OF THE

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OF w

THE NEO-PLATONISTS.

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THE NEO-PLATONISTS:

A STUDY IN
THE HISTORY OF HELLENISM.

THOMAS WHITTAKER,

AUTHOR OF 'ESSAYS AND NOTICES, PHILOSOPHICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL.'

CAMBRIDGE:
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.

1901

W-5

Cambrrtigr :

PRINTED BY J. AND C. F. CLAY,
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.

CONTENTS.

Introduction

PAGE

vii

CHAPTER I.

Graeco-Roman Civilisation in its Political Development

CHAPTER II.

The Stages of Greek Philosophy

CHAPTER III.

Religious Developments in Later Antiquity

CHAPTER IV.

Plotinus and his Nearest Predecessors

CHAPTER V.

The Phi

losophical System of Plotinus

Psychology

. 44

Metaphysics ......

. 54

Cosmology and Theodicy ....

. 71

Aesthetics .......

. 88

Ethics

CHAPTER VI.

. 92

S9851

VI CONTENTS

CHAPTER VII.

PAGE

The Diffusion of Neo-Platonism 108

1. Porphyry 108

2. Iarnblichus .122

3. The School of Iarnblichus 132

CHAPTER VIII.

The Polemic against Christianity 137

CHAPTER IX.

The Athenian School 156

1. The Academy becomes Neo-Platonic . . . .156

2. Proclus 158

3. The End of the Platonic Succession . . . .181

CHAPTER X.

The Influence of Neo-Platonism 186

CHAPTER XI.

Conclusion 206

APPENDIX.

I. The Communism of Plato 217

II. The Gnostics 220

III. Iamblichus and Proclus on Mathematical Science . 224

Index of Names -2-2U

INTRODUCTION.

^T^HAT the history of ancient culture effectively ends with
-*- the second century of the Christian era is an impression
not infrequently derived from histories of literature and even
of philosophy. The period that still remains of antiquity is
obviously on its practical side a period of dissolution, in which
every effort is required to maintain the fabric of the Roman
State against its external enemies. And, spiritually, a new
religious current is evidently beginning to gain the mastery ;
so that, with the knowledge we have of what followed, we can
already see in the third century the break-up of the older form
of inner as well as of outer life. In the second century too
appeared the last writers who are usually thought of as classical.
The end of the Stoical philosophy as a living system coincides
with the death of Marcus Aurelius. And with Stoicism, it
is often thought, philosophy ceased to have an independent
life. It definitely entered the service of polytheism. In its
struggle with Christianity it appropriated Oriental superstitions.
It lost its scientific character in devotion to the practice of
magic. It became a mystical theology instead of a pursuit
of reasoned truth. The structure of ancient culture, like the
fabric of the Empire, was in process of decay at once in form
and content. In its permeation by foreign elements, it already
manifests a transition to the new type that was to supersede it.
An argument for this view might be found in a certain
niodernness" which has often been noted in the later classical
literature. Since the ancient type was dissolved in the end

Vlll INTRODUCTION

to make way for the modern, we might attribute the early
appearance of modern characteristics to the new growth
accompanying incipient dissolution. The general falling-off in
literary quality during the late period we should ascribe to
decay ; the wider and more consciously critical outlook on life,
which we call modern, to the movement of the world into its
changed path. Thus there would be a perfectly continuous
process from the old civilisation to the new. On the other
hand, we may hold that the " modernness " of the late classical
period does not indicate the beginning of the intermediate
phase of culture, but is a direct approximation to the modern
type, due to the existence of a long intellectual tradition of a
similar kind. If the latter view be taken, then we must regard
the dissolution of the ancient world as proceeding, not by a
penetration of new elements into the older form of culture so
as to change the type, but indirectly through the conquest
of the practical world by a new power; so that, while ancient
culture was organically continuous as long as it lasted, it finally
came to an end as an organism. The new way into which the
world had passed was directed by a new religion, and this
appropriated in its own manner the old form of culture, bringing
it under the law of its peculiar type. Thus one form was
substituted for another, but the first did not spontaneously
pass into the second. There was no absolute break in history ;
for the ancient system of education remained, though in a
reduced form, and passed by continuous transition into another ;
but the directing power was changed. The kind of " modern "
character the ancient culture assumed in the end was thus an
anticipation of a much later period, not a genuine phase of
transition. In confirmation of the latter view, it might be
pointed out that the culture of the intermediate period, when
it assumed at length its appropriate form, had decidedly less
of the specifically modern character than even that of early
antiquity with all its remoteness.

Be this as it may in pure literature, it is certain that

INTRODUCTION IX

the latest phase of ancient philosophy had all the marks of an
intrinsic development. All its characteristic positions can be
traced to their origin in earlier Greek systems. Affinities can
undoubtedly be found in it with Oriental thought, more parti-
cularly with that of India; but with this no direct contact can be
shown. In its distinctive modes of thought, it was wholly
Hellenic. So far as it was " syncretistic," it was as philosophy
of religion, not as pure philosophy. On this side, it was an
attempt to bring the various national cults of the Roman
Empire into union under the hegemony of a philosophical
conception. As philosophy, it was indeed " eclectic," but the
eclecticism was under the direction of an original effort of specu-
lative thought, and was exercised entirely within the Hellenic
tradition. And, in distinction from pure literature, philosophy
made its decisive advance after practical dissolution had set in.
It was not until the middle of the third century that the
metaphysical genius of Plotinus brought to a common point
the Platonising movement of revival which was already going
on before the Christian era. The system founded by Plotinus,
and known distinctively as " Neo-Platonism," was that which
alone gave unity to all that remained of Greek culture during
the period of its survival as such. Neo-Platonism became, for
three centuries, the one philosophy of the Graeco- Roman world.
It preserved the ancient type of thought from admixture with
alien elements ; and, though defeated in the struggle to give
direction to the next great period of human history, it had a
powerful influence on the antagonist system, which, growing
up in an intellectual atmosphere pervaded by its modes of
thought, incorporated much of its distinctive teaching.

The persistence of philosophy as the last living force of the
ancient world might have been predicted. Philosophic thought
in antiquity was the vital centre of liberal education as it has
never been for the modern world. There were of course those
who disparaged it in contrast with empirical practice or with
rhetorical ability, but, for all that, it had the direction of

X INTRODUCTION

practical thought so far as there was general direction at all.
The dissolution by which the ancient type was broken down
did not begin at the centre but at the extremities. The free
development of the civic life both of Greece and of Rome had
been checked by the pressure of a mass of alien elements
imperfectly assimilated. These first imposed a political prin-
ciple belonging to a different phase of culture. To the new
movement thus necessitated, the culture of the ancient world,
whatever superficial changes it might undergo, did not inwardly
respond. Literature still looked to the past for its models.
Philosophy least of all cared to adapt itself. It became instead
the centre of resistance to the predominant movement, — to
overweening despotism under the earlier Caesars, to the
oncoming theocracy when the republican tradition was com-
pletely in the past. The latest philosophers of antiquity were

pre-eminently

" The kings of thought
Who waged contention with their time's decay."

And their resistance was not the result of pessimism, of a
disposition to see nothing but evil in the actual movement of
things The Neo-Platonists in particular were the most
convinced of optimists, at the very time when, as they well
knew, the whole movement of the world was against them.
The}- held it for their task to maintain as far as might be the
type of life which they had themselves chosen as the best ;
knowing that there was an indefinite future, and that the
alternating rhythms in which, with Heraclitus and the Stoics,
they saw the cosmic harmony 1 and the expression of providential
reason, would not cease with one period. If they did not
actually predict the revival of their thought after a thousand
years, they would not have been in the least surprised to see it.
More than once has that thought been revived, and with
various aims ; nor is its interest even yet exhausted. The first
revival the philosophers themselves would have cared for was

1 waXivrovos ap/novh] k6<t/j.ov oKodcrrep Xvprjs xai to^ov. — Heraclitus.

INTRODUCTION XI

that of the fifteenth century, when, along with their master
Plato, they became the inspirers of revolt against the system of
mediaeval theology that had established itself long after their
defeat. Another movement quite in their spirit, but this time
not an insurgent movement, was that of the Cambridge
Platonists in the seventeenth century, which went back to
Neo-Platonism for the principles of its resistance to the
exclusive dominance of the new " mechanical philosophy." As
the humanist academies of Italy had appealed against Scholastic
dogmatism to the latest representatives in antiquity of free
philosophic inquiry, so the opponents in England of " Hobbism "
went for support to those who in their own day had intellectually
refuted the materialism of the Stoics and Epicureans. Since
then, many schools and thinkers have shown affinity with
Neo-Platonic thought ; and, apart from direct historic attach-
ment or spontaneous return to similar metaphysical ideas,
there has been a deeper continuous influence of which something
will have to be said.

Within the last fifty years or thereabouts, the Neo-Platonists,
though somewhat neglected in comparison with the other
schools of antiquity, have been made the subject of important
historical work. To French philosophers who began as disciples
of Cousin, a philosophy that could be described as at once
"eclectic" and "spiritualist" naturally became an object of
interest. The result of that interest was seen in the brilliant
works of Vacherot and Jules Simon. For definite and positive
information on the doctrines of the school, the portion of Zeller's
Philosopliie der Griechen that deals with the period is of the
highest value. In English, Mr Benn's chapter on " The
Spiritualism of Plotinus," in his Greek Philosophers, brings out
well the advance in subjective thought made by the latest on
the earlier philosophies of Greece. Of special importance in
relation to this point are the chapters on Plotinus and his
successors in Siebeck's Gescliichte der Psycliologie. An extensive
work on the psychology of the school has appeared since in the

xii INTRODUCTION

last two volumes of M. Chaignet's Psychologie des Grecs.
Recent English contributions to the general exposition of the
Neo-Platonist philosophy are Dr C. Bigg's volume in the
" Chief Ancient Philosophies " Series (S.P.C.K.), and Mr F. W.
BusselPs stimulating book on The School of Plato, which,
however, deals more with preliminaries than with the school
itself.

In the later historical treatment of Neo-Platonism a marked
tendency is visible to make less of the supposed " Oriental "
character of the school and more of its real dependence on the
preceding philosophies of Greece. This may be seen in Zeller
as compared with Vacherot, and in Mr Benn as compared with
Zeller. Of the most recent writers, M. Chaignet and Dr Bigg,
approaching the subject from different sides, conclude in almost
the same terms that the system of Plotinus was through and
through Hellenic. And, as M. Chaignet points out, Plotinus,
in all essentials, fixed the doctrine of the school. Whatever
attractions the thought of the East as vaguely surmised may
have had for its adherents, their actual contact with it was
slight. When the school took up a relation to the practical
world, it was as the champion of "Hellenism" (EWyivtafios)
against the " barbarian audacity " of its foes. On the whole,
however, it did not seek to interfere directly with practice, but
recognised the impossibility of modifying the course which the
world at large was taking, and devoted itself to the task of
carrying forward thought and preserving culture. Hence a
history of Neo-Platonism must be in the main a history of
doctrines internally developed, not of polemic with extraneous
systems of belief. At the same time the causes must be
indicated of its failure, and of the failure of philosophy, to hold
for the next age the intellectual direction of the world, — a
failure not unqualified. To bring those causes into view, it will
be necessary to give a brief sketch of the political, as well as
of the philosophical and religious movement to the time of
Plotinus. For the ultimate causes of the triumph of another

INTRODUCTION Xlll

system were social more than they were intellectual, and go fal-
lback into the past. Of the preceding philosophical development,
no detailed history can be attempted. As in the case of the
political and religious history, all that can be done is to put the
course of events in a light by which its general bearing may be
made clear. In relation to the inner movement, the aim will be
to show precisely at what point the way was open for an advance
on previous philosophies, — au advance which, it may be said
by anticipation, Neo-Platonism did really succeed in making
secure even for the time when the fortunes of independent
philosophy were at their lowest. Then, when the history of
the school itself has been set forth in some detail, a sketch,
again reduced to as brief compass as possible, must be given
of the return of the modern world to the exact point where the
thought of the ancient world had ceased, and of the continued
influence of the Neo-Platonic conceptions on modern thought.
Lastly, an attempt will be made to state the law of the
development ; and, in relation to this, something will be said
of the possibilities that still remain open for the type of thought
which has never been systematised with more perfection than
in the school of Plotinus.

"Onpourrait dire, sans trop d'exageration, que l'histoire
morale des premiers siecles de notre ere est dans l'histoire
du platonisme."

Matter, Histoire Critique du Gnosticisme,
livre viii. ch. 28.

CHAPTER I.

GftAECO-ROMAN CIVILISATION IN ITS POLITICAL

DEVELOPMENT.

Broadly, the political- history of classical antiquity almost
from the opening of the historic period may be described as
a slow passage from the condition of self-governing common-
wealths with a subordinate priesthood to the condition of a
theocratic despotism. This was a reduction of the West to the
polity of the civilised East. In the old Oriental monarchies
known to the classical world, the type was that of a consecrated
despot ruling with the support and under the direction of a
priesthood socially supreme. Immemorial forms of it were to
be seen in Egypt and in the Assyrio- Babylonian civilisation on
which the conquering Persian monarchy was superimposed.
In Persia had appeared the earliest type of a revealed as
distinguished from an organised natural religion. And here
were the beginnings of the systematic intolerance at first so
puzzling to the Greeks 1 . Intolerance, however, did not till

1 Herodotus, though he knew and sympathised with the refusal of the
Persian religion to ascribe visible form to the divinity, saw in the persecution
of the Egyptian cult by Cambyses and in the burning of Greek temples by order
of Xerxes, nothing but acts of wanton impiety. They had come to be better
understood in the time of Cicero, who definitely ascribes the latter to the motive
of pious intolerance. See De Rep. iii. 9, 14. After a reference to the animal
deities of Egypt as illustrating tbe variety of religious customs among civilised
men, the exposition proceeds : " Deinde Graeciae sicut apud nos, delubra
magnifica humanis consecrata simulacris, quae Persae nefaria putaverunt,
eamque unam ob causam Xerxes inflammari Atheniensium faua iussisse dicitur,
quod deos, quorum domus esset omnis hie mundus, inclusos parietibus contineri
nefas esse duceret."

W. 1

2 GRAECO-ROMAN CIVILISATION [i

later and from a new starting-point assume a permanently
aggressive form. With the Persians, conquest over alien
nationalities led to some degree of tolerance for their inherited
religions.

The origin of the monarchies of Egypt and of Western Asia
is a matter of conjecture. To the classical world they appeared
as a finished type. The ancient European type of polity was
new and independent. It did not spring out of the Oriental
type by way of variation. In investigating its accessible
beginnings we probably get nearer to political origins than
we can in the East. We have there before our eyes the plastic
stage which in the East can only be conjectured. The Greek
tragic poets quite clearly distinguished their own early con-
stitutional monarchies with incompletely developed germs of
aristocracy and democracy from Oriental despotism. While
these monarchies lasted, they were probably not very sharply
marked off, in the general consciousness, from other monarchical
institutions. The advance to formal republicanism revealed at
once a new type of polity and the preparation for it at an
earlier stage. That this was to be the conquering type might
very well be imagined. Aeschylus puts into the mouth of the
Persian elders a lamentation over the approaching downfall of
kingship in Asia itself 1 . Yet this prophecy, as we know, is
further from being realised now than it may have appeared
then. And, though organised despotism on the great scale
was thrown back into Asia by the Persian wars, the later
history of Europe for a long period is the history of its return.

The republican type of culture was fixed for all time 8 , first
in life and then in literature, by the brief pre-eminence of
Athens. The Greek type of free State, however, from its
restriction to a city, and the absence of a representative system,

1 oi)5' is yav wponiTVovTes
dp^ovrai ' fla<Tihela
yap 8i6\o)\ev iVx^s-
oi'5' Ztl yKCoaaa ppoToicnv
iv <pvkaKah' XeXi'rtu yap
Xaos iXevdepa /Sdfetv,
ibs iXvdri frrybv dX^aj. Pers. 590 — 6.

2 <='s rbv airavra avdpdyirwv §Lov. Herod, vi. 109.

i] IN ITS POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT 3

with other causes, could not maintain itself against the inroads
of the monarchical principle, which at that time had the power
of conferring unity on a larger aggregate. The Macedonian
monarchy, originally of the constitutional type, became, through
its conquests at once over Greece and Asia, essentially an
Oriental monarchy — afterwards a group of monarchies — dis-
tinguished only by its appropriation of the literary culture of
Greece. Later, the republican institutions of Rome, which
succeeded those of Greece as the type of political freedom,
broke down, in spite of their greater flexibility and power of
incorporating subjects 1 , through a combination of the causes
that affected Greece and Macedon separately. Perhaps the
imperial monarchy was a necessity if the civilised world was
to be kept together for some centuries longer, and not to break
up into warring sections. Still, it was a lapse to a lower form
of polity. And the republican resistance can be historically
justified. The death of Caesar showed his inheritors that the
hour for formal monarchy was not yet come. The complete
shaping of the Empire on the Oriental model was, in fact,
postponed to the age of Diocletian and Constantine. Mean-
while, the emperor not being formally monarch, and the
republic remaining in name, the whole system of education
continued to be republican in basis. The most revered classics
were those that had come down from the time of freedom.
Declamations against tyrants were a common exercise in the
schools. And the senatorial opposition, which still cherished
the ethical ideal of the republic, came into power with the
emperors of the second century. What it has become the
fashion to call the "republican prejudices" of Tacitus and
Suetonius were adopted by Marcus Aurelius, who, after citing
with admiration the names of Cato and Brutus, along with
those of later heroes of the Stoical protestation against

1 That the Romans themselves were conscious of this, may be seen for
example in a speech of the Emperor Claudius as recorded by Tacitus (Ann. xi.
24): "Quid aliud exitio Lacedaemoniis et Atheniensibus fuit, quamquam armis
pollerent, nisi quod victos pro alienigenis arcebant? at conditor nostri Romulus
tautum sapientia valuit, ut plerosque populos eodem die hostes, dein cives
habuerit."

1—2

4 GRAECO-ROMAN CIVILISATION [i

Caesarean despotism, holds up before himself " the idea of a
polity in which there is the same law for all, a polity ad-
ministered with regard to equal rights and equal freedom of
speech, and the idea of a kingly government which respects
most of all the freedom of the governed." 1 Here the demand
for administrative unity might seem to be reconciled with the
older ideal ; but the Stoic emperor represented the departing
and not the coming age.

There was a discrepancy between the imperial monarchy on
the one hand, potentially absolute, though limited by the
deference of the ruler for ancient forms, and on the other hand
the ideal that had come down from the past. The ethics of
antiquity had never incorporated absolutism. Now the new
religion that was already aiming at the spiritual dominance of
the Empire had no tradition that could separate it from the
monarchical system. Christian ethics from the first accepted
absolutism as its political datum. The Christian apologists
under the Antonines represent themselves as a kind of legiti-
mists, — praying, in the time of Marcus Aurelius, that the right
of succession of Commodus may be recognised and the blessing
of hereditary kingship secured 2 . Christianity therefore, once
accepted, consecrated for the time an ideal in accordance with
the actual movement of the world. In substituting the notion
of a monarch divinely appointed for the apotheosis of the
emperors, it gave a form less unendurable in civilised Europe
to a servility which, in its pagan form, appearing as an Asiatic
superstition, had been something of a scandal to the rulers who
were in a manner compelled to countenance it. The result,
unmodified by new factors, is seen in the Byzantine Empire.
The Roman Empire of the East remained strong enough to

1 i. 14 (Long's Translation). With the above passage may be compared
Julian's appeal to Plato and Aristotle in support of his conviction that the spirit
of laws should be impersonal (Epistola ad Themistium, 261 — 2). The second
imperial philosopher, in his satirical composition entitled Caesares, most
frequently reaffirms the judgments of Suetonius and Tacitus, but not without
discrimination. Tiberius he sums up as a mixed character, and does not
represent him as flung into Tartarus with Caligula and Nero.

2 See Renan, Marc-Aurile, where illustrations are given of this attitude on
the part of the apologists.

I] IN ITS POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT 5

throw off the barbarian attack for centuries. It preserved
much of ancient Greek letters. In distinction from the native
monarchies of Asia, it possessed a system of law that had
received its bent during a period of freedom 1 . But, with these
differences, it was a theocratic monarchy of the Oriental type.
It was the last result, not of a purely internal development,
but of reaction on the Graeco-Roman world from the political
institutions and the religions of Asia.

The course of things in the West was different. Having
been for a time reduced almost to chaos by the irruptions of
the Germanic tribes, the disintegrated and then nominally
revived Western Empire furnished the Church with the oppor-
tunity of erecting an independent theocracy above the secular
rule of princes. This type came nearest to realisation in the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It broke down partly through
internal decay and partly through the upgrowth of a stronger
secular life. With immense difficulty and with the appearance
almost of accident 2 , a new kind of free State arose. The old
Teutonic monarchies, like the old Greek monarchies, were not
of the Asiatic type. They contained elements of political
aristocracy and democracy which could develop under favouring
circumstances. In most cases the development did not take
place. With the cessation of feudal anarchy, the royal power
became too strong to be effectively checked. There was formed
under it a social hierarchy of which the most privileged equally
with the least privileged orders were excluded as such from all
recognised political authority. Thus on the Continent, during
the early modern period, the prevailing type became Catholic
Absolutism, or, as f* has been called, " European monarchy," —
a system which was imitated in the Continental Protestant
States. By the eighteenth century this had become, like the

1 " The period of Roman freedom was the period during which the stamp of
a distinctive character was impressed on the Roman jurisprudence." Sir Henry
Maine, Ancient Lata, 10th ed. , ch. ii. p. 40.

- Comte at least regarded Absolutism as the normal development, Consti-
tutionalism as a local anomaly, in European history before 1789,

6 GRAECO-ROMAN CIVILISATION [i

Byzantine Empire or the old Asiatic monarchies, a fixed type,
a terminal despotism from which there could be no peaceful
issue. It was destroyed — so far as it has since been destroyed —
by the revolutionary influence of ideas from the past and from
without. In England the germs of freedom, instead of being
suppressed, were developed, and in the seventeenth century,
after a period of conflict, the modern system of constitutional
monarchy was established. To the political form of the modern
free State, early English institutions by their preservation
contributed most. Classical reminiscences, in England as
elsewhere, enkindled the love of freedom ; but deliberate
imitation was unnecessary where the germs from which the
ancient republics themselves had sprung were still ready to
take a new form. From England the influence of revived
political freedom diffused itself, especially in France, where it
combined with the emulation of classical models and with
generalisations from Roman law, to form the abstract system
of "natural rights." From this system, on the intellectual side,
have sprung the American and the French Republics.

In the general European development, the smaller con-
stitutional States may be neglected. The reappearance of a
kind of city-republic in mediaeval Italy is noteworthy, but had
little practical influence. The Italian cities were never com-
pletely sovereign States like the Greek cities. Politically, it is
as if these had accepted autonomy under the supremacy of the
Great King. Spiritually, it is as if they had submitted to a
form of the Zoroastrian religion from which dissent was penal.
Nor did the great Italian poets and thinkers ever quite set up
the ideal of the autonomous city as the Greeks had done. In
its ideal, their city was rather a kind of municipality : with
Dante, under the " universal monarchy " of the restored Empire ;
with Petrarch and more distinctly with Machiavelli, under Italy
as a national State, unified by any practicable means. Even in
its diminished form, the old type of republic was exceedingly
favourable to the reviving culture of Europe ; but the prestige
of the national States around was too strong for it to survive
except as an interesting accident.

The present type of free State is one to which no terminal

I] IN ITS POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT 7

form can be assigned. In England and in America, in France
and in Italy, not to speak of the mixed forms existing else-
where, it is still at the stage of growth. The yet living rival
with which it stands confronted is the Russian continuation or
reproduction of Christian theocracy in its Byzantine form 1 .

1 This epilogue, sketchiug the political transition to modern Europe, seemed
necessary for the sake of formal completeness, although the bearing of political
history on the history of philosophy is much less direct in modern than in
ancient times.

CHAPTER II.

THE STAGES OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY.

At the time of the Persian wars the civilisation of the
East was in complexity, specialism, organised industry — what-
ever relative importance we may attach to those features of
progress — in all probability ahead of the civilisation of Greece.
The conscious assumption of self-government by the Greek
cities had, however, been closely followed by the beginnings of
what we may call speculative science, which was a distinctive
product of the Greek intellect. For this, the starting-point
was furnished by the empirical observations of Egyptians and
Chaldaeans, made with a view to real or fancied utility —
measurement of land or prediction of future events. The
earliest Greek philosophers, natives of the Ionian cities of
Asia Minor, and thus on the borders of the fixed and the
growing civilisations, took up a few generalised results of the
long and laborious but unspeculative accumulation of facts and
methods by the leisured priesthoods 1 of Egypt and Babylonia,
and forthwith entered upon the new paths of cosmical
theorising without regard to authoritative tradition, and of
deductive thinking about numbers and figures without regard
to immediate utility. As early as Pythagoras, still in the sixth

1 This way of putting the matter seems to reconcile the accounts of the
invention of geometry in Egypt given by Herodotus and Aristotle, which
Prof. Burnet (Early Greek Philosophy, Introduction, p. .19) finds discrepant.
Herodotus assigns the motive, viz. "the necessity of measuring the lands afresh
after the inundations"; Aristotle the condition that made it possible, viz. " the
leisure enjoyed by the priestly caste."

II] THE STAGES OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY 9

century B.C., speculative science had begun to show signs of its
later division into philosophy properly so-called, and positive
science; the first special sciences to become detached, after
mathematics, being those to which mathematical treatment
seemed applicable. All this took place before the continuous
movement of reflective thinking on human knowledge, which
marks a new departure in philosophy, not its first origin, began
at Athens.

The emotion in which philosophy and science had their
common source was exactly the same in ancient Greece and
in renascent Europe. Plato and Aristotle, like Descartes and
Hobbes, define it as " wonder." The earliest thinkers did not
define it at all. Their outlook has still something very im-
personal. With them, there is little inquiry about happiness
or the means of attaining it. When the speculative life has
been lived by several generations of thinkers, and a self-
conscious theory of it is at length set forth, as at the opening
of Aristotle's Metaphysics, the happiness involved in it is
regarded as something that necessarily goes with mere think-
ing and understanding.

This is the subjective form of early Greek philosophy.
In objective content, it is marked by complete detachment
from religion. No traditional authority is acknowledged.
Myths are taken merely as offering points of contact, quite
as frequently for attack as for interpretation in the sense of
the individual thinker. The handling of them in either case
is perfectly free. Results of the thought and observation of
one thinker are summed up by him, not to be straightway
accepted by the next, but to be examined anew. The aim is
insight, not edification.

The general result is a conception of the cosmos in principle
not unlike that of modern science ; in detail necessarily crude,
though still scientific in spirit, and often anticipating the latest
phases of thought in remarkable ways. Even the representa-
tions of the earth as a disc floating on water, and of the stars
as orifices in circular tubes containing fire, are less remote in
spirit from modern objective science than the astronomy of
later antiquity and of the instructed Middle Ages. This was

10 THE STAGES [il

far more accurate in its conception of shapes and magnitudes
and apparent motions, but it was teleological in a way that
purely scientific astronomy cannot be. The earliest Ionian
thinkers, like modern men of science, imposed no teleological
conceptions on their astronomical theories.

At the same time, early Greek philosophy was not merely
objective, as modern science has become. It was properly
philosophical in virtue of its " hylozoism." Life and mind, or
their elements, were attributed to the world or its parts.
Later, a more objective "naturalism" appears, as in the
system of Democritus. Here the philosophical character is
still retained by the addition of an explicit theory of know-
ledge to the scientific explanation of the cosmos. " Primary "
and " secondary " qualities of matter are distinguished, and
these last are treated as in a sense unreal. Thus the definite
formulation of materialism is accompanied by the beginnings
of subjective idealism. But with the earliest thinkers of all,
there is neither an explicit theory of knowledge nor an ex-
clusion of life and mind from the elements of things.

The atomism of Democritus and his predecessors was the
result of long thinking and perhaps of much controversy.
The " Ionians," down to Heraclitus, regarded the cosmos as
continuously existing, but as ruled by change in all its parts
if not also as a whole. The Eleatics, who came later, affirmed
that unchanging Being alone exists : this is permanent and
always identical ; " not-being " absolutely does not exist, and
change is illusory. The Being of Parmenides, it is now held 1 ,
was primarily the extended cosmos regarded as a closed sphere
coincident with all that is. Yet, though the conception was
in its basis physical and not metaphysical, the metaphysical
abstraction made by Plato was doubtless implicit in it. And
Parmenides himself evidently did not conceive reality as purely
objective and mindless. If he had intended to convey that
meaning, he would have been in violent contradiction with his
predecessor Xenophanes, and this would hardly have escaped
notice. The defect of Eleaticism was that apparent change

1 See Tannery, Pour VHhtoire de la Science Hellene, and Burnet, Early
Greek Philosophy.

n ] OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY 11

received no satisfactory explanation, though an attempt was
made to explain it in what Parmenides called a " deceptive "
discourse as dealing with illusory opinion and no longer with
demonstrative truth. Atomism mediated between this view
and that of the Ionians by asserting a plurality of real beings,
each having the characters of the Eleatic "being." "Not-
being" for the atomists was empty space; change in the
appearances of things was explained by mixture and separation
of unchanging elements. The mechanical conception of the
purely quantitative atom, which modern science afterwards
took up, was completed by Democritus. Anaxagoras, though
fundamentally a mechanicist, did not deprive his atoms of
quality. And Empedocles, along with ideas of mixture and
separation — explained by the attractive and repulsive agents,
at once forces and media, to which he gave the mythological
names of Love and Strife— retained something of the old
hylozoism. Over against the material elements of things,
Anaxagoras set Mind as the agent by which they are sifted
from their primitive chaos. This was the starting-point for
a new development, less purely disinterested than the first
because more coloured by ethical and religious motives, but
requiring even greater philosophic originality for its accom-
plishment.

The new departure of philosophy, though adopting the
Anaxagorean Mind as its starting-point, had its real source
in the ethical and political reflection which began effectively
with the Sophists and Socrates. To give this reflective
attitude consistency, to set up the principles suggested by
it against all exclusive explanations of reality from the material
ground of things, and yet to do this without in the end letting
go the notion of objective science, was the work of Plato.
Aristotle continued Plato's work, while carrying forward science
independently and giving it relatively a more important posi-
tion. One great characteristic result of the earlier thinking —
the assertion that materially nothing is created and nothing
destroyed — was assumed as an axiom both by Plato and by
Aristotle whenever they had to deal with physics. They did
not take up from the earlier thinkers those specific ideas that

12 THE STAGES [il

afterwards turned out the most fruitful scientifically — though
Plato had a kind of atomic theory — but they affirmed physical
law in its most general principle. This they subordinated to
their metaphysics by the conception of a universal teleology.
The teleological conception of nature there is good historical
ground for attributing also to Socrates.

The special importance which Plato's Timaeus acquired
for his successors is due to its being the most definite attempt
made by the philosopher himself to bring his distinctive
thought into relation with objective science. Thus, in view
of knowledge as it was in antiquity, the later Platonists were
quite right in the stress they laid on this dialogue.

For the period following upon the death of Aristotle, during
which Stoicism and Epicureanism were the predominant schools,
the most important part of Plato's and Aristotle's thought was
the ethical part. Both schools were, on the theoretical side, a
return to naturalism as opposed to the Platonic and Aristotelian
idealism. Both alike held that all reality is body ; though the
Stoics regarded it as continuous and the Epicureans as discrete.
The soul, for the Stoics as for the Epicureans, was a particular
kind of matter. The most fruitful conception in relation to the
science of the future was preserved by Epicurus when he took
up the Democritean idea of the atom, defined as possessing
figured extension, resistance and weight; all "secondary"
qualities being regarded as resulting from the changes of
order and the interactions of the atoms. And, on the whole,
the Epicureans appealed more to genuine curiosity about
physics for itself 1 , though ostensibly cultivating it only as a
means towards ridding human life of the fear of meddlesome
gods. If the determinism of the Stoics was more rigorous, it
did not prevent their undertaking the defence of some popular
superstitious which the Epicureans have the credit of opposing.
On the other hand, Stoicism did more for ethics. While both
schools, in strict definition, were " eudaemonist," the Stoics
brought out far more clearly the social reference of morality.
Their line of thought here, as the Academics and Peripatetics

1 Mr Benn, in his Greek Philosophers, points out the resemblance of
Lucretius in type of mind to the early physical thinkers of Greece.

Il] OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY 13

were fond of pointing out, could be traced back to Plato and
Aristotle. So also could the teleology which they combined
with their naturalism. But all the systems of the time were
more or less eclectic.

The social form under which the Stoics conceived of
morality was the reference, no longer to a particular State,
but to a kind of universal State. Since the social reference
in Greek morality had been originally to the " city," the name
was retained, but it was extended to the whole world, and the
ideal morality was said to be that of a citizen of the world.
This "cosmopolitanism" is prepared in Plato and Aristotle.
Socrates (as may be seen in the Memorabilia of Xenophon)
had already conceived the idea of a natural law or justice
which is the same for all States. And in Aristotle that
conception of " natural law " which, transmitted by Stoicism,
had so much influence on the Roman jurisprudence, is definitely
formulated 1 . The humanitarian side of Stoicism — which is not
quite the same thing as its conception of universal justice — is
plainly visible in Cicero 2 .

Although Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, was by race half
a Phoenician, it cannot be said that the East contributed
anything definable to the content of his ethics. Its sources
were evidently Greek. Down to the end of the ancient world,

1 See the quotation and references given by Zeller, ii. 2, p. 646, n. 1.
(Aristotle, Eng. Trans., ii. 175, n. 3.)

- See, in De Finibus, the exposition of Cato, deducing from the Stoic
principles the existence of a " communis humani generis societas " (iii. 19, 62).
"Bonitas" is expressly distinguished from "justitia" (c. 20, 66); cf. De Off.
iii. 6, 28. In the fifth book of the De Finibus, Piso goes back for the origin of
the whole doctrine to the Platonists and Peripatetics. The following sentence
(c. 23, 65) sums up the theory: "In omni autem honesto, de quo loquimur,
nihil est tam illustre nee quod latius pateat quam coniunctio inter homines
hominum et quasi quaedam societas et communicatio utilitatum et ipsa caritas
generis humani, quae nata a primo satu, quod a procreatoribus nati diliguntur
et tota domus coniugio et stirpe coniungitur, serpit sensim foras, cognationibus
primum, turn affinitatibus, deinde amicitiis, post vicinitatibus, turn civibus et
iis, qui publice socii atque amici sunt, deinde totius complexu gentis humanae ;
quae animi affectio suum cuique tribuens atque hanc, quam dico, societatem
coniunctionis humanae niunirice et aeque tuens iustitia dicitur, cui sunt
adiunctae pietas, bonitas, liberalitas, benignitas, comitas, quaeque sunt generis
eiusdem."

14 THE STAGES [il

philosophy was continued by men of various races, but always
by those who had taken the impress of Greek or of Graeco-
Roman civilisation.

The same general account is true of the Neo-Platonists.
They too were men who had inherited or adopted the Hellenic
tradition. On the ethical side they continue Stoicism ; although
in assigning a higher place to the theoretic virtues they return
to an earlier view. Their genuine originality is in psychology
and metaphysics. Having gone to the centre of Plato's ideal-
istic thought, they demonstrated, by a new application of its
principles, the untenableness of the Stoic materialism ; and,
after the long intervening period, they succeeded in defining
more rigorously than Plato had done, in psychology the idea of
consciousness, in metaphysics the idea of immaterial and
subjective existence. Scientifically, they incorporated elements
of every doctrine with the exception of Epicureanism ; going
back with studious interest to the pre-Socratics, many frag-
ments of whom the latest Neo-Platonist commentators rescued
just as they were on the point of being lost. On the subjective
side, they carried thought to the highest point reached in
antiquity. And neither in Plotinus, the great original thinker
of the school, nor in his successors, was this the result of
mystical fancies or of Oriental influences. These, when they
appeared, were superinduced. No idealistic philosophers have
ever applied closer reasoning or subtler analysis to the relations
between the inner and the outer world. If the school to some
extent " Orientalised," in this it followed Plato ; and it diverged
far less from Hellenic ideals than Plato himself.

A certain affinity of Plato with the East has often been
noticed. This led him to the most remarkable previsions of
the later movement of the world. The system of caste in the
Republic is usually said to be an anticipation of the mediaeval
order of society. Now in the introduction to the Timaeus and
in the Gritias, the social order of Egypt is identified in its
determining principles with that of the ideal State, and both
with the constitution of pre-historic Athens, also regarded as
ideal. Hence it becomes evident that, for his specialisation
and grading of social functions, Plato got the hint from the

II] OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY 15

Egyptian caste of occupations 1 . Thus his ideal society is in
contact, on one side with the pre-Hellenic East, on the other
side with the Orientalised Europe of the Middle Ages. By its
communism it touches modern schemes of reform 2 .

Mr Benn has remarked that the stages of degeneration from
the ideal aristocracy to a tyranny, set forth in the Republic, are
the same as the actual stages of degeneration of the Roman
State. To this it may be added that in the Laws Plato lays
down the exact conditions that concurred for the establishment
of Christianity. The problem is to get a new system of legis-
lation received in the projected colony. For this he finds that,
though citizens from the same State are better in so far as they
are likely to be more orderly, yet they will be too attached to
their own laws. There is therefore an advantage in beginning
with a mixture of colonists from several States. The character
of such colonists will make the task in any case difficult, but
the most favourable condition is that the ideas of a great
legislator should be taken up by a young and vigorous tyrant.
Generalise a little, putting for a single legislator the succession
of those who formulated ecclesiastical doctrine and discipline,
and for a single tyrant the consummated autocracy of the later
Roman Empire, and the conditions are historically given. For
there was, in the cosmopolitan Empire, exactly that mixture
of different inherited customs which Plato desiderates. Add,
what is continually insisted on in the Laws, that towards
getting particular precepts enforced it would conduce much
if they could be regarded as proceeding from a god, and it will
be seen that here also the precise condition of success was laid
down.

The philosopher even anticipated some of the actual legis-
lation of the Church. In the tenth book of the Laws, he
proposes a system of religious persecution. Three classes of
the impious are to be cast out, — those who deny the existence
of all gods, those who say that the gods take no heed of human
affairs, and those who say that they can be bought off with

1 Cf. Arist. Pol. iv. (vii.) 9, 13'29 b 23 : 6 W x u P ta f-^ ° xara. ytvos rod
iroXiTiKov Tr\-fi$ovs £'£ AlyvTrrov.

2 See Appendix I.

16 THE STAGES [ll

prayers and gifts ; or, as we may put it compendiously, —
Atheists, Epicureans and Catholics. As, however, the last
class would have been got rid of with least compunction, the
anticipation here was by no means exact. And probably none
of these glimpses, extraordinary as they were, into the strange
transformation that was to come in a thousand years, had any
influence in bringing it to pass.

The Neo-Platonists would have carried out an ethical
reform of polytheism in the spirit of the Republic and the Laws ;
but they did not propose to set up persecution as a sanction.
On the contrary, they were the champions of the old intellectual
liberty of Hellenism against the new theocracy. One of the
most Orientalising sayings to be found in the later Platonists,
namely, that the " barbarians " have an advantage over the
Greeks in the stability of their institutions and doctrines as
contrasted with the Greek innovating spirit 1 , occurs both in
the Timaeus and in the Laws' 2 . And Plato's attack, in the
Republic, on the myths of Greek religion, was continued by the
Christians, not by his Neo-Platonic successors; who sought to
defend by allegorical interpretations whatever they could not
accept literally ; or at least, in repudiating the fables, did not
advocate the expulsion of the poets.

It is to be remembered further that in the philosophical
tradition of antiquity even more than in its general culture, the
republican ideal was always upheld. Aristotle as well as Plato,
it is true, was less favourable than the statesmen, orators and
historians of the great Athenian period to personal spontaneity
uncontrolled by the authority of the State. But of course what

1 Quoted by Bitter and Preller (Historia Philosophies Graecae, 547 b) from
the De Mysteriis formerly attributed to Iamblichus : fxera^aWd/xeva ael 5ia ti)v
Kcuvorofxiav kclI irapavoixiav tCiv 'EXXiji'wi' ovUv iraveTai....^6.p^apoi de fiovifioi tois
■VjBeaiv oures nal rots X6701S fiefZaiw tois avrois e/xix^vovcn.

2 Allowance being made for the point of view, the two aspects of Plato are
appreciated with perfect exactitude by Joseph de Maistre in his vituperation of
the Greek spirit. (Du Pape, livre iv. ch. 7.) Plato's "positive and eternal
dogmas," says the brilliant reactionary, "portent si clairement le cachet
oriental que, pour le meconnaitre, il faut n'avoir jamais entrevu rAsie....Il y
avait en lui un sophiste et un theologien, ou, si Ton veut, un Grec et un
Chalde'en. On n'entend pas ce pbilosophe si on ne le lit pas avec cette idee
toujours pre"sente a l'esprit."

Il] OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY 17

the philosophers desired was the supremacy of reason, not of
arbitrary will. Licence in the city seemed to them condemn-
able on this ground among others, that under the show of
liberty it paved the way for a tyrant. And the later schools,
in which philosophy had fixed a sort of official attitude, were
always understood to be hostile to despotism 1 . The Stoics in
particular had this reputation, which they justified under the
early Empire. That the Neo-Platonists, although by their
time philosophy had almost ceased to have a political branch,
were still of the ancient tradition, is proved by the republican
spirit of Julian, who had received from them his self-chosen
training'-. In the chiefs of the school also, slight indications to
the same effect may be discerned. This attitude of the philo-
sophers had its importance in preserving the memory of the
higher ideal notwithstanding the inevitable descent due to
circumstance. And even in the early Middle Ages, deriving
their knowledge of antiquity as they did mainly from a few
late compilations, such discussions as there are on the origin
of society and of government seem traceable to reminiscences
from the philosophic schools; the idea of a social contract in
particular coming probably from the Epicureans.

1 Cf. Sueton. Nero, 52: "Liberalis disciplinas omnis fere puer attigit. Sed
a philosophia eum mater avertit, monens imperaturo contrariam esse."

2 Julian's refusal to be addressed by the title 5etnr6TTis customary in the
East, did not conciliate the "average sensual man" of Antioch. See Misopogon,
343c — 344a: SeviroT-qs ehai ov (prjs oi<5e avexv tovto d/coiW, d\Xa /cat ayavaKreis,...
OovXeveiv 5' r/^as dvayKa^eis apxov<ri /cat vo/xols. kclLtoi woffip Kpenrov -r\v ovo/xd^eadai
ix.b> <re SeairdTijv, Zpyy 8e iS.i> ^uas elvai iXevdipovs ; ...&<peh 5e tt)v <tkt)V7]v /cat robs

flifJLOVS KO.1 TOVS OpX 7 ? " 7 " 05 aTO\ib\eKCLS TJfXUV TT)V TroXiv.

CHAPTER III.

RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENTS IN LATER ANTIQUITY.

Though philosophy at its beginning among the Ionians
had broken with traditional authority as completely as it has
ever done since, religion and free speculation did not cease
to interact. In some points, however, their developments
were independent. Religious developments independent of
philosophy were the establishment and the increased atten-
tion paid to the " mysteries," and the importation of new
worships from Egypt and Asia Minor. It was also due
rather to a new development of religion than to philosophy,
that more definite and vivid beliefs came to be popularly held
about the immortality of the soul and about future rewards
and punishments; though philosophers of religious mind sought
to impress these doctrines along with the general conception
of a providential government of the universe. In the
Homeric poems, the soul goes away to the underworld as
soon as the corpse is burnt, and can never afterwards reappear
in the world of living men. Yet much later, in the dramatists,
the ghost is invoked as still having active powers in this world.
Here there is perhaps a survival of a stage of belief more
primitive than the Homeric, rather than a development 1 ; but
in the notion of definite places of reward and punishment there
was clearly some growth of belief. Perhaps the mythical
treatment of immortality by which Plato follows up his
arguments for it on speculative grounds, is more a reaction

1 Rohde (Psyche, i.) finds evidences of such survival in Hesiod.

Ill] RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENTS IN LATER ANTIQUITY 19

of older religion on philosophy than an application of philo-
sophy to religion. To the exact truth of the representations
given, the philosopher never commits himself, but merely
contends that something of the kind is probably true, as
against the imaginations in Homer of a world of lifeless shades
contrasted in their unreality with the vigour and bloom of
life on earth. This side of Plato's teaching had for a long
time not much influence. It became influential in proportion ■
as religion revived. With Aristotle and the naturalistic
schools, personal immortality almost went out of sight.
The Epicureans denied the immortality of the human soul
altogether, and with the Stoics survival of consciousness after
death, if admitted at all, was only till the end of a cycle or
" great year." The religious belief, and especially the belief
in Tartarus, became, however, in the end vigorous enough to
furnish one point of contact for a new religion that could make
it still more definite and terrible. And one side of the new
religion was prepared for by the notion, more or less seriously
encouraged, that those who partook of the mysteries had
somehow a privileged position among the dead 1 . This of course
was discountenanced by the most religious philosophers; though
they came to hold that it showed a certain want of piety
towards ancestral beliefs to make light of initiation into the
native mysteries.

Ancient religion and philosophy had not always been on
such amicable terms as are implied in this last approximation.
Especially at the beginning, when philosophy was a new thing,
what may be called a sporadic intolerance was manifested
towards it. Indeed, had this not been so, it would be necessary
to allow that human nature has since then changed fundament-
all}-. Without such germs of intolerance, its later developments
would have been inconceivable. What can be truly said is that
the institutions of antiquity were altogether unfavourable to
the organisation of it. The death of Socrates had political
more perhaps than religious motives. It has even been main-
tained that serious intolerance first appeared in the Socratic

1 Cf. Hatch, The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian
Church, Lecture X.

2—2

20 RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENTS [ill

school itself 1 . Plato, it is clear, would have been quite willing
that an ethical reform of religion should be carried out by force.
After the first collision, however, religion on the one side re-
mained unorganised, and philosophy on the other side prac-
tically free.

How far was popular polytheism taken seriously ? That it
was not taken seriously by the philosophers is quite evident.
Perhaps the Epicureans reacted on it less than any other school ;
for they conceived of their ethical ideal as realised by the many
gods named in mythology, and they had no other divinities.
Their quarrel was not with polytheism as such, but with the
belief in gods who interrupted their divine tranquillity to
interfere in the affairs of mortals. The belief of the philosophic
schools generally was some form of theism, or, as in the case of
the Stoics, pantheism, by which the gods of mythology, if
recognised at all, were subordinated to a supreme intelligence
or allegorised into natural forces. The later philosophers made
use of more elaborate accommodations. Aristotle had rejected
polytheism in so many words. Plato had dismissed it with
irony. Their successors needed those explicit theories of a
rationalising kind which Plato thought rather idle. For the
educated world, both in earlier and later antiquity, Cudworth's
position is probably in the main true, that a sort of monotheism
was held over and above all ideas of gods and daemons.

Thus the controversy between Christian assailants and pagan
defenders of the national religions was not really a controversy
between monotheism and polytheism. The champions of the
old gods contended only for the general reasonableness of the
belief that different parts of the earth have been distributed
to different powers, divine though subordinate 2 . And in
principle the Christians could have no objection to this. They
themselves often held with regard to angels what the pagans
attributed to gods ; or even allowed the real agency of the
pagan gods, but called them "daemons," holding them to be evil
beings. The later paganism also allowed the existence of evil

1 This is the thesis of a very suggestive little book by M. G. Sorel, entitled
Le Prods de Socrate (1889).

2 Cf. Keim, Celsus' Wahres Wort, p. 67.

Ill] IN LATER ANTIQUITY 21

daemons, and had a place for angels among supernatural powers.
Perhaps there is here a trace of Christian influence.

It is often represented as a paradox that the Christian idea
of a suffering God should have triumphed over what is supposed
to have been the universal prejudice of paganism that to suffer
is incompatible with divinity. There is no real paradox. Ideas
of suffering gods were everywhere, and the worship of them
became the most popular. The case is really this. The philo-
sophers held that absolutely divine beings — who are not the
gods of fable — are " impassible." In oratorical apologies for
the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, this philosophic view of
the divinity had to be met. On the other hand, the Christians
made most of their converts among those who were not philo-
sophers. By their mode of appeal, they got the advantage at
once of a rigorous monotheism such as philosophy was tending
to diffuse, and of the idea that expiations could be performed
by incarnate and suffering deities, such as were believed in
over all the pagan world. Exactly with this kind of popular
paganism philosophy had had its quarrel. Of Xenophanes, the
earliest explicitly monotheistic philosopher, it is related that,
being asked by the people of Elea whether they should sacrifice
to Leucothea and lament for her, he replied : " If you think
her a god, do not lament; if human, do not sacrifice 1 ." The
same view was taken by later philosophers. It was against
this, and not against the popular imaginations, that such sayings
as the well-known one of Tertullian were directed.

Coinciding with the rise of Christianity there was, as has
lately come to be recognised, a revival, not a decline, of ancient
religion. The semblance of decline is due to the effect produced
011 modern readers by the literature of the later Roman Republic
and earlier Empire, which proceeded for the most part from the
sceptical minority. This impression has been corrected by the
evidence of archaeology. So far as there was a real decline in
the worship of the old gods, it meant only a desertion of in-
digenous cults for more exciting ones from the East. First

1 Arist. Rlwt. ii. 23, 1400 b 5. (R. P. 81 a.) Sevocpduris 'EXedrcus (pwrucnv el
duwfft rrj Aewcodeqi Kai dpyvucnv r) fir), <rvve(iov\evev, d fx.ev Oebv uTro\a,ul-idvov<n, /at]
dp-qvtlv, el o' dvOpwirov, fir} Ovtiv.

22 RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENTS [ill

there appeared the cult of the Oriental Bacchus, then of Cybele
and of Isis. And all these present curious analogies with
Christianity. It is an interesting circumstance that from the
Bacchae of Euripides, — which is essentially a picture of the
uncontrollable frenzy aroused by devotion to a lately born son
of Zeus, persecuted and afterwards triumphant, coming from
the East, — several lines were transferred to the Christus Pattens 1 .
The neglect of the altars of the gods spoken of by Lucian may
be explained by this transfer of devotion. In the dialogue
®edov 'K/acXrjala, the Hellenic gods are called together with a
view to the expulsion of intruding barbarian divinities, such as
those that wear Persian or Assyrian garments, and above all
" the brutish gods of Nile," who, as Zeus himself is obliged to
admit, are a scandal to Olympus. Momus insinuates that the
purge will not turn out easy, since few of the gods, even among
the Hellenic ones themselves, if they come to be closely
examined, will be able to prove the purity of their race. Such
an attempt at conservative reform as is here satirised by Lucian
no doubt represented what was still the attitude of classical
culture in the second century ; as may be seen by the invective
of Juvenal against the Egyptian religion. Later, the syncretism
that took in deities of every nationality came to be adopted
by the defenders of classicism. It is this kind of religious
syncretism, rather than pure classicism, that revives at the
Renaissance. The apology not only for the Greek gods but for
those of Egypt, as in truth all diverse representations of the
same divinity, is undertaken in one of Bruno's dialogues.
What makes this the more remarkable is that Bruno probably
got the hint for his Spaccio della Bestia Trionfante precisely
from the dialogue of Lucian just referred to.

The nearest approach in the Hellenic world to the idea of
a personal religious revelation was made by the philosophic
sect of the Pythagoreans. The early history of the sect is
mainly the account of an attempt at ethico-political regulation of
cities in the south of Italy by oligarchies imbued with the philo-
sophical and religious ideas of Pythagoras. These oligarchies

1 See the notes in Paley's edition of Euripides. The Christus Patiens was
formerly attributed to Gregory Nazianzen, but is now held to be of later date.

Ill] IX LATER ANTIQUITY 23

made themselves intensely unpopular, and the Pythagorean
associations were violently suppressed. Afterwards remains of
the societies combined to form a school specially devoted to
geometry and astronomy, and in astronomy remarkable for
suggestions of heliocentric ideas. Till we come to the Neo-
Pythagoreans of about the first century B.C., the history of the
school is obscure. Its religious side is observable in this,
that those who claim to be of the Pythagorean succession
appeal more than other philosophers to the recorded sayings of
the founder, and try to formulate a minute discipline of daily
life in accordance with his precepts. The writings, mostly
pseudonymous, attributed by them to early Pythagoreans 1 are
in composition extremely eclectic, borrowing freely from the
Stoics as well as from Plato and Aristotle. Coincidences
were explained by the assumption that other philosophers
had borrowed from Pythagoras. The approach of the Neo-
Pythagorean school to the idea of a revelation is illustrated
by the circumstance that Apollonius of Tyana, to whom in the
first century A.D. miracles and a religious mission were attri-
buted, was a Pythagorean. The lives of Pythagoras himself,
by Porphyry and Iamblichus, are full of the marvels related in
older documents from which both alike drew. According to
Zeller, the peculiar doctrines and the ascetic discipline of the
Essenes are to be ascribed to Neo-Pythagorean rather than
to Indian or Persian influences. Their asceticism — an essen-
tially non-Judaic character — has in any case to be explained
from a foreign source; and its origin from this particular
Hellenic source is on the whole the most probable, because of
the number of detailed coincidences both in method of life and
in doctrine.

Closely connected with the idea of the cosmical harmony, so
strongly accentuated in the Pythagorean school, is the adoration
of the stars thought of as animated beings, which became in
quite a special manner the philosophic religion. This may
have been first suggested by the star-worship associated with
the empirical observations of the Chaldaeans, from which the

1 Zeller, iii. 2, pp. 100 — 3, gives a long list of them.

24 RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENTS [ill

Greek rational astronomy arose. There is not much trace of
this form of religion in Greek polytheism at its first mytho-
logical stage. The genuine gods of Greece were essentially
anthropomorphic. In a passage of Aristophanes 1 it is even
said that the sun and moon are distinctively the gods of the
barbarians. The earliest philosophers did not treat the heavenly
bodies as in any special way divine, but regarded them as
composed of the same kinds of matter as the other and lower
bodies of the universe. When popular religion thought it an
impiety on the part of Anaxagoras to explain the nature and
action of the sun without introducing divine agency, the divine
agency required was no doubt of an anthropomorphic kind, —
that of a charioteer for example. By Plato and Aristotle the
divinity of the stars themselves was affirmed ; aud it afterwards
became an article of faith with what we may call pagan philo-
sophical orthodoxy. It was for the philosophers a mode of
expressing the teleological relation between the supreme Deity
and the animated universe. The heavenly bodies, according to
the theory, were placed in spheres to give origin by their
motions to the ideas of time and number, and to bring about
the succession of day and night and the changes of the seasons
for the good of men and other animals. That they might do
this, they were endowed with ruling intelligences superior to
man's and more lasting. For the animating principle of the
stars, unimpeded by any process of growth or decay, can
energise continuously at its height, whereas human souls,
being temporarily united to portions of unstable matter, lapse
through such union from the condition of untroubled intel-
lectual activity. This theory, founded by Plato in the Timaeus,
was an assertion of teleological optimism against the notion

1 Quoted in Blakesley's Herodotus, vol. ii. p. 210, n.

TP. i] yap aek-qvT] x^ navovpyos ijXios,

v/mv (Tn(3ov\evoi>Te iroXvv ijdri XP° V0V >

rots ftapfiapoLcri Trpodidorov rr\v EXXdSa.

EP. (Va tI de tovto dparov ; TP. otitj vt] At'o

i]fxe?s fJ.ei> vfiiv dvotxev, tovtoigi. de

oi j3dp(3apoi dvovcn.

Pax, 406—11.

Ill] IN LATER ANTIQUITY 25

that the stars are products of chance-aggregation. As such,
it was defended by Plotinus against the pessimism of the
Christian Gnostics, who— going beyond the Epicureans, as he
sa y S — regarded the present world as the work of an imperfect
or of an eviL creator. And in the latest period of the Neo-
Platonic school at Athens, a high place was given, among the
devotional usages adopted from the older national religions, to
those that had reference to the heavenly bodies.

A current form taken by this modification of star-worship
was astrology. Its wide dissemination in Italy is known from
the edicts expelling the so-called "mathematici" or "Chaldaei,"
as well as from the patronage they nevertheless obtained at the
courts of emperors. Along with magic or " theurgy," it came
to be practised by some though not by all the members of the
Neo-Platonic school. Plotiuus himself, as a true successor of
Plato, minimised where he could not entirely deny the pos-
sibility of astrological predictions and of magical influences,
and discouraged the resort to them even if supposed real. In
his school, from first to last, there were always two sections:
on the one hand those who, in their attachment to the old
religion and aversion from the new, inquired curiously into all
that was still preserved in local traditions about human inter-
course with gods or daemons ; and on the other hand those
who devoted themselves entirely to the cultivation of philosophy
in a scientific spirit, or, if of more religious mind, aimed at
mystical union with the highest God as the end of virtue and
knowledge. This union, according to the general position of
the school, was in no case attainable by magical practices,
which at best brought the soul into relation with subordinate
divine powers. According to those even who attached most
importance to " theurgy," it was to be regarded as a means of
preparation for the soul itself in its progress, not as having any
influence on the divinity. One here and there, it was allowed,
might attain to the religious consummation of philosophy
without external aids, but for the majority they were necessary.
As " magical " powers, when real, were held to be due to a
strictly "natural" sympathy of each part of the universe with
all the rest, and as this was not denied, on scientific grounds,

26 RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENTS IN LATER ANTIQUITY [ill

by the opponents of magic, the theoretical difference between
the two parties was less than might be supposed. It did not
prevent philosophers of opposite views on this point from being
on friendly terms with each other. The real chasm was
between the philosophers who, however they •might aspire
after what they had heard of Eastern wisdom, had at heart
the continuance of the Hellenic tradition, and those believers
in a new revelation who, even if giving to their doctrines a
highly speculative form, like the Gnostics 1 , yet took up a
revolutionary attitude towards the whole of ancient culture.

1 See Appendix II.

CHAPTER IV.

PLOTINUS AND HIS NEAREST PREDECESSORS.

A name once customarily but incorrectly applied to the
Neo-Platonist school was "the School of Alexandria." The
historians who used the name were aware that it was not
strictly correct, and now it seems to be again passing out of
use. That the Neo-Platonic teachers were not in any close
association with the scientific specialists and literary critics of
the Alexandrian Museum was elaborately demonstrated by
Matter in a work which is really a History of the School — or
rather Schools— of Alexandria, and not, like those of Vacherot
and Jules Simon bearing the same general title, of Neo-
Platonism. In his third volume (1818) Matter devotes a
special section to the Neo-Platonic philosophy, " falsely called
Alexandrian," and there he treats it as representing a mode of
thought secretly antipathetic to the scientific spirit of the
Museum. This, however, is an exaggeration. Of the obscure
antipathy which he thinks existed, he does not bring any
tangible evidence; and, in fact, when Neo-Platonism had
become the philosophy of the Graeco-Roman world, it was
received at Alexandria as elsewhere. What is to be avoided is
merely the ascription of a peculiar local association that did not

exist.

To the Jewish Platonism of Philo and to the Christian
Platonism of Clement and Origen the name of " Alexandrian "
may be correctly applied ; for it was at Alexandria that both

28 PLOTINUS [IV

types of thought were elaborated. To the Hellenic Platonism
of Plotinus and his school it has no proper application. Plo-
tinus indeed received his philosophical training at Alexandria
under Ammonius Saccas ; but it was not till long after, at
Rome, that he began to put forth a system of his own. After
his death, knowledge of his system, through Porphyry and
Iamblichus, diffused itself over all parts of the Roman Empire
where there was any care for philosophy. Handed on by the
successors of Iamblichus, the doctrine of Plotinus at last gained
the assent of the occupants of Plato's chair in the Academy.
The one brilliant period of Neo- Platonism at Alexandria was
when it was expounded there by Hypatia. Its last great
names are not those of Alexandrian teachers, but those of the
" Platonic successors " at Athens, among whom by far the most
distinguished was Proclus.

The school remained always in reality the school of Plotinus.
From the direction impressed by him it derived its unity. A
history of Neo-Platonism must therefore set out from the
activity of Plotinus as teacher and thinker. Of this activity an
account sufficient in the main points is given by his disciple
Porphyry, who edited his writings and wrote his life 1 .

