THE SPIRITUALISM OF PLOTINUS.
I.
Among the most interesting of Plutarch’s religious writings is one
entitled _On the Delays in the Divine Vengeance_. As might be expected
from the name, it deals with a problem closely akin to that which
ages before had been made the subject of such sublime imagery and
such inconclusive reasoning by the author of the Book of Job. What
troubled the Hebrew poet was the apparently undeserved suffering of
the just. What the Greek moralist feels himself called on to explain
is the apparent prosperity and impunity of the wicked. He will not for
a moment admit that crime remains unavengeful; his object is to show
why the retribution does not follow directly on the deed. And, in order
to account for this, he adduces a number of very ingenious reasons. By
acting deliberately rather than in blind anger, the gods wish to read
us a useful lesson in patience and forbearance. Sometimes their object
is to give the sinner an opportunity for repentance and amendment; or
else they may be holding him in reserve for the performance of some
beneficial work. At other times, their justice is delayed only that it
may be manifested by some signal and striking form of retribution. In
many cases, the final stroke has been preceded by long years of secret
torment; and even where no suffering seems to be inflicted, the pangs
of remorse may furnish a sufficient expiation. Or again, vengeance may
be reserved for a future generation. Some persons hold that to visit
the sins of the fathers on the children is unjust, but in this they
are profoundly mistaken. Members of the same family and citizens of
the same state are connected as parts of one organic whole; sharing in
the benefits which accrue from the good deeds of their predecessors,
it is right that they should also share in the responsibility for
their crimes. Moreover, the posterity of the wicked inherit a sinful
disposition which, as the gods can clearly foresee, would betray itself
in overt acts were they not cut off in their youth. And it is equally
an error to suppose that the original wrongdoers remain unaffected
by the retribution which befalls their descendants. On the contrary,
they witness it from the next world, where it adds poignancy to their
remorse, and entails on them fresh penalties over and above those which
they have already been doomed to suffer.
Thus with Plutarch, as with his master Plato, a future world is the
grand court of appeal from the anomalies and inequalities of this
world; and, following the example of the _Gorgias_ and the _Republic_,
he reserves to the last a terrible picture of the torments held in
store for those who have not expiated their transgressions on earth,
describing them as they are supposed to have been witnessed by a
human soul temporarily separated from the body for the purpose of
viewing and reporting on this final manifestation of divine justice.
It would appear, however, from the narrative in question that future
punishments are not eternal. After a more or less protracted period
of expiation, the immortal soul is restored to the upper world, under
whatever embodiment seems most appropriate to its former career. Among
those whose turn has arrived for entering on a new existence at the
moment when Plutarch’s visitor makes his descent to hell, is the soul
of Nero. The wicked Emperor has just been condemned to assume the form
of a viper, when a great light shines forth, and from the midst of the
light a voice is heard crying: ‘Let him reappear under the guise of
a song-bird haunting the neighbourhood of marshes and meres; for he
has already paid the penalty of his guilt, and the gods owe him some
kindness for having liberated Greece, the best and most beloved by them
of all the nations that he ruled.’
It would seem from this singular and touching expression of gratitude
that the deathless idealism of Hellas found in Nero’s gift of a nominal
liberty ample compensation for the very real and precious works of art
of which she was despoiled on the occasion of his visit to her shores.
At first sight, that visit looks like nothing better than a display
of triumphant buffoonery on the one side and of servile adulation on
the other. But, in reality, it was a turning-point in the history of
civilisation, the awakening to new glories of a race in whom life had
become, to all outward appearance, extinct. For more than a whole
century the seat of intellectual supremacy had been established in
Rome; and during the same period Rome herself had turned to the West
rather than to the East for renovation and support. Caesar’s conquests
were like the revelation of a new world; and three times over, when the
two halves of the divided empire came into collision, the champion who
commanded the resources of that world had won. Henceforth it was to her
western provinces and to her western frontiers that Rome looked for
danger, for aggrandisement, or for renown. In Horace’s time, men asked
each other what the warlike Cantabrians were planning; and the personal
presence of Augustus himself was needed before those unruly Iberians
could be subdued. His adopted sons earned their first laurels at the
expense of Alpine mountaineers. His later years are filled with German
campaigns; and the great disaster of Varus must have riveted attention
more closely than any victory to what was passing between the Rhine and
the Elbe. Under Claudius, the conquest of Britain opened a new source
of interest in the West, and, like Germany before, supplied a new title
of triumph to the imperial family. Half the literary talent in Rome,
the two Senecas, Lucan, and at a later period Martial and Quintilian,
came from Spain, as also did Trajan, whose youth fall in this period.
