Neoplatonism

This is not a prominent feature in Plotinus or his immediate disciples, who still exhibit full confidence in the subjective pre suppositions of their philosophy. But the later adherents of the school did not possess this confidence ; they based their philosophy on revelations of the Deity, and they found these in the religious traditions and rites of all nations. The Stoics had taught them to overstep the political boundaries of states and nationalities, and rise from the Hellenic to a universal human consciousness. Through all history the spirit of God has breathed ; everywhere we discover the traces of His revelation. The older any religious tradition or mode of worship is, the more venerable is it, the richer in divine ideas. Hence the religions of the East had a peculiar interest for the Neoplatonist. Neoplatonism seizes on the aspiration of the human soul after a higher life, and treats this psychological fact as the key to the interpretation of the universe. Hence the existing religions, after being refined and spiritualized, were made the basis of philosophy.

Neoplatonism thus represents a stage in the history of religion; indeed this is precisely where its historical importance lies. In the progress of science and enlightenment it has no positive sig nificance, except as a necessary transition which the race had to make in order to get rid of nature-religion, and that under-valuing of the spiritual life which formed an insuperable obstacle to the advance of human knowledge. Neoplatonism, however, failed as signally in its religious enterprise as it did in its philosophical. While seeking to perfect ancient philosophy, it really extinguished it ; and in like manner its attempted reconstruction of ancient re ligions only resulted in their destruction. For in requiring these religions to impart certain prescribed religious truths, and to incul cate the highest moral tone, it burdened them with problems to which they were unequal. And further, by inviting them to loosen, though not exactly to dissolve, their political allegiance—the very thing that gave them stability—it removed the foundation on which they rested.

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 an other—Why was Neoplatonism defeated by Christianity? Three things were wanting in Neoplatonism ; they are admirably indi cated 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.

Yet the influence of Neoplatonism on the history of our ethical culture is immeasurable, above all because it begot the conscious ness 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 Neoplato nism; but Neoplatonism enforced the deeper truth—a truth which the older philosophy had missed—that man shall not live by knowledge alone.

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. The Jewish and Christian thinkers of the first two centuries ap proach considerably nearer than Numenius to the later Neopla tonism. 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 Neopla tonism. While his system assigns the supremacy to Greek philo sophy 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 ap prehension 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 knowl edge of the truth—on Platonism, Scepticism and "Revelation." A still more remarkable parallel to the later Neoplatonism is af forded by the Christian Gnostics of Alexandria, especially Valen tinus and the followers of Basilides. 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.