CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY DATE DUE isi^^2% 1974 S jDij a , tar "^ . T -^ zt:^ B517 .wengis"™""" '■'""'^ The Neo-Platonists olin 3 1924 031 006 608 The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924031006608 THE NEO-PLATOlsriSTS CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS C. F. CLAY, Manager LONDON : Fetter Lane, E.G. 4 NEW YORK : G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, MADRAS: MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd. TORONTO : I. M. DENT AND SONS, Ltd. TOKYO,: THE MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA All rights reserved THE NEO-PLATONISTS A STUDY IN THE HISTORY OF HELLENISM BY THOMAS WHITTAKER . SECOND EDITION WITH A SUPPLEMENT ON THE COMMENTARIES OF PROCLUS CAMBEIDGE AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 1918 n sn ■ H y. ^ S.^'5\ PREFACE. TO THE SECOND EDITION During the time that has elapsed since the publication of the first edition of this work, I have at intervals kept myself in contact with the subject; but it was not until lately that I saw clearly how the book might receive the completion which from the first had appeared desirable. The task that obviously re- mained was to give a more circumstantial _ account of the Athenian period of Neo-Platonism. I once thought of doing this in a second volume; but it became evident in the end that, for the aim I had in view, what was necessary and sufficient was a more adequate exposition of Proclus. I had never proposed to deal with all minutiae on a uniform scale. My purpose was, while not neglecting to give some account of the lesser as well as the greater thinkers, to set forth sub- stantially the doctrine of the school so as to bring out its real originality and its historical importance. Now, for this purpose, even Porphyry and lamblichus, while they must always retain an honotirable place in the history of philo- sophy, are of minor significance. The case is otherwise with Proclus, whose name has by general consent taken rank next to that of Plotinus as representing the last powerful expression of Hellenic thought before it ceased to have any effective originality. Since the book was written, the publication of improved texts has put it in my power to do more justice to the thought of Proclus than would have been possible at first. I hope that, with the aid of these, I have been able to set before the reader an account of his principal commentaries bringing out their distinctive features and the new developments by which its finished form was given to the great system of philosophy initiated by Plotinus two centuries earlier. vi PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION In the text and notes of the book as it appeared in 1901, I have made only slight alterations. The Appendix on the outlying subject of Gnosticism, however, I found must be re- written in view of recent research. The nature of the modifi- cation needed, I have indicated in the Appendix itself in its new form. T.W. February, 1918. CONTENT^ FAOK INTRODUCTION . . . ix CHAPTER I GRAECO-ROMAN CIVILISATION IN ITS POLITICAL DE- VELOPMENT , . . . 1 CHAPTER II THE STAGES OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY .... 7 CHAPTER III RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENTS IN LATER ANTIQUITY . 17 CHAPTER IV PLOTINUS AND HIS NEAREST PREDECESSORS . . 26 CHAPTER V THE PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM OF PLOTINUS ... 40 1. PSYCHOLOGY 43 r*"2. METAPHYSICS 53 3. COSMOLOGY AND THEODICY 70 4. AESTHETICS 87 5. ETHICS 91 CHAPTER VI THE MYSTICISM OF PLOTINUS . . ' . . . . 98 CHAPTER VII THE DIFFUSION OF NEO-PLATONISM .... 107 1. PORPHYRY 107 2. lAMBLICHUS 121 3. THE SCHOOL OF lAMBLICHUS 131 VlU CONTENTS 1 CHAPTER VIII PAGE THE POLEMIC AGAINST CHRISTIANITY .... 136 CHAPTER IX THE ATHENIAN SCHOOL 155 1. THE ACADEMY BECOMES NEO-PLATONIC . . 155 2. PROCLUS 157 3. THE END OF THE PLATONIC SUCCESSION . . 180 CHAPTER X THE INFLUENCE OF NEO-PLATONISM .... 185 CHAPTER XI CONCLUSION 206 APPENDIX I. THE COMMUNISM OF PLATO 216 II. THE GNOSTICS 218 III. lAMBLICHUS AND PROCLUS ON MATHEMATICAL SCIENCE 225 SUPPLEMENT THE COMMENTARIES OF PROCLUS 229 ON THE FIRST ALGIBIADES 242 „ „ PARMENIDMS 248 „ „ TIMAEUS 264 „ „ REPUBLIC 295 INDEX OF NAMES gig INTKODUCTIGN That the history of ancient culture effectively ends with the second century of the Christian era is an impression not in- frequently derived from histories of literature and even of philosophy. The period that still remains of antiquity is ob- viously 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 ap- peared 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 "modemness" which has often been noted in the later classical literature. Since the ancient type was dissolved in the end to make way for the modem, we might attribute the early appearance of modern characteristics to the new growth ac- companying 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 modem, to the movement of the world into its X INTBODUCTION 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 rehgion, and this ap- propriated 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 re- duced form, and passed by continuous transition into another; but the directing power was changed. The kind of " modem " character which 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 modem character than even that of early antiquity with all its remoteness. Be this as it may in pure literature, it is certain that 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 par- ticularly 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 INTRODUCTION xi 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 speculative thought, and was exercised entirely within the Hellenic tradition. And, in distinction from pure literature, philosophy made its decisive advance after practical disso- lution 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-Plato- nism," 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 atmo- sphere 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 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 xii INTRODirCTION movement thus necessitated, the culture of the ancient world, whatever superficial changes it might undergo, did not m- wardly respond. Literature still looked to the past for its models. Philosophy least of all cared to adapt itself. It be- came instead the centre of resistance to the predominant movement, — ^to overweening despotism under the earUer Caesars, to the oncoming theocracy when the republican tradition was completely 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 resxdt 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. They 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^ and the expression of provi- dential reason, would not cease with one period. If they did not actually predict the revival of their thought after a thou- sand years, they would not have been in the least stirprised 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 