With Nero’s visit to Greece in 66 the reaction begins. When, a few
years later, the empire was disputed between a general from Gaul and
a general from Syria, it was the candidate of the Eastern legions who
prevailed; the revolt of Judaea drew attention to Eastern affairs; and
the great campaigns of Trajan must have definitely turned the tide of
public interest in that direction, notwithstanding the far-sighted
protest of Tacitus. On more peaceful ground, Hadrian’s Asiatic tours
and his protracted residence in Athens completed the work inaugurated
by Nero. In his reign, the intellectual centre of gravity is definitely
transferred to Greece; and Roman literature, after its last blaze of
splendour under Trajan, becomes extinct, or survives only in forms
borrowed from the sophistical rhetoric of the East.
Plutarch, who was twenty-one when Nero declared his country free, was
the first leader in the great Hellenist revival, without, at the same
time, entirely belonging to it. He cared more for the matter than for
the form of antiquity, for the great deeds and greater thoughts of
the past than for the words in which they were related and explained.
Hence, by the awkwardness and heaviness of his style, he is more
akin to the writers of the Alexandrian period than to his immediate
successors. On the one side, he opens the era of classical idealism;
on the other, he closes that of encyclopaedic erudition. The next
generation bore much the same relation to Plutarch that the first
Sophists bore to Hecataeus and Herodotus. Addressing themselves to
popular audiences, they were obliged to study perspicuity and elegance
of expression, at the risk, it is true, of verbosity and platitude.
Such men were Dion Chrysostom, Herôdes Atticus, Maximus Tyrius, and
Aristeides. But the old models were imitated with more success by
writers who lived more entirely in the past. Arrian reproduced the
graceful simplicity of Xenophon in his narrative of the campaigns of
Alexander and his reports of the lectures of Epictêtus. Lucian composed
dialogues ranking with the greatest masterpieces of lighter Attic
literature. The felicity of his style and his complete emancipation
from superstition may probably be traced to the same source—a diligent
study of the ancient classics. It is certain that neither as a writer
nor as a critic does he represent the average educated taste of his own
times. So far from giving polytheism its deathblow, as he was formerly
imagined to have done, he only protested unavailingly against its
restoration.
Not only oratory and literature, but philosophy and science were
cultivated with renewed vigour. The line between philosophy and
sophisticism was not, indeed, very distinctly drawn. Epictêtus severely
censures the moral teachers of his time for ornamenting their lectures
with claptrap rhetoric about the battle of Thermopylae or flowery
descriptions of Pan and the Nymphs.[406] And the professed declaimers
similarly drew on a store of philosophical commonplaces. This sort of
popular treatment led to the cultivation of ethics and theology in
preference to logic and metaphysics, and to an eclectic blending of the
chief systems with one another. A severer method was inculcated in the
schools of Athens, especially after the endowment of their professors
by Marcus Aurelius; but, in practice, this came to mean what it means
in modern universities, the substitution of philology for independent
enquiry. The question was not so much what is true as what did Plato
or Aristotle really think. Alexandrian science showed something of the
same learned and traditional character in the works of Ptolemy; but the
great name of Galen marks a real progress in physiology, as well as a
return to the principles of Hippocrates.
Thus, so far as was possible in such altered circumstances, did
the Renaissance of the second century reproduce the intellectual
environment from which Plato’s philosophy had sprung. In literature,
there was the same attention to words rather than to things; sometimes
taking the form of exact scholarship, after the manner of Prodicus;
sometimes of loose and superficial declamation, after the manner of
Gorgias. There was the naturalism of Hippias, elaborated into a system
by the Stoics, and practised as a life by the new Cynics. There was
the hedonism of Aristippus, inculcated under a diluted form by the
Epicureans. There was the old Ionian materialism, professed by Stoics
and Epicureans alike. There was the scepticism of Protagoras, revived
by Aenesidêmus and his followers. There was the mathematical mysticism
of the Pythagoreans, flourishing in Egypt instead of in southern Italy.
There was the purer geometry of the Alexandrian Museum, corresponding
to the school of Cyrênê. On all sides, there was a mass of vague moral
preaching, without any attempt to exhibit the moral truths which we
empirically know as part of a comprehensive metaphysical philosophy.
