CHAPTER XIII

THE RELIGIOUS PERIOD (100 B. C.–476 A. D.)

=The Two Causes of the Rise of Religious Feeling.= There were two causes for the turn of the time from its interest in individual practical ethics to religion. The first was an inner cause within the nature of the ethical philosophy of the Schools. The rise of the religious and the supernatural was the culmination of the undercurrent of skepticism in the validity of reason, which we found growing rapidly in the Ethical Period. The more the Schools grew alike in their teaching, the less were they able to assure their disciples of any certain insight into virtue and happiness. The Ethical Period ended in eclecticism, and this was the impeachment of the authority of each School. The Schools examined their dogmatic assumptions. The fundamental inner conviction grew stronger that the intellect of man is self-inconsistent: so inconsistent as to be undependable; so inconsistent as not to vouchsafe man the virtue and happiness which the Schools had promised. As Skepticism became more strongly intrenched, the imperturbable self-certainty of the Wise Man became shaken, the Ethical Period disappeared, and the Religious Period was born. Belief in the authority of the supernatural superseded belief in the authority of the reason.

The second cause may be called external, and was the introduction of many eastern religions into the empire. It has been common to exaggerate the vices of the Romans of the first Christian centuries, and to point to the corruption of the times as the cause of the great rise of religions.[42] No doubt, in the city of Rome and other large cities the populations were very licentious and corrupt. But this was not the case with the people in the small municipalities and the country. The people were united in peace under one government. There was great commercial prosperity and widespread travel. Education prospered. The religion of the Romans, however, long since decadent, had become an object of derision. All faith in it had been lost, and magicians and romancers had a large patronage. The inner life of man demanded some external spiritual authority to satisfy it, and, finding it could not be satisfied in the realm of sense, turned to the supersensuous. It was an age of universal superstitions, reported miracles, and the multiplying of myths. In the realm of the religious emotions everything was in flux. Even the Greek philosophies――the Stoic, the Platonic, the Cynic, and the neo-Pythagorean――show it in their emphasis upon renunciation in practical life. In place of the Grecian love for earthly existence, a longing for the mysterious was growing into a feverish desire for strange and mysterious cults. A great religious movement possessed the nations of the empire, and into Roman civilization of the first century A. D. there streamed many new religions. From the Orient came the Mithra, Magna Mater, Star Worship, Isis and Osiris, and many others. These mingled with the western religions, and their rivalry was energetic for the possession of men’s spirits. The Roman people were hospitable to all religions, and Rome became a religious battleground. With the interest turned from earthly to heavenly things, salvation from trouble seemed to lie in the supernatural.

=The Need of Spiritual Authority.= Thus the complacent Ethical Period gave way to the cry for some authority in morals and science. Man was no longer confident that he could attain present happiness or his soul’s salvation by his own strength. He turned for help both to the religious tradition of the past and to the revelation that might come to him in the present. The authority in either was practically the same; for the past was only the crystallization of an ever-present divine spirit. Yet present and past revelations differ in their credentials: the present revelation is an immediate illumination of the spirit; the past is presented in historic records. The Alexandrian school accepted both forms of revelation as the highest source of knowledge.

The demand for supernatural authority found expression in many curious ways. It is notorious that at this time the writings and oral traditions of the past were greatly interpolated. The philosophers of the first century thought that they themselves could get a hearing only by inserting their own doctrines into the writings of Plato, Aristotle, and other heroes of the past. Thus the neo-Pythagoreans invented a halo of wisdom for Pythagoras in order to give their own sect its credentials. The demand for authority culminated in the attempt to trace the entire civilization of the time to some religious source. Philo on the one side, and the Gnostics on the other, found that Greek and Hebrew history have a common religious origin. Greek thought was found in the Oriental writings. The Greek sages were placed by the side of the Old Testament heroes. The canon of the Christians is full of cross-references――the Old Testament giving historical authority to the New Testament, the New Testament giving to the Old Testament the support of immediate revelation. There came into vogue what was called “allegorical interpretation,” according to which an historical document could be given two interpretations (or more)――a literal interpretation and a spiritual interpretation. The documents were supposed to have a body and a soul. The literal interpretation was of the body of the documents and suitable for the people; the spiritual interpretation was the more liberal interpretation of the soul of the document and suitable for philosophers.