Through the reticence of Plotinus himself, the date and
place of his birth are not exactly recoverable. This reticence
Porphyry connects with an ascetic repugnance to the body.
It was only by stealth that a portrait of the master could be
taken; his objection, when asked to sit to a painter, being the
genuinely Platonic one that a picture was but an " image of an
image." Why perpetuate this when the body itself is a mere
image of reality ? Hence also the philosopher did not wish to
preserve the details of his outward history. Yet in his
aesthetic criticism he is far from taking a merely depreciating
view of the fine arts. His purpose seems to have been to
prevent a cult of him from arising among his disciples. He
would not tell his birthday, lest there should be a special
celebration of it, as there had come to be of the birthdays of

1 Porphyry's Life is prefixed to the edition of Plotinus by E. Volkmann
(Teubuer, 1883, 4), from which the citations in the present volume are made.

IV] AND HIS NEAREST PREDECESSORS 29

other philosophers 1 ; although he himself used to keep the
traditional birthday-feasts of Socrates and Plato 2 .

According to Eunapius 3 , he was born at Lyco (or Lycopolis)
in Egypt. From Porphyry's Life the year of his birth is
inferred to be 204 or 205. In his twenty-eighth year, being
dissatisfied with the other Alexandrian teachers of philosophy
whom he frequented, he was taken by a friend to Ammonius.
When he had heard him^he said to his companion : " This is
the man of whom I was in search " (tovtov e&jTovv). With
Ammonius he remained eleven years. At the end of that time,
he became eager to learn something definite of the philosophy
that was cultivated among the Persians and Indians. Ac-
cordingly, in his thirty-ninth year he joined the expedition
which Gordian was preparing against Persia (242). The
Emperor was killed in Mesopotamia, and, the expedition having
failed, Plotinus with difficulty escaped to Antioch. At the age
of forty, he went to Rome (244) ; where, for ten whole years,
though giving philosophical instruction, he wrote nothing.
He began to write in the first year of the reign of Gallienus
(254). In 263, when Plotinus was about fifty-nine, Porphyry,
then thirty years of age, first came into relation with him.
Plotinus had by that time written twenty-one " books," on such
topics as had presented themselves in lectures and discussions.
These Porphyry found issued to a few. Under the stimulus of
new discussions, and urged by himself and an earlier pupil,
Amelius Gentilianus, who had come to him in his third year at
Rome, Plotinus now, in the six years that Porphyry was with
him, wrote twenty-four more books. The procedure was as
before ; the books taking their starting-point from the questions
that occurred 4 . While Porphyry was in Sicily, whither he had
retired about 268, Plotinus sent him in all nine more books.

1 Cicero treats the direction of Epicurus that his birthday should be
celebrated after his death as a weakness in a philosopher. De Fin. ii. 31, 102 :
" Haec non erant eius, qui inuumerabilis mundos infinitasque regiones, quarum
nulla esset ora, nulla extremitas, mente peragravisset." In the last two words
there is an evident allusion to Lucr. i. 74.

2 Porph. Vita Plotini, 2.

3 Vitae Philoaophorum ac Sophist arum (Plotinus).

* V. Plot. 5 : 4k irpocTKaipwv Trpo(3\T)/xdTwv raj inro94o'eis XapovTa,

30 PLOTINUS [IV

In 270, during this absence, Plotinus died in Campania. After
his death, Amelius consulted the Delphic oracle on his lot, and
received a response placing him among the happy daemons,
which Porphyry transcribes in full 1 .

Among the hearers of Plotinus, as Porphyry relates, were
not a few senators. Of these was Rogatianus, who carried
philosophic detachment so far as to give up all his possessions,
dismiss all his slaves, and resign his senatorial rank. Having
before suffered severely from the gout, he now, under the
abstemious rule of life he adopted, completely recovered 2 . To
Plotinus were entrusted many wards of both sexes, to the
interests of whose property he carefully attended. During the
twenty-six years of his residence at Rome, he acted as umpire
in a great number of disputes, which he was able to settle
without ever exciting enmity. Porphyry gives some examples
of his insight into character, and takes this occasion to explain
the reason of his own retirement into Sicily. Plotinus had
detected him meditating suicide ; and, perceiving that the
cause was only a " disease of melancholy," persuaded him to go
away for a time 3 . One or two marvellous stories are told in
order to illustrate the power Plotinus had of resisting malignant
influences, and the divine protection he was under 4 . He was
especially honoured by the Emperor Gallienus 5 and his wife
Salonina, and was almost permitted to carry out a project of
restoring a ruined city in Campania, — said to have been once a
"city of philosophers 6 ," — which he was to govern according to
the Platonic Laws, giving it the name of " Platonopolis 7 ." The
fortunes of the scheme are curiously recalled by those of
Berkeley's projected university in the Bermudas.

At the time of this project, Plotinus must have been
already engaged in the composition of his philosophical books.

1 V. Plot. 22. - Ibid. 7.

3 Ibid. 11. * Ibid. 10.

5 Gallienus tolerated Christianity. He was a man of considerable accom-
plishments, though the historians do not speak highly of him as a ruler.

6 This apparently means, as has been conjectured (R. P. 508 f.), that it had
formerly been ruled by a Pythagorean society.

» V. Plot. 12.

IV ] AND HIS NEAREST PREDECESSORS 31

As Porphyry relates, no external demands on his attention,
with whatever good will and practical success he might respond
to them, could break the continuity of his meditations, which
he had always the power to resume exactly at the point where
he had left off. Of the characteristics of his lecturing, his
disciple gives a sympathetic picture 1 . He did not care for
personal controversy ; as was shown by his commissioning his
pupils to reply to attacks on his positions. Porphyry mentions
a case in which he himself was set to answer an unedifying
discourse of the rhetor Diophanes 2 . The books of Plotinus,
as we have seen, were not composed on any general plan.
Porphyry relates that, through a weakness of the eyes, he
never read over again what he had once written. His gram-
matical knowledge of Greek remained imperfect, and the
revision as well as editing of his writings was committed to
Porphyry, from whom proceeds the arrangement of the six
" Enneads," — the name the fifty- four books received from their
ordering in groups of nine. While he worked in this irregular
way, the character of his thought was extremely systematic.
He evidently possessed his doctrine as a whole from the time
when he began to write. Yet in detail, even to the very last
books, in which Porphyry thought he observed a decline of
power, he has always something effectively new to add.

In addition to the grouping according to subjects, which he
adopted for his arrangement of the Enneads as we have them,
Porphyry has put on record an alternative ordering which may
be taken as at least approximately chronological. The chrono-
logical order is certain as regards the succession of the main
groups. Of these there are three, or, more exactly, four ; the
third group being divided into two sub-groups. At the begin-
ning of the second main group also the order of four books is
certain. For the rest, Porphyry does not definitely state that
the books are all in chronological order; but, as his general

1 V. Plot. 13 : t\v 5' (v tw Xeyeiv r\ 2v5eii;is tov vov &XP 1 T °v TpocwTrov olvtov ri>
0uis imXapurovTOS ' ipa.afj.ios fitv 6<pdijvai, koXXIuv 5k t6t€ fidXto-ra bpuifxivos' icai
\€7tt6s ns iSptlis ewidei nai r\ irpq.bT-q 1 ; ouXa/XTre ko.1 rb Trpoo-qvts Trpbs to.% ipwrrjcreis
ioeinvvTO Kal rb evrovov.

- Ibid. 15.

32 PLOTINUS [IV

arrangement in this enumeration is chronological, we may take
it that he carried it through in detail as far as he could ; and,
as a matter of fact, links of association can often be detected
in passing consecutively from one book to another. For
reading, I have found this order on the whole more convenient
than the actual grouping of the Enneads.

When the books are read in this chronological order, the
psychological starting-point of the system becomes particularly
obvious, the main positions about the soul coming early in the
series. In the exposition that is to follow 1 , these will be set
forth first. After Psychology will come Metaphysics, then in
succession Cosmology (with Theodicy), Aesthetics and Ethics 2 .
A separate chapter will be devoted to the Mysticism of Plotinus 3 .
For this order of exposition support might be found in what
Plotinus himself says, where he points out that from the
doctrine of the soul, as from a centre, we can equally ascend
and descend 4 .

Before beginning the exposition, an attempt must be made
to ascertain the points of contact furnished to Plotinus by those
nearest him in time. His general relation to his predecessors
is on the whole clear, but not the details. Of the teachings
of his Alexandrian master, nothing trustworthy is recorded.
Ammonius left nothing written, and the short accounts pre-
served of his doctrine come from writers too late to have had
any real means of knowing. What those writers do is to
ascribe to him the reasoned positions of Plotinus, or even the
special aims of still later thinkers contemporary with them-
selves. Porphyry, in a passage quoted by Eusebius, mentions
that Ammonius had been brought up as a Christian, but, as
soon as he came in contact with philosophy, returned to the
religion publicly professed. He is spoken of as a native of
Alexandria ; and the name " Saccas " is explained by his having
been originally a porter (5a/c/ca<? being equivalent to craicico-
(f)6pos). Hierocles calls him " the divinely taught" (0€oBiBaKTo<;).

1 See ch. v.

2 Eoughly, this corresponds to the order : — Enn. iv. v. vi. n. in. i.

3 See ch. vi. 4 Enn. iv. 3, 1.

IV] AND HIS NEAREST PREDECESSORS 33

Besides Plotinus he had as pupils Longinus the famous critic 1 ,
Origen the Christian, and another Origen. With this Origen
and a fellow-student named Herennius, Plotinus is said to have
entered into a compact that none of them should divulge
the doctrine of Ammonius. The compact was first broken by
Herennius, then by Origen ; lastly Plotinus thought himself
at liberty to expound the master's doctrine orally. Not for ten
more years did he begin to write 2 . Evidently this, even if
accepted, does little towards explaining the source of the
written doctrine of Plotinus, — in which there is no reference
to Ammonius, — and Zeller throws doubt on the whole story :i ,
regarding it as suspiciously like what is related about a similar
compact among the early Pythagoreans. It is to be observed
that Porphyry does not say that he had it directly from
Plotinus.

What is clear is this, that from Ammonius Plotinus must
have received some impulse which was of great importance for
his intellectual development. In the class-room of Plotinus,
we learn from Porphyry 4 , the later Platonic and Aristotelian
commentators were read ; but everywhere an original turn was
given to the discussions, into which Plotinus carried the spirit
of Ammonius. This probably indicates with sufficient clearness
the real state of the case. Ammonius was one of those teachers
who have the power of stirring up independent thought along
a certain line ; but he was not himself the formative mind
of the movement. The general line of thought was already
marked out. Neither Ammonius nor Plotinus had to create
an audience. A large section of the philosophical world had
for long been dissatisfied with the Stoic, no less than with the
Epicurean, dogmatism. The opposition was partly sceptical,
partly Neo-Pythagorean and Platonic. The sceptical opposition
was represented first by the New Academy, as we see in Cicero ;
afterwards by the revived Pyrrhonism of Aenesidemus and

1 The Ilept'Ti/'ous, formerly attributed to Longinus, is now generally ascribed
to some unknown writer of the first century. See the edition by Prof. W. Rhys
Roberts (1899), who, however, points out that in its spirit it is such a work as
might very well have proceeded from the historical Longinus.

2 Porph. V. Plot. 3. a hi. 2, p. 452. 4 V. Plot. 14.

w. 3

34 PLOTINUS [IV

Sextus. In Cicero we see also, set against both Epicureanism
and Stoicism as a more positive kind of opposition, a sort of
eclectic combination of Platonic and Peripatetic positions. A
later stage of this movement is represented by Plutarch ; when
Platonism, though not yet assuming systematic form, is already
more metaphysical or "theological," and less predominantly
ethical, than the eclecticism of Cicero's time. On its positive
side the movement gained strength in proportion as the
sceptical attack weakened the prevailing dogmatic schools.
These at the same time ceased to give internal satisfaction,
as we perceive in the melancholy tone of Marcus Aurelius.
By the end of the second century, the new positive current was
by far the strongest ; but no thinker of decisive originality had
appeared, at least on the line of Greek thought. In Plotinus
was now to appear the greatest individual thinker between
Aristotle and Descartes. Under the attraction of his systema-
tising intellect, all that remained of aspiration after an inde-
pendent philosophy was rallied to a common centre. Essentially,
the explanation of the change is to be found in his individual
power. Yet he had his precursors as well as his teachers.
There were two thinkers at least who, however little they may
have influenced him, anticipated some of his positions.

The first was Philo of Alexandria, who was born about
30 B.C., and died later than a.d. 40. The second was Numenius
of Apamea, who is said to have flourished between 160 and
180 a.d. Philo was pretty certainly unknown to Plotinus.
Numenius was read in his class-room ; but his disciple Amelius
wrote a treatise, dedicated to Porphyry, in which, replying to
an accusation of plagiarism, he pointed out the differences
between their master's teaching and that of Numenius.
Amelius, it may be remarked, had acquired a great reputation
by his thorough knowledge of the writings of Numenius.
Porphyry cites also the testimony of Longinus. The judgment
of the eminent critic was for the unquestionable originality of
Plotinus among the philosophers of his own and the preceding
age 1 . In what that originality consisted, Plotinus, who spoke

1 Longinus ap. Porph. V. Plot. 20: ol 8e...Tp6wip Oeupias Idly XPW*M V0 <-
H\uTlvb% dai koX Tei>Ti\t.ai>ds 'A/At\ios,...ov5e yap ov8' iyyis ti to, Novfirjvlov ko.1

IV] AND HIS NEAREST PREDECESSORS 35

of him as " a philologist but by no means a philosopher," might
not have allowed his competence to decide. He himself con-
fessed that he did not understand some treatises of Plotinus
that were sent to him. What he ascribes to him in the
passage quoted by Porphyry is simply a more accurate mode
of interpreting the Pythagorean and Platonic principles than
had been attempted by others who took the same general
direction. This, however, only renders his judgment the more
decisive as to the impression Plotinus made in spite of the
difficulties of his style.

To make clear what doctrines of Plotinus were anticipated,
the principles of his metaphysics must be stated in brief pre-
liminary outline. Of the causes above the visible world, he
placed highest of all the One beyond thought and being. To
the One, in the Neo-Platonic philosophy, the name of God is
applicable in a peculiar manner. Everything after it that is
called divine is regarded as derivative. Next in order, as the
effect of the Cause and Principle, comes the di vine Mind,
identical with the " intelligible world " which is its object.
Last in the order of supramundane causes comes the Soul of
the whole, produced by Mind. Thence the descent is to the
world of particular souls and changing things. The series
composed of the primal One, the divine Mind, and the Soul
of the whole, is sometimes called the " Neo-Platonic Trinity 1 ."
Now Numenius put forth the idea of a Trinity which in one
point resembles that of Plotinus.

According to Proclus, Numenius distinguished "three Gods."
The first he called the Father, the second the Maker, while the
third was the World, or that which is made*. The point of

Kpoviov teal ~Si.obipa.Tov ko.1 QpacuWov tois TIKojtlvov irepl rCiv o.vtG>v crvyypd/xfj.aaii'
efs aKpifiaav ■ 6 b~t 'A/uAtos kixt' lx vr l ^ v toutov ^adl^eiv Trpoaipovfievos nai to. ttoWo.
/dv tCjv avTwv doy/xaTdiv ix^ > f JLel ' 0S i T V & e^epyaaia iro\vs uv...wv ko.1 fxdvuv i]/xets
a^tov elva.i vofdfofiev iirwKOTreio-dcu to. o~vyypdfj./j.a.Ta.

1 It is of course inexact to speak of a first, second and third "Person" in the
Trinity of Plotinus. Even the generalised term "hypostasis" is more strictly
applicable in Christian than in Neo-Platonic theology, as Vacherot points out.
See Histoire Critique de VEcole d'Alexandrie, t. ii. p. 425 n.

2 Comm. in Tim. p. 93. (R. P. 506 a ; Zeller, iii. 2, p. 220, n. 6.) Tror^a
fj.€V KaKel rbv irpQrrov, noir]Tr]v 8e t'ov SevTepov, iroirip\a 8Z rbv rplrov ' 6 yap Kdcrfxos
/car' avrbv 6 rpiros iarl Beds.

3—2

36 PLOTINUS [IV

resemblance here to Plotinus is the distinction of " the first
God " from the Platonic Demiurgus, signified by " the Maker."
With Numenius, however, the first God is Being and Mind ;
not, as with Plotinus, a principle beyond these. Zeller remarks
that, since a similar distinction of the highest God from the
Creator of the world appears before Numenius in the Christian
Gnostics, among whom the Valentinians adopted the name
" Demiurgus " from Plato, it was probably from them that
Numenius got the hint for his theory ; and that in addition
Philo's theory of the Logos doubtless influenced him 1 . To this
accordingly we must turn as possibly the original starting-point
for the Neo-Platonic doctrine.

With Philo, the Logos is the principle that mediates be-
tween the supreme God and the world formed out of matter
Essentially the conception is of Greek origin, being taken
directly from the Stoics, who got at least the suggestion of it
from Heraclitus 2 . Philo regards the Logos as containing the
Ideas in accordance with which the visible world was formed.
By this Platonising turn, it becomes in the end a different
conception from the divine " Reason " of the Stoics, embodied
as that is in the material element of fire. On the other hand,
by placing the Platonic Ideas in the divine Mind, Philo inter-
prets Plato in a sense which many scholars, both in antiquity
and in modern times, have refused to allow. Here Plotinus
coincides with Philo. Among those who dissented from this
view was Longinus. Porphyry, who, before he came to Rome,
had been the pupil of Longinus at Athens, was not without
difficulty brought over, by controversy with Amelius, to the
view of Plotinus, " that intelligibles do not exist outside in-
tellect 3 ." Thus by Plotinus as by Philo the cause and principle
of things is distinguished from the reason or intellect which is
its proximate effect ; and, in the interpretation of Plato, the
divine mind is regarded as containing the ideas, whereas in the

1 iii. 2, p. 219, n. 3.

2 See, for the detailed genealogy of the conception, Principal Drummond's
Philo Judaeus, vol. i.

3 V. Plot. 18. The position which he had adopted from Longinus was on

£i;W TOV VOV il<pt<JTT)K€ TO. VQ-qTO..

IV] AND HIS NEAREST PREDECESSORS 37

Timaeus they are figured as existing outside the mind of the

Demiurgus. On the other hand, Plotinus differs both from

Philo and from the Gnostics in consistently treating as mythical

the representation of a maker setting out from a certain

moment of time to shape things according to a pattern out

of pre-existent matter. And, in spite of his agreement with

Philo up to a certain point, there is nothing to show that their

views were historically connected. Against the attempt to

connect Plotinus, or even Numenius, with Philo, a strong point

is urged by Dr Bigg. Neither Plotinus nor Numenius, as he

points out, ever uses Xo'709 as a technical term for the " second

hypostasis 1 ." Yet, if they had derived their theory from Philo,

this is evidently what they would have done ; for the Philonian

X070?, on the philosophical side, was not alien from Greek

thought, but was a genuine product of it. In truth, to adapt the

conception to their own systems by means of a change of name,

would have been more difficult than to arrive at their actual

terminology directly by combining Stoical and Aristotelian

positions with their Platonism. This kind of combination is

what we find in the eclectic thinkers, of whom Numenius was

one. Plotiuus made use of the same elements ; the presence of

which in his system Porphyry has expressly noted 2 . And, so

far as the relation of the Neo-Platonic Trinity to Plato is

concerned, the exact derivation of the three " hypostases " is

pointed out in a fragment of Porphyry's lost History of

Philosophy 3 . The highest God, we there learn, is the Idea of

1 See Xeoplatonism, pp. 123, 242, etc. Dr Bigg's actual assertions seem too
sweeping. It is not quite correct to say, as he does in the second of the passages
referred to, that Plotinus expressly refuses to apply to his principle of Intelli-
gence the title Logos, which in his system means, as with the Stoics, " little
more than physical force." There are indeed passages where he refuses to apply
the title in some special reference ; but elsewhere — as in Enn. v. 1, 6 — he says
that Soul is the \670s of Mind, and Mind the \6yos of the One. While the term
with him has many applications, and among them the Stoical application to
the "seminal reasons" of natural things, it may most frequently be rendered by
" rational law."

- V. Plot. 14 : e/AfjLepu.KTa.1 8' ev rots <rvyypdfx/xaaL Kal ra -tuiko. \av6dvovra
doy/jLara Kal to. HepnraTrjTiKa' K<xTawtirvKv<jiTcu 6e Kal r/ juera rd (pvaiKa roi
AptcrroreXouy wpayfj-areia.

3 Fragm. 16 in Nauck's Opi/triilo Selecta.

38 PLOTINUS [IV

the Good in the Republic ; the second and third hypostases are
the Demiurgus and the Soul of the World in the Timaeus. To
explain the triadic form of such speculations, no theory of
individual borrowing on any side is necessary. All the thinkers
of the period, whether Hellenic, Jewish or Christian, had grown
up in an atmosphere of Neo-Pythagorean speculation about
numbers, for which the triad was of peculiar significance 1 .
Thus on the whole it seems that Numenius and Plotinus drew
independently from sources common to them with Philo, but
cannot well have been influenced by him.

Plotinus, as we have seen, had some knowledge of Numenius ;
but, where a special point of contact has been sought, the
difference is as obvious as the resemblance. The great differ-
ence, however, is not in any detail of the triadic theory. It is
that Plotinus was able to bring all the elements of his system
under the direction of an organising thought. That thought
was a definitely conceived immaterialist monism which, so far
as we know, neither Philo nor Numenius had done anything
substantially to anticipate. He succeeded in clearly developing
out of Plato the conception of incorporeal essence, which his
precursors had rather tended by their eclecticism to confuse.
That the conception was in Plato, the Neo-Platonists would
have not only admitted but strongly maintained. Yet Plato's
metaphorical expressions had misled even Aristotle, who
seriously thought that he found presupposed in them a spatial
extension of the soul 2 . And if Aristotle had got rid of semi-
materialistic " animism " even in expression, this had not
prevented his successors from running into a new materialism
of their own. Much as the Platonising schools had all along
protested against the tendency to make the soul a kind of body
or an outcome of body, they had not hitherto overcome it by
clear definitions and distinctions. This is one thing that

1 Jules Simon, in his Histoire de VEcole d' Alexandria, dwells on this point
as an argument against the view, either that Neo-Platonism borrowed its Trinity
from Christianity or Christianity from Neo-Platonism.

2 Proclus wrote a book to defend Plato's view of the soul against Aristotle's
attack.

IV] AND HIS NEAREST PREDECESSORS 39

Plotinus and his successors achieved in their effort after an
idealist metaphysic.

It was on this side especially that the thought of the school
influenced the Fathers and Doctors of the Church. On the
specific dogmas of Christian theology, Neo-Platonism probably
exercised little influence. From Platonising Judaism or
Christianity, it received none at all. At most an isolated
expression occurs showing that the antipathy to alien religions
was not so unqualified as to prevent appreciation, for example,
of the Platonism in the Fourth Gospel. Numenius, it is
interesting to note, was one of the few earlier writers who
attach themselves to the Hellenic tradition and yet show
traces of sympathetic contact with Hebraic religion. He it
was who called Plato " a Moses writing Attic 1 ." On the other
side Philo, though by faith a Jew, was as a philosopher
essentially Greek both in thought and in terminology. What
divided him from the Hellenic thinkers was simply his ac-
ceptance of formal limitations on thought prescribed by a
positive religion.

In concluding the present chapter, a word may be said on
the literary style of Plotinus, and on the temper of himself and
his school in relation to life. His writing is admittedly difficult ;
yet it is not wanting in beautiful passages that leave an
impression even of facility. He is in general, as Porphyry says,
concentrated, " abounding more in thoughts than in words."
The clearness of his systematic thought has been recognised by
expositors in spite of obscurities in detail ; and the obscurities
often disappear with close study. On the thought when it
comes in contact with life is impressed the character of ethical
purity and inwardness which always continued to mark the
school. At the same time, there is a return to the Hellenic
love of beauty and knowledge for themselves. Stoical elements
are incorporated, but the exaggerated " tension " of Stoicism

1 Suid. and Clem. Strom. (R. P. 7 b, 504.) ri yap 4<ttl IW&tuv t) M«wi)s
irrudfuv ; Longinus, as we have seen, had enough knowledge of Numenius to
compare him with Plotinus. This being so, it is certainly a rather remarkable
coincidence, if the treatise On the Sublime was not written by Longinus, that in
it also there should be an admiring reference to " the legislator of the Jews."

40 PLOTINUS AND HIS NEAREST PREDECESSORS [iV

has disappeared. While the Neo-Platonists are more con-
sistently ascetic than the Stoics, there is nothing harsh or
repulsive in their asceticism. The ascetic life was for them not
a mode of self-torture, but the means to a happiness which on
the whole they succeeded in attaining. Perhaps the explanation
is that they had restored the idea of theoretic virtue, against
the too narrowly practical tone of the preceding schools. Hence
abstinence from the ordinary objects of pursuit left no blank.
It was not felt as a deprivation, but as a source of power to
think and feel. And in thinking they knew that indirectly
they were acting. For theory, with them, is the remoter source
of all practice, which bears to it the relation of the outward
effect to the inward cause.

CHAPTER V.

THE PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM OF PLOTINUS.

As idealists and their opponents alike recognise, one great
stumbling-block of an idealist philosophy is language. This
was seen by Plato, by Plotinus, and by Berkeley, just as from
the other side it is seen by the materialist and the dualist.
Language was formed primarily to indicate the things of sense,
and these have not the characters which idealism, whether
ancient or modern, ascribes to reality. Ancient idealism refuses
to call external things real in the full sense, because they are in
flux. The reality is the fixed mental concept or its unchanging
intelligible object. Modern idealism regards things as merely
" phenomenal," because they appear to a consciousness, and be-
yond this appearance have no definable reality. Whether reality
itself is fixed or changing, may by the modern idealist be left
undetermined ; but at any rate the groups of perceptions that
make up the " objects " of daily experience and even of science
are not, in his view, objects existing in themselves apart from
mind, and known truly as such. Only by some relation to mind
can reality be constituted. The way in which language opposes
itself to ancient idealism is by its implication that existence
really changes. To modern idealism it opposes itself by its
tendency to treat external things as absolute objects with a real
existence apart from that of all thinking subjects.

The two forms of developed idealism here regarded as
typically ancient and modern are the earliest and the latest —
that of Plato on the one side, that of post-Cartesian, and still

42 THE PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM [v

more of post-Kantian, thinkers on the other. The idealism of
Plotinus contains elements that bring it into relation with both.
English readers know how Berkeley insists that, if we are to
grasp his doctrine, we must attend to the meanings he desires
to convey, and must not dwell on the mere form of expression.
Let us see how Plato and Plotinus deal with the same difficulty.

Plato's treatment of it may be most readily studied in the
Gratylus. Language, Socrates undertakes to show, has a certain
natural conformity to things named. To those who named
them, external things mostly presented themselves as in flux.
Accordingly, words are full of devices by the makers of language
for expressing gliding and flowing movements. With a little
ingenuity and an occasional evasion, those who hold that the
true nature of everything is to flow and not to be in any
manner fixed, might exhibit the early legislators over human
speech as in exact agreement with their philosophical opinions.
Yet after all there are some words, though fewer, that appear
at first sight to express stability. So that the primitive
legislators were not, on the face of things, perfectly consistent.
On the whole, however, words suggesting flux predominate.
Similarly the early myth-makers, in their derivation of all things
from Ocean and Tethys, seem to have noticed especially the
fact of change in the world. The Heracliteans, therefore, have
the advantage in the appeal to language and mythology. Still,
their Eleatic opponents may be right philosophically. The
makers of language and myth may have framed words and
imagined the origin of things in accordance with what is
apparent but not real. Real existence in itself may be stable.
If this is so, then, to express philosophic thought accurately, it
will be necessary to reform language. In the meantime, the
proper method in all our inquiries and reasonings must be, to
attend to things rather than words.

According to the Platonic doctrine, the " place of ideas " is
the soul 1 . In virtue of its peculiar relations to those stable
and permanent existences known by intellect, the individual
soul is itself permanent. It gives unity, motion and life to the

1 Arist. Be An. iii. 4, 429 a 27. (R. P. 251 c.)

V] OF PLOTINUS 43

fluent aggregate of material particles forming its temporary
body. It disappears from one body and reappears in another,
existing apart in the intervals between its mortal lives. Thus
by Plato the opposition of soul and body is brought, as a
subordinate relation, under the more general opposition of the
stable ideas — the existence of which is not purely and simply
in the soul, but is also in some way transcendent — and the flux
of material existence. For Plotinus, this subordinate opposition
has become the starting-point. He does not dismiss the earlier
antithesis ; but the main problem with him is not to find
permanence somewhere as against absolute flux. He allows in
the things of sense also a kind of permanence. His aim is first
of all to prove that the soul has a real existence of its own,
distinguished from body and corporeal modes of being. For
in the meantime body as such — and no longer, as with the
Heracliteans, a process of the whole — had been set up by the
dominant schools as the absolute reality. By the Epicureans
and Stoics, everything that can be spoken of at all was regarded
as body, or a quality or relation of body, or else as having no
being other than "nominal." The main point of attack for
scepticism had been the position common to the naturalistic
schools, that external things can be known by direct appre-
hension as they really are. Neither the Academical nor the
Pyrrhouist scepticism, however, had taken the place of the
ruling dogmatic system, which was that of the Stoics. Thus
the doctrine that Plotinus had to meet was still essentially
materialism, made by the sceptical attack less sure of itself, but
not dethroned.

The method he adopts is to insist precisely on the para-
doxical character of the soul's existence as contrasted with that
of corporeal things. How specious is the view of his opponents
he allows. Body can be seen and touched. It resists pressure
and is spread out in space. Soul is invisible and intangible,
and by its very definition unextended. Thus language has to
be struggled with in the attempt to describe it ; and in the
end can only be made to express the nature of soul by con-
straining it to purposes for which most men never think of
employing it. What is conclusive, however, as against the

44 THE PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM [V

materialistic view, is that the soul cannot be described at all
except by phrases which would be nonsensical if applied
to body or its qualities, or to determinations of particular
bodies. Once the conception of soul has been fixed as that
of an incorporeal reality, body is seen to admit of a kind of
explanation in terms of soul — from which it derives its " form "
— whereas the essential nature of soul admitted of no explana-
tion in terms of body.

Above soul and beneath body, as we shall see, Plotinus has
other principles, derived from earlier metaphysics, by which he
is able to construct a complete philosophy, and not merely
what would be called in modern phrase a " rational psychology."
His psychology, however, is the centre. Within the soul, he
finds all the metaphysical principles in some way represented.
In it are included the principles of unity, of pure intellect, of
moving and vitalising power, and, in some sense, of matter itself.
Further, by what may be called his " empirical psychology,"
he prepared the starting-point for the distinctively modern
" theory of knowledge." This he did, as Prof. Siebeck has
shown 1 , by the new precision he gave to the conception of
consciousness. On this side he reaches forward to Descartes,
as on the other side he looks back to Plato and Aristotle.

1. Psychology.

It is absurd, or rather impossible, says Plotinus at the
opening of one of his earliest expositions 2 , that life should be
the product of an aggregation of bodies, or that things without
understanding should generate mind. If, as some say, the soul
is a permeating air with a certain habitude (Trvev/Aavrm exov)
— and it cannot be air simply, for there are innumerable airs
without life — then the habitude (7rm exov or exeats) is either
a mere name, and there is really nothing but the " breath," or
it is a kind of being (rtov ovtiov ri). In the latter case, it is a
rational principle and of another nature than body (\0709 av
etrj Ti9 >cal ou awfia ical <j>vai<; erepa). If the soul were matter,
it could produce only the effects of the particular kind of

1 Geschichte der Psychologie, i. 2. 2 E1111. iv. 7.

V] OF PLOTINUS 45

matter that it is — giving things its own quality, hot or cold,
and so forth — not all the opposite effects actually produced in
the organism. The soul is not susceptible of quantitative
increase or diminution, or of division. Thus it has not the
characters of a thing possessing quantity (airoaov apa ?; yfrv-^v)-
The unity in perception would be impossible if that which
perceives consisted of parts spatially separated. It is impossible
that the mental perception, for example, of a pain in the finger,
should be transmitted from the "animal spirit" (yfrv^iKov
nrv€vp,a) of the finger to the ruling part (to rjyep,ovovi>) in the
organism. For, in that case, there must either be accumu-
lated an infinity of perceptions, or each intermediate part in
succession must feel the pain only in itself, and not in the
parts previously affected ; and so also the ruling part when it
becomes affected in its turn. That there can be no such
physical transmission as is supposed of a mental perception,
results from the very nature of material mass, which consists
of parts each standing by itself: one part can have no know-
ledge of what is suffered by another part. Consequently we
must assume a percipient which is everywhere identical with
itself. Such a percipient must be another kind of being than
body. That which thinks can still less be body than that which
perceives. For even if it is not allowed that thought is the
laying hold on intelligibles without the use of any bodily organ,
yet there are certainly involved in it apprehensions of things
without magnitude (ap,eye6wv avTikifaeLs). Such are abstract
conceptions, as for example those of the beautiful and the just.
How then can that which is a magnitude think that which is
not ? Must we suppose it to think the indivisible with that in
itself which is divisible ? If it can think it at all, it must rather
be with some indivisible part of itself. That which thinks,
then, cannot be body. For the supposed thinking body has no
function as an extended whole (and to be such is its nature as
body), since it cannot as a whole come in contact with an object
that is incorporeal.

The soul in relation to the body, according to Plotinus's own
mode of statement, is "all in all and all in every part 1 ." Thus

^Enn. iv. 2, 1.

46 THE PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM [V

it is in a sense divisible because it is in all the parts of a
divisible body. Properly it is indivisible because it is all in
the whole and all in each part of it. Its unity is unlike that
of a body, which is one by spatial continuity, having different
parts each of which is in a different place ; and unlike that of a
quality of body such as colour, which can be wholly in many
discontinuous bodies. In the case of a quality, that which is
the same in all portions of body that possess it in common
is an affection (Trddrj^a), and not an essence (ova la). Its
identity is formal, and not numerical, as is the case with the
soul 1 .

In this general argumentation, it will be observed, Plotinus
starts from the supposition that the body has a reality other
than phenomenal. Allowing this, he is able to demonstrate
against his opponents that a reality of a different kind from
that of body must also be assumed. In his metaphysics he
goes further, and reduces corporeal things in effect to pheno-
mena ; but in his psychology he continues to take a view
nearer that of "common-sense." Thus he is confronted with
the difficulties that have since become familiar about the
"connexion of body and mind," and the possibility of their
interaction. He lays bare in a single saying the root of all
such difficulties. How if, in talking of a "mixture" of a
corporeal with an incorporeal nature, we should be trying to
realise an impossibility, as if one should say that linear magni-
tude is mixed with whiteness' 2 ? The solution for psychology
is found in the theory that the soul itself remains " unmixed "
in spite of its union with body; but that it causes the pro-
duction of a " common " or " dual " or " composite " nature,

1 Cf. Erin. vi. 4, 1. The peculiar relation of the soul, in itself indivisible, to
the body, in itself divisible, and so communicating a kind of divisibility to the
soul, Plotinus finds indicated by the "divine enigma" of the " mixture" in the
Tiviaeus. Enn. iv. 2, 2: tovto &pa earl rb ddws riviy^ivov 'ttJs d/xeplarov K<xl del
Kara to. avra exovaijs [ovaias] kclI ttjs irepl rd auifxara yiyvoixivqs fxeptaTTJs rpirov e|
dfj.<pdii> cweKep&aaTO ovaias eldos.'

- Enn. i. 1, 4 : ftr-qTeov di Kal rbv rpdvov tt)s /u£ews, /xriTrore ov Swards rj,
w<nrep dv e'i tis X^yoi /x€/j,lx^ al - Aei/K^ ypa-whv, <pucriv dWrjv aXXij. This book,
though coming first in Porphyry's arrangement according to subjects, is given
as the last but one in the chronological order.

V] OF PLOTINUS 47

which is the subject in perception. By the aid of this inter-
mediary, the unity of the soul is reconciled — though not
without perplexities in detail — with localisation of the organic
functions that subserve its activity.

The different parts of the animated body participate in the
soul's powers in different ways 1 . According as each organ of
sense is fitted for one special function, a particular power of
perception may be said to be there ; the power of sight in the
eyes, of hearing in the ears, of smell in the nostrils, of taste in
the tongue, of touch everywhere. Since the primary organs of
touch are the nerves, which have also the power of animal
motion, and since the nerves take their origin from the brain,
in the brain may be placed the starting-point of the actual
exercise of all powers of perception and movement. Above
perception is reason. This power has not properly a physical
organ at all, and so is not really in the head ; but it was
assigned to the head by the older writers because it com-
municates directly with the psychical functions of which the
brain is the central organ. For these last, as Plotinus remarks,
have a certain community with reason. In perception there is
a kind of judgment ; and on reason together with the imagina-
tion derived from perception, impulse follows.

Tn making the brain central among the organs that are in
special relation with mind, Plotinus of course adopts the
Platonic as against the Aristotelian position, which made the
heart central. At the same time, he incorporates what had
since been discovered about the special functions of the nervous
system, which were unknown to Aristotle as to Plato. The
vegetative power of the soul he places in relation with the
liver, because here is the origin of the veins and the blood
in the veins, by means of which that power causes the nourish-
ment of the body. Hence, as with Plato, appetite is assigned
to this region. Spirited emotion, in accordance with the
Platonic psychology, has its seat in the breast, where is the
spring of lighter and purer blood.

Both perceptions and memories are " energies " or activities,

1 Enn. iv. 3, 23.

48 THE PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM [V

not mere passive impressions received and stored up in the
soul 1 . Take first the case of the most distinct perception.
In sight, when we wish to perceive anything clearly, we direct
our vision in a straight line to the object. This outwardly
directed activity would not be necessary if the object simply
left its impression on the soul. Were this the whole process,
we should see not the outward objects of vision, but images
and shadows of them ; so that what we see would be other than
the things themselves {ware ciXka fieu ehai avrd rd irpdy/xaTa,
aXXa 8e ra r)p2v opwfxeva). In hearing as in sight, perceptions
are energies, not impressions nor yet passive states (fii) tvttol,
/j.r)S€ irelae^). The impression is an articulated stroke in the
air, on which it is as if letters were written by that which
makes the sound. The power of the soul as it were reads
those impressions. In the case of taste and smell, the passive
affections (irddr}) are one thing ; the perceptions and judgments
of them are another. Memory of things is produced by exercise
of the soul, either generally or in relation to a special class of
them. Children remember better because they have fewer
things to attend to. Mere multitude of impressions retained,
if memory were simply an affair of retaining impressions, would
not cause them to be less remembered. Nor should we need to
consider in order to remind ourselves; nor forget things and
afterwards recall them to mind. The persistence of passive
impressions in the soul, if real, would be a mark rather of
weakness than of strength, for that which is most fixedly
impressed is so by giving way (to <ydp evrvTrcoTarov rw eliceiv
earl tolovtov). But where there is really weakness, as in the
old, both memory and perception are worse.

The activity of perception, though itself mental, has direct
physical conditions. That of memory has not. Memory itself
belongs wholly to the soul, though it may take its start from
what goes on in the composite being. What the soul directly
preserves the memory of, is its own movements, not those of
body. Pressure and reaction of bodies can furnish no explana-
tion of a storing-up of mental " impressions " (tvttoi), which are

1 Enn. iv. 6.

V] OF PLOTINUS 49

not magnitudes. That the body, through being in flux, is
really a hindrance to memory, is illustrated by the fact that
often additions to the store cause forgetfulness, whereas memory
emerges when there is abstraction and purification 1 . Some-
thing from the past that was retained but is latent may be
recalled when other memories or the impressions of the moment
are removed. Yet. though it is not the composite being but
the soul itself that possesses memory, memories come to it not
only from its spontaneous activity, but from its activity incited
by that which takes place in consequence of its association with
the body 2 . There are memories of what has been done and
suffered by the dual nature, though the memories themselves,
as distinguished from that which incites them, are purely
mental. Thus indirectly the physical organism has a bearing
on memory as well as on perception. It follows, however, from
the general view, that memory as well as reason belongs to the
" separable " portion of the soul. Whether those who have
attained to the perfection of virtue will, in the life of complete
separation from the body, retain indefinitely their memories of
the past, is another question. The discussion of it belongs
rather to the ethics than to the pure psychology of Plotinus.

To specific questions about sense-perception, Plotinus de-
votes two short books, both of which are concerned primarily
with vision. Discussing the transmission of light 3 , he finds
that, like all perception, seeing must take place through some
kind of body. The affection of the medium, however, need not
be identical with that of the sense-organ. A reed, for example,
through which is transmitted the shock of a torpedo, is not
affected like the hand that receives the shock. The air, he
concludes, is no instrument in vision. If it were, we should be
able to see without looking at the distant object ; just as we
are warmed by the heated air we are in contact with. In the
case of heat too, Plotinus adds, we are warmed at the same time
with the air, rather than by means of it. Solid bodies receive
more of the heat than does the air intervening between them

1 Enn. iv. 3, 26 : Trpocrride/x^vuv tlvCip XrjOrj, 4v 8' a<pa.t.pl<rei ko.1 Kadapaei
avaxinrrei iroWaKts 17 /ivripirj.

* Enn. iv. 3, 27. 3 Enn. iv. 5.

w. 4

50 THE PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM [V

and the heated object. In pursuance of this argument, he
remarks that even the transmission of sound is not wholly
dependent on a stroke in an aerial medium. Tones vary
according to the differences of the bodies from which the sound
starts, and not simply according to the shock. Furthermore,
sounds are transmitted within our bodies without the inter-
mediation of air; as when bones are bent or sawn 1 . The shock
itself, whether in air or not, when it arrives at perception is the
sound. Light Plotinus defines as an incorporeal energy of the
luminous body directed outwards. Being an " energy," and not
a mere quality (7rotoT?7<?), it is capable of overleaping an interval
without becoming inherent in that which occupies the interval;
as, in fact, it leaves no impress on the air through which it
passes. It can exist in the interspace without a percipient,
though a percipient, if present, would be affected by it.

For positive explanation here, Plotinus falls back on the
idea, borrowed from the Stoics, of a " sympathy " binding
together remote but like parts of the universe. The other book
mentioned 2 , which discusses the question why things seen at a
distance appear small, is interesting from its points of contact
with Berkeley. To solve the problem, Plotinus sets out in
quest of something more directly psychological than the
" visual angle 3 ." Is not one reason for differences of estimate,
he asks, because our view of magnitude is in an " accidental "
relation to colour, which is what we primarily behold 4 ? To
perceive how large any magnitude really is, we must be near
it, so as to be able to go over its parts in succession. At a
distance, the parts of the object do not permit accurate dis-
cernment of their relative colouring, since the colours arrive
faint (a/xvSpd). Faintness in colours corresponds to smallness
in magnitude; both have in common "the less" (t6 tjttov).
Thus the magnitude, following the colour, is diminished pro-

1 Erin. iv. 5, 5 : ovk ev dipt, dXXd o~vyKpoto~avTos Kal TrK-fj^avros dWo dWov'
olov Kal outCov Kap\f/eis irpbs dWrfka iro.pa.Tpijiop.ivuv dipos p.r) ovtos pLera^i Kal
TrpLcreLs.

2 Enn. ii. 8. 3 Of. Theory of Vision, § 79.

4 Enn. ii. 8, 1 : on Kara avp^e^r/Kos opa/rai to p.iyedo$ tov xP<Aucctos irpuxus
OewpovpL&ov,

V] OF PLOTINUS 51

portionally (dvd \6yov). The nature of the affection, however,
becomes plainer in things of varied colours. Confusion of
colours, whether in near or distant objects, causes apparent
diminution of size, because the parts do not offer differences by
which they can be accurately distinguished and so measured 1 .
Magnitudes also of the same kind and of like colours are
deceptive because the sight slips away; having, for precisely
the same reason as in the ca^e of confused colours, no hold on
the parts. Again, distant objects look near at hand because
there is loss of visible detail in the intervening scenery. Close
as all this comes to Berkeley, at least in psychological method,
the incidental remark comes still closer, that that to which we
primarily refer visible magnitude appears to be touch. This
occurs in a question about the <: magnitude " of sound, to which
reference is made by way of illustrating the analogy of great
and small in different sense-perceptions 2 .

Feeling, in the sense of pleasure and pain, according to
Plotinus, belongs primarily to the animated body, in the parts
of which it is localised 3 . The perception of it, but not the
feeling itself, belongs to the soul. Sometimes, however, in
speaking of the feeling of pleasure or pain, we include along
with it the accompanying perception. Corporal desires too
have their origin from the common nature of the animated
body. That this is their source is shown by the differences, in
respect of desires, between different times of life, and between
persons in health and disease. In his account of desire and
aversion, Plotinus notes the coincidence between mental and
bodily movements 4 . The difference between the affection of
the animated body on the one side and the soul's clear per-
ception of it on the other, applies both to appetitive and to
irascible emotion 5 . Of these the second is not derived from

1 Cf. Theory of Vision, § 56.

- Enn. II. 8, 1 : rivi yap irpwTWS to iv rrj <pwvrj /xiyedos, uo-irep Soku Trj 6\(pf) to
opdi/xevov ;

» Enn. iv. 4, 18—21.

4 Enn. iv. 4, 20 : eV ttjs ddtvrjs iyiveTo r\ yvuxns, ko.1 dirayuv e/c rod ttoiovvtos to
irados T] \pvxn Pov\o(*ivr) iiroiei ti)v <pvyr)v, ko.1 tov irpwrov wadovTos OtSacr/coiros tovto
<j>evyovTbs irws Kai avrov iv t-q o-vo-to\tj.

5 Enn. iv. 4 r 28.

4—2

52 THE PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM [V

the first, but both spring from a common root. That its origin
cannot be entirely independent is shown by the fact that those
who are less eager after bodily pleasures are less prone to anger
and irrational passions. To explain the impulse (op fir}) to repel
actively the cause of injury, we must suppose perception added
to the mere resentment (a<yavaKrrjcns:), which, as a passion, is
primarily a boiling-up of the blood. The " trace of soul " on
which this kind of emotion depends (to eKireaov eh Ov/xov
Ixvos) has its seat in the heart.

Error too arises from the common nature, by which right
reason becomes weak, as the wisest counsellor in an assembly
may be overborne by the general clamour 1 . The rational power,
with Plotinus as with Aristotle, is in its own nature " unmixed";
but it has to manifest itself under conditions of time and in
relation to the composite being. Further discussion of these
points will in the main come better under the head of meta-
physics than of psychology. A distinctively psychological
theory, however, is the explicit transformation of the Platonic
" reminiscence " into a doctrine of " innate ideas " potentially
present. The term " memory," Plotinus observes, is improperly
applied to the intellectual energising of the soul in accordance
with its innate principles 2 . The reason why the older writers
ascribed memory and reminiscence to the soul when it thus
energises, was apparently because it is then energising in
accordance with powers it always had (as it has now latent
memories) but does not always bring into action, and especially
cannot bring into action on its first arrival in the world. In
this place for one Plotinus does not in the least fail to recognise
that there has been scientific progress since the time of those
whom he calls " the ancients."

The higher and the lower powers of the soul meet in the
imaginative faculty ((fravracrla, to (pavTaaTtKov), which is the
psychical organ of memory and self-consciousness. By this
view the dispersion is avoided that would result from assigning
memory of desires to the desiring part of the soul, memories
of perception to the perceiving part, and memories of thought

1 Enn. iv. 4, 17. 2 Enn. iv. 3, 25.

V] OF PLOTINUS 53

to the thinking part. Thought is apprehended by the imagi-
nation as in a mirror; the notion (i'6t]fia) at first indivisible
and implicit being conveyed to it by an explicit discourse
(Xoyo?). For thought and the apprehension of thought are not
the same {aWo yap r) vorjats, /cal aWo ?; t?}? vo/jaews dvri-
\?;\/a?) ; the former can exist without the latter. That which
thus apprehends thought apprehends perceptions also 1 .

Here we come to the psychological conception of " con-
sciousness," which Prof. Siebeck has traced through its formative
stages to its practically adequate expression by Plotinus 2 . By
Plato and Aristotle, as he points out, such expressions are used
as the " seeing of sight," and, at a higher degree of generality,
the " perceiving of perception " and the " thinking of thought " ;
but they have no perfectly general term for the consciousness
with which we follow any mental process whatever, as distin-
guished from the process itself. Approximations to such terms
were made in the post-Aristotelian period by the Stoics and
others, but it was Plotinus who first gained complete mastery
of the idea. Sometimes he speaks of " common perception "
(o-vvalcrdrjais) in a generalised sense. His most usual expres-
sion is that of an " accompaniment " (irapaKo\ov6r]ais) of its
own mental activities by the soul. " Self-consciousness," in its
distinctive meaning, is expressed by "accompanying oneself"
{irapaKoXovOelv kavru>). With these terms are joined expres-
sions for mental "synthesis" (avvdeaLS and <tvv€gl<;) as a
unitary activity of the soul in reference to its contents.

Important as the conception of consciousness became for
modern thought, it is not for Plotinus the highest. Prof.
Siebeck himself draws attention to one remarkable passage 3 in
which he points out that many of our best activities, both
theoretical and practical, are unaccompanied at the time by
consciousness of them ; as for example reading, especially when
we are reading intently ; similarly, the performance of brave
actions ; so that there is a danger lest consciousness should
make the activities it accompanies feebler {ware rets irapa-
Ko\ovdi]aeL<; Kivhvveveiv dfivSporepa*; auras tcis evepyeias als

1 Emi. iv. 3, 28—30. - Geschichte der Psychologic, i. 2, pp. 331 ff.

3 Enn. i. 4, 10.

54 THE PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM [V

irapaKokovQovai iroielv). The rank assigned to introspective
consciousness of mental activities is similar to that which is
assigned to memory 1 . It is above sense, but lower than pure
intellect, which energises with more perfection in its absence.
The organ of introspection and of memory, as we have seen, is
the same.

The highest mode of subjective life, next to the complete
unification in which even thought disappears, is intellectual
self-knowledge. Here the knower is identical with the known.
On this too Plotinus is not without keen psychological observa-
tions, apart from the metaphysical developments next to be
considered. The strong impression of a sense-perception, he
remarks, cannot consist with the attainment of this intellectual
unity. Whatever exaggerates feeling lowers the activity of
thought. The perception of evils, for example, carries with it
a more vehement shock, but less clear knowledge. We are
more ourselves in health than in disease, but disease makes
itself more felt, as being other than ourselves. The attitude
of self-knowledge, Plotinus adds, is quite unlike that in which
we know an object by external perception. Even the knower
cannot place himself outside like a perceived object and gaze
upon himself with the eyes of the body 2 .

Within the mind as its very centre is the supreme unity
beyond even self-knowledge. This is one with the metaphysical
cause of all thiugs, and must first be discussed as such, since the
proof of its reality is primarily metaphysical. Its psychological
relations will best be dealt with in the chapter on the mysticism
of Plotinus.

2. Metaphysics.

Apart from a unifying principle, nothing could exist. All
would be formless and indeterminate, and so would have
properly no being. A principle of unity has already been
recognised in the soul. It is not absent in natural things, but
here it is at a lower stage ; body having less unity than soul

1 Erin. iv. 4, 2.

2 Erin. v. 8, 11 : ovok yap ovd' avrbs Swarm it,w dels eavrbv ws aiaO-qTov bvra
6(pda\/j.6is rots tov (TLOfxarus (SXeTreiv,

V] OF PLOTINUS 55

because its parts are locally separate. In soul, however, we
cannot rest as the highest term. Particular souls, by reason of
what they have in common, can only be understood as derived
from a general soul, which is their cause but is not identical
with all or any of them. Again, the general soul falls short
of complete unity by being the principle of life and motion to
the world, which is other than itself. What it points to as a
higher unifying principle is absolutely stable intellect, thinking
itself and not the world, but containing as identical with its
own nature the eternal ideas of all the forms, general and
particular, that become explicit in the things of time and space.
Even intellect has still a certain duality, because, though
intelligence and the intelligible are the same, that which thinks
distinguishes itself from the object of thought. Beyond thought
and the being which, while identical with it, is distinguishable
in apprehension, is the absolute unity that is simply identical
with itself. This is other than all being and is the cause of
it. It is the good to which all things aspire ; for to particular
things the greatest unification attainable is the greatest good ;
and neither the goodness and unity they possess, nor their
aspiration after a higher degree of it, can be explained without
positing the absolute One and the absolute Good as their source
and end.

By the path of which this is a slight indication, Plotinus
ascends to the summit of his metaphysics. The proof that the
first principle has really been attained, must be sought partly
in the demonstration of the process by which the whole system
of things is derived from it, partly in individual experience.
This last, being incommunicable— though not to be had without
due preparation — belongs to the mystical side of the doctrine.
Of the philosophical doctrine itself, the method is not mystical.
The theory of " emanation " on which it depends is in reality
no more than a very systematic expression of the principle
common to Plato and Aristotle, that the lower is to be explained
by the higher 1 .

1 See for example Enn. v. '.), 4 : ou yap orj, d>s olovrcu, ipvxv vovv reXeiwOdaa.
ytvvq.' woOtv yap to dvvafxti evepydq earui, /mtj tou els evipynav ayovTos airiov
ovtos ; ...dtb Sti ra irp&TO. tvtpydq rlOtcdai nal airpoaota ko\ re'Xeia.

56 THE PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM [V

The accepted term, " emanation," is derived from one of the
metaphors by which Plotinus illustrates the production of each
order of being from the next above. He compares the cause
of all to an overflowing spring which by its excess gives rise to
that which comes after it 1 . This similarly produces the next,
and so forth, till at length in matter pure indetermination is
reached. The metaphorical character of this representation,
however, is carefully insisted on. There is no diremption of the
higher principle. God and mind do not disperse themselves
in individual souls and in natural things, though these are
nowhere cut off from their causes. There is a continual process
from first to last, of which the law is the same throughout.
Each producing cause remains wholly in its proper seat (iv rfj
oUeia ehpa), while that which is produced takes an inferior
station 2 . The One produces universal Mind, or Intellect that
is one with the Intelligible. Intellect produces the Soul of the
Whole. This produces all other existences, but without itself
lapsing. Nothing within the series of the three intelligible
principles can be said to lapse in production ; the term being
applicable only to the descent of the individual soul. The
order throughout, both for the intelligible causes and for the
visible universe, is a logical order of causation, not an order
in time. All the producing causes and their effects in every
grade always existed and always will exist. The production
by the higher causes has the undeviating character of natural
necessity, and is not by voluntary choice and discursive reason,
which are secondary resultants within the world of particulars.

This philosophical meaning Plotinus makes clear again and
again. His metaphors are intended simply as more or less
inadequate illustrations. One that comes nearer to his thought
than that of the overflowing spring, is the metaphor of illumina-
tion by a central source of light : for according to his own
theory light is an incorporeal energy projected without loss.
Since, however, it is still an energy set going from a body, he
admits that even this comparison has some inexactitude. In
this mode of expression, Mind is the eternal " irradiation " of

1 Emi. v. 2, 1. 2 Enn. v. 2, 2.

V] OF PLOTINUS 57

the One 1 . As Mind looks back to the One, Soul looks back to
Mind; and this looking back is identical with the process of
generation.

Plotinus himself traces the idea of this causal series to
Plato, for whom, he says, the Demiurgus is Intellect, which is
produced by the Good beyond mind and being, and in its turn
produces Soul 2 . This historical derivation, as we have seen,
was accepted by Porphyry. Plotinus goes on to interpret earlier
philosophers from the same point of view. He recognises, how-
ever, that the distinctions between the One in its different
senses drawn by the Platonic Parmenides were not made with
that exactitude by Parmenides himself. Aristotle, he says,
coming later, makes the primal reality separable indeed and
intelligible, but deprives it of the first rank by the assertion
that it thinks itself. To think itself belongs to Mind, but not
to the One 3 .

As in the nature of things there are three principles, so also
with us 4 . For there is reality in this world of ours, and not a
mere semblance. The virtue and knowledge here are not simply
images of archetypes yonder in the intelligible world. If indeed
we take the world here not as meaning simply the visible aspect
of things, but as including also the soul and what it contains,
everything is " here " that is " there 5 ."

The order of first, second and third in the intelligible prin-
ciples is not spatial 6 . In the intelligible order, body may be
said to be in soul, soul in mind, and mind in the One 7 . By
such -expressions is to be understood a relation of dependence,
not the being in a place in the sense of locality. If any one
objects that place can mean nothing but boundary or interval
of space, let him dismiss the word and apply his understanding

1 Enn. v. 1, 6: irepi\ap.^/i.v ii- avrov /xeV, e'| avrov 8e /xiuovros, olov rjXiov to nepl
avrbv \ap.irpbv (pws irepiOi'ov, e'if avrov del yevv^fievof fxivovros.

2 Enn. v. 1,8: uxrre TLXaruva eibevai in p.tv Ta.ya.6ov rbv vovv, etc 5£ rod vov rrju

3 Enn. v. 1, 9.

4 Enn. v. 1, 10: wawep 5i iv rr\ (pvan rpirra ravra. ian to. eipij/xi'i'a, oi'tu XPV
vo/Jii^eiv teal nap' i)ixlv ravra elvai.

5 Enn. v. 9, 13 : iravra ivravda, baa. Kaxtl.

6 Enn. vi. 5, 4. 7 Enn. v. 5, 9.

58 THE PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM [v

to the thing signified 1 . The incorporeal and unextended in
which extended body participates is not to be thought of as a
point ; for mass, which includes an infinity of points, participates
in it. Nor yet must we think of it as stretched out over the
whole of the mass ; but of the whole extended mass as par-
ticipating in that which is itself without spatial interval 2 . This
is the general relation of the visible to the intelligible world.
As non-spatial dependence and implication, we have found that
it runs through the intelligible causes themselves.

In what relates to the difference between the extended and
the unextended, the character of intelligible being is already
perfectly determinate not only in soul, but in soul as the
principle of organic life. For that principle transcends the
opposition between small and great. If it is to be called small
as having no extension of its own, it may equally be called
great as being adequate to the animation of the whole body
with which it is connected, while this is growing in bulk 3 . The
soul is all in the germ ; yet in a manner it contains the full-
grown plant or animal. In itself it undergoes no change of
dimensions. Though the principle of growth, it does not grow ;
nor, when it causes motion, is it moved in the motion which it
causes 4 .

The primal One from which all things are is everywhere
and nowhere. As being the cause of all things, it is everywhere.
As being other than all things, it is nowhere. If it were only
" everywhere," and not also " nowhere," it would be all things 5 .
No predicate of being can be properly applied to it. To call it
the cause is to predicate something, not of it but of ourselves,
who have something from it while it remains in itself 6 . This
is not the " one " that the soul attains by abstracting from
magnitude and multitude till it arrives at the point and the
arithmetical unit. It is greatest of all, not by magnitude but

1 Eun. vi. 4, 2 : tt\v tov wo/xaros d(pels Kar-qyopiav rrj diavolq. to Xeyo/xevov
XafifiaveTW.

2 Erin. vi. 4, 13.

3 Eim. vi. 4, 5 : fxapTvpei 5e ry p.eydXip tt)s ^i'X^s Kai to /xei^oi'os tov oynou
yti/o/j.ei'ov (pdaveiv ewl irdv avrov tyjv avTrjv y'vxw, V ew eXaTTOvos oyKov i]v.

4 Enu. in. 6, 4. 5 Enu. in. l J, 3.
u Erin. vi. 9, 3.

V] OF PLOTINUS 59

by potency ; in such a manner that it is also by potency that
which is without magnitude. It is to be regarded as infinite,
not because of the impossibility of measuring or counting it,
but because of the impossibility of comprehending its power 1 .
It is perfectly self-sufficing; there is no good that it should
seek to acquire by volition. It is good not in relation to itself,
but to that which participates in it. And indeed that which
imparts good is not properly to be called "good," but "the
Good " above all other goods. " That alone neither knows, nor
has what it does not know; but being One present to itself it
needs not thought of itself." Yet in a sense it is all beings
because all are from it 2 ; and it generates the thought that is
one with being. As it is the Good above all goods, so, though
without shape or form, it possesses beauty above beauty. The
love of it is infinite ; and the power or vision by which mind
thinks it is intellectual love 3 .