And, lastly, there was an immense undefined religious movement, ranging
from theologies which taught the spirituality of God and of the human
soul, down to the most irrational and abject superstition. We saw
in the last chapter how, corresponding to this environment, there
was a revived Platonism, that Platonism was in fact the fashionable
philosophy of that age, just as it afterwards became the fashionable
philosophy of another Renaissance thirteen centuries later. But it
was a Platonism with the backbone of the system taken out. Plato’s
thoughts all centred in a carefully considered scheme for the moral and
political regeneration of society. Now, with the destruction of Greek
independence, and the absorption everywhere of free city-states into
a vast military empire, it might seem as if the realisation of such a
scheme had become altogether impracticable. The Republic was, indeed,
at that moment realising itself under a form adapted to the altered
exigencies of the time; but no Platonist could as yet recognise in
the Christian Church even an approximate fulfilment of his master’s
dream. Failing any practical issue, there remained the speculative side
of Plato’s teaching. His writings did not embody a complete system,
but they offered the materials whence a system could be framed. Here
the choice lay between two possible lines of construction; and each
had, in fact, been already attempted by his own immediate disciples.
One was the Pythagorean method of the Old Academy, what Aristotle
contemptuously called the conversion of philosophy into mathematics.
We saw in the last chapter how the revived Platonism of the first and
second centuries entered once more on the same perilous path, a path
which led farther and farther away from the true principles of Greek
thought, and of Plato himself when his intellect stood at its highest
point of splendour. Neo-Pythagorean mysticism meant an unreconciled
dualism of spirit and matter; and as the ultimate consequence of
that dualism, it meant the substitution of magical incantations and
ceremonial observances for the study of reason and virtue. Moreover, it
readily allied itself with Oriental beliefs, which meant a negation of
natural law that the Greeks could hardly tolerate, and, under the form
of Gnostic pessimism, a belief in the inherent depravity of Nature that
they could not tolerate at all.
The other alternative was to combine the dialectical idealism of
Plato with the cosmology of early Greek thought, interpreting the
two worlds of spirit and Nature as gradations of a single series and
manifestations of a single principle. This was what Aristotle had
attempted to do, but had not done so thoroughly as to satisfy the
moral wants of his own age, or the religious wants of the age when a
revived Platonism was seeking to organise itself into a system which
should be the reconciliation of reason and faith. Yet the better sort
of Platonists felt that this work could not be accomplished without
the assistance of Aristotle, whose essential agreement with their
master, as against Stoicism, they fully recognised. Their mistake
was to assume that this agreement extended to every point of his
teaching. Taken in this sense, their attempted harmonies were speedily
demolished by scholars whose professional familiarity with the original
sources showed them how strongly Aristotle himself had insisted on the
differences which separated him from the Academy and its founder.[407]
To identify the two great spiritualist philosophers being impossible,
it remained to show how they could be combined. The solution of such
a problem demanded more genius than was likely to be developed in
the schools of Athens. An intenser intellectual life prevailed in
Alexandria, where the materials of erudition were more abundantly
supplied, and where contact with the Oriental religions gave Hellenism
a fuller consciousness of its distinction from and superiority to
every other form of speculative activity. And here, accordingly, the
fundamental idea of Neo-Platonism was conceived.
II.
Plotinus is not only the greatest and most celebrated of the
Neo-Platonists, he is also the first respecting whose opinions we have
any authentic information, and therefore the one who for all practical
purposes must be regarded as the founder of the school. What we know
about his life is derived from a biography written by his disciple
Porphyry. This is a rather foolish performance; but it possesses
considerable interest, both on account of the information which it was
intended to supply, and also as affording indirect evidence of the
height to which superstition had risen during the third century of our
era. Plotinus gave his friends to understand that he was born in Egypt
about 205 A.D.; but so reluctant was he to mention any circumstance
connected with his physical existence, that his race and parentage
always remained a mystery. He showed somewhat more communicativeness
in speaking of his mental history, and used to relate in after-life
that at the age of twenty-eight he had felt strongly attracted to the
study of philosophy, but remained utterly dissatisfied with what the
most famous teachers of Alexandria had to tell him on the subject. At
last he found in Ammonius Saccas the ideal sage for whom he had been
seeking, and continued to attend his lectures for eleven years. At the
end of that period, he joined an eastern expedition under the Emperor
Gordian, for the purpose of making himself acquainted with the wisdom
of the Persians and Indians, concerning which his curiosity seems to
have been excited by Ammonius. But his hopes of further enlightenment
in that quarter were not fulfilled. The campaign terminated
disastrously; the emperor himself fell at the head of his troops in
Mesopotamia, and Plotinus had great difficulty in escaping with his
life to Antioch. Soon afterwards he settled in Rome, and remained there
until near the end of his life, when ill-health obliged him to retire
to a country seat in Campania, the property of a deceased friend,
Zêthus. Here the philosopher died, in the sixty-sixth year of his age.
