary that we should often travel 
 the ground which they explored ; to point out the track when 
 circumstances call upon us to revisit it ; to make it possible that Why 
 we should enter upon inquiries of which they knew nothing,, ajjd "^^essary. 
 yet which they fancied they could settle by their methods. fWe 
 apprehend that our obligations to them for the clearness and pl'e- 
 cision which they have been the instruments of giving to dis- 
 course ; for the hints which they have supplied us respecting the 
 laws of thought ; for showing what they could and what they 
 could not do, would be as cheerfully and cordially recognised by 
 our learned, and honoured countryman^Ililr. Mill,,As by the most 
 fanatical reviver of mediaeval notions sbd practicesTj
 
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