Any inconsistency there might appear to be in making
assertions about the One is avoided by the position that nothing
— not even that it "is" any more than that it is "good" — is to
be affirmed of it as a predicate. The names applied to it are
meant only to indicate its unique reality 4 . The question is
then raised, whether this reality is best indicated by names
that signify freedom, or chance, or necessity. Before we can
know whether an expression signifying freedom (to e</>' rjfiiv)
may be applied in any sense to the gods and to God (eVt deovs
ical eri fiaXkov iirl deov), we must know in what sense it is
applicable to ourselves 5 . If we refer that which is in our power
to will (/3ov\r](T^\ and place this in right reason (iv Xoyw
6p9a), we may — by stretching the terms a little — reach the
conclusion that an unimpeded theoretic activity such as we
ascribe in its perfection to the gods who live according to mind,
is properly called free. The objection that to be free in this

1 Enn. vi. 9, 6 ; \rfivTeov ol ko.1 direLpov clvto ov ry dSu^iTrjTW r) rod fxeyidovs rj
tov apiO/xov, ctXXa t<£ drnpCK^TTT^ ttjs ovudfiecos.

* Enu. vi. 7, 32: ovdev ovv touto tQv 6vtwv /ecu irdvra' ovbev ixiv, on varepa. to.
oi'ra, TT&vTa 5e, otl e£ clvtov.

3 Enn. vi. 7, 35. Plotinus's actual expression is vovs ipQv.

■> Enn. vi. 7, 38. 5 Enn. vi. 8, 1.

60 THE PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM [V

sense is to be " enslaved to one's own nature " is dismissed with
the remark that that only is enslaved which, being withheld by
something else, has it not in its power to go towards the good 1 .
The view that seems implied in the objection, namely, that
freedom consists in action contrary to the nature of the agent,
is an absurdity 2 . But to the supreme principle, from which all
things have being and power of their own, how can the term
be applied in any sense ? The audacious thought might be
started that it " happens to be " as it is, and is not master of
what it is, but is what it is, not from itself; and so, that it has
no freedom, since its doing or not doing what it has been
necessitated to do or not to do, is not in its own power. To
this the reply is, that we cannot say that the primal cause is
by chance, or that it is not master of its origin ; because it has
not come to be 3 . The whole difficulty seems to arise from our
positing space (-^wpav /cal tottov) as a kind of chaos, and then
introducing the principle into our imaginary space ; whereupon
we inquire whence and how it came there 4 . We get rid of the
difficulty by assigning to the One no place, but simply the
being as it is, — and this because we are bound so to express
ourselves by necessity of speech. Thus, if we are to speak of it
at all, we must say that it is lord of itself and free. Yet it
must be allowed that there is here a certain impropriety, for to
be lord of itself belongs properly to the essence {ovaia) identical
with thought, and the One is before this essence 5 . With a
similar impropriety, its will and its essence may be said to be
the same. Each particular being, striving after its good, wills
that more than to be what it is, and then most thinks that it
is, when it participates in the good. It wills even itself, so far
only as it has the good. Carry this over to the Good which is
the principle of all particular goods, and its will to be what it
is, is seen to be inseparable from its being what it is. In this
mode of speech, accordingly, — having to choose between ascribing
to it on the one hand will and creative activity in relation to

1 Enn. vi. 8, 4. "- Enn. vi. 8, 7.

3 Enn. vi. 8,7: to 5e irpGrrov otire Kara Tvyy)v dv \eyoi/aev, oiire ov Kvpiov rrjs
avTou yevicxeuis, oti fxrjde yeyove.

4 Enn. vi. 8, 11. 5 Enn. vi. 8, 12.

V] OF PLOTINUS 61

itself, on the other hand a contingent relation which is the
name of unreason, — we must say, not that it is " what it hap-
pened to be," but that it is " what it willed to be 1 ." We might
say also that it is of necessity what it is, and could not be
otherwise ; but the more exact statement is, not that it is thus
because it could not be otherwise, but because the best is thus.
It is not taken hold of by necessity, but is itself the necessity
and law of other things 2 . It is love, and the object of love,
and love of itself 3 . That which as it were desires and that
which is desired are one 4 . When we, observing some such
nature in ourselves, rise to this and become this alone, what
should we say but that we are more than free and more than
in our own power? By analogy with mind, it may be called
operation {evep^fxa) and energy. Its energy and as it were
waking {olov eypiiyopais) are eternal 5 . Reason and mind are
derived from the principle as a circle from its centre 6 . To
allow that it could not make itself other than it did, in the
sense that it can produce only good and not evil, is not to limit
its freedom and absolute power. The power of choice between
opposites belongs to a want of power to persevere in what is
best 7 . The One and Good alone is in truth free; and must be
thought and spoken of, though in reality beyond speech and
thought, as creating itself by its own energy before all being 8 .

To the question, why the One should create anything beyond
itself, Plotinus answers that since all things, even those without
life, impart of themselves what they can, the most perfect and
the first good cannot remain in itself as envious, and the potency

1 Enn. vi. 8, 13 : umre ovk otrep Ztvx^v icmv, d\X' owep r)j3ov\-fidr] clvt6s. Cf. c.
20 : aurds £o~ti nai 6 wapdyiov iavrov.

2 Enn. vi. 8, 10.

3 Enn. vi. 8, 15 : ko.1 epda/xiov nal tpws 6 avrbs ko.1 avrov Upws.

4 Ibid. : t6 olov iipi.ep.evov t<jS e<p€Ti^ '4v.

5 Enn. vi. 8, 16. 6 Enn. vi. 8, 18.

" Enn. vi. 8, 21 : ko.1 yap rb to. avriKel/xeva bvvaadat dovva/utas earl rod iirl rod
aplo~Tov fxivuv.

8 Since it is energy in the Aristotelian sense, or complete realisation, it is
dvevtpyqrov. That is, there is no higher realisation to which it can proceed.
Cf. Enn. v. 6, 6 : oXws /xei> yap ovSe/xia ivtpyeia ^x €l a ^ ^aXtv evtpyeiav. In this
sense, it is said (Enn. i. 7, 1) to be beyond onergy (iw^Ketva evepydas).

62 THE PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM [V

of all things as without power 1 . As that is the potency of all
things, Mind, which it first generates, is all things actually.
For knowledge of things in their immaterial essence is the
things themselves 2 . Mind knows its objects not, like percep-
tion, as external, but as one with itself 3 . Still this unity, as
has been said, involves the duality of thinking and being
thought, and hence is not the highest, but the second in order,
of the suprainundane causes. Within its indivisible unity it
contains the archetype of the whole visible world and of all
that was or is or is to be existent in it. The relation of its
Ideas to the whole of Mind resembles that of the propositions
of a science to the sum of knowledge which consists of them.
By this comparison, which frequently recurs, Plotinus seeks to
convey the notion of a diversity in unity not expressed as local
separation of parts 4 . The archetype of the world being thus
existent, the world in space is necessarily produced because its
production is possible. We shall see this " possibility " more
exactly formulated in the theory of matter. The general state-
ment is this : that, since there is the " intelligential and
all-potent nature" of mind, and nothing stands between that
and the production of a world, there must be a formed world
corresponding to the formative power. In that which is formed,
the ideas are divided ; in one part of space the idea of the
sun takes shape, in another the idea of man. The archetype
embraces all in its unity without spatial division 5 .

Thus, while suprainundane intellect contains all real being,
it has also the productive power by which the essential forms
of things are made manifest in apparent separation from itself
and from one another. Differences, so far as they belong to
the real being, or " form," of things here, are produced by pre-
existent forms in the ideal world. So far as they are merely

1 Enn. v. 4, 1.

2 Enn. v. 4, 2. Cf. Enn. v. 9, 5 : r; twv dvev i/Xijs ewiaTrifXT] ravrbv t<jJ
irpdyfxaTi. 3 Enn. v. 5, 1.

4 See for example Enn. v. 9, 8.

5 Enn. v. 9, 9 : <£wrews voepds /cat wavToovvdfxov oilo-ris /cat ovdevbs didpyovros,
fxrjdevbs ovtos fxera^u tovtov /cat tov S^aadai dvva.fj.evov, dvdyxT) to fxev Kocrfirjdrjvai,
to 5e Koa/xrjacu. /cat to fxev KOO~fX7]6ev ityei to eldos fxefj.epiafx.4vov, dWaxov dvdpwwov
/cat dWaxov r/Xiov to 8e ev evl irdvTa.

V] OF PLOTINUS G3

local and temporal, they express only a necessary mode of
manifestation of being, under the condition of appearing at a
greater degree of remoteness from the primal cause. What
then is the case with individuality ? Does it consist merely in
differences of position in space and time, the only true reality
being the ideal form of the " kind " ; or are there ideal forms
of individuals ? Plotinus concludes decisively for the latter
alternative 1 . There are as many formal differences as there
are individuals, and all pre-exist in the intelligible world.
What must be their mode of pre-existence we know from the
nature of Intellect as already set forth. All things there are
together yet distinct. Universal mind contains all particular
minds ; and each particular mind expresses the whole in its
own manner. As Plotinus says in one of those bursts of enthu-
siasm where his scientific doctrine passes into poetry : " They
see themselves in others. For all things are transparent, and
there is nothing dark or resisting, but every one is manifest to
every one internally and all things are manifest ; for light is
manifest to light. For every one has all things in himself and
again sees in another all things, so that all things are every-
where and all is all and each is all, and infinite the glory. For
each of them is great, since the small also is great. And the
sun there is all the stars, and again each and all are the sun.
In each, one thing is pre-eminent above the rest, but it also
shows forth all-." The wisdom that is there is not put together
from separate acts of knowledge, but is a single whole. It does
not consist of many brought to one ; rather it is resolved into
multitude from unity. By way of illustration Plotinus adds
that the Egyptian sages, whether they seized the truth by
accurate knowledge or by some native insight, appear to have
expressed the intuitive character of intellectual wisdom in
making a picture the sign of each thing 3 .

In the intelligible world identical with intellect, as thus
conceived, the time and space in which the visible world appears,
though not " there " as such, pre-exist in their causes. So too,

1 See especially Enn. v. 7: Tlepl tov el ko.1 twv ko.0' frcatrra ?cmi> et8t].

2 Enn. v. 8, 4.

3 Enn. v. 8, G. This is quite an isolated reference to Egypt.

64 THE PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM [V

in the rational order, does perception, before organs of percep-
tion are formed. This must be so, Plotinus urges, because
perception and its organs are not a product of deliberation, but
are present for example in the pre-existent idea of man, by an
eternal necessity and law of perfection, their causes being in-
volved in the perfection of mind 1 . Not only man, but all
animals, plants and elements pre-exist ideally in the intelligible
world. For infinite variety is demanded in order that the whole,
as one living being, may be perfect in all its parts and to the
utmost degree. There, the things we call irrational pre-exist
in their rational laws 2 . Nor is the thing here anywhere really
mindless. We call it so when it is without mind in act; but
each part is all in potency, depending as it does on its ideal
cause. In the order of ideal causes there is as it were a stream
of living beings from a single spring ; as if all sensible qualities
were combined in one quality without losing their distinctions 3 .
The particular is not merely the one particular thing that it
is called. Rational division of it always brings something new
to light ; so that, in this sense, each part of the whole is infinite 4 .
This infinity, whether of whole or part, is one of successive
involution. The process of division is not that of bisection, but
is like the unfolding of wrappings 5 . The whole intelligible
world may be presented to imagination as a living sphere
figured over with every kind of living countenance 6 .

Universal mind involves the essence of every form of reason,
in one Reason as it were, great, perfect, embracing all (els olov
\6<yos, fAeyas, reXeios, TrdvTas 'rrepie-^wv). As the most exact

1 Enn. vi. 7, 3: 'iyKeiTai. rb atV^ij-rt/ccV elvai /cat ovtws alaOriTLKbv iv tqj ei'5et
vwb didiov dvdyKTjs Kal reXeibrr/ros, vov iv avru) ^x 0VTOS > e'twep riXeios, t&s alrlas.

' 2 Enn. vi. 7, 9: iKe'i be Kal rb dXoyov Xeybfievov Xbyos ijf, /cat rb avow vovs r)v,
iwel Kal 6 vou>v ittttov vous iari, /cat 7) vb-qaLS lirirov coOs rjv.

3 Enn. VI. 7, 12: olov et ris t]v TroibrTjs fxia 7rdcras iv avrrj £x owja KaL o-uj^ovaa
rets iroibrrjTas, yXvKiJTTjs fier evubias, /cat b/xov ocvojStjs woibr'qs /cat xiAtDe dvavruv
5vvdfM€Ls /cat xpw / ttdrwi' o\peis /cat &aa a<pal yivdjaKOvcnv. iaruaav be /cat 6'ira d/coat
dKovovffL, irdvra p.iXi] /cat pvd/xbs iras.

4 Enn. vi. 7, 13: vovs...ov...raiirbv /cat h> n iv p,ipei, dXXd wdvra' iwel Kal to
iv /nipei av ov% &, dXXd Kal tovto Eireipov biaipovp,evov. Cf. Enn. vi. 5, 5 on the
infinite nature (dweipos </>t/<ns) of being.

8 Enn. vi. 7, 14 : /xri /car' evdi, dXX' els rb ivrbs del.
e Enn. vi. 7, 15 fin.

V] OF PLOTINUS

reasoning would calculate the things of nature for the best,
mind has all things in the rational laws that are before reason-
ing 1 . Each thing being what it is separately, and again all
things being in one together, the complex as it were and com-
position of all as they are in one is Mind 2 . In the being that
is mind, all things are together, not only undivided by position
in space, but without reference to process in time. This
characteristic of intellectual being may be called " eternity 3 ."
Time belongs to Soul, as eternity to Mind 4 . Soul is necessarily
produced by Mind, as Mind by the primal One 5 . Thus it is in
contact at once with eternal being, and with the temporal
things which it generates by the power it receives from its
cause. Having its existence from supramundane intellect, it
has reason in act so far as that intellect is contemplated by it 6 .
The Soul of the whole is perpetually in this relation to Mind ;
particular souls undergo alternation; though even of them
there is ever something in the intelligible world 7 . Soul has
for its work, not only to think— for thus it would in no way
differ from pure intellect— but to order and rule the things
after it. These come to be, because production could not stop
at intelligibles, the last of which is the rational soul, but must
go on to the limit of all possible existence 8 .

In the relation of the many souls to the one which includes

1 Enn. vi. 2, 21 : ws yap dv 6 aKpi^araros \oyiap.bs XoyicxaiTo <lis dpiara, ovrws
i?X ei TrdpTa iv reus \670ts vpb \oyiap.ov oven.

2 Enn. vi. 2, 21 : x^/ns p-ev eK&vruv a Ictlv ovrwv, 6/xoO 5' av iv ivl ovtwv, tj

TTaVTWV (V ivl OVTU1V 6I0V (TV /J.w\o KT) Kal (JVvOtaiS VOVS icFTl.

3 Enn. in. 7, 4 : avry 17 dtadeens avrov Kal (pvais dt-q av aiuv.

4 Enn. in. 7, 11. Cf. Enn. iv. 4, 15: alwv /j.iv irepl vovv, xpbvos bi vepl \pvxw-

5 Enn. v. 1, 7 : i/'i'XV' 7<*P yevvq vovs, vovs uv rAeios. Kal yap ri\eiov ovra.
yevvdv USei, Kal fxr] 5vvafJ.iv odcrav Tocravr-qv tiyovov eZVcu.

6 Enn. v. 1, 3 : i) re ovv virocrraais avry dwb vov re ivepyeia \6yos vov avrrj
opu/iivov.

7 Enn. iv. ft, 8 : ov wdcra ovd' 17 ytxeripa \pvxh Zov, d\X Zen ti aiiTrjs iv tu> vot]t(3
dd....irdaa yap Tpvxn ?X eL Tl Kal T °v "dra irpbs rb <ru>/J.a Kal rod avw wpbs vovv.

8 Enn. iv. 8, 3 : irpoaXafiovaa yap ry voepd dvat Kal aWo, Kad' 6 ttjv oUelav
fcX e " UTtbffraaiv, >/o0s ovk i/xeivev, Zx eL Te ^H " Ka ^ o-vtj}, eitrep Kal irav, 8 av rj tQ>v
6vtuiv. pXtirovea 5t irpbs p.iu rb irpb iavrrjs voet, els 8e iavr-rjv ffwfri eavrrjv, eU 8i
rb ner' avT-ijv KOtTfie? re Kal SioiKet Kal dpxei airrov ' 8n p.r]di olbv re fjv arrival ra
ndvra ev rip vot)t$, 8vvap.ivov i<pe$rjs Kal a\\ov yeviffdai iXdrrovos fiiv, dvayKalov 8i
elvai, e'iirep Kal rb irpb avrov.

W. 5

66 THE PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM [V

all, Soul imitates Mind. It too is necessarily pluralised ; and
in the inherent distinctions of the particular souls their coming
to birth under different sensible manifestations is already neces-
sitated. The one soul is the same in all, as in each part of a
system of knowledge the whole is potentially present 1 . To soul,
the higher intellect furnishes the reasons of all its operations 2 .
Knowledge in the rational soul, so far as it is of intelligibles, is
each thing that it thinks, and has from within both the object
of thought and the thinking (to re i'otjtov ttjv re votjaiv), since
mind is within 3 . Plotinus fully recognises the difficulty of the
question : How, if Being and Mind and Soul are everywhere
numerically one, and not merely of the same formal essence
(o/ioeiSe?), can there yet be many beings and minds and souls 4 ?
The answer, in the case of soul, as of mind and being, is that
the one is many by intrinsic difference, not by local situation
(erepoTrjTi, ov t6ttu>). The plurality of souls, as has been said,
is in the rational order prior to their embodiment. In the Soul
of the Whole, the many souls are present to one another without
being alienated from themselves. They are not divided by
spatial limits — just as the many portions of knowledge in each
soul are not — and the one can contain in itself all. After this
manner the nature of soul is infinite 5 . The general soul can
judge of the individualised affections in each without becoming
conscious to itself in each that it has passed judgment in the
rest also 6 . Each of us is a whole for himself, yet all of us, in
the reality that is all, are together one. Looking outward, we
forget our unity. Turning back upon ourselves, either of our own
accord or seized upon as the goddess seized the hair of Achilles,
we behold ourselves and the whole as one with the God within 7 .

1 Enn. iv. 9, 5.

2 Enn. iv. 9, 3. When the general soul impresses form on the elements of
the world, vovs is the x°PVy°s T & v M>yu)v.

3 Enn. v. 9, 7. 4 Enn. vi. 4, 4.

5 Enn. vi. 4, 4 Jin.: ovtios earlv dirupos i) ToiavTij cpvais.

s Enn. vi. 4, 6 : did, tL o&v ov avvaio-ddverai 17 eripa rr)s iripas Kpl/j.a; -q otl
Kpiais iariv, d\X ov ir&Oos. elra ovd' avrrj r) Kpivatra K^KpiKa \iyei, d\X' ?Kpive (xhvov.

7 Enn. vi. 5, 7 : ??W fxiv ovv opuvres t) 86ev ^rjfxfxeda ayvoovnev iv ovres, olov
irpdcrcoTra TroWa els rb ?fw Kopv(pr)v ^x 0VTa eis T0 dlffa fxiav. el Si tis iin(TTpa<prjva.i
dvvairo 77 irap' airoO 7} ttjs 'Adrjvds avTrjs evrvxyvas rrjs eX£ ewj, 0e6v re Kal avrbv /cat
t6 Trdv oi/'erat.

V] OF PLOTINUS G7

The soul is the principle of life and motion to all things ;
motion being an image of life in things called lifeless. The
heaven is one by the power of soul, and this world is divine
through it 1 . The soul of the whole orders the world in accord-
ance with the general reasons of things, as animal bodies are
fashioned into " microcosms " under the particular law of the
organism 2 . It creates not by deliberative intelligence, like
human art, which is posterior and extrinsic. In the one soul
are the rational laws of all explicit intelligence — " of gods and
of all things." " Wherefore also the world has all 3 ."

Individual souls are the intrinsic laws of particular minds
within the universal intellect, made more explicit 4 . Not only
the soul of the whole, but the soul of each, has all things in
itself 5 . Wherein they differ, is in energising with different
powers. Before descent and after reascent of the particular
soul, each one's thoughts are manifest to another as in direct
vision, without discourse". Why then does the soul descend
and lose knowledge of its unity with the whole ? For the
choice is better to remain above 7 . The answer is that the
error lies in self-will 8 . The soul desires to be its own, and so
ventures forth to birth, and takes upon itself the ordering of a
body which it appropriates, or rather, which appropriates it, so
far as that is possible. Thus the soul, although it does not
really belong to this body, yet energises in relation to it, and in
a manner becomes a partial soul in separation from the whole 9 .

But what is finally the explanation of this choice of the
worse, and how is it compatible with the perfection of the
mundane order? How is the position of the Phaedo, that the
body is a prison, and the true aim of the soul release from it,

1 Enn. v. 1, 2.

- Enn. IV. 3, 10 : ola Kal ol h> o-rrfp/xaat \6yoi TrXdrrovai Kal nopcpovcri to. £ipa
olov fxiKpovs rivas Kdfffiovs.

3 Enn. iv. 3, 10 fin.

4 Enn. iv. 3, 5: \6yoi vCsv ovaai ko.1 e^eiXiyfi^vai p.a\\ov t) eKuvoi...rb ravrbv
Kal 'irtpov ou^ovaai fiivei re eKaarr) Iv, Kal bfxov ev iraaai..

5 Enn. iv. 3, 6.

B Enn. iv. 3, 18 : olov 6<p0a\/xbs Zkoo-tos Kal o&8tv 5t Kpvirrbv ovU TreirXao-fifrov,
dXXd irplv dirt'iv dWui I8wv (Ketvos Zyvco.

7 Enu. iv. 3, 14. 8 Enn. v. 1, 1.

9 Enn. vi. 4, 16.

5—2

68 THE PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM [V

reconcilable with the optimism of the Timaeus ? The answer
is that all — descent and reascent alike — has the necessity of a
natural law. The optimism has reference to the whole order.
Of this order, such as it must be in a world that is still good
though below the intelligible and perfectly stable supramundane
order, temporary descent, dissatisfaction with the consecmences
of the descent, and the effort to return, are all conditions. Any
expression that seems to imply arbitrariness at any point, is
part of the mythological representation. Thus .when in the
Timaeus it is said that God " sows " the souls, this is mythical,
just as when he is represented as haranguing them 1 . Necessity
and self-caused descent are not discordant. The soul does not
go by its will to that which is worse ; yet its course is its own 2 .
And it must expiate both the original error, and any evil that
it may do actually. Of the first, the mere change of state is
the punishment ; to the second, further chastisement is assigned.
The knowledge acquired below is a good, and the soul is not to
be blamed overmuch if in its regulation of sensible nature it
goes a little beyond what 'is safe for itself 3 . On the other
hand, a slight inclination at the beginning to the worse, if not
immediately corrected, may produce a permanent disposition 4 .
Be the error light or grave, it comes under an undeviating law
of justice. To the particular bodies fitted for them, the souls
go neither by voluntary choice nor sent, but as by some natural
process for which they are ready. The universal law under
which the individual falls is not outside but within each 5 . The
notion that there may be in small things an element of con-
tingency which is no part of the order, is suggested but not
accepted 6 . The whole course of the soul through its series of
bodily lives, and its release from the body when this is attained,

1 Enn. iv. 8, 4. 2 Enn. iv. 8, 5.

3 Enn. iv. 8, 7 : ypQais yap evapyecrripa rayadov i] tov kclkov welpa oh 7] dvva/jus
acrdeveaTe'pa, rj ware ewLaTrjfxrj to ko.kov irpb irelpas yvQivat.

4 Enn. in. 2, 4. Cf. in. 3, 4 : Kal o-fxiKpa. pOTrrj dpKei eh ^K^acriv tov opdov.

5 Enn. iv. 3, 13.

6 Enn. iv. 3, 16 : ov yap to. /xev Set i>opt.lt;eiv <TWT€TdxOai, to. 8e Kexa\do-0ai eh
rb avTe^ovaiov. el yap /car' airlas yivecrdai del xal (pvaiKa 1 ; axoXovdias Kal Kara \6yoi>
'iva Kal rd^iv p,lav, Kal tcl a/xiKp6Tepa Bet avvreraxdai. Kal vvvvcpavdat. vop.l£eiP.

V] OF PLOTINUS 69

are alike necessarily determined 1 . The death of the. soul, so
far as the soul can die, is to sink to a stage below moral evil
— which still contains a mixture of the opposite good — and to
be wholly plunged in matter 2 . Even thence it may still some-
how emerge ; though souls that have descended to the world of
birth need not all make the full circle, but may return before
reaching the lowest point 3 .

Here we come to the metaphysical doctrine by which Plotinus
explains the contrasts the visible world presents. Neither moral
good nor evil is with him ultimate. Of virtues even the highest,
the cause is the Good, which in reality is above good (virepd-
jaOov). Of moral evil, so far as it is purely evil, the cause is
that principle of absolute formlessness and indeterminateness
called Matter. At the same time, matter is the receptive prin-
ciple by which alone the present world could be at all. Evils
accordingly are an inevitable constituent of a world that is
subject in its parts to birth and change. And indeed without
evil there can be no good in our sense of the term. Nor is
there evil unmixed in the things of nature, any more than there
is unformed matter. Whence then is this principle opposed to
form and unity ?

That Matter is an independently existing principle over
against the One, Plotinus distinctly denies. The supposition
is put as inadmissible that there are dp%al 7rXe/ou9 koi Kara
avvrvyjav ra irpMra^. Matter is the infinite (to aireipov) in
the sense of the indeterminate (to dopio-Tov), and is generated
from the infinity of power or of eternal existence that is an
appanage of the One, which has not in itself indeterminateness,
but creates it 5 . To the term " infinite " in the sense of an

1 Enn. iv. 3, 24 : tpiperai 8e ko.1 avros 6 iraaxuiv dyvoCiv i(f> a iraOelv irpocrrjicei,
a<TT&TU) /uev rrj cpopa wavTaxov aiwpou/j.evos reus 7r\decus, Te\evTQi> 5e Cocnrep iroWa
Ka/Awv oh avTeTet.vev eh tov Trpo<rrjKovTa at)ry tottov eveireaev, eKovaiw rrj (popq. to
&kov<ti.ov els rb nadelv Hx 03 "- Cf. Enn. iv. 4, 45.

2 Enn. i. 8, 13: nal tovto ecrrt to eV g.5ov i\B6vTa etn.KaTa5ap6e.lv. Cf. Enn.
i. 6, 6.

3 Enn. iv. 4, 5 fin. 4 Enn. n. 4, 2.

5 Enn. II. 4, 15 : e'ii] h.v -yevvridev en rrjs tov evbs airetpias fj dvpd/xeojs yj tov del,
ovk ovcrvs ev eKeivip diretpias d\\a ttolovvtos.

70 THE PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM [V

actual extent or number that is immeasurable (aSie$JLT7]Tov), or
of a quantitative infinite (Kara to ttoo-ov airetpov), there is
nothing to correspond. Matter, in itself indeterminate, is that
of which the nature is to be a recipient of forms. Like intel-
ligible being, it is incorporeal and unextended. Place, indeed,
is posterior both to matter and bodies 1 . By its absolute want
of all form, that is, of all proper being, matter is at the opposite
extreme to things intelligible, and is the principle of ugliness
and evil 2 . It receives, indeed, all determinations, but it cannot
receive them indivisibly (dfjLepws). One form in matter excludes
another; so that they appear as separated by spatial intervals 3 .
The reason of this is precisely that matter has no determination
of its own. The soul in taking up the forms of things per-
ceptible, views them with their mass put away {airoOefieva top
6jkoi> opa), because by its own form it is indivisible, and there-
fore cannot receive the extended as such. Since matter, on
the contrary, has no form of its own by which to unite distinc-
tions, the intrinsic differences of being must be represented in
it by local separation. Yet, since the intelligible world is in a
sense a " world," and is many as well as one, it too must have a
kind of matter 4 . This " intelligible matter " is the recipient of
formal diversities in the world of being ; as sensible matter is
the recipient of the varied appearances in space. The matter
of the intelligible world, differing in this respect from matter
properly so-called, does not receive all forms indifferently ; the
same matter there having always the same form 5 . The matter
"here " is thus more truly "the indeterminate" than the matter
" there " ; which, in so far as it has more real being, is so much
the less truly " matter 6 ." Matter itself may best be called
" not-being 7 ." As the indeterminate, it is only to be appre-
hended by a corresponding indeterminateness of the soul 8 — a
difficult state to maintain, for, as matter itself does not remain

1 Emi. ii. 4, 12 : 6 5e tottos varepos ttjs vXtjs ko.1 tu>v aw/xdnav.

2 Enn. ii. 4, 16. 3 Enii. m. 6, 18.

4 Enn. ii. 4, 4.

5 Enn. ii. 4, 3 : ij 8e tQv ytvoixivwv uXtj del d\\o /ecu &X\o eldos ?ff%«i twi> di
didiuv t) avTT) ravrov del.

e Enn. ii. 4, 15. 7 Enn. in. 6, 7.

8 Enn. n. 4, 10: dopcaria tt)s \j/vxns- Cf. Enn. i. 8, 9.

V] OF PLOTINUS 71

unformed in things, so the soul hastens to add some positive
determination to the abstract formlessness reached by analysis.
To be the subject and recipient ever ready for all forms, it
must be indestructible and impassible, as it is incorporeal and
unextended. It is like a mirror which represents all things
so that they seem to be where they are not, and keeps no
impression of any 1 . The appearances of sense, themselves " in-
vulnerable nothings 2 ," go through it as through water without
dividing it. It has not even a falsehood of its own that it can
say of things 3 . In that it can take no permanent hold of any
good, it may be called evil 4 . Fleeing every attempt of percep-
tion to grasp it, it is equally receptive in appearance of the
contraries which it is equally unable to retain.

■

3. Cosmology and Theodicy.

The theory of matter set forth, though turned to new meta-
physical account, is fundamentally that of Aristotle. As with
Aristotle, Matter is the presupposition of physics, being viewed
as the indestructible " subject " of forms, enduring through all
changes in potency of further change ; but Plotinus is careful
to point out that the world of natural things derives none of
its reality from the recipient. The formal reason (X070?) that
makes matter appear as extended, does not " unfold " it to
extension — for this was not implicit in it — but, like that also
which makes it appear as coloured, gives it something that was
not there 5 . In that it confers no qualities whatever on that
which appears in it, matter is absolutely sterile 6 . The forms
manifested in nature are those already contained in the intellect
that is before it, which acquires them by turning towards the
Good. All differences of form, down to those of the elements,
are the product of Reason and not of Matter 7 .

While working out his theory from a direct consideration

1 Enn. in. 6, 7.

2 Adonais, xxxix. — an exact expression of the idea of Plotinus.

3 Enn. in. 6, 15. 4 Enn. 111. 6, 11.
5 Enn. 11. 4, 9. 6 Enn. in. 6, 19.
7 Enn. vi. 7, 11.

72 THE PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM [V

of the necessity that there should be something indestructible
beneath the transformations of body, Plotinus tries to prove it
not inconsistent with what is known as Plato's " theory of
matter" in the Timaeus. The phrases in which the "recipient"
is spoken of as a " room " and a " seat " are interpreted meta-
phorically. Here Plotinus is evidently arguing against com-
mentators in his own time who took the " Platonic matter " to
be empty space 1 . This has now become the generally accepted
interpretation ; opinions differing only as to whether the space
or matter in which the ideas manifest themselves is to be re-
garded as objective extension or as a subjective form 2 . Plotinus
himself approaches the latter view when he consents to call
matter a " phantasm of mass " {(^avTaa^a Be 6'7/cou Xejw),
though still regarding it as unextended (a/zeye#e?). His account
of the mental process by which the nature opposed to that of
the ideas is known (voOcp \ojia/j,a)) quite agrees with Plato's.

On another point of Platonic interpretation, Plotinus and
all his successors take the view which modern criticism seems
now to find the most satisfactory. Plausible as was the reading
of the Timaeus which would regard it as teaching an origin of
the world from an absolute beginning of time, this was never,
even at the earliest period, really prevalent in the school of
Plato. During the Platonising movement that preceded Plo-
tinus, the usual interpretation had been to regard what is said
about the making of the world from pre-existent elements
as mythological. The visible universe, said the earliest like
the latest interpreters, is described by Plato as " generated "
because it depends on an unchanging principle while itself per-
petually subject to mutation ; not because it is supposed to

1 See especially Enn. 11. 4, 11 : oOev rives ravrbu ry Kevy ttjv v\t)v elprjKa<n.

'-' The first is Zeller's view, in which he is followed by Siebeck and by
Baeumker (Das Problem der Materie in der griechischen Philosophic, 1890), who
have skilfully defended it against objections. Mr Archer-Hind, in his edition of
the Timaeus, takes the view that the Platonic matter is space as a subjective
form. This would bring it very close to the Kantian doctrine. The more usual
view would in effect make it an anticipation of Descartes' attempt in the
Principia Philosophiae to construct body out of pure extension. There is
certainly a striking resemblance in general conception between Plato's and
Descartes' corpuscular theory, which I do not remember to have seen noted.

UNIVERSITY

V] OF PLOTINUS " 7d

have been called into being at a particular moment. That this
was all along the authorised interpretation may be seen even
from Plutarch 1 , who, in defending the opposite thesis, evidently
feels that he is arguing against the opinion predominant among
contemporary Platonists 2 . Thus Plotinus, when he says that
there never was a time when this whole was not, nor was there
ever matter unformed, is not introducing a novelty. And on
this point we do not hear that opposition to his doctrine arose
from any quarter. His difference with Longinus was on the
question whether the divine mind eternally contains the ideas
in itself or contemplates them eternally as objective existences;
not as to whether ideas and unordered matter once stood apart
and were then brought together by an act or process of creative
volition. The duration of the universe without temporal begin-
ning or end was the accepted doctrine of Hellenic Platonism.

In accordance with this general view, however, it is possible,
as Plotinus recognises 3 , to hold either that the universe is per-
manent only as a whole, while all its parts perish as individual
bodies {Kara to To8e) and are renewed only in type (Kara to
dSos), or that some of the bodies in the universe — namely,
those that fill the spaces from the sphere of the moon outwards
— are always numerically identical. If the former view is the
true one, then the heavenly bodies differ from the rest only by
lasting a longer time. About the latter view there would be
no trouble if we were to accept Aristotle's doctrine that their
substance is a fifth element, not subject like the rest to altera-
tion. For those who allow that they consist of the elements of
which living bodies on earth are constituted, the difficulty is
that they must be by nature dissoluble. This Plato himself
conceded to Heraclitus. As in his physics generally, so here,
Plotinus argues in a rather tentative way. He suggests as the
true solution, that the heaven with all its parts consists of a

1 Ilepi ttjs iv Ti,ucuy \pi>xoyovlas.

2 It may be noted that the " Platonic matter," according to Plutarch, is
simply body or "corporeal substance." i] [xtv ovv awnaros ovala ttjs Xeyofiivrjs
vk aiiTov navdexovi (pvaews edpas re Kal Ti6r)vr)s tCiv yivqrCjv oi>x irepa tLs eariv
(c. 5 fin.).

3 Enu. ii. 1, 1.

74 THE PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM [V

purer kind of fire, which we may call " light," moving if at all
with a circular motion, losing nothing by efflux, and conse-
quently in no need, like mortal bodies, of nourishment from
without. This material light, being a kind of body, must of
course be distinguished from light as an outflowing energy 1 .
Radiant light, as we have seen 2 , is for Plotinus an activity
carrying with it no loss either of substance or of efficiency ;
whence it furnished an analogy closer than is possible on any
modern theory for the metaphysical doctrine of emanation.

For the rest, this picture of the physical universe does not
essentially differ from Aristotle's. The whole forms a single
system, with the fixed stars and the seven planets (including
the sun and moon) revolving round the spherical earth in com-
binations of perfect circles. Like the stars, the earth too has
a divinity of its own 3 . The space which the universe fills is
finite. Body is not atomic in constitution but continuous.
The complex movements of the whole system recur in astro-
nomical cycles. In order to solve difficulties connected with
the infinite duration of a world in constant change, Plotinus
sometimes takes up the Stoical theory that in the recurrent
periods the sequence of events is exactly repeated. This he
does especially where the question presents itself, how that
infinity in the world of sense is possible which is required by
his doctrine that there are " ideas of particulars." Individual
differences, he allows, must according to this view be infinite,
seeing that there is no limit to the duration of the world either
in the past or in the future. The difficulty would be met by
supposing that differences finite in number recur exactly in
succeeding cycles. Thus, in any one cycle no two individuals
are without all formal difference, and yet the number of "forms "
is limited 4 . This solution, however, seems to be offered with
no great confidence. The point about which Plotinus is quite
clear is that individual as well as specific differences have their
rational determination in the ideal world. From this he deduces
that, in any one period of the cosmos at least, there are no two

1 Enn. ii. 1,7: to 6/j.wvv/j.ov avrf' </><£?, 6 dr} cpa/xep kcli dawfj-arov elvai.
- Cf. Enn. iv. 5. 3 Enn. iv. 4, 22—27.

4 Enn. v. 7, 2.

V] OF PLOTINUS 75

individuals that differ only numerically, without a trace of
inward distinction 1 . About infinity in the ideal world or in
the soul there is no difficulty 2 . The conception of an actual
quantitative infinite is not merely difficult, but impossible.

Yet, while repeatedly laying down this position, Plotinus
allows that space and number as prefigured in eternal intellect
have an infinitude of their own. We may say that number is
infinite, though infinity is repugnant to number (to diretpov
fid^eTai Tftl dpL0/j,a>), as we speak of an infinite line ; not that
there is any such (oi>x 0Tt ^ a " TL Tt<? Toiavrr)), but that we can go
in thought beyond the greatest existing. This means that in
intellect the rational law of linear magnitude does not carry
with it the thought of a limit 3 . Similarly, number in intellect
is unmeasured. No actual number can be assigned that goes
beyond what is already involved in the idea of number. In-
tellectual being is beyond measure because it is itself the
measure. The limited and measured is that which is prevented
from running to infinity in its other sense of indeterminateness 4 .
Thus limited and measured is the visible cosmos.

To time is allowed an explicit infinity that is denied to
space. It is the "image of eternity," reflecting the infinite
already existent whole of being by the continual going to infinity
of successive realisations 5 . Time belongs to apartness of life
(BLdaraci^ ovv t,wr\<i XP° V0V € W e )- Tne Soul of tne Whole
generates time and not eternity, because the things it produces
are not imperishable. It is not itself in time; nor are individual
souls themselves, but only their affections and deeds 6 , which are
really those of the composite nature. Thus the past which is
the object of memory is in things done ; in the soul itself there
is nothing past 7 . Of Zeus, whether regarded as Demiurgus or

1 Erin. v. 7, 3.

2 Erin. v. 7, 1 : rr\v 5e ev tw vorjTco direipiav ov Sec dedievai ' irdcra yap iv
dfxepel. As regards the soul and its \6yoi, of. c. 3.

a Enn. vi. 6, 17 : 17 to dweipov aWou rpdirou, oi>x us ddteiiiTt]ToV dXXd iruis
dirupos ; rj iv ry \6ycp rrjs avToypa.pL/j.TJs ovk Zvi wpoavoovp.evov irepas.

* Enn. vi. 6, 18. 5 Enn. in. 7, 11.

B Enn. iv. 4, 15.

7 Enn. iv. 4, 16: dXXd -rrdvrts ol \6yoi dVa, uo-irep dpr)Tai...rb de r6de /xerd rode
tV rots Trpdyp.acni' ou dui/a/xevois dp.a wavra.

7G THE PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM [V

as Soul of the World, we must deny even the "before and after"
implied in memory 1 . That which guides the whole (to rj<yov-
fievov rod ttcivtos) knows the future as present {Kara to ea-rdvat),
and has therefore no need of memory and discursive reason to
infer it from the past 2 . These faculties belong to acquired in-
tellect, and, as we shall see, are dismissed even by the individual
soul when it has reascended to intuitive knowledge.

If things eternal were altogether alien to us, we could not
speak of them with intelligence. We also then must participate
in eternity 3 . How the -soul's essence can be in eternity while
the composite nature consisting of soul and body is in time, can
only be understood when the definition of time has been more
strictly investigated. To define it in relation to physical move-
ment does not express its essential character. The means by
which we learn to know time is no doubt observation of motion,
and especially of the revolutions of the heavenly bodies. Yet
while ordered external motion more than anything else shows
time forth to mental conception, it does not make time be.
When the motion of the whole is measured in terms of time,
which itself is fixed according to certain intervals marked out
in the space through which the motions proceed, this is an
" accidental " relation. The parts of time, invisible and inappre-
hensible in themselves, must have remained unknown till thus
measured, but time itself is prior to the measurement of its
parts. We must bring it back finally to a movement of the
soul, though the soul could hardly have known it to any purpose
without the movement of the heaven. Time is not, however,
in the merely individual soul, but in all souls so far as they are
one. Therefore there is one uniform time, and not a multitude
of disparate times ; as in another relation there is one eternity
in which all participate 4 . Thus the one soul, in which individual

1 Enn. iv. 4, 10.

2 Erin. iv. 4, 12. Hence, adds Plotinus, the creative power (to ttolovv) is not
subject to labour and difficulty, as was in the imagination of those who thought
the regulation of the whole would be a troublesome business.

3 Enn. in. 7, 7 : Set dpa /cat i]fuv /zeretVat rod alQvos.

4 Enn. in. 7, 13 : ap ovv /cat ev r\plv [6] xpopos ; fj ev ^pvxQ T-fi TOiavTy irdcrr] icai
6/u,oei5ws ev waai /cat at wdaai. p.la. did ov diaaTrairdrjaeTai 6 xP^vos' eVet ovd' 6 aiCbv
6 KO.T d\Xo ev tois ofioeideaL iraaiv.

y] OF PLOTINUS 77

souls are metaphysically contained, participates in eternity and
produces time, which is the form of a soul living in apparent
detachment from its higher cause.

Unity in the soul of the whole, here so strongly insisted on,
does not with Plotinus exclude the reality of particular souls.
We have seen that he regards individuality as determined by
differences in the Ideas, and not by the metaphysically unreal
modes of pluralising ascribed to Matter. What comes from
matter is separateness of external manifestation, and mutability
in the realisations attained; not inner diversity, which pre-
exists in the world of being. This view he tarns against the
fatalism that would make the agency of the individual soul
count for nothing in the sum of things. He is without the
least hesitation a determinist. Within the universal order, he
premises, the uncaused (to ava'iTiov) is not to be received,
whether under the form of " empty declinations," or of a sudden
movement of bodies without preceding movement, or of a
capricious impulse of soul not assignable to any motive 1 . But
to say that everything in each is determined by one soul that
runs through all, is, by an excess of necessity, to take away
necessity itself and the causal order ; for in this case it would
not be true that all comes to pass by causes, but all things
would be one, without distinction between that which causes
and that which is caused; "so that neither we are we nor is
anything our work 2 ." Each must be each, and actions and
thoughts must belong to us as our own 3 . This is the truth
that physical, and especially astrological, fatalism denies. To

1 Etm. in. 1, 1: t? yap to j3ov\r)Tov—TOVTo 8e 77 §£u 77 eiVw — 7? rb iTndvfitirbv
ii<iv7}<j(V ij, el fj-riSev bpeKTov ei<lvqo-ev, ov5' av 6'Xws tKivqdr}. The principle of
psychological determinism could not be more clearly put. In view of this, it is
not a little surprising that Zeller should vaguely class Plotinus and his
successors as champions of "free-will." On the other hand Jules Simon, who
quite recognises the determinism of the school, misstates the doctrine of Plotinus
as regards the nature of the individual when he says (Histoire de VEcole
(V Alexandria, t. i. pp. 570—1) that that which is not of the essence of each soul,
and must consequently perish, is, according to Plotinus, its individuality, and
that this comes from matter.

2 Enn. in. 1, 4.

3 Cf. Enn. in. 4, 6: ov yap o.uolus lv rois avrois ttSs Kii/eirai 7) fiovXerai 77

ivepyet.

78 THE PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM [V

preserve the causal order without exception while at the same
time allowing that we ourselves are something, we must intro-
duce the soul as another principle into the contexture of
things, — and not only the soul of the whole, but along with it
the soul of each 1 . Being in a contexture, and not by itself, it
is not wholly master, and so far fate or destiny (el/nap fievrj)
regarded as external, has a real existence. Thus all things
come to pass according to causes ; but some by the soul, and
some through the other causes among which it is placed.
Of its not thinking and acting rationally (tov p-rj cppovelv)
other things are the causes. Rational action has its cause
within ; being only not hindered from without 2 .

Virtue therefore is free ; and the more completely free the
more the soul is purified from mixture. To the bad, who do
most things according to the imaginations excited by bodily
affections, we must assign neither a power of their own nor a
proper volition 3 . How then can punishment be just? The
answer is that the composite nature, which sins, is also that
which pays the penalty of sin 4 . The involuntariness of sin
(on n/xapTia aKovaiov) does not prevent the deed being from
the doer 5 . Some men indeed come into being as if by a
witchcraft of external things, and are little or nothing of
themselves: others preserve the original nature of the soul's
essence. For it is not to be thought that the soul "alone of all
things is without such a nature 6 . In preserving or recovering
this lie virtue and freedom.

A more elaborate treatment of the problem of theodicy here
raised is contained in three books that belong to Plotinus's last
period 7 . This problem he does not minimise. Although, in
metaphysical reality, the world has not come to be by a process
of contrivance resembling human art, yet, he says, if reasoning

1 Enn. in. 1, 8. 2 Enn. in. 1, 10.

3 Enn. vi. 8, 3 : oiirt to eV avroh ovre to eKotiaiov dwaofiev.
« Enn. i. 1, 12. 5 Enn. in. 2, 10.

6 Enn. ii. 3, 15 : ov yap dij vofjucrr^ov toiovtov dvai ^uxV"j olov, 6 tl hv 'i^wdtv
iradrj, ravrqv cpvcrLv iax e <- v P&vrpt twv tt&vtwv olndav (pvav ovk ix ov,Jav -
i Enn. in. 2, in. 3, i. 8.

y] OF PLOTINUS 79

had made it, it would have no reason to be ashamed of its
work 1 . This whole, with everything in it, is as it would be if
providentially ordered by the rational choice of the Maker 2 .

If, indeed, the world had come into existence a certain time
ago, and before was not, then the providence which regulates it
would be like that of rational beings within the world; it would
be a certain foresight and reasoning of God how this whole
should come to exist, and how it should be in the best manner
possible. Since, however, the world is without beginning and
end, the providence that governs the whole consists in its being
in accordance with mind, which is before it not in time but as
its cause and model so to speak.

From mind proceeds a rational law which imposes harmony

on the cosmos. This law, however, cannot be unmixed intellect

like the first. The condition of there being a world below the

purely intelligible order — and there must be such a world, that

every possible degree of perfection may be realised — is mutual

hindrance and separation of parts. The unjust dealings of men

with one another arise from an aspiration after the good along

with a want of power to attain it. Evil is a defection (e'A.\en/a<?)

of good ; and, in a universe of separated existences, absence of

good in one place follows with necessity from its presence in

another. Therefore evils cannot be destroyed from the world.

What are commonly called evils, as poverty and disease, Plotinus

continues to assert with the Stoical tradition, are nothing to

those who possess true good, which is virtue ; and they are not

useless to the order of the whole. Yet, he proceeds, it may still

be argued that the distribution of what the Stoics after all

allow to be things " agreeable " and " not agreeable " to nature,

is unfair. That the bad should be lords and rulers of cities, and

that men of worth should be slaves, is not fitting, even though

lordship and slavery are nothing as regards the possession of

real good. And with a perfect providence every detail must be

as it ought to be. We are not to evade the difficulty by saying

that providence does not extend to earth, or that through

chance and necessity it is not strong enough to sway things

1 Enn. in. 2, 3 : ov8' tl Xoyicr/xbs dij 6 Troir)<ras, aicx vl '^' ral T V iroiifOivTi..

2 Enn. vr. 8, 17.

80 THE PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM [V

here. The earth too is as one of the stars (&>? ev rt twi'
aarpcov) 1 . If, however, we bear in mind that we are to look
for the greatest possible perfection that can belong to a world
of mixture, not for that which can belong only to the intelligible
order, the argument may be met in full. Among men there
are higher and lower and intermediate natures, — the last being
the most numerous. Those that are so degenerate as to come
within the neighbourhood of irrational animals do violence to
the intermediate natures. These are better than those that
maltreat them, and yet are conquered by the worse in so far
as they themselves are worse in relation to the particular kind
of contest to be undergone. If they are content to be fatted
sheep, they should not complain of becoming a prey to the
wolves. And, Plotinus adds parenthetically, the spoilers too
pay the penalty ; first in being wolves and wretched men, and
then in having a worse fate after death, according to their
acquired character. For the complete order of justice has
regard to the series of past and future lives, not to each present
life by itself. But to take things as seen in one life : always the
mundane order demands certain means if we are to attain the
end. Those who have done nothing worthy of happiness cannot
reasonably expect to be happy. The law is, for example, that
out of wars we are to come safe by proving our courage, not by
prayer. Were the opposite the case, — could peace be preserved
amid every kind of folly and cowardice, — then indeed would
providence be neglectful. When the bad rule, it is by the
unmanliness of those that are ruled ; and it is just that it
should be so. Yet, such as man is, holding a middle rank,
providence does not suffer him to be destroyed, but he is
borne up ever toward the higher; the divine element giving
virtue the mastery in the long run. The human race partici-
pates, if not to the height, in wisdom and mind, and art and
justice, and man is a beautiful creation so far as he can be
consistently with his place in the universe. Reason (o \6yos)
made things in their different orders, not because it envied a
greater good to those that are lower placed, but because the law

1 Enn. in. 2, 8.

V] OF PLOTINUS 81

itself of intelligential existence carries with it variety (ov $66vo3,
aXka \6y<o iroiKiXiav voepav e^oi/Tt). Thus in a drama all the
personages cannot be heroes. And reason does not take the
souls from outside itself and fit them into the poem by
constraining a portion of them from their own nature for the
worse. The souls are as it were parts of reason itself, and it
fits them in not by making them worse, but by bringing them to
the place suitable to their nature. If then, it may be asked,
we are not to explain evil by external constraint, but reason is
the principle and is all, what is the rational necessity of the
truceless war among animals and men ? First, destructions of
animals are necessary because, in a world composed of changing
existences, they could not be born imperishable. Thus, if they
were not destroyed by one another they would no less perish.
Transference of the animating principle from body to body,
which is promoted by their devouring each other, is better than
that they should not have been at all. The ordered battles
men fight as if dancing the Pyrrhic dance, show that what we
take for the serious affairs of mankind are but child's play, and
declare that death is nothing terrible 1 . It is not the inward
soul but the outward shadow of a man that groans and laments
over the things of life. But how then, the philosopher proceeds,
can there be any such thing as wickedness if this is the true
account ? The answer which he ventures' 2 is in effect that of
maleficent natures the Reason in the world might say : ' These
too have their part in me, as I too in these." This reason (ovto?
6 \0709) is not unmixed mind {aKparo^ vovs). Its essence is to
consist of the contraries that were in need of strife with one
another so that thus a world of birth might hold together (rrjv
avaracriv avra> Kal olov ouaiav tt}? TOLavTiy; ivavTHocreaiS
<}>epov(n)<;). In the universal drama the good and the bad must
perform the opposite parts assigned them. But from this does
it not follow that all is pardonable 3 ? No, answers Plotinus, for

1 Enn. in. 2, 15: uinrep 8b iwl tuv dedrpuv rah OKi]vah, ovtu \Pn "al rovs
<pbvovs dedffdat. Kal iravras davdrovs Kal irdXewv d\w<r«S Kal apirayds, ^era^crets
iravra Kal yuera(rxwa r 'ff«s * a ' Opv v ^ v Kal oinuywv viroKpicreis.

- Enn. in. 2, 16: reroW^w yap- rax* 5' hv Kal njxoifiev.

3 " Tout comprendre est tout pardonner."

w. 6

82 THE PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM [V

the reason which is the creative word of the drama fixes the
place both of pardon and of its opposite ; and it does not assign
to men as their part that they should have nothing but forgive-
ness for the bad 1 . In the consequences of evil for the whole
there is nevertheless a rational order, and an order out of which
good may come 2 .

Still, that good may come of evil is not the deepest ground
of its existence. Some one might argue that evil, while it is
actual, was not necessary. In that case, even if good comes of
it, the justification of providence must fail. The reply has
been given already in outline. The necessity of evil results
from matter. Matter is necessary because, the principle of
things having infinite productive power, that power must
manifest itself in every possible degree : there must therefore
be a last term, to eoyaTov, which can produce nothing beyond
itself. " This is matter, having nothing any longer of its own ;
and this is the necessity of evil 3 ." If it is argued that moral
evil in us, coming as it does from association with the body, is
to be ascribed rather to form than to matter, since bodies derive
their distinctive character from form, the reply is that it is not
in so far as the forms are pure that they are the source of
ignorance and bad desires, but in so far as they are mixed with
matter (\6yot evv\oi). The fall of the soul is its approach to
matter, and it is made weak because its energies are impeded
by the presence of matter, which does not allow all its powers
to arrive at their realisation 4 . Yet without this principle of
indeterminateness that vitiates the pure forms, causing them
to miss their true boundary by excess or defect, there would be
for us neither good nor any object of desire. There would be
neither striving after one thing nor turning away from another

1 Enn. in. 2, 17: dXX' tacas crvyyvdofxrj to?s KaKocs' el fii) Kal to rrjs avyyvui/x^s
Kal /j.rj 6 \6yos noier iroiel de 6 \6yos /j.r]de o~vyyvu)/j.oi>as eirl tois toioutols elvcu.

2 Enn. in. 2, 18 : olov iK /xoi^et'as Kal alx/^a\uirov dycjyrjs TcuSes Kara cpvcriv
j3e\Tiovs Kal avdpes, el ti>xoi, Kal iroheis dXXcu a/meivovs tQiv ireiropOrin.ivwv iiirb
avdpQv irovqpQv. From a passage like this may we not infer that Plotinus was
able to see the barbarian inroads without despairing of the future ?

3 Enn. i. 8, 7.

4 Enn. i. 8, 14 : v\t) to'ivvv Kal aaffeveias \pvxy atria Kal KaKias ahla. wporepov
dpa KaKrj avTr] Kal irpwrov KaKbv.

V] OF PLOTINUS 83

nor yet thought. " For our striving is after good and our
turning away is from evil, and thought with a purpose is of
good and evil, and this is a good 1 ."

The last sentence contains one of the two or three very
slight possible allusions in the whole of the Enneads to orthodox
Christianity. With Christian Gnosticism Plotinus deals ex-
pressly in a book which Porphyry has placed at the end of the
second Eimead 2 . A separate exposition of it may be given
here, both because it is in some ways specially interesting, and
because it brings together Plotinus's theory of the physical order
of the world and of its divine government. Any obscurity that
there is in it comes from the allusive mode of dealing with the
Gnostic theories, of which no exposition is given apart from
the refutation. The main points of the speculations opposed
are, however, sufficiently clear.

After a preliminary outline of his own metaphysico-theo-
logical doctrine, in which he dwells on the sufficiency of three
principles in the intelligible world, as against the long series
of " aeons " introduced by the Platonising Gnostics 3 , Plotinus
begins by asking them to assign the cause of the "fall" (acfxiX/xa)
which they attribute to the soul of the world. When did this
fall take place ? If from eternity, the soul remains fallen. If
the fall had a beginning, why at that particular moment and
not earlier ? Evidently, to undergo this lapse, the soul must
have forgotten the things in the intelligible world ; but if so,
how did it create without ideas ? To say that it created in
order to be honoured is a ridiculous metaphor taken from
statuaries on earth 4 . Then, as to its future destruction of the

1 Enn. I. 8, 15 : 17 yap opeiiis ayaOov, r\ 5£ ZkkXhtis kcikov, tj 5£ vbrjats Kal i]
(pp6vijffts ayadov Kal Kaicov, Kal axirij '4v tl tCiv ayaQCbv.

- Enn. 11. 9. Ilpds tovs KaKbv t6v drj/jnovpybv toO k6<thov Kal rbv Kbup.ov KaKov
dvai \tyovras, or Ilpds to i>s yvdXTTiKoijs.

3 Cf. Enn. 11. 9, 6 : ras 5£ aXXas vwoGTaaeis ii XPV X^7«" as daayovat,
TrapoiKiqaeis Kal dfTirinrovs Kal /leravoias ;

4 Enn. 11. 9, i : tl yap ai> cavrfi Kal iXoytfero ytviadai £k rod Koap.o-
voirjcai ; yeXoiov yap rb iVa tl/j.i2to, Kal p.tracpepbvTuii' dirb tCiv aya\p.aToirotwi> rQiv
ivTavda.

6—2

84 THE PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM [V

world, if it repented of its creation, what is it waiting for ? If
it has not yet repented, it is not likely to repent now that it
has become more accustomed to that which it made, and more
attached to it by length of time. Those who hold that, because
there are many hardships in the world, it has therefore come
into existence for ill, must think that it ought to be identical
with the intelligible world, and not merely an image of it.
Taken as what it is, there could be no fairer image. And why
this refusal to the heavenly bodies of all participation in the
intelligible, — especially by men who complain of the disorder
in terrestrial things ? Then they introduce another soul, which
they make to be compacted of the material elements, as if that
was possible for a soul 1 . Not honouring this earth, they say
that there is a " new earth " to which they are to go, made in
the pattern of a world, — and yet they hate " the world."
Whence this pattern if not from the creative power which
they say has lapsed ? Much in their teaching Plotinus never-
theless acknowledges to be true. The immortality of the soul,
the intelligible world, the first God, the doctrine that the soul
ought to flee association with the body, the theory of its
separation, the flight from the realm of birth to that of being,
all these are doctrines to be found in Plato ; and they do well
in proclaiming them. On the part of Plato's disciples, there is
no disposition to grudge them the right to declare also the
points wherein they differ. They ought, however, to try to
prove what they have to say of their own on its merits, putting
their opinions with good feeling and like philosophers; not with
contumely towards " the Greeks," and with assertions that they
themselves are better men. As a matter of fact, they have only
made incongruous additions to that which was better in the form
given to it by the ancients 2 ; introducing all sorts of births and
destructions, and finding fault with the universe, and blaming
the soul of the whole for its communion with the body, and
casting reproach upon the ruler of this whole, and identifying

1 Enn. ii. 9, 5 : ttws yap av fwiji' tjvtivovv ^x° l V ^ K T & v (TTOtxelfat cnjaraais;

'-' Enn. ii. 9, 6 : eTrel t& ye elpr]fxiva tois iraXaiois -wepl twv votjtGjv 7roA\<J3 dfxelvu
/cat TreTraiSev/xtvcos etp^rat /cat tois p.7) i^aTraTup.ii'ois tt\v einde'ovaav eh dvOpuTrovs
&TT&Tr]v padius yvtxxrdriaerai.

V] OF PLOTINUS 85

the Demiurgus with the Soul of the World 1 , and attributing the
same affections to that which rules the whole as to particular
things.

That it is not so good for our soul to be in communion with
the body as to be separate, others have said before; but the case
is different with the soul of the whole, which rules the frame
of the world unimpeded, whereas ours is fettered by the body.
The question wherefore the creative power made a world is the
same as the question wherefore there is a soul and wherefore
the Demiurgus made it. It involves the error, first, of suppos-
ing a beginning of that which is for ever ; in the next place,
those who put it think that the cause of the creation was a
turning from something to something else. The ground of that
creative action which is from eternity, is not really in discursive
thought and contrivance, but in the necessity that intelligible
things should not be the ultimate product of the power that
mauifests itself in them. And if this whole is such as to
permit us while we are in it to have wisdom, and being here
to live in accordance with things yonder, how does it not bear
witness that it has its attachment there ?