Plotinus seems to have begun his career as a public teacher soon after
taking up his residence in Rome. His lectures at first assumed the
form of conversations with his private friends. Apparently by way of
reviving the traditions of Socrates and Plato, he encouraged them to
take an active part in the discussion: but either he did not possess
the authority of his great exemplars, or the rules of Greek dialogue
were not very strictly observed in Rome; for we learn from the report
of an eye-witness that interruptions were far too frequent, and that
a vast amount of nonsense was talked.[408] Afterwards a more regular
system of lecturing was established, and papers were read aloud by
those who had any observations to offer, as in our own philosophical
societies.
The new teacher gathered round him a distinguished society, comprising
not only professional philosophers, but also physicians, rhetors,
senators, and statesmen. Among the last-mentioned class, Rogatianus,
who filled the office of praetor, showed the sincerity of his
conversion by renouncing the dignities of his position, surrendering
his worldly possessions, limiting himself to the barest necessaries
of life, and allowing himself to be dependent even for these on the
hospitality of his friends. Thanks to this asceticism, he recovered the
use of his hands and feet, which had before been completely crippled
with gout.[409]
The fascination exercised by Plotinus was not only intellectual, but
personal. Singularly affable, obliging, and patient, he was always
ready to answer the questions of his friends, even laying aside his
work in order to discuss the difficulties which they brought to him for
solution. His lectures were given in Greek; and although this always
remained to him a foreign language, the pronunciation and grammar of
which he never completely mastered, his expressions frequently won
admiration by their felicity and force; and the effect of his eloquence
was still further heightened by the glowing enthusiasm which irradiated
his whole countenance, naturally a very pleasing one, during the
delivery of the more impressive passages.[410]
As might be expected, the circle of admirers which surrounded Plotinus
included several women, beginning with his hostess Gemina and her
daughter. He also stood high in the favour of the Emperor Galienus
and his consort Salonina; so much so, indeed, that they were nearly
persuaded to let him try the experiment of restoring a ruined city in
Campania, and governing it according to Plato’s laws.[411] Porphyry
attributes the failure of this project to the envy of the courtiers;
Hegel, with probably quite as much reason, to the sound judgment of the
imperial ministers.[412]
Our philosopher had, however, abundant opportunity for showing on a
more modest scale that he was not destitute of practical ability. So
high did his character stand, that many persons of distinction, when
they felt their end approaching, brought their children to him to be
taken care of, and entrusted their property to his keeping. As a result
of the confidence thus reposed in him, his house was always filled with
young people of both sexes, to whose education and material interests
he paid the most scrupulous attention, observing that as long as his
wards did not make a profession of philosophy, their estates and
incomes ought to be preserved unimpaired. It is also mentioned that,
although frequently chosen to arbitrate in disputes, he never made a
single enemy among the Roman citizens—a piece of good fortune which is
more than one could safely promise to anyone similarly circumstanced in
an Italian city at the present day.[413]
Plotinus possessed a remarkable power of reading the characters and
even the thoughts of those about him. It is said, probably with some
exaggeration, that he predicted the future fate of all the boys placed
under his care. Thus he foretold that a certain Polemo, in whom he
took particular interest, would devote himself to love and die young;
which proved only too true, and may well have been anticipated by a
good observer without the exercise of any supernatural prescience.
As another instance of his penetration, we are told that a valuable
necklace having been stolen from a widow named Chione, who lived in
his house with her family, the slaves were all led into the presence
of Plotinus that he might single out the thief. After a careful
scrutiny, the philosopher put his finger on the guilty individual.
The man at first protested his innocence, but was soon induced by an
application of the whip to confess, and, what was a much more valuable
verification of his accuser’s insight, to restore the missing article.
Porphyry himself could testify from personal experience to his friend’s
remarkable power of penetration. Being once about to commit suicide,
Plotinus divined his intention, and told him that it proceeded, not
from a rational resolution, but from a fit of the blues, as a remedy
for which he prescribed change of scene, and this did in fact have the
desired effect.[414]
Previous to his forty-ninth year, Plotinus wrote nothing. At that age
he began to compose short essays on subjects which suggested themselves
in the course of his oral teaching. During the next ten years, he
produced twenty-one such papers, some of them only a page or two in
length. At the end of that period, he made the acquaintance of his
future editor and biographer, Porphyry, a young student of Semitic
extraction, whose original name was Malchus. The two soon became fast
friends; and whatever speculative differences at first divided them
were quickly removed by an amicable controversy between Porphyry and
another disciple named Amelius, which resulted in the unreserved
adhesion of the former to the doctrine of their common master.[415] The
literary activity of Plotinus seems to have been powerfully stimulated
by association with the more methodical mind of Porphyry. During the
five years[416] of their personal intercourse he produced nineteen
essays, amounting altogether to three times the bulk of the former
series. Eight shorter pieces followed during the period of failing
health which preceded his death, Porphyry being at that time absent
in Sicily, whither he had retired when suffering from the fit of
depression already mentioned.