At the same time a vast number of writings appeared as historical revelations. It was necessary to separate the true from the false, but this could not be done by the individual without injuring the very principle upon which revelation was supposed to rest. Consequently all knowledge was generally regarded as revelation. For example, Plutarch and the Stoics divided revelation into three classes: poetry, law, and philosophy. Although Plutarch disclaimed open superstitions, he nevertheless accepted as true all sorts of miracles and prophecies. The later neo-Platonists are also examples of the great body of those who made no discrimination as to what revelation is true. The Christian church may be said to have been alone in making a criticism of the records, and in setting up as criteria tradition and historically accredited authority. As a result of its criticism the Christian canon was finally decided upon, and the Old and New Testaments were accepted as alone inspired. The rivals of the church――the Alexandrian philosophies, especially neo-Platonism――had no organization that could decide upon a canon. They were consequently at a disadvantage, but they felt no need of an infallible historical authority or of historical criticism. Revelation to them was any immediate illumination of the individual. The individual man who comes in contact with the Deity has possession of the divine truth. Although only few attain the truth, and these only at rare moments, there is nevertheless no way of determining what is fictitious and what is true. This difference in the conception of inspiration between the neo-Platonists and the Christians is important to note, for it marks an important difference in the two greatest intellectual movements of the next thousand years. The church fixed revelation on the basis of historical authority, and this revelation became the source of the scholasticism of the Middle Ages; neo-Platonism left the individual man free to get revelation from any source through his own personal contact with the divine, and this was the basis of the mysticism of the Middle Ages.

=The Rise of the Conception of Spirituality.= We have seen that out of the widespread cry for spiritual help came the demand for spiritual authority. There is also another result,――the increased importance in history of the spiritual personality. The men of the past became heroes, the great men sanctified and surrounded with myths. Hero worship, ancestor worship, the worship of the genius of the emperor inaugurated by Augustus, were part of this movement. Disciples began to have unconditional trust in their masters, and in neo-Platonism this worship culminated in veneration for the leaders of the School. This movement appears in the grandest form in history in the impression of the wonderful personality of Jesus Christ.

The next step was to regard personality as the revelation of the divine Logos. Personality is the cosmic reason. Nature and history are kinds of general revelations, but special revelations require great personalities――Moses, the prophets, the Greek scientists, and especially Jesus who was the Messiah, the Son of God. The power that these personalities exhibit must be a revelation, and not the working of the human reason, for the human unaided reason deals only with sensations, and is incapable of gaining divine truth. The reason needs the divine to illuminate it. The great personalities are therefore the repositories of powers that make them different from ordinary men. Their revelations are above, and sometimes opposed to, the conclusions of ordinary reason. Thus personalities themselves are divided by religious dualism, and in them the human and divine are far apart. Moreover, the more great personalities were apotheosized, the more the common run of humanity was depreciated. Then distinction was made between great personalities. At first, when authority was sought everywhere, all great personalities were supposed to have divine revelation; later, when the lines were drawn between the Christian and other beliefs, only the Christian leaders were considered by the Christians to be instruments of the divine.

This spiritualizing of historical personalities laid the emphasis more than ever before upon the dualism in all human beings. All men are ensnared in the world of sense, and they can attain knowledge of the higher world only through the illumination of their higher natures. Aristotle alone among the Greeks had had a clear conception of spirituality, but he had conceived spirituality as applied solely to God. He had not conceived God to be a person. But the Stoic antithesis of reason and what is contrary to reason, and the Platonic antithesis of the supersensuous and the sensuous, had marked off _in man_ the inner personal nature of man as withdrawn into itself and set over against his sensuous nature. The more this ethical dualism became a religious dualism, the more the conception of spiritual personality was extended to all human beings. Its most refined expression was in the Christian conception of the soul.

=The Revival of Platonism.= The Platonism of the Academy had had little influence in the Ethical Period and its tradition had been barely kept alive. The Middle Academy had been skeptical and the New Academy eclectic. The Religious Period, on the other hand, was thoroughly Platonic, and Plato from this time until the Crusades became the ruling philosophical power. For three hundred years his influence had been nothing; for the next twelve hundred he dominated men’s minds, so far as any philosopher could in religious times. When the Wise Man vanished from philosophy, and the expectation of spiritual blessedness took its place, when Skepticism drove men from ethics, first to eclecticism and then to theology, when philosophy passed to mysticism――then did Platonism, with its antithesis between the sensible and the supersensible, come to its own. Of all the historical philosophies it could best amalgamate all religions. Platonism (1) absorbed Oriental religions, (2) furnished a didactic form for Christianity, (3) recreated itself into the mystic neo-Platonism. The world-longing for the supernatural found its best medium in Platonism. When the Wise Man vanished, the mystic priest appeared.

=The Divisions of the Religious Period.= Out of the seething religious times at the beginning of this era, there emerged two distinct currents of thought that extended through the entire length of the Religious Period, and carried down into the Middle Ages all the culture that the mediæval possessed. The two movements were (1) the religious philosophies of the still persistent Hellenic civilization, and (2) the new-born Christian religion, which was destined to determine the future of the western people. If we scrutinize these two movements we shall find that each has its introductory and its development stages, and at the point of division in each stands a great leader who was instrumental in bringing about the transition. The great neo-Platonist, Plotinus (204–269), marks the division line in the Hellenic movement; the Christian, Origen (185–254), marks the division line in theological Christianity. While these men were contemporaries, we shall take, for various reasons, the year 200 as the date of division of the Christian movement, and the year 250 as the date of division of the Hellenic movement. The first stage of each movement we shall call its Introductory Period, and the second its Development Period.

During their Introductory Periods the two movements tried to draw together under the influence of the philosophical eclecticism which colors this time. In their Development Periods the two movements draw apart, become closed and mutually repellent. The historical developments of the two movements from beginning to end are very different. The tide of Hellenism floods with Plotinus, its greatest representative, and after him there is a gradual ebb. On the other hand, Christianity shows a continuous growth, both internally and externally, and the mighty Origen only points to the mightier Augustine. Both movements finally merge in Augustine.

I. Hellenic Religious II. Christianity. Philosophy. 1. Introductory Period Introductory Period (100 B. C.–250 A. D.). (31 A. D.–200 A. D.).

(1) Greek-Jewish philosophy (1) Period of simple faith (until of Alexandria. the 2d century A. D.). Philo (25 B. C.–50 A. D.).

(2) Neo-Pythagoreanism (2) Period of Earlier Formulation (100 B. C.–150 A. D.). of Doctrine. Apologists (2d century). Gnostics (2d century). Old Catholic Theologians (2d and 3d centuries).

2. Development Period Development Period (200–476). (250–476). Neo-Platonism. (1) Period of Actual Formulation Plotinus (204–269). of Doctrine. Jamblichus (d. 330 about). The School of Catechists. Proclus (410–485). Origen (185–254).

(2) The Œcumenical Councils and the establishment of dogma.

=The Hellenic Religious Philosophies.= Alexandria and not Athens was now the intellectual centre of Hellenism. The position and history of the city, as well as the character of its population, were most favorable for the mingling of religions and philosophies. In the “university” of this great commercial metropolis the treasures of Greek culture were concentrated and scholastic work was vigorously pursued. Here all philosophies met, and all religions and cults were tolerated. Exhausted Greek philosophy here came in contact with those fresh Oriental ideas which previously, at a distance, had excited the imagination of the Greeks as something mysterious. The result was a new phase of philosophy,――theosophy, comparative religion, or eclecticism of philosophy and religion.

In no instance were the authors of these religious philosophies Greeks. The philosophy of Philo was a Hellenism, but the Hellenism of a Jew. Neo-Pythagoreanism seems to have had representatives from every country except the motherland of Greece. The author of neo-Platonism was born in Egypt. Of the two introductory movements, the Greek-Jewish philosophy accorded more with Oriental life, neo-Pythagoreanism with Greek life. Both go back to the principles that were fundamental in the Pythagorean mysteries.

=The Introductory Period of Hellenic Religious Philosophy= (100 B. C.–250 A. D.). =The Turning to the Past for Spiritual Authority.=

=1. The Greek-Jewish Philosophy of Philo.= The Jews lived in great numbers in Alexandria, and many of them were wealthy and influential. In Alexandria the Old Testament had been translated into Greek, and through it the Greeks had become acquainted with the religion of the Jews. While the Old Testament contained the philosophy of the Jews, these Alexandrian Jews had learned in Alexandria to admire greatly the philosophy of the Greeks. So great was their admiration that they soon conceived Plato to be in their Law and their Law in Plato. They argued that since the Old Testament was their revelation, all the best Greek philosophy must be in the Old Testament. The Alexandrian Jews used Greek conceptions wherever they found them; and this tendency toward eclecticism appeared as early as 160 B. C. in Aristobulus and Aristeas. At that time these Jews used Greek philosophy in interpreting the Old Testament and employed the “allegorical method of interpretation.” This eclectic tendency was brought to completion by Philo (25 B. C.–50 A. D.), who was the most notable philosopher of this time. Philo was guided in his eclecticism by some such rules as these: (1) Revelation is the highest possible authority and includes the best of Greek thought; (2) Greek philosophy is derived from the fundamental principles of the Old Testament; (3) Jewish revelation is expressed in symbols, while Greek philosophy is expressed in concepts.

Philo’s teaching contains, in unsymmetrical form, both Stoicism and Platonism, and in it can be found the seeds of all that grew up in Christian soil. His philosophy was a bridge from the philosophy of Judaism to Christian theology. It has been called a “buffer” philosophy.

God is the ultimate cause of the world, but He is so transcendent that He can be described only in negative terms. This method of defining God got the name in later times of “negative theology.” It was the common method in these Alexandrian days. God is absolutely inconceivable and inexpressible to man; to Himself He is “I am who am.” The goodness of God impelled Him, and His power enabled Him, to create the world. From this point of view Philo is a monist. But in man reason and sense meet. Man’s soul is from God, but his sense-body is from matter, and from this point of view Philo is a dualist. Matter is outside God. God is so transcendent that He cannot come in contact with matter, and so He created the world and rules the world through mediators or “potencies.” These “potencies” are the same as the Ideas of Plato, the “reasons” of the Stoics, the numbers of the Pythagoreans, the angels of the Old Testament, or the dæmons of popular mythology. The sum-total of God’s activity in the world was called by Philo the Logos. Philo speaks of the Logos in two ways: sometimes as the plural number of teleological forces in the world; sometimes as the unity of these forces, “the first begotten of God,” “the second God,” “the son of God.” The Logos represents the first attempt to overcome the dualism between matter and God. The Logos is the high priest standing between God and the world. It is the everlasting revelation of God’s presence. Philo’s world is made by God and not by others, and is the expression of God’s thought in infinite forms and forces. God is not defiled by coming into contact with matter. God gives orders, the Logos obeys. Philo believed in transmigration of souls, and to him the most important problem is, How the spirit can become like God. The answer is (1) by the acquirement of the Stoic apathy, (2) by possessing the Aristotelian dianoetic virtues, (3) by complete absorption in God.

=2. Neo-Pythagoreanism.= The history of Pythagoreanism is extremely varied. Its body of doctrine from epoch to epoch was continually changing. The only characteristic common to its entire history was its practical tendency toward asceticism and its affiliation with the Mysteries. Let us review the history of Pythagoreanism down to the time of neo-Pythagoreanism. In 510 B. C., at the battle of Crotona, the early band of Pythagoreans was dispersed, and about 504 B. C. Pythagoras died. His scattered followers formed a school centring at Thebes around the philosophy of numbers, and this school lasted until 350 B. C. In 350 B. C. Pythagoreanism no longer existed as a school, for its members had either joined the Academy or formed one of the Mysteries. In 100 B. C. Pythagoreanism again emerged under the name of neo-Pythagoreanism, and this is the body which we meet in the introductory stage of the Religious Period. Alexandria was its centre, but it drew its disciples from every part of the earth. Among them Apollonius alone rises as a distinct figure. He was widely known, for he traveled everywhere as a religious teacher and wonder-worker. Other neo-Pythagoreans were P. Nigidius Figulus, a friend of Cicero, Sotion, a friend of the Sextians, Moderatus of Gades, and in later times Nicomachus of Gerasa and Numenius of Apamea. Another, and rather numerous group, allied to the neo-Pythagoreans, should be mentioned here. These were the so-called Eclectic Platonists, the representatives of whom were Plutarch (50–125 A. D.), and Celsus (about 200 A. D.), the opponent of Christianity. The only important difference between the neo-Pythagoreans and the Eclectic Platonists was that the former referred to Pythagoras as their religious model, and the latter to Plato. Both were mystical, ascetic, and eclectic.

Neo-Pythagoreanism first became noticeable in the first century B. C., on account of the great number of writings appearing under the names of Pythagoras and Philolaus. About these there arose a large neo-Pythagorean literature,――about ninety treatises by fifty authors. The writings under the name of Pythagoras were, for many centuries, the cause of the misconception of the true teaching of the original Pythagoras. The advent of the neo-Pythagorean literature marks the return at Alexandria to the older systems of thought, and is coincident with the learned literary investigations in the University of Alexandria. The particular revival of Pythagoreanism in the form of neo-Pythagoreanism came at the same time with the renewal of the Homeric form of poetry.

Neo-Pythagoreanism, as its history shows, is the philosophy of a half-religious sect with ascetic tendencies. Its transcendental philosophy was better suited to a people under an autocratic government, and ruled by Oriental traditions, than was the ethical teaching of the four Schools. The system of the ethical Schools arose out of the needs of the individual; but at this time the cry was for an absolute object which transcends both the individual and nature. The demand was for a god who could be served not by sacrifice, but by silent prayer, wisdom, and virtue. There are many points of similarity between the doctrine of Philo and neo-Pythagoreanism. The neo-Pythagoreans were monotheistic, but at the same time they accepted within their monotheism the hierarchy of the gods. They held to the commonly accepted doctrines of their time, viz., the transmigration of the soul, the dualism of the mind and body, the mediation of a graded series of celestial beings between man and God. They interpreted God in a spiritual way, but they conceived the ideas in God’s mind to be the Pythagorean numbers――just as Philo conceived them to be the Old Testament angels.

=The Development Period of Hellenic Religious Philosophy= (250–476 A. D.). =The Turning to the Present for Spiritual Authority. Platonism and Neo-Platonism.= Neo-Platonism is the final statement of Hellenic culture, and the question may be asked, In what form did it present Hellenism? The answer is, It sets forth the Hellenic feeling as _mysticism_. The contribution of Plotinus was the destruction of the classic Greek ideal with its definiteness of form, and was the substitution of a new ideal of soaring spiritual exaltation. One has only to look back to the art, science, and philosophy of the Periclean Age to appreciate how far this last survival of Greek culture had drifted from its original moorings. Nevertheless, neo-Platonism is not so very far distant from that powerful ascetic principle in the Greek mysteries which is one aspect of the doctrine of Plato himself. Neo-Platonism was Platonism exaggerated on this mystic and ascetic side. Plotinus said that he was ashamed that he had a body; that the soul looks on and weeps at the sinfulness of the body; that it is not enough to regulate the body, but that the body must be exterminated. As the voice of Hellenism, neo-Platonism is speaking in an age when consciousness is weighed down with the sense of the enormity of evil and the need of salvation. Neo-Platonism feels that the moral conflict in the human soul is repeated in the universe; that the eternal struggle between matter and spirit goes on in the macrocosm as well as the microcosm. Plotinus held to the ancient Greek conception of the personification of the powers of nature, of the derivation of happiness from activity, of the supremacy of the intellect over the other faculties. But in accepting the ancient Greek doctrine of the subordination of man to the universe, he conceived man to be absorbed by the universe.

=Neo-Platonism and the Two Introductory Philosophies.= Neo-Platonism, therefore, shares in the mysticism of the philosophies of Philo and the neo-Pythagoreans. All three teach the transcendence of God; all three were metaphysically monistic and ethically dualistic; all three conceive the existence of intermediaries between God and man. The introductory philosophies sought to build eclectic doctrines, while neo-Platonism became eclectic only in its last phases. Plotinus constructed a positive and original philosophy, and among the three systems the teaching of Plotinus is carefully worked out. Indeed, Plotinus is by far the greatest thinker of this religious period. In the philosophy of Plotinus the relations between man and God are given a more æsthetic character, and the doctrine of immediate experience is more carefully discussed and has greater importance than in neo-Pythagoreanism and the teaching of Philo.

=Neo-Platonism and Christianity.= Neo-Platonism and Christianity have one thing at least in common. They have the same problem,――how to spiritualize the universe. This was the problem that both Plotinus and Origen attempted to work out. With the development of the consciousness of spiritual personality and the need of a revelation, the Divine seemed to both to be correspondingly farther away. God is unknown and incomprehensible, and so pure that He cannot come in contact with earthly existence. What, then, is the bond between the heavenly and the earthly? From the point of view of cosmology and of ethics, neither succeeded in overcoming the dualism. The sensuous was regarded as alien to God, and as a thing from which the spirit must free itself. Metaphysically their efforts to construct a spiritual monism were more successful, but their efforts were along different lines. The Christian conceived the universe of God and matter to be bound together by the principle of love; the neo-Platonist, by a series of countless grades of beings in diminishing perfections from the All-perfect. Then again, to the neo-Platonist the question of the return of man to God was a question of the personal inner experience of the individual; to the Christian theologian it was included in the larger problem of the historical process by which the whole human race is redeemed. Thus the metaphysical solution of each works out differently and with different factors.

Both neo-Platonic and Christian theology tried to prove that their respective religious convictions were the only true source of salvation. Both originated in the Alexandrian School. Christian theology was preceded by the fantastic system of the Gnostics, as Plotinus was preceded by the Pythagoreans and Philo. In their development the differences between the two appear. Christianity was supported by a church organization which had an internal vitality and a regulative power; neo-Platonism was supported and regulated by individuals, without organization, who had assimilated every faith. Christian theology was founded on a faith that had already expanded, while neo-Platonism was at the beginning an erudite religion that tried to develop an extended faith and, incidentally, later to assimilate other cults. Outwardly neo-Platonism, as the final stand of the pagan world to save itself from destruction, was unsuccessful in that it failed to perpetuate itself as an organization. Really it achieved a marked success. Not only did it live a long life of two hundred and fifty years, but it also lived in the development of its antagonist, Christianity. For neo-Platonism, by the irony of fate, was one of the important factors that entered into the building up and strengthening of Christianity. In its lingering death-struggle Hellenism was creating the conceptions that the Christian, Augustine, later employed in shaping Christian theology for the Middle Ages.

=The Periods of Neo-Platonism.=

(1) The Alexandrian School――about 240. Neo-Platonism presented as a Scientific Theory. The leader was Plotinus (204–269). (2) The Syrian School――about 310. The Attempt to Systematize all Polytheisms. The leader was Jamblichus (d. about 330). (3) The Athenian School――about 450. The Recapitulation of Greek Philosophy. The leader was Proclus (410–485).

=The Alexandrian School. The Scientific Theory of Neo-Platonism. The Life and Writings of Plotinus= (204–269 A. D.). Plotinus was born in Lycopolis in Egypt, and received his education in Alexandria, under Ammonius Saccas, who was Origen’s teacher. He campaigned with the emperor, Gordian, against the Persians, in order to pursue scientific studies in the East. He was especially interested in the Persian religion. In this way Plotinus became acquainted at first hand with the mysticism of the Orient. In 244 he appeared at Rome as a teacher, and was received with great éclat by the people, and in the highest circles he gained the most reverent recognition. His school contained representatives from all nations and from almost every calling,――physicians, rhetoricians, poets, senators, an emperor and empress. Plotinus lived in a country estate in Campania, and he almost succeeded in inducing the emperor to found a city of philosophers in Campania. It was to be called Platonopolis and, with Plato’s Republic as a model, it was to be an Hellenic cloister for religious contemplation. The literary activity of Plotinus occurred in his old age, and he wrote nothing until after he was fifty. His works consisted of fifty-four _Corpuscles_ which his pupil, Porphyry, combined into six _Enneads_. For the next three hundred years his school became the centre of the Hellenic movement――the centre of science, philosophy, and literature. The literature of neo-Platonism was enormous, on account of the many commentaries on the philosophy of Plato within the neo-Platonic circle.

=The General Character of the Teaching of Plotinus.= There is a great division of opinion about the value of the teaching of Plotinus, for he drew his philosophy only in the broadest outlines, and he made no attempt to advance from a general view of the world to exact knowledge of it. Intellectually his philosophy is an abstraction; and yet emotionally, in an intimate way, it touched deeply an age weary with culture. Thus one can see how the actual achievement of Plotinus was small, but how at the same time its force and influence was very great. It was a religious teaching which rose to magnificent heights of contemplation from miserable intellectual surroundings. Nevertheless, the philosophy of Plotinus was an extreme form of intellectualism――it was an intellectual ennobling and transforming of religion. The earlier philosophy had supported the happiness of the individual by offers of infinitude; but Plotinus thought of the individual as never isolated from the Infinite, but as always longing for the Infinite. Fellowship with God is knowledge of Him, but it is knowledge of a peculiar kind. It is enthusiasm, intuition, ecstasy. There is a chasm between man and God, which Plotinus would bridge by placing reality so deeply within consciousness as to annihilate all antitheses and contradictions. Thus this deep reality below consciousness is cosmic and not human; and the religion of Plotinus is cosmocentric and not anthropocentric. Plotinus intensifies and summarizes Greek culture in order to consolidate and defend it. But in thus thinking out the Greek conceptions to their logical completeness, those conceptions collapse.

=The Mystic God.= There are two characteristics that distinguish the mystic God of Plotinus.

1. The first characteristic is the supra-consciousness of God. God is the indefinable, original Being who is above all antitheses. He is _supra_-everything, even _supra_-conscious. Nothing can be attributed to Him, not even thought or will, for these imply two elements and God is a unity. Any description of Him must be in negative terms (“negative theology”). If we speak of Him as the One, the First, the Cosmic Cause, Goodness, or as Light, we are only relatively and not really describing Him. God is present in all, yet He is not divided; He is the source of all, and yet He himself is perfectly finished. In his conception of God as compared to the world, Plotinus added the realm of the supra-conscious and the sub-conscious to the conscious.

2. In the second place Plotinus conceived God in His relation to the world in the terms of _dynamic pantheism_. This is a pantheism of a peculiar type. God does not create the world; the world is not the act of His will; nor is the world the result of a transference of part of His nature. In ordinary pantheism the world is a diffusion of the substance of God and the whole is static. Not so in the teaching of Plotinus! God permeates the world by His activity, and the world is dynamic through and through. But this dynamic activity of God must not be conceived as an historical or time process. _The process is timeless. It is a process of essence or worth._ The grades in the process are those of _significance or value_. All are within the all-embracing unity of God and each particular draws its life from Him. _This is called the theory of emanations._ Plotinus used the figure which mystics have always employed in this connection,――the figure of the sun and its rays of light in the darkness. The rays become less and less intense with the increasing distance from the Godhead, until they end in darkness. The process is an overflowing from the Godhead in which the Godhead remains unchanged.

=The Two Problems of Plotinus.= Starting with this conception of the Godhead as a dynamic contentless Being, Plotinus is bound to explain the world of sense-phenomena. His problem is twofold: he must explain the sequence of phenomena from the Godhead, which is the metaphysical problem; he must explain how man, living in the world of sense, can rise to communion with the Godhead, which is the ethical problem. Metaphysics and ethics are to Plotinus in inverted parallelism.

=The World of Emanations.――The Metaphysical Problem of Plotinus.= The aim of Plotinus in this is to construct a metaphysical monism out of the dualistic factors which had so long been present in Greek thought. The two fundamental principles upon which he raised his structure were (1) his dynamic series of emanations, and (2) his conception of matter as entirely negative. The highest Being, God, by an excess of energy or goodness, has the natural impulse to create something similar to himself. This creative impulse exists in each creature in turn and the movement propagates itself. Stage is added to stage in a descending series, until the impulse dies out in non-Being as the limit. The ordinary pantheism of co-existence of phenomena is transformed into a succession of stages of values, and all make up a harmony of more or less distinct copies of God. There are three steps in which the process of emanation proceeds,――spirit, soul, and matter.

_The Spirit or Nous_ is the first emanation from the One in point of significance. It is the image of the One sent forth by its overflow of energy. This image involuntarily turns toward its original, the One, and in beholding it becomes Spirit, Nous, or intellectual consciousness. It turns to the One and recognizes itself as the image of the One. Thus, in the first degree away from God, the duality of thinker as subject, and of the thing thought as object, appears. The unconsciousness of the One is thus contrasted with consciousness, and the dual nature of consciousness is thus brought out; and for the first time an exact formulation of the psychological conception of consciousness is given.

The Nous is a unitary function of the One, like the Logos of Philo. At the same time the Nous contains within itself, as content, the Platonic Ideas or arch-types of individuals. These Ideas are not mere thoughts, but have their own existence. The Nous is their unity, however, just as a unity exists for the theorems of a science. These Ideas are pure intellectual potencies and the final causes of the world of nature.

_The Soul_ is the second degree removed from the One. It stands in the same relation to the Nous as the Nous to the Godhead. The Soul belongs to the world of light, but it stands just on the boundaries of the world of darkness. It is the image of an image and therefore doubly dual,――it consists of a higher or world-soul and the lesser souls. The world-soul is divided into two forces,――the formative power of the world, and the body of the world. Individual souls are divided into the supersensible or intellectual soul (the part that has pre-existence and undergoes metamorphosis), and the sensible part which has built up the body as an instrument of its working power. The soul is present in all parts of its body. The individual souls are called _plastic forces_.

_Matter_ is the emanation which is most distant from the One. The Nous is the emanation of the One, the world-soul is the emanation from the Nous, individual souls are a kind of intermediate emanation from the world-soul, and matter is the emanation of the individual souls. That is to say, the world-soul, with the forces that are native to it, generates matter and then, by uniting itself through its forces with matter, produces the world of corporeal things. _What is the character of matter_ with which the world-soul forms this union? _It is space._ Space conditions all earthly existence. It is the same as Plato’s conception of the absolutely negative non-Being and the merely possible. It is absolute sterility, entirely evil and devoid of good. Matter has no dualistic independence of the One. _What is the character of the nature world?_ It has the same character and quality as the formative forces that unite with this negative matter――it is no more and no less eternal. The world of nature to Plotinus is one of magic, and not merely teleological. He says that the heavens are the union of a perfect soul with matter; the stars are the visible gods united with matter; the powers of the air and sky are dæmons, which mediate between the stars and the souls of men, united with matter; the body of man is the human soul united with matter; inorganic nature is the lowest of the plastic forces united with matter. Wherever there is matter (space), there is found imperfection and limitation and evil. Man as an individual is sympathetically and mysteriously bound to all parts of the universe. Scientific investigation of nature is entirely ruled out by this neo-Platonic teaching. It never could be the instrument for penetrating a magical universe. Faith and superstition take the place of science, and prophecy alone undertakes to solve nature’s riddle.

The world of nature is thus broken in two. In one sense it is bad, ugly, and irrational. In another sense it is good, beautiful, and rational, because it is formed by the souls that enter into it. In opposition to the Gnostics Plotinus praised the harmony and beauty of the world, and promulgated his metaphysics of the beautiful as a last farewell of Hellenic civilization. Beauty is not composite, but the simple Idea of worth shining through the world of sense. Beauty is from the inner and for the inner. Art does not imitate nature, but expresses the reason; it supplements the defects of nature and creates something new. Yet the world of nature is beautiful, because down to the lowest deeps it is permeated by the divine.

=The Return of the Soul to God.――The Ethical Problem of Plotinus.= In his discussion of moral conduct Plotinus started from the point opposite to that of his metaphysics. He looked from the point of view of man up the series which descended from the Godhead. Men immersed in matter have nevertheless a share in the divine life, and their goal is independence of the world. They must free themselves from sense. Man’s ethical task is to separate the two worlds and to turn away from the material, not only in its abnormalities but in every way. The practical virtues have little value in such a sublimation of the soul, for these only bind the soul more closely to the world of matter. The political virtues are only a preparation by which the soul learns how to be free from sense. The intellectual virtues are necessary, but the goal of salvation is not reached by knowledge alone. “The wizard king builds his tower of speculation by the hands of human workmen till he reaches the top story, and then he summons his genii to fashion the battlements of adamant and crown them with starry fire.” Out of the mental condition of contemplation the soul will rise on the wings of ecstasy to the God from whom it came. The call of Plotinus is to the ascetic life. The development required is that of spirituality. Ethically Plotinus’ doctrine is dualistic, because it requires the rejection of matter as evil. The return is not an evolution nor an innovation in which reform of the old world is demanded. There is no individual progress, but a penetration into the foundation of things. But what incentive has man to undertake this return? What arouses him from his sleep? Not sense-perception nor reflection, but his love for the beautiful. The innate impulse of Platonic love turns the soul away from matter to the illuminating Idea. He who has an immediate recognition of the pure Idea is gaining the higher perfection. Only when man is in ecstasy――an ecstasy which transcends every subjective state――does he get complete contact and union with God. In such a moment of consecration he forgets himself and becomes God. This final step never comes unless God himself illuminates the soul by a special light so that it can see God. This final state comes only to few souls, and to those but seldom.

=The Syrian School.――The Systematizing of Polytheisms.――Jamblichus.= This school existed about a generation after the death of Plotinus. Its founder was Jamblichus (d. about 330), whose teacher was Porphyry, the pupil of Plotinus. Jamblichus was a Syrian, who got his instruction from Porphyry at Rome, and then went back to his native country to set up for himself a school of neo-Platonism. He soon became reverenced as teacher, religious reformer, and worker of miracles. He wrote commentaries on Plato, Aristotle, and the theological works of the Orphics, Chaldeans, and the Pythagoreans. Among the crowd of his enthusiastic disciples, one notes the names of the Emperor Julian and Hypatia.[43]

The neo-Platonism of Jamblichus contained no new point of view. Metaphysically and ethically his teaching was identical with that of Plotinus. He tried to complete the religious movement by coördinating all cults, excepting Christianity, into a unity. This was an eclecticism by which Jamblichus came naturally, for Syria was a land where eclecticism thrived. It was here that Gnosticism had its stronghold. With free eclectic hand Jamblichus filled in all the intermediary grades between the Godhead and man with the multitude of gods of all religions. In his system he placed 10 supra-terrestrial gods, 365 celestial beings, 72 orders of sub-celestial beings, and 42 orders of natural gods. To find places for them all, he had to increase the number of intermediaries; and to systematize this complex polytheism, he employed the Pythagorean numbers. His theory shows how persistent was the Hellenic civilization.

=The Athenian School.――Recapitulation.――Proclus.= The Syrian school failed to restore the old religions, and we find neo-Platonism, after revivals here and there, again at Athens. The city that had been the original sanctuary of Greek culture was the last stronghold of Hellenism.

The Athenian school made its appearance about 410, and its leading representatives were Plutarch, Syrianus, and Proclus. Proclus (410–485), the pupil of Syrianus, was the most important representative of the Athenian school, and he may be said to have uttered the last word of dying Hellenism. Born at Constantinople, of a Lycian family, he received his education at Alexandria; and when he became leader of the school at Athens, he received the extravagant worship of his pupils. Connected with the Athenian school were the great commentators, Philoponus and Simplicius, whose works on Aristotle became of great value to later times. Their erudite compilations stand out sharply against the imaginative speculations of their age. In connection with this school Boëthius must not be overlooked. He was a neo-Platonist who called himself a Christian, and he was an important figure in the history of education. His translations and expositions of Aristotle’s logic and of the _Isagoge_ of Porphyry were very influential in the Middle Ages.

Proclus was a theologian like Jamblichus, excepting that he tried to put theology upon a philosophical basis. By means of the dialectic he sought to systematize the entire philosophical thought of the Greeks. His insatiable desire for faith was accompanied by wonderful dialectical ability, with the result that his teaching was an intricate formalism united with mythology. He carried out his dialectical plans to the minutest detail. He drew the materials of his system from both barbarians and Greeks, and he himself had been initiated into all the Mysteries. Every superstition of the past and present influenced him, and in framing a universal system he did not feel satisfied until every transmitted doctrine had found a place in that system. He was the systematizer of paganism and its scholastic. He conceived that the fundamental problem was that of the One and the Many, and that the One is related to the Many in three stages,――permanence, going-forth, and return. The Many as a manifold effect is similar to the unity of the original cause and yet different from it. Development is the striving of the effect to return to the original cause, and this strife for a return to God was illustrated by Proclus in every realm of life, and he repeated it again and again in application to every detail. He conceived that the development of the world from the Godhead was continually going through this triad system of change. His philosophy, however, shows no originality other than being an ingenious formal classification in which every polytheism found a place.