In the distribution of riches and poverty and such things,
the man of elevated character (o (nrovhalos) does not look for
equality, nor does he think that the possessors of wealth and
power have any real advantage. How if the things done and
suffered in life are an exercise to try who will come out victorious
in the struggle ? Is there not a beauty in such an order 2 ? If
you are treated with injustice, is that so great a matter to your
immortal being? Should you be slain, you have your wish,
since you escape from the world. Do you find fault with civic
life ? You are not compelled to take part in it. Yet in the
State, over and above legal justice with its punishments, there
is honour for virtue, and vice meets with its appropriate dis-
honour. In one life, no doubt the fulfilment is incomplete, but

1 Enn. n. 9, 6: nal els ravrbv dyovres rbv byjuiovpybv rrj xf/vxv- Both Yacherot
and Jules Simon find this identification in the system of Plotinus himself. The
error is corrected by Zeller, iii. 2, p. 633, n. 3.

- Enn. II. 9, 9 : «' de yv/xvdaiov eli) vikwvtuiv xal ^ttw/x^vuv, wQs oi) ko.1 ravrri
/coXws (x a *

86 THE PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM [v

it is completed in the succession of lives ; the gods giving to
each the lot that is consequent on former existences. Good
men should try to rise to such height of goodness as their
nature allows, but should think that others also have their
place with God, and not dream that after God they themselves
are alone in their goodness, and that other men and the whole
visible world are without all part in the divine. It is easy,
however, to persuade unintelligent men who have no real
knowledge what goodness is, that they alone are good and the
sons of God 1 .

Having remarked on some of the inconsistencies in the
mythological cosmogonies of the Gnostics, Plotinus returns
again to the point that the causation of natural things should
not be compared to the devices of an artist, the arts being
posterior to nature and the world 2 . We must not blame the
universe because all is' not equally good. That is as if one
were to call the power of growth evil because it is not
perception, or the perceptive faculty because it is not reason.
There are necessarily degrees in things.

The practice of exorcisms and incantations by the Gnostics
is especially attacked. They compose charms, says Plotinus,
addressed not only to the soul of the world but to still higher
powers, as if incorporeal things could be acted on by the sounds
of the voice modulated according to some cunningly devised
rules of art. Claiming as they do to have power against
diseases, they would say rightly if, with the philosophers, they
said that the means of keeping clear of them is temperance
and a regular mode of life. They ascribe them, however, to the
entrance of demons into the body, and profess to expel them by
forms of words. Thus they become of great repute with the
many, who stand in awe of magical powers ; but they will not
persuade rational men that diseases have not their physical cause

1 Near the end of c. 9, a comparison is borrowed from Plato, Rep. iv. 426 :
i) otet olbv t' ehai avSpl /j.7] eiriara/jLeity fxerpelv, irepcov tolovtuv voWQv \eybvrwv
otl TETpairqxv'S eariv, avrbv ravra p.rj ^yeiadai irepi avrov;

Enn. ii. 9, 12 : </>vcriKWTepoi> yap ttolvtus, d\\' ovx ws at Te'x"at ewolu ' varepai
yap Trjs </>i''<rews Kal tov Kba/nov at re'x"at.

V] OF PLOTINUS 87

in "changes externally or internally initiated 1 ." If the demon
can enter without a cause, why is the disease not always
present ? If there is a physical cause, that is sufficient without
the demon. To say that, as soon as the cause comes to exist,
the demonic agency, being read}', straightway takes up its
position beside it, is ludicrous.

Next the antinomian tendency of the Gnostic sects is
touched upon. This way of thinking, the philosopher proceeds,
with its positive blame of providence going beyond even the
Epicurean denial, and dishonouring all the laws of our mundane
life, takes away temperance, and the justice implanted in moral
habits and perfected by reason and practice, and in general all
human excellence. For those who hold such opinions, if their
own nature is not better than their teaching, nothing is left
but to follow pleasure and self-interest ; nothing thought
excellent here being in their view good, but only some object
of pursuit in the future. Those who have no part in virtue,
have nothing by which they can be set in motion towards the
world beyond. To say, " Look to God," is of no use unless you
teach men how to look. This was taught in the moral dis-
courses of the ancients, which the present doctrine entirely
neglects. It is virtue carried to the end and fixed in the soul
with moral wisdom that points to God. Without true virtue,
God is but a name 2 .

The concluding chapters are directed against the refusal to
recognise in sensible things any resemblance to intelligible
beauty. How, Plotinus asks the Gnostic pessimists, can this
world be cut off from its intelligible cause ? If that cause is
absent from the world, then it must also be absent from you ;
for the providence that is over the parts must first be over the
whole. What man is there who can perceive the intelligible
harmony of music and is not moved when he hears that which
is in sensible sounds? Or who is there that is skilled in
geometry and numbers and does not take pleasure in seeing

1 Enu. II. '.I, 14 : tovs fiivroL ei> cppovovvras ovk av weiOoiev, u>s ovx o.l vbcot raj
airtas Zx ov(JLV V Kafiarois rj Tr\T}a/xouais rj ivodats t) cr)\j/((TL koX o'Xcjs /u.era/3o\cus 7]
i^uidev tj)v dpXTT' V IvooOev \aj3ovcrais.

2 Enn. ii. 0, 15 : avev 5e dperJJs a\i]0ii/rjs Oeos Xeyofxevos ouo/xd (<ttii>.

88 THE PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM [V

the orderly and proportionate with his eyes ? And is there
any one who, perceiving all the sensible beauty of the world,
has no feeling of anything beyond it ? Then he did not
apprehend sensible things with his mind. Nothing can be
really fair outside and foul within. Those who are called
beautiful and internally are ugly, either have a false exterior
beauty also, or their ugliness is adventitious, their nature
being originally beautiful. For the hindrances here are many
to arriving at the end. Since this reason of shortcoming does
not apply to the whole visible world, which contains all, that
must necessarily be beautiful. Nor does admiration of the
beauty by which the physical universe participates in good
tend to bind us more to the body. Rather, it gives us reasons
for living well the life that is in the body. By taking all strokes
from without as far as possible with equanimity, we can make
our souls resemble, as nearly as may be, the soul of the whole
and of the stars. It is therefore in our power, while not finding
fault with our temporary dwelling-place, not to be too fond of
the body, and to become pure, and to despise death, and to know
the better and follow it, and to regard without envy those
higher mundane souls that can and do pursue the same intel-
ligible objects, and pursue them eternally 1 .

4. Aesthetics.

The passages devoted by Plotinus to aesthetics are not
lengthy, but among ancient writings that touch upon the
general theory of beauty and the psychology of art, they are

1 Philo also, it may be noted here, accepted the opinion attributing life and
mind to the stars. In his optimism of course the Jewish philosopher agrees with
Plato and Plotinus. The Gnostics seem to have taken up from the popular
astrology the notion that the planets exercise malignant influences. Plotinus has
some ironical remarks on the terror they express of the immense and fiery bodies
of the spheres. Against the astrological polytheism which regarded the planetary
gods as rulers of the world, he himself protests in a book where he examines
sceptically and with destructive effect the claims of astrology. See Enn. n. 3, 6:
6'Aus 5e fjLTjdevl ivi to Ktjpiov ttjs dLoiKrjcreus SiSopcu, tovtols 5£ rd Trdvra didovai, w&irep
ovk eTricrraTouvTos evos, d</>' oil dtrjprfjcrdac to irav endarui 8l86vtos Kara (pvcnv to aiiTov
irepalvew ko.1 ivepyeiv to. avTov avvTfTayfx^vov av /xer' avrov, \vovtos £o~ti kclI ayvoovvTos
Kdfffiov <pvaiv dpx^v exovTos /cat airiav irpwTrjv iwl wavra lovcrav.

V] OF PLOTINUS 89

of exceptional value. In his early book " On the Beautiful 1 ,"
where he closely follows Plato, he at the same time indicates
more than one new point of view. A brief summary will make
this clear.

Beauty, he first argues, cannot depend wholly on symmetry,
for single colours and sounds are beautiful. The same face too,
though its symmetry remains, may seem at one time beautiful,
at another not. And, when we go beyond sensible beauty, how
do action and knowledge and virtue, in their different kinds,
become beautiful by symmetry ? For, though the soul in which
they inhere has a multiplicity of parts, they cannot display a
true symmetry like that of magnitudes and numbers 2 .

The explanation of delight in sensible beauty, so far as it
can be explained, is that when the soul perceives something
akin to its own nature it feels joy in it; and this it does when
indeterminate matter is brought under a form proceeding from
the real being of things. Thus beauty may attach itself to
the parts of anything as well as to the whole. The external
form is the indivisible internal form divided in appearance by
material mass. Perception seizes the unity and presents it to
the kindred soul. An example of this relation is that among
the elements of body fire is especially beautiful because it is
the formative element 3 .

The beauty of action and knowledge and virtue, though not
seized by sense-perception, is like sensible beauty in that it
cannot be explained to those who have not felt it. It is itself
in the soul. What then is it that those who love beauty of
soul take delight in when they become aware of it either in
others or in themselves ? To know this, we must set its
opposite, ugliness, beside beauty, and compare them. Ugliness
we find in a disorderly soul, and this disorderliness we can only
understand as superinduced by matter. If beauty is ever to be
regained in such a soul, it must be by purification from the
admixture. The ugliness is in fact the admixture of disorderly

1 Enn. i. 6. Tiepl rod koKov.

2 Eim. I. 6, 1 : ovre yap ws fieyidr) otire us apidp.ol avp.jj.iTpa /ccu'toi wXeidvuv
fiepwv rrjs ipi'xys ovtuv.

3 Here the theoretical explanation is to be found in the Stoic physics.

90 THE PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM [V

passions derived from too close association with the body, and
it is the soul itself in its unmixed nature that is beautiful. All v
virtue is purification. Now the soul, as it becomes pure of
regard for outward and inferior things, is borne upward to
intellect. In intellect accordingly is the native and not alien
beauty of the soul ; because only when thus borne upward is it
in truth soul and nothing else. Thus beauty is being, which is
one with intellect, and the nature other than being is the ugly.
The good and the beautiful are therefore to be looked for
together, as are the ugly and the evil. The first principle
(to irpoiTov) is Beauty itself (icaXkovr)), as it is the Good
(rdyadov). Intellect is the beautiful (to koKov). Soul is
beautiful through intellect. All other things are beautiful
through the formative soul.

A return must therefore be made again to the principle
after which every soul aspires, to the Idea of the Good in itself
and of Beauty in itself. This is to be reached by closing the
eyes to common sights and arousing another power of vision
which all have but few make use of 1 . For such vision you
must prepare yourself first by looking upon things done
beautifully by other souls. Thus you will be enabled to see
the beauty of the soul itself. But to see this, you must refer
it to your own soul. If there is any difficulty here, then your
task must be to shape your soul into accord with ideal beauty
as a sculptor shapes a statue. For only by such inward reference
is the beauty to be seen that belongs to souls 2 .

At the end of this book, Plotinus suggests a distinction
afterwards developed. If, he says, we speak broadly and with-
out exact discrimination, then the first principle, which projects
or radiates beauty from itself, may be called beautiful. If we
distinguish more accurately, we shall assign to the Ideas "intel-
ligible beauty " ; the Good which is beyond, we shall regard as

1 Euu. i. 6, 8. No vehicle of land or sea is of avail, dXXa ravra iravra
&<peivai 5et /cat pi] fikiiretv, dXX' olov fx.vaa.VTa 6\f/iv dWr/v dWd^aadai /cat dv eyelpai,
rjv ^x et V&v irds, xP&vTai <>e 0X1701.

2 Enn. 1. 6, 9 : to yap bpH.v irpbs to bpup-evov crvyyevks /cat op.oiov Troirjadpevov
Set e7ri/3dXXetf rjj 6ia. ou yap av nuiwoTe eldev 6<p8a\p.bs ijXiov r/Xtoet5rys /at)
yeyevrj.ucvos, ovde to na\di> &v loot \pvxh P-T] Ka\i) yevopivq.

V] OF PLOTINUS ' 1)1

the spring and principle of beauty 1 . Elsewhere he gives a
psychological reason why beauty is in the second place. Those
who apprehend the beautiful catch sight of it in a glimpse, and
while they are as it were in a state of knowledge and awake.
The good is always present, though unseen, — even to those that
are asleep, — and it does not astound them once they see it, nor
is any pain mixed with the recognition of it. Love of the
beautiful gives pain as well as pleasure, because it is at once a
momentary reminiscence and an aspiration after what cannot
be retained''. In another place 3 , the higher kind of beauty that
transcends the rules of art is declared to be a direct impress of
the good beyond intelligence. It is this, says Plotiuus, that
adds to the mere symmetry of beauty, which may still be seen
in one dead, the living grace that sets the soul actively in
motion. By this also the more lifelike statues are more
beautiful even when they are less proportionate. The irregu-
larity that comes from indeterminate matter is at the opposite
extreme, and is ugliness. Mere size is never beautiful. If bulk
is the matter of beauty (to fieya v\r) tov /ca\ov), this means
that it is that on which form is to be impressed. The larger
anything is, the more it is in need of beautiful order. Without
order, greater size only means greater ugliness 4 .

Discussing in a separate book, Intellectual or Intelligible
Beauty 5 , Plotinus begins by observing that the beauty of a
statue comes not from the matter of the unshapen stone, but
from the form conferred by art (irapd tov el'Sovs, o evfj/cev rj
Te^vr]). If any one thinks meanly of the arts because they
imitate nature 6 , first it must be pointed out that the natures of
the things imitated are themselves imitations of ideal being,

1 Enn. i. 6, 9 : ware bXoax^p^ fJ-t" Xbyo: to wpwToi/ ko\6v ■ SiaipQu be r& vo-qra,
to p.kv vorjTov koKov rbv twv elowv <pr\au t6ttov, to 5' dyaObv to ew^Keiua /cat wrjyr]!/
teal &pxi v T °u koXov.

2 Enn. v. 5, 12 : ko.1 Z<tti de to fxev ffwiov koX wpoo-qvh koi afipbTepov kuI, (is
(0e\ei ris, irapbv aiVy to bi 6dp.(3os Hx ei Kai ficirXijfti» kclI av/x/xiyij ti£ dXyvvovn
tt\v rjoovqv.

3 Enn. vi. 7, 22. « Enn. vi. 6, 1.

5 Enn. v. 8. Ilept tov vot)tov k&Wovs.

6 The argument here is no doubt, as Mr Bosanquet remarks in his History
of Aesthetic, tacitly directed against Plato himself.

92 THE PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM [V

which precedes them in the logical order of causation. And
the arts do not simply imitate the thing seen, but run back to
the rational laws whence its nature is. Besides, they create
much from themselves (7ro\Xa irap avrwv -ttoiovcti), filling up
deficiencies in the visible model. Thus Phidias did not shape
his Zeus after anything in perception, but from his own appre-
hension of the God as he might appear if he had the will to
manifest himself to our eyes.

The arts themselves — which as creative ideas are in the
soul of the artist — have a beauty surpassing that of the works
that proceed from them ; these being necessarily, from the
separateness of manifestation which takes the place of the
original unity, weakened resemblances of the mental concep-
tion that remains. Thus we are brought back to the thought
that if we would recognise true beauty, whether seen in nature
or in art, we must look within 1 . The proper abode of beauty
is the intellectual being to which the soul attains only by
inward vision. Above it is the good beyond knowledge, from
which it is infused. Below it is the beauty found dispersed
in visible things, by which the soul, if not altogether depraved
from its original nature, is awakened to the Beauty of the
Ideas.

5. Ethics.

The good which is beyond beauty is also beyond moral
virtue, as we saw at an earlier stage of the exposition. The
attainment of it belongs to the mystical consummation of
Plotinus's philosophy, and not properly to its ethical any more
than to its aesthetical part. At the same time, it is not regarded
as attainable without previous discipline both in practical moral
virtue and in the pursuit of intellectual wisdom. The mere
discipline is not sufficient by itself to assure the attainment of
the end ; but it is, to begin with, the only path to follow.

In treating of virtue on its practical side, Plotinus differs
from his Stoical predecessors chiefly in the stress he lays on the
interpretation even of civic virtue as a preliminary means of

1 Enn. v. 8, 2.

V] OF PLOTINUS 93

purifying the soul from admixture with body. The one point
where he decidedly goes beyond them in the way of precept is
his prohibition of suicide 1 except in the rarest of cases 3 . Here
he returns in the letter of the prohibition to the view of earlier
moralists. The philosopher must no longer say to his disciples,
as during the period of the Stoic preaching, that if they are in
any way dissatisfied with life " the door is open." A moralist
under the Empire cannot, on the other hand, take the ground
of Aristotle, that suicide is an injury to the State. No public
interest was so obviously affected by the loss of a single unit
as to make this ground of appeal clearly rational. The argu-
ment Plotinus makes use of is substantially that which Plato
borrowed from the Pythagoreans. To take a violent mode of
departing from the present life will not purify the soul from
the passions that cling to the composite being, and so will not
completely separate it and set it free from metempsychosis.
Through not submitting to its appointed discipline, it may
even have to endure a worse lot in its next life 3 . So long as
there is a possibility of making progress here, it is better to
remain. - -

The view that in moral action the inward disposition is the
essential thing, is to be found already, as a clearly formulated
principle, in Aristotle. The Stoics had persistently enforced
it ; and now in Plotinus it leads to a still higher degree of
detachment, culminating as we shall see in mysticism. Porphyry
made the gradation of the virtues by his master somewhat
more explicit ; and Iamblichus was, as Vacherot has remarked 4 ,
more moderate and practical in his ethical doctrine ; but invari-
ably the attitude of the school is one of extreme inwardness.
Not only is the inner spring that by which moral action is to
be tested ; the all-important point in relation both to conduct
and insight is to look to the true nature of the soul and,

1 Enn. i. 9.

2 Cf. Enn. I. 4, 7 : d\\' el cu'x/xdXwros 1x704x0, irdp rot iariv 656s i^vai, el fir)
eti) evSaifJ-ovetv.

3 Enn. 1. '.) : /cat el elixapfxivos x/>6Vos 6 bodels e/cdorw, wp6 tovtov ovk eiirvx^s, el
ix-q, tlicrwep (pa/xiv, avayKatov.

4 Jlistoire Critique tie VEcole d'Alexandrie, t. ii. p. 62.

94 THE PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM [V

keeping this in view, to rid it of its excrescences. First in
the order of moral progress are the " political " virtues, which
make the soul orderly in the world of mixture. After these
come the " cathartic " virtues, which prepare it to ascend to the
ideal world. Positive virtue is attained simply by the soul's
turning back to the reality it finds when with purged sight it
looks within; and it may find this reality as soon as the negative
"purification" has been accomplished 1 .

The perfect life of the sage is not in community but in
detachment. If he undertakes practical activity, it must be
from some plain obligation, and the attitude of detachment
ought still to be maintained internally. Neither with Plotinus
nor with any of his successors is there the least doubt that the
contemplative life is in itself superior to the life of action.
Here they are Aristotelian. The chance that the philosopher
as such may be called on to reform practical life seems to them
much more remote than it did to Plato. Yet, in reference to
politics, as Zeller points out 2 , a certain predilection may be
noticed for the " Platonic aristocracy." It may be observed also
that Plotinus by implication condemns Asiatic monarchy as
unjust and contrary to nature 3 . And the view is met with
incidentally that practical wisdom is the result of deliberation
in common ; each by himself being too weak to achieve it.
Thus, in the single resolution arrived at by the joint effort
of all, political assemblies imitate the unity that is in the
world 4 .

That genuine freedom or self-dependence belongs properly
to the contemplative and not to the active life Plotinus main-
tains in one place 5 by the following argument. If virtue itself
were given the choice whether there should be wars so that it
might exercise courage, and injustice so that it might define
and set in order what is just, and poverty so that it might
display liberality, or that all things should go well and it should

1 Erin. i. 2, 4. - iii. 2, p. 605.

3 Enn. v. 5, 3.

4 Enn. vi. 5, 10 : /j.ifj,ovvTai 5i kclI eKKXrjcriai Kal vacra avvobos w? els ev ry (ppoveiv
ibvrwv • koX x^pts e/cacrroj els to (ppovelv aadevr/s, (TV/J.j3a\\wv de els b* was ev rfj avvddw
Kal tt) Cos dXyjOws <xvvio~ei to ppovelv eyivvrjcre Kal evpe.

5 Enn. vi. 8, 5.

y] OF PLOTINUS 95

be at peace, it would choose peace. A physician like Hippo-
crates, for example, might choose, if it were within his choice,
that no one should need his art. Before there can be practical
virtue, there must be external objects which come from fortune
and are not chosen by us. What is to be referred to virtue
itself and not to anything external, is the trained aptitude of
intelligence and the disposition of will prior to the occasion of
making a choice. Thus all that can be said to be primarily
willed apart from any relation forced upon us to external things,
is unimpeded theoretical activity of mind.

In another book, the philosopher sets himself to defend in
play the paradox that all outgoing activity is ultimately for
the sake of contemplation 1 . Production (woi.r)cn<;) and action
{-TTpa^i^) mean everywhere either an inability of contemplation
to grasp its object adequately without going forth of itself, or
a secondary resultant (7rapaKo\ov07]fxa) not willed but naturally
issuing from that which remains in its own higher reality.
Thus external action with its results, whether in the works of
man or of nature, is an enfeebled product of contemplation.
To those even who act, contemplation is the end ; since they
act so that they may possess a good and know that they possess
it, and the knowledge of its possession is only in the soul.
Practice, therefore, as it issues from theory, returns to it 2 . At
the end of the book Plotinus, passing beyond the half-serious
view hitherto developed, indicates that the first principle of all
is prior even to contemplation. Here occurs the comparison of
it to the spring of life in the root of an immense tree. This
produces all the manifold life of the tree without becoming
itself manifold 3 . It is the good which has no need even of
mind, while mind contemplates and aspires after it.

The doubt for Plotinus is not whether the contemplative

1 Enn. in. 8, 1 : iral'SovTes 5r} ttjv irpwr^v irplv iwixa-P^v <nrovdd^ii> el Xe'yot./j.ei'
■jravTa Oewplas i<pUadai Kal els tAos tovto /3\6rai>, ...ap av tis dva.axot.TO t6 irapdbo^ov
tqv \6yov :

- Enn. m. 8, 6 : dvlKap.\pev ovv trd\iv rj 7rpa£is els Oewpiav. Cf. c. 8 : irdpepyov
Oewpias rd wavra.

3 Enn. m. 8, 10: airrrj roivvv irap{o~x e ^ (v T V l/ "^dcrav £<jir\v rip <puTip tt\v woWtjv,
ffieive 5i avrr] ov ttoWt) ovaa, d\V dpxv rrjs iroWrjs.

96 THE PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM [v

life is higher than the life of action, but whether it can properly
be described as consisting in volition. Volition, he holds, is
hardly the right term to apply to pure intellect and the life in
accordance with it. Still less is it applicable to the One before
intellect. Yet, as he also insists, to speak of the first principle
as not-will and not-thought and not-knowledge would be even
more misleading than the application to it of the positive
terms. What is denied of the primal things is not denied in
the sense that they are in want of it, but in the sense that they
have no need of it, since they are beyond it. On the other
hand, when the individual nature takes upon itself, as appears,
one addition after another, it is in truth becoming more and
more deprived of reality 1 . To recover the reality that is all,
it must dismiss the apparent additions — which, if they indeed
affected the being that remains, would be diminutions — and
return to itself. Of such additions are practical activities. In
the world of mixture they are necessary, but they must be
treated as such, not thought of as conferring something more
upon the soul than it has in itself. Only by rising above them
in self-knowledge can the soul become liberated. Otherwise, it
remains attached to its material vehicle, and changes from body
to body as from one sleep to another. " True waking is a true
rising up from the body, not with a body 2 ." This cannot be
completely attained by practical virtue, which belongs to the
composite nature and not to the separable soul ; as the poet
indicates in the Odyssey when he places the shade of Hercules
in Hades but " himself among the gods." The hero has been
thought worthy to ascend to Olympus for his noble deeds, but,
as his virtue was practical and not theoretical, he has not wholly
ascended, but something of him also remains below 3 . The man
of practical virtue, as the Homeric account is interpreted else-
where 4 , will retain some memory of the actions he performed
on earth, though he will forget what is bad or trivial ; the man
of theoretic virtue, possessing now intuitive knowledge, will

1 Enn. VI. 5, 12: ov yap £k tov ovtos vjv t\ irpoadr)Kr) — ovdev yap iKeivuj wpocrOrj-
<reis- — dAAct tov fi-q ovtos.

2 Enn. in. 6, 6. 3 Enn. i. 1, 12.
4 Enn. iv. 3, 32.

V] OF PLOTINUS 97

dismiss all memories whatever 1 . Memory, however, seems to
be thought of not as actually perishing, but as recoverable
should the soul redescend to relation with the material uni-
verse.

Here Plotinus is expressing himself, after Plato, in terms
of metempsychosis. As in the Platonic representation of the
future life, intermissions are supposed during which the purified
soul gets temporary respite from occupation with a body.
Plotinus, however, as we have seen, does not treat that which
is distinctively called the Platonic " reminiscence " as more than
a myth or a metaphor. When the soul, even here, is energising
in accordance with pure intellect, it is not "remembering."
Memory is of past experience, and is relative to time and its
divisions. The energy of pure intellect is not in relation to
time, but views things in the logical order of concepts. Hence
it is that the better soul strives to bring the many to one by
getting rid of the indefinite multiplicity of detail ; and so
commits much to oblivion.

Consistently with this general view, Plotinus holds that the
happiness of the sage receives no increase by continuance of
time 2 . We cannot make a greater sum by adding what no
longer exists to what now is. Time can be measured by
addition of parts that are not, because time itself, the " image
of eternity," belongs to things that become and are not.
Happiness belongs to the life of being, and this is incom-
mensurable with the parts of time. Is one to be supposed
happier for remembering the pleasure of eating a dainty
yesterday or, say, ten years ago ; or, if the question is of
insight instead of pleasure, through the memory of having had
insight last year / To remember things that went well in the
past belongs to one who has them nut in the present and,
because now he has them not, seeks to recall those that have
been. To the argument that time is necessary for the per-
formance of fair deeds, the reply is, first, that it is possible to
be happy — and not less but more so — outside the life of action.
In the next place, happiness comes not from the actual per-

1 Enn. iv. 4, 1.

%l Enn. I. 5. Et iv iro.po.7a.cti. xpovov rb tvoo.ip.ovuv.

w. 7

98 THE PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM OF PLOTINUS [V

formance of the deeds, but from the disposition with which
they are done. The man of right disposition will find happiness
in disinterested appreciation, for example, of patriotic deeds
which he has not himself had the opportunity of performing.
Hence (as the Stoics also held against Aristotle) length of life
is not necessary for its moral perfection 1 .

Several points of the ethics of Plotinus are brought together
in a book giving a philosophical interpretation of the fancy
that to each person is allotted his particular genius or
" daemon 2 ." Plotinus's interpretation is that the daemon of
each of us is the power next above that in accordance with
which his actual life is led. For those who live the common
life according to sense-perception, it is reason ; for those who
live the life of reason, it is the power above that. How then,
he asks, with reference to the " lots " in the Republic, if each
while " there " chooses his tutelary daemon and his life " here,"
are we masters of anything in our actions ? The explanation
he suggests is, that by its mythical choice once for all " there,"
is signified the soul's will and disposition in general every-
where 3 . Continuing in terms of the Platonic imaginations on
the destiny of souls, he observes that since each soul, as a
microcosm, contains within itself a representation not only of
the whole intelligible world, but also of the soul which guides
the visible universe 4 , it may find itself, after departure from
the body, in the sun or one of the planets or in the sphere of
the fixed stars, according as it has energised with the power
related to this or that part of the whole. Those souls that
have overpassed the " daemonic nature " are at this stage of
their mutation outside all destiny of birth and beyond the limits
of the visible heaven.

1 Enn. i. 5, 10 : to 5& ev reus Trpd^ecri to evbaifiovuu rideadat ev to?s e'fw ttjs
aperrjs Kal ttjs ^pvxvs e0 " rt tl9(vtos' tj yap tvepyeia Trjs i/'i'X 1 7 s & v T V 4>povr)aai Kal ei>
iavrfi wSl ivtpyrjcrai. Kal tovto to evdai/novus.

- Enn. in. 4. Hepl tov elXr/xoTOS Tinas dal/j.oi'os.

3 Enn. in. 4, 5 : dXX' el e^e? alpe?Tai tov Ba'ifxova Kal tov /3iov, ttws £ti twos
Kvpioi ; r; Kal i] a'ipeais eKei r) \tyofxevr} ttjv tt/s i/'i'X'? 5 Trpoaipeciv Kal Siddftnv Kad6\ov
Kal iravraxov atViTTerai. In Enn. n. 3, 15, the "lots" are interpreted as
meaning all the external circumstances of the soul at birth taken together.

4 Enn. m. 4, 6 : XPV 7<*P oteffOai Kal kSct/jlop dvai iv ttj \frvx3J rjfj.wv fir] ixbvov
vot)tov, d\\a Kal ^ux^s r V* xoafiov 6fioeL8rj Otiadecnv.

CHAPTER VI.

THE MYSTICISM OF PLOTINUS.

The aim of philosophic thought, for Plotinus as for Plato, is
pure truth expressed with the utmost exactitude. And, much
as he abounds in metaphor, he knows how to keep his intellectual
conceptions clear of mixture with their imaginative illustration.
On the interpretation of myths, whether poetic or philosophic,
he is as explicit as intelligent readers could desire. After
allegorising the myth of Pandora and of Prometheus, for
example, he remarks that the meaning of the story itself may
be as any one likes, but that the particular interpretation has
been given because it makes plain the philosophic theory of
creation and agrees with what is set forth 1 . Again, in inter-
preting the Platonic myth of Eros, he calls to mind that myths,
if they are to be such, must separate in time things not
temporally apart, and divide from one another things that are
in reality together ; seeing that even rational accounts have to
resort to the same modes of separation and division 2 . This
relation between science and myth remained substantially the
same for his successors. Some of them might devote greater
attention to mythology, and indulge more seriously in fancies
that a deep philosophic wisdom was embodied in it by the
ancient " theologians " ; but the theoretical distinction between

1 Enn. IV. 3, 14 : ravra ixkv ovv 071-77 rts Soifdfet, d\\' otl €fj.<paiva to. ttjs et's tov
k6<t/j.op 56(7€0)s, /cat Trpoaq.dei rots Xeyo^vots.

2 Enn. in. 5, 9 : Set 8Z tovs fivdovs, dfrep tovto taovrai, /cat nepifeiv x/^ois a
\4yovat, Kal BiaipeTv air' d\\rj\wu noWd twi> 6vtuv 6/xou fxev cWa, rctfei 5t fj Owdfiecri
SuarUTa, oirov /cat ol \6yot /cat 7eef<rets tCjv dyevvriTwif irotovffi, /cat to, 6/j.ov ovra Kal
avrol 5iaLpovcrt, /cat Stodijaeres d>s ovvavrai rif voqeavTi tfo-q avyx^povai ovvaipeiv.

7—2

100 THE MYSTICISM [VI

truth of science and its clothing in imaginative form is made, if
anything, sharper. The distinction comes to be used — as it is
already to some extent by Plotinus — to explain the physical
cosmogonies of early philosophers without supposing that they
meant to teach an actual emergence of the world from some
primordial element or chaotic aggregate and its return to this.
What the oldest philosophers had in view, according to the
Neo-Platonist system of interpretation, was only to render
their logical analysis of the world into its permanent con-
stituents easier to grasp. As the Neo-Platonist doctrine itself
was thought out wholly on the line of the philosophical
tradition, its relation to " positive religion " is quite the
opposite of subservience. The myths are completely plastic
in the hands of the philosophers. Of their original meaning,
no doubt they have a less keen sense than Plato, who saw the
real hostility of a naturalistic " theogony " like that of Hesiod
to his own type of thought ; but this only shows how dominant
the philosophical point of view has become. Plato could not
yet treat the myths of Greek religion so arbitrarily as would
have been necessary for his purpose, or did not think it worth
while. For the Neo-Platonists the poetic mythology has
become like their own "matter," absolutely powerless to
modify the essence of thought, but equally ready to take on
an elusive reflexion of every idea in turn. Not in this quarter,
therefore, need we look for any derogation from the scientific
character of Neo-Platonic thought.

If Plotinus accepted Hellenic religion as the basis of culture,
the reason was because he saw in it no obstacle to the adequate
expression of philosophic truth ; which, moving freely on its
own plane, could turn the images of mythology themselves to
the account of metaphysics and ethics. Some members of the
school, as we know, were given to devotional practices and to
theurgy ; but in all this the master did not personally join.
On one occasion indeed, he seemed to his disciples to speak too
loftily on the subject, though, as Porphyry tells us, they did not
venture to ask his meaning. Amelius had become diligent in
sacrificing and in attending the feasts of the gods, and wished
to take Plotinus with him. He declined, saying, "It is for

VI] OF PLOTINUS 101

them to come to me, not for me to go to them 1 ." The
explanation is no doubt to be found in the contrast between
the common religious need for a social form of worship and
the subjective intensity of the mystic. That this was in the
temperament of Plotinus is evident all through the Enneads.
His religious attitude invariably is that the soul, having duly
prepared itself, must wait for the divinity to appear. External
excitement is the very reverse of the method he points out :
he insists above all on internal quietude. Porphyry also has
something to tell us on the subject. Four times while he was
with him, he relates, Plotinus attained the end of union with
the God who is over all, without form, above intellect and all
the intelligible. Porphyry himself attained this union once, in
his sixty-eighth year-. The mystical " ecstasy " was not found
by the later teachers of the school easier to attain, but more
difficult ; and the tendency became more and more to regard it
as all but unattainable on earth. Are we to hold that it was
the beginning of Plotinus's whole philosophy ; that a peculiar
subjective experience was therefore the source of the Neo-
Platonic doctrines ? This will hardly seem probable after the
account that has been given of Plotinus's reasoned system ;
and, in fact, the possibility of the experience is inferred from
the system, not the propositions of the system from the
experience. It is described as a culminating point, to be
reached after long discipline ; and it can only be known from
itself, not from any description. Not being properly a kind of
cognition, it can become the ground of no inference. Now,
since the philosophy of Plotinus undoubtedly claims to be a
kind of knowledge, it must have its evidence for learners in
something that comes within the forms of thought. While he
was personally a mystic, his theory of knowledge could not be
mystical without contradicting the mysticism itself.

In modern phraseology, it was a form of Rationalism.
Cognition at its highest degree of certainty, as Plotinus
understands it, may best be compared to Spinoza's " knowledge
of the third kind," or '' scieutia intuitiva 3 ." Exactly as with

1 Porpli. V. Plot. 10: eKeivovs Sd vpbs ipie 2px«r0ai, ovk i/xe irpbs indvov>.
- V. Plot. 23. ;i Eth, ii. Prop. 40, Scbol. 2. Cf. Enu. vi. 7, 2.

102 THE MYSTICISM [VI

Spinoza, the inferior degrees that lead up to it are : first, the
" opinion " that is sufficient for practical life ; second, the
discursive " reason " that thinks out one thing adequately from
another, but does it only through a process, not grasping the
relation at once in its totality. The difference is that Plotinus
conceives the highest kind of knowledge not as mathematical
in form but as " dialectical." By " dialectic " he means, not a
purely formal method, a mere " organon," but a method of
which the use, when once attained, gives along with the form
of thought its content, which is true being 1 . Before the learner
can reach this stage, he must be disciplined in the other
branches of liberal science. As with Plato, dialectic is the
crown of a philosophical education. Nor does Plotinus alto-
gether neglect the logical topics he regards as subsidiary to
this. At the beginning of the sixth Ennead is placed a
considerable treatise'- in which he criticises first the Stoic and
then the Aristotelian categories, and goes on to expound a
scheme of his own. This scheme, as Zeller remarks, has not
the same importance for his system as those of Aristotle and of
the Stoics for theirs. Porphyry, in his larger commentary on
the Categories, defended Aristotle's treatment against the
objections of Plotinus, and thenceforth the Aristotelian cate-
gories maintained their authority in the school 3 . On the other
hand, it must be observed that this affects only a subsidiary
part of Plotinus's theory of knowledge. His general view
regarding the supremacy of dialectic as conceived by Plato,
was also that of his successors. In subordination to this,
Aristotle's list of the most general forms of assertion about
being held its own against the newer scheme of Plotinus. By
the Athenian successors of Plotinus more definitely than by
himself, Aristotle came to be regarded as furnishing the needful
preliminary training for the study of Plato 4 .

1 Enn. i. 3. He pi SiaXeKTiKrjs.

- Emi. vi. 1-3. llepi twv yev&v tou ovtos. 3 Zeller, iii. 2, pp. 523 — i.

4 The doctrine of categories elaborated by Plotinus being for the most part in
no organic relation to his general system, it did not seem necessary to give a
detailed exposition of it. Its abandonment by the Neo-Platonic school, besides,
makes it historically less important.

Vl] OF PLOTINUS 103

The philosophic wisdom of which dialectic is the method,
Plotinus expressly declares 1 , cannot be achieved without first
going through the process of learning to know by experience.
Knowledge and virtue at lower stages can exist, though not in
perfection, without philosophy; but except by starting from
these, the height of theoretic philosophy is unattainable. Even
when that height is attained, and being is known in intuitive
thought, there is something remaining still. The One and
Good, which is the first principle of things, is beyond thought.
If it is to be apprehended at all, and not simply inferred as
the metaphysical unity on which all things necessarily depend,
there must be some peculiar mode of apprehending it. Here
Plotinus definitely enters upon the mystical phase of his
doctrine. The One is to be seen with " the eyes of the soul,"
now closed to other sights. It becomes impossible, as he
recognises, to use terms quite consistently, and he cannot
altogether dispense with those that signify cognition ; but it
is always to be understood that they are not used in their strict
sense. That which apprehends the One is intellect — or the
soul when it has become pure intellect ; so that the principle
above intelligence has sometimes to be spoken of as an " in-
telligible," and as that which mind, when it " turns back,"
thinks before it thinks itself. For by this reflexive process — in
the logical order of causes — mind comes to be, and its essence
is to think. On the other hand, the One does not "think";
its possession of itself is too complete for the need to exist
even of intuitive thought. Accordingly, since it can only
be apprehended by the identification with it of that which
apprehends, mind, to apprehend it, must dismiss even the
activity of thought, and become passive. At last, unexpectedly,
the vision of the One dawns on the purified intellectual soul.
The vision is "ineffable": for while it can only be indicated in
words that belong to being, its object is beyond being. All
that can be done is to describe the process through which it
comes to pass, and, with the help of inadequate metaphors,
to make it recognisable by those who may also attain it
themselves.

1 Enn. i. 3, 0.

104 THE MYSTICISM [VI

Since that which is sought is one, he who would have the
vision of it must have gone back to the principle of unity in
himself; must have become one instead of many 1 . To see it,
we must entrust our soul to intellect, and must quit sense and
phantasy and opinion, and pay no regard to that which comes
from them to the soul. The One is an object of apprehension
{avveai'i) not by knowledge, like the other intelligibles, but
by a presence which is more than knowledge. If we are to
apprehend it, we must depart in no way from being one, but
must stand away from knowledge and knowables, with their
still remaining plurality. That which is the object of the
vision is apart from no one, but is of all ; yet so as being
present not to be present except to those that are able and
have prepared themselves to see it 2 . As was said of matter,
that it must be without the qualities of all things if it is to
receive the impressions of all, so and much more so, the soul
must become unformed {uveiheos;) if it is to contain nothing to
hinder its being filled and shone upon by the first nature*.
The vision is not properly a vision, for the seer no longer
distinguishes himself from that which is seen — if indeed we
are to speak of them as two and not as one 4 — but as it were
having become another and not himself, is one with that other
as the centre of the soul touching the centre of all 5 . While
here, the soul cannot retain the vision ; but it can retreat to it
in alternation with the life of knowledge and virtue which is
the preparation for it. " And this is the life of gods and of
godlike and happy men, a deliverance from the other things
here, a life untroubled by the pleasures here, a flight of the
alone to the alone."

1 Enn. vi. 9, 3.

2 Enn. vi. 9, 4 : oi'» yap 8r] aireuriv ov8evus exe'ivo Kal irdvTwv 8e, ware irapbv fir)
irapetvai dXX' r) rols 5e'xf<r#cu Swa/nevoLS Kal ira.pi<TKtva<jp.ivoi.s. Cf. C. 7 : ov yap Kelral
ttov ip-qp-Ciaav avrov t& dXXa, dXX' ecrrt tu dwafxevLi} diyelv (Kelvo irapbu, ra; 5'
abvvarovvri ov iraptcrriv.

6 Enn. vi. 9, 7 : el /xeXXet p.7]bev e/xwodiov iyKad-qfxtvov ZotaOai rrpbs TrXrjpwcriv
Kal ^Wapi-if/iv avrrj rrjs tpvcreus 7^s irpwTTjs.

4 "An audacious saying," adds Plotinus.

5 Enn. vi. 9, 10. Cf. c. II : to 5e i<rus yjv ov Otajj-a, dXXd dXXos rpowos rod
£de?v, '{KGTaais Kal airXwcris Kal eVicotns avrov Kal e<peo~is Trpos a<f>7)v Kal oraffis.

Vl] OF PLOTINUS 105

These are the concluding words of the Enneads in Porphyry's
redaction. In another book, which comes earlier but was written
later 1 , Plotinus describes more psychologically the method of
preparation for the vision. The process, which may begin at
any point, even with the lowest part of the soul, consists in
stripping off everything extraneous till the principle is reached.
First the body is to be taken away as not belonging to the true
nature of the self ; then the soul that shapes the body ; then
sense- perception with appetites and emotions. What now
remains is the image of pure intellect 2 . Even when intellect
itself is reached by the soul turning to it, there still remains,
it must be repeated, the duality and even plurality implied in
synthetic cognition of self as mind". Mind is self-sufficing,
because it has all that it needs for self-knowledge ; but it needs
to think itself. The principle, which gives mind its being and
makes it self-sufficing, is beyond even this need ; and the
true end for the soul is, by the light it sees by, to touch and
gaze upon that light. How is this to be done ? Take away
all 4 .

All other things, as Plotinus says elsewhere, in comparison
with the principle have no reality, and nothing that can be
affirmed of them can be affirmed of it. It has neither shape
nor form, and is not to be sought with mortal eyes. For those
things which, as perceptible by sense, are thought most of all
to be, in reality most of all are not. To think the things of
sense to be most real is as if men sleeping away all their lives
should put trust in what they saw in their dreams, and, if one
were to wake them up, should distrust what they saw with
open eyes and go off to sleep again 5 . Men have forgotten what
even from the beginning until now they desire and aspire after.
" For all things strive after that and aspire after it by necessity

1 Enn. v. 3.

'-' This is related to intelleet itself as the moon to the sun. Cf. Enn. v. <>, 4.
•' Enn. v. 3, 13: Kivbvvevei yap o\ws to voetv iroWwv (is avrb avveXdbvTwv
o~vvaio~0r)cns elvai rov o\ov, brav avro tl eavrb vorj' 6 Srj Kvpius icri vouv.

4 Enn. v. 3, 17 : Kal tovto to reXos raXridivbv ^i'xf?> e<p&ipacrdcu <pwrbs entivov

Kal (xvtu avrb 0ed<rao~dai, ovk dWui ipwri, d\\" cu't^j, 5t' ov Kal bpq. wws dv ovv

tovto yevoiTo; &<pe\e irdvTa.

5 Enn. v. 5, 11.

106 THE MYSTICISM [VI

of nature, as if having a divination that without it they
cannot be 1 ."

Much as all this may resemble Oriental mysticism, it does
not seem to have come from any direct contact with the East.
Zeller indeed finds in the idea of a mental state beyond
cognition a decisive break with the whole direction of classical
thought, and makes Philo here the sole predecessor of Plotinus' 2 .
But, we may ask, whence came the notion to Philo himself?
The combination of the most complete " immanence " in one
sense with absolute transcendence of Deity in another, does not
seem native to Jewish religion, any more than the asceticism
for which, in the Essenes, Zeller finds it necessary to recur to
a Greek origin. Once get rid of the presupposition that Neo-
Platonism sprang from a new contact with Eastern theosophy,
and the solution is clear. To Philo and to Plotinus alike, the
direct suggestion for the doctrine of "ecstasy" came from Plato.
The germinal idea that there is a mode of apprehension above
that of perfectly sane and sober mind appears already in more
than one Platonic dialogue. During the period of almost
exclusively ethical thinking, between Aristotle and revived
Pythagoreanism and Platonism, hints of the kind naturally
found little response. After the revival of speculative thought,
it is not surprising that they should have appealed to thinkers
of widely different surroundings. The astonishing thing would
have been if in all the study then given to Plato they had
been entirely overlooked. That neither Philo nor Plotinus over-
looked them may be seen from the references and quotations
given by Zeller himself 3 . What is more, Plotinus definitely
contrasts intellect soberly contemplating the intelligible with
intellect rapt into enthusiasm and borne above it ; and explains
the Platonic imagery of " insanity " and " intoxication " as
referring to the latter state. Mind is still sane while con-
templating intellectual beauty, and is seized upon by the
"divine madness" only in rising above beauty to its cause

1 Enn. v. 5, 12.

2 iii. 2, pp. 448, 611.

3 See, for Philo, iii. 2, p. 415, u. 5; for Plotinus, p. 615, n. 3. Cf. Porph.
V. Plot. 23.

Vl] OF PLOTINUS 107

beyond 1 . That Plotinus derived from Plato his conception of
the Good beyond being is generally admitted. It is equally
clear that for the theory of its apprehension also there
presented itself a Platonic point of view. Thus even the
mystical consummation of his philosophy may be traced to a
Hellenic source.

Plato's own imagery, and in connexion with it his occasional
mention of " bacchants " and "initiates," may of course have
been suggested by forms of worship that were already coloured
bv contact with the East ; but this does not affect the character
of the Neo-Platonic school as in its own age essentially a
classical revival. It was not inhospitable to Oriental cults,
being indeed vaguely conscious of an affinity to those that were
associated, in the higher order of their devotees, with a con-
templative asceticism ; and, as willingly as Plato, it found
adumbrations of philosophic truth in religious mysteries.
These, however, as we have seen, in no case determined the
doctrine, which was the outcome of a long intellectual tradition
worked upon by thinkers of original power. The system left
by Plotinus was further elaborated by the best minds of his
own period; and, during the century after his death, we find
it making its way over all the Graeco-Roman world. Defeated
in the practical struggle, it became, all the more, the accepted
philosophy of the surviving Greek schools; to take up at last
its abode at Athens with the acknowledged successors of
Plato. These stages will be described in the chapters that
follow.

1 Enn. VI. 7, 35 : koX rbv voxiv ro'ivvv [Set] rrjv fxev ^x eiv Svvapup els to voelv, 17 to,
iv ai'Tw /3\e7ret, tt]v 8e, 77 ra eireKuva avrou eTrifioXfj tivi ko.1 irapaboxa, K ^' V" *<*'
■wportpov eiipa fxofov Kai 6pu>v vcrrepov KaX vovv ^<xxe Kai 'iv iari ' tcai icrriv ixtivri p.tv
7} dka vov Zp.<ppovos, avTt) 8i vovs epQv. orav [yap] atppuv yevrjTai fitOvafjels tov
ViKrapos, rote tpuv yiverai air\u)6th us tvwdOfiav toj Kopu>.

CHAPTER VII.

THE DIFFUSION OF NEO-PLATONISM.

1. Porphyry.

Both for his own and for succeeding times, the name of
Porphyry stands out conspicuous among the disciples of Plotinus.
Eunapius, writing towards the end of the fourth century, observes
that Plotinus is now more in the hands of educated readers than
Plato himself; and that, if there is any popular knowledge of
philosophy, it consists in some acquaintance with his doctrines.
He then proceeds to give credit for this to the interpretations of
Porphyry. And thus, he says, the honour was distributed from
the first. Universally the doctrine was ascribed to Plotinus;
while Porphyry gained fame by his clearness of exposition —
"as if some Hermaic chain had been let down to men 1 ." He
then goes on to celebrate Porphyry's knowledge of all liberal
science (ovSev 7raiSeia<i el8os 7rapa\e\oi7ra><;) ; of which we have
independent evidence in his extant works and in the titles of
those that are lost. Eunapius's biography seems to have been
mostly compiled— not always with perfect accuracy — from the
information given by Porphyry himself in his Life of Plotinus.

Porphyry was born in 233 and died later than 301. He was
a Tyrian by birth. His name was originally " Malchus," the root
of which, in the Semitic languages, means " a king." At the

1 Eunap. Vitae (Porphyrins) : 6 jih yap UXomVos rip re ttjj V' l 'X^ s ovpav'up /cat
ry XoijtfS /cat alviy/jLaTwdei twv \6yuv, (3apvs e56/cei /cat Sixttjkoos ' 6 de llop(pvpLOS,
ai<77re p ' Epixal'Krj tls aeipa /ecu 7rpos avdpwirovs emvevovcra, 5ia ttoikIXtis iratdelas iravTa
eis to iiiyuwcTOV /cat Kadapbv e^rjyytWev.

VI l] THE DIFFUSION OF NEO-PLATONISM 109

suggestion of his teachers he Hellenised it first into "Basileus"
and then into " Porphyrins" (from the colour of regal garments).
After having studied under Longinus at Athens, he visited
Rome, and there, as we have seen, became a disciple of Plotiuus
from the year 203. His journey to Sicily, with its cause, has
been already mentioned. Afterwards he returned to Rome ;
and it was in Rome, according to Eunapius, that he gained
reputation by his expositions of Plotinus. Late in life he
married the widow — named Marcella — of a friend ; for the
sake of bringing up her children, as we learn both from
Eunapius and from Porphyry's letter to her which is extant.
She was subjected to some kind of persecution by her neigh-
bours, who, Jules Simon conjectures', may have been Christians,
and may have sought to detach her from philosophy. The
letter is an exhortation to perseverance in philosophical
principles, and is full of the characteristic ethical inwardness
of Neo-Platonisnr. That Porphyry engaged in controversy
with Christianity, now on the verge of triumph, is well known :
and with him, as with Julian, the effect is a just perceptible
reaction of Christian modes of thought or speech. As theo-
logical virtues he commends (t faith, truth, love, hope " ; adding
only truth to the Christian three 3 .

A distinctive character of his treatise against the Christians
seems to have been its occupation with questions of historical
criticism. Very little of it has been preserved even in fragmen-
tary form, the set replies of apologists, as well as the treatise
itself, being lost ; but the view he took about the Book of
Daniel is on record. According to Jerome, he maintained that
it was written in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes ; so that the
historical events supposed to have been predicted were really
events that had taken place before the time of the writer.

1 Histoire <L' VEcole d'Alexandrie, t. ii. pp. 98 — 9.

- See for example Epittola ad Marcellam, c. 9 : 7rtDs oTv ovk drotrov tt)v
iveTrei<Jixtvr)v iv aol elvat Kai rb <tQ$ov Kai rb <np'^6p.(vov Kai rb ye airoWvov Kai <rb>
diroWvuevov tov re ttXovtov Kai ttjv Trcvlav t6v re iraripa ko.1 rbv dvbpa Kai tov tuiv
ovtws dyadQv Kadrjyt/Mbva, Kexv"tvai ""po* T h v T °v v<pr]yrjTov GKidv, ws 8rj rbv 6vtus
v<pr)yy]Tr\v /xt) ivrbs £x ovo ~ av f* 7 )^ itapd ffavrfj iravra rbv ttXovtov ;

3 Ad Marcellam, 24: T^craapa aroix^a p-dXiara KfKparvvOu nepl deov' ttIgtis,
d\r)deia, fycus, iKrls.

110 THE DIFFUSION [VII

This, Jerome says, proves the strength of the case in favour
of its genuinely prophetic character; for if events subsequent
to the time of Daniel had not been very clearly prefigured,
Porphyry would not have found it necessary to argue against
the ascription to him of the authorship 1 .

In the time of Plotinus, Porphyry recounts, there were
members of various sects, both Christians and others, who put
forth apocalypses such as those attributed to Zoroaster and
Zostrianus, by which they " deceived many, themselves also
deceived." Amelius wrote against the book of " Zostrianus " ;
Porphyry himself against that of " Zoroaster," showing it to be
spurious and recent and forged by the authors of the sect in
order to give currency to the opinion that their own doctrines
were those of the ancient Zoroaster 2 . The spirit of critical
inquiry thus aroused in Porphyry seems to have led him more
and more to take the sceptical view about all claims to
particular revelations from the gods, including the " theurgic "
manifestations to which attention was paid by some members
of the Neo-Platonic school. It was probably at a late period of his
life that he wrote the letter to the Egyptian priest Anebo,to which
an unknown member of the school of Iamblichus replied, under
the name of " Abammon," in the famous book De Mysteriis.

One little book of Porphyry, entitled De Antro Nympkarum,
is an interesting example of the mode of interpreting poetic
mythology current in the school. Porphyry there sets out to
show that Homer, in his description of the Grotto of the
Nymphs at Ithaca 3 , probably did not give an account of an
actual cavern to be found in the island — for topographers
make no mention of any that resembles the description — but
deposited in allegorical form an ancient " theological wisdom "
identical with true philosophy. If there really is such a

1 Cf. Jules Simon, Histoire de VEcole cVAlexandrie, t. ii. p. 181. " L'on peut
juger," says the historian on the preceding page, "par l'indignation menie que
cet ouvrage excita dans l'Eglise, de l'importance et de la gravite des attaques
qu'il contenait."

2 Vita Plotini, 16 : vodov re ko.1 veov to j3ij3\iov trapadetKuvs irew\affp.evov re
virb tuiv rrjv a'ipecnv aiKTrqaafxivwu els So^af rod elvai rov Trakaiod 7iupoa(TTpov ra
86yp.a.Ta, a avrol eiXovro Trpe<r[3ei!iei)>.

3 Od. xiii. 102—112.

VII] OF NEO-PLATONISM 111

cavern, then those who wrought it had the hidden meaning,
which in that case was only transmitted by the poet. This
meaning Porphyry educes with an ingenuity that has an
attractiveness of its own. It must be noted, however, that
the philosophers do not add, and do not think they are adding,
anything to the content or even to the authority of their
doctrine. All such interpretations are in the interest of the
old mycologists and no longer of the philosophers, who are
not now putting themselves under the protection of the legends,
but on the contrary are seeking if possible to save them.

Of all Porphyry's writings, that which had the most far-
reaching influence on culture was his short introduction to the
Aristotelian Categories. Coming down to the Middle Ages in
the Latin translation of Boethius, it sufficed, by a few words at
the opening, to set going the whole discussion on " universals "
with which early Scholasticism was preoccupied. This of course
was not due to any special originality, but to its summing up
clearly and briefly the points of the rival theories maintained
by Platonists, Peripatetics and Stoics. Porphyry's logical works
generally were expository, and well adapted for use in the
schools through keeping the subject clear of metaphysics 1 .
Besides devoting much labour to commenting on Aristotle, he
wrote a History of Philosophy, to which his extant Life of
Pythagoras probably belonged ; psychological works from which
many passages are cited by Stobaeus ; and mathematical works
referred to by Proclus. Among his occasional writings of a
more original kind, the most extensive now remaining is the
Be Abstinentia (Tlepl uttox^ e^vx^v), a treatise against the
eating of animal food. His expositions of Plotinus, already
referred to, are still represented in the Sententiae ('A^op/xat
7rpo9 T(i vorjrd 2 ).

In what is recorded of Porphyry's metaphysical doctrines, a
tendency is found to greater elaboration of the triadic method
of grouping, carried out still more systematically by later Neo-
Platonism. The real importance of the writings in which he

1 Cf. Zeller. iii. 2, pp. 640—3.

'-' Prefixed to the Didot edition of Plotinus (1855).

112 THE DIFFUSION [VII

set forth the doctrine of his school was due, however, as his
contemporaries recognised, to the insight with which he pene-
trated to his master's essential thought and to his lucidity in
expounding it. Some illustration of this may be furnished from
the Sententiae. Then, as an example of his more personal
work, an exposition may be given of the Be Abstinentia. The
treatise has, besides, a more general interest in the specimens
it offers of the ethical questions raised and discussed in later '
antiquity, not in a spirit of scholastic casuistry but with a
genuine desire for their solution in the light of reflective
conscience.

Preoccupation with ethics may be noticed in the Sententiae,
which contain a more systematic classification of the virtues
than Plotinus had explicitly given. Porphyry classifies them
into Political, Cathartic, Theoretic and Paradigmatic. The
virtues of the first class set the soul free from excess of
passionate attachment to the body, and produce moderation ;
those of the second class liberate it altogether from this
attachment, so that it can now turn to its true good. The
third class comprises the virtues of the soul energising intellec-
tually ; the fourth, those that are in intellect itself, to which
the soul looks up as patterns. Our care must be chiefly about
the virtues of the second class, seeing that they are to be
acquired in this life. Through them is the ascent to the
contemplative virtues of soul and to those that are their
models in pure intellect. The condition of purification is
self-knowledge 1 .

When the soul knows itself, it knows itself as other than
the corporeal nature to which it is bound. The error to which
we are especially liable is ascription of the properties of body
to incorporeal being. The body of the world is everywhere
spatially, its parts being spread out so that they can be dis-
criminated by the intervals between them. To God, Mind and
Soul, local situation does not apply. One part of intelligible
being is not here and another there. Where it is, it is as a
whole. The union of an incorporeal nature with a body is

1 Sententiae, 34.

VI r] OF NBO-PLATONISM 113

altogether peculiar 1 . It is present indivisibly, and as numeri-
cally one, to tlie multitude of parts, each and all. What appears
to be added — as locality or relation— in departing from incor-
poreal being, is really taken away. Not to know being and not
to know oneself, have the same source, namely, an addition of
what is not, constituting a diminution of being which is all, —
and which, except in appearance, cannot be diminished. Recovery
of yourself by knowledge is recovery of being which was never
absent, — which is as inseparable from you in essence as you are
from yourself 2 .

This is of course the doctrine of Plotinus taken at its
centre. With equal exactitude Porphyry reproduces his con-
ception of being as differentiated intrinsically and not by
participation in anything external 3 . Plurality of souls is prior
to plurality of bodies, and is not incompatible with the continued
unity of all souls in one. They exist without diremption, yet
unconfused, like the many parts of knowledge in a single soul 4 .
Time accompanies the cognitive process in soul, as eternity
accompanies the timeless cognition of intellect. In such
process, however, the earlier thought does not go out to give
place to the later. It appears to have gone out, but it

1 Sententiae, 35: oOre oftv Kpdcrts, r) M<s' J > V crvvodos, rj irapdOfuis ' d\\' erepos
Tpowos. Cf. 6 : ov to ttoiouv els dWo rreXdcrei Kai d(py iroLtl d rroiel' d\\d Kai ra
ireXdcrei Kai drpfj ti iroiovvra, Kara o~vp.j3e(3riKbs rrj ire\d<rei XPV T<XI - On this Ritter
and Preller remark (524 a), " Favet theurgicis hoc placitnm." Here is a good
illustration of the readiness which historians have often displayed to see the
"theurgical" in preference to the scientific side of the Neo-Platonists. Whether
by itself or taken along with the context, what the passage suggests is a kind of
Occasionalist phenomenism. All changes, even in bodies, have their true
cause in immaterial being. Material approach or contact is not an efficient
cause, but accompanies as its "accident" the real order of metaphysical
causation.

-' Sententiae, 41 : o or; oi>rw aov eariv dvairoairacnov tear ovcriav, ws <rv
cravTov.

3 Sententiae, 38 : ov yap ft-wOei* iiriKTr)Tos, ovbe iireio-odiwbris avrov rj erepbr-qs,
ovbe <z\\oi> p-edti-ei, d\\' eavry iroWd.

4 Sententiae, 39 : buo-rrjo-av yap, ovk dwoKOirdaai, ovbe drroKeppaTiaao-ai els
eavras ti\v 6\r)i> ' /cat irdpticiv d\\r)\ais, ov o-vyKexvp-tvo-h ovbe awpbv -woiovaat. tt)v
6\r)v '...wo-rrep ovde ai eTrio-Trjp.au o-vvexvO-qaav al woWai ev ^pvxv M'P — K <*' ai 7ra<rat,
pia - Kai TrdXtv i) o\t? a\\rj rrapa wdcras.

