with the Byzantine Roman empire; Julian perished in the pursuit of this project. But even before his day the shrewder Neoplatonists had seen that their lofty religious philosophy could not stoop to an alliance with the despotic world-empire, because it could not come in contact with the world at all. To Neoplatonism political affairs are at bottom as indifferent as all other earthly things. The idealism of the new philosophy was too heavenly to be naturalized in the Byzantine empire, which stood more in need of police officials than of philosophers. Important and instructive, therefore, as are the attempts made from time to time by the state and by individual philosophers to unite Neoplatonism and the universal monarchy, their failure was a foregone conclusion.
There is one other question which we are called upon to raise here. Why did not Neoplatonism set up an independent religious community? Why did it not provide for its mixed multitude of divinities by founding a universal church, in which all the gods of all nations might be worshipped along with the one ineffable Deity? The answer to this question involves the answer to another—Why was Neoplatonism defeated by Christianity? Three essentials of a permanent religious foundation were wanting in Neoplatonism; they are admirably indicated in Augustine’s Confessions (vii. 18-21). First, and chiefly, it lacked a religious founder; second, it could not tell how the state of inward peace and blessedness could become permanent; third, it had no means to win those who were not endowed with the speculative faculty. The philosophical discipline which it recommended for the attainment of the highest good was beyond the reach of the masses; and the way by which the masses could attain the highest good was a secret unknown to Neoplatonism. Thus it remained a school for the “wise and prudent”; and when Julian tried to enlist the sympathies of the common rude man for the doctrines and worship of this school, he was met with scorn and ridicule.
It is not as a philosophy, then, nor as a new religion, that Neoplatonism became a decisive factor in history, but, if one may use the expression, as a “mood.” The instinctive certainty that there is a supreme good, lying beyond empirical experience, and yet not an intellectual good—this feeling, and the accompanying conviction of the utter vanity of all earthly things, were produced and sustained by Neoplatonism. Only it could not describe the nature of this highest good; and therefore it had to abandon itself to imagination and aesthetic impressions. It changed thought into an emotional dream; it plunged into the ocean of sentiment; it treated the old world of fable as the reflection of a higher reality, and transformed reality into poetry; and after all these expedients, to borrow a phrase of Augustine’s, it only saw afar off the land of its desire.
Yet the influence of Neoplatonism on the history of our ethical culture is immeasurable, above all because it begot the consciousness that the only blessedness which can satisfy the heart must be sought higher even than the sphere of reason. That man shall not live by bread alone, the world had learned before Neoplatonism; but Neoplatonism enforced the deeper truth—a truth which the older philosophy had missed—that man shall not live by knowledge alone. And, besides the propaedeutic importance which thus belongs to it, another fact has to be taken into account in estimating the influence of Neoplatonism. It is to this day the nursery of that whole type of devotion which affects renunciation of the world, which strives after an ideal, without the strength to rise above aesthetic impressions, and is never able to form a clear conception of the object of its own aspiration.
Origin.—As forerunners of Neoplatonism we may regard, on the one hand, those Stoics who accepted the Platonic distinction between the sensible world and the intelligible, and, on the other hand, the so-called Neopythagoreans and religious philosophers like Plutarch of Chaeronea and especially Numenius of Apamea. But these cannot be considered the actual progenitors of Neoplatonism; their philosophic method is quite elementary as compared with the Neoplatonic, their fundamental principles are uncertain, and unbounded deference is still paid to the authority of Plato. The Jewish and Christian thinkers of the first two centuries approach considerably nearer than Numenius to the later Neoplatonism.[1] Here we have Philo, to begin with. Philo, who translated the Old Testament religion into the terms of Hellenic thought, holds as an inference from his theory of revelation that the divine Supreme Being is “supra-rational,” that He can be reached only through “ecstasy”, and that the oracles of God supply the material of moral and religious knowledge. The religious ethics of Philo—a compound of Stoic, Platonic and Neopythagorean elements—already bear the peculiar stamp which we recognize in Neoplatonism. While his system assigns the supremacy to Greek philosophy over the national religion of Israel, it exacts from the former, as a sort of tribute to the latter, the recognition of the elevation of God above the province of reason. The claim of positive religion to be something more than the intellectual apprehension of the reason in the universe is thus acknowledged. Religious syncretism is also a feature of Philo’s system, but it differs essentially from what we find in later Neoplatonism. For Philo pays no respect to any cultus except the Jewish; and he believed that all the fragments of truth to be found amongst Greeks and Romans had been borrowed from the books of Moses. The earliest Christian philosophers, particularly Justin and Athenagoras, likewise prepared the way for the speculations of the Neoplatonists—partly by their attempts to connect Christianity with Stoicism and Platonism, partly by their ambition to exhibit Christianity as “hyperplatonic.” In the introduction to his Dialogue with Trypho, Justin follows a method which bears a striking resemblance to the later method of Neoplatonism: he seeks to base the Christian knowledge of God—that is, the knowledge of the truth—on Platonism, Scepticism and “Revelation.” A still more remarkable parallel to the later Neoplatonism is afforded by the Christian Gnostics of Alexandria, especially Valentinus and the followers of Basilides.[2] Like the Neoplatonists, the Basilidians believed, not in an emanation from the Godhead, but in a dynamic manifestation of its activity. The same is true of Valentinus, who also placed an unnameable being at the apex of his system, and regarded matter, not as a second principle, but as a product of the one divine principle. It must be added that the dependence of Basilides and Valentinus on Zeno and Plato is beyond dispute. But the method observed by these Gnostics in thinking out the plan and the history of the universe is by no means thoroughgoing. Ancient myths are admitted without undergoing analysis; the most naïve realism alternates with daring efforts at spiritualizing. Philosophically considered, therefore, the Gnostic systems are very unlike the rigorous self-consistency of Neoplatonism; although they certainly contain almost all the elements which enter into the Neoplatonic theory of the universe.
But were the oldest Neoplatonists really acquainted with the speculations of Philo, or Justin, or Valentinus, or Basilides? Did they know the Oriental religions, Judaism and Christianity in particular? And, if so, did they really derive anything from these sources?
To these questions we cannot give decided, still less definite and precise, answers. Since Neoplatonism originated in Alexandria, where Oriental modes of worship were accessible to every one, and since the Jewish philosophy had also taken its place in the literary circles of Alexandria, we may safely assume that even the earliest of the Neoplatonists possessed
- ↑ The resemblance would probably be still more apparent if we thoroughly understood the development of Christianity at Alexandria in the 2nd century; but unfortunately we have only very meagre fragments to guide us here.
- ↑ The dogmas of the Basilidians, as given by Hippolytus, read almost like passages from Neoplatonic works: ἐπεὶ οὐδὲν ἦν, οὐχ ὕλη, οὐκ οὐσία, οὐκ ἀνούσιον, οὐχ ἁπλοῦν, οὐ σύνθετον, οὐκ ἀνόητον, οὐκ ἀναίσθητον, οὐκ ἄνθρωπος. . . . οὐκ ὢν θεὸς ἀνοήτως, ἀναισθήτως, ἀβούλως, ἀπροαιρέτως, ἀπαθῶς, ἀνεπιθυμήτως κόσμον ἠθέλησε ποιῆσαι . . . οὕτως οὐκ ὢν θεὸς ἐποίησε κόσμον οὐκ όντα ἐξ οὐκ ὄντων, καταβαλόμενος καὶ ὑποστήσας σπέρμα τι ἓν ἔχον πᾶσαν ἐν ἑαυτῷ τὴν τοῦ κόσμου πανσπερμίαν (Philos. vii. 20 seq.). See Gnosticism, Basilides, &c.
