Chapter 8

Origen, like the Neoplatonists, says that God is above or beyond Being; but he is sounder than Clement on this point, for he attributes self-consciousness[124] and reason to God, who therefore does not require the Second Person in order to come to Himself. Also, since God is not wholly above reason, He can be approached by reason, and not only by ecstatic vision.

The Second Person of the Trinity is called by Origen, as by Clement, "the Idea of Ideas." He is the spiritual activity of God, the World-Principle, the One who is the basis of the manifold. Human souls have fallen through sin from their union with the Logos, who became incarnate in order to restore them to the state which they have lost.

Everything spiritual is indestructible; and therefore every spirit must at last return to the Good. For the Good alone exists; evil has no existence, no substance. This is a doctrine which we shall meet with again. Man, he expressly asserts, cannot be consubstantial with God, for man can change, while God is immutable. He does not see, apparently, that, from the point of view of the Platonist, his universalism makes man's freedom to change an illusion, as belonging to time only and not to eternity.

While Origen was working out his great system of ecclesiastical dogmatic, his younger contemporary Plotinus, outside the Christian pale, was laying the coping-stone on the edifice of Greek philosophy by a scheme of idealism which must always remain one of the greatest achievements of the human mind.[125] In the history of Mysticism he holds a more undisputed place than Plato; for some of the most characteristic doctrines of Mysticism, which in Plato are only thrown out tentatively, are in Plotinus welded into a compact whole. Among the doctrines which first receive a clear exposition in his writings are, his theory of the Absolute, whom he calls the One, or the Good; and his theory of the Ideas, which differs from Plato's; for Plato represents the mind of the World-Artist as immanent in the Idea of the Good, while Plotinus makes the Ideas immanent in the universal mind; in other words, the real world (which he calls the "intelligible world," the sphere of the Ideas) is in the mind of God. He also, in his doctrine of Vision, attaches an importance to _revelation_ which was new in Greek philosophy. But his psychology is really the centre of his system, and it is here that the Christian Church and Christian Mysticism, in particular, is most indebted to him.

The _soul_ is with him the meeting-point of the intelligible and the phenomenal. It is diffused everywhere.[126] Animals and vegetables participate in it;[127] and the earth has a soul which sees and hears.[128] The soul is immaterial and immortal, for it belongs to the world of real existence, and nothing that _is_ can cease to be.[129] The body is in the soul, rather than the soul in the body. The soul creates the body by imposing form on matter, which in itself is No-thing, pure indetermination, and next door to absolute non-existence.[130] Space and time are only forms of our thought. The concepts formed by the soul, by classifying the things of sense, are said to be "Ideas unrolled and separate," that is, they are conceived as separate in space and time, instead of existing all together in eternity. The nature of the soul is triple; it is presented under three forms, which are at the same time the three stages of perfection which it can reach.[131] There is first and lowest the animal and sensual soul, which is closely bound up with the body; then there is the logical, reasoning soul, the distinctively _human_ part; and, lastly, there is the superhuman stage or part, in which a man "thinks himself according to the higher intelligence, with which he has become identified, knowing himself no longer as a man, but as one who has become altogether changed, and has transferred himself into the higher region." The soul is thus "made one with Intelligence without losing herself; so that they two are both one and two." This is exactly Eckhart's doctrine of the _funkelein_, if we identify Plotinus' [Greek: Nous] with Eckhart's "God," as we may fairly do. The soul is not altogether incarnate in the body; part of it remains above, in the intelligible world, whither it desires to return in its entirety.

The world is an image of the Divine Mind, which is itself a reflection of the One. It is therefore not bad or evil. "What more beautiful image of the Divine could there be," he asks, "than this world, except the world yonder?" And so it is a great mistake to shut our eyes to the world around us, "and all beautiful things.[132]" The love of beauty will lead us up a long way--up to the point when the love of the Good is ready to receive us. Only we must not let ourselves be entangled by sensuous beauty. Those who do not quickly rise beyond this first stage, to contemplate "ideal form, the universal mould," share the fate of Hylas; they are engulfed in a swamp, from which they never emerge.