Porphyry observes that the first series of essays show the immaturity
of youth—a period which he extends to what is generally considered the
sufficiently ripe age of fifty-nine;—the second series the full-grown
power of manhood; and the last the weakness of declining years. The
truth is that his method of criticism, at least in this instance, was
to judge of compositions as if their merit depended on their length,
and perhaps also with reference to the circumstance whether their
subject had or had not been previously talked over with himself.
In point of fact, the earlier pieces include some of the very best
things that Plotinus ever wrote; and, taking them in the order of
their composition, they form a connected exposition of Neo-Platonic
principles, to which nothing of importance was ever added. This we
shall attempt to show in the most effectual manner possible by basing
our own account of Neo-Platonism on an analysis of their contents; and
we strongly recommend them to the attention of all Greek scholars who
wish to make themselves acquainted with Plotinus at first hand, but
have not leisure to wade through the whole of his works. It may also
be mentioned that the last series of essays are distinguished by the
popular character of their subjects rather than by any evidence of
failing powers, one of them, that on Providence,[417] being remarkable
for the vigour and eloquence of its style.
By cutting up some of the longer essays into parts, Porphyry succeeded,
much to his delight, in bringing the whole number up to fifty-four,
which is a product of the two perfect numbers six and nine. He then
divided them into six volumes, each containing nine books—the famous
_Enneads_ of Plotinus. His principle of arrangement was to bring
together the books in which similar subjects were discussed, placing
the easier disquisitions first. This disposition has been adhered to
by subsequent editors, with the single exception of Kirchhoff, who has
printed the works of Plotinus according to the order in which they
were written.[418] Porphyry’s scrupulous information has saved modern
scholars an incalculable amount of trouble, but has not, apparently,
earned all the gratitude it deserved, to judge by Zeller’s intimation
that the chronological order of the separate pieces cannot even now
be precisely determined.[419] Unfortunately, what could have been of
priceless value in the case of Plato and Aristotle, is of comparatively
small value in the case of Plotinus. His system must have been fully
formed when he began to write, and the dates in our possession give no
clue to the manner in which its leading principles were evolved.[420]
Such, so far as they can be ascertained, are the most important facts
in the life of Plotinus. Interwoven with these, we find some legendary
details which vividly illustrate the superstition and credulity of the
age. It is evident from his childish talk about the numbers six and
nine that Porphyry was imbued with Pythagorean ideas. Accordingly,
his whole account of Plotinus is dominated by the wish to represent
that philosopher under the guise of a Pythagorean saint. We have
already alluded to the manner in which he exalts his hero’s remarkable
sagacity into a power of supernatural prescience and divination. He
also tells us, with the most unsuspecting good faith, how a certain
Alexandrian philosopher whose jealousy had been excited by the
success of his illustrious countryman, endeavoured to draw down the
malignant influences of the stars on the head of Plotinus, but was
obliged to desist on finding that the attack recoiled on himself.[421]
On another occasion, an Egyptian priest, by way of exhibiting his
skill in magic, offered to conjure up the daemon or guardian spirit
of Plotinus. The latter readily consented, and the Temple of Isis
was chosen for the scene of the operations, as, according to the
Egyptian, no other spot sufficiently pure for the purpose could be
found in Rome. The incantations were duly pronounced, when, much to
the admiration of those present, a god made his appearance instead
of the expected daemon. By what particular marks the divinity of the
apparition was determined, Porphyry omits to mention. The philosopher
was congratulated by his countryman on the possession of such a
distinguished patron, but the celestial visitor vanished before any
questions could be put to him. This mishap was attributed to a friend
‘who, either from envy or fear, choked the birds which had been given
him to hold,’ and which seem to have played a very important part in
the incantation, though what it was, we do not find more particularly
specified.[422]
Another distinguished compliment was paid to Plotinus after his death
by no less an authority than the Pythian Apollo, who at this period had
fully recovered the use of his voice. On being consulted respecting the
fate of the philosopher’s soul, the god replied by a flood of bombastic
twaddle, in which the glorified spirit of Plotinus is described as
released from the chain of human necessity and the surging uproar of
the body, swimming stoutly to the storm-beaten shore, and mounting the
heaven-illumined path, not unknown to him even in life, that leads to
the blissful abodes of the immortals.[423]
In view of such tendencies, one hardly knows how much confidence is
to be placed in Porphyry’s well-known picture of his master as one
who lived so entirely for spiritual interests that he seemed ashamed
of having a body at all. We are told that, as a consequence of this
feeling, he avoided the subject of his past life, refused to let his
portrait be painted, neglected the care of his health, and rigorously
abstained from animal food, even when it was prescribed for him under
the form of medicine.[424] All this may be true, but it is not very
consistent with the special doctrines of Plotinus as recorded in his
writings, nor should it be allowed to influence our interpretation of
them. In his personal character and conduct he may have allowed himself
to be carried away by the prevalent asceticism and superstition of the
age; in his philosophy he is guided by the healthier traditions of
Plato and Aristotle, and stands in declared opposition to the mysticism
which was a negation of Nature and of life.