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 estabhshed 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 ' waXtDToms apiiovli) k4o-/iioii iKaairep \ipris Kal rdlou. — Heraclitus. INTBODUCTION xiii Neo-Platonism for the principles of its resistance to the ex- clusive dominance of the new "mechanical philosophy." As the humanist academies of Italy had aj> CHAPTER II THE STAGES OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY A.T the time of the Persian wars the civilisation of the East was in complexity, specialism, organised industry — whatever relative importance we may attach to those features of pro- gress^n 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 distinc- tive 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 grow- ing civilisations, took up a few generalised results of the long and laborious but unspeculative accumulation of facts and methods by the leisured priesthoods^ 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 century B.C., speculative science had begun to show signs of its later division into philosophy properly so-called, and posi- tive science; the first special sciences to become detached, after mathematics, being those to which mathematical treat- ment seemed applicable. All this took place before the con- tinuous movement of reflective thinking on human knowledge, ^ 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 Ghreek Philosophy, 1st ed.. Introduction, p. 19) finds dis- crepant. 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." 8 THE STAGES C*^" 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 hfe has been lived by several generations of thinkers, and a self-con- scious theory of it is at length set forth, as at the opening of Aristotle's Metaphysics, the happiness involved in it is re- garded as something that necessarily goes with mere thinking 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 fre- quently 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 ac- cepted 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 repre- sentations of the earth as a disc floating on water, and of the stars as orifices in circular tubes containing fire, are less re- mote in spirit from modem objective science than the astro- nomy of later antiquity and of the instructed Middle Ages. This was 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 teleo- logical conceptions on their astronomical theories. At the same time, early Greek philosophy was not merely n] OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY 9 objective, as modern science has become. It was properly philosophical in virtue of its "hylozoism." Life and mind, or their elements, were attributed to me 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 "lonians," down to HeracUtus, 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^, was primarily the extended cosmos regarded as a closed sphere coincident with aU 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 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 be- tween this view and that of the lonians by asserting.a plurality I of real beings, each having the characters of the Eleatic 1 See Tannery, Pour I'Hiatoire de la Science Hellene, and Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy. 10 THE STAGES t^^' "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 con- ception of the purely quantitative atom, which modern science afterwards took up, was completed by Democritus. Anaxa- goras, 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 re- pulsive agents, at once forces and media, to which he gave the mythological names of Love and Strife — retained some- thing 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 .1 for its accomplishment. ^ 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 atti- tude 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 impor- tant position. 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 eariier thinkers those specific ideas that afterwards turned out the most fruitful scientific- ally — 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. n] OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY 11 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 re- sulting 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^, 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 superstitions 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 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, 1 Mr Benn, in his Greek Philosophers, points out the resemblance of Lucretius in type of mind to the eaily physical thinkers of Greece. 12 THE STAGES t^°^- 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 "cosmopoUtanism" 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 con- ception of "natural law" which, transmitted by Stoicism, had so much influence on the Roman jurisprudence, is definitely | formulated^- The humanitarian side of Stoicism — ^which is not quite the same thing as its conception of universal justice — is plainly visible in Cicero^. Although Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, was by race half a Phoenician, it cannot be said that the East contributed any- thing definable to the content of his ethics. Its sources were evidently Greek. Down to the end of the ancient world, philosophy was continued by men of various races, btit 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; al- though in assigning a higher place to the theoretic virtues ^ 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); ct. 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 loquimui, nihil est tam illustre nee quod latius pateat quam ooniunctio inter homines hominum et quasi quaedam societas et communicatio utilitatum et ipsa caritas generis humani, quae nata a primo aatu, quod a procreatoribus nati diliguntur et tota domus coniugio et stirpe coniungitur, serpit sensim foras, oognationibus primum, tum afEnitatibus, deinde amicitiis, post vicinitatibus, turn civibus et iis, qui publico socii atque amici aunt, deinde totius complezu ' gentia humanae; quae animi affeotio suum cuique tribuens atque banc, quam dico, societatemconiunctionis humanae mnnifice et aeque tuens iustitia dicitur, oui sunt adiunctae pietas, bonitas, liberalitas, benignitas, comitas, quaeque sunt generis eiusdem." ll] OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY 13 they return to an earlier view. Their genuine originaUty is in psychology and metaphysics. Having gone to the centre of Plato's idealistic thought, they dentenstrated, 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 ex- ception of Epicureanism; going back with studious interest to the pre-Socratics, many fragments 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 Critias, 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 Egyptian caste of occupations^. 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^. * Cf. Arist. Pol. iv. (vii.) 9, 1329 b23: 6 Si x"?'-'^!'