The universe resembles a vast chain, of which every being is a link. It may also be compared to rays of light shed abroad from one centre. Everything flowed from this centre, and everything desires to flow back towards it. God draws all men and all things towards Himself as a magnet draws iron, with a constant unvarying attraction. This theory of emanation is often sharply contrasted with that of evolution, and is supposed to be discredited by modern science; but that is only true if the emanation is regarded as a process in time, which for the Neoplatonist it is not.[133] In fact, Plotinus uses the word "evolution" to explain the process of nature.[134]

The whole universe is one vast organism,[135] and if one member suffer, all the members suffer with it.[136] This is why a "faint movement of sympathy[137]" stirs within us at the sight of any living creature. So Origen says, "As our body, while consisting of many members, is yet held together by one soul, so the universe is to be thought of as an immense living being, which is held together by one soul--the power and the Logos of God." All existence is drawn upwards towards God by a kind of centripetal attraction, which is unconscious in the lower, half conscious in the higher organisms.

Christian Neoplatonism tended to identify the Logos, as the Second Person of the Trinity, with the [Greek: Nous], "Mind" or "Intelligence," of Plotinus, and rightly; but in Plotinus the word Logos has a less exalted position, being practically what we call "law," regarded as a vital force.[138]

Plotinus' Trinity are the One or the Good, who is above existence, God as the Absolute; the Intelligence, who occupies the sphere of real existence, organic unity comprehending multiplicity--the One-Many, as he calls it, or, as we might call it, God as thought, God existing in and for Himself; and the Soul, the One and Many, occupying the sphere of appearance or imperfect reality--God as action. Soulless matter, which only exists as a logical abstraction, is arrived at by looking at things "in disconnexion, dull and spiritless." It is the sphere of the "merely many," and is zero, as "the One who is not" is Infinity.

The Intelligible World is timeless and spaceless, and contains the archetypes of the Sensible World. The Sensible World is _our_ view of the Intelligible World. When we say it does not exist, we mean that we shall not always see it in this form. The "Ideas" are the ultimate form in which things are regarded by Intelligence, or by God. [Greek: Nous] is described as at once [Greek: stasis] and [Greek: kinêsis], that is, it is unchanging itself, but the whole cosmic process, which is ever in flux, is eternally present to it as a process.

Evil is disintegration.[139] In its essence it is not merely unreal, but unreality as such. It can only _appear_ in conjunction with some low degree of goodness which suggests to Plotinus the fine saying that "vice at its worst is still human, being mixed with something opposite to itself.[140]"

The "lower virtues," as he calls the duties of the average citizen,[141] are not only purgative, but teach us the principles of _measure_ and _rule_, which are Divine characteristics. This is immensely important, for it is the point where Platonism and Asiatic Mysticism finally part company.[142]

But in Plotinus, as in his Christian imitators, they do _not_ part company. The "marching orders" of the true mystic are those given by God to Moses on Sinai, "See that thou make all things according to the pattern showed thee in the mount.[143]" But Plotinus teaches that, as the sensible world is a shadow of the intelligible, so is action a shadow of contemplation, suited to weak-minded persons.[144] This is turning the tables on the "man of action" in good earnest; but it is false Platonism and false Mysticism. It leads to the heartless doctrine, quite unworthy of the man, that public calamities are to the wise man only stage tragedies--or even stage comedies.[145] The moral results of this self-centred individualism are exemplified by the mediæval saint and visionary, Angela of Foligno, who congratulates herself on the deaths of her mother, husband, and children, "who were great obstacles in the way of God."

A few words must be said about the doctrine of ecstasy in Plotinus. He describes the conditions under which the vision is granted in exactly the same manner as some of the Christian mystics, e.g. St. Juan of the Cross. "The soul when possessed by intense love of Him divests herself of all form which she has, even of that which is derived from Intelligence; for it is impossible, when in conscious possession of any other attribute, either to behold or to be harmonised with Him. Thus the soul must be neither good nor bad nor aught else, that she may receive Him only, Him alone, she alone.[146]" While she is in this state, the One suddenly appears, "with nothing between," "and they are no more two but one; and the soul is no more conscious of the body or of the mind, but knows that she has what she desired, that she is where no deception can come, and that she would not exchange her bliss for all the heaven of heavens."

What is the source of this strange aspiration to rise above Reason and Intelligence, which is for Plotinus the highest category of Being, and to come out "on the other side of Being" [Greek: epekeina tês ousias]? Plotinus says himself elsewhere that "he who would rise above Reason, falls outside it"; and yet he regards it as the highest reward of the philosopher-saint to converse with the hypostatised Abstraction who transcends all distinctions. The vision of the One is no part of his philosophy, but is a mischievous accretion. For though the "superessential Absolute" may be a logical necessity, we cannot make it, even in the most transcendental manner, an object of sense, without depriving it of its Absoluteness. What is really apprehended is not the Absolute, but a kind of "form of formlessness," an idea not of the Infinite, but of the Indefinite.[147] It is then impossible to distinguish "the One," who is said to be above all distinctions, from undifferentiated matter, the formless No-thing, which Plotinus puts at the lowest end of the scale.

I believe that the Neoplatonic "vision" owes its place in the system to two very different causes. First, there was the direct influence of Oriental philosophy of the Indian type, which tries to reach the universal by wiping out all the boundary-lines of the particular, and to gain infinity by reducing self and the world to zero. Of this we shall say more when we come to Dionysius. And, secondly, the blank trance was a real psychical experience, quite different from the "visions" which we have already mentioned. Evidence is abundant; but I will content myself with one quotation.[148] In Amiel's _Journal_[149] we have the following record of such a trance: "Like a dream which trembles and dies at the first glimmer of dawn, all my past, all my present, dissolve in me, and fall away from my consciousness at the moment when it returns upon myself. I feel myself then stripped and empty, like a convalescent who remembers nothing. My travels, my reading, my studies, my projects, my hopes, have faded from my mind. All my faculties drop away from me like a cloak that one takes off, like the chrysalis case of a larva. I feel myself returning into a more elementary form." But Amiel, instead of expecting the advent of "the One" while in this state, feels that "the pleasure of it is deadly, inferior in all respects to the joys of action, to the sweetness of love, to the beauty of enthusiasm, or to the sacred savour of accomplished duty.[149]"

We may now return to the Christian Platonists. We find in Methodius the interesting doctrine that the indwelling Christ constantly repeats His passion in remembrance, "for not otherwise could the Church continually conceive believers, and bear them anew through the bath of regeneration, unless Christ were repeatedly to die, emptying Himself for the sake of each individual." "Christ must be born mentally ([Greek: moêtôs]) in every individual," and each individual saint, by participating in Christ, "is born as a Christ." This is exactly the language of Eckhart and Tauler, and it is first clearly heard in the mouth of Methodius.[150] The new features are the great prominence given to _immanence_--the mystical union as an _opus operatum_, and the individualistic conception of the relation of Christ to the soul.

Of the Greek Fathers who followed Athanasius, I have only room to mention Gregory of Nyssa, who defends the historical incarnation in true mystical fashion by an appeal to spiritual experience. "We all believe that the Divine is in everything, pervading and embracing it, and dwelling in it. Why then do men take offence at the dispensation of the mystery taught by the Incarnation of God, who is not, even now, outside of mankind?... If the _form_ of the Divine presence is not now the same, we are as much agreed that God is among us to-day, as that He was in the world then." He argues in another place that all other species of spiritual beings must have had their Incarnations of Christ; a doctrine which was afterwards condemned, but which seems to follow necessarily from the Logos doctrine. These arguments show very clearly that for the Greek theologians Christ is a cosmic principle, immanent in the world, though not confined by it; and that the scheme of salvation is regarded as part of the constitution of the universe, which is animated and sustained by the same Power who was fully manifested in the Incarnation.