W. 8

1]4 THE DIFFUSION [VII

remains ; and what appears to have come in is from the
movement of the soul returning on itself 1 .

Thus closely does the disciple follow the master into the
psychological subtleties 2 by which he anticipated the modern
position that, as the idea of extension is not extended, so the
succession of thoughts does not suffice to give the thought of
succession. After the illustration offered of his penetrating
clearness of exposition, we may go on to a work which shows
him in a more distinctive light.

Plotinus, though personally an ascetic, laid no stress in his
writings on particular ascetic practices. His precepts reduce
themselves in effect to a general recommendation to thin down
the material vehicle so that the soul may be borne quietly upon
it 3 . There is no suggestion in the Enneads that the perfection
of philosophic life requires abstinence from animal food. Not
infrequently, however, both earlier and later, this abstinence
was practised as a strict duty by those who traced their
philosophic ancestry to Pythagoras. Now the Neo-Platonists,
on the practical side, continued the movement of religious and
moral reform represented by teachers like Apollonius of Tyana 4 .

1 Sententiae, 44 : ipvxv Se fxeraftaivei air' dWov eis dWo, ewafieifiovcra to,
vorj/J-ara' ovk e^iarap-ivuv rdv irpurepuiv, oi>8e wodev dXXodev eireiffibvTwv tQv
devre'pujv dXXd t& p.ev wcnrep &Tre\r]\vde, Kalirep fxivovra ev avrfj' rd 5 wairep
dWaxiOev e'lreiai.v. dcpiKaro 5' ovk dWaxbdeu, dXX' avryjs Kai avrbdev eis eavrrjv
KivovpLevrjs, Kai to op.pLa. (pepovavs eis d ^X eL KaT d /nepos. irrfyrj ydp ZoLKev ovk
diroppvTip, dXXd kvk\lp eis eavrr/v dvaj3\v^ov(rri d exec.

2 To ignore the subtleties of the school is especially misleading in the case
of a doctrine like that of "ecstasy." Jules Simon (Histoire de VEcole. d'
Alexandria, t. ii. p. 156), referring to a passage of the Sententiae (26), says that,
for Porphyry, "ecstasy is a sleep." What Porphyry really says is that, while
we have to speak of the existence beyond mind in terms of thought, we can only
contemplate it in a state that is not thought; as sleep has to be sjDoken of in
terms of waking life, but can only be known through sleeping. Ecstasy, that is
to say, is compared to sleep because it also has to be apprehended by its like,
and because language, by which alone we can try to communicate our appre-
hension to others, has been framed for a different realm of experience ; not at
all because it is a kind of sleep.

3 Enn. in. 6, 5.

4 Eunapius, in the introduction to his Lives, says of Apollonius that he is
not to be counted as a mere philosopher, but rather as something between the
gods and man (ovk4ti (pCK6co<pos ' dXX' t\v ti Oewv re Kai dvdpdnrov fieaov).

VII] OF NEO-PLATONISM 115

Thus many of them refrained on principle from flesh-eating.
Among these was Porphyry. The occasion of his treatise was
that Castricius Firmus, one of the disciples of Plotinus, having
begun to practise abstinence from flesh, had returned to the
ordinary custom. He could easily defend himself on theoretical
grounds; for Peripatetics, Stoics and Epicureans had all their
systematic refutation of the Pythagorean abstinence. To the
arguments current in the schools, accordingly, Porphyry first
sets himself to reply.

The contention of the Stoics and Peripatetics was that the
idea of justice is applicable only to rational beings ; to extend
it beyond them to irrational beings, as those do who refuse to
kill animals for food, is to subvert its nature and to destroy the
possibility of that in it which is practicable. The Epicurean
argument which Porphyry cites is founded on a conjectural
account of the origin of laws. The primitive legislator per-
ceived some utility, and other men, who had not perceived it at
first, as soon as their attention was drawn willingly attached to
its violation a social prohibition and a penalty. It is for
reasons of utility that there are laws against homicide but
not against the slaughter of animals. If indeed a contract
could have been made, not only among men but also between
men and animals, to refrain from killing one another at random,
it would have been well that justice should be so far extended,
for thus safety would have been promoted ; but it is impossible
for animals that do not understand discourse to share in law.
To the general argument Porphyry in the first book replies
provisionally that he does not recommend this abstinence to
all men — not for example to those who have to do with the
mechanical arts, nor to athletes, nor to soldiers, nor to men
of affairs— but only to those who live the life of philosophy.
Legislators make laws not with a view to the theoretic life, but
to a kind of average life. Thus we cannot adopt their conces-
sions as rules for a life that is to be better than written law.
The asceticism of the philosopher consists in a withdrawal from
the things of ordinary life, if possible without trial of them.
No one can dwell at once with the things of sense and the

8—2

116 THE DIFFUSION [VII

things of the mind 1 . The life of the body generally, and such
matters as diet in particular, cannot safely be left unregulated
by reason. The more completely they are put in order once for
all, the less attention they will occupy, and the freer the mind
will be for its own life. The Epicureans have to some extent
recognised this in advising abstinence from flesh, if not on the
ground of justice yet as a means of reducing needs and so
making life simpler.

From the practical side the objection was raised that to
reject the flesh of animals as food is inconsistent with the
custom of offering them as sacrifices to the gods. Porphyry
replies by an unsparing attack on the custom. This fills the
second book. An account of the origin of animal sacrifices
is quoted from Theophrastus, who with reason, Porphyry says,
forbids those who would be truly pious to sacrifice living
things 2 . Offerings of fruits and corn and flowers and spices
came earliest. The custom of sacrificing animals was not
earlier than the use of them for food, which began, together
with cannibalism, in a dearth of fruits. Living things then
came to be sacrificed because men had been accustomed to
make first offerings to the gods of all that they used 3 . Re-
sponses of oracles and sayings from the poets are quoted to show
that the least costly sacrifices with purity of mind are the most
pleasing to the gods. Porphyry disclaims any intention of
overthrowing established customs ; but remarks that the laws
of the actual State allow private persons to offer the plainest
sacrifices, and such as consist of things without life. To make
an offering to the gods of food from which we ourselves abstain
would undoubtedly be unholy ; but we are not required to do
it. We too must sacrifice, but in accordance with the nature

1 De Abst. i. 42. The theories of some of the Gnostics are alluded to. to 5Z
OLeadai Kara ttjp atadrjaiv iradaiubp-evov irpbs roh voyroh evepyetv ttoWous ko.1 twi>
Papfidpuv e£erpax??Wo'-

2 De Abst. ii. 11 : eiVorws 6 Qeb<ppaaTOS airayopevei fx-q dveiv ra e/j.\[/vxa tous rip
ovtl evtre^eiv edeXovras.

3 This is a generalised account. Here and elsewhere in the De Abstinentia
there is much curious lore about the origin both of flesh-eating and of animal
sacrifices.

VII] OF NEO-PLATONISM 117

of the different powers. To the God over all, as a certain wise
man 1 said, we must neither offer nor even name anything
material. Our offering must be contemplation without even
inward discourse. To all the gods, the special thank-offering
of the philosopher will be fair thoughts regarding them. Some
of those who are devoted to philosophy, Porphyry allows,
hesitate here, aud make too much of externals. We will not
quarrel with them, lest we too should be over-precise on such
a matter, but will add contemplation, as our own offering, to
their observance of pious tradition.

He who cares about piety knows that to the gods none but
bloodless sacrifices are to be offered. Sacrifices of another kind
are offered only to the daemons — which name Plato applied
without distinction to the multitude of invisible powers below
the stars. On the subject of daemons, Porphyry then proceeds
to give an account of the views popularly expounded by some
of the Platonists (a rwv YlXarcovifcwv rwes i8rj/j.oa leva av 2 ).
One of the w r orst injuries done by the bad among the daemons
is to persuade us that those beings are the causes of earthly
ills who are really the causes of quite the opposite. After this,
they turn us to entreaties and sacrifices to the beneficent gods
as if they were angry 3 . They inflame the desires of men with
love of riches and power and pleasure, whence spring factions
and wars. And, what is most terrible, they reach the point of
persuading them that all this has been stirred up by the highest
God. Nor are the philosophers altogether blameless. For some
of them have not kept far enough apart from the ideas of the
multitude, who, hearing from those that appeared wise things
in harmony with their own opinions, were still further en-
couraged in unworthy thoughts about the gods.

If cities must propitiate such powers, that is nothing to us
(ouSei; 7T/JO? ?//ia?). For by these wealth and external and bodily
things are thought to be goods and deprivation of them an evil,

1 Apollonius of Tyana, as is mentioned in a note in Nauck's edition
(Porphyrii Opuscula Selecta).

2 Be Abst. ii. 37—43.

3 De Abst. ii. 40 : rpiwovalv re fiera tovto (irl Xiraveias rip-cis /cat Ovaias tQiv
dyaOoepyuiv Vewv uis usp-yiap-ivuiv.

118 THE DIFFUSION [VII

and they have little care about the soul. The same position
must be taken as regards divination by the entrails of victims.
This, it may be said, will be clone away with if we refrain from
killing and eating animals. Why not, then, kill men also for
the purpose ? It is said that better premonitions are to be got
in that way, and many of the barbarians really practise this
mode of divination. As a matter of fact, whether the victim
is human or is an irrational animal, thus to gain knowledge
of the future belongs to injustice and greed 1 .

Here Porphyry recounts a number of cases of human
sacrifice in former times, and their commutation into animal
or symbolical sacrifices; appealing to historical authority for
the statement that it was not until the time of Hadrian that
all survivals of such rites throughout the Empire were practi-
cally abolished' 2 . Before concluding the book, he observes that
even the unperverted ideas of the multitude make some
approach to right opinion about the gods ; and illustrates the
remark by passages from comic poets ridiculing the notion
that divine powers are pleased with such things as are usually
offered to them. Then he points to the swarm of evils brought
in by those who introduced costly sacrifices 3 . To think that
the gods delight in this kind of expenditure must have a
specially bad influence on the minds of youth, teaching them
to neglect conduct ; whereas to think that they have regard
above all to the disposition must tend to make them pious and
just. The philosopher, in Plato's view, ought not to accom-
modate himself to bad customs, but to try to win men to the
better ; if he cannot, let him go the right way himself, caring
neither for dangers nor abuse from the many. And surely if
Syrians and Hebrews and Phoenicians and Egyptians could
resist even to the death kings that strove to make them depart

1 Be Abst. ii. 51 : d\\' oicnrep ddisias Kal wXeope^ias yv to eW/ca p.a.vTtla.%
dvaipuv tov bpbcpvKov, ovtu kcu to dXoyov £wov cr^drretc fxavTilas fVe/ca adtKOV.

2 De Abut. ii. 56 : Ka.TaXvdrji'ai oe rds dvOpwirodvaias ax^bv rds Trapd iraaiv
(pijdi IldXXas 6 dpiffTa rd irepl tG>v tov Widpa crvvayaylov fivcT-qpioJv i(p' ' Adpiavov tov
avTOKpaTopos.

3 De Abst. ii. 60: dyuoovo-iv 5£ oi tt\v ■no\vTi\eiav elcrayayovTes els tcls dvaias,
owus dp.a TauTy eo-pbv kclkGiv d<n)yayov, beioib'aiiJ.ovlav, Tpvcp-qv, VTrb\r) T 'ii> tov
8eKd£eii> bvvao-dat. to delov />at Ovaiais aKeladai Tr\v dbiKlaf.

VIl] OF NEO-PLATONISM 119

from their national laws in the matter of food, we ought not to
transgress the laws of nature and divine precepts for the fear of
men.

In the third book, Porphyry undertakes to show that
animals, in so far as they have perception and memory, have
some share in reason, and therefore are not beyond the range
of justice. Defining uttered discourse, not according to the
doctrine of any particular school but in the perfectly general
sense of " a voice significant through the tongue of internal
affections in the soul," we shall find that animals capable of
uttering sounds have a kind of discourse among themselves.
And before utterance, why should we not suppose the thought
of the affection to have been there 1 ? Even if we pass over
some of the stories about men that are said to have understood
the tongues of animals, enough is recorded to show that the
voices of birds and beasts, if intently listened to, are not wholly
unintelligible. Voiceless animals too, such as fishes, come to
understand the voices of men ; which they could not do with-
out some mental resemblance. To the truth of Aristotle's
assertion that animals learn much both from one another and
from men, every trainer can bear witness. Those who will not
see all these evidences of their intelligence take the part of
calumniating the creatures they mean to treat ruthlessly 2 .
Animals are subject not only to the same bodily diseases as
men but to the same affections of the soul. Some have even
acuter senses. That animals do indeed possess internal reason
is shown by the knowledge they display of their own strength
and weakness and by the provisions they make for their life.
To say that all this belongs to them " by nature " amounts to
saying that by nature they are rational 3 . We too arrive at
reason because it is our nature; and animals, as has been said,

1 I)e Abst. iii. 3: r: 5^ ov\l «al a irdax (L T <> irporepov Kai wplv elirciv 8 p.i\\ei,
SievorjOr] ;

!)(' Abst. iii. 6: d\\' 6 fiev evyvu:fiwi> Kal etc toutwv fieraSidwcri avveaeus tois
j'oiois, 6 5e dyvwfj.u)v Kal dvicrT6pr)Tos clvtQu <f>4p(Tai ovvepyCov avrov rrj els avrd
■jr\eove^l(f. Kai 7r<£s 7<ip oil/c ^eWee KaKoXoyqauv Kal SiapaXetv a KaraKowTetv u>s
\L6ov irporipriTai ;

3 De Abst. iii. 10: 6 8e <pu<rei Xiyuv avrois irpoaehai ravra dyvod A^yto? 6ti
<pvaa tarl \oyiKa.

120 THE DIFFUSION [VII

learn by being taught, as we do. They have vices of their own,
though these are lighter than those of men ; and the virtues of
the social animals are undeniable, however difficult their mental
processes may be for us to follow.

Against the external teleology of Chrysippus, according to
which all other animals were created for the use of man,
Porphyry cites the argument of Carneades, that where there
is a natural end for any being, the attainment of the end must
be marked by some profit to that being, and not to some other.
If we were to follow the teleological method of the Stoics, we
could not well escape the admission that it is we who have been
produced for the sake of the most destructive brutes ; for while
they are of no use to us, they sometimes make their prey of
men. This they do driven by hunger, whereas we in our
sports and public games kill in wantonness 1 . Returning to the
question about the reason of animals, Porphyry argues, after
Plutarch, that to an animal that could not reason at all, its
senses would be of no use towards action for ends. Inferiority
in reasoning power is not the same as total deprivation of it.
We do not say that we are entirely without the faculty of
vision because the hawk has sharper sight. If normally
animals had not reason, how could they go mad, as some do ?
Porphyry next cites from Theophrastus an argument for a
relation of kinship not only among all men, but between men
and all animals 2 . In the bodies and souls of both, we find the
same principles. For our bodies consist not only of the same
primary elements but of the same tissues — " skin, flesh, and

1 De Abst. iii. 20. Here follow some pages adapted from Plutarch's De
Sollertia Animalium, cc. 2 — 5, beginning: e£ wv 5tj ko.1 rb /j.ei> (povinov ko.1 dr)piu>8e$
r)/j.u>i> Eirepptl'ffdT] nai to vpbs oiktov awades, tov 5' rj/mepov to nXeiaTov a.Trrjp.j3\vvav ol
TrpuiTOi touto To\fj.7}oai>Tes. ol 5k Uvdaybpeiot tt)v wpbs to. Bripia TrpaoTrjTa pt,e\eTqv
iiroi-qeavTo tov tpiXavdpilwov tcai {piXoiKTip/xovos. In view of modern discussions on
teleology and evolution, a passage that occurs later may be found interesting.
Having enumerated the devices of animals that live in the water for catching
prey and escaping from enemies, one of the spokesmen in the dialogue argues
that the struggle is nature's means of promoting animal intelligence. De
Sollertia Animalium, 27 (979 a) : kclI tov k6k\ov tovtov ko.1 ttjv wepioSov reus /car'
dWr/Xcov 5iu>i;ecri ko.1 tpvyah yi/Mvafffia /ecu p.e\eTi]v r\ (pvffis avTols eva.yiovi.ov ireTrolyKe
8fivbT7)Tos kclI ovvtaews.

2 De Abst. iii. 25.

VIl] OF NEO-PLATONISM 121

the kind of humours natural to animals." Likewise the souls
of animals resemble those of men by their desires and impulses,
by their reasonings, and above all by their sense-perceptions.
The difference, in the case of souls as of bodies, is in degree
of fineness. Therefore, in abstaining from the flesh of animals,
Porphyry concludes, we are more just in that we avoid harming
what is of kindred nature ; and, from thus extending justice,
we shall be less prone to injure our fellow-men. We cannot
indeed live in need of nothing, like the divinity ; but we can
at least make ourselves more like God by reducing our wants.
Let us then imitate the " golden race," for which the fruits of
the earth sufficed.

The fourth book, which is incomplete, accumulates tes-
timonies to show that . abstinence from Mesh is not a mere
eccentric precept of Pythagoras and Empedocles, but has been
practised by primitive and uncorrupted races, by communities
of ascetics like the Essenes, and by the Egyptian and other
priesthoods, some of whom have abstained from all kinds of
animal food, some from particular kinds. Then, after giving
an account of the Brahmans and of the Buddhist monks (who
are evidently meant by the ^.a/xaraLoi) on the authority of
Bardesanes (perhaps the Gnostic), who derived his information
from an Indian embassy to the imperial court early in the
third century, Porphyry returns to the general ascetic argument
for abstinence. One who would philosophise ought not to live
like the mass of mankind, but ought rather to observe such
rules as are prescribed to priests, who take upon themselves
the obligation of a holier kind of life 1 .

This is the strain in which the work breaks off, but it will
be observed that on the whole the point of view is as much
humanitarian as ascetic. Transmigration of human souls into
the bodies of animals Porphyry explicitly denied. Here he
mentions it only as a topic of ridicule used against Pythagoras.
The stories of men who have been transformed into animals,
he interprets as a mythical indication that the souls of
animals have something in common with our own. The way

1 De Abst. iv. 18.

122 THE DIFFUSION [VII

in which the whole subject is discussed reveals a degree of
reflectiveness with regard to it in the ancient schools which
has scarcely been reached again by civilised Europe till
quite modern times. And perhaps, for those who wish to
preserve the mean, no more judicious solution will be found
than Plutarch came upon incidentally in his Life of Cato the
Censor; where he contends that, while justice in the proper
sense is applicable only among men, irrational animals also
may claim a share of benevolence 1 .

2. Iamblich us.

Iamblichus, who was regarded as the next after Porphyry
in the Neo-Platonic succession 2 , had been his pupil at Rome.
He was a native of Chalcis in Coele- Syria, aud his own later
activity as a teacher was in Syria. He died in the reign of
Constantine, about 330. Eunapius describes him as socially
accessible and genial, and as living on familiar terms with his
numerous disciples. Though he is often described as having
given to the Neo-Platonic school a decisive impulse in the
direction of theurgy, the one well-authenticated anecdote on
the subject in his biography does not lend any particular
support to this view. A rumour had gone abroad that some-
times during his devotions he was raised in the air and
underwent a transfiguration. His disciples, fearing that they
were being excluded from some secret, took occasion to ask
him if it was so. Though not much given to laughter, he
laughed upon this inquiry, and said that the story was prettily
invented but was not true 3 . Eunapius was told this by his
teacher Chrysanthius ; and Chrysanthius had it from Aedesius,
who bore a part in the conversation. The biographer certainly

1 Vitae, Cato Major, 5 : Kairoi tt]v xPV crT ° T V Ta T ?7 S diicaio<n'ivr)s irXarvrtpov
t6ttov opwfjLev fTnXa.fj.ftai'ovcTa.v vbfiu> /j.(p yap Kal ru> Sikcu'oj 7rpos avdpwwovs fxbvov
XP^crdai ire(pvKap.ev, irpbs evepyeoias dt Kal x^-P LTa ^ 2<ttiv ore Kal p.ixP L T ^ v o-Xbywv
fyiov uiawtp £k Tnjyqi irXovcrias awoppel rrjs i)p.epbTT]To%.

2 See Julian, Or. vn. 2'22 B, where Plotinus, Porphyry and Iamblichus are
mentioned in order as carrying on the tradition of Plato.

3 Eunap. Vitae (Iamblichus) : 6 p.ev dirarrjaas v/xcis ovk i)v &xapis, ravra 5£ oi'x

OVTiOS ?x €U

VIl] OF NEO-PLATOXISM 123

goes on to relate some marvels on hearsay, but he mentions
distinctly that none of the disciples of Iamblichus wrote them
down. He records them, as he says himself, with a certain
hesitation; but he did not think himself justified in omitting
what was told him by trustworthy witnesses.

The literary style of Iamblichus, Eunapius allows, has not
the beauty and lucidity of Porphyry's. Not that it altogether
fails of clearness, nor that it is grammatically incorrect; but it
does not draw the reader on. As Plato said of Xenocrates, he
had not sacrificed to the Hermaic Graces. An interesting
account is given of the way in which he was stirred up to
reflection on political topics by Alypius, an acute dialectician
of Alexandria. A public disputation having been arranged
between them, Alypius put to him a question from which he
at first turned away with disdain. The query was : " Whether
a rich man is necessarily either unjust or the heir of one who
has been unjust 1 ." According to the traditional philosophic
view that poverty and wealth, in comparison with the goods of
the mind, are alike indifferent, the question seemed frivolous;
but further* thought modified the impression, and Iamblichus
became an admirer of Alypius and afterwards wrote his life.
The composition, Eunapius thought, was not successful; and
this he ascribes to the author's want of aptitude for political
discussion and of real interest in it. It conveyed a sense of
Iamblichus's admiration for Alypius, but did not succeed in
giving the reader any clear idea as to what he had said or
done. ^

Eunapius himself was not by special training a philosopher,
but a rhetorician. He was an adherent of the party attached
to the old religion. Commonly, he is described as an indis-
criminate panegyrist of all the philosophers of his party ; but,
as we see, he was not wanting in candour. While looking
back with reverence to Iamblichus as the intellectual chief
of the men whose doctrines he followed, he does not in the
least understate his defects of style. And on no one does he
lavish more praise than on his Athenian teacher in rhetoric,

1 'EtV^ fioi, <pt\6ffocf>e,' Trpds cli'toi* ^0t;, '6 w\ov<nos rj aoiKos r) o.5lkov KXripovo/xos,
val r) o\i ; tovtujv yap fxtaov ovdiv.'

124 THE DIFFUSION [VII

Prohaeresius, who was a Christian. Iamblichus was one of those
who are placed higher by their own age than by later times.
His reputation had probably reached its greatest height about
the time of Julian, who spoke of him as not inferior in genius
to Plato 1 . Still, he remains a considerable philosopher. He
modified the doctrine of Plotinus more deeply than Porphyry ;
and the changes he made in it were taken up and continued
when it came to be systematised by the Athenian school. If
he does not write so well as Porphyry or Proclus, he succeeds
in conveying his meaning. And, while professedly expounding
the tradition of a school, and freely borrowing from his pre-
decessors, he always has a distinctive drift of his own.

The surviving works of Iamblichus belonged to a larger
treatise in which the Pythagorean philosophy was regarded as
the original source of the tradition he expounds. The whole
treatise was entitled %vvay(oy>} rcov HvOwyopelcov Boyfidrcou. Of
the separate works, the first in order is a Life of Pythagoras.
The second is mainly ethical in content, and is a general
exhortation to the study of philosophy (A070? TrpoTpeirTLKos
iirl <pi\oao<pLav). The remaining three are mathematical 2 .
The best notion of the individual tone of Iamblichus's thought
will be given by an abstract of the second book — the Pro-
trepticus. But first a word must be said on the kind of
modification he made in the doctrine of Plotinus.

From the references in later writers, it is known that he
attempted a more systematic analysis of the stages of emanation
by resolving them into subordinate triads. As there are traces

1 Or. iv. 146 A. To save their genuineness, the letters of Julian " to
Iamblichus the philosopher " are as a rule assumed to have been written to
a nephew of Iamblichus, known from the correspondence of Libanius. Zeller
(iii. 2, p. 679, n. 2) points to circumstances wbich show that they must have
purported to be written to the elder Iamblichus, who died near the time when
Julian was born (331). He therefore follows Dodwell (" A Discourse concerning
the Time of Pythagoras," cited by Fabricius, Bibliotheca Graeca) in regarding
them as spurious. Dodwell gives what seems a decisive reason for rejecting them,
namely, that Sopater, who was executed under Constantine, is referred to as alive.

- Tbe genuineness of one of these (Ta deo\oyou/j.eva rrjs dpi.0/J-r]TtKT]s) has
been contested. The other two bear the titles Ilepl rrjs koivtjs /xadrjuartKiis
tiri<TTr)/J-ys and Ilepi tt}s ^iko/xixxov dptdfxT]TiKTJs daayuyfjs. See, on the former,
Appendix III.

VII] OF NEO-PLATONISM 125

of this already in Porphyry, and as Proclus carried the method
much farther, the interest of Iamblichus here is that he
illustrates the continuous effort of the school towards com-
pleteness and consistency. He dwelt with special emphasis on
the position that the causal process from higher to lower is
logical, and not in time ; and thought it not without danger to
suppose a temporal production of the world even as a mere
hypothesis. More explicitly than Plotinus or Porphyry, he
insisted that no individual soul can remain permanently in
the intelligible world any more than in Tartarus. It is the
nature of every particular soul to descend periodically and to
reascend in accordance with a law of universal necessity. The
point where he was most original was, however, his affirmation,
as against Plotinus, that when the soul "descends" it descends
wholly. The whole soul, and not merely a kind of effluence of
it, is in relation with this world so long as it is here at all.
There is no " pure soul " that remains exempt from error while
the " composite nature " is at fault. If the will sins, how can
the soul be without sin 1 ? This correction in what seemed
Plotinus's over-exalted view was almost universally allowed,
and was definitively taken up by Proclus. It certainly does
not bear out the notion that Iamblichus was a thinker who
deserted all sobriety in order to turn a philosophic school into
an association of theosophic adepts.

The Protrepticus is in considerable part made up of excerpts
from Plato, Aristotle, and Neo-Pythagorean writings, but it is
at the same time consistently directed to the end of showing
the importance of theoretical knowledge both for itself and in
relation to practice. Contemplation is put first; but, of all the
school, Iamblichus dwells most on the bearing of knowledge
upon practical utilities. At the beginning he brings out the
point that general scientific discipline must be communicated
before philosophy, " as the less before the greater mysteries 2 ."
We are to regard the constancy of the stellar movements, so

1 Procl. in Tim. 341 D. (R. P. 528.) el de 17 irpoalpeois ap.apT&vei, irws

dvafldpTTlTOS 1) ^pvxv ;

2 Protrepticus, a 2, ed. H. Pistelli, p. 10: ws irpb rC)v fMeyaXuv /xvaTrjpiwf to.
fUKpa wapaoortov, nal irpb (f)i\o<xo(pias 7rcu5ei'ae.

126 THE DIFFUSION [VII

that we may be prepared to adapt ourselves to the necessary
course of things. From scientific knowledge we are to rise to
wisdom {ao(f)La) as knowledge of first principles, and finally as
theology. We need knowledge to make use of "goods," which
without the wisdom to use them are not goods, or rather are
evils. Things in use (rd ^pri^ara) have reference to the body,
and the body is to be attended to for the sake of the soul and
its ruling powers. Each of us is the soul, and knowledge of the
soul is knowledge of oneself. The physician as such does not
know himself. Those who practise arts connected not with the
bod}' directly but with things that are for the body, are still
more remote from self-knowledge, and their arts are rightly
called mechanical. We must exercise the divinest part of the
soul by the appropriate motions. Now to what is divine in us
the movements of the whole are akin 1 . In the part of the soul
that has rational discourse is the intellectual principle, which is
the best that belongs to the soul. For the sake of this, and of
the thoughts with which it energises, all else exists.

While without philosophy practical life cannot be well
regulated, the theoretic life is yet not finally for the sake of
practice. Rather, mind itself and the divine are the ultimate
end, the mark at once of the intellectual eye and of love. It is
by the power of living the life of theory that we differ from
other animals. Of reasou and prudence there are in them' also
some small gleams, but they have no part in theoretic wisdom ;
whereas in accuracy of perception and vigour of impulse many
of them surpass man. Since, however, we are discoursing with
men and not with gods, we must mingle exhortations bearing
on civic and practical life Now philosophy alone, in relation
to the other kinds of knowledge, can judge and direct. And
philosophical knowledge is not only possible but is in one way
more attainable than other knowledge, because it is of first
principles, which are better known by nature and are more
determinate. It is of the highest degree of utility, because it
definitely makes its object the insight by which the wise man
judges and the reason which proceeds from insight and is

1 Protr. 5, p. 31 : rep 8' ev tj/jup delip ^v-yyeveli ejVi lavqaeis ai tov iravrbs
biavor)oei% /ecu irtpupopal.

VII] OF NEO-PLATONISM 127

expressed in law. And that it is not inaccessible is shown by
the eagerness with which students devote themselves to it.
Unlike other scientific pursuits, it demands no special ap-
pliances or conditions of time and place.

After further elaborating this argument, Iamblichus pro-
ceeds to infer from " common notions " that insight (<j>povr]cri<;)
is most to be chosen for itself, and not for the sake of other
things. Suppose a man to have everything else and to suffer
from a malady in the part of him that has insight, life would
not be for him a gift to choose, for none of its other goods
would be of any use to him 1 . Insight, therefore, cannot be a
mere means to gaining other things. The way too in which
death is shunned proves the soul's love of knowledge ; for it
flees what it does not know, the dark and the unapparent, and
by nature pursues what is plain to sight and knowable 2 . And
although, as they that declare the mysteries say, our souls are
bound to our bodies to pay the penalty of some antenatal
offence, yet, in so far as human life has the power of sharing in
divine and immortal intellect, man appears as a god in relation
to the other things that are on earth.

Iamblichus next argues on Aristotelian grounds that man
has a natural end, and that this end is that which in the
genetic order, fulfilling itself as this does continuously, is the
latest to be perfected 3 . Now in human development mental
insight is that which is last attained. This then is the final
good of man. For we must at length stop at something that is
good in itself. Otherwise, by viewing each thing in turn as
a means to some extraneous end, we commit ourselves to a
process to infinity. Yet, though insight is not properly a
utility, but a good to be chosen for itself, it also furnishes the
greatest utilities to human life, as may be seen from the arts.

1 l'mtr. S, p. 45 : el yap Kai iravra tis e'x 0l > SutpOap/nevos 5e eftj kclI voctGiv Tip
(ppovovvTi, oi'x aiperos 6 /3tos - ov5ev yap o<pe\os ov8e twv aXXwv ayatiiov.

Protr. 8, p. 46 : Kai to (ptvyeiv 5e rbv Oavarov rovs ttoWovs delicvwi tt\v
<pt\op.ddetav rrjs ^i'xn^- (pevyet yap a fxrj ytyvuvKei, to (TKOTwdes Kai to /at] orjXov,
(pvati. 5e 8iu3K€L to (pavepbv tcai to yvuicrTdv.

Protr. 9, p. 51 : tAos 5£ Kara <pvo~iv tovt6 i&Tiv 6 KaTa ttjv yeveo-w ireQvuev
vcTaTov (TrtTeXuudaL trepatvop.ivrjs ttjs yevecrews cn/eexws.

128 THE DIFFUSION [VII

Just as the physician needs a knowledge of nature, so the
lawgiver and the moralist need theoretical knowledge, though
of another kind, if they are to regulate the social life of man.
The relation of this knowledge to the whole of life is like that
of sight to physical action. In itself it simply judges and
shows, but without it we could do nothing or very little.

Those who enjoy the pleasure of insight enjoy most the
perfection of life in itself; an enjoyment which is to be dis-
tinguished from incidental pleasures, received while living but
not springing essentially from the proper activity of life. The
difficulty of living the theoretic life here, comes from the
conditions of human nature ; for now we have to be constantly
doing things that have relation to needs. This is most of all
the lot of those deemed happiest by the many. If, however,
we prepare ourselves by philosophising, we may hope, having
returned whence we came, to live in untroubled contemplation
of divine truth. Thus Iamblichus is led from the Aristotelian
ideal of the contemplative life to the thought of the Phaedo,
that philosophising is a kind of dying; death being nothing but
the separation of the soul from the body to live a life by itself.
Our soul can never perceive truth in its purity till it is released.
To prepare it for such knowledge, and to approach that know-
ledge as near as possible while we live, we must purify the soul
from all that comes to it from the body, — from common desires
and fears, care about needs, and the hindrances thrown in the
way by external sense. The genuine virtues of courage,
temperance and justice proceed from the insight reached by
philosophic purification ; the virtues that result from a
balancing of pleasures and pains are a mere adumbration of
virtue. When a distinction is drawn between the lot in Hades
of the uninitiated and of the initiated, we may understand by
the truly initiated (' vapOijKocpopoi fiei> 7toX\ol, /3('tK)^ot Se re
iravpot') no other than those who have become purified through
philosophy. Those who do not arrive in Hades as purified
souls, quickly become subject to rebirth in new bodies. There-
fore, since the soul is immortal, there is for it no escape from
ills and no safety except to acquire as much goodness and
insight as possible.

Vn] OF NEO-PLATONISM 129

The character of the philosopher is next set forth by an
excerpt of the celebrated passage in the Theaetetus. An account
of the ideal philosophic education is adapted from the seventh
book of the Republic. The Platonic view is enforced that the
special function of philosophy is to remove from the soul the
accretion that comes to it from birth, and to purify that energy
of it to which the power of reason belongs 1 . The argument of
the Gorgias is then taken up, that the intemperate soul, which
would be ever getting and spending, is like a " leaky vessel,"
while orderliness in the soul resembles health in the body.
After some further development of this topic, Iamblichus returns
to the point that philosophy is the most directive of all the
arts (rjyefxoviKwraTT] iraaoov rwv re^vwi'). Hence most pains
ought to be spent in learning it. An art of dealing with words,
indeed, might be learned in a short time, so that the disciple
should be no worse than the teacher; but the excellence that
comes from practice is only to be acquired by much time and
diligence. The envy of men, too, attaches itself to rapid
acquisitions of every kind ; praise is more readily accorded to
those that have taken long to acquire. Further, every acquire-
ment ought to be used for a good end. He that aims at all
virtue is best when he is useful to most 2 . Now that which is
most useful to mankind is justice. But for any one to know
the right distribution of things and to be a worker with the
true law of human life, he must have acquired the directive
knowledge that can only be given by philosophy.

Iamblichus then goes on to argue that even if one were to
arise exempt from wounds and disease and pain, and gigantic
of stature, and adamantine of body and soul, he could in the
long run secure his own preservation only by aiding justice.
An evil so monstrous as tyranny arises from nothing but law-
lessness. Some wrongly deem that men are not themselves the
causes of their being deprived of freedom, but are forcibly
deprived of it by the tyrant. To think that a king or tyrant

1 Protr. 10, p. 83 : rb yap irepiaipelv ryv ykvecnv airb t^s ipvxv* Kal (KKaBatpeiv
ttju XoyifecrQai 5vva/xtvr]v avrrjs ivepyeiav /xaXtara avrr} irpoarjKet.

- Protr. 20, p. 97 : t6v re av apexes dpeydfxevov rrjs <ri'M7rd<rijs GKeirreov elvai, tK
rlvos av \6yov rj Zpyov apto-ros efjj ' toiovtos 5' av en? 6 ir\d<TToi.s axpeXi^os wv.

W. ^

130 THE DIFFUSION [VII

arises from anything but lawlessness and greed is folly 1 . When
law and justice have departed from the multitude, then, since
human life cannot go on without them, the care of them has to
pass over to one. The one man whom some suppose able by
his single power to dissolve justice and the law that exists for
the common good of all, is of flesh like the rest and not of
adamant. It is not in his power to strip men of them against
their will. On the contrary, he survives by restoring them when
they have failed. Lawlessness then being the cause of such
great evils, and order being so great a good, there is no means
of attaining happiness but to make law preside over one's own

life.

The Protrepticus concludes with an interpretation of thirty-
nine Pythagorean " symbols," or short precepts which are taken
as cryptic expressions of philosophic truths. In their literal
meaning, Iamblichus says, they would be nonsensical; but,
according to the "reserve" (ixefMvOia) inculcated by Pythagoras
on his disciples, not all of them were intended to be understood
easily by those who run (rots a7r\w<? cikovovctiv e'£ eirihpofxrj^ re
evTvyxdvovatv). Iamblichus proposes to give the solutions of
them all, without making an exception of those that fell under
the Pythagorean reserve.

The interpretations contain many points of interest. If the
precepts were ever literal " taboos," not a trace of this character
is retained. The last given, which was generally understood to
command abstinence from animal food, is interpreted simply as
inculcating justice with fit regard for what is of kindred nature
and sympathetic treatment of the life that is like our own 2 .
The absence of any reference to the literal meaning seems to
indicate that Iamblichus did not follow Porphyry on this point.
In interpreting the "symbols" relating to theology, if the whole
of what he says is fairly considered, he seems to give them a
turn against credulity ; his last word being that that which is

1 Protr. 20, p. 103: oans yap riyeiTcu /3a<riA<?a rj rOpavvov e£ d\\ov tlv6s
ylyveadat ?? e'£ dvofxias re /cat wXeovc i^cas, P-upbs effriv.

2 Protr. 21, p. 125 : to 5e ' ip.\pi>xuv avtx ov ' e7r ' SiKaioavvrjv Trporpewet ko.1
wacrav tt]v tov avyyevovs Tip.r}v ko.1 t\\v ttjs 6/iot'as fw^s AirodoxV" *«' ^pds eYe/>a
roiaOra TrXeiova.

VII ] OF NEO-PLATONISM 131

to be believed is that which is demonstrable. One of them
runs, " Mistrust nothing marvellous about the gods, nor about
the divine opinions." After pointing out generally the weakness
of man's faculties, which should prevent him from judging rashly
as to what is possible to the gods. Iamblichus goes on to explain
more particularly that by "the divine opinions" (to. 6 da
SojfiaTa) are meant those of the Pythagorean philosophy,
and that they are proved by cogent demonstration to be
necessarily true 1 . The precept therefore means : Acquire
mathematical knowledge, so that you may understand the
nature of demonstrative evidence, and then there will be no
room for mistrust. That is also what is meant in reference to
the gods 2 . The truth about the whole, Iamblichus says in
another place, is concealed and hard to get hold of, but is to
be sought and tracked out by man through philosophy, which,
receiving some small sparks from nature, kindles them into a
flame and makes them more active by the sciences that proceed
from herself 3 . Many of the sayings are interpreted as com-
mending the method of philosophising from intelligible principles
setting forth the nature of the stable and incorporeal reality.
The " Italic " philosophy — which had long since come to be
regarded as a doctrine of incorporeal being — is to be preferred
before the Ionic 4 . The precept, not to carve the image of a god
on a ring (' 6eov tvttov ixr) iTriy\v<j)6 8aKTv\l(p ') is interpreted
to mean, " Think of the gods as incorporeal 5 ." The model of

1 Protr. 21, pp. 110—111.

2 This extended interpretation, with its preface about the inadequacy of
human judgments on divine things, comes out of its proper place. The
" symbol," which is the twenty-fifth, is also explained in due order (p. 121), and
there the preface is omitted and the whole runs thus: To 8e ' irepl deQv p.i]8ev
6a.vfjLa.aTov airioTti fiijde irepl deluv 8oyfj.dTwi> ' irpoTpewei ixerUvai Kal KTaadai eKelva
to. /j.a.dr)fxaTa, 6V a ovk dirio-Trj<reis ovk^ti irepl OeQv Kal irepl Oeiwv doy/x&Tiov f'^wi' Ta
fxadri/jiaTa. /cat rets eino-Tr)fj.oviKas dirodei^ets.

3 Protr. 21, p. 116 : eirel yap awbKpv<pos (pt'crei 7/ irepl rod iravTos dXrjOeia, Kal
SvcrdopaTOS iKavws' fyT-qrea 5e o'/uws avOpuiirtj) Kal i^xvevria fj.aXi.o-Ta 81a <piXucro<pias.
5lo. yap aXXov tivos eiriTijdevfj.aTos ovtus ddufarov ' avrrj 8e fxiKpa Tiua evava/xaTa
irapd Tift (puffeuis Xa/xiSduovaa Kal toaavel ecpoOiagofievri fwirvpei re aura Kal p.tyt6i<vei
Kal evepyeaTepa 5td ra>i> wap' at)r?)s fxadrju.dTUi' direpydftTai.

4 Prolr. 21, p. 125 : irporifia tt)v 'IraXiKifv <piXoo-o<piav ttiv rd do-dinara Kad'
aura dewpovaav r^s 'luviKrjs ttjs rd crcu^ara irpo-qyovpjvwi eiTLo-Koirov/xiuijs.

" Protr. 21, p. 120.

9—2

132 THE DIFFUSION [VII

method for the discovery of truth about divine things is, as has
been said, that of mathematics. Thus the precept ' ev 6Sg5 fir)
a-^i^e ' is turned against the method of search by a series of
dichotomies, and in favour of a process which leads directly to
truth without ambiguity because each step of the way is
demonstratively certain as soon as it is taken 1 . The special
bearing of the Pythagorean philosophy, with its appeal to
equality and proportion, on the virtue of justice (tt}v reXeioraTrjv
aperrjit) is dwelt on 2 . Then, in nearing the end, Tamblichus
points out as one incitement to philosophise, that of all kinds
of knowledge philosophy alone has no touch of envy or of joy
in others' ill, since it shows that men are all akin and of like
affections and subject in common to unforeseen changes of
fortune. Whence it promotes human sympathy and mutual
love 3 .

3. The School of Iamblichus.

After the death of Iamblichus, his school dispersed itself
over the whole Roman Empire 4 . His most brilliant disciple
was Sopater, a man of ambitious temperament, who, as
Eunapius expresses it, thought to change the purpose of
Constantine by reason. He did in fact succeed in gaining
a high position at Court ; but in the struggle of intrigue his
enemies at last got the better of him, and he was condemned
by the Christian emperor to be executed, apparently on a
charge of magic. According to Eunapius, he was accused of
binding the winds so as to prevent the arrival of the ships on
which Constantinople depended for its supply of corn 5 .

Both now and for some time later, philosophers and others
who were not even nominal adherents of Christianity could
be employed by Christian rulers. Eustathius, another of
Iamblichus's disciples, was sent by Constantius on an embassy

1 Protr. 21, pp. 118—119. 2 Protr. 21, p. 114.

3 Protr. 21, p. 123.

4 Eunap. Vitae (Iamblichus) : aXXot fiii> yap dWaxov tu>v dp-qfxevwv 6/j.i\rjTu>i>
5i€Kpld7jcrav eh awacrav ttjv ~P(i)(ml'Ck))v cirixpaTeiav.

3 Eunap. Vitae (Aedesius).

VIl] OF NEO-PLATONISM 133

to Persia. Themistius, who was an Aristotelian, held offices
at a later period. The Christians themselves, long after the
death of Julian, were still for the most part obliged to resort
to the philosophical schools for their scientific culture 1 . The
contest in the world, however, was now effectively decided,
and the cause represented by the philosophers was plainly seen
to be the losing one. Of its fortunes, and of the personalities
of its adherents, we get a faithful picture from Eunapius, whose
life of Aedesius is especially interesting for the passages
showing the feelings with which the triumph of the Church
was regarded. Aedesius was the successor of Iamblichus at
Pergamum in Mysia. The biographer, it may be noted, dis-
tinctly tells us that he had no reputation for theurgy. The
marvels he connects with his name relate to the clairvoyance
of Sosipatra, the wife of Eustathius. Aedesius educated the
sons of Eustathius and Sosipatra; hence the connexion. One
of them, Antoninus, took up his abode at the Canopic mouth
of the Nile, whither came the youth eager for philosophical
knowledge. To him again, as to Aedesius, no theurgical
accomplishments are ascribed ; a possible reason in both cases,
Eunapius suggests, being concealment on account of the
hostility of the new rulers of the world. Those who put
before him logical problems were immediately satisfied ; those
who threw out anything about " diviner " inquiries found him
irresponsive as a statue. He probably did not himself regard
it as supernatural prescience when he uttered the prophecy,
afterwards held for an oracle, that soon " a fabulous and
formless darkness shall tyrannise' over the fairest things on
earth " (kcil tl /u,uOo)Se<; icai aetSe? (tkotos rupavv?]aec ra iirl
yij'i KaXkicna) 1 . The accession of Julian to the empire created

1 ZeUer, ill. 2, p. 739.

- Cf. Gibbon on the " Final Destruction of Paganism," where the prediction
is quoted iu a note. (Decline and Fall of tin- Roman Empire, ed. J. B. Bury,
vol. iii. p. 208.) In the chapter referred to, however, Gibbon antedated the
disappearance of pagan rites ; as may be seen from the lives of philosophers
later than Eunapius's period. With the impression made on the biographer, it
is interesting to compare his contemporary St Jerome's description, cited by
Grote at the end of the preface to his Plato, of the desertion of the philosophic
schools. Who now, asks the Christian Father, reads Plato or Aristotle? "llus-
ticauos vero et piscatores nostras totus orbis loquitur, universus mundus sonat."

134 THE DIFFUSION [VII

no illusion in the most clear-sighted of the philosophers.
Chrysanthius, one of his instructors in the Neo-Platonic
philosophy, was pressingly invited by him to come and join
him in the restoration of Hellenism. Deterred, the biographer
says, by unfavourable omens, he declined. The Emperor never-
theless conferred on him, in association with his wife Melite,
the high-priesthood of Lydia 1 . This he accepted : but, fore-
warned of the failure of Julian's attempt to revive the ancient
worship, he altered as little as possible during his tenure of
office ; so that there was hardly any disturbance there when
the state of things was again reversed ; whereas elsewhere the
upheavals and depressions were violent. This was at the time
looked upon as an example of his unerring foresight, derived
from the knowledge of divine things communicated by his
Pythagorean masters 2 . It was added, that he knew how to
make use of his gift of prevision ; this, no doubt, in contrast
with Maximus 3 .

Maximus and Chrysanthius were fellow-pupils of Aedesius,
and were united in their devotion to theurgy. When Julian
was first attracted to the philosophic teachers of his time, the
aged Aedesius had commended him to his disciples Eusebius
and Chrysanthius, who were present, and Priscus and Maximus,
who were then absent from Pergamum. Eusebius, whose
special interest was in logical studies, spoke with disparage-
ment of theurgy, but Julian's curiosity was excited by what he
heard. To satisfy it, he visited Maximus at Ephesus, at whose
suggestion he sent for Chrysanthius also. Under Maximus and
Chrysanthius he continued his philosophical studies. It may
have been his interest in theurgy that led him to seek initia-
tion, during his visit to Greece, in the Eleusinian mysteries ;
though his argument afterwards for being initiated was merely
compliance with ancient usage ; he treats it as a matter of

1 Eunap. Vitae (Maximus). Melite was a kinswoman of Eunapius, and
Chrysanthius became his teacher in philosophy.

2 Eunap. Vitae (Chrysanthius): bpdv yovv dv tis avrbv ecp-qae pdWov to.
eab/xeva t) TrpoXtyeiv t& fiiWovra, ourws diravra birjdpei Kai avveXdpi^avev, waavei
Trapwp re Kai avviov tois deoTs.

Hi. : €$av/j.d<rdr] yovv em tovtois, ws ov fxbvov deivbs rd /JLeWovra wpovoetv, dWd
Kai Toh yvwaddai xp?jcra<T0<xi.

VII] OF NEO-PLATONISM 135

course that such ceremonies can make no difference to the
soul's lot 1 . When he had become Emperor, he invited Maximus
with Chrysanthius, and afterwards Priscus, to Court. Unlike
Chrysanthius, Maximus, when he found the omens unfavourable,
persisted till he got favourable ones. In power, as Eunapius
frankly acknowledges, he displayed a want of moderation which
led to his being treated afterwards with great severity. He
was put to death under Valens, as the penalty of having been
consulted regarding divinations about the Emperor's successor.
Priscus, we learn' 2 , had been from his youth up a person of
rather ostentatious gravity and reserve. He was, however, no
pretender, but maintained the philosophic character consistently
during the reign of Julian ; nor was he afterwards accused of
any abuse of power. He died at the time when the Goths
were ravaging Greece (396—8). Preserving always his grave
demeanour, says Eunapius, and laughing at the weakness of
mankind, he perished along with the sanctuaries of Hellas,
having lived to be over ninety, while many cast away their
lives through grief or were killed by the barbarians. During
the events that followed Julian's reign (361-363), the bio-
grapher was himself a youth 3 . He was born probably in 346
or 347, and died later than 414.

Of the literary activity of the school during the period
from the death of Iamblichus to the end of the fourth ceutury,
there is not much to say. Many of the philosophers seem to
have confined themselves to oral exposition. Chrysanthius
wrote much, but none of his works have come down to us.
We have reports of the opinions of Theodore of Asine 4 , an
immediate disciple buth of Porphyry and of Iamblichus. His
writing seems to have taken the form chiefly of commentaries.
Proclus had a high opinion of him and frequently cites him.
We learn that with Plotinus he maintained the passionlessness

1 Or. vii. 239 BC : tovtois pt.lv, oh djjtws tou p.vwdrivaL /^e/3twrat, aai fj.rj
pwqdeloiv o't deoi rds ap.oi^as aKepaious <pv\&TTov(Ti, tois 5e fj.oxQypoh ovolv eari w\iov
Kav «<xa> twv Upwv eio~(ppri<Two~i 7rept/36\u>e.

- Eunap. Vitae (Priscus).

8 Eunap. Vitae (Maximus) : kcu 6 raura ypa,<pwv eiraiOeveTo kcit' eVce/eons tovs
Xpwovs wait wv ko.1 els ifprjfiovs dpri reXaJc.

* Zeller, iii. 2, pp. 721 ft'.

136 THE DIFFUSION OF NEO-PLATONISM [VII

and uninterrupted activity of the higher part of the soul ; and
that he defended Plato's position on the equality of the sexes.
Dexippus, another disciple of Iamblichus, wrote, in the form of
a dialogue with a pupil, a work on the Aristotelian Categories
which survives 1 . The book Be Myst&riis, long attributed to
Iamblichus himself, is now considered only as illustrating the
general direction of his school 2 . Its most distinctive feature
is insistence on the necessity and value of ceremonial religion
for the mass of mankind, and indeed for all but an inappreciable
minority. It is admittedly well-written, as is also the little
book of Sallust Be Biis et Mundo 9 . This Sallust, according
to Zeller 4 , was pretty certainly the friend of Julian known
from the Emperor's Orations and from references in the
historians ; and the book may have been put forth with a
popular aim as a defence of the old religious system now
restored and to be justified in the light of philosophy. A
noteworthy point in it is the apology for animal sacrifices.
As in the Be Mysteriis, the higher place of philosophy is saved
by the position that the incorporeal gods are in no way affected
by prayer or sacrifice or by any kind of ceremony, and are
moved by no passions. The forms of traditional religion, it is
nevertheless maintained, are subjectively useful to men, and
its modes of speech admit of a rational interpretation. The
book ends by affirming the position of the Republic, that virtue
would be sufficient for happiness even if there were no rewards
reserved for it in another life.

J Zeller, iii. 2, p. 737, n. 1.

2 An edition of it was published at Oxford by Gale in 1678, with Latin
version and notes and a reconstruction of Porphyry's letter to Anebo, to which it
is a reply. The later edition by Parthey (Berlin, 1857) is based on Gale's.
English readers will find an exact account of the sceptical queries of Porphyry,
and of the solutions given by the author, in Maurice's Moral and Metaphysical
Philosophy, vol. i.

3 Edited by Orelli, with Latin version and notes, in 1821.

4 iii. 2, p. 734.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE POLEMIC AGAINST CHRISTIANITY.

In taking up the defence of the old against the new
religious institutions of the Roman Empire, the Neo-Platonists
were simply continuing the attitude of earlier philosophical
culture. From the time when the new religious phenomenon
was first consciously recognised — that is to say, from about the
beginning of the second century — it had aroused an instinctive
antagonism among men who were as far from believing the
pagan myths as the Christians themselves. The outlines of
the apology for paganism, so far as it can be recovered, remain
from first to last without essential modification. Celsus, writing
in the second century, conceives the problem to be that of
reconciling philosophical theism with diversities of national
worship. It may be solved, in his view, by supposing the
supreme Deity to have allotted different regions to subordinate
divine powers, who may either be called gods, as by the Greeks,
or angels, as by the Jews. Then, to show that the Christians
have no philosophical advantage, he points to the declarations
of Greek thinkers that there is one supreme God, and that the
Deity has no visible form. On the other side, he insists on
the resemblances between Hebrew and Greek legends. Greek
mythology, he remarks, has in common with Christianity its
stories of incarnations. In other religions also resurrections
are spoken of. Such are those of Zamolxis in Scythia and of
Rhampsinitus among the Egyptians. Among the Greeks too
there are cases in which mortal men have been represented as
raised to divinity. Noah's flood may have been borrowed from

138 THE POLEMIC [VIII

Deucalion's, and the idea of Satan from the Greek Titanomachies.
The more intelligent Jews and Christians are ashamed of much
in Biblical history, and try to explain it allegorically. What is
supposed to be distinctive of Christian ethics has been put
better, because more temperately, by the Greek philosophers.
Plato holds much the same view about the difficulty there is
for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven. He
declares likewise that evil is never to be returned for evil.
The reproach of idolatry against the non-Judaic religions is a
calumny. Statues are not regarded as deities, but only as aids
to devotion. To the highest God, as all agree, only the worship
of the mind ought to be offered. But why should not hymns
be addressed to beneficent visible powers like the sun, or to
mental attributes such as Wisdom, represented by Athena ?
Piety is more complete when it has regard to all the varied
manifestations of divinity in the world 1 .

On their side, the Christians were quite willing to appeal
to philosophers and poets who had had ideas of a purer religion
than that of the multitude. All such ideas, they maintained,
were borrowed from the Hebrew Scriptures. Philo had pre-
viously taken that view ; and, as we saw, among men who
attached themselves to the Hellenic tradition, Numenius was
ready to allow something of the same kind. Theodoret, early
in the fifth century, is sarcastic upon the ignorance displayed
by the pagans of his time, who are not aware of the fact, to be
learned from their own sages, that the Greeks owed most of
their knowledge of the sciences and arts to the " barbarians 2 .''
As against unmodified Judaism, the Christians could find
support for some of their own positions in the appeal to
religious reformers like Apollonius of Tyana ; who, condemning
blood-offerings as he did on more radical grounds than them-
selves, was yet put forward by the apologists of paganism as a
half-divine personage. So far did this go that Hierocles, the

1 See Keim's reconstruction of the arguments of Celsus from Origen's reply
(Celsus 1 Wahres Wort, 1873).

2 See p. 89 of Neumann's prolegomena to his reconstruction of Julian's
work against the Christians, to be spoken of later. In taking for granted the
essential independence of Hellenic culture, it would seem that Greek popular
opinion was sounder than much learned opinion.

VIIl] AGAINST CHRISTIANITY 139

Proconsul of Bithynia who wrote against the Christians in the
time of Diocletian, gave his ecclesiastical antagonist Eusebius
occasion to treat the part of his book that dealt with Apollonius
as the only part worth replying to. And Porphyry, in whom
the Christians saw their most dangerous adversary, himself
made a distinct claim to what we should now call religious as
distinguished from philosophical liberty in the matter of food
and of sacrificing. Nor was any objection usually raised by the
authorities to reforming sects that aimed at personal holiness.
The Roman Government even looked upon it as part of its own
function to repress savage rites, such as human sacrifices.
Whence then sprang the repugnance almost uniformly to be
observed in the statesmen, philosophers and men of letters who
were brought into contact with the new religion ? For they
were quite prepared to appreciate a monotheistic worship, and
to welcome anything that afforded a real prospect of moral
reform.

We might be tempted to find the cause in the want of
culture among ordinary Christians. Julian, for example, who de-
tested the "uneducated Cynics" of his time, can think of nothing
worse to say of them than that they resemble the Christian
monks (cnroTaKTiGTaiy. The only difference is that the Cynics
do not make a business of gathering alms ; and perhaps this is
only because they can find no plausible pretext. It is those, he
adds, who have shown no capacity for rhetorical or philosophical
culture that rush straight to the profession of Cynicism 2 . Yet,
he goes on to admit, there is really, as the Cynics claimed on
their own behalf, a " shorter path " to philosophic virtue than
the normal one of intellectual discipline. The shorter path is,
however, the more difficult ; requiring greater and not less
vigour of mind and firmness of will. Of those who took it were
the elder Cynics like Diogenes. The true as distinguished
from the false Cynic remained, in fact, for Julian as for Epic-
tetus, a hero among philosophers. This was part of the Stoical

1 Or. vn. 224 a— c.

2 Or. VII. 225 is: tCiv pyropinuiv oi 5vcr/j.a6ecrTa.T0i nal ovo' vir' avrov rod BacriXtus
'Ep/xov TT)V yXCoTTav eKKadapdr/vai. Ovvd/xevot, <ppevudi}i>ai 5£ oi)5e 7rpos avTrjs ttjs
'Adr)i>as avv tu 'Epfi.-g,...6ppiu)cnv £irl tov Kwicrfidf.

140 THE POLEMIC [VIII

tradition continued into Neo-Platonism. And, as we know, it
was a commonplace with philosophic preachers to make light
of mental accomplishments as compared with moral strength.
Besides, the Christians had among them men of rhetorical
training who were not without knowledge of philosophy. The
antagonism therefore cannot be accounted for altogether on this
line.

The truth is that the Graeco-Roman world had a perception,
vague at first but gradually becoming clearer, of what was to
be meant by Christian theocracy. When Tacitus spoke of the
" exitiabilis superstitio," he had doubtless come face to face in
Asia with nascent Catholicism. In the fourth century, the new
types of the fanatical monk and the domineering ecclesiastic
were definitely in the world, and we may see by the expressions
of Eunapius the intense antipathy they aroused 1 . Already in
the second century, Celsus, while he treated the Gnostic sects,
with their claims to a higher "knowledge," as having a perfect
right to the Christian name, was evidently much more struck
by the idea of a common creed which was to be humbly
accepted. This was the distinctive idea of that which he
recognises as the " great Church " among the Christians. It is
remarkable that, in dealing with the claims of Christianity
generally, and not with the strange tenets of some speculative
sects, the defender of the established order in the Roman State
treats philosophy as the true wisdom by which everything is to
be tested, and reproaches the revolutionary innovators on the
ground that they say to their dupes, "Do not examine."
Celsus was probably a Roman official ; and he may have seen
already some of the political aims of the new society. For of
course the word " catholic " as applied to the Church was not
intended to remain without a very tangible meaning. The
Christian apologists of the second century are already looking
forward to spiritual control over the public force of the Empire 2 .

1 Eunap. Vitae (Aedesius) : elra eneio-rjyov roh iepo7s tottois tovs KaXov/j.ei'ovs
iu.ova.xovs, avOpuirovs /u.ev Kara to eldos, 6 5£ /St'os auTois <jv<J)Sr)S, ...rvpavvLKrjV yap
€lx ev e^ovo-iav Tore ttcls avdpwiros /xiXaivau <popGiv iaOrJTa /cat drjfxoaig, j3ov\6/J.evos
ao-x'THJ-ovdv.

- See Renan, Marc-Aurele. The alternative imposed by the Church on the
Empire was, Renan says, to persecute or to become a theocracy.

VIII] AGAINST CHRISTIANITY 141

A verse of the New Testament by which the claim was held to
be made is pointed to by Julian in arguing that the Christians
are not legitimate successors of the Israelites. Christ, according
to the view of the Church, was the prophet that Moses foretold,
of whom it was said, " that every soul, which will not hear that
prophet, shall be destroyed from among the people " (Acts iii.
28). The Church possessed the teachings of Christ, and was
a living body with the right to declare them authoritatively.
The true religion was not now, as under an earlier dispensation,
for one chosen race, but for the whole world. Hence the whole
world was bound to hear and to obey it. The reply of Julian
was that the application of the prediction supposed to have
been made was false. Moses never had the least idea that his
legislation was to be abrogated, but intended it for all time.
The prophet he meant was simply a prophet that should renew
his own teaching of the law. The law was for the Jews only,
and the Christians had no claim to represent them. The
Jewish religion had its proper place as one national religion
among others. It was open even to those who were not born
under it to adopt it as their own if they chose ; but they should
have submitted to all its obligations. The care of the Jews
about religious observances, and their readiness to face perse-
cution on behalf of them, are contrasted by the Emperor in one
place with the laxity and indifference of the Greeks. They are
in part pious, he says, worshipping as they do the God who
rules the visible world, whom we also serve under other names.
In this only are they in error, that they arrogate to themselves
alone the worship of the one true God, and think that to us,
" the nations," have been assigned none but gods whom they
themselves do not deign to regard at all 1 .