^^ o "<"■« yivos toO irokiTiKoS irkiiBovi (^ Alyi-irrov. ' See Appendix I. 14 THE STAGES C^^- Mr Benn has remarked that the stages of degeneration from the ideal aristocracy to a tyranny, set forth in the Bepublie, 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 legislation 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 in- herited customs which Plato desiderates. Add, what is con- tinually insisted on in the Laws, that towards getting par- ticular 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 pro- poses 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 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, extraordina^-y as they were, into the strange transformation that was to come in a thousand years, had any influence in bringing it to pass. II] or GREEK PHILOSOPHY 15 The Neo-Platonists would have carried out an ethical re- form 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 intellec- tual 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', occurs both in the Timaeus and in the Laws^. And Plato's attack, in the Republic, on the myths of Greek religion, was continued by the Christians, not by his Neo-Platonic succes- sors ; who , sought to defend by allegorical interpretations whatever they could not accept literally; or at least, in re^ pudiating 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 the philosophers desired was the supremacy of reason, not of arbitrary will. Licence in the city seemed to them condemnable 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 1 Quoted by Bitter and Preller (Historia Philosophiae Graecae, 7th ed. 547 b) from the De Mysteriis formerly attributed to lamblichus (vii. 5, ed. Parthey, p. 259): /ierapdWdiuva del Sii tV KuivoTO/dav Kai vapavo/dav tuv "EtW-livuv oiSiv vaiiTai...p&p§apoi Si /idvi/ioi, toXs ii0e 'K.pariXif tov '^p/iTJi/ kcU ri)V ^Ipiv Beav dyy^\ovs etvai tfyqai-v. 1 knsii.Bhel. ii. 23, 1400 b 5. (B. P. 81 a.) geco^dj'Tjs 'BXedTois ipijirwaiv el BiwGi T5 AevKoSiif Kal BprrivGiaiv ^ |in}, awe§oi\evev, el p.b> Oeiv iiro\afi.pdvov(ri, M BpTjveTv, ei S' dvBpairoi', fiA] 66eiv. " Tert. De Came ChrisH, c. 5: "Natus est Dei Filius; non pudet, quia pudendum est : et mortuus est Dei Klius; prorsus credibUe est, quia ineptum est: et sepultus, resurrexit; certum est, quia impossibile." ™] IN LATEB ANTIQUITY 21 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 indigenous ciitts for more exciting ones from the East. First 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 interest- ing 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 after- wards triumphant, coming from the East, — many lines were transferred to the Christus Patiens^. The neglect of the altars of the gods spoken of by Lucian may be explained by this transfer of devotion. In the dialogue @ewv 'E,KK\.ria-La, 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 delta Bestia Trionfante precisely from the dialogue of Lucian just referred to. The nearest approach in the Hellenic world to the idea of a 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 much later date. 22 RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENTS [^H- 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 philosophical and religious ideas of Pythagoras. These oli- garchies made themselves intensely unpopular, and the Pytha- gorean associations were violently suppressed. Afterwards remains of the societies combined to form a school specially devoted to geometry and astronomy, and in astronomy re- markable 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 succes- sion appeal more than other philosophers to the recorded sayings of the founder, and try to formulate a minute dis- cipline of daily life in accordance with his precepts. The writings, mostly pseudonymous, attributed by them to early Pythagoreans^ are in composition extremely eclectic, borrow- ing 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 ApoUonius of Tyana, to whom in the first century a.d. miracles and a religious mission were attributed, was a Pjrthagorean. The lives of Pythagoras himself, by Porphyry and lamblichus, 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-Pytha- gorean rather than to Indian or Persian influences. Their asceticism — an essentially 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 prob- able, 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 1 Zeller, iii. 2, pp. 100-3, gives a long list of them. in] IN LATER ANTIQTTITY 23 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 fcy the star-worship associated with the empirical observations of the Chaldaeans, from which the Greek rational astronomy arose. There is not much trace of this form of religion in Greek polytheism at its first mythological stage. The genuine gods of Greece were essentially anthropomorphic. In a passage of Aristophanes^ 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 anthro- pomorphic kind, — that of a charioteer for example. By Plato and Aristotle the divinity of the stars themselves was affirmed; and it afterwards became an article of faith with what we may call pagan philosophical 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 aninials. That they might do this, they were endowed with ruling intelUgences 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 sopls, being temporarily united to portions of unstable matter, lapse through such union from ''■ Quoted in Blakesley's Herodotus, vol. ii. p. 210, n. TP. i) yiip aeXi^ri xii iravovpyos ^Xios, iffiiv iiri^ov\e6oPT€ ToKiiv iidti ^joivoi', Tois pap^ipouTi wpoSlSerov T^jx'EXXdSa. BP. Iva H di tovto Sparov ; TP. oriii vii Ala ol pAp^apoi Biovai. Pax, 406-11. 24 RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENTS t''^- the condition of untroubled intellectual activity. This theory, founded by Plato in the Timaeus, was an assertion of teleo- logical optimism against the notion that the stars are products of chance-aggregation. As such, it was defended by Plotinus against the pessimism of the Christian Gnostics, who — agoing beyond the Epicureans, as he says — 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 "Chal- daei," as well as from the patronage they nevertheless ob- tained 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. Plotinus him- self, as a true successor of Plato, minimised where he could not entirely deny the possibility 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 intercourse 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, accord- ing 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 consimimation of philosophy without external in] IN LATER ANTIQUITY 25 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, by the opponents of magic, the theoretical difference between the two parties was less than might be supposed. It did not prevent philo- sophers 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 revela- tion who, even if giving to their doctrines a highly speculative form, like the Gnostics^, 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 his- torians 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 Alex- andrian 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 (1848) 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 Pla- tonism of Clement and Origen the name of "Alexandrian" may be correctly applied ; for it was at Alexandria that both 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 lambhchus, diffused itself over all parts of the Roman Empire where there was any care for philosophy. Handed on by the successors of lamblichus, the doctrine of Plotinus at last CH. IV] PLOTINUS AND HIS NEABBST PREDECESSOBS 27 gained the assent of the occupants of Plato's chair in the Academy. The one brilHant period of Neo-Platgnism 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 dis- ' ciple Porphyry, who edited his writings and wrote his life^. 