How far Plotinus was indebted to Ammonius Saccas for his speculative
ideas is another question with respect to which the Pythagoreanising
tendencies of his biographer may possibly have contributed to the
diffusion of a serious misconception. What Porphyry tells us is this.
Before leaving Alexandria, Plotinus had bound himself by a mutual
agreement with two of his fellow-pupils, Herennius and Origines
(not the Christian Father, but a pagan philosopher of the same age
and name), to keep secret what they had learned by listening to the
lectures of Ammonius. Herennius, however, soon broke the compact,
and Origines followed his example. Plotinus then considered that the
engagement was at an end, and used the results of his studies under
Ammonius as the basis of his conversational lectures in Rome, the
substance of which, we are left to suppose, was subsequently embodied
in his published writings. But, as Zeller has pointed out, this whole
story bears a suspicious resemblance to what is related of the early
Pythagorean school. There also the doctrines of the master were
regarded by his disciples as a mystery which they pledged themselves
to keep secret, and were only divulged through the infidelity of one
among their number, Philolaus. And the same critic proves by a careful
examination of what are known to have been the opinions of Origines
and Longinus, both fellow-pupils of Plotinus, that they differed from
him on some points of essential importance to his system. We cannot,
therefore, suppose that these points were included in the teaching of
their common master, Ammonius.[425] But if this be so, it follows that
Plotinus was the real founder of the Neo-Platonic school; and, in all
cases, his writings remain the great source whence our knowledge of its
first principles is derived.
III.
In point of style, Plotinus is much the most difficult of the ancient
philosophers, and, in this respect, is only surpassed by a very few
of the moderns. Even Longinus, who was one of the most intelligent
critics then living, and who, besides, had been educated in the
same school with our philosopher, could not make head or tail of his
books when copies of them were sent to him by Porphyry, and supposed,
after the manner of philologists, that the text must be corrupt, much
to the disgust of Porphyry, who assures us that its accuracy was
unimpeachable.[426] Probably politeness prevented Longinus from saying,
what he must have seen at a glance, that Plotinus was a total stranger
to the art of literary composition. We are told that he wrote as fast
as if he were copying from a book; but he had never mastered even
the elements of the Greek language; and the weakness of his eyesight
prevented him from reading over what he had written. The mistakes in
spelling and grammar Porphyry corrected, but it is evident that he
has made no alterations in the general style of the _Enneads_; and
this is nearly as bad as bad can be—disjointed, elliptical, redundant,
and awkward. Chapter follows chapter and paragraph succeeds to
paragraph without any fixed principle of arrangement; the connexion
of the sentences is by no means clear; some sentences are almost
unintelligible from their extreme brevity, others from their inordinate
length and complexity. The unpractised hand of a foreigner constantly
reveals itself in the choice and collocation of words and grammatical
inflections. Predicates and subjects are huddled together without any
regard to the harmonies of number and gender, so that even if false
concords do not occur, we are continually annoyed by the suggestion of
their presence.[427]
But even the most perfect mastery of Greek would not have made
Plotinus a successful writer. We are told that before taking up the pen
he had thoroughly thought out his whole subject; but this is not the
impression produced by a perusal of the _Enneads_. On the contrary, he
seems to be thinking as he goes along, and to be continually beset by
difficulties which he has not foreseen. The frequent and disorderly
interruptions by which his lectures were at one time disturbed seem
to have made their way into his solitary meditations, breaking or
tangling the thread of systematic exposition at every turn. Irrelevant
questions are constantly intruding themselves, to be met by equally
irrelevant answers. The first mode of expressing an idea is frequently
withdrawn, and another put in its place, which is, in most cases, the
less intelligible of the two; while, as a general rule, when we want to
know what a thing is, Plotinus informs us with indefatigable prolixity
what it is not.