The question has been much debated, whether the influence of Persian and Indian thought can be traced in Neoplatonism, or whether that system was purely Greek.[151] It is a quite hopeless task to try to disentangle the various strands of thought which make up the web of Alexandrianism. But there is no doubt that the philosophers of Asia were held in reverence at this period. Origen, in justifying an esoteric mystery-religion for the educated, and a mythical religion for the vulgar, appeals to the example of the "Persians and Indians." And Philostratus, in his life of Apollonius of Tyana, says, or makes his hero say, that while all wish to live in the presence of God, "the Indians alone succeed in doing so." And certainly there are parts of Plotinus, and still more of his successors, which strongly suggest Asiatic influences.[152] When we turn from Alexandria to Syria, we find Orientalism more rampant. Speculation among the Syrian monks of the third, fourth, and fifth centuries was perhaps more unfettered and more audacious than in any other branch of Christendom at any period. Our knowledge of their theories is very limited, but one strange specimen has survived in the book of Hierotheus,[153] which the canonised Dionysius praises in glowing terms as an inspired oracle--indeed, he professes that his own object in writing was merely to popularise the teaching of his master. The book purports to be the work of Hierotheus, a holy man converted by St. Paul, and an instructor of the real Dionysius the Areopagite. A strong case has been made out for believing the real author to be a Syrian mystic, named Stephen bar Sudaili, who lived late in the fifth century. If this theory is correct, the date of Dionysius will have to be moved somewhat later than it has been the custom to fix it. The book of the holy Hierotheus on "the hidden mysteries of the Divinity" has been but recently discovered, and only a summary of it has as yet been made public. But it is of great interest and importance for our subject, because the author has no fear of being accused of Pantheism or any other heresy, but develops his particular form of Mysticism to its logical conclusions with unexampled boldness. He will show us better even than his pupil Dionysius whither the method of "analysis" really leads us.

The system of Hierotheus is not exactly Pantheism, but Pan-Nihilism. Everything is an emanation from the Chaos of bare indetermination which he calls God, and everything will return thither. There are three periods of existence--(1) the present world, which is evil, and is characterised by motion; (2) the progressive union with Christ, who is all and in all--this is the period of rest; (3) the period of fusion of all things in the Absolute. The three Persons of the Trinity, he dares to say, will then be swallowed up, and even the devils are thrown into the same melting-pot. Consistently with mystical principles, these three world-periods are also phases in the development of individual souls. In the first stage the mind aspires towards its first principles; in the second it becomes Christ, the universal Mind; in the third its personality is wholly merged. The greater part of the book is taken up with the adventures of the Mind in climbing the ladder of perfection; it is a kind of theosophical romance, much more elaborate and fantastic than the "revelations" of mediæval mystics. The author professes to have himself enjoyed the ecstatic union more than once, and his method of preparing for it is that of the Quietists: "To me it seems right to speak without words, and understand without knowledge, that which is above words and knowledge; this I apprehend to be nothing but the mysterious silence and mystical quiet which destroys consciousness and dissolves forms. Seek, therefore, silently and mystically, that perfect and primitive union with the Arch-Good."

We cannot follow the "ascent of the Mind" through its various transmutations. At one stage it is crucified, "with the soul on the right and the body on the left"; it is buried for three days; it descends into Hades;[154] then it ascends again, till it reaches Paradise, and is united to the tree of life: then it descends below all essences, and sees a formless luminous essence, and marvels that it is _the same essence_ that it has seen on high. Now it comprehends the truth, that God is consubstantial with the Universe, and that there are no real distinctions anywhere. So it ceases to wander. "All these doctrines," concludes the seer, "which are unknown even to angels, have I disclosed to thee, my son" (Dionysius, probably). "Know, then, that all nature will be confused with the Father--that nothing will perish or be destroyed, but all will return, be sanctified, united, and confused. Thus God will be all in all.[155]"

There can be no difficulty in classifying this Syrian philosophy of religion. It is the ancient religion of the Brahmins, masquerading in clothes borrowed from Jewish allegorists, half-Christian Gnostics, Manicheans, Platonising Christians, and pagan Neoplatonists. We will now see what St. Dionysius makes of this system, which he accepts as from the hand of one who has "not only learned, but felt the things of God.[156]"

The date and nationality of Dionysius are still matters of dispute.[157] Mysticism changes so little that it is impossible to determine the question by internal evidence, and for our purposes it is not of great importance. The author was a monk, perhaps a Syrian monk: he probably perpetrated a deliberate fraud--a pious fraud, in his own opinion--by suppressing his own individuality, and fathering his books on St. Paul's Athenian convert. The success of the imposture is amazing, even in that uncritical age, and gives much food for reflection. The sixth century saw nothing impossible in a book full of the later Neoplatonic theories--those of Proclus rather than Plotinus[158]--having been written in the first century. And the mediæval Church was ready to believe that this strange semi-pantheistic Mysticism dropped from the lips of St. Paul.[159]

Dionysius is a theologian, not a visionary like his master Hierotheus. His main object is to present Christianity in the guise of a Platonic mysteriosophy, and he uses the technical terms of the mysteries whenever he can.[160] His philosophy is that of his day--the later Neoplatonism, with its strong Oriental affinities.

Beginning with the Trinity, he identifies God the Father with the Neoplatonic Monad, and describes Him as "superessential Indetermination," "super-rational Unity," "the Unity which unifies every unity," "superessential Essence," "irrational Mind," "unspoken Word," "the absolute No-thing which is above all existence.[161]" Even now he is not satisfied with the tortures to which he has subjected the Greek language. "No monad or triad," he says, "can express the all-transcending hiddenness of the all-transcending super-essentially super-existing super-Deity.[162]" But even in the midst of this barbarous jargon he does not quite forget his Plato. "The Good and Beautiful," he says, "are the cause of all things that are; and all things love and aspire to the Good and Beautiful, which are, indeed, the sole objects of their desire." "Since, then, the Absolute Good and Beautiful is honoured by eliminating all qualities from it, the non-existent also ([Greek: to mê on]) must participate in the Good and Beautiful." This pathetic absurdity shows what we are driven to if we try to graft Indian nihilism upon the Platonic doctrine of ideas. Plotinus tried hard to show that his First Person was very different from his lowest category--non-existent "matter"; but if we once allow ourselves to define the Infinite as the Indefinite, the conclusion which he deprecated cannot long be averted.

"God is the Being of all that is." Since, then, Being is identical with God or Goodness, evil, as such, does not exist; it only exists by its participation in good. Evil, he says, is not in things which exist; a good tree cannot bear evil fruit; it must, therefore, have another origin. But this is dualism, and must be rejected.[163] Nor is evil in God, nor of God; nor in the angels; nor in the human soul; nor in the brutes; nor in inanimate nature; nor in matter. Having thus hunted evil out of every corner of the universe, he asks--Is evil, then, simply privation of good? But privation is not evil in itself. No; evil must arise from "disorderly and inharmonious motion." As dirt has been defined as matter in the wrong place, so evil is good in the wrong place. It arises by a kind of accident; "all evil is done with the object of gaining some good; no one does evil as evil." Evil in itself is that which is "nohow, nowhere, and no thing"; "God sees evil as good." Students of modern philosophy will recognise a theory which has found influential advocates in our own day: that evil needs only to be supplemented, rearranged, and transmuted, in order to take its place in the universal harmony.[164]