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 1 view of the fine arts. His purpose seems to have been to li prevent a cult of him from arising among his disciples. He l would not tell his birthday, lest there should be a special I celebration of it, as there had come to be of the birthdays of ii other philosophers"; although he himself used to keep the i traditional birthday-feasts of Soorate^ and Plato'. « According to Eunapius*, he was born at Lyco (or Lycopolis) B in Egypt. From Porphyry's Life the year of his birth is II inferred to be 204 or 205. In his twenty-eighth year, being " ^ Porphyry's Life is prefixed to the edition of Plotinus by R. Volkmann il (Teubner, 1883, 4), from which the citations in the present volume are made. I ' CScero 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 innumerabilis mundos infinitasque regiones, t quarum nulla esset ora, nuUa extremitas, mente peragravisdet." In the last 1^ two words there is an evident allusion to Lucr. i. 74. ' Porph. Vita Plotini, 2. * Vitae Philosophorum ac Sophistarum (Plotinus). i 28 PLOTINUS t^^- 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" {rovrov e^rjrovv). 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 Em- peror 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 dis- cussions. 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 i. While Porphyry was in Sicily, whither he had retired about 268, Plotinus sent him in all nine more books. 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 fuUa. 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 ^ V. Plot. 5 : ^K wpo(rKaip(iJv TrpopXrjfiaTOJv rds {nrodiff^is Xa^&vra, ' r. Plot. 22. IV] AND HIS NEAREST PREDECESSORS 29 abstemious rule of life he adopted, completely recovered^. To Plotinus were entrusted many wards of both sexes, to the interests of whose property he carefullj^ttended. 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^. 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'. He was especially honoured by the Emperor GaUienus* 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 °," — which he was to govern according to the Platonic Laws, giving it the name of " Plato- nopolis'." 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. 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'. He did not care for personal controversy; as was shown by his commissioning his pupils to reply to attacks on his positions. Porphyry mentions 1 F. Plot. 7. 2 xUd. 11. » Ibid. 10. ' Gallieuus tolerated Christianity. He was a man of considerable accom- pUshments, though the historians do not speak highly of him as a ruler. ' This apparently means, as has been conjectured (R. P. 508 f.), that it had formerly been ruled by a Pythagorean society. » V. Plot. 12. ' V. Plot. \Z: Tjv S' iv Ti^ X&yeiv ii &5ei|is toC vov axp' toB Tpoffiivov airou ri (t>S>s iiriXdixirovTOS • ipdd/uos fih d^B^vai, KaWlav 5e rdre fi,d\iffTa opib/ievos • Kal XeTrrAs Tis iSpiis liriBei. Kal i} irpfirris Si^a^ire Kal rb Trpoat)vh vpbs ris ^pwTijireit iSelKvvTo Kal to cStovov. 30 PLOTINUS t^^- a case in which he himself was set to answer an unedifying discourse of the rhetor Diophanes^. 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 chronological 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 beginning 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 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 pajssing consecutively from one book to an- other. 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 particu- < larly obvious, the main positions about the soul coming early | in the series. In the exposition that is to follow*, these wiU be set forth first. After Psychology will come Metaphysics/I 1 V. Plot. 15. » See oh. v. I IV] AND HIS NEAREST PREDECESSORS 31 then in succession Cosmology (with Theodicy), Aesthetics and Ethics 1. A separate chapter will be devoted to the Mysticism of Plotinus^. 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^. 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 pre- decessors 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 preserved 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 themselves. 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 {ZaKKa^ being equivalent to 6po<:). Hierocles calls him "the divinely taught " (deo- StBaKToplas ISltfi xP'^o'ti/'cot nXuTO/As elfft Kal VevTi,\iavbs'Afii\ii>s,...oidk yap o6S' iyyis n to, TSoviitivlov xal Kpovlov Kal MoSepdrov Kal OpaaiWov toTs HXutIvov irepL twv airwv atrfypd/i/iaffir els &Kpl§aav " 6 Se 'AiUXioi Kar' tx'V A^" TO&rov ^aSll'etv irpoaipoiiitvos Kal ri, iroWi. /ley r&v airCov doy/iiruv ^X'5/'«">S) ^V ^^ iifpyaalif iroXis i!i'...c6yo»Tis Tai Kal airov iv ry (TuittoK^. * Enn. rv. 4, 28. v] OF PLOTINTJS 51 which this kind of emotion depends {to mireaov ek dvfiov t-Xyoi}) 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^. 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 dis- cussion of these points will in the main come better under the head of metaphysics 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^. The reason why the older writers ascribed memory and reminis- cence to the soul when it thus energises, was 'apparently be- cause 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 pro- gress since the time of those whom he calls "the ancients." , The higher and the lower powers of the soul meet in the imaginative faculty {^avraa-ia, to t^avTaa-TiKov), 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 to the thinking part. Thought is apprehended by the imagi- nation as in a mirror; the notion (vorj/ia) at first indivisible, and imphcit being conveyed to it by an explicit discourse (\d70s). For thought and the apprehension of thought are not the same (aWo y^p 17 voijo-t?, «at &\Xo 17 t^? voT/o-ew? avri- Xij'^is) ; the former can exist without the latter. That which thus apprehends thought apprehends perceptions also'. 1 Enn. IV. 4, 17. ^ Enn. iv. 3, 25. 8 Enn. IV. 3, 28-30. 4—2 52 THE PHILOSOPHICAIi SYSTEM [CH- Here we come to the psychological conception of " conscious- ness," which Prof. Siebeck has traced through its formative stages to its practically adequate expression by Plotinus^ 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" (i7vvaLa67iav Enn. VI. 8, 10. ' Enn. VI. 8, 15 : Koi ip&aiuov Kal ipus airoi Kal airoS Ipas. ° Ibid. : ri) olov iipiiiievov T(f i^erif h>. * Enn. VI. 8, 16. « Enn. vi. 8, 18. * Enn. VI. 8, 21 : kuI yip tA tA ivTiKel/ieva SivtuxSai ddvvafilas iirrl rov M ToO dpiffTov p^veiv, ' Since it is energy in the Aristotelian sense, or complete realisation, it is ivevipyjiTov. That is, there is no higher reaUsation to which it can proceed. Cf. Enn. V. 6, 6: S\m /iiv yA,p oiSe/ila ivipyeia lx« au iriXiv ivipyeiav. In this sense, it is said (Enn. I. 7, 1) to be beyond energy (iTrimiva ii/epyelas). « Enn. V. 4,.l. » Enn. V. 4, 2. Cf. Enn. v. 9, 5: ^ ™» S,vev CXt/s iTurr'^p.ri raMv t, iWaxoS avdpwirov Kal dXXaxoC ^XfOK * tA Si iv ivl w&vra. • See especially Enn. v. 7 : Oepl toC el xal tSv xaS' ^koo-to (anv eidr). 62 THE PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM [CH. ^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 en- thusiasm where his scientific doctrine passes into poetry:;i| "They see themselves in others. For all things are trans- parent, and there is nothing dark or resisting, but every one is manifest to every one internally and all things are mani- fest; 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 everywhere and all is all and each is all, and the splendour is infinite. 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 ex- pressed the intuitive character of intellectual wisdom in making a picture the sign of each things. In the intelligible world identical with intellect, as thus con- ceived, the time and space in which the visible world appears, f though not "there" as such, pre-exist in their causes. So too, in the, rational order, does perception, before organs of per- ception 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 involved in the perfection of mind*. Not only man, but all animals, plants and elements pre-exist ideally in the • Enn. V. 8, 4. " Enn. v. 8, 6. This is quite an isolated reference to Egypt. ' Enn. VI. 7, 3: ^yxeiTai to alffByfriKiv elfai Kai oBtus at(r9rinKbp iv, tQ eWei ivo AidLov ivAyiaii xal reXeidrriTos, voO ii> aiiTifi^ovros, efirep i-Aeios, tAs aWos. V] OF PLOTINUS 63 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 lawsK Nor is the thing here anywhere really mindless. We call it so when it is with- out 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 2. 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'. 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*. The whole intelligible world may be presented to imagination as a living sphere figured over with every kind of living countenance*. Universal mindinvolves the essence of every form of reason, in one Reason as it were, great, perfect, embracing all (eh olov ■ '\6'^o<;, ii&fa)7-os, yKvxirTjs fier eiuStas, Kal dfiov olviiSris ttoiAtijs xal xv^&v hirivTinv SvvdfjLeis Kal xpwAU^^ui' a^peis Kal baa atpal ytviiKTKOVtnv, ^(rrtaaav de Kal baa 6jcoal &Koiovn, TT&VTa lii'Kri Kal pvO/ws was. ' Enn. VI. 7, 13 : voOs. ..oi.. .rairbv Kal Iv n iv fiJpei, dXXd Tdvra • IttcI Kal t6 iv lUpa av oix ^v, dXXd Kal toOto aireipov Siaipoiftevov, C£. Enn. VI. 5, 5 on the infinite nature (Aireipos ^i0 S' av iv ivl ovtiov, i] ndvTtav iv ivl ovtuv olov cu/iTrXoKTj koI (rivdetyis vovs itrru. 64 THE PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM [CH. \ is mind, all things are together, not only undivided by position 1 in space, but without reference to process in time. This V characteristic of intellectual being may be called "eternity^." Time belongs to Soul, as eternity to Mind^ Soul is necessarily produced by Mind, as Mind by the primal One*. 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'. 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*. 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 °- In the relation of the many souls to the one which includes 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 ne- cessitated. The one soul is the same in all, as in each part of a Msystem of knowledge the whole is potentially present'. To soul, the higher intellect furnishes the reasons of all its operations 8. Knowledge in the rational soul, so far as it is of ■' Enn. m. 7, 4: aUrri i] Siddeais a^roC xal ^icris eftj &y aldv. 2 Enn. m, 7, 11. Cf. Enn. IV. 4, 15: alCjv fiev irepl vovv, xpbvot di Tepl ^Ifvx^y- ' Enn. V. 1, 7: ^uxV y^P yevvf rovs, vovs liv rAeios. Kal y&p riXeiov irra. yevvav iSu, Kal fii) Sifa/uv oiitrav Toaairiiy iyovov elvai. * Enn. V. 1, 3: ^ Te oSv irdaraffis airr^ Airb ("oO S re ivepyeli/, \6yos yov aiii dptafi^ov. ° Enn. rv. 8, 8 : oi ireiaa oiS' ij Tiixiripa ■^vx>l ISv, dXX' Iitti ti airTjs iv rif vtn)Tif &d....Ta' ^iyuy. V] OF PLOTINUS 65 intelligibles, is each thing that it thinks, and has from within both the object of thought and the thinking {ro re votjtov rrjv re voTjatv), since mind is within*, Plotinus fully recognises the difficulty of the question : How, if Being and Mind and , Soul are everywhere numerically one, and not merely of the I same formal essence (o/ioetSe?), can there yet be many beings ' and minds and souls ^? The answer, in the case of soul, as of mind and being, is that the one is many, by intrinsic differ- ence, not by local situation {erepoTTjTt.ov To-rrtp). 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 them- selves. 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^. The general soul can judge of the individual- ised affections in each without becoming conscious to itself in each that it has passed judgment in the rest also*. 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*. 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*. 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'. It creates not by deliberative intelligence, like 1 Enn. V. 9, 7. ^ Enn. vi. 4, 4. ' Enn. VI- 4, 4 jin. : o^tas iarlv Aireipos rj roiairy) tftitris. ' Enn. VI. 4, 6 : Sia. tI ovv oii irwaurOdverai t) iripa ttjs iripas Kplfw, ; fi Sti xplais iariv, iXK' oi) irABoi. elra oiS' oirrj ri Kplvaaa xiKpiKa X^ei, dXV l/tpiye liivov. ' Enn. VI. 5, 7 : ?f u lUv oHv opwvTes fj SBey i^-Zi/ifieBa iyvoovfuev Iv Spres, oiov TpbaaTta iroXXa els rb (^u Kopvit>T)V ^ovTa els to etau pUav. el S^ tis ^irtarpa^ntvai SinaiTO fi Trap' airoO tJ Trjs 'ASt/cSs ofir^s eirvx-^as t^s ?X|eus, dedv re Kal airbv Kal ri Ttav o^erai. ' Enn. V. 1, 2. ' Enn. IV. 3, 10: oro icai oi iv airipixaci \6701 TrXdrrouo-t Koi fiopipovai rd ^ifa. oXov lUKpois Tivas jtiff/ious. w. 5 66 THE PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM [CH. 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 alP." Individual souls are the intrinsic laws of particular mindsf within the universal intellect, made more explicit". Not only the soul of the whole, but the soul of each, has all things in itself^- 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'. The answer is that the error lies in self-will'. 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'. 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, reconcilable with the optimism of the Timaeust 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 supramun- dane order, temporary descent, dissatisfaction with the con- sequences 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 ' Enn. IV. 3, Id fin. Enn. IV. 3, 5: X<7oi vwv oStrai Kal i^eiXiyfiivai /laWov TJ 4Keivoi...Tb Tairhr Kal irepov aiiiovaai piivu re iK&arti Iv, Kal ifioO hr iratrai. » Enn. IV. 3, 6. Enn. IV. 3, 18 : olov dipSoK/iis ^jcairTos koI oiSh/ S^ KpvwTov oiSk ireirXaaftipov, AWi. irpiv (ItSv SX\if ISiiv eKctvos lyvu, » Enn. IV. 3, 14. « Enn. v. 1, 1. ' Enn. VI. 4, 16. V] OF PLOTINUS 67 when in the Timaeus it is said that God "sows" the souls, this is mythical, just as when he is represented as haranguing them^. 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. On the other hand, a slight inclination at the beginning to the worse, if not immediately corrected, may produce a permanent disposition*. Be the error light or grave, it comes under an undeviating law of justice. To the particu- lar 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 imder which the individual falls is not outside but within each'. The notion that there may be in small things an element of contingency which is no part of the order, is suggested but not accepted*. The whole course of the soul through its series of bodily lives, and its release from the body when this is attained, are alike necessarily determined'. 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 '. Even thence it may still somehow emerge; though souls that have descended to the world of birth need not all 1 Enn. IV. 8, 4. 2 Enn. iv. 8, 5. ' Enn. IV. 8, 7: yru' a TraBetv irpoa-^Ka, iffTirip jiiv rQ Se iSirire/) iroXXa Kafioiv ofj iaiTiTeuiev els Toy irpoaiiKovTa airif Tbirov iviireaev, ixovalif rg ipopq, rb &Koi Enn. IV. 4, 5 fin. ' Enn. n. 4, 2. ' Enn. n. 4, 15: eft; &v yepvrieiv iK t^s toO ivbs iireiptas ij Sw&iitui ij toO iel, DiK otfo-Tjs iv iKdvtf direiplas dXXtk iroioDirros. * Enn. n. 4, 12: 6 Si t6tos iSarepos ttjs ffXijs Kai t&v awndruv. » Enn. n. 4, 16. V] OF PLOTINUS 69 not receive them indivisibly (afiep&v). One form in matter excludes another; so that they appear aa separated by spatial intervals^. The reason of this is precisely that matter has no determination of its own. The soul in taking up the forms of things perceptible, views them with their mass put away {a7ro0e/ieva tov oyKov opa), because by its own form it is in- divisible, and therefore cannot receive the extended as such. Since matter, on the contrary, has no form of its own by which to unite distinctions, 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^. 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 in- differently; the same matter there having always the same form'. The matter "here" is thus more truly "the indeter- minate" than the matter "there"; which, in so far as it has more real being, is so much less truly "matter*." Matter itself may best be called "not-being^." As the indeterminate, it is only to be apprehended by a corresponding indeterminateness of the soul" — a difficult state to maintain, for, as matter itself does not remain 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'. The appearances of sense, themselves "invulnerable nothings*," go through it as through water without dividing it. It has not even a falsehood 1 Enn. m. 6, 18. « Enn. □. 4^ 4. " Enn. n. 4, 3: ^ S^ rSiv yiro/ihw ii\ri del SXKo xal oKKo etSos fffX", tuv Si itSiuv i] airii rairhv iel. » Enn. n. 4, 15. ^ Enn. m. 6, 7. 8 Enn. n. 4, 10: iopurrla t^s 'I'uxn^- Cf- E°'i' !• 8, 9. ' Enn. m. 6, 7. ' Adonais, xxxix. — an exact expression of the idea of Plotinua. 1 70 THE PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM [CH, of its own that it can say of things i. In that it can take no permanent hold of any good, it may be called evil 2. Fleeing every attempt of perception 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 (\070s) 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'. In that it confers no qualities whatever on that which appears in it, matter is absolutely sterile*. 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". While working out his theory from a direct consideration 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 "theorj' 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*. 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- 1 Enn. in. 6, 15. 2 Emi_ m g^ ^ ' Enn. n. 4, 9. . « Enn. m. 6, 19. " Enn. VI. 7, 11. « See especially Enn. n. 4, 11: 66 tv nvh raMv rif Kevif tV iiXiji' elp^xaffi. v] OF PLOTINUS 71 garded as objective extension or as a subjective form*. Plo- tinus himself approaches the latter view when he consents to call matter a "phantasm of mass" {af iraaa yip iv &/iepet. As regards the soul and its \6yoi, cf . c. 3. 74 THE PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM [CH, have an infinitude of their own. We may say that number is infinite, though infinity is repugnant to number {to d-jreipov fidxerat t«3 dpi0fjLa), as we speak of an infinite Kne; not that there is any such {ovx on eari tk roiavrri), 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 limits 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 indeterminate- ness^- 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'. Time belongs to apartness of Ufe (Stoo-Tao-t? oSi/ foi}? xpovov elxe). The Soul of the 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*, 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°. Of Zeus, whether regarded as Demi- urgus or as Soul of the World, we must deny even the " before and after" implied in memory'. |That which guides the whole [to rjyovnevov rov iravTOi;) knows the future as present {Kara TO kffTavai), and has therefore no need of memory and dis- cursive reason to infer it from the past'. | These faculties be- long to acquired intellect, and, as we shall see, are dismissed 1 Enn. VI. 6, 17: ■^ t6 iireipov aKKov Tp6irov, oix us ASu^Ittitoii' dXXi iriSs iiretpos; ^ iv rif Xdyif rijs airoypanfiris oix (vi irpoavooiiievov vipas. 2 Enn. VI. 6, 18. ' Enn. m. 7, 11. ' Enn. IV. 4, 15. ° Enn. IV. 4, 16: dXXi TrdxTcs oi \lyyoi d/ia, uairep efpjjTOi. . .t4 5^ t656 /tera rdSe iv toU Tpdyfjuzffiv od SwaptivoK &fia TrdvTa. ' Enn. IV. 4, 10. ' Enn. IV. 4, 12. Hence, adds Plotinus, the creative power (ro voiouk) 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. V] OF PLOTINUS 75 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 1. 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 movement 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 any- thing 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 inter- vals marked out in the space through which the motions proceed, this is an "accidental" relation. The parts of time, invisible and inapprehensible in themselves, must have re- mained 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 par- ticipate". iThus the one soul, in which individual souls are metaphysically contained, participates in eternity and pro- duces time, which is the form of a soul living in apparent detachment from its higher cause. I 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 ' Eiin. m. 7, 7: Set ipa xal iipuv /ierelvai toO alanos. * Enn. m. 7, 13: op oiv xal iv iifuv [6] xP^vos; ij iv ^ux5 tJ TotoiiTi; jrdo-p itai o/ioeiiSus iv irain koX o! vaaaiiila. Sih oi 5iocrjro(rffi)]) regarded as external, has a real existence. Thus all things ' Eun. III. 1, 1: ^ 7^/3 tA ^ov\iit6v — tovto Sk rj ?|w 17 ela-ia — ^ t6 iitiBuiiitThii ixlvrjaei' " ij, ei firiBiv dpeKriv iKlvr/irev, oiS' &p oXtos iKuiifBr). 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-wiU." 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 I'^cole d'Alexandrie, 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 in- dividuality, and that this comes from matter. 2 Enn. III. 1, i. " a. Enn. III. 4, 6: oi yap ofiolios in toU airols iras KiveiTat rj ;8oiiXeToi 1; iyepyet. * Enn. III. 1, 8. v] OF PLOTHSTTJS 77 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 (t^ fii] ^povelv) other things are the causes. Rational action has its cause within; being only not hindered from without*. 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 2. How then can punishment be just? The answer is that the composite nature, which sins, is also that which pays the penalty of sin'. The involuntariness of sin (oTi dfiaprCa aKovaiov) does not prevent the deed being from the doer*. Some men indeed come into being as if by a witch- craft of external things, and are little or nothing of them- selves : 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 °. 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'. 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 had made it, it would have no reason to be ashamed of its work'. This whole, with everything in it, is as it would be if providentially ordered by the rational choice of the Maker '- If, indeed, the world had come into existence a certain time ago, and before was not, then the providence which regulates 1 Enn. ni. 1, 10. ° Enn. VI. 8, 3 : otre ri iir airois oSre t6 ixoinov diturofiev. ' Enn. I. 1, 12. * Enn. m. 2, 10. ' Enn. n. 3, 15 : oi yhp dii voin-iariov towutov etvai tpvx^v, oTov, 8 ti 4y l^uSev ■jtASxi, TadTT)v (f>iinv ttrx^^" f^vV" '''"" ^^"tuv olxelav tjiiaiv oiK Ixowok. Enn. m. 2, m. 3, i. 8. ' Enn. m. 2, 3: oiS' el 'Koyur/jJii eiti b TOi-fjaas, a'urxweirai, rif ironiBivTi. » Enn. VI. 8, 17. 78 THE PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM [CH. 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 begin- ning 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 intel- lect 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 deal- ings 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 (eWei^t?) 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 de- stroyed 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 dis- tribution of what the Stoics after all allow to be things "agreeable" and "not agreeable" to nature, is vmfair. 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 here. The earth too is' as one of the stars {mi ev Tt t&v aaTpwvY. 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 intelh- gible order, the argument may be met in full. Among men 1 Enn. m. 2, 8. V] OP PLOTINUS 79 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 ffrational 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 par- ticular 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 coward- ice, — 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 participates, 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 corisistently with his place in the universe. Reason (d \6yobvovi BeaaSai xal irdxTOS Bavdrovs Kal irSXeav aXdffas Kal ipwayis, /leTaBiaeu irAvra koI /ieT-affxij/itaTiffeis *ra2 Bfrlpiuv itoi ol/iwyQv iiroKpiireis. ' Enn. rn. 2, 16 : TeroXyUijo-flw yip ■ rdxa S' &v kcU rixoi-Mv. ' "Tout oomprendre est tout pardonner." Enn. in. 2, 17: &\V tp6y'iiais d7a9oC Kal Kaxov, xal oilri; Sy Ti twv irfaBav. W. 6 1 82 THE PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM [cfi. slight possible allusions in the whole of the Enneads to orthoi- dox Christianity. With Christian Gnosticism Plotinus deals expressly in a book which Porphyry has placed at the end of the second Ennead^. 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 ob- scurity 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 outUne 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", Plotinus begins by asking them to assign the cause of the " fall " (a-tjjdX- fia) 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 inteUigible 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'- Then, as to its future destruction of the 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 intelUgible 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 ^ Enn. n. 9. Tlpis roiis KO/t6» riv Sriniovpyw toO kIkthov koX tov kSithov mm etvai Xiyoi/Tas, or llpis tovs yvuaTiKois. ' a. Enn. n. 9, 6: ras Se &Was iroirTdcreis H xpv \iyfir ds eUriyovai; jrapoiK'^ireis /tai ivTiTiirovs xal fieravolas ; ' Enn. u. 9, 4: H yi,p ft;/ iavT^ Kai Ao7ifcro yevi' o5 Sinifn-TJff8ai. tA irdv eKdffTtp 8t56vTos Karct, ij>6 6,v tSoi tf/vx)] l^V KoM] yevofiipii. ' Enn. 1. 6, 9: wo-re bXoax^pet /dv \6yif rb irpurov KoKbv • Siaipav Sk rb, j-oijtA rb /J^v vorrrov KaXbv rbv tQv dSav ip'/iffei Tbitov, rb S' dyaffbv rb iirheiva Kai -n-qy^v 90 THE PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM [CH. because it is at once a momentary reminiscence and an as- piration after what cannot be retained^- In another place ^, 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 Plotinus, 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 lifehke statues are more beautiful even when they are less pro^ portionate. The irregularity 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 jier/a vXrf T0V KaXov), 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*. Discussing, in a separate book*. Intellectual or Intelligible Beauty, 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 {trapa rod e'iBov<;, o ivfjieev r/ Texvr]). If any one thinks meanly of the arts because they imitate nature =, first it must be pointed out that the natures of the things imitated are themselves imitations of ideal being, 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 (ttoXXo, Trap" avra>v iroiovai), filling up deficiencies in the visible model. Thus Phidias did not shape his Zeus after anything in perception, but from his own apprehension 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 ^ Enn. V. 5, 12: xai iari Sk ri /iiv ^ttiok xal Tpoffrivis Kal &ppiTffiov koL, lis i6i\ei. Tis, Ttapbv aiT

aiJ,iii, dvajKalov. ^ Hisioire Critique de l'£cole d'Alexandrie, t. ii. p. 62. 3 Enn. I. 2, 4. V] OF PLOTINTJS 93 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 superio]*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^, 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^- 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 ^. That genuine freedom or self-dependence belongs properly to the contemplative and not to the active life Plotinus main- tains in one place* 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 dis- play liberality, or that all things should go well and it should 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 for- tune and are not chosen by us. What is to be referred to virtue itself and not to anything external, is the trained aptitude of inteUigence 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 1 iii. 2, p. 605. ^ Enn. v. 5, 3. ' Enn. VI. 5, 10: luiwvvTai. Si koX iKKXijirlai, Kal iraaa ixivoSos lis els h> tQ (jipoveiv IbvTiiiv ■'koJ xwpis ^Kaffros els to (jipoveiv acrSevfis, (rvfifidWai' Si els ev ttSs iv T^ awbSif Kal ry Cis d,\i]9as awiffei. rb (jipoveiv iyh>vi)letr6ai Kal els tAos toCto ^XiireLy, . . .ap' S,v Tis i.v&axoi'ro rh vapASo^ov Tov \6yov; ' Enn. m. 8, 6: 6,v4Kaii.ij/ev oiv irdXiv ^ irpofis els eeuplav. Cf. c. 8: irdpepyov Seaplas tA Trdi/Ta. ' Enn. m. 8, 10: oSt?) toIvw irapiaxe li^v tV iraaav fw^c rif VTt^ t^v iroXMlv', f/ieive Si airii oi) ttoWt) oSaa, iW ipxh ttjs ToWijs. V] OF PLOTINUS 95 more deprived of reality^. 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^." This can- not 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*. The man of practical virtue, as the Homeric account is interpreted elsewhere*, 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 dismiss all memories whatever^. Memory, however, seems to be thought of not as actually perishing, but as recoverable should the soul redescend to relation with the material universe. 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 puri- fied 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 * Enn. VI. 5, 12 : oi ykp ix toO ovtos ijr i) irpoaft,hoi.s Kal TrapeffKevcurp-ivois. C£. 0. 7 : oi yhp KehaL tov iprmwaav airroS ra S\\a, dXX' (jv Kal aranis. s Enn. V. 3. 104 THE MYSTICISM [CH. consists in stripping off everything extraneous till the prin- ciple 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^. Even when intellect itself is reached by the soul turning to it, there still remains, it must be repeated, the duahty and even plurality impUed in synthetic cognition of self as mind ^- Mind is self-sufficing, because it has all that it needs for self-know- ledge; 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*. 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 Uves 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 oft to sleep again*. 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 of nature, as if having a divination that without it they cannot be*." 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 1 This is related to intellect itself as the moon to the sun. Cf. Enn. v. 6, 4. * Enn. V. 3, 13: Kifdweiei yi.p SKm ri voeiv troKKHr eh airb amcKeiiiTav awalae-naii elvai toS S\ov, Srav airb n iavrb vo^ ■ 8 5^ Kvplm iffri roeiv. ' Enn. V. 3, 17: Kal toDto to tAos rSKrieivbr i/nixv, i?0(l^o(rfloi OTis iKclvov Koiairv airb e^AaatrBai, oiiK dWifi tpaH, dXX' airif, Si ov Kal 6i>g.....irus S.v oir TOUTO yivono; iipeXe Trdiira. * Enn. V. 5, 11. - Enn. v. 5, 12. VI] OF PLOTINUS 105 thought, and makes Philo here the sole predecessor of Plo- tinus^., But,, we may ask, whence came the notion to Philo himself? The combination of the mo^ complete "imma- nence " 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 pre- supposition 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 dia- logue. During the period of almost exclusively ethical think- ing, between Aristotle and revived Pythagoreanism and Plato- nism, 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 over- looked. That neither Philo nor Plotinus overlooked them may be seen from the references and quotations given by Zeller himself 2. 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 contemplating intellectual beauty, and is seized upon by the " divine madness " only in rising above beauty to its cause beyond'- That Plotinus de- rived from Plato his conception of the Good beyond being is generally admitted. It is equally clear that for the theory of 1 iii. 2, pp. 448, 611. 2 See, for Philo, iii. 2, p. 415, n. 5; for Plotinus, p. 615, n. 3. Cf. Porph. F. Plot. 23. ' Enn. VI. 7, 35: koX top vovv toIvvp [dcT] tV M^" ^X"" S6vaiuv els t6 voeiv, ^ to, iv airif /SX^irei, riip bi, y rk liriKeiva, airov ^tti/SoX^ tiw Kal irapaSoxS) KtS' w nal Trpdrcpop iiipa fi6vov Kal bpSiv iiarepov Kal vow fo^e Kal iv icrri • Koi lanv ixelvii iJ^v ij 64a voO iii4>povo!, aiiTHi Si I'oCs ipav. Srav [yitp] &(t>pav yiviyraL fiedvffSels toO vdKrapos, rire ipwv ylverai atrKiaBeh els eiirdOeiav tc^ xipi^. 106 THE MYSTICISM OF PLOTINUS [Vl its apprehension also there presented itself a Platonic point of view. Thus even the mystical consummation of his philo- sophy 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 by contact with the East,- but this does not affect the charac- ter 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 contemplative 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 tradi- tion 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. CHAPTER VII* THE DIFFUSION OF NEO-PLATONISM 1. Porphyry. Both for his own and for succeeding times, the name of Por- phyry 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 doc- trine was ascribed to Plotinus; while Porphyry gained fame by his clearness of exposition — "as if some Hermaic chain had been let down to meni." He then goes on to celebrate Porphyry's knowledge of all liberal science {ovSev TratSet'a? elSo<; irapaXeKonro)!;); 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 suggestion of his teachers he HeUenised 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 Plotinus from the year 263. His journey to Sicily, with its cause, has been already mentioned. Afterwards he ' Eunap. Vitae (Porphyrius) : o /iiv yap IIXutikos ti? re rrji ^ux'^s oip&vlif koX T

ipios, warep 'Bp/iaiici} ns aeipk Kal wpbs &v6p(iTovs iTi.veiov(ra, SiA toikIXtis iraiBeLa.- irdvTa els to eiyvauTOv Kal KaBapbv Of-fiyyeWtv. , 108 THE DIFFUSION [CH. returned to Rome; and it was in Rome, according to Euna- pius, 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 neighbours, 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-Platonism^. 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 theological virtues he commends "faith, truth, love, hope" ; adding only truth to the Christian three'. 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. 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*. ^ Histoire de V^cole d' Alexandrie, t. ii. pp. 98-9. ' See for example Eplstola ad Marcellam, o. 9: xSs oiv oiiK arorov r^v ireireuriJtivtpi iv ffol etvai xal ri aif^ov xal rb aifibijsvov koX t6 ye dTroXXto (cai iToWifiei'ov riv re TrXoOroi' Kal ttjv ireiilav rbv tc varipa koX rbv ivSpa. ital rbv tQv Svtws &yaBQ>v KaffrjyefJiAva, KiXt^ivai Trpos riiv toO iipriyriToS ffKidr, lit Sri Tbv ivTiiK itpTfytiT^v p,^ ivrbs ^X"^'^"'" A"!^^ irapa irauT^ irivra. Tor irXovTov; " Ad Marcellam, 24: Ti