According to Plotinus, the ultimate source of all things is God, of whom it is impossible to predicate anything, because He is logically prior to anything that can be predicated. Now, God, acting on a creative impulse, created a Spirit (vows) somewhat like Himself. This Spirit, acting on a like impulse, created another, namely the World-Soul. This created other souls, and so on until the series of productions in accordance with the law of diminish ing spiritual returns ends in that extremely low kind of souls called matter. The process of creation is usually conceived as a kind of emanation, analogous to the sun's emission of light; sometimes, however, creation seems to be reduced to a logical or quasi-logical relationship. The World-Soul (the creation of the first Spirit created directly by God) is conceived as a group or system of spirits very like the Platonic "Ideas," at once thoughts and objects, but perfect and immutable. As the creations or emanations are held to be immanent in the creators, the Neo-Pla tonist universe in really one spiritual system, all the parts of which are spiritual though in varying degrees. The human soul has fallen from a higher grade of spirituality, and can only regain this by a training in asceticism and mysticism and after a series of successive births. The Neo-Platonism of Plotinus, with its system of graded spiritual emanations from God, was readily adapted to the then prevalent Polytheism and belief in spirits and spectres of all sorts. Greek paganism thus received a new lease of life under Julian the Apostate. Plotinus also criticized the Christian exaggeration of man's place in the universe and of the importance of prayer without work. (See NEOPLATONISM; PHILO; PLOTINUS; PROCLUS.)
Cicero (106-43 B.c.) and the Eclectics. Philosophers who neither construct a system of their own nor embrace an existing system as a whole, but adopt and combine parts belonging to dif ferent systems, are called eclectics or syncretists. The term Eclecticism is sometimes applied with great latitude so as to include even such comparatively harmonious systems as Neo Platonism, but is more usually restricted to the less systematic and more loose jointed philosophies. In 146 B.c. Greece became a Roman province, and Rome developed philosophic ambitions without ever succeeding in constructing an independent phil osophic system. It was probably in keeping with the essentially practical mentality of the Romans to refrain from speculation beyond a certain point, and to trust their common sense instead of following theoretical adventure "whithersoever it may lead." The most famous eclectics of antiquity were Cicero and Seneca (A.D 5-65). Both showed marked leanings towards the epistem ology of the Sceptics of the New Academy and the ethics of the Stoics. Cicero also leaned somewhat towards Stoic pantheism, and Seneca has impressed many people as remarkably Christian for a pagan. Of course, there were eclectics outside Rome. Perhaps the best known of them was the Greek, Plutarch (A.D. 50-120). (See CICERO ; SENECA ; PLUTARCH.) The End of Ancient Philosophy.—In A.D. 529 the Emperor Justinian closed the school of philosophy and so brought to an end the first main period in the history of philosophy. During the dark ages, which followed, the writings of the eclectics, and especially those of Cicero, did much to keep alive a knowledge of ancient philosophy and an interest in philosophical problems.