Julian, we see, had no hostility to Hebrew religion as such.
On the contrary, he resembles Porphyry in showing special
friendliness to it in so far as its monotheism may be taken to
coincide with that of philosophy. The problem presented to
the Empire by Judaism, so difficult at an earlier period, had
now become manageable through the ending of all political

1 Ep. 63 (ed. Heitlein). aXafovdq, pa.pj3a.piKr), adds Julian, 71756s ravrrivi rr\v
aTrovoiav eirapdevres.

142 THE POLEMIC [VIII

aspirations on the part of the Jewish community. The question
as to the respective merits of Hebrew and Greek religion, if no
new question had arisen, would soon have been reduced to a
topic of the schools. The system, at once philosophical and
political, of the classical world in its dealings with religion, was
not of course "religious liberty" in its modern sense. In a
congeries of local worships, mostly without definite creeds,
the question of toleration for dissentients had scarcely arisen.
The position reached by the representatives of ancient thought,
and allowed in practice, was that the national religions might
all be preserved, not only as useful, but as adumbrations of
divine truth. To express that truth adequately is the business
of philosophy and not of popular religion. Philosophy is to be
perfectly free. This is laid down explicitly by Julian 1 . Thus,
according to the system, philosophy is cosmopolitan and is an
unfettered inquiry into truth. Religion is local and is bound
to the performance of customary rites. Those who are in quest
of a deeper knowledge will not think of changing their ancestral
religion, but will turn to some philosophical teacher. At the
same time, the religions are to be moralised 2 . Priests are to be
men of exemplary life, and are to be treated with high respect.
The harmony of the whole system had of course been broken
through by Christianity, which, after the period of attempted
repression by force, had now been for more than a generation
the religion of the Empire. Julian's solution of the problem,
renewed by his reversal of the policy of his uncle, was to grant
a formal toleration to all 3 . Both sides are forbidden to use

1 Or. v. 170 bc. For those of ordinary capacity (rots tfubrais) the utility of
divine myths is sufficiently conveyed through symbols without rational under-
standing. For those of exceptional intelligence (rots irepLTToh) there can be no
utility without investigation into truth of reason, continued to the end, oik aldol
Kal irlcrreL ixaXKov dWorpias do^ijs tj rrj <x<peT{pa Kara vovv evepyelg..

2 See Ep. 49. The progress of Hellenism is not sufficient without moral
reform. The example set by the Christians of philanthropy to strangers, and
by the Jews of supporting their own poor, ought to be followed by the Greeks.
Anciently, continues Julian, this belonged to the Hellenic tradition, as is shown
by the words of Eumaeus in the Odyssey (xiv. 56).

3 The earliest edicts of Constantine had simply proclaimed a toleration of
Christianity; but these, it was well understood, were a mere preliminary to its

VIII] AGAINST CHRISTIANITY 143

violence, which is entirely out of place where opinions are
concerned 1 . Nevertheless, for dignities, "the pious" — that is
to say, the adherents of the old religions — are to be preferred 2 .
Christians are not allowed to be public teachers of Grecian
letters ; the reason assigned being that the Greek poets,
historians and orators treat the gods with honour, whereas the
Christians speak dishonourably of them. It is unworthy of an
educated or of a good man to teach one thing and to think
another. Let them either change their views about the
theology of the Greeks or confine themselves to the exposi-
tion of their own 3 .

By this policy there is no reason to think that the Emperor
was putting back a process by which captive Greece might
again have led the conqueror captive. The Church absolutely
needed the elements of culture if it was to rule the world; and
it could find them only in the classical tradition. It was now
in more or less conscious possession of its own system, which
was precisely the antithesis of the system which Julian desired
to restore. A religion had been revealed which claimed to be
true for all. Philosophy, so far as it was serviceable, could be
treated as a preparation for it or as an instrument in defining
its doctrines, but could have no independent standing-ground.
Letters, in the hands of ecclesiastics, could furnish the gram-
matical and rhetorical training without which the reign of a
"spiritual power" would have been impossible. The new
system, however, was as yet far from being fully at work.
Christian pupils, we must remember, continued to frequent
the pagan schools much later. Thus there was evidently no
insuperable prejudice by which they would have been univer-
sally excluded from a liberal education not subjugated to
ecclesiastical authority. If then by any possibility the advance

acceptance as the State religion. Julian stripped the Church of the privileges,
over and above toleration, which it had acquired in the meantime.

1 Ep. 52, 438 h : \6ycf) 5Z ireidecrtlat XPV Ka ' Sid&fftceirOai tovs avdpuirovs, ov
ir\riycus ovde vfipeaiv ovoi aiKta/Atp rod crw/uaros. avdis 5t Kal ttoWcLkls napaivQ tols
em T7je a\r]07J Ofocrtfieiav opp-ufievois pL-qdev aBinew r&v Ya\i\a.luv to. ir\7}t)-q, p.t]8e
iiriTideadai p.r}be vfipifciv (is avrovs.

- Ep. 7, 376 c : wpoTip.affda.L fxivTOi tovs 6eoo~fj3eis Kal wavv (f>ijfJ.i 8eiv.

3 Ep. 42.

144 THE POLEMIC [VIII

of the theocratic idea could have been checked, it is clear that
the Emperor took exactly the right measures. The classical
writers were to be seen, so far as public authority could secure
it, under the light of the tradition to which they themselves
belonged. Pupils were not to be systematically taught in the
schools of the Empire that the pagan gods were " evil demons,"
and that the heroes and sages of antiquity were among the
damned. And, hopeless as the defeated party henceforth was
of a change of fortune, Julian's memory furnished a rallying-
point for those who now devoted themselves to the preservation
of the older culture interpreted by itself. Marinus, in writing
the biography of Proclus, dates his death "in the 124th year
from the reign of Julian." Thus the actual effect of his
resistance to that system of ecclesiastical rule which afterwards,
to those who again knew the civic type of life, appeared as a
" Kingdom of Darkness," may have been to prolong the evening
twilight.

All who have studied the career of Julian recognise that his
great aim was to preserve "Hellenism," by which he meant
Hellenic civilisation. Of this the ancient religion was for him
the symbol. The myths about the gods are not to be taken
literally. The marriage of Hyperion and Thea, for example, is
a poetic fable 1 . What the poets say, along with the divine
element in it, has also much that is human 2 . Pure truth,
unmixed with fable, is to be found in the philosophers, and
especially in Plato 3 . On the Jewish religion, the Emperor's
position sometimes appears ambiguous. He easily finds, in the

1 Or. iv. 136 c : pvt} 5e avvdvaa/nbv pajS^ ydfiovs vTroXa/j.^dvio/mv, amaTOL ko.1
wapddo^a rrjs irotTjTiKTJs /xoijcrrji idipfiara.

2 lb. 137 C : dXXa t<x p.ei> tu>v ttol^twv xaipetv edawp.ei' ■ £%ei yap nera tov Oeiov

TT0\V KCLI TO dvdpdlWlVOV .

3 Julian, however, like the Neo-Platouists generally, is unwilling to allow
that Plato could ever have intended to treat the poetic legends with disrespect.
In Or. vn. 237 bc, he cites as an example of ev\d(3eia irepl rd tGiv deuv 6v6p.ara,
the well-known passage in the Timaeus, 40 d, about the gods that have left
descendants among us, whom we cannot refuse to believe when they tell us of
their own ancestors. This, he says, might have been ironical (as evidently
many took it to be) if put in the mouth of Socrates ; but Timaeus, to whom it
is actually assigned, had no reputation for irony.

VIII] AGAINST CHRISTIANITY 145

Old Testament, passages from which to argue that the God of
Israel is simply a tribal god like those of the nations. His
serious opinion, however, seems to have been that the Hebrew
prophets had arrived at an expression, less pure indeed than
that of the Greek philosophers, but quite real, of the unity of
divine government 1 . In one passage — than which no better
could be found to illustrate the antithesis between " Hebraism "
and " Hellenism " — he compares them to men seeing a great
light as through a mist, and unable to describe what they see
except by imagery drawn from the destructive force of fire 2 .
While himself regarding the divinity as invisible and incorporeal,
he treats as prejudice their denunciations of the making of
statues. The kind of truth he would recognise in popular
polytheism he finds not altogether inconsistent with the
Hebrew Scriptures, which speak of the angels of nations.
National deities, whether to be called angels or gods, are
interpreted as a kind of genius of each race. The various
natural aptitudes of peoples suppose a variety in the divine
cause, and this can be expressed as a distribution made by
the supreme God to subordinate powers 3 . That is the
position taken up by Julian in his book against the Christians
— which is at the same time a defence of Hellenism. From
the fragments contained in Cyril's reply — of which perhaps half
survives — it has been beautifully reconstructed by C. J. Neu-
mann 4 . A summary of the general argument will serve better
than anything else to make clear the spiritual difference that
separated from their Christian contemporaries the men who
had received their bent in the philosophic schools.

Evidently neither Julian's work nor any other was felt to
be so peculiarly damaging as Porphyry's. By a decree of the

1 Cf. E P . 25.

2 Fragmentum Epistolae, 296 a: olov 0cDs ,u^ya di 6/u.Lx^ys oi dvdpuvoi fiXeirovTes
ov KadapQs ovSe dXiKpivus, airrd 5e (Kecvo veuoniKdrfs ovxl <£ws xadapdv, dXXa vvp,
/cat twv irepl avro irdvTwv 6vm adearoi /3ou><ri /xtya ' QpiTTere, <f>oj3ua8e, wvp, #\6£ ,
dd.va.Tos, /xaxaipa, pofj.cf>aia, ttoWoU ovd/j-aai pdav 4^rjyov/j.evoi tt)v fiXairTLKTjv rod
irvpbs 8uvafj.iv.

3 This idea, which we meet with also in Celsus, appears to have been
suggested by a passage in the Critias, where such a distribution is described.

4 Iuliami Imperatorw Librorum contra Christiana* quae supersunt (1880).

w. 10

14G THE POLEMIC [VIII

Council of Ephesus (431) and by a law of Theodosius II. (448),
Porphyry's books, though not those of Celsus, Hierocles or
Julian, were sentenced to be burned. In the changed form of
the law in Justinian's code, the books written by any one else
to the same purpose (Kara rrjs evcrefiov? twv X^picrriavoju
6prj<TKeia<i) are brought under the decree, but not by name 1 .
The difference between Julian's line of attack and Porphyry's,
so far as it can be made out, is that Julian, while much that he
too says has an interest from its bearing on questions of Biblical
criticism, pays no special attention to the analysis of documents.
He takes for granted the traditional ascriptions of the Canonical
books, and uniformly quotes the Septuagint. Porphyry is said
to have known the Hebrew original. We have already met
with his view on the Book of Daniel ; and so characteristic was
his inquiry into questions of authorship and chronology, that
Neumann is inclined to refer to him an assertion of the late
and non-Mosaic origin of the Pentateuch, quoted by Macarius
Magnes about the end of the fourth century from an unknown
philosopher 2 . What line was taken either by Julian or by
Porphyry on the primitive teaching of Christianity itself, hardly
anything remains to show. Of Porphyry, as was said, all the
express refutations have disappeared ; and of the later books of
Cyril's reply to Julian there are left only a few fragments. We
learn from one of these 3 that the Catholic saint rejected as
spurious the words of Christ in Luke xxiii. 34. "The Apostate"
had apparently quoted them against anticipations of the
mediaeval treatment of the Jews. On the cult of martyrs,
the Bishop of Alexandria's reply is not without point, as Julian
would have been the first to allow 4 . The Greeks themselves,
he says 5 , go in procession to the tombs and celebrate the praises
of those who fought for Greece ; yet they do not worship them
as gods. No more do we offer to our martyrs the worship due

1 Neumann, Prolegomena, pp. 8 — 9.

2 Neumann, Prolegomena, p. 20 : MwiWws ovb*kv dwoaui^erai. ffvyypd/j.fj.aTa
yap wavTa crvve/Aweirprjcrdcu tQ vau> Xeyerai. oca 5 iw dvofMtri Mwwfws eypd<f>T)
fj.£Ta ravra, /xerd xtXta /cat eKarov /cat oydorjKOVTa irt) ttjs Muvciws reXevrrjs vwb
"EcrSpa /cat tuiv dfi<p' avrbv cvveypd<pn-

3 Neumann, pp. 69, 130 — 1.

4 Cf. Ep. 78. 5 Neumann, pp. 85— 6.

Viri] AGAINST CHRISTIANITY 147

to God, nor do we pray to them. Moreover, the gods of the
Gentiles were men who were born and died, and the tombs of
some of them remain. Connected with this recurrence to the
"Euhemerism" which the Christian Fathers sometimes borrowed
from Greek speculators on the origin of religion, is a quotation
from Porphyry's Life of Pythagoras; introduced, Neumann
conjectures (p. 80), to prove that the Greeks had no right to be
incredulous about the declaration (1 Peter iii. 19, 20) that
Christ preached to the spirits in prison ; since Pythagoras is
represented as having descended into the Idaean cave (here
apparently identified with the underworld) where the tomb of
Jupiter was.

On the relation of Christianity to its Hebrew origins, and
on these as compared with the poetry and philosophy of Greece,
a coherent account of Julian's view can be put together. He
seems to have begun by speaking of the intuitive knowledge
men have of God. To such knowledge, he says, — perhaps with
an allusion to the elements of Gnostic pessimism that had found
their way into orthodox Christianity, — has usually been attached
the conviction that the heavens, as distinguished from the earth,
are a diviner part of the universe, though it is not meant by
this that the earth is excluded from divine care. He entirely
repudiates the fables about Cronos swallowing his children, and
about the incestuous marriages of Zeus, and so forth. But, he
proceeds, the story of the Garden of Eden is equally mythical.
Unless it has some secret meaning, it is full of blasphemy, since
it represents God as forbidding to his creatures that knowledge
of good and evil which alone is the bond of human intelligence,
and as envious of their possible immortality. In what do stories
like that of the talking serpent — according to the account, the
real benefactor of the human race — differ from those invented
by the Greeks ? Compare the Mosaic with the Platonic cos-
mogony, and its speculative weakness becomes plain. In the
language of the Book of Genesis there is no accurate definition.
Some things, we are told, God commanded to come into being ;
others he " made " ; others he separated out. As to the Spirit
(irvevfia) of God, there is no clear determination whether it was
made, or came to be, or is eternal without generation. Accord-

10—2

148 THE POLEMIC [VIII

ing to Moses, if we are to argue from what he says explicitly 1 ,
God is not the creator of anything incorporeal, but is only a
shaper of underlying matter. According to Plato, on the other
hand, the intelligible and invisible gods of which the visible
sun and moon and stars are images, proceed from the Demi-
urgus, as does also the rational soul of man. Who then speaks
better and more worthily of God, the " idolater " Plato, or he of
whom the Scripture says that God spoke with him mouth to
mouth ?

Contrast now the opinions of the Hebrews and of the Greeks
about the relations of the Creator to the various races of man-
kind. According to Moses and all who have followed the
Hebrew tradition, the Creator of the world chose the Hebrews
for his own people, and cared for them only. Moses has nothing
to say about the divine government of other nations, unless one
should concede that he assigns to them the sun and moon for
deities (Deut. iv. 19). Paul changes in an elusive manner 2 ;
but if, as he says sometimes (Rom. iii. 29), God is not the God
of the Jews only, why did he neglect so long all but one small
nation settled less than two thousand years ago in a portion of
Palestine ? Our teachers say that their creator is the common
father and king of all, and that the peoples are distributed by
him to presiding deities, each of whom rules over his allotted
nation or city. In the Father, all things are perfect and all
things are one; in the divided portions, one power is pre-
dominant here, another there. Thus Ares is said to rule over
warlike nations, Athena over those that are warlike with
wisdom, and so forth. Let the appeal be to the facts. Do
not these differences in the characters of nations exist ? And
it cannot be said that the differences in the parts are uncaused
without denying that providence governs the whole. Human
laws are not the cause of them, for it is by the natural characters

1 Angels, Julian contends elsewhere, are the equivalents, in the Hebrew
Scriptures, of the gods of polytheism. No doubt Moses held that they were
produced by divine power, and were not independently existing beings ; but,
pre-eminent as their rank in the universe must be, he has no account to give of
them in his cosmogony, where we should have expected to find one.

2 The words are given from Cyril by Neumann (p. 177, 11) : uinrep oi
iro\viro8es Trpbs ras irirpas.

VIIl] AGAINST CHRISTIANITY 149

of men that the laws peculiar to each people are determined.
Legislators by the lead they give can do little in comparison
with nature and custom. Take the case of the Western races 1 .
Though they have been so long under Roman rule, you find
extremely few among them showing aptitude for philosophy or
geometry or any of the sciences. The cleverest appreciate only
debate and oratory, and concern themselves with no other
branch of knowledge. So strong is nature.

The cause assigned by Moses for the diversity of languages
is altogether mythical. And yet those who demand that the
Greeks should believe the story of the tower of Babel, themselves
disbelieve what Homer tells about the Aloadae, how they
thought to pile three mountains on one another, Xv ovpavos
d/x/3arb i i etrj 2 . One story is neither more nor less fabulous than
the other. While Moses thus tries to account for the varieties
of human speech, neither he nor any of his successors has a
clear cause to assign for the diversity of manners and customs
and constitutions, which is greater than that of languages.
What ueed to go through the particulars : the freedom-loving
and insubordinate ways of the German tribes ; the submissive-
ness and tameness of the Syrians and Persians and Parthians,
and, in a word, of all the barbarians towards the East and the
South ?

How can a God who takes no providential care for human
interests like those of legal and political order, and who has
sent no teachers or legislators except to the Hebrews, claim
reverence or gratitude from those whose good, both mental and
physical, he has thus left to chance ? But let us see whether
the Creator of the world — be he the same as the God of the
Hebrews or not — has so neglected all other men.

First, however, the point must be insisted on, that it is not
sufficient in assigning the cause of a thing to say that God
commanded it. The natures of the things that come into
existence must be in conformity with the commands of God.

1 The Gauls and Iberians of course are meant. The Teutonic races had
hardly been long enough or extensively enough under the influence of Graeco-
lioman culture for their distinctive aptitudes to be noticed, except in warfare.

- Od. xi. 316.

150 THE POLEMIC [VIII

If fire is to be borne upwards and earth downwards, fire must
be light and earth heavy. Similarly, if there are to be
differences of speech and political constitution, they must be
in accordance with pre-existing differences of nature. Any one
who will look may see how much Germans and Scythians differ
in body from Libyans and Aethiopians. Is this also a mere
command ? Do not air too and geographical situation act
together with the gods to produce a certain complexion ? In
reality, the commands of God are either the natures of things
or accordant with the natures of things. To suppose these
natural diversities all ordered under a divine government
appropriate to each, is to have a better opinion of the God
announced by Moses, if he is indeed the Lord of all, than that
of Hebrew and Christian exclusiveness.

Julian now turns to the detailed comparison. The admired
decalogue, he observes, contains no commandments not recog-
nised by all nations, except to have no other gods and to keep
the Sabbath Day. For the transgression of the rest, penalties
are imposed everywhere, sometimes harsher, sometimes milder,
sometimes much the same as those of the Mosaic law. The
commandment to worship no other gods has joined with it the
slander that God is jealous. The philosophers tell us to imitate
the gods as far as possible ; and they say that we can imitate
them by contemplating the things that exist and so making
ourselves free from passion. But what is the imitation of God
celebrated among the Hebrews ? Wrath and anger and savage
zeal. Take the instance of Phinehas (Num. xxv. 11), who is
represented as turning aside God's wrath by being jealous along
with him.

In proof that God did not care only for the Hebrews,
consider the various gifts bestowed on other peoples. Were
the beginnings of knowledge given to the chosen race ? The
theory of celestial phenomena was brought to completion by
the Greeks after the first observations had been made in
Babylon. The science of geometry, taking its origin from the
art of mensuration in Egypt, grew to its present magnitude.
The study of numbers, beginning from the Phoenician mer-
chants, at length assumed the form of scientific knowledge

Vlll] AGAINST CHRISTIANITY 151

among the Greeks, who, combining this science with the others,
discovered the laws of musical intervals.

Shall I, the Emperor continues, mention the names of
illustrious Greeks as they occur, or bring them under the
various heads, — philosophers, generals, artificers, lawgivers ?
The hardest and cruellest of the generals will be found
dealing more leniently with those who have committed the
greatest crimes than Moses with perfectly unoffending people.
Other nations have not wanted legislators in sacred things.
The Romans, for example, have their Numa, who also delivered
his laws under divine inspiration. The spirit from the gods,
Julian allows in a digression, comes seldom and to few among
men. Hebrew prophecy has ceased ; none remains among the
Egyptians ; the indigenous oracles of Greece have yielded to
the revolutions of time and are silent. You, he says, turning
to the Christians, had no cause to desert us and go over to the
Hebrews for any greater gifts they have to boast of from God ;
and yet, having done so, you would have done well to adhere to
their discipline with exactitude. You would not then have
worshipped, not merely one, but many dead men. You would
have been under a harsh law with much of the barbarous in it,
instead of our mild and human laws, and would have been
worse in most things though better as regards religious purity
(ayvoTepoi 8e /ecu KaOapwrepoi t<z? aytaTeias). But now you do
not even know whether Jesus spoke of purity. You emulate
the angry spirit and bitterness of the Jews, overturning temples
and altars and slaughtering not only those who remain true to
their paternal religion but also the heretics among yourselves 1 .

1 Cf. Ep. 52, where Julian recalls several massacres of "the so-called
heretics" (tuv \eyo/x£vuv aipeTiKuv) in the reign of his predecessor Constantius.
Those who are called clerics, he says, are not content with impunity for their
past misdeeds ; but craving the lordship they had before, when they could
deliver judgments and write wills and appropriate the portions of others, they
pull every string of disorder and add fuel to the flames (wavra klvovuiv aKocrfxias
k&\wv Kal to \ey6)j.ei>oi> irvp iiri irvp oxerevoven). At the opening of the epistle, he
professes to find that he was mistaken in the thought that " the rulers of the
Galilaeans " would regard him more favourably than his Arian predecessor,
under whom they were banished and imprisoned and had their goods con-
fiscated; whereas he himself has repealed their sentences and restored to them
their own.

152 THE POLEMIC [VIII

These things, however, belong to you and not to your teachers.
Nowhere did Jesus leave you such commands or Paul.

To return : the gods gave Rome the empire ; to the Jews
they granted only for a short time to be free ; for the most part,
they made them alien sojourners and subject to other nations.
In war, in civil government, in the fine and useful arts, in the
liberal sciences, there is hardly a name to be mentioned among
the Hebrews. Solomon, who is celebrated among them for his
wisdom, served other gods, deceived by his wife (viro t>}<?
<yvvai/c6<;), they say. This, if it were so, would not be a mark
of wisdom ; but may he not have paid due honour to the
religions of the rest of the world by his own judgment and
by the instruction of the God who manifested himself to him ?
For envy and jealousy are so far from angels and gods that
they do not extend even to the best men, but belong only to
the demons.

If the reading of your own scriptures is sufficient for you,
why do you nibble at Greek learning ? Why, having gone over
to the Hebrews, do you depart further from what their prophets
declare than from our own manners ? The Jewish ritual is very
exact, and requires a sacerdotal life and profession to fulfil it.
The lawgiver bids you serve only one God, but he adds that
you shall " not revile the gods " (Exod. xxii. 28). The brutality
of those who came after thought that not serving them ought
to be accompanied by blaspheming them. This you have taken
from the Jews. From us you have taken the permission to eat
of everything. That the earliest Christian converts were much
the same as those of to-day is proved by what Paul says of them
(1 Cor. vi. 9 — 11). Baptism, of which the Apostle speaks as
the remedy, will not even wash off diseases and disfigurements
from the body. Will it then remove every kind of transgression
out of the soul ?

The Christians, however, say that, while they differ from the
present Jews, they are in strictness Israelites according to the
prophets, and agree with Moses and those who followed him.
They say, for example, that Moses foretold Christ. But Moses
repeatedly declares that one God only is to be honoured. It is
true that he mentions angels, and admits many gods in this

Vill] AGAINST CHRISTIANITY 153

sense ; but he allows no second God comparable with the first.
The sayings usually quoted by the Christians from Moses and
Isaiah have no application to the son of Mary 1 . Moses speaks
of augels as the sons of God (Gen. vi. 2) ; Israel is called the
firstborn son of God (Exod. iv. 22), and many sons of God
(i.e. angels) are recognised as having the nations for their
portion ; but nothing is said of a Firstborn Son of God, or #eo<?
\6yos, in the sense of the Christian doctrine.

At this point comes a disquisition on the agreement, in all
but a few things, of Hebrew and of Greek religion. According
to Cyril, Julian argued that Moses commanded an offering, in
the form of the scapegoat (Levit. xvi. 8), to unclean demons
(/xtapot? Kal a7rorpo7ratoi<i Satfioai). In not following the
general custom of sacrificing, the Christians stand apart from
the Jews as well as from all other nations. But the Jews, they
will say, do not sacrifice. The reason, however, is that they do
not think it lawful for them to sacrifice except at Jerusalem,
and that they have been deprived of their temple. And they
still keep up customs which are in effect sacrificial, and abstain
from some kinds of meat. All this the Christians neglect.
That the law in these matters was at some future time to be
annulled, there is not the slightest suggestion in the books of
Moses. On the contrary, the legislator distinctly declares that
it is to be perpetual.

That Jesus is God neither Paul nor Matthew nor Luke nor
Mark ventured to assert. The assertion was first made — not
quite distinctly, though there is no doubt about the meaning —
by the worthy John, who perceived that a great multitude in
many of the Grecian and Italian cities was taken hold of by
this malady 2 , and who had heard, as may be supposed, that the

1 A more exact discussion of them was left over for the second part, to which
Cyril's reply has not been preserved. The point is made in passing that any-
thing which may be said of a ruler from Judah (Gen. xlix. 10) can have no
reference to Jesus, since, according to the Christians, he was not the son of
Joseph but of the Holy Spirit. Besides, the genealogies of Matthew and Luke,
tracing the descent of Joseph from Judah, are discrepant.

- What Julian has in view bere is not any and every form of apotbeosis, but,
as the context shows, the devotion to corpses and relics, which seemed to him
to distinguish the Christians from Jews and Greeks alike. In Ep. 49 he even
commends their care about tombs.

154 THE POLEMIC [VIII

tombs of Peter and Paul were secretly objects of adoration at
Rome. In their adoration of tombs and sepulchres, the Chris-
tians do not listen to the words of Jesus of Nazareth, who said
they were full of all uncleanness (Matth. xxiii. 27). Whence
this comes, the prophet Isaiah shall say. It is the old super-
stition of those who " remain among the graves, and lodge in
the monuments" (Is. lxv. 4), for the purpose of divining by
dreams. This art the apostles most likely practised after their
master's end, and handed it down to their successors.

And you, Julian proceeds, who practise things which God
abominated from the beginning through Moses and the prophets,
yet refuse to offer sacrifices. Thence he returns to the point
that, if the Christians would be true Israelites, they ought to
follow the Jewish customs, and that these on the whole agree
more with the customs of " the Gentiles " than with their own.
Approval of animal sacrifices is clearly implied in the account
of the offerings of Cain and Abel. Circumcision, which was
enjoined on Abraham and his seed for ever, the Christians do
not practise, though Christ said that he was not come to destroy
the law. " We circumcise our hearts," they say. By all means,
replies Julian, for none among you is an evildoer, none is wicked ;
thus you circumcise your hearts. Abraham, he goes on to
interpret the account in Genesis xv., practised divination by
shooting stars (v. 5), and augury from the flight of birds (v. 11).
The merit of his faith therefore consisted not in believing
without but with a sign of the truth of the promise made to
him. Faith without truth is foolishness.

Incomplete as the reconstruction necessarily remains, there
is enough to show the general line the Emperor took. It was
to deny any ground, in the Old Testament as it stood, for the
idea of Christianity as a universalised Judaism. All else is
incidental to this. If then no religion was meant to be universal,
but Judaism, in so far as it excludes other religions, is only for
Jews, the idea of Christian theocracy loses its credentials.
Divine government is not through a special society teaching
an authoritative doctrine, but through the order of the visible
universe and all the variety of civic and national institutions
in the world. The underlying harmony of these is to be sought

VIII] AGAINST CHRISTIANITY 155

out by free examination, which is philosophy. Of philosophy,
accordingly, and not of polytheism as such, Julian was the
champion. And if the system he opposed did not succeed in
finally subjugating the philosophy and culture for which he
cared, that was due not to any modification in the aims and
ideals of its chiefs, but to the revival of forces which in their
turn broke the unity of the cosmopolitan Church as the Church
had broken the unity of the Roman State.

CHAPTER IX.

THE ATHENIAN SCHOOL.

1. The Academy becomes Neo-Platonic.

About the opening of the fifth century, the chair of Plato
was occupied by Plutarch, an Athenian by birth and the first
distinguished representative at Athens of Neo-Platonism. By
what particular way the Neo-Platonic doctrine had reached
Athens is unknown; but Plutarch and the "Platonic successors"
(Aiado^ot HXarwviKol) who followed him, connected themselves
directly with the school of lamblichus, and through Iamblichus
with Porphyry and Plotinus. Their entrance on the new line
of thought was to be the beginning of a revival of philosophical
and scientific activity which continued till the succession was
closed by the edict of Justinian in 529. Strictly, it may be said
to have continued a little longer; for the latest works of the
school at Athens were written some years after that date. From
that year, however, no other teacher was allowed to profess
Hellenic philosophy publicly; so that it may with sufficient
accuracy be taken as fixing the end of the Academy, and with
it of the ancient schools.

Approximately coincident with the first phase of the revival
at Athens, was the brilliant episode of the school at Alexandria,
where Neo-Platonism was now taught by Hypatia as its autho-
rised exponent. Of her writings nothing remains, though the
titles of some mathematical ones are preserved. What is known
is that she followed the tradition of Iamblichus, whose doctrines

IX] THE ATHENIAN SCHOOL 157

appear in the works of her pupil and correspondent Synesius.
Her fate in 415 at the hands of the Alexandrian monks, under
the patriarchate of Cyril (as recorded by the ecclesiastical
historian Socrates), was not followed immediately by the ces-
sation of the Alexandrian chair of philosophy, which indeed
continued to have occupants longer than any other. Between
415 and 450, Hierocles, the author of the commentary on the
Pythagorean Golden Verses, still professed Neo-Platonism. He
was a pupil of Plutarch at Athens, but took up the office of
teacher at Alexandria, of which he was a native. He too was
an adherent of the old religion ; and, for something he had said
that was thought disrespectful towards the new, he was sentenced
by a Christian magistrate of Constantinople to be scourged 1 .
Several more names of Alexandrian commentators are recorded;
ending with Olympiodorus in the latter part of the sixth
century 2 . All these names, however, — beginning with Hierocles,
— belong in reality to the Athenian succession 3 .

Plutarch died at an advanced age in 431. His successor
was Syrianus of Alexandria, who had been his pupil and for
some time his associate in the chair. Among the opinions of
Plutarch, it is recorded that with Iamblichus he extends
immortality to the irrational part of the soul, whereas Proclus
and Porphyry limit it to the rational part 4 . A psychological
position afterwards developed by Proclus may be noted in his
mode of defining the place of imagination (^avracrla) between

1 See the note, pp. 9 — 10, in Gaisford's edition of the Commentary on the
Golden Verses, appended as a second volume to his edition of the Eclogues of
Stobaeus (Oxford, 1850).

- See Zeller, iii. 2, p. 852, n. 1, where it is shown that Olympiodorus the
commentator on Plato is identical with the Olympiodorus who wrote (later
than 564) the commentary on Aristotle's Meteorology. Olympiodorus the
Aristotelian teacher of Proclus at Alexandria is of course much earlier.

3 In one of his commentaries, Olympiodorus remarks that the succession
still continues in spite of the many confiscations (/cai ravra woWQv Srmtvaewv
yiPofjLivwf). This, according to Zeller, refers to the succession at Alexandria,
not at Athens ; but all the Alexandrian teachers of this last period received
their philosophical inspiration, directly or indirectly, from the occupauts of the
chair at Athens, and in that way come within the Athenian school.

4 See the quotation from Olympiodorus given by Zeller, ii. 1, p. 1008, n. 4,
where the views of different philosophers on this subject are compactly stated.

158 THE ATHENIAN SCHOOL [iX

thought and perception 1 . By Plutarch first, and then by
Syrian us, the use of Aristotle as an introduction to Plato, with
insistence on their agreements rather than on their differences,
was made systematic in the school. Most of its activity hence-
forth takes the form of exceedingly elaborate critical commen-
taries 2 . It is not that originality or the recognition of it
altogether ceases. When any philosopher introduces a distinctly
new point of view, it is mentioned in his honour by his successors.
In the main, however, the effort was towards systematising what
had been done. This was the work specially reserved for the
untiring activity of Proclus.

2. Proclus.

We now come to the last great name among the Neo-
Platonists. After Plotinus, Proclus was undoubtedly the most
original thinker, as well as the ablest systematiser, of the school.
His abilities were early recognised, and the story of an omen
that occurred on his arrival at Athens was treasured up. He
had lingered outside and arrived at the Acropolis a little late, as
his biographer records 3 ; and the porter said to him, " If you
had not come, I should have shut the gates." His life was
written by his successor in the Academic chair, some time
before the decree of Justinian ; so that this anecdote has the
interest of showing what the feeling already was in the school
about its prospects for the future.

Proclus (or Proculus) was born at Constantinople in 410, but
was of a Lycian family. His father was a jurist ; and he himself
studied at Alexandria first rhetoric and Roman law, afterwards

1 Philop. de An. (Zeller, iii. 2, p. 751, n. 2). tCiv /nev aiad^rCbv to 5i.riprifj.tvov
els b> (Tvvadpoi'gei, rb de tQv deluv arrXovv /ecu ws &i> tis eirroi eviKbv els rtiirovs rivas
Kai fxop<pas dia<p6povs di'd/xcirreTcu.

- Plutarch wrote an important commentary on Aristotle's Be Aninia. Be-
tween the commentary of Alexander of Aphrodisias (fl. 200) and that of
Plutarch, says Zeller (iii. 2, p. 749, n. 4), none is on record except the
paraphrase of Themistius. Syrianus, besides many other commentaries, wrote
one on the Metaphysics, portions of which have been published. See Vacherot,
Histoire Critique de VEcole d' Alexandria, t. ii. livre iii. ch. 1 ; and Zeller, iii. 2,
p. 761, n. 2.

s Marin us, Vita Prodi, c. 10.

IX] THE ATHENIAN SCHOOL 159

mathematics and philosophy. Under Olympiodorus, his Alex-
andrian teacher, he rapidly acquired proficiency in the
Aristotelian logic. Becoming dissatisfied with the philosophical
teaching at Alexandria, he went to Athens when he was not
quite twenty. There he was instructed both by Syrianus and
by Plutarch, who, notwithstanding his great age, was willing to
continue his teaching for the sake of a pupil of such promise.
At that time Proclus abstained severely from animal food, and
Plutarch advised him to eat a little flesh, but without avail ;
Syrianus for his part approving of this rigour 1 . His abstinence
remained all but complete throughout his life. When he
deviated from it, it was only to avoid the appearance of sin-
gularity 3 . By his twenty-eighth year he had written his
commentary on the Timaeus, in addition to many other
treatises. According to Marinus, he exercised influence on
public affairs ; but he was once obliged to leave Athens for a
year. The school secretly adhered to the ancient religion, the
practice of which was of course now illegal. His year's exile
Proclus spent in acquiring a more exact knowledge of the ancient
religious rites of Lycia 3 . Marinus describes him as an illus-
tration of the happiness of the sage in the type of perfection
conceived of by Aristotle— for he enjoyed external good fortune
and lived to the full period of human life — and as a model of
the ascetic virtues' in the ideal form set forth by Plotinus. He
was of a temper at once hasty and placable ; and examples are
given of his practical sympathy with his friends 4 . Besides his
origiuality and critical spirit in philosophy, his proficiency in
theurgy is celebrated 5 , and various marvels are related of him.
He died at Athens in 485 6 .

The saying of Proclus has often been quoted from his

1 Marinus, Vita Prodi, c. 12.

- Ibid., 19: d 5t irore Kaipos ru foxvpirepos iirl ttjc tovtwv (sc. twv in\pv\^v)
Xpyaw e/criXet, jxbvov aireyeveTo, nal tovto ocrlas x°-P lv -

3 Ibid., 15.

* Ibid., 17. 5 Ibid., 28.

6 The dates of his birth and death are fixed by the statement of Marinus
(c. 36) that he died, at the age of 75, " in the 121th year from the reign of
Julian." This, as Zeller shows (iii. 2, p. 776, n. 1), must be referred to the
beginning and not to the end of Julian's reign.

160 THE ATHENIAN SCHOOL [iX

biography, that the philosopher ought not to observe the
religious customs of one city or country only, but to be the
common hierophant of the whole world. The closeness, however,
with which he anticipated in idea Comte's Religion of Humanity,
does not seem to have been noticed. First, we are told that he
practised the ceremonial abstinences prescribed for the sacred
days of all religions, adding certain special days fixed by the
appearance of the moon 1 . In a later chapter, Marinus tells us
about his cult of the dead. Every year, on certain days, he
visited the tombs of the Attic heroes, then of the philosophers,
then of his friends and connexions generally. After performing
the customary rites, he went away to the Academy ; where he
poured libations first to the souls of his kindred and race, then
to those of all philosophers, finally to those of all men. The
last observance corresponds precisely to the Positivist " Day of
All the Dead," and indeed is described by Marinus almost in
the identical words 2 .

A saying quoted with not less frequency than that referred
to above, is the declaration of Proclus that if it were in his
power he would withdraw from the knowledge of men for the
present all ancient books except the Timaeus and the Sacred
Oracles 3 . The reason he gave was that persons coming to them
without preparation are injured ; but the manner in which the
aspiration was soon to be fulfilled in the Western world 4 suggests
that the philosopher had a deeper reason. May he not have

1 Marinus, 19 : nal IdiKWTepov 5e rivas evr/arevijev rip.e'pas £% ewupaveias. The
note in Cousin's edition (Prodi Opera Inedita, Paris, 1864) seems to give the
right interpretation : "'E£ e-rrupavdas, ex apparentia, scilicet lunae, ut monet
Fabricius et indicant quae sequuntur." Zeller (iii. 2, p. 784, n. 5) refers the
observance to special revelations from the gods to Proclus himself.

2 Ibid., 36 : kclI em train toijtols 6 evayeararos rpirov SXKov Trepiypdxpas tottov,
naaais ev avral reus ti2v diroLxop.e'vwv dvdpdnrwv \pv\cus dcpucriovTO.

"• Ibid., 38: eludei 8e TroWdias ical tovto \eyet.v, tin ' KvpLos el rju, /nova av rQv
dpxaiwu dirduTwu /3i/3\t'wi> eirolovv (pepeadai to. Xbyia Kal rbv TifJ.aiov, to. 8£ $\\a
rj(pdvi^ov eK tuv vvv dvdpdnruv.'

4 Corresponding to the Oracles, which Proclus would have kept still current,
were of course in the West the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures and the
Fathers. Of these he was not thinking ; but, curiously, along with the few
compendia of logic and " the liberal arts " which furnished almost the sole
elements of European culture for centuries, there was preserved a fragment of
the Timaeus in Latin translation.

IX] THE ATHENIAN SCHOOL 161

seen the necessity of a break in culture if a new line of intel-
lectual development was ever to be struck out ? He and his
school, indeed, devoted themselves to the task, not of effacing
accumulated knowledge for a time, but of storing it up. Still,
in the latter part of the period, they must have been consciously
preserving it for a dimly foreseen future rather than for the next
age. Whatever may have been the intention of the utterance,
it did as a matter of fact prefigure the conditions under which
a new culture was to be evolved in the West.

That the Neo-Platonists had in some respects more of
Hellenic moderation than Plato has been indicated already; and
this may be noted especially in the case of Proclus, who on
occasion protests against what is overstrained in the Platonic
ethics. His biographer takes care to show that he possessed
and exercised the political as a basis for the "cathartic" virtues 1 .
And while ascetic and contemplative virtue, in his view as in
that of all the school, is higher than practical virtue, its
conditions, he points out, are not to be imposed on the active
life. Thus he is able to defend Homer's manner of describing
his heroes. The soul of Achilles in Hades is rightly represented
as still desiring association with the body, because that is the
condition for the display of practical virtue. Men living the
practical life could not live it strenuously if they were not
intensely moved by feelings that have reference to particular
persons and things. The heroic character, therefore, while it is
apt for great deeds, is also subject to grief. Plato himself would
have to be expelled from his own ideal State for the variety of
his dramatic imitations. Only in societies falling short of that
severe simplicity could lifelike representations of buffoons and
men of inferior moral type, such as we meet with in Plato, be
allowed. Besides, he varies from one dialogue to another, in
the opinions he seems to be conveying, and so himself departs
from his ideal. Where Plato then is admitted, there is no
reason why Homer too should not be admitted 2 .

1 Marinus, 14 — 17.

2 The defence of Homer is to be found in the Commentary on the Republic,
which is of special interest for the Neo- Platonic theory of mythology. Cf.
Zeller, iii. 2, p. 818, n. 4, for references to the portion of it cited.

W. 11

162 THE ATHENIAN SCHOOL [IX

A large part of the activity of Proclus was given to
commenting directly on Plato; but he also wrote mathematical
works 1 , philosophical expositions of a more independent kind,
and Hymns to the Gods 2 , in which the mythological personages
are invoked as representatives of the powers by which the
contemplative devotee rises from the realm of birth and change
to that of immutable being. Of the philosophical works that
do not take the form of commentaries on particular treatises,
we possess an extensive one entitled Platonic Theology ; three
shorter ones on Providence, Fate, and Evils, preserved only in a
Latin translation made in the thirteenth century by William of
Morbeka, Archbishop of Corinth ; and the Theological Elements
{%roLX€t(oat<i SeoXojiKT]). All these have been published 3 .
Of the last, an attempt will be made to set forth the substance.
In its groundwork, it is an extremely condensed exposition of
the Plotinian doctrine ; but it also contains the most important
modifications made in Neo-Platonism by Proclus himself. The
whole is in the form of dialectical demonstration, and may
perhaps best be compared, as regards method, with Spinoza's
expositions of Cartesianism. An abstract of so condensed a
treatise cannot of course do justice to its argumentative force,
since much must necessarily be omitted that belongs to the
logical development; but some idea may be given of the genuine
individual power of Proclus as a thinker. A " scholastic " turn
of expression, remarked on by the historians, will easily be
observed ; but Proclus is not a Scholastic in the sense that
he in principle takes any doctrine whatever simply as given
from without.

As a commentator, no doubt his aim is to explain Plato ;
and here the critics cannot fairly complain when he says that
his object is only to set forth what the master taught. Indeed

1 See Appendix III.

2 Seven of these have been preserved. See the end of Cousin's collection.
Like Porphyry's De Antro Nympharum, they have a charm of their own for those
who are, in Aristotle's phrase, cpikbfxvdoi.

3 The Platonic Theology does not seem to have been reprinted since 1618,
when it appeared along with a Latin translation by Aemilius Portus. The next
three works are placed at the beginning of Cousin's collection. The ^roixeicoffcs
is printed after the Sententiae of Porphyry in the Didot edition of Plotinus.

IX] THE ATHENIAN SCHOOL 163

the complaint that he is a "scholastic" in this sense is neu-
tralised by the opposite objection that his Platonic Theology
contains more of Neo-Platonism than of Plato. And one
point of his teaching — not comprised in the treatise now to
be expounded — seems to have been generally misunderstood.
In more than one place 1 he describes belief (irians) as higher
than knowledge (yvwais), because only by belief is that Good
to be reached which is the supreme end of aspiration. This
has been supposed to be part of a falling away from pure
philosophy, though Zeller allows that, after all, the ultimate
aim of Proclus "goes as much beyond positive religion as
beyond methodical knowing 2 ." And in fact the notion of
" belief," as Proclus formulates it, instead of being a resigna-
tion of the aims of earlier philosophy, seems rather to be a
rendering into more precise subjective terms of Plato's meaning
in the passage of the Republic where Socrates gives up the
attempt at an adequate account of the Idea of the Good 3 .
As Plotinus had adopted for the highest point of his onto-
logical system the Platonic position that the Good is beyond
even Being 4 , so Proclus formulated a definite principle of
cognition agreeing with what Plato indicates as the attitude
of the mind when it at last descries the object of its search.
At the extreme of pure intellect — at the point, as we might
say, which terminates the highest segment of the line re-
presenting the kinds of cognition with their objects — is a
mode of apprehension which is not even " dialectical," because
it is at the very origin of dialectic. And to call this "belief"
is to prepare a return from the mysticism of Plotinus — which
Proclus, however, does not give up— to the conception of a
mental state which, while not strictly cognitive, is a common
instead of a peculiar experience. The contradiction between
this view and that which makes belief as "opinion" lower
than knowledge is only apparent 5 . A view of the kind has

1 Cf. E. P. 543 ; Zeller, iii. 2, p. 820.

2 iii. 2, p. 823. 3 Rep. vi. 506.

4 Rep. vi. 509.

5 Pico della Mirandola seized the general thought of Proclus on this point,
and applied it specially to philosophical theology. See the " Fifty-five Con-
clusions according to Proclus" appended to the edition of the Platonic Theology

11—2

164 THE ATHENIAN SCHOOL [iX

become more familiar since. Put in the most general terms
it is this: that while belief in its sense of opinion is below
scientific knowledge, belief as the apprehension of metaphysical
principles is above it ; because scientific knowledge, if not at-
tached to some metaphysical principle, vanishes under analysis
into mere relations of illusory appearances.

The method of discriminating subordinate triads within
each successive stage of emanation, which is regarded as
characteristic of Proclus, had been more and more elaborated
during the whole interval from Plotinus. The increasing use of
it by Porphyry, by Iamblichus, and by their disciple Theodore
of Asine, is noted by the historians. Suggestions of the later
developments are to be met with in Plotinus himself, who, for
example, treats being, though in its essence identical with intel-
lect, as prior if distinguished from it, and goes on further to
distinguish life, as a third component of primal Being, from
being in the special sense and from intellect 1 . This is not indeed
the order assigned to the same components by Proclus, who
puts life, instead of intellect, in the second place ; but the
o-erm of the division is there. A doctrine in which he seems
to have been quite original is that of the "divine henads 2 ,"
to which we shall come in expounding the Elements. For
the rest, the originality of many things in the treatise, as well
as its general agreement with Plotinus, will become evident
as we proceed.

Every multitude, the treatise begins, participates in a
manner in the One. For if in a multitude there were no
unity, it would consist either of parts which are nothings, or
of parts which are themselves multitudes to infinity. From
this starting-point we are led to the position that every multi-
tude, being at the same time one and not one, derives its real
existence from the One in itself (to avroev).

already referred to. The words of Pico's forty-fourth proposition are these :
" Sicut fides, quae est credulitas, est infra intellectum ; ita fides, quae est
vere fides, est supersubstantialiter supra scientiam et intellectum, nos Deo
immediate conjungens."

1 Enn. VI. 6, 8 : to op wpwrov del \a^€?p irpurov ov, efra vovp, elra rb foov.

- Cf. Zeller, iii. 2, p. 793.

IX] THE ATHENIAN SCHOOL 165

The producing (to irapdyov), or that which is productive
of another (to irapaKriKov dXkov), is better than the nature
of that which is produced (/cpeirrov -n}? tov irapayo/xevov
(pvaecos).

The first Good is that after which all beings strive, and is
therefore before all beings. To add to it anything else is to
lessen it by the addition, making it some particular good
instead of the Good simply.

If there is to be knowledge, there must be an order of
causation, and there must be a first in this order. Causes
cannot go in a circle : if they did, the same things would be
prior and posterior, better and worse. Nor can they go in an
infinite series : to refer back one cause to another without a
final term would make knowledge impossible 1 .

Principle and primal cause of all being is the Good. For all
things aspire to it ; but if there were anything before it in the
order of causes, that and not the Good would be the end of their
aspiration. The One simply, and the Good simply, are the
same. To be made one is to be preserved in being — which is a
good to particular things ; and to cease to be one is to be
deprived of being.

In order that the derivation of motion may not go on in
a circle or to infinity, there must be an unmoved, which is
the first mover; and a self-moved, which is the first moved ; as
well as that which is moved by auother. The self-moved is the
mean which joins the extremes 2 .

Whatever can turn back upon itself, the whole to the whole,
is incorporeal. For this turning back is impossible for body,
because of the division of its parts, which lie outside one
another in space 3 . That which can thus turn back upon itself,

1 Srcux- OeoX. 11. The order meant here is of course logical, not chrono-
logical. All existing things depend on an actual first cause of their being.
toTiv curia Trpuorrj twc ovtoiv, d</>' 77s olov ix p'j"??s irpbucriv eKaara, to. /xef eYYt'S oura
iKetur/s, ra 6e troppuiTepov.

2 2t<hx- OeoX. 14. Here again the order is purely logical. There is no
notion of a first impulse given to a world that has a chronological beginning.

3 Ztoix- OeoX. 15 : ovoev dpa <ri2p.a irpbs iavrb iritpvKev iirKTrpicpetv, wj 6\ov
iire<rTpa.(pOai. wpbs 6'Xoe. et rt apa irpbs iavrb eiri.<TTpeirri.Kbv eariv, dawp.aTbv £<rri
/ecu ap.tp£s.

166 THE ATHENIAN SCHOOL [iX

has an essence separable from all body. For if it is inseparable
in essence, it must still more be inseparable in act ; were it
separable only in act, its act would go beyond its essence. That
is, it would do what, by definition, is not in its power to
do. But body does not actually turn back upon itself.
Whatever does thus turu back is therefore separable in essence
as in act.

"Beyond all bodies is the essence of soul, and beyond all
souls the intellectual nature, and beyond all intellectual exist-
ences the One "\ Intellect is unmoved and the giver of motion,
soul self-moving, body moved by another. If the living body
moves itself, it is by participation in soul. Similarly, the soul
through intellect participates in perpetual thought (/ieTe^et tov
del voelv). For if in soul there were perpetual thinking
primarily, this would be inherent in all souls, like self-motion.
Since not all souls, as such, have this power, there must be
before soul the primarily intelligent (to irpooTcos votjtikov).
Again, before intellect there must be the One. For intellect,
though unmoved, is not one without duality, since it thinks
itself; and all things whatsoever participate in the One, but
not all things in intellect.

To every particular causal chain (aeipd ical rd^is), there is
a unity (fiovd<i) which is the cause of all that is ordered under
it. Thus after the primal One there are henads (ei/aSe?) ; and
after the first intellect, minds (i/oes); and after the first soul,
souls ; and after the whole of nature, natures.

First in order is always that which cannot be participated
in (to d/xeOe/cTov), — the " one before all " as distinguished from
the one in all. This generates the things that are participated
in. Inferior to these again are the things that participate, as
those that are participated in are inferior to the first.

The perfect in its kind (to Tekeiov), since in so far as it is
perfect it imitates the cause of all, proceeds to the production
of as many things as it can ; as the Good causes the existence of
everything. The more or the less perfect anything is, of the
more or the fewer things is it the cause, as being nearer to or

1 Stoix- OeoX. 20 : TrdfTuv ffufxarui' iwiKeiva ianv i] i/'i'X^s ovala, ko.1 iraaQv
\j/vxu" (Tr^Keiva r\ votpa. (pvais, /cat iracrcov tQv voepwv inrocrT&aewv tTr^Keiva to ev.

IX] THE ATHENIAN SCHOOL 167

more remote from the cause of all. That which is furthest from
the principle is unproductive and the cause of nothing.

The productive cause of other things remains in itself while
producing 1 . That which produces is productive of the things
that are second to it, by the perfection and superabundance of
its power. For if it gave being to other things through defect
and weakness, they would receive their existence through its
alteration ; but it remains as it is 2 .

Every productive cause brings into existence things like
itself before things unlike. Equals it cannot produce, since it
is necessarily better than its effects. The progression from the
cause to its effects is accomplished by resemblance of the things
that are second in order to those that are first 3 . Bein^ similar
to that which produces it, the immediate product is in a manner
at once the same with and other than its cause It remains
therefore and goes forth at the same time, and neither element
of the process is apart from the other. Every product turns
back and tries to reach its cause ; for everything strives after
the Good, which is the source of its being ; and the mode of
attaining the Good for each thing is through its own proximate
cause. The return is accomplished by the resemblance the
things that return bear to that which they return to 4 ; for the
aim of the return is union, and it is always resemblance that
unites. The progression and the return form a circular activity.
There are lesser and greater circles according as the return is to
things immediately above or to those that are higher. In the
great circle to and from the principle of all, all things are
involved 5 .

1 ^.toix- OeoX. 26 : el yap fiinelrai to ev, eKelvo 8e a.Kivr)T<js ixpiaTijo'i to, /xer'
avrb, /cat wav to irapayov waatjTOJS £x el T V" T °u irapayeiv airiav.

" 'Ztolx- OeoX. 27 : ou yap awop.epio~p.bs ecrrt tov irapdyovTos to irapaybpevov '
ovbe yap yevicei tovto wpo-rriKev, ovbe rots yevvqTLKols ai'riois ' ovbe p.e rd/3a<rts " ov
yap v\r) yiverai tov irpo'ibvTos ' fxivei yap, olou e'en. Kal to irapaybixevov a\\o irap 1
avrb eaTiv.

3 Ztolx- OeoX. 29 : iracra wpbobos oV oixoiottjtos air oreKe it at tQiv bevTep-cv irpbs to
7rpwra.

4 "Ltolx- OeoX. 32 : ira-ra ein-rTpo-pr) bC bpoLbrr-TOS airoTe\eiTai tuv iirio-Tpe-po-
p-evuv, irpbs S €WLO-Tpi<p€Tai,

5 "Ztoix- OeoX. 33 : irav to wpo'Cbv dirb tlvos Kal einaTpi<pov, kvkKiktjv Zx €i T V"
evepyei.av....p.ei^ous be kvkXol Kai eXarrovs tiHv /*ee e-Tt.o~Tpo<p'j)v irpbs to. inrepKeifj.ei>a

168 THE ATHENIAN SCHOOL [IX

Accordingly, everything that is caused remains in its own
cause, and goes forth from it, and returns to it 1 . The remaining
(lJ>ovri) signifies its community with its cause ; the going forth,
its distinction from it (afxa yap hiaicpiaei, irpoohos) ; the return,
its innate endeavour after its own good, from which its particular
being is. Of the things multiplied in progressive production,
the first are more perfect than the second, these than the uext,
and so forth ; for the " progressions " from cause to effect are
remissions of being (vcpecreis) of the second as compared with
the first. In the order of return, on the contrary, the things
that are most imperfect come first, the most perfect last. Every
process of return to a remoter cause is through the same inter-
mediate stages as the corresponding causal progression. First
in the order of return are the things that have received from
their cause only being (to elvcu) ; next, those that have received
life with being ; last, those that have received also the power of
cognition. The endeavour (ope^t?) of the first to return is a
mere fitness for participation in causes 2 ; the endeavour of the
second is " vital," and is a motion to the better ; that of the
third is identical with conscious knowledge of the goodness of
their causes (Kara rrjv yvwaiv, avvala6t]aL<i ovcra rrj<; rcov
aiTLoov ayadoTriTos;).

Between the One without duality, and things that proceed
from causes other than themselves, is the self-subsistent (to
avdviroaTarov), or that which is the cause of itself. That which
is in itself, not as in place, but as the effect in the cause, is self-
subsistent. The self-subsistent has the power of turning back
upon itself 3 . If it did not thus return, it would not strive after
nor attain its own good, and so would not be self-sufficing and
perfect ; but this belongs to the self-subsistent if to anything.

avvexws yivo/j.^vajp, tuv 5e Trpbs ra avwrepu, Kai fxixP 1 - T &v iravruu apxv*- °- wo "yo-P
iK(ivy)s iravra, Kai Trpbs eKeivrjv.

1 2tchx. OeoX. 35 : ttcLv to airiarbu Kai p^evei iv rfj avrov atria, Kai Trpbuaiv <z7r'
avrrjs, Kai eiuaTp£<pei Trpbs avrrjv.

2 2rotx. QeoX. 39 : oixricobr] iroieiTai rrjv enter po<pr)v. That is to say, they
tend to be embodied in some definite form, which is their "essence."

3 Srotx- OeoX. 42 : el yap d.0' eavrou Trpbeiai., Kai rrpi iirtaTpo(pr]v Trotr/nerai Trpbs
eavrb. d0' ov yap t) wpbob'os e/cdcrois, els tovto Kai t) rrj Trpobby avaroixos

llTMJTpOfpT).

IX] THE ATHENIAN SCHOOL 169

Conversely, that which has the power of turning back upon
itself is self-subsistent. For thus to return, and to attain the
end, is to find the source of its perfection, and therefore of its
being, within itself. The self-subsistent is ungenerated. For
generation is the way from imperfection to the opposite perfec-
tion 1 ; but that which produces itself is ever perfect, and needs
not completion from another, like things that have birth. The
self-subsistent is incorruj)tible, for it never departs from the
cause of its preservation, which is itself. It is indivisible and
simple. For if divisible, it cannot turn back, the whole to the
whole; and if composite, it must be in need of its own elements,
of which it consists, and hence not self-sufficing.

After some propositions on the everlasting or imperishable
(ai'8top) and the eternal (alcoviov), and on eternity and time,
not specially distinctive of his system, Proclus goes on to a
characteristic doctrine of his own, according to which the
higher cause — which is also the more general — continues its
activity beyond that of the causes that follow it. Thus the
causal efficacy of the One extends as far as to Matter, in the
production of which the intermediate causes, from intelligible
being downwards, have no share.

That which is produced by the things second in order, the
series of propositions begins 2 , is produced in a higher degree by
the things that are first in order and of more causal efficacy ;
for the things that are second in order are themselves produced
by the first, and derive their whole essence and causal efficacy
from them. Thus intellect is the cause of all that soul is the
cause of; and, where soul has ceased to energise, the intellect
that produces it still continues its causal activity. For the
inanimate, in so far as it participates in form, has part in
intellect and the creative action of intellect". Further, the
Good is the cause of all that intellect is the cause of; but not
conversely. For privations of form are from the Good, since all

1 "Ltolx- 0eo\. 45 : /cat yap i] yivtvLS 686s icrnv 4k tou dreXous el$ to ivavrlov
riXuov.

- 'Zrotx- Qeo\. 56.

TTJS TOU VOV TTOirjOtWS.

170 THE ATHENIAN SCHOOL [iX

is thence, but intellect, being form, is not the ground of
privation 1 .

The product of more causes is more composite (avvOeroorepov)
than the product of fewer. For if every cause gives something
to that which proceeds from it, more causes must confer more
elements and fewer fewer. Now where there are more elements
of the composition, the resultant is said to be more composite ;
where there are fewer, less. Hence the simple in essence is
either superior to things composite or inferior. For if the
extremes of being are produced by fewer concurrent causes and
the means by more, the means must be composite while the
extremes on both sides are simpler. But that the extremes are
produced by fewer causes is evident, since the superior causes
both begin to act before the inferior, and in their activity
stretch out beyond the point where the activity of the latter
ceases through remission of power (Si vcpeatv hvvd/j,e(os).
Therefore the last of things, like the first, is most simple,
because it proceeds only from the first; but, of these two
simplicities, one is above all composition, the other below it.

Of things that have plurality, that which is nearer the One
is less in quantity than the more distant, greater in potency 2 .
Consequently there are more corporeal natures than souls, more
of these than of minds, more minds than divine henads.

The more universal (oXtKcorepov) precedes in its causal
action the more particular (pcepucooTepov) and continues after
it. Thus "being" comes before "living being" (£a>ov), and
"living being" before "man," in the causal order as in the
order of generality. Again, at a point below the agency of the
rational power, where there is no longer " man," there is still
a breathing and sentient living being ; and where there is no
longer life there is still being. That which comes from the
more universal causes is the bearer of that which is communi-
cated in the remitting stages of the progression. Matter,
which is at the extreme bound, has its subsistence only from
the most universal cause, namely, the One. Being the subject

1 2rotx- OeoX. 57 : vovs 5e areprtaeus viroo-Tar-qs oik ecriv, eI5os tap.

' 2 Srwx- Oeo\. 62 : 'ojjloiov yap ry evl fidWov to eyyurepov • rb de Iv tt&vtui> rj»

inroffTaTiKbv a.Tr\rj6uvTUS.

IX] THE ATHENIAN SCHOOL 171

of all things, it proceeded from the cause of all 1 . Body in
itself, while it is below participation in soul, participates in a
manner in being. As the subject of animation (viroKei/xevov
tj}? -v/rin^eocreeix?), it has its subsistence from that which is more
universal than soul.

Omitting some auxiliary propositions, we may go on to the
doctrine of infinity as formulated by Proclus. In passing, it
may be noted that he explicitly demonstrates the proposition
that that which can know itself has the power of turning back
upon itself. The reason assigned is that in the act of self-
knowledge that which knows and that which is known are one.
And what is true of the act is true also of the essence 2 . That
only the incorporeal has the power of thus turning back upon
itself was proved at an earlier stage.

Infinity in the sense in which it really exists, with Proclus
as with Plotinus, means infinite power or potency. That
which ever is, is infinite in potency ; for if its power of being
(>/ Kara to elvcu Suva/xis) were finite, its being would some
time fail 3 . That which ever becomes, has an infinite power of
becoming. For if the power is finite, it must cease in infinite
time ; and, the power ceasing, the process must cease. The
real infinity of that which truly is, is neither of multitude nor
of magnitude, but of potency alone 4 . For self-subsistent being
(to avdviroo-TaTax; 6v) is indivisible and simple, and is in potency
infinite as having most the form of unity (evoeiSeo-TaTov ) ; since
the greatest causal power belongs to that which is nearest the
One. The infinite in magnitude or multitude, on the other
hand, is at once most divided and weakest. Indivisible power
is infinite and undivided in the same relation (fcaTa tcivtov) ;
the divided powers are in a manner finite (TreTrepaa/xevai
7ra)?) by reason of their division. From this sense of the

1 Ztoix- 6eo\. 72 : r) ftiv yap i/\r>, viroKtiuevov ovo~a tt&vtwv, e'/c tov Trdvrwv
alrlov TrporjXOe.

2 ^.toix- ©eo\. 83 : irav yap to Tip tvtpye.1v irpbs eavrb eTriOTptTCTinbv /cat oiiaiav
£x ei irpbs iavTT)v ovvvtvovcrav, koI ev eavrrj ov<ro.v.

4 —Toix- OeoX. 86 : ttolv to ovtus ov Tip 6vti dweipbv iffTi, oStc Kara to irXijdos,
oure /caret rb fniyeOos, dWct /cara 7-771/ 5vvap.iv ptbvrjv.

172 THE ATHENIAN SCHOOL [iX

finite, as limited power, is to be distinguished its sense as
determinate number, by which it comes nearest to indivisible
unity.

That which is infinite, is infinite neither to the things above
it nor to itself, but to the things that are inferior. To these,
there is that in it which can by no means be grasped ; it has
what exceeds all the unfolding of its powers : but by itself, and
still more by the things above it, it is held and defined as a
whole 1 .

We have already met with the position that in a complete
causal series the first term is " imparticipable " (afiWeKTov).
This means that in no way do the things it produces share it
among them. The cause, thus imparticipable or transcendent,
remains by itself in detachment from every succeeding stage.
In drawing out the consequences of this position, Proclus
introduces those intermediate terms which are held to be
characteristic of his system. Within the Being or Intellect of
the Plotinian Trinity, he constitutes the subordinate triad of
being, life and mind. To these discriminated stages he applies
his theory that causes descend in efficacy as they descend in
generality. The series of things in which mind is immanent
is preceded by imparticipable mind ; similarly life and being
precede the things that participate in them ; but of these
being is before life, life before mind 2 . In the order of
dependence, the cause of more things precedes the cause of
fewer. Now all things have being that have life, and all
things have life that have mind, but not conversely. Hence in
the causal order being must come first, then life, then mind.
All are in all ; but in each each is present in the manner
appropriate to the subsistence of that in which it inheres 3 .

1 2tcux- ©eo\. 93 : iavrb 5e <jvv£x ov KaX bpifav owe av eavTui aweipov virapxot.,
ovbe 7roXXy /xaWov rots virepKeip.e'i'ois, /xolpav ^x ou ttjs ev e/eetWs dfreipias- direipb-
repai. yap al tQp oXiKurepwv 5vvap.eis, dXiKwrepai oCtrat /cat eyyvrepu TeTO.yp.enai Trfs
TrpuTiffTTjs aweiplas.

2 Ztoix- ©eo\. 101 : iravToiv tQv vov fierexovTUv 7?yetTCU 6 d/xe#e/eTOS vovs, KaX
ruv ttjs fwi;s 7/ fay, /cat tuv tov ovtos to 6v ■ avTuv 8e tovtwv to p.ev bv vpb t?}s s'wtJs,
i) be far] wpb tov vov.

3 "Ltoix- Qeo\. 103 : Travra ev vdcnv oliceim 8e ev eK&ffTO}. As for example, ev
TV fafi KaTa ptfcl-iv p.ev to elvai, /car' al-Hav 5e to voeiv ' dXXd ja/n/ews itcdrepov '
Kara tovto yap i) iiirap^s.

IX] THE ATHENIAN SCHOOL 173

All that is immortal is imperishable, but not all that is
imperishable is immortal. For that which ever participates
in life participates also in being, but not conversely. As
being is to life, so is the imperishable, or that which cannot
cease to be, to the immortal, or that which cannot cease to
live 1 . Since that which is altogether in time is in every
respect unlike that which is altogether eternal, there must
be something between them ; for the causal progression is
always through similars 2 . This mean must be eternal in
essence, temporal in act. Generation, which has its essence
in time, is attached causally to that which on one side shares
in being and on the other in birth, participating at once in
eternity and in time ; this, to that which is altogether eternal ;
and that which is altogether eternal to being before eternity
(et? to ov, to irpoaioovtovy.

The highest terms of each causal chain (aeipa), and only
those, are connected with the unitary principle of the chain
next above. Thus only the highest minds are directly attached
to a divine unity ; only the most intellectual souls participate
in mind ; and only the most perfect corporeal natures have a
soul present to them 4 . Above all divine unities is the One,
which is God ; as it must be, since it is the Good ; for that
beyond which there is nothing, and after which all things strive,
is God 5 . But that there must also be many divine unities is
evident, since every cause which is a principle takes the lead in
a series of multiplied existences descending from itself by degrees
of likeness. The self-complete unities {avrorekeh evdhes) or
"divine henads," are "the gods," and every god is above being
and life and mind G . In all there is participation, except in
the One 7 .

- "Ztoix- OeoX. 100 : ai irpboboi. iracai 5ta tuv oixoiuv. 3 "Ltoix- OeoX. 107.

4 Zt(»x- OeoX. 111. Cf. 112 : Trdcrr]s Taijews to. irpwTiaTa fxop<prjv Hx €l r ^ v '"'P
avTu>v.

Stoix- OeoX. 113 : ov yap p.rjSiv iariv tiriKeiva, Kal ov irdvra itpUrai, Oebs

TOVTO.

6 2toix- OeoX. 115 : 7ras 0edt VTrepovo~i6$ iari Kal virtpfuos Kal inrtpvovs.
' ^.toix- OeoX. 116: Tras debs p.€0£kt6s eon, ttXtjv tov ev6s....d yap to~Tt.v 6.Wrj
/xera rb irpLorov d/xideKTOs ivds, ri 8ioio~ei tov cubs ;

174 THE ATHENIAN SCHOOL [iX

Much has been written upon the question, what the henads
of Proclus really mean. Usually the doctrine is treated as an
attempt to find a more definite place for polytheism than was
marked out in the system of Plotinus. This explanation,
however, is obviously inadequate, and there have not been
wanting attempts to find in it a more philosophical meaning.
Now so far as the origin of the doctrine is concerned, it seems
to be a perfectly consequent development from Plotinus.
Proclus seeks the cause of plurality in things at a higher
stage than the intelligible world, in which Plotinus had been
content to find its beginning. Before being and mind are
produced, the One acts as it were through many points of
origin ; from each of these start many minds ; each of which
again is the principle of further differences. As the primal
unity is called #eo?, the derivative unities are in correspondence
called 6eol. Thus the doctrine is pure deductive metaphysics.
There is hardly any indication that in thinking it out Proclus
had in view special laws of nature or groups of natural facts 1 .
Though not otherwise closely resembling Spinoza's doctrine of
the " infinite attributes," it resembles it in this, that it is a
metaphysical deduction intended to give logical completeness,
where intuitive completeness becomes impossible, to a system
of pure conceptual truth.

From the divine henads, according to Proclus, the provi-
dential order of the world directly descends. This position he
supports by a fanciful etymology 2 , but deduces essentially from
the priority of goodness as characterising the divinity 3 . After
goodness come power and knowledge. The divine knowledge is
above intellect ; and the providential government of the world
is not by a reasoning process (ov Kara Xoyta/xov). By nothing
that comes after it can the divinity in itself either be expressed

1 A slight development on this line is to be met with in §§ 151 — 8, but not
such as to affect the general aspect of the doctrine.

2 Srotx- OeoX. 120: iv Oeois t] vpbvoia Trpuirw ...7) 5e irpbvoia. (ws roijvopa
tp:<paivei) ivipyeid iori irpb vov. rqi eTvai dpa 0eol /ecu rf ayaddTTjres elvai wdvruiv
Trpovoovffi, irdvTa rrjs irpb vov TrXr/povvres dyad6rr)Tos.

3 'Etoix- OeoX. 121 : irav rb deiov virapijiv p.tv @x eL T V V dyaddrijra, 5vvap.iv 5e
ivialav teal yvuiatv xpticpiov, dXTjirrov irdaiv bp.ov rots devrepots. ...d\X' 17 07rap£is ti2
dplcrip x a P aKT VP L fc TCU > xal i] virdo-Tacns Kara rb dpiarov ' tovto 5£ i) dyadbTijs.

IX] THE ATHENIAN SCHOOL 175

or known. Since, however, it is knowable as henads from the
things that participate in them, only the primal One is entirely
unknowable, as not being participated in 1 . The divinity knows
iudivisibly the things that are divided, and without time the
things that are in time, and the things that are not necessary
with necessity, and the things that are mutable immutably ;
and, in sum, all things better than according to their own
order. Its knowledge of the multiple and of things subject to
passion is unitary and without passivity. On the other hand,
that which is below has to receive the impassible with passive
affection, and the timeless under the form of time 2 .

The order of the divine henads is graduated ; some being
more universal, some more particular. The causal efficacy of
the former is greater ; of the latter, less. The more particular
divine henads are generated from the more universal, neither
by division of these nor by alteration, nor yet by manifold
relationships, but by the production of secondary progressions
through superabundance of power 3 . The divine henad first
communicates its power to mind ; through mind, it is present
to soul ; and through soul it gives a resonance of its own
peculiar nature even to body. Thus body becomes not only
animate and intelligential, but also divine, receiving life and
motion from soul, indissoluble permanence from mind, divine
union from the henad participated in 4 . Not all the other
henads together are equal to the primal One 5 . There are as
many kinds of beings that participate in the divine henads
as there are henads participated in. The more universal henads
are participated in by the more universal kinds of beings ; the
more particular by the more particular. Thus the order of
beings is in precise accordance with the order of the henads.
Each being has for its cause not only the henad in which it
participates, but, along with that, the primal One G .

1 Srotx- OeoX. 123 : /x6vov t6 irpQirov iravTt\Qs &yvuxTTot>, are d/xtdetcTov of.
- Ztoix- ©eoX. 124. 3 Srotx- ©«>*• 12G -

* Ztoi X - OeoX. 129.

5 1.TOLX- OeoX. 133: ov yap ai iraffai tCov 6eu>v inrdp£eis wapiaodfTai tgj hi '
TO(ravTT)v (Ktivo wpbs to tt\t)0os tCjv Oeuv ZXaxef virep^oXrjv.

6 2iroiX- OeoX. 137 : iraca eVas awvtpiarr^ai ti2 evl to p.eT^x o " o.vttjs ov.

176 THE ATHENIAN SCHOOL [iX

All the powers of the divinity penetrate even to the terres-
trial regions, being excluded by no limits of space from presence
to all that is ready for participation 1 . Beside that providence
of the gods which is outside and above the order over which it
is exercised, there is another, imitating it within the order and
exercised over the things that are at a lower stage of remission
by those that are higher in the causal series 2 . The gods are
present in the same manner to all things, but not all things
are present in the same manner to the gods. It is unfitness
of the things participating that causes obscuration of the
divine presence. Total deprivation of it would mean their
complete disappearance into not-being. At each stage of
remission, the divinity is present, not only in the manner
peculiar to each causal order, but in the manner appropriate
to the particular stage. The progressions have the form of a
circle; the end being made like the beginning through the
return of all things within the order to its principle 3 .

The whole multitude of the divine henads is finite in
number. It is indeed more definitely limited than any other
multitude, as being nearest to the One. Infinite multitude, on
the other hand, is most remote from the One 4 . There is at the
same time, as has been shown, a sense in which all divine things
are infinite. That is to say, they are infinite in potency, and
unbounded in relation to what is below them 5 .

The henads participated in by being which is prior to
intellect are intelligible (vorjTaL); those that are participated
in by intellect itself are intelligential (voepai), as producing
intelligence 6 ; those that are participated in by soul are supra-
mundane {virepKoajxioi). As soul is attached to intellect, and

3 Ztoix- ©eo\. 146. Cf. 148 : trdcra 8eia rri£is iavry avvrjvwTai rpix&s ' a7r6 re
rrjs aKp6rrjTos ttjs eavTrjs kcli diro ttjs nea6rr]TOS, Kal diro tov t{\ovs....ko.I ovtws 6
(Tv/xvas 5ia.KO(Tfios eh ecn 5ia ttjs evowoiov tQv irpwTwv 5vvdp.ews, 8td rrjs ei> rrj
/xect6t7?ti cvvoxys, did rrjs rod riXovs eis ttjv dpxw T &v irpooduv eTnarpO(prj<;.

5 Ztoix- Qeo\. 150: t} 5£ direipia Kara ttjv Suva/xiv eKelvoif rb de aireipov
dwepiXrjirrov, oh iariv aireipov.

6 Xtoix- Qeo\. 163 : oi)x oifru voepai, ws iv vQ ixpeo-TTjicviai, d\V tl)5 xar airlav
tov vov Trpovirdpxovaai, Kal diroyevvrjcraaai tov vouv.

IX] THE ATHENIAN SCHOOL 177

intellect turns back upon intelligible being ; so the supramun-
dane gods depend on the intelligential, as those again on the
intelligible gods 1 . Something also of visible bodies being from
the gods, there are also "mundane henads" (iyKoafuoi ivd&es).
These are mediated by mind and soul ; which, according as
they are more separable from the world and its divided
contents, have more resemblance to the imparticipable 2 .

Having dealt so far with the ontology of intellect, Proclus
goes on to formulate the characters of intellectual knowledge.
Intellect has itself for the object of its thought 3 . Mind in act
knows that it thinks ; and it does not belong to one mind to
think an object and to another to think the thought of the
object 4 . The thought, the knowledge of the thought, and the
cognisance of itself as thinking, are simultaneous activities of
one subject. It is the character of mind to think all things
together. Imparticipable mind thinks all of them together
simply; each mind that follows thinks them all still together,
but under the form of the singular 5 . That mind is incorporeal
is shown by its turning back upon itself 6 . In accordance with
its being, it contains all things intellectually, both those before
it and those after it; the former by participation, the latter by
containing their causes intellectually 7 .

Mind constitutes what is after it by thinking; and its
creation is in thinking, and its thought in creating 8 . It is
first participated in by the things which, although their thought
is according to the temporal and not according to the eternal

1 Stoix- GeoX. 164 : ws ovv \jsvxv iratra els vovv avqpT7)Tai, Kal vovs els to vot)t6v
iwio-Tpairrai, outw brj Kal oi inre pKoa/uoi deol twv voepwv e'te'xoPTai, Ka.da.irep drj ko.1

OVTOl TOOV V07)TWV.

2 Stoix- GeoX. 166. 3 Stoix- GeoX. 107.

4 2toix- GeoX. 168 : nds vovs Kar' evepyetav oldev, on voet, Kal ouk a\\ov /j.ev
tbiov tI voelv, aXXou 5e rd voelv, on voei.

5 1.TOIX- GeoX. 170: 7r£s vovs iravra cL/acl voer dXX' 6 p.ev afiideKros airXws iravra,
riov 5e per' 1 eKelvov Hkclvtos Kab" eV awavra. Cf. 180.

6 2>oix- GeoX. 171 : on /xev ovv do-w/xaros 6 poOs, r\ irpbs eavrbv iirto-Tpo<pri StjXoI •
twv yap awixdruiv ovbev irpbs eavTO iiriOTptyeTai.

7 2rotx- GeoX. 173 : to 5e elvai avrov voepbv, Kal to. atria dpa. voepuis ix ei r ^ v
iravTwv • wore iravra voepQs e'xet "■** vovs, kcli to. irpb aiiTov, Kal to. tier' avrbv ' u>s
ovv to, votito. voepws e'xet ""^ s vovs, ovtu Kal to. alo~dr}Ta voepws.

8 Zrotx- GeoX. 171 : irds voOs t£ voelv ixpiaTrjaL to. per' avrbv, Kai t\ iroiifots ev
to) voelv, Kal r\ vbi)Cis ev ry 7roteiV .

w. 12

178 THE ATHENIAN SCHOOL [iX

order, which is timeless, yet have the power of thinking and
actually think during the whole of time. That such existences
should be interposed before particular souls, is required by the
graduated mediation characteristic of every casual progression 1 .
Soul that is sometimes thinking and sometimes not, cannot
participate without mediation in eternal mind.

The intellectual forms in mind are both in one another and
each for itself without either spatial interval or confusion.
This Proclus demonstrates from the nature of indivisible
essence. If any one needs an analogy as well as a demon-
stration, then, he says, there is the case of the various theorems
existing in one soul. The soul draws forth the propositions
that constitute its knowledge, not by pulling them apart from
one another, but by making separately clear to itself implicit
distinctions that already exist 2 . The minds that contain more
universal forms are superior in causal efficacy to those that
contain more particular forms. The first by forms that are
quantitatively less produce more effects ; the second fewer by
forms that are quantitatively more. From the second proceed
the finer differences of kinds 3 . The products of intellectual
forms are imperishable. Kinds that are only for a time do not
subsist from a formal or ideal cause of their own ; nor have
perishable things, as such, a pre-existent intellectual form 4 .
The number of minds is finite 5 . Every mind is a whole ; and
each is at once united with other minds and discriminated from
them. Imparticipable mind is a whole simply, since it has in
itself all the parts under the form of the whole ; of the partial
minds each contains the whole as in a part 6 .

1 2twx. OeoX. 175 : ovbafiov yap ai irpbobot yivovrai d/j.eo~ios, dXXd Sia tu>v
auyyevwv /cat bp.o'uov, Kara re ids VTroaTaaeis Kal ras tQv evepyeiQv reXetoT^ras.

- "Ltoix- OeoX. 176 : iravra yap ei\iKpivu>s 17 ipvxv irpodyei, Kal X W P' S %KaoT0v,
[x-qhev e<p£\KOVo~a airb tQv XonrQv, a (el p.rj Sie/ce/cptro del Kara tt)v ?£w) ov8' av tj
eve'pyeia Si^Kpive rrjs ipvxvs-

3 Utoix- OeoX. 177 : odev oi devrepoi vbes reus tQv eldCbv /j.epiKure'pais SiaKplaeaiv
eirtbiapdpovai wus Kal Xewrovpyovcri rds tQv irpuiruiv elboirouas.

4 Zroix- OeoX. 178: irdv voepbv eldos dtbiuv earlv inroaraTLKdv ovre dpa rd

yevr) rd Kara riva xpbvov a7r' curias v(pe(TTT]Ktv eldrjTiKTjs, ovre rd (pdaprd, 17 (pdaprd,
eldos ?x £l voepbv Trpo'virapxov.

5 Stoix- OeoX. 179.

6 'Ztoix- OeoX. 180 : dXX' 6 /xev dp.49eKros vovs a7rXws 6'Xos, Cos rd fitprj iravra
b\iKws ix wv & v tavTui, tuiv St /j.epiKuii' e/cacrros ws iv /xipei to 6'Xoe exei. Cf. 170.

IX] THE ATHENIAN SCHOOL 179

The mean between divine imparticipable mind and mind
participated in and intelligential but not divine, is divine
mind participated in. In this participate divine souls. Of
souls there are three kinds : first, those that are divine ;
second, those that are not divine but that always participate in
intelligible mind ; third, those that change between mind and
deprivation of it. Every soul is an incorporeal essence and
separable from the body 1 . For since it knows that which is
above it, namely, mind and intellectual things in their purity,
much more is it the nature of the soul to know itself. Now
that which knows itself turns back upon itself. And that
which turns back upon itself is neither body nor inseparable
from body; for the mere turning back upon itself, of which
body is incapable, necessitates separability. Every soul is
indestructible and incorruptible. For everything that can in
any way be dissolved and destroyed is either corporeal and
composite or has its existence in a subject. That which is
dissolved undergoes corruption as consisting of a multitude
of divisible parts ; that of which it is the nature to exist in
another, being separated from its subject vanishes into not-
being. But the soul comes under neither of these determina-
tions; existent as it is in the act of turning back upon itself.
Hence it is indestructible and incorruptible.

Proclus now goes on to define more exactly the characters of
the soul in relation to things prior and posterior to it. It is self-
subsistent and is the principle of life to itself and to all that
participates in it. As it is a mean between things primarily
indivisible and those that have the divisibility belonging to body,
so also it is a mean between things wholly eternal and those
that are wholly temporal. Eternal in essence and temporal
in act, it is the first of things that have part in the world of
generation. In the logical order of causes, it comes next after
mind, and contains all the intellectual forms that mind possesses
primarily. These it has by participation, and as products of
the things before it. Things perceptible it anticipates in their
pre-formed models {rrapahecyiiaTiKOis;)- Thus it holds the
reasons of things material immaterially, and of corporeal

12—2

180 THE ATHENIAN SCHOOL [iX

things incorporeally, and of things apart in space without
spatially separating them. Things intelligible, on the other
hand, it receives in their expression by images (eUoviKw) ;
divisibly the forms of those that are undivided, by multipli-
cation the forms of those that are unitary, by self-motion the
forms of those that are unmoved 1 .

Every soul participated in has for its first organ an imperish-
able body, ungenerated and incorruptible. For if every soul
is imperishable in essence and primarily animates something
corporeal, then, since its being is immutable, it animates it always.
If that which has soul has it always, it also participates ever
in the life of soul 2 . But that which is ever living ever is, that
is to say, is imperishable 3 .

All that participates in time yet is perpetually moved, is
measured by circuits. For since things are determinate both in
multitude and in magnitude, transition cannot go on through
different collocations to infinity. On the other hand, the
transitions of that which is ever moved can have no term.
They must therefore go from the same to the same ; the time
of the circuit furnishing the measure of the motion. Every
mundane soul, since it passes without limit through transitions
of which time is the measure, has circuits of its proper life, and
restitutions to its former position 4 . While other souls have
some particular time for the measure of their circuit, the circuit
of the first soul measured by time coincides with the whole of

time 5 .

With greater distance of souls from the One there goes,
according to the general principle already set forth, increase of

3 The chief propositions on the imperishable vehicle of the soul are to be
found near the end of the treatise (207—10). The substance of tbeni is that, in
the descent and reascent of the particular soul, extraneous material clothings
are in turn put upon the vehicle and stripped off from it ; the vehicle itself
remaining impassible.

4 2toix- OeoX. 199 : waaa yj/vxh ejK6a/xios ireptodois XPV TaL T V* olxeias fays Kal
aTTOKa.Ta<jTdcreaii>. . . .Trdcra yap Trepiodos twv dXSitav dwoKaTaiTTaTiKT] e<m.

5 Srotx- OeoX. 200.

IX] THE ATHENIAN SCHOOL 181

number and diminution of casual efficacy 1 . Every particular
soul may descend to birth infinite times and reascend from
birth to being. For it now follows after the divine and now
falls away; and such alternation must evidently be recurrent.
The soul cannot be an infinite time among the gods, and then
the whole succeeding time among bodies; for that which has
no temporal beginning can never have an end, and that which
has no end necessarily has no beginning 2 .

Every particular soul, descending to birth, descends as a
whole, It does not partly remain above and partly descend.
For if part of the soul remains in the intelligible world, it must
either think ever without transition, or by a transitive process.
But if without transition, then it thinks as pure intellect, and
not as a part of the soul ; and so must be the soul immediately
participating in mind, that is, the general soul. If it thinks by
a transitive process, then, out of that which always thinks and
that which sometimes thinks one essence is composed. But
this also is impossible. Besides, it is absurd that the highest
part of the soul, being, as it is if it does not descend, ever perfect,
should not rule the other powers and make them also perfect.
Every particular soul therefore descends as a whole 3 .

3. The End of the Platonic Succession,

Of the successors to Plato's chair after Proclus, the most
noteworthy was Damascius, the last of all. A native of
Damascus, he had studied at Alexandria and at Athens.
Among his teachers was Marinus, the immediate successor
and the biographer of Proclus. The skill in dialectic for
which he was celebrated, he himself attributed to the instruc-
tions of Isidore, his predecessor in the chair, whose biography
he wrote 4 . In an extensive work on First Principles ('ATropicu

2 Srotx- 0eo\. 206 : Xeiirerai apa vepidSovs iKaar-qv iroieiadai av68wv re in ttjs
yev£<TiW ko.1 twv els ytvevLv Kadoduv, teal tovto a.irav<TTOi> dvai dtdrdv aireipov XP 0V0V •
eK&arr) apa ^I'X?? P-epiKV KaTievai re eV direipov dvvarai ko.1 aviivai. /cat tovto ov p.r)
iravatTai T€pl airdaas rb irddijfJ.a yevd/xevou.

3 Sroix- 0«oX. 211.

4 The fragments of this, preserved by Photius, are printed in the appendix to
the Didot edition of Diogenes Laertius.

182 THE ATHENIAN SCHOOL [iX

/cai XvaeLs nepl twv Trpo&rwv ap-^oov) 1 , he maintained with the
utmost elaboration that the principle of things is unknowable.
This we have met with as a general position in Proclus 2 ; and
it is already laid down distinctly by Plotinus, who says for
example that we can learn by intellect that the One is, but not
what it is. Even to call it the One is rather to deny of it
plurality than to assert any truth regarding it that can be
grasped by the intelligence 3 . Still, with Plotinus and Proclus,
this is more a recognition of the inadequacy of all forms of
thought to convey true knowledge of the principle which is the
source of thought, than a doctrine standing out by itself as the
last word of their philosophy. Damascius on the other hand
seems to exhaust human language in the effort to make plain
how absolutely unknowable the principle is 4 . Thus his doctrine
has the effect of a new departure, and presents itself as the
most definitely agnostic phase of ancient metaphysics. Zeller
treats this renunciation of all knowledge of the principle as a
symptom of the exhaustion of Greek philosophy ; a view which
perhaps, at certain points of time, would not have allowed us
to hope much more from modern philosophy. The ancient
schools, however, did not die till a final blow was struck at
them on behalf of the spiritual authority that now ruled the
world.

It may be read in Gibbon how the Emperor Justinian
(527 — 565), while he directed the codification of the Roman
law, succeeded in effacing in considerable measure the record
of stages of jurisprudence less conformable to the later imperial
absolutism. To make that absolutism unbroken even in name,
he afterwards suppressed the Roman Consulship, which had

1 About half of this work was edited by Kopp in 1826 ; the whole by Ruelle
in 1889. In 1898 was published a complete French translation by M. Chaignet
in three volumes.

3 Enn. v. 5, 6 : to 5e olov arjixaivoi. av to oi>x olov ' ov yap Hvi ovde to olov, otoi

^Se to tI Taxa Se /ecu to £v 6vop.a tovto apo~iv ex ei Tpos to. woWti, bdev /ecu

'Av6\\uva ot YlvdayopiKol avp.(3o\iKu>s irpbs a\\ri\ovs eo~r)p.aivov airocpaaei twv
ttoXXQv.

4 Cf. R. P. 545 : ko.1 tI -n-ipas ^crrat tov \6yov ttXtjv criyrjs 6.p.rjxd.vov Kol 6p,o\oylas
tov p.7]deu yivwaKeiv w pLTjde de/xis, ddwaTWi/ ovtwv eh yvwcnv eXdeiv ;

IX] THE ATHENIAN SCHOOL 183

gone on till his time. Before the completion of his Code — the
great positive achievement to which he owes his fame — he had
already promulgated a decree for securing uniformity in the
spiritual sphere. So far, in spite of the formal prohibition of
the ancient religion, the philosophers at Athens had retained
some freedom to oppose Christian positions on speculative
questions. This seems clear from the fact that Proclus had
been able to issue a tractate in which he set forth the arguments
for the perpetuity of the world against the Christian doctrine of
creation 1 . Justinian, who was desirous of a reputation for
strictness of orthodoxy, resolved that even this freedom should
cease; and in 529 he enacted that henceforth no one should
teach the ancient philosophy. In the previous year, when
there was a " great persecution of the Greeks " (that is, of all
who showed attachment to the ancient religion), it had been
made a law that those who " Hellenised " should be incapable
of holding offices. Suppression of the philosophical lectures
was accompanied by confiscation of the endowments of the
school. And these were private endowments ; the public
payments to the occupants of the chairs having long ceased 2 .
The liberty of philosophising was now everywhere brought
within the limits prescribed by the Christian Church. Not
till the dawn of modern Europe was a larger freedom to be
reassumed ; and not even then without peril.

The narrative of the historian Agathias (fl. 570) is well
known, how Damascius, Simplicius, Eulalius, Priscianus, Her-
mias, Diogenes and Isidorus departed from Athens for Persia,
having been invited by King Chosroes (Khosru Nushirvan),
and hoping to find in the East an ideal kingdom and a
philosophic king 3 . Though Chosroes himself was not without
a real interest in philosophy, as he showed by the translations
he caused to be made of Platonic and Aristotelian writings,
their expectations were thoroughly disappointed. They found

1 A reply to the 'ETnx«-py/J-a- T a Kara. XpicrTiavwv of Proclus was written by
Joannes Philoponus, in the form of a lengthy work (now included in the Teubner
Series) bearing the title I)e Aeternitate Mundi.

2 See, for the evidence as to the exact circumstances of the suppression,
Zeller, iii. 2, pp. 849—50, with notes. Of. R. P. 547 c.

;i P. P. 547.

184 THE ATHENIAN SCHOOL [iX

that the genuine unmodified East was worse than the Roman
Empire in its decline. At length they entreated to return to
their own country under any conditions ; and Chosroes, though
pressing them to stay, not only allowed them to go, but in a
special clause of a treaty of peace with Justinian, stipulated
that they should not be constrained to forsake their own
opinions, but should retain their freedom while they lived.
This was in 533. The date of their voluntary exile was
probably 532.

After their return, as has been already indicated, the
philosophers devoted themselves to the writing of learned
commentaries. The most illustrious of the commentators was
Simplicius, whose works on Aristotle's Categories, Physics, Be
Caelo and De Anima, and on the Encheiridion of Epictetus,
are extant. Even this last period was not marked by complete
inability to enter on a new path. What the speculative
exhaustion animadverted on by Zeller really led to was a return
to the most positive kind of knowledge that then seemed attain-
able. Aristotle now came to be studied with renewed zeal ;
and it was in fact by a tradition from the very close of antiquity
that he afterwards acquired his predominant authority, first
among the Arabians and then among the schoolmen of the
West 1 . The last Neo-Platonists thus had the merit of compre-
hending his unapproached greatness as the master in antiquity
of all human and natural knowledge. If to some extent they
were wrong in trying to prove his thoroughgoing agreement
with Plato, their view was at any rate nearer the mark than
that which makes the two philosophers types of opposition.
The most recent students of Plato would perfectly agree with
one at least of the distinctions by which Simplicius reconciles
apparently conflicting positions. When Plato, he says, describes
the world as having come to be, he means that it proceeds from
a higher cause ; when Aristotle describes it as not having
become, he means that it has no beginning in time 2 . Apart
from learned research, subtleties may still be found in the
commentators that had never before been expressed with such

1 Cf. Kenan, Averroes et VAverroisme, pp. 92 — 3.

2 Zeller, iii. 2, p. 84(3. Cf. Archer-Hind, The Timaeus of Plato.

IX] THE ATHENIAN SCHOOL 185

precision. For the rest, they are themselves as conscious of
the decline as their modern critics. What they actually did
was in truth all that was possible, and the very thing that was
needed, in their own age.

To the latest period, as was said at the beginning of the
chapter, belong the names of several Alexandrian teachers.
Among these are Hermias, the pupil of Syrianus ; Ammonius,
the son of Hermias and the pupil of Proclus 1 ; Asclepiodotus,
a physician, who, according to Damascius, surpassed all his
contemporaries in knowledge of mathematics and natural
science ; and Olympiodorus, a pupil of Ammonius and the last
teacher of the Platonic philosophy whose name has been
preserved. Commentaries by Hermias and Ammonius, as well
as by Olympiodorus, are still extant.

An exhaustive history of Neo-Platonism would find in the
writings of the Athenian school materials especially abundant.
Much has been printed, though many works still remain un-
published. In the present chapter, only a very general account
is attempted. The object, here as elsewhere, has been to bring
out the essential originality of the Neo-Platonic movement ;
not to trace minutely the various currents that contributed to
its formation and those into which it afterwards diverged as it
passed into later systems of culture. To follow, " per incertam
lunam sub luce maligna," the exact ways by which it modified
the culture of mediaeval Europe, would be a work of research
for a separate volume. The general direction, however, and its
principal stages, are sufficiently clear ; and some attempt will
be made in the next chapter to trace first the continued
influence of Neo-Platonism in the Middle Ages, and then its
renewed influence at the Renaissance and in modern times.
For the earliest period — for the unmistakably "dark ages" of
the West — the transmission was in great part through Christian
writers, who, living at the close of the ancient world, had
received instruction as pupils in the still surviving philosophic
schools.

1 Joannes Philoponus (11. 530), the Christian commentator on Aristotle, had
Ammonius for his teacher, and quotes him as " the philosopher." See Zeller,
iii. 2, p. 829, n. 4.

CHAPTER X.

THE INFLUENCE OF NEO-PLATONISM.

The influence of Neo-Platonism on the official Christian
philosophy of the succeeding period was mainly in the de-
partment of psychology. Biblical psychology by itself did
not of course fix any determinate scientific view. Its literal
interpretation might seem, if anything, favourable to a kind
of materialism combined with supernaturalism, like that of
Tertullian. Even the Pauline conception of " spirit," regarded
at once as an infusion of Deity and as the highest part of the
human soul, lent itself quite easily to a doctrine like that of
the Stoics, which identified the divine principle in the world
with the corporeal element most remote by its lightness and
mobility from gross matter. For a system, however, that was
to claim on behalf of its supernatural dogmas a certain justi-
fication by human reason as a preliminary condition to their
full reception by faith, the idea of purely immaterial soul and
mind was evidently better adapted. This conception, taken
over for the practical purposes of the Church in the scientific
form given to it by the Neo-Platonists, has accordingly main-,
tained its ground ever since. The occasional attempts in
modern times by sincerely orthodox Christians to fall back
upon an exclusive belief in the resurrection of the body,
interpreted in a materialistic sense, as against the heathen
doctrine of the natural immortality of the soul, have never
gained any appreciable following. At the end of the ancient

X] THE INFLUENCE OF NEO-PLATONISM 187

world Platonic idealism, so far as it was compatible with the
dualism necessitated by certain portions of the dogmatic
system, was decisively adopted. In the East, Greek ecclesias-
tical writers such as Nemesius (fl. 450), who had derived
their culture from Neo-Platonism, transmitted its refutations
of materialism to the next age. In the West, St Augustine,
who, as is known, was profoundly influenced by Platonism, and
who had read Plotinus in a Latin translation, performed the
same philosophical service. The great positive result was to
familiarise the European mind with the elements of certain
metaphysical conceptions elaborated by the latest school of
independent philosophy. When the time came for renewed
independence, long practice with abstractions had made it
easier than it had ever hitherto been — difficult as it still
was — to set out in the pursuit of philosophic truth from a
primarily subjective point of view.

It was long, however, before Western Europe could even
begin to fashion for itself new instruments by provisionally
working within the prescribed circle of revealed dogma and
subordinated philosophy. The very beginning of Scholasticism
is divided by a gulf of more than three centuries from the end
of Neo-Platonism ; and not for about two centuries more did
this lead to any continuous intellectual movement. In the
meantime, the elements of culture that remained had been
transmitted by Neo-Platonists or writers influenced by them.
An especially important position in this respect is held by
Boethius, who was born at Rome about 480, was Consul in 510,
and was executed by order of Theodoric in 524. In philosophy
Boethius represents an eclectic Neo-Platonism turned to ethical
account. His translation of Porphyry's logical work has already
been mentioned. He also devoted works of his own to the
exposition of Aristotle's logic. It was when he had fallen into
disgrace with Theodoric that he wrote the Be Consolation 1
Plrilosophiae ; and the remarkable fact has often been noticed
that, although certainly a nominal Christian, he turned in
adversity wholly to heathen philosophy, not making the
slightest allusion anywhere to the Christian revelation. The
vogue of the Be Consolatione in the Middle Ages is equally

188 THE INFLUENCE [X

noteworthy. Rulers like Alfred, eagerly desirous of spreading
all the light that was accessible, seem to have been drawn
by a secret instinct to the work of a man of kindred race, who,
though at the extreme bound, had still been in living contact
with the indigenous culture of the old European world. Another
work much read in the same period was the commentary of
Macrobius (fl. 400) on the Somnium Scipionis extracted from
Cicero's Be Republica. Macrobius seems not to have been
even a nominal Christian. He quotes Neo-Platonist writers, and,
by the impress he has received from their type of thinking,
furnishes evidence of the knowledge there was of them in
the West.

In the East some influence on theological metaphysics was
exercised by Synesius, the friend of Hypatia. Having become
a Christian, Synesius unwillingly allowed himself to be made
Bishop of Ptolemais (about 410); seeking to reserve the
philosophical liberty to treat portions of popular Christianity
as mythical, but not quite convinced that this was compatible
with the episcopal office. A deeper influence of the same kind,
extending to the West, came from the works of the writer
known under the name of that " Dionysius the Areopagite "
who is mentioned among the converts of St Paul at Athens
(Acts xvii. 34). As no incontestable reference to those works
is found till the sixth century, and as they are characterised by
ideas distinctive of the school of Proclus, it is now held that
they proceeded from some Christian Platonist trained in the
Athenian school. It is possible indeed that the real Dionysius
had been a hearer of Proclus himself. We learn from Marin us 1
that not all who attended his lectures were his philosophical
disciples. The influence of the series of works, in so far as
they were accepted officially, was to fix the "angelology" of
the Church in a learned form. They also gave a powerful
impulse to Christian mysticism, and, through Scotus Erigena,
set going the pantheistic speculations which, as soon as thought
once more awoke, began to trouble the faith.

When, about the middle of the ninth century, there emerges

1 Vita Prodi, 38.

X] OF NEO-PLATONISM 189

the isolated figure of John Scotus Erigena, we may say, far as
we still are from anything that can be called sunrise, that

"now at last the sacred influence
Of light appears, and from the walls of Heaven
Shoots far into the bosom of dim Night
A glimmering dawn."

He has been regarded both as a belated Neo-Platonist and as
the first of the Scholastics. In reality he cannot be classed as
a Neo-Platonist, for his whole effort was directed towards
rationalising that system of dogmatic belief which the Neo-
Platonists had opposed from the profouudest intellectual and
ethical antipathy. On the other hand, he was deeply influenced
by the forms of Neo-Platonic thought transmitted through
Dionysius, whose works he translated into Latin ; and his own
speculations soon excited the suspicion of ecclesiastical authority.
His greatest work, the De Divisione Naturae, was in 1225 con-
demned by Pope Honorius III. to be burned. Scotus had,
however, begun the characteristic movement of Christian
Scholasticism. And Dionysius, who could not well be anathe-
matised consistently with the accredited view about the
authorship of his writings — who indeed was canonised, and
came to be identified with St Denys of France — had been
made current in Latin just at the moment when the knowledge
of Greek had all but vanished from the West.

The first period of Scholasticism presents a great gap
between Scotus and the next considerable thinkers, who do
not appear before the latter part of the eleventh century.
Towards the end of the twelfth century, the second period
begins through the influx of new Aristotelian writings and
of the commentaries upon them by the Arabians. The Arabians
themselves, on settling down after their conquest of Western
Asia, had found Aristotle already translated into Syriac. Trans-
lations were made from Syriac into Arabic. These translations
and the Arabian commentaries on them were now translated
into Latin, sometimes through Hebrew; the Jews being at this
time again the great intermediaries between Asia and Europe.
Not long after, translations were made directly from the Greek

190 THE INFLUENCE [X

texts preserved at Constantinople. Thus Western Europe
acquired the complete body of Aristotle's logical writings, of
which it had hitherto only possessed a part ; and, for the first
time since its faint re-awakening to intellectual life, it was put
in possession of the works dealing with the content as well as
the form of philosophy. After prohibiting more than once the
reading of the newly recovered writings, and in particular of
the Physics and Metaphysics, the ecclesiastical chiefs at length
authorised them; having come to see in the theism of Aristotle,
which they were now able to discriminate from the pantheism of
pseudo-Aristotelian writings, a preparation for the faith. It is
from this period that the predominating scientific authority of
Aristotle in the Christian schools must be dated. Taken over
as a tradition from the Arabians, it had been by them received
from the latest commentators of the Athenian school of Neo-
Platonism.

The Arabian philosophy, highly interesting in itself, is still
more interesting to us for its effect on the intellectual life of
Europe. Aristotelian in basis, it was Neo-Platonic in super-
structure. Its distinctive doctrine of an impersonal immortality
of the general human intellect is, however, as contrasted both
with Aristotelianism and with Neo-Platon ism, essentially original.
This originality it does not owe to Mohammedanism. Its affinity
is rather with Persian and Indian mysticism. Not that
Mohammedanism wanted a speculative life of its own ; but that
which is known to history as " Arabian philosophy " did not
belong to that life 1 . The proper intellectual life of Islam was
in "theology." From the sharp antagonism which sprang up
between the Arabian philosophers and " theologians " seems to
date the antithesis which became current especially in the
Europe of the Renaissance. For the Greek philosophers,
" theology " had meant first a poetic exposition of myths, but
with the implication that they contained, either directly or when
allegorised, some theory of the origin of things. Sometimes —
as occasionally in Aristotle and oftener in the Neo-Platonists —
it meant the highest, or metaphysical, part of philosophy. It

1 See Eenan, Averroes et VAverrolsme, ch. ii.

X] OF NEO-PLATONISM 191

was the doctrine of God as first principle of things, and was
accordingly the expression of pure speculative reason. With
Islam, as with Christianity, it might mean this ; but it meant
also a traditional creed imposed by the authority of Church and
State. The creed contained many articles which philosophy
might or might not arrive at by the free exercise of reason.
To the Mohammedan "theologian," however, these were not
points which it was permissible to question, except hypotheti-
cally, but principles to argue from. Hence the "philosophers,"
having made acquaintance with the intellectual liberty of Greece,
which they were seeking to naturalise in Arabian science, were
led to adopt the custom of describing distinctively as a "theo-
logian " one who speculated under external authority and with
a practical purpose. Of course the philosophers claimed to
deal equally — or, rather, at a higher level — with divine objects
of speculation ; but, according to their own view, they were not
bound by the definitions of the theologian. At the same time,
they were to defer to theology in popular modes of speech,
allowing a "theological" truth, or truth reduced to what the
multitude could profit by, in distinction from" philosophical"
or pure truth. The Jews and the Christians too, they allowed,
were in possession of theological truth ; each religion being
good and sufficient in practice for the peoples with whom it
was traditional. The reason of this procedure — which has no
precise analogue either in ancient or in modern times — was that
the Arabian Hellenising movement was pantheistic, while the
three religious known to the philosophers all held to the
personality of God. Hence the Arabian philosophy could not,
like later Deism, find what it regarded as philosophic truth by
denuding all three religions of their discrepant elements. Since
they were expressed in rigorously defined creeds, it could not
allegorise them as the ancient philosophers had allegorised
polytheism. Nor was the method open to it of ostensibly
founding a new sect. The dominant religions were theocratic,
claiming the right, which was also the duty, of persecution.
The consequence was, formulation of the strange doctrine
known as that of the " double truth."

Under the dominion of Islam, the "philosophers," in spite of

192 THE INFLUENCE [X

their distinction between the two kinds of truth, were treated
by the " theologians " as a hostile sect and reduced to silence.
Their distinction, however, penetrated to Christian Europe,
where, though condemned by Church Councils, it long held its
ground as a defence against accusations of heresy. The ortho-
dox distinction between two spheres of truth, to be investigated
by different methods but ultimately not in contradiction, may
easily be put in its place. Hence a certain elusiveness which
no doubt helped to give it vogue in a society not inwardly
quite submissive to the authority of the Church even at the
time when the theocracy had apparently crushed all secular
and intellectual opposition. The profundity of the revolt is
evident alike in the philosophical and in the religious move-
ments that marked the close of the twelfth and the opening
of the thirteenth century. The ideas that animated both
movements were of singular audacity. In philosophy, the
intellectual abstractions of Neo-Platonism, and in particular
the abstraction of " matter," were made the ground for a
revived naturalistic pantheism. Ideas of " absorption," or im-
personal immortality, genuinely Eastern in spirit, may have
appealed as speculations to the contemplative ascetics of
Orientalised Europe. These were not the only ideas that
came to the surface. In common with its dogmas, the Catholic
hierarchy was threatened ; and, to suppress the uprising, the
City of Dis on earth was completed by the Dominican
Inquisition. Yet philosophy, so far as it could be made sub-
servient to orthodoxy, was to be a most important element in
the training of the Dominicans themselves. From their Order
proceeded Thomas Aquinas, the most systematic thinker of
the Middle Ages, at whose hands scholastic Aristotelianism
received its consummate perfection. Against older heresies,
against " Averroism," against the pantheism of heterodox
schoolmen, the Angelic Doctor furnished arguments acceptable
to orthodoxy, marshalled in syllogistic array. For a short
time, his system could intellectually satisfy minds of the
highest power, skilled in all the learning of their age, if only
they were in feeling at one with the dominant faith.

Over and above its indirect influence through the psy-

X] OF NEO-PLATONISM 1 !>3

chology of the Fathers, Neo-Platonic thought found direct
admission into the orthodox no less than into the heterodox
speculation of the Scholastic period. Aquinas quotes largely
from Dionysius; and Dante was, as is well known, a student
both of Aquinas and of Dionysius himself, whose classification
of the " Heavenly Hierarchy " he regarded as a direct revelation
communicated by St Paul to his Athenian proselyte. Thus, if
we find Neo-Platonic ideas in Dante, there is no difficulty about
their source. The line of derivation goes straight back to the
teaching of Proclus. We are not reduced to the supposition
of an indirect influence from Plotinus through St Augustine.
Incidental Neo-Platonic expressions in Dante have not escaped
notice 1 . More interesting, however, than any detailed coinci-
dence is the fundamental identity of the poet's conception of
the beatific vision with the vision of the intelligible world as
figured by Plotinus. Almost equally prominent is the use he
makes of the speculative conception of emanation. That the
higher cause remains in itself while producing that which is
next to it in order of being, is affirmed by Dante in terms that
might have come directly from Plotinus or Proclus 2 . And it
is essentially by the idea of emanation that he explains and
justifies the varying degrees of perfection in created things.

The Neo-Platonism of the Divina Commedia, as might be
expected, is found almost exclusively in the Paradiso ; though
one well-known passage in the Purgatorio, describing the mode
in which the disembodied soul shapes for itself a new material
envelope, bears obvious marks of the same influence. Here,
however, there is an important difference. Dante renders

1 Some of them are referred to by Bouillet in the notes to his French
translation of the Enneads (1857 — 61).

Here, for want of a more appropriate place, it may be mentioned that there
is no complete translation of the Enneads into English. The marvellous
industry of Thomas Taylor, "the Platonist," in translating Neo-Platonic
writings, did not carry him through the whole of Plotinus. The portions
translated by him have been reprinted for the Theosophical Society in Bonn's
Series.

2 Tbe general thought finds expression at the end of Par. xxix.

" 1' eterno Valor...
Uno manendo in se come davanti."

w. 13

194 THE INFLUENCE [X

everything in terms of extension, and never, like the Neo-
Platonists, arrives at the direct assertion, without symbol, of
pure immaterialism. This may be seen in the passage just
referred to, as compared with a passage from Porphyry's
exposition of Plotinus closely resembling it in thought. While
Dante represents the soul as having an actual path from one
point of space to another, Porphyry distinctly says that the
soul's essence has no locality, but only takes upon itself
relations depending on conformity between its dispositions and
those of a particular body ; the body, whether of grosser or of
finer matter, undergoing local movement in accordance with its
own nature and not with the nature of soul 1 . Again, the point
of exact coincidence between Dante and Plotinus in what they
say of the communications between souls that are in the world
of being, is that, for both alike, every soul "there" knows the
thought of every other without need of speech. Plotinus,
however, says explicitly that the individualised intelligences
within universal mind are together yet discriminated without
any reference to space. What Dante says is that while the
souls are not really in the planetary spheres, but only appear
in them momentarily, they are really above in the empyrean.
Even in his representation of the Deity, the Christian poet still
retains his spatial symbolism. God is seen as the minutest and
intensest point of light, round which the angels— who are the
movers of the spheres — revolve in their ninefold order. At the
same time, the divine mind is said to be the place of the
primum mobile, thus enclosing the whole universe 2 . Viewed in
relation to the universe as distinguished from its cause, the
angelic movers are in inverted order, the outermost and not the
innermost being now the highest. Thus, by symbol, it is finally

1 Cf. Purg. xxv. 85 — 102 and Sententiae, 32. Porphyry is explaining the
way in which the soul may be said to descend to Hades, eVet 5e 5t??/cet to fiapv
irvevfxa /cat 'ivvypov dxpL tQiv inroyeitcv tottujv, ovtu /cat avTt] A^yerat xwptiv vtto yr/v ■
ov\otl ij avrr) ovaia fi€Taj3alv€i tottovs, /cat e'c t6ttols ylverai' dXX' oti tu>v ire<pvKOTLcv
(rwp.a.Twv rdwovs ixeTafiaiveiv, /cat eiXrixevai tottovs, ux^Cf'S dvadexerai, dexo/J^euuv
avTrjv /cara ras e7nTr)5ei6T7]Tas twv tolovtoiv crw/xdrwi' e/c ttjs /car' o.vtt)v iroids
diadtaews.

2 "E questo cielo non ha altro dove

Che la mente divina.''

Par. xxvii. 109—110.

X] OF NEO-PLATONISM 195

suggested that immaterial essence is beyond the distinction of
the great and the small in magnitude ; but even at the end the
symbolism has not disappeared.

Like the completed theocratic organisation of society, the
Scholastic system which furnished its intellectual justification
was hardly finished before it began to break up from within.
St Thomas Aquinas was followed by John Duns Scotus, who,
while equally orthodox in belief, limited more the demonstrative
power of reason in relation to ecclesiastical dogma. Soon after
came William of Ockham, whose orthodoxy is to some extent
ambiguous. The criticisms of the Subtle and of the Invincible
Doctor had for their effect to show the illusoriness of the syste-
matic harmony which their great predecessor seemed to have
given once for all to the structure composed of dominant
Catholic theology and subordinated Aristotelian philosophy.
Duns Scotus was indirectly influenced by Neo-Platonism, which
came to him from the Jewish thinker Ibn Gebirol, known to
the schoolmen as Avicebron. This was the source of his theory
of a " first matter " which is an element in the composition of
intellectual as of corporeal substances. His view that the
" principle of individuation " is not matter but form, coincides
with that of Plotinus. Ockham was a thinker of a different
cast, representing, as against the Platonic Realism of Duns
Scotus, the most developed form of mediaeval Nominalism. In
their different ways, both developments contributed to upset
the balance of the Scholastic eirenicon between science and faith.
The rapidity with which the decomposition was now going on
may be judged from the fact that Ockham died about 1349,
that is, before the end of the half-century which had seen the
composition of the Divina Commedia.

The end of Scholasticism as a system appealing to the living
world is usually placed about the middle of the fifteenth century.
From that time, it became first an obstruction in the way of
newer thought, and then a sectarian survival. The six centuries
of its effective life are those during which Greek thought was
wholly unknown in its sources to the West. John Scotus
Erigena was one of the very last who had some knowledge of
Greek before the study of it revived in the Italy of Petrarch

13—2

196 THE INFLUENCE [X

and Boccaccio. For the new positive beginning of European
culture, the classical revival, together with the impulse towards
physical research, — represented among the schoolmen by Roger
Bacon, — was the essential thing.

In the familiar story of the rise of Humanism, the point
that interests us here is that the first ancient system to be
appropriated in its content, and not simply studied as a branch
of erudition, was Platonism. And it was with the eyes of the
Neo-Platonists that the Florentine Academy read Plato himself.
Marsilio Ficino, having translated Plato, turned next to Plotinus.
His Latin translation of the Enneads appeared in 1492 \
Platonism was now set by its new adherents against Aristo-
telianism, whether in the Scholastic form or as restored by
some who had begun to study it with the aid of the Greek
instead of the Arabian commentaries. The name of Aristotle
became for a time to jiearly all the innovators the synonym of
intellectual oppression.

The Platonists of the early Renaissance were sincere
Christians in their own manner. This was not the manner
of the Middle Age. The definitely articulated system of
ecclesiastical dogma had no real part in their intellectual life.
They were Christians in a general way ; in the details of their
thinking they were Neo-Platonists. In relation to astrology
and magic, indeed, they were Neo-Platonists of a less critical
type than the ancient chiefs of the school. Belief in both
magic and astrology, it is hardly necessary to say, had run down
through the whole course of the intervening centuries ; so that
there was little as yet in the atmosphere of the modern time
that could lead to a renewal of the sceptical and critical sifting
begun by thinkers like Plotinus and Porphyry. The influence
of Christianity shows itself in the special stress laid on the
religious aspect of Neo-Platonism. An example of this is to
be met with at the end of Marsilio Ficino's translation of
Plotinus. In the arguments prefixed to the closing chapters,
Ficino tries to make Plotinus say definitely that the union of
the soul with God, once attained, is perpetual. He has himself

1 The Greek was printed for the first time in 1580, when it appeared along
with the translation.

X] OF NEO-PLATONISM 197

a feeling that the attempt is not quite successful; and he rather
contends that Plotinus was logically bound to make the affir-
mation than that it is there in his very words. As a matter of
fact, Plotinus has nowhere definitely made it ; and it seems
inconsistent alike with his own position that differences of
individuality proceed with necessity from eternal distinctions
in the divine intellect, and with his hypothetical use of the
Stoic doctrine that events recur in exactly repeated cycles.
When he says that in the intelligible world, though not in
earthly life, the vision is continuous, this does not by itself
mean that the soul, when it has ascended, remains above
without recurrent descents. It is true, nevertheless, that
Plotinus and Porphyry did not so explicitly as their successors
affirm that all particular souls are subject to perpetual vicissi-
tude 1 .

This point is of special interest because Ficino's interpre-
tation may have helped to mislead Bruno, who, in a passage
in the dedication of his Eroici Furori to Sir Philip Sidney,
classes Plotinus, so far as this doctrine is concerned, with the
" theologians." All the great philosophers except Plotinus, he
says, have taught that the mutations in the destiny of souls are
without term. On the other hand, all the great theologians
except Origen have taught that the soul either attains final
rest or is finally excluded from beatitude. The latter doctrine
has a practical reference, and may be impressed on the many
lest they should take things too lightly. The former is the
expression of pure truth, and is to be taught to those who are
capable of ruling themselves. Great as is for Plotinus the
importance of the religious redemption to which his philosophy
leads, the theoretic aspect of his system is here misapprehended.
Nothing, however, could bring out more clearly than this
pointed contrast, Bruno's own view. Coming near the end of
Renaissance Platonism, as Ficino comes near its beginning,

1 Thus St Augustine could commend Porphyry for what he took to be the
assertion that the soul, having once wholly ascended to the realm of being, can
never redescend to birth. That any soul can remain perpetually lapsed is
unquestionably contrary to the opinion both of Plotinus and of Porphyry. One
of Porphyry's objections to Christianity was that it taught that doctrine.

)

198 THE INFLUENCE [X

he marks the declared break with tradition and the effort
after a completely independent philosophy.

Other elements as well as Neo-Platonism contributed to
Bruno's doctrine ; yet he too proceeds in his metaphysics from
the Neo- Platonic school. In expression, he always falls back
upon its terms. The system, indeed, undergoes profound
modifications. Matter and Form, Nature and God, become
antithetic names of a single reality, rather than extreme
terms in a causal series descending from the highest to the
lowest 1 . Side by side with the identity, however, the difference
is retained, in order to express the " circle " in phenomenal
things. In Bruno's cosmological view, modifications were of
course introduced by his acceptance and extension of the
Copernican astronomy. Yet he seeks to deduce this also
from propositions of the Neo-Platonic metaphysics. The
Neo-Platonists held, as he did, that the Cause is infinite in
potency, and necessarily produces all that it can produce.
The reason why they did not infer that the extended uni-
verse is quantitatively infinite was that, like some moderns,
they thought actual quantitative infinity an impossible con-
ception.

One of Bruno's most interesting points of contact with
Plotinus is in his theory of the beautiful. For this he may
have got the hint from the difference that had struck Plotinus
between the emotion that accompanies pursuit of knowledge
and beauty on the one hand, and mystical unification with the
good on the other. By this unification, however, Plotinus does
not mean moral virtue; so that when Bruno contrasts intellectual
aspiration with a kind of stoical indifference to fortune, and
treats it as a " defect " in comparison, because there is in the
constantly baffled pursuit of absolute truth or beauty an
element of pain, he is not closely following Plotinus. Yet in
their account of the aspiration itself, the two thinkers agree.
The fluctuation and pain in the aesthetic or intellectual life are
insisted on by both. In Bruno indeed the thought is immensely

1 Identification of all in the unity of Substance is regarded by Vacherot as
characterising Bruno's thought, in contrast with the Neo-Platonic "emanation."
See Histoire Critique de VEcole d'Alexandrie, t. iii. p. 196.

X] OF NEO-PLATONISM 199

expanded from the hint of Plotinus ; the Eroici Furori being
a whole series of imaginative symbols interpreted as expressive
of the same ardour towards " the unknown God of unachieved
desire." There is here manifest a difference of temperament.
Bruno had more of the restlessness which Plotinus finds in the
soul of the artist and the theorist. Plotinus, along with his
philosophical enthusiasm, had more of the detachment and
repose of the religious mystic.

The most striking difference between the Platonism of the
Neo-Platonists and that of the Renaissance, is the stronger
accentuation by the latter of naturalistic pantheism. This,
though not absent in Neo-Platonism itself, is subordinate.
Plotinus, as we saw, regards the heavenly bodies as divine,
and can on occasion speak like Bruno of the earth as one of
the stars. This side of his doctrine, however, is less prominent
than his conception of intellectual and superessential divinity.
With Bruno the reverse is the case. And Campanella too seizes
on the naturalistic side of the doctrine to confound the despisers
of the visible world. Among his philosophical poems there is
one in particular which conveys precisely the feeling of the book
of Plotinus against the Gnostics.

" Deem you that only you have thought and sense,

While heaven and all its wonders, sun and earth,
Scorned in your dullness, lack intelligence ?
Fool ! what produced you ? These things gave you birth :
So have they mind and God 1 ."

This tone of feeling, characteristic of the Renaissance, passed
away during the prevalence of the new "mechanical philosophy,"
to reappear later when the biological sciences were making
towards theories of vital evolution. It is thus no accident
that it should then have been rendered by Goethe, who
combined with his poetic genius original insight in biology.

1 Sonnet xix. in Symonds's translation. The original of the passage may be
given for comparison.

" Pensiti aver tu solo provvidenza,

E '1 ciel la terra e 1' altre cose belle,
Le quali sprezzi tu, starsene senza?
Sciocco, d' onde se' nato tu? da quelle,
Dunque ci e senno e Dio."

200 THE INFLUENCE [X

While the Platonising movement was going on, other
ancient doctrines had been independently revived. For the
growth of the physical sciences, now cultivated afresh after long
neglect, the revival of Atomism was especially important. The
one scientific doctrine of antiquity which Neo-Platonism had
been unable to turn to account was seen by modern physicists
to be exactly that of which they were in need. Thus whether,
like Descartes and Hobbes, they held that the universe is a
plenum, or, with Democritus himself, affirmed the real existence
of vacuum, all the physical thinkers of the seventeenth century
thought of body, for the purposes of science, as corpuscular.
Corpuscular physics was the common foundation of the
" mechanical philosophy." Now it is worthy of note that the
first distinctively Platonic revival, beyond the period we call
the Renaissance, decisively adopted the corpuscular physics as
not incompatible with "the true intellectual system of the
universe." The Cambridge Platonists, as represented especially
by Cudworth, did not, in their opposition to the naturalism of
Hobbes, show any reactionary spirit in pure science ; but were
so much awake to the growing ideas of the time that, even
before the great impression made by Newton's work, they were
able to remedy for themselves the omission that had limited
the scientific resources of their ancient predecessors. And
More, in appending his philosophical poem on The Infinity of
Worlds to that on The Immortality of the Soul, does not shrink
from appealing to the authority of Democritus, Epicurus and
Lucretius in favour of those infinite worlds in space which the
Neo-Platonists had rejected. Neither on this question nor on
the kindred one as to the manifestation of Deity in a pheno-
menal universe without past or future limit in time, does he
commit himself to a final conclusion ; but evidently, after at
first rejecting both infinities as involving impossibilities of
conception, he inclined to the affirmation of both.

The new metaphysical position that philosophy had in the
meantime gained, was the subjective point of view fixed by
Descartes as the principle of his " method for conducting the
reason and seeking truth in the sciences." This, as has been
indicated, was remotely Neo-Platonic in origin ; for the Neo-

X] OF NEO-PLATONISM 201

Platonists had been the first to formulate accurately those
conceptions of immaterial substance and of introspective con-
sciousness which had acquired currency for the later world
through the abstract language of the schools. Thus Descartes,
with Scholasticism and Humanism behind him, could go in a
summary way through the whole process, without immersing
himself in one or the other as a form of erudition ; and could
then start, so far as the problem of knowledge is concerned,
where the ancients had left off. Knowledge of that which is
within, they had found, is in the end the most certain. The
originality of Descartes consisted in taking it as the most
certain in the beginning. Having fixed the point of view, he
could then proceed, from a few simple positions ostensibly put
forward without appeal to authority, to construct a new frame-
work for the sciences of the inner and of the outer world.

Here was the beginning of idealism in its modern form.
The other great innovation of the modern world in general
principle, was the notion that there is a mode of systematically
appealing to experience as the test of scientific truth ; that
rational deduction, such as was still the main thing for
Descartes, must be supplemented by, if not ultimately sub-
ordinated to, the test of inductive verification. This, though
not exclusively an English idea, has been mainly promoted by
English thinkers, in its application first to the physical, and
then, still more specially, to the mental sciences. In antiquity,
experience had indeed been recognised as the beginning of
knowledge in the genetic order. Its priority in this sense could
be allowed by a school as rationalist as Neo-Platonism. It had
not, however, even by the experiential schools, been rigorously
defined as a test applicable to all true science. On this side
Bacon and Locke, as on the other side Descartes, were the
great philosophical initiators of the new time.

The essential innovations of modern thought, as we see,
were innovations in method. They did not of themselves
suggest any new answer to questions about ultimate reality or
the destiny of the universe. It is not that such answers have
been lacking; but they have always remained, in one way or
another, new formulations of old ones. The hope cherished by

202 THE INFLUENCE [X

Bacon and Descartes that the moderns might at length cut
themselves loose from the past and, by an infallible method,
discover all attainable truth, has long been seen to be vain.
Not only individual genius, but historical study of past ideas
and systems, have become of more and not of less importance.
The most original and typical ontologies of modern times are
those of Spinoza and Leibniz; and, much as they owe to the
newer developments of science and theory of knowledge, both
are expressed by means of metaphysical conceptions that
had taken shape during the last period of ancient thought.
Pantheism and Monadism are not merely implicit in the Neo-
Platonic doctrine; they receive clear formulation as different
aspects of it. If, as some modern critics think, the two
conceptions are not ultimately irreconcilable, the best hints
for a solution may probably still be found in Plotinus. No
one has ever been more conscious than he of the difficulty
presented by the problem of comprehending as portions of one
philosophical truth the reality of universal and that of in-
dividual intellect.

Perhaps the strongest testimony to the intrinsic value of
the later Greek thought is Berkeley's Siris. For if that thought
had really become obsolete, Berkeley was in every way pre-
pared to perceive it. He had pushed the Cartesian reform as
far as it would go, by reducing what Descartes still thought of
as real extended substance to a system of phenomena un-
consciousness. He had at the same time all the English
regard for the test of experience, fortified by knowledge of
what had been done in his own age in investigating nature.
Thus, he had taken most decisively the two steps by which
modern philosophy has made a definite advance. Besides, as a
theologian, he might easily have assumed that anything there
was of value in the work of thinkers who, living long after
the opening of the Christian era, had been the most uncom-
promising antagonists of the Christian Church, must have been
long superseded. His own early Nominalism, which, as may
be seen in Siris itself, he had never abandoned, might also have
been expected to prejudice him against Platonic Realism. Yet
it is precisely in the Neo-Platonists that Berkeley, near the

X] OF NEO-PLATONISM 203

end of his philosophical career, found hints towards a tentative
solution of ontological questions which he had at first thought
to settle once for all by a resolutely logical carrying out of the
principles of Descartes and Locke. It is true that in actual
result Siris makes no advance on the original Neo-Platonic
speculations, which are not really fused with Berkeley's own
early doctrine, but are at most kept clear of contradiction with
it. For all that, Siris furnishes the most decisive evidence of
enduring vitality in a school of thought which, to Berkeley's
age if to any since the classical revival, must have seemed
entirely of the past.

Berkeley's work here seems in a manner comparable with
that of the Platonising English poets from Spenser to Shelley.
The influence of Platonism on literature is, however, too wide a
subject to be treated episodically. The one remark may be
made, that not till modern times did it really begin to influence
poetic art. In antiquity it had its theories of art, — varying
greatly, as we have seen, from Plato to Plotinus, — but artistic
production was never inspired by it. If poetic thought, as
some think, is an anticipation of the future, this influence on
poetry may be taken as further evidence that the ideas of the
philosophy itself are still unexhausted.

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the great
controversies of metaphysics did not centre in Platonism.
There is truth in the view that would make this first period
of distinctively modern philosophy a kind of continuation of
later Scholasticism, more than of the Renaissance which im-
mediately preceded it. Its ostensible questions were about
method. The usual division of its schools or phases by
historians is into " Dogmatism " (by which is meant the
rationalistic theory of certitude) and its opposite " Empiricism,"
followed by " Scepticism " and then by " Criticism." As these
names show, it is concerned less with inquiry into the nature of
reality than with the question how reality is to be known, or
whether indeed knowledge of it is possible. And, with all its
differences, the modern " Enlightenment " has this resemblance
to Scholasticism, that a particular system of doctrine is always
in the background, to which the controversy is tacitly referred.

204 THE INFLUENCE [X

This system is in effect the special type of theism which the
more rationalistic schoolmen undertook to prove as a preliminary
to faith in the Catholic creed. Even in its non-Christian form,
as with the "Deists," it is still of the Judaeo-Christian tradition.
The assumption about the relation of God to the world is that
the world was created by an act of will. Ordinary Rationalism
is " dogmatic " by its assertion that " natural religion " of this
type can be demonstrated. " Empiricism " usually holds that
the same general positions can be established sufficiently on at
least " probable " grounds. The Scepticism of Hume proceeds
to show the failure of Empiricism — with which he sides philo-
sophically as against Rationalism — to establish anything of the
kind. Hume's philosophical questioning, while this was the
practical reference which aroused so much feeling in his own
age, had of course a wider reach. Yet when Kant, stirred
by the impulse received from Hume, took up again from a
" Critical " point of view the whole problem as to the possibility
of knowledge, he too thought with a reference to the same
practical centre of the controversy. Having destroyed the
Wolffian " Dogmatism," he still aimed at reconstructing from
its theoretical ruin a generalised theology of essentially the
same type. For Kant, as for the line of thinkers closed by
him, there was only one ontology seriously in question ; and
that was Christian theism, with or without the Christian
revelation.

The German movement at the opening of the nineteenth
century, if it did nothing else, considerably changed this aspect
of things. In its aims, whatever may now be thought of its
results, it was a return to ontology without presuppositions.
The limited dogmatic system which was the centre of interest
for the preceding period has for speculation passed out of sight.
Spinoza perhaps on the positive side exercises a predominant
influence ; but there are returns also to the thinkers of the
Renaissance, to Neo-Platonism, and to the ancient systems of
the East, now beginning to be known in Europe from trans-
lations of their actual documents. A kind of Neo-Christianity
too appears, which again treats Christian dogma in the spirit of
the Gnostics or of Scotus Erigena. And all this is complicated

X] OF NEO-PLATONISM 205

by the necessity imposed on every thinker of taking up a
definite attitude to the Kantian criticism of knowledge. Among
the systems of the time, that of Hegel in particular has fre-
quently been compared to Neo-Platonism ; but here the
resemblance is by no means close. The character of Hegel's
system seems to have been determined mainly by its relation
to preceding German philosophy and to Spinoza. Both on
Spinoza himself and on Leibniz, the influence of Neo-Platonism,
direct or indirect, was much more definite, and points of
comparison might be sought with more profit. In Hegel, as
in the other philosophers of the period, the resemblance is
partly of a quite general kind. They are again ontologists,
interested in more possibilities than in the assertion or denial
of the rudiments of a single creed. But, knowing the historical
position of the Neo-Platonists, they find in them many thoughts
that agree with their personal tendencies.

Up to this point the outline given of the course of later
philosophy may, it seems to me, on the whole be regarded as
abbreviated history. The next stage may perhaps be summed
up as another return from ontology to questions about the
possibility of knowledge, and to logical and methodological
inquiries. To pursue further the attempt to characterise the
successive stages of European thought would be to enter the
region where no brief summary can fairly pretend to be a
deposit of ascertained results. The best plan, from the point
now reached, will be to try to state the law of philosophic
development which the history of Neo-Platonism suggests ; and
then to make some attempt to learn what positive value the
doctrine may still have for the modern world. This will be the
subject of the concluding chapter.

CHAPTER XI.

CONCLUSION.

Once the Neo-Platonic period, instead of being left in
shadow, is brought into clear historical light, the development
of Greek philosophy from Thales to Proclus is seen to consist
of two alternations from naturalism to idealism. The "physical"
thinkers are followed by Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Then,
by a similar antithesis, the more developed naturalism of the
Stoics and Epicureans is followed by the more developed
idealism of the Neo-Platonists. The psychology of the Greeks
has been brought by Prof. Siebeck under the order assigned by
this law. Mr Benn has suggested the law as that of Greek
philosophy in general, but without carrying it through in its
application to the details 1 . When to the empirical formula the
test of psychological deduction is applied, this seems to show
that it must have a more general character — that it must be a
law, not only of Greek thought, but of the thought of mankind.
For evidently, as the objective and subjective points of view
become distinguished, the mind must tend to view things first
objectively, and then afterwards to make a reflective return
on its own processes in knowing. Thus we ought to find
universally that a phase of speculative naturalism — the ex-
pression of the objective point of view — is followed, when

1 Both historians call the later phase Spiritualism, hut on etymological
grounds Idealism is the preferable term. "Spirit" (irveu/xa), as Prof. Siebeck
lias shown in his detailed history, was not used by the Greek philosophers
themselves as the name of an immaterial principle.

Xl] CONCLUSION 207

reflection begins to analyse things into appearances for mind,
by a phase of idealism. Unfortunately, no exact verification of
so extended a deduction can be made out. All that can be said
is that the facts do not contradict it.

The law, in the most general terms, may be stated thus :
"Whenever there is a spontaneous development of philosophic
thought beyond the stage of dependence on tradition, a natural-
istic phase comes first and an idealistic phase second. In no
intrinsic development, whether of individuals or of peoples, is
there a reversal of the order. One or other of the phases,
however, may be practically suppressed. An individual mind,
or the mind of a people, may stop at naturalism, or after the
most evanescent phase of it may go straight on to pure idealism.
Where both phases definitely appear, as in the case of Greece,
we must expect returns of the first, making a repeated rhythm.
Further, we must take account of foreign influences, which may
modify the intrinsic development. Also, when both stages have
been passed through, and are represented by their own teachers,
revivals of either may appear at any moment. Thus in modern
Europe we can hardly expect to trace through the whole deve-
lopment any law whatever. When thinkers began to break
through the new tradition which had substituted itself for
ancient mythology and philosophy alike, and had ruled through
the Middle Ages, there was from the first a possibility, according
to the temper of the individual mind, of reviving any phase of
doctrine, naturalistic or idealistic, without respect to its order
in the past. We may occasionally get a typical case of the law,
as in the idealistic reaction of the Cambridge Platonists on the
naturalism of Hobbes ; but we cannot expect anything like this
uniformly.

Two great national anomalies are the precisely opposite
cases of India (that is, of the Hindus) and of China. Nowhere
in Asia of course has there been that self-conscious break with
traditional authority which we find in ancient Greece and in
modern Europe ; in both of which cases, however, it must be
remembered that the authoritative tradition has never ceased
to exist, but has continued always, even in the most sceptical
or rational periods, to possess more of direct popular power than

208 CONCLUSION [XI

philosophy. The philosophies of India and of China are not
formally distinct from their religions, and have not found it
necessary to repudiate any religious belief simply as such.
Still, each has a very distinct character of its own. The official
philosophy of China is as purely naturalistic as that of India is
idealistic. And in both cases the learned doctrine succeeds in
giving a general direction to the mind of the people without
appealing to force. With the Hindus, naturalism seems to have
been an almost entirely suppressed phase of development. The
traces of it found in some of the philosophic systems may be
remains of an abortive attempt at a naturalistic view of things
in India itself, or may be the result of a foreign influence such
as that of Greek Atomism. On the other hand, the Taoism
and the Buddhism of China are admittedly much reduced from
the elevation they had at first, and have become new elements
in popular superstition instead of idealistic philosophies. Bud-
dhism of course is Indian ; and Taoism, in its original form
perhaps the sole attempt at metaphysics by a native Chinese
teacher, seems to have been an indeterminate pantheism, not
strictly to be classed either as naturalistic or as idealistic. Both
are officially in the shade as compared with Confucianism ;
and this, while agnostic with regard to metaphysics, is as
a philosophy fundamentally naturalistic ; adding to ancestral
traditions about right conduct simply a very general idea of
cosmic order as the theoretic basis for its ethical code.

India and China being thus taken to represent one-sided
evolutions of the human mind, we shall see in ancient Greece
the normal sequence under a comparatively simplified form. In
modern Europe we shall see a complex balance of the two
tendencies. Turning from the question of historical law to
that of philosophical truth, we may conjecture that the reflective
process must somehow mark an advance in insight ; but that, if
nothing is to be lost, it ought to resume in itself what has gone
before. And, as a matter of fact, European idealists, both
ancient and modern, have not been content unless they could
incorporate objective science with their metaphysics.

Thus we arrive at a kind of " law of three states " — tradition
or mythology, naturalism, idealism. In its last two terms, this

Xl] CONCLUSION 209

law seems to be an inversion of the sequence Comte sought to
establish from the " metaphysical " to the " positive " stage ;
naturalism being the philosophy underlying " positivism," while
idealism is another name for " metaphysics." How then are we
to explain Comte's own mental development ? For he undoubt-
edly held that he himself had passed from tradition through
" metaphysics " to " positivity." Exceptio probat regulam : " the
exception tests the rule 1 ." In the first place, what Comte
regarded as his own metaphysical stage was not metaphysics
at all, but a very early mode of political thought in which he
accepted from eighteenth century teachers their doctrine of
abstract "natural rights." In the second place, his mental
history really had a kind of metaphysical phase ; but this came
after his strictly "positive" or naturalistic period. His later
philosophy became subjective on two sides. Having at first
regarded mathematics as the sufficient formal basis of all the
sciences, he arrived later at the view that at the head of the
philosophy of mathematics there ought to be set out a more
general statement of principles. That is to say, his intention
was to fill up the place that belongs properly to logic, which in
its formal division is subjective. Again, in his later scheme, after
the highest of the sciences, which he called "morality" — meaning
really a psychology of the individual, placed after and not before
sociology — there came his " subjective synthesis." This was an
adumbration of metaphysics in the true sense of the term ; so
that his circle of the sciences, beginning with formal principles
of reasoning, would have completed itself by running into
subjectivity at the other extreme. The apparently exceptional
case of Comte therefore turns out to be a real confirmation of
the law.

However it may be with this proposed law of three states,
there can be no doubt that a very highly developed form of
idealism is represented by the Neo-Platonists. How does this
stand in relation to modern thought ? An obvious position to
take up would be to allow the merit of Plotinus and his suc-

1 See Mr Carveth KeacVs Logic, p. 214.
w. H

210 CONCLUSION [XI

cessors in scientifically elaborating the highest metaphysical
conceptions, but to dismiss all their detailed ontology as of
merely historic interest. Thus we should fall back upon a
position suggested by Plato in the Philebus ; namely, that
though there may be very little " dialectical," or, as we should
now say, metaphysical knowledge, that little may be "pure 1 ."
This, however, is too easy a way. The Neo-Platonic thought is,
metaphysically, the maturest thought that the European world
has seen. Our science, indeed, is more developed ; and so also,
with regard to some special problems, is our theory of know-
ledge. On the other hand, the modern time has nothing to
show comparable to a continuous quest of truth about reality
during a period of intellectual liberty that lasted for a thousand
years. What it has to show, during a much shorter period of
freedom, consists of isolated efforts, bounded by the national
limitations of its philosophical schools. The essential ideas,
therefore, of the ontology of Plotinus and Proclus may still be
worth examining in no merely antiquarian spirit.

A method of examination that suggests itself is to try
whether, after all, something of the nature of verification may
not be possible in metaphysics. The great defect of idealistic
philosophy has been that so little can be deduced from it. The
facts of nature do not, indeed, contradict it, but they seem to
offer no retrospective confirmation of it. Now this, to judge
from the analogy of science, may be owing to the extreme
generality with which modern idealism is accustomed to state
its positions. It is as if in physics we were reduced to an
affirmation of the permanence of " matter " defined in Aristo-
telian terminology. Let us try what can be made of an
idealistic system that undertakes to tell us more than that
reality is in some way to be expressed in terms of mind.
Plotinus and Proclus, from their theory of being, make deduc-
tions that concern the order of phenomena. Since their time,
great discoveries have been made in phenomenal science. Do
these tend to confirm or to contradict the deductions made from
their metaphysical principles by the ancient thinkers ?

] Phileb. 58 c.

XI] CONCLUSION 21 1

We must allow, of course, for the defective science of
antiquity. The Neo-Platonists cannot be expected to hold
any other than the Ptolemaic astronomy. They do not,
however, profess to deduce the details of astronomy from
their metaphysics. Just as with the moderns, much in the
way of detail is regarded as given only by experience. That
the universe has this precise constitution — if it has it — is known
only as an empirical fact, not as a deduction from the nature of
its cause. What the Neo-Platonists deduce metaphysically is
not the geocentric system, but the stability of that system —
or of any other — if it exists. Thus they do not agree with the
Stoics ; who, though taking the same view about the present
constitution of the universe, held that the system of earth
with surrounding planetary and stellar spheres is periodically
resolved into the primeval fire and again reconstituted, the
resolution being accompanied by an enormous expansion of
bulk. All such ideas of an immense total change from a
given state of things to its opposite, Plotinus and his successors
reject. Any cycle that they can allow involves only changes of
distribution in a universe ordered always after the same general
fashion. They cany this even into their interpretation of early
thinkers like Empedocles. According to Simplicius, the periods
of concentration and diffusion which alternate in his cosmogony
were by Empedocles himself only assumed hypothetically, and
to facilitate scientific analysis and synthesis 1 . For universal
intellect, as all the Neo-Platonists say, is ever-existent and
produces the cosmic order necessarily ; hence it does not
pometimes act and sometimes remain inactive. Undeviating
necessity, in its visible manifestation as in reality, belongs to
the divinity above man as to the unconscious nature below him.
Change of manifestation depending on apparently arbitrary
choice between opposites belongs to man from his intermediate
position. To attribute this to the divinity is mythological.
There must therefore always be an ordered universe in which
every form and grade of being is represented. The phenomenal
world, flowing from intellectual being by a process that is

1 Be Caelo (E. P. 133 i.*).

14—2

212 CONCLUSION [XI

necessary and as it were natural, is without temporal begin-
ning or end. These propositions we are already familiar with ;
and these are the essence of the deduction. Thus if the
universe — whatever its detailed constitution may be — does not
always as a whole manifest a rational order, the metaphysical
principle is fundamentally wrong. To prove scientifically that
the world points to an absolute temporal beginning, or that it is
running down to an absolute temporal end, or even that it is
as a whole alternately a chaos and a cosmos, would be a refu-
tation of the form of idealism held by Plotinus. How then
does modern science stand with regard to this position ?

It may seem at first sight to contradict it. For does not
the theory of cosmic evolution suppose just such immense
periodic changes as were conceived by Empedocles, according
to the most obvious interpretation of his words ? So far as the
solar system is concerned, no doubt it does ; but the solar
system is only a part of the universe. And there seems to be
no scientific evidence for the theory that the universe as a
whole has periods of evolution and dissolution. Indeed, the
evidence points rather against this view. Astronomical ob-
servers find existent worlds in all stages. This suggests that,
to an observer on any planet, the stellar universe would always
present the same general aspect, though never absolute identity
of detail as compared with its aspect at any other point of time.
For every formed system that undergoes dissolution, some other
is evolved from the nebulae which we call relatively "primordial."
Thus the total phenomenal manifestation of being remains always
the same. If this view should gaiu strength with longer observa-
tion, then science may return in the end to the Neo-Platonic
cosmology on an enlarged scale, and again conceive of the
whole as one stable order, subject to growth and decay only in
its parts. At no time, as the metaphysician will say, is the
mind of the universe wholly latent. There is no priority of
sense to intellect in the whole. The apparent priority of
matter, or of the sentiency of which matter is the phenomenon,
is simply an imaginative representation of the evolutionary
process in a single system, regarded in isolation from the
universe of which it forms part.

XI] CONCLUSION 213

That this view is demonstrated by science cannot of course
be said. The evidence, however, is quite consistent with it,
and seems to point to this rather than to any other of the
possible views. The question being not yet scientifically
settled, the idealism of Plotinus still offers itself, by the
cosmology in which it issues, for verification or disproof. And
empirical confirmation, if this were forthcoming, would be
quite real as far as it goes, precisely because the metaphysical
doctrine is not so very general as to be consistent with all
possible facts. A scientific proof that the universe is running
down to a state of unalterable fixation would refute it.

To the speculative doctrine of Plotinus no very great
addition, as we have seen, was made before Proclus. The
additions Proclus was able to make have by historians as a rule
been treated as useless complications, — multiplications of entities
without necessity. Yet the power of Proclus as a thinker is
not denied even by those who find little to admire in its
results ; and it had undergone assiduous training. He may be
said to have known in detail the whole history of ancient
thought, scientific as well as philosophical, at a time when it
could still be known without any great recourse to fragments
and conjecture. And he came at the end of a perfectly con-
tinuous movement. It is therefore of special interest to see
how the metaphysical developments he arrived at appear in
the light of discoveries made since the European community
returned again to the systematic pursuit of knowledge.

What is noteworthy first of all is the way in which,
following Aristotle, he has incorporated with the idea of the
one stable universe that of an upward movement in the
processes that belong to the realm of birth. As we have seen,
he distinctly says that in the order of genesis the imperfect
comes before the perfect. And this is not meant simply in
reference to the individual organism, where it is merely a genera-
lised statement of obvious facts, but is applied on occasion to
the history of science. Now the technical terms by which he
expresses the philosophical idea of emanation admit of trans-
ference to an evolutionary process in time through which its
components may be supposed to become explicit. The 77730080?

214 CONCLUSION [XI

and the eiriGrpo^rj, or the going forth from the metaphysical
principle and the return to it, are not of course themselves
processes of the universe in time. Yet there is no reason why
they should not have respectively their temporal manifestations
in its parts, so long as neither type of manifestation is supposed
to be chronologically prior or posterior in relation to the whole.
When the terms are thus applied, they find accurate expression
in the idea of an evolution, and not of a lapse manifested
chronologically, — with which " emanation " is sometimes con-
founded. Primarily, it is the e-maTpofyri, rather than the
7T/3ooSo?, that becomes manifest as the upward movement.
Indeed the term corresponds pretty closely to " involution,"
which, as Mr Spencer has said 1 , would more truly express the
nature of the movement than " evolution." This process is
seen in history when thought, by some great discovery, returns
to its principle. The antithetic movement, which may be
regarded as the manifestation of the 7r/>6oSo?, is seen when,
for example, a great discovery is carried, as time goes on, into
more and more minute details, or is gradually turned to
practical applications. Thus it corresponds to most of what
in modern times is called " progress." A corollary drawn by
Proclus from his system, it may be noted, also suggests itself
from the point of view of modern evolution. The highest and
the lowest things, Proclus concludes, are simple ; "composition,"
or complexity, belongs to intermediate natures.

An even more remarkable point of contact between the
metaphysics of Proclus and later science is that which presents
itself when we bring together his doctrine of the "divine
henads " and the larger conceptions of modern astronomy.
This doctrine, as we saw, is with Proclus abstract metaphysics.
The One, he reasons, must be mediated to the remoter things
by many unities, to each of which its own causal " chain " is
attached. Elaborate as the theory is, it had, when put forth,
hardly any concrete application. If, however, we liberate the
metaphysics from the merely empirical part of the cosmology,
a large and important application becomes clear. The primal
One, as we know, is by Neo-Platonism identified with the
1 First Principles, 6th ed., p. 261.

XI] CONCLUSION 215

Platonic Idea of the Good. Now this, with Plato, corresponds
in the intelligible world to the sun in the visible world, and is
its cause. But if, as Proclus concluded, the One must be
mediated to particular beings by many divine unities, what
constitution should we naturally suppose the visible universe
to have ? Evidently, to each " henad " would correspond a
single world which is one of many, each with its own sun.
Thus the metaphysical conception of Proclus exactly prefigures
the post-Copernican astronomy, for which each of the fixed
stars is the centre of a planetary " chain," and the source of
life to the living beings that appear there in the order of birth.

From the infinite potency of the primal Cause, Bruno drew
the inference that the universe must consist of actually in-
numerable worlds. If we take the Neo-Platonic doctrine, not
in its most generalised form — in which, as soon as we go
beyond a single world, it might seem to issue naturally in an
assertion of the quantitative infinite — but with the additions
made to it by Proclus, the plurality of worlds certainly becomes
more scientifically thinkable. For the "henads" — composing,
as Proclus says, the plurality nearest to absolute unity — are
finite in number. Quantitative infinity he in common with all
the school rejects. A kind of infinity of space as a subjective
form would have presented no difficulty. Indeed both the
geometrical and the arithmetical infinite were allowed by
Plotinus in something very like this sense. The difficulty was
in the supposition that there are actually existent things in
space which are infinite in number. The problem, of course,
still remains as one of metaphysical inference. For there can
be no astronomical proof either that the whole is finite or that
it is infinite. An infinite real ethereal space, with a finite
universe of gravitating matter — which seems to be the tacit
supposition of those who argue from the fact of radiant heat
that the sum of worlds is running down to an end — Bruno and
his Neo-Platonic predecessors would alike have rejected.

The Neo-Platonic idealism, it ought now to be evident, was
far removed from the reproach of peculiar inability. to bring
itself into relation with the things of time and space. If both
finally baffle the attempt at complete mental comprehension,

216 CONCLUSION [XI

this, the philosophers would have said, is because they are
forms of becoming, and hence remain mixed with illusory
imagination. Contrasted with the eternity of intellect, that
which appears under those forms is in a sense unreal. The
whole philosophy of " genesis," however largely conceived, be-
comes again what it was for Parmenides, to whom the
explanations of physics, though having truth as a coherent
order in the world of appearance, where

irav irXeov iarlv 6fxov <f>deo<i teal vvktos d(f>dvrov,

t<T(OV dfKJiOTepCOV 1 ,

are yet false as compared with the unmixed truth of being.
In whatever sense Parmenides conceived of being, the Neo-
Platonists, as we know, conceived of it in the manner of
idealism. Their idealistic ontology, not deprived of all its
detail but merely of its local and temporal features, would, if
accepted, clear up more things than the most ambitious of
modern systems. That it does not in the end profess to make
all things clear, should not be to a modern mind a reason for
contemning it, but should rather tell in its favour.

1 Parmenides ap. Simplic. Phys. (R. P. 100).

APPENDIX.

I. The Communism of Plato.

The feature of Plato's Republic that has drawn most general
attention both in ancient and in modern times is its communism.
This communism, however, had no place in the doctrine of his
philosophical successors. And his system is in one important
point quite opposed to that which is usual in modern socialism
with its effort after equality. Some unremembered anticipation of
this may have been caricatured by Aristophanes in the Ecclesiazusae:
but the artifices in the comedy for maintaining strict "democratic
justice " are of course the very antithesis of the Platonic conception,
the essence of which is to cultivate to the highest point, by separa-
tion of classes and by special training, every natural difference of
faculty. Besides, the Platonic community of goods is applied only
to the ruling philosophic class of guardians and to the military
class of their auxiliaries. The industrial portion of the community is
apparently left to the system of private property and commercial
competition — though no doubt with just so much regulation from
the guardians as is necessary to preserve the social health and keep
down imposthumes. Now the interesting thing is that this offers
something far more practicable than socialism of the modern indus-
trial type.

That this is so may be seen by bringing the Platonic community
of goods into comparison with Mr Spencer's generalisations, in the
third volume of his Principles oj Sociology, on the origin of " Pro-
fessional Institutions." Mr Spencer shows that professional, as
distinguished from industrial, institutions are all differentiated from
the priesthood, which, along with the military class, forms the
dominant part of the earliest specialised society. Now the re-
muneration of all professional classes is for a long time public.

218 APPENDIX

Like Plato's guardians, they receive support from the rest of the
community, not so much for particular services as for constant
readiness to perform certain kinds of service. And a sort of
disinterested character long continues to be assumed in professional
functions, so that the remuneration is formally a voluntary gift,
and not the market price of the service immediately done. This
is now looked upon as a " survival." The normal system is thought
to be that in which every form of social activity is thrown into the
competition of the market-place. Perhaps Mr Spencer himself takes
this view. If, however, we follow out the clue supplied by his
inductions, we are led to imagine a new transformation by which
predominant industrialism might, having done its work, be dis-
placed by a reform in the spirit though not according to the
letter of the Platonic communism.

Industrial institutions, as Mr Spencer says, are for the " susten-
tation " of life ; professional institutions are for its " augmentation."
Now, where there is to be augmentation, sustentation, and the
activities subservient to it, must not be the direct aim of everyone
in the community. Among Mr Spencer's "professional" activities,
for example, are science and philosophy. The beginnings of these,
Aristotle had already said, appeared among the Egyptian priests
because they had leisure to speculate. As Hobbes put it, " leisure
is the mother of philosophy." The same thing is recognised in
Comte's social reconstruction, where, though individual property
is retained, commercial competition is allowed only in the industrial
sphere ; the class that corresponds to the higher class of Plato's
guardians being supported publicly on condition of renouncing all
claim to a private income. The diffei-ence of Comte's from Plato's
scheme is that it is social and not directly political. Comte assigns
no " secular power " to his ecclesiastical or philosophical class. What
Mr Spencer's inductive conclusions also suggest is a social rather
than a political transformation, but oue more generalised than
Comte's. For the professional class, as conceived by Mr Spencer,
includes much more than the philosophic and scientific class. It
is far too differentiated to be restored to anything like the homo-
geneity of an early priesthood. Hence it could not, as such,
become a ruling class, either directly like Plato's guardians, or
indirectly like the Comtean hierocracy.

The point of the reform that suggests itself is this : if the whole
social organism is ever to be brought under an ethical ideal of the

APPENDIX 219

performance of social duties, transcending the conception of an
unmitigated struggle for individual profit or subsistence, the class
to begin with is the class which, by its origin, has already something
of the disinterested character. The liberal professions must be, as
it were, brought back to their original principles. The natural
method of achieving this would be an extension of the system of
public payment as opposed to quasi-commercial competition. Com-
petition itself cannot be dispensed with ; but it would then be in
view of selection or promotion by qualified judges, and do longer
with a view to individual payments from members of the general
community taken at random. Payments would be graduated but
fixed ; not left to the chances of employment in each particular
case. In short, the method would be that of the ecclesiastical
and military professions, and of the Civil Service, generalised ;
though it would no doubt be necessary, as Comte admitted in
the case of teachers, to leave just enough liberty of private practice
to guard against the repression of originality.

To attempt such a reform from below, as is the idea of industrial
socialism, is evidently chimerical. Industrial institutions have their
first origin in the necessity of subsistence, not in an overflow of
unconstrained energy ; and, so far as they are developed from
within, they owe their development to the keenest desire for gain.
Hence they cannot but be the last to be effectively "moralised."
This is just as fatal to Comte's proposal that the supreme secular
power should be handed over to the "industrial chiefs" as it
is to "social democracy." A purely industrial society could
not supply enough disinterested elements for the work of general
regulation. The conclusion seems to be that competition with
a view to individual profit must, as Plato and Comte equally
recognised, be left in the industrial sphere because in that sphere
it supplies the only natural and adequate motive of exertion ; but
that, even there, it can only be carried on justly and humanely
under political regulation by representatives of the whole com-
munity. To constitute a complete political society, it is generally
allowed that there must be diversity of interests. If we allow
that there must also be disinterested elements, then it is evident
that these can only be fitly developed by the reduction of material
motives, within a certain portion of the society, to their lowest
possible limit. The Platonic communism was the first attempt to
solve this problem systematically instead of leaving it to accident.

220 APPENDIX

II. The Gnostics.

The most accurate appreciation of Gnosticism seems to me to
be that of Lipsius in his extremely valuable article in Ersch and
Gruber's Encyclopddie. What Lipsius especially makes clear is
that Gnosticism was not in its essence a mixture of Christianity
and Hellenism, but was a development of Christianity itself, re-
garded as a revealed religion, into a speculative philosophy. In
its highest philosophical development, which was the system of
Valentinus and his successors, it took over elements both from
Greek mythology and from Platonic philosophy ; but this was an
accretion on the Judaeo-Christian elements that formed its nucleus.
An earlier accretion was that which it received during its first
period, when it was springing up in Syria. During this period,
before it reached Alexandria, it appropriated elements of Semitic
rather than of Greek polytheism. These were in the main
Phoenician and Syro-Chaldaic. In its allegorical procedure upon
the documents both of Judaism and of Christianity, it was only
carrying further a method used by Philo among Jewish thinkers,
and by those who afterwards came to be regarded as orthodox
among the Christians. The difference of the Gnostic "heretics" from
thinkers who, like Clement, desired to be also obedient Catholics, was
that the former did not accept the limits imposed by the "ecclesias-
tical tradition"; that is to say, by the average Christian consciousness
as interpreted by systematisers whose aim was fixed upon the universal
reception of a common doctrine. Their speculations had thus one
of the characters of a free philosophy as distinguished from a
philosophy working in subordination to a recognised authoritative
standard. In the expression of their philosophy, on the other hand,
the Gnostics could not disentangle themselves from mythological
imagination. Though essentially philosophies, their systems never
arrive at pure conceptual thought, but turn abstractions into
persons, and eternal relations of reality into histories of events in
time. I The dualism and pessimism of these systems, and their
tendency to regard all phenomena as alike illusory — so that the
question whether any historical tradition is literally true or not
becomes a matter of indifference — much as they may suggest a
remoter Eastern origin, are in reality perfectly independent develop-
ments of the Judaeo-Christian data from which all the Gnostics set

APPENDIX 221

out. For the Gnostics themselves, these data, evaporated as they
might be, were still the presupposition of their peculiar type of
thought.

The result appears to be that Gnosticism was, as Neo-Platonism
was not, a direct outgrowth of the East. It was a serious attempt
at the identification of Christianity as a religion with speculations
on the origin and end of things. Now this identification of religion
with philosophy is a character of the typically Eastern systems of
thought. In its manner it represents a form of speculative freedom.
The individual Brahman, for example, is perfectly free to elaborate
the data of tradition and of past thought in his own way ' ; though
popular mythology is never definitely broken with, and the phi-
losophy is never quite purely theoretical. It may lead far beyond
the practical virtues, through ascetic contemplation to absolute
indifference, but the religious purpose of attaining redemption
from evil is always the final aim. The case of the Gnostics is
similar. They refuse to enter into the Catholic system of authori-
tative dogma wrought out by theological experts with a view to
the imposition on all of a creed that keeps within the bounds set
by the religious consciousness of the many. Philosophy is not
with them, as with the Fathers, an instrument taken up as the
means of giving precise intellectual form to an accredited doctrine.
It is meant to be the speculative unfolding of the traditional
data without regard to any organised enforcement of uniformity.
On the other side, the Christian Gnostics have not the Greek
conception of perfectly disinterested knowledge, which in the Neo-
Platonists subsists along with any mystical aim they may cherish
as a religious consummation of their philosophy. Whatever stress
the Gnostics, by the very name they assume, may lay on know-
ledge as opposed to mere faith, it is always knowledge with a view
to the religious life that they mean. In the later Stoics we meet
with a similar tendency. Here philosophy is passing by way of
ethics into religion, as with the Gnostics religion, by the spirit of
measureless speculation, passed into philosophy. But of Greek
philosophy the very origin and principle of being is " unspeakable
desire to see and know." It began with this and to this it returned.
The direction to practice, social or personal, is secondary. In the

1 Sir Alfred Lyall, in "Letters from Vamadeo Sbastri " (Asiatic Stiirfies,
Second Series), points out the resemblance on this side between Gnosticism and
Hinduism.

222 APPENDIX

Gnostic cosmogonies, on the contrary, the pursuit of hidden
knowledge is the occasion by which the soul of the whole pre-
cipitates itself from its pre-mundane union with the highest divinity
into a realm of ill. From the evil world of matter, religious
enlightenment is the means of escape. Thus it is only as a
divinely-given remedy for the suffering soul that knowledge is
desirable. Evidently the Gnostics are here quite faithful to their
Judaeo-Christian data.

In their terminology they are even ultra-Christian. Their
technical term -rrXrjpwfjia, as the name for the highest sphere of being,
is of Pauline origin. And nothing is more characteristic of them
than their use of the words 77-reu/Aa for the highest part of the soul ;
and 7tviv[j.o.tikoI for the enlightened. Now this is a peculiarly
Christian usage 1 . In the tradition of Greek science, when a higher
part of the soul is distinguished from the soul generally, it is called
vovs. "When the necessity is supposed of placing a subtler material
principle between gross matter and the soul, this principle is called
TTvev/xa. From a strictly materialist point of view, the 7rvevfxa might
come to be identified with the soul ; but it is never taken psycholo-
gically in the sense of its higher part. A modern use of "spirit" in
a meaning continuous with this, is when "animal spirits" were
regarded as the instrument of the soul for moving the limbs. When,
on the other hand, we speak of the "spirit" as equivalent to the
"mind" of man, with merely a shade of difference in connotation,
we are, etymological ly, continuing the Christian usage. The claim
that the Trvei^cu-iKoi, or "spiritual men," alone possess true knowledge
(yvwo-is), in distinction from the imperfectly enlightened faith (7tio-tis)
of the mass of believers, is thus a claim which, by its very terms,
declares its origin as outside the Greek tradition.

Under favourable circumstances, Gnosticism might have become
the starting-point for a sort of Christian Brahmanism. It presents,
however, this difference from Brahmanism, that it is the speculative
development, not of a natural religion like that of the Vedas, but of
a religion tracing its origin to a personal founder. Hence perhaps the
impossibility of its ever making good its claim to be the true
Christianity. When a religion is proclaimed to have been revealed
under given circumstances of time and place, it cannot allow its
historical tradition to be indefinitely vaporised without ceasing to

1 See the discussions of the various meanings of irvevixa in Siebeck's
Geschichte der Psychologic

APPENDIX 223

exist. All the religions of this type, whether aggressively intolerant
or not, have had to bind themselves by a creed of more or less
precision into a Church of more or less exclusiveness. The opposite
extremes as regards rigour of ecclesiastical discipline are probably
Roman Catholicism and Buddhism ; but the bond exists in all by
the mere fact of their origin. Even Gnosticism organised itself into
communities which were not simply philosophic schools. It did not,
even at its highest point, produce solitary speculations like those of
the Brahmans.

Long into the Middle Ages communities animated by Gnostic
ideas persisted, under various names, as a menace to the dominion
of historical Christianity. At the end of his Histoire Critique du
Gnosticisme, Matter devotes some pages to this prolongation. In
those religious heresies of Languedoc which, at the beginning of the
thirteenth century, were stamped out by the Albigensian Crusade
and the Inquisition, newly centralised and systematised on the
initiative of Dominic, the historian is able to trace Gnostic as well
as Manichaean ideas. Now the movement of the Albigenses did
not spring up quite spontaneously in southern France. It came
originally from the European provinces of the Eastern Empire.
Both there and in the Asiatic provinces, it had from time to time
come to the surface, only to be suppressed more or less effectively by
the Emperors at Constantinople. May it not be that some of the
Russian sects which the Orthodox Church is still engaged in
suppressing are a continuation of the same type of speculative
religion? If so, is it not possible that it has still a future?

Let us suppose a remarkable religious personality to arise in
Russia, modern in relation to science and ethics, yet possessing the
type of metaphysical imagination characteristic of the Gnostics.
The way seeming now open for another revolution in the Judaeo-
Christian line of development, a new religion might be proclaimed,
accepting the results of modern science and criticism, but, by the
aid of an imaginative ontology, still retaining at its centre the
Eastern idea of a redeemer and revealer. It would of course be
persecuted by Russian Orthodoxy, but this might be the beginning
of its success. Throwing itself on Western Europe, it would meel
with States practising toleration, and, in the Latin countries, with
a decadent religion. In France and Italy, minds are open, and
a desire is felt for something to take the place of the hollow
structure which, hampering thought and life, can yet only be

224 APPENDIX

controlled by the State and not abolished. A new enthusiasm,
religious and not merely political, would sweep away the wreck.
The condition, if anything can be inferred from history, would
seem to be a renewed contact of the religious ideas of East
and West. For this, the situation of Russia is exactly adapted.
Without the personality, any combination of conditions, however
favourable in itself, must of course be powerless; but, if the recurrent
aspiration of European minds towards a "religion of the future" is
more than a vain reminiscence, this seems the direction in which to
look.

Ill Iamblichus and Proclus on Mathematical Science.

For the theory of knowledge, the views of the later Neo-
Platonists on mathematics are still not without interest even to
students of Kant. An outline of some of the positions taken up
may be found in the book of Iamblichus on the Common Science
of Mathematics 1 , and in the two Prologues of Proclus to his
Commentary on the first book of Euclid's Elements". Of these
Prologues, the first coincides in subject with the treatise of
Iamblichus ; dealing with that which is common to arithmetic and
geometry, and prior to all special departments of mathematics. The
second is an introduction to the general theory of geometry and to
Euclid's Elements in particular, and gives in its course a brief
chronicle of the history of the science to the time of Euclid. The
first Prologue draws from the same sources as the work of
Iamblichus, setting forth views that had gradually taken shape in
the schools of Plato and Aristotle. In the case of one theory at
least in the second, Proclus seems to lay claim to originality. In
other cases, he mentions incidentally that he is only selecting a few
things from what earlier writers have said. Iamblichus is pro-
fessedly expounding the ideas of the "Pythagorean philosophy."

The starting-point with both writers is the position of Plato at
the end of the sixth book of the Republic. The objects of
mathematics and the faculty of understanding (SiaVom) that deals

1 Iamblichi de Communi Mathematica Scientia Liber, ed. N. Festa, 1891.
(Teubner.)

2 Prodi Diadochi in Primum Euclidis Elementorum Librvm Commentarii, ex
rec. G. Friedlein, 1873. (Teubner.)

APPENDIX 225

with them come between dialectic and its objects above, and sense-
perception and its objects below. Being thus intermediate, are
mathematical forms and the reasonings upon them derivatives of
sense-perception, or are they generated by the soul? In the view
most clearly brought out by Proclus, they result from the productive
activity of the soul, but not without relation to a prior intellectual
norm, conformity to which is the criterion of their truth. What is
distinctive of Proclus is the endeavour to determine exactly the
character of this mental production. Iamblichus does not so
specially discuss this, but lays stress on the peculiar fixity of
relations among the objects of mathematics. Mathematical objects
are not forms that can depart from their underlying matter, nor yet
qualities, like the heat of fire, which though actually inseparable
can be thought of as taken away. The forms that constitute number
and extension have a coherence which does not admit of this kind
of disaggregation, whether real or ideal.

According to the view made specially clear by Iamblichus,
mathematical science does not take over its employment of division
and definition and syllogism from dialectic. The mathematical
processes to which these terms are applied are peculiar to mathe-
matics. From itself it discovers and perfects and elaborates them ;
and it has tests of its own, and needs no other science towards the
order of speculation proper to it. Its difference from dialectic is
that it works with its own assumptions, and does not consider
things "simply," without assumptions 1 . As Proclus also says,
there is only one science without assumptions (avvn-oOeTos). No
special science demonstrates its own principles or institutes an
inquiry about them. Thus the investigator of nature (6 cpvarioXoyos)
assumes that there is motion, and then sets out from that
determinate principle ; and so with all special inquirers and
practitioners 2 .

Both writers, while they make considerations about the practical
utility of knowledge subordinate, yet repeatedly draw attention to
the applications, direct and indirect, of mathematics to the arts of
life. Proclus cites Archimedes as a conspicuous example of the

1 De Comm. Math. Scieiltia, pp. 89 — 90: d<£' iavTrjs ovv eupLo-Kei re avra. kclI
reXeiol ko.1 el-epyafcrai, rd re oUela avTrj Ka\ws dtde doKi/J-dfrut, /ecu ov detrai d'XXf/s
emo~Tr)p.ris 7rp6s ttt)v oiKelav deupiav. ov yap rb dirXws Kaddirep rj SiaXe/cTi/ci?, dXXd rd
v<p' eavTrjv SiayLvwcTKei, olKeiws re avrd dewpe? Ka66<rov avrrj vn6K(iTa.i.

2 Prologus n., p. 75.

w. 15

226 APPENDIX

power conferred by science when directed to practical invention.
And science in general, as both he and Iamblichus insist, derives its
necessity from the mathematical principles on which it depends.
The perception of the peculiar scientific importance of mathematics,
grounded in the necessity of its demonstrations, they ascribe to
Pythagoras ; who, as both declare in almost the same terms, brought
it to the form of a liberal discipline. By this is meant that, instead
of treating it as a collection of isolated propositions, each discovered
for itself, Pythagoras began to impress on it the systematically
deductive character which it assumed among the Greeks. In the
order of genetic development, men turn to knowledge for its
own sake when the care about necessary things has ceased to be
pressing 1 .

The classification of the mathematical sciences given in the two
treatises is the same. First in order comes the " common mathe-
matical science" which sets forth the principles that form a bond of
union between arithmetic and geometry. The special branches of
mathematics are four : namely, arithmetic, geometry, music, and
spherics ((KpatptK^). Music is a derivative of arithmetic ; containing
the theory of complex relations of numbers as distinguished from
the numbers themselves. Spherics is similarly related to geometry ;
dealing with abstract motion prior to the actual motion of bodies.
To beginners it is more difficult than astronomy, which finds aid in
the observation of moving bodies ; but as pure theory it is prior 2 .
Next come the various branches of mixed mathematics, such as
mechanics, optics, astronomy, and generally the sciences that employ
instruments for weighing, measuring and observing. These owe
their less degree of precision and cogency to the mixture of sense-
perception with pure mathematical demonstration. Last in the

1 Prologus i., p. 29: ko.1 yap iraaa 77 yeveins /cat r) iv avrrj arpecpofiivr) ttjs ipvxv*
fwr/ ir£<pvKev airb tov dreXoDs els to T^Xeiov x u P e ^ v - Cf. Stoix- ©eoX. 45.

2 With the substitution of astronomy for "spherics," the four Pythagorean
sciences of Iamblichus and Proclus form the "quadrivium," or second division
of the "seven liberal arts," of mediaeval tradition. (The "trivium," according
to the list usually given, comprises grammar, dialectic and rhetoric.) A more
curious point of contact is the identity of the conception of " spherics" — simply
as classification of science and apart from philosophical theory of knowledge —
with Comte's "rational mechanics," regarded by him as the branch of mathe-
matics immediately prior to astronomy, which is the first of the physical
sciences.

APPENDIX 227

theoretic order come simple data of perception brought together as
connected experience (ifx.Trei.pia.).

The ground of this order is to be found in the rationalistic
theory of knowledge common to the school. As Proclus remarks,
the soul is not a tablet empty of words, but is ever written on and
writing on itself — and moreover, as he adds, written on by pure
intellect which is prior to it in the order of being. Upon such a
basis of psychology and consequent theory of knowledge, he goes on
to put the specific question about geometrical demonstration and the
activity of the soul in its production. How can geometry enable us
to rise above matter to unextended thought, when it is occupied
with extension, which is simply the result of the inability of matter
to receive immaterial ideas otherwise than as spread out and apart
from one another ? And how can the Siavoia, proceeding as it does
by unextended notions, yet be the source of the spatial constructions
of geometry? The solution is that geometrical ideas, existing un-
extended in the Siayoia, are projected upon the "matter" furnished
by the epavraaia. Hence the plurality and difference in the figures
with which geometrical science works. The idea of the circle as
understood (in the StaVoia) is one ; as imagined (in the cpavraa-ia) it
is many ; and it is some particular circle as imagined that geometry
must always use in its constructions. At the same time, it is not the
perceived circle (the circle in the alo-drjais) that is the object of pure
geometry. This, with its unsteadiness and inaccuracy, is the object
only of applied geometry. The true geometrician, while necessarily
working by the aid of imagination, strives towards the unextended
unity of the understanding with its immaterial notions. Hence the
disciplinary power of geometry as set forth by Plato 1 . According
to this view, those are right who say that all geometrical propositions
are in a sense theorems, since they are concerned with that which
ever is and does not come into being ; but those also are right who

1 In his theory of " geometrical matter," Proclus remarks, he has taken the
liberty of dissenting from Porphyry and most of the Platonic interpreters. See
Prologus n. , pp. 56 — 7 : irepi fxev ovv rrjs yew/jLerpiKrjs i/Xtjs rotravra e"xoiJ.ei> X^7«e
ovk ayvoovvres, oca. ko\ 6 <f>iko<ro<pos llop<pi'ipios ev rots (Xvliluktois yeypatptv Kal ol
ttXuvtoi rCiv lWarwviK&v oiaraTTOvrai, avpL<pujv6repa 8e elvai ravra reus yew/xerptKah
e<podois vo/xi^ovres Kal to HX&twvi Siavorjra KaXovvri to. viroKel/xeva rrj yewixeTpiq..
G\<vq.5ci yap otv ravra d\\r)\ois, 8i6ri rwv yeufj.erpiKun' d8£>v ai li£v alriai, Ka6' as
Kal 77 didvota 7rpo/3d\\e( ras aTrodei^eis, iv avrrj ir pov<p(arr)Ka<n.v , avrd 5f eKa<rra ra
diaipou/xeva Kal <rvvri.diLi.eva axn^ara rrepl tt)v (pavraaiav 7rpo^^\r]Tai.

228 APPENDIX

say that all are in a sense problems, for, in the way of theorems too,
nothing can be discovered without a going forth of the understanding
to the " intelligible matter " furnished by the imagination, and this
process resembles genetic production 1 . The division once made,
however, the theoretic character is seen not only to extend to all but
to predominate in all.

1 Prologus ii., pp. 77—79.

INDEX OF NAMES.

Aedesius, 122, 133, 134

Aenesidemus, 33

Aeschylus, 2

Agathias, 183

Alexander of Aphrodisias, 158 n.

Alfred the Great, 188

Alypius, 123

Anielius, 29, 30, 34, 36, 100, 110

Ammonius Saccas, 28, 20, 32, 33

Aninionius (pupil of Proclus), 185

Auaxagoras, 11, 24

Antoninus, M. Aurelius. See Aurelius

Antoninus (Neo-Platonic philosopher),

133
Apollonius of Tyana, 23, 114, 117 n.,

138
Aquinas, 192 ff.

Archer-Hind, E. D., 72 n., 184 n.
Archimedes, 225
Aristophanes, 24, 217
Aristotle, 8 n. , etc.
Asclepiodotus, 185
Augustine, St, 187, 193, 197 n.
Aurelius, M., 3, 4, 34
Avicebron (Ibn Gebirol), 195

Bacon, Francis, 201, 202
Bacon, Roger, 196
Baeumker, CI., 72 n.
Bardesanes, 121
Benn, A. W., 12 n., 15, 206
Berkeley, 30, 41, 42, 50, 202
Bigg, C, 37
Boccaccio, 196

Boethius, 111, 187
Bosanquet, B., 91 n.
Bouillet, M. N., 193 n.
Bruno, 22, 197 ff., 215
Burnet, J., 8 n., 10 n.

Campanella, 199
Carneades, 120
Celsus, 137, 140, 145 n., 146
Chaignet, A. E., 182 n.
Chosroes, 183
Chrysanthius, 122, 134
Chiysippus, 120
Cicero, 1 n., 13, 29 n., 33, 188
Clement (of Alexandria), 27, 220
Comte, 5 n., 160, 209, 218, 226 n.
Constantine, 3, 132, 142 n.
Constantius, 132, 151 n.
Cudworth, 20, 200
Cyril, St (Bishop of Alexandria),
145 ff., 157

Damascius, 181 ff.

Dante, 6, 193 ff.

Democritus, 10, 11, 200

Descartes, 9, 34, 44, 72 n., 200 ff.

Dexippus, 136

Diocletian, 3

Diogenes, 139

Dionysius the Areopagite, 188, 193

Dodwell, H. (the elder), 124 n.

Dominic, St, 223

Drummond, J., 36 n.

Duns Scotus, l!l">

230

INDEX OF NAMES

Empedocles, 11, 121, 211, 212

Epictetus, 139, 184

Epicurus, 12, 29 n., 200

Erigena, John Scotus, 188, 195, 204

Euclid, 224 ff.

Eunapius, 123, 135, etc.

Euripides, 22

Eusebius (Bishop of Caesarea), 32,

139
Eusebius (Neo-Platonic philosopher),

134
Eustathius, 132

Ficino, Marsilio, 196 ff.
Firmus, Castricius, 115

Gallienus, 30
Gibbon, E., 133 n., 182
Goethe, 199
Grote, G. , 133 n.

Hatch, E., 19 n.

Hegel, 205

Heraclitus, 10, 36, 73

Herennius, 33

Hermias, 185

Herodotus, 1 n., 8 n.

Hesiod, 18 n., 100

Hierocles (Proconsul of Bithynia),

138, 146
Hierocles (of Alexandria), 32, 157
Hobbes, 9, 200, 207, 218
Homer, 18, 96, 110, 149, 161
Hume, 204
Hypatia, 28, 156

Iamblichus. See ch. vn., etc.
Isidore, 181. (Not identical with the
" Isidorus " mentioned at p. 183.)

Jerome, St, 109, 133 n.
Joannes Philoponus, 183 n., 185 n.
Julian. See ch. viii., etc.
Justinian, 156, 182
Juvenal, 22

Kant, 204, 224

Keim, Th., 20 n., 138 n.

Leibniz, 202, 205

Lipsius, R. A., 220

Locke, 201, 203

Longinus, 33, 34, 36, 39 n., 73, 109

Lucian, 22

Lucretius, 12 n., 200

Lyall, A. C, 221 n.

Macarius Magnes, 146

Machiavelli, 6

Macrobius, 188

Maine, H. S., 5 n.

Maistre, J. de, 16 n.

Marcella, 109

Marinus, 144, etc. See Proclus.

Matter, A. J., 27, 223

Maurice, F. D., 136 n.

Maximus, 134

Mirandola, Pico della, 163 n.

Morbeka, William of, 162

More, H., 200

Moses, 39, 141, 146 ff.

Nemesius, 187

Neumann, C. J., 138 n., 145 ff.

Newton, 200

Numa, 151

Numenius, 34 ff., 138

Ockham, William of, 195
Olympiodorus (teacher of Proclus),

157 n., 159
Olympiodorus (Commentator on Plato

and Aristotle), 157, 185
Origen (the ecclesiastical writer), 27,

33, 138 n., 197
Origen (Platonic philosopher), 33

Parmenides, 10, 11, 57, 216

Petrarch, 6, 195

Phidias, 92

Philo Judaeus, 27, 34 ff., 88 n., 106,

138, 220
Plato, 9, etc.

Plotinus. See chs. iv., v., vi., etc.
Plutarch (of Chaeronea), 34, 73, 120,

122
Plutarch (of Athens), 150 ff.

INDEX OF NAMES

•231

Porphyry. Sec ch. vn., etc.
Preller, L. See Hitter
Priscus, 134, 135
Proclus. See ch. ix., etc.
Prohaeresius, 124

Pythagoras, 8, 22, 114, 121, 130, 147,
220

Read, C, 209 n.

Renan, E., 4 n., 140 n., 184 n.,
190 n.

Ritter, H. and Preller, L. Cited as
R. P. The references are to Hiatoria
Philosophiue Graecae, 7th ed.

Rogatianus, 30

Rohde, E., 18 n.

Sallust (Praetorian Prefect under

Julian), 136
Scotus, John. See Erigena
Scotus, John Duns. See Duns
Sextus Enipiricus, 33
Shelley, P. B., 203
Siebeck, H., 44, 53, 72 n., 206,

222 n.
Simon, J., 27, 38 n., 77 n., 85 n.,

109, 110 n., 114 n.
Sirnplicius, 183, 184, 211
Socrates (the philosopher), 11, 12,

13, 19, 29, 42, 144 n., 163, 206
Socrates (ecclesiastical historian), 157
Sopater, 124 n., 132

Sorel, G., 20 n.

Sosipatra, 133

Spencer, H., 214, 217 ff.

Spenser, E., 203

Spinoza, 101, 162, 174, 202, 204,

205
Suetonius, 3, 4 n., 17 n.
Synesius, 157, 188
Syrianus, 157 ff.

Tacitus, 3, 4 n., 140
Tannery, P., 10 n.
Taylor, T., 193 n.
Tertullian, 21, 186
Thales, 206

Themistius, 133, 158 n.
Theodore of Asine, 135, 164
Theodoret, 138
Theophrastus, 116, 120.

Vacherot, E., 27, 35 n., 85 n., 93,

158 n., 198 n.
Valentinus, 220

Xenophanes, 10, 21
Xenophon, 13

Zeller, E. The references are to Die
Philosophic der Grieehen, n. 1,
4th ed.; n. 2, in. 2, 3rd ed.

Zeno (the Stoic), 13

Zoroaster, 110

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