Nevertheless, by dint of pertinacious repetition, the founder of
Neo-Platonism has succeeded in making the main outlines, and to a great
extent the details, of his system so perfectly clear that probably no
philosophy is now better understood than his. In this respect, Plotinus
offers a remarkable contrast to the two great thinkers from whom his
ideas are principally derived. While Plato and Aristotle construct each
particular sentence with masterly clearness, the general drift of their
speculations is by no means easy to ascertain; and, even now, critics
take diametrically opposite views of the interpretation which is to be
put on their teaching with regard to several most important points. The
expositors of Neo-Platonism, on the contrary, show a rare unanimity in
their accounts of its constitutive principles. What they differ about
is its origin and its historical significance. And these are points on
which we too shall have to enter, since all the ancient systems are
interesting to us chiefly as historical phenomena, and Neo-Platonism
more so than any other. Plotinus effected a vast revolution in
speculative opinion, but he effected it by seizing on the thoughts of
others rather than by any new thoughts or even new developments or
applications of his own.
Whether Plotinus was or was not the disciple of Ammonius, it is beyond
all doubt that he considered himself the disciple of Plato. There are
more than a hundred references to that philosopher in the _Enneads_,
against less than thirty references to all the other ancient thinkers
put together;[428] and, what is more remarkable, in only about half
of them is he mentioned by name. The reader is expected to know that
‘he’ always means Plato. And it is an article of faith with Plotinus
that his master cannot be mistaken; when the words of oracular wisdom
seem to contradict one another, there must be some way of harmonising
them. When they contradict what he teaches himself, the difficulty
must be removed by skilful interpretation; or, better still, it must
be discreetly ignored.[429] On the other hand, when a principle
is palpably borrowed from Aristotle, not only is its derivation
unacknowledged, but we are given to understand by implication that
it belongs to the system which Aristotle was at most pains to
controvert.[430]
But numerous as are the obligations, whether real or imaginary, of the
Alexandrian to the Athenian teacher, they range over a comparatively
limited field. What most interests a modern student in Platonism—its
critical preparation, its conversational dialectic, its personal
episodes, its moral enthusiasm, its political superstructure—had
apparently no interest for Plotinus as a writer. He goes straight
to the metaphysical core of the system, and occupies himself with
re-thinking it in its minutest details. Now this was just the part
which had either not been discussed at all, or had been very
insufficiently discussed by his predecessors. It would seem that the
revival of Platonic studies had followed an order somewhat similar
to the order in which Plato’s own ideas were evolved. The scepticism
of the _Apologia_ had been taken up and worked out to its last
consequences by the New Academy. The theory of intuitive knowledge,
the ethical antithesis between reason and passion, and the doctrine of
immortality under its more popular form, had been resumed by the Greek
and Roman Eclectics. Plutarch busied himself with the erotic philosophy
of the _Phaedrus_ and the _Symposium_, as also did his successor,
Maximus Tyrius. In addition to this, he and the other Platonists of
the second century paid great attention to the theology adumbrated
in those dialogues, and in the earlier books of the _Republic_. But
meanwhile Neo-Pythagoreanism had intervened to break the normal line
of development, and, under its influence, Plutarch passed at once to
the mathematical puzzles of the _Timaeus_. With Plato himself the
next step had been to found a state for the application of his new
principles; and such was the logic of his system, that the whole stress
of adverse circumstances could not prevent the realisation of a similar
scheme from being mooted in the third century; while, as we have seen,
something more remotely analogous to it was at that very time being
carried out by the Christian Church. Plato’s own disappointed hopes had
found relief in the profoundest metaphysical speculations; and now the
time has come when his labours in this direction were to engage the
attention hitherto absorbed by the more popular or literary aspects of
his teaching.
Now it was by this side of Platonism that Aristotle also had been most
deeply fascinated. While constantly criticising the ideal theory,
he had, in truth, accepted it under a modified form. His universal
classification is derived from the dialectic method. His psychology and
theology are constructed on the spiritualistic basis of the Academy,
and out of materials which the founder of the Academy had supplied.
It was therefore natural that Plotinus should avail himself largely
of the Stagirite’s help in endeavouring to reproduce what a tradition
of six centuries had obscured or confused. To reconcile the two Attic
masters was, as we know, a common school exercise. Learned commentators
had, indeed, placed their disagreement beyond all dispute. But there
remained the simpler course of bringing their common standpoint into
greater prominence, and combining their theories where this seemed
possible without too openly renouncing the respect due to what almost
all considered the superior authority of Plato. To which of the two
masters Neo-Platonism really owed most is a question that must be
postponed until we have made ourselves acquainted with the outlines of
the system as they appear in the works of Plotinus.
IV.
It has been already mentioned how large a place was given to erotic
questions by the literary Platonists of the second century. Even in
the school of Plotinus, Platonic love continued to be discussed,
sometimes with a freedom which pained and disgusted the master beyond
measure.[431] His first essay was apparently suggested by a question
put to him in the course of some such debate.[432] The subject is
beauty. In his treatment of it, we find our philosopher at once rising
superior to the indecorous frivolities of his predecessors. Physical
beauty he declares to be the ideal element in objects, that which
they have received from the creative soul, and which the perceptive
soul recognises as akin to her own essence. Love is nothing but the
excitement and joy occasioned by this discovery. But to understand the
truer and higher forms of beauty, we must turn away from sensible
perceptions, and study it as manifested in wise institutions, virtuous
habits, and scientific theories. The passionate enthusiasm excited
by the contemplation of such qualities as magnanimity, or justice,
or wisdom, or valour can only be explained by assuming that they
reveal our inmost nature, showing us what we were destined for, what
we originally were, and what we have ceased to be. For we need only
enumerate the vices which make a soul hideous—injustice, sensuality,
cowardice, and the like—to perceive that they are foreign to her real
nature, and are imposed on her by contamination with the principle
of all evil, which is matter. To be brave means not to dread death,
because death is the separation of the soul from the body. Magnanimity
means the neglect of earthly interests. Wisdom means the elevation of
our thoughts to a higher world. The soul that virtue has thus released
becomes pure reason, and reason is just what constitutes her intrinsic
beauty. It is also what alone really exists; without it all the rest of
Nature is nothing. Thus foul is opposed to fair, as evil to good and
false to true. Once more, as the soul is beautiful by participation
in reason, so reason in its turn depends on a still higher principle,
the absolute good to which all things aspire, and from which they are
derived—the one source of life, of reason, and of existence. Behind all
other loves is the longing for this ultimate good; and in proportion
to its superiority over their objects is the intensity of the passion
which it inspires, the happiness which its attainment and fruition must
bestow. He who would behold this supreme beauty must not seek for it
in the fair forms of the external world, for these are but the images
and shadows of its glory. It can only be seen with the inward eye, only
found in the recesses of our own soul. To comprehend the good we must
be good ourselves; or, what is the same thing, we must be ourselves and
nothing else. In this process of abstraction, we first arrive at pure
reason, and then we say that the ideas of reason are what constitutes
beauty. But beyond reason is that highest good of which beauty is
merely the outward vesture, the source and principle from which beauty
springs.
It is evident that what Plotinus says about beauty and love was
suggested by the well-known passages on the same subject in the
_Phaedrus_ and the _Symposium_. His analysis of aesthetic emotion
has, however, a much more abstract and metaphysical character than
that of his great model. The whole fiction of an antenatal existence
is quietly let drop. What the sight of sensible beauty awakens in a
philosophic soul is not the memory of an ideal beauty beheld in some
other world, but the consciousness of its own idealising activity, the
dominion which it exercises over unformed and fluctuating matter. And,
in all probability, Plato meant no more than this—in fact he hints as
much elsewhere,[433]—but he was not able or did not choose to express
himself with such unmistakable clearness.
Again, this preference for mythological imagery on the part of the
more original and poetical thinker seems to be closely connected with
a more vivid interest in the practical duties of life. With Plotinus,
the primal beauty or supreme good is something that can be isolated
from all other beauty and goodness, something to be perceived and
enjoyed in absolute seclusion from one’s fellow-men. God is, indeed,
described as the source and cause of all other good. But neither here
nor elsewhere is there a hint that we should strive to resemble him by
becoming, in our turn, the cause of good to others. Platonic love, on
the contrary, first finds its reality and truth in unremitting efforts
for the enlightenment and elevation of others, being related to the
transmission of spiritual life just as the love inspired by visible
beauty is related to the perpetuation and physical ennoblement of the
race.
This preference of pure abstract speculation to beneficent action may
be traced to the influence of Aristotle. Some of the most enthusiastic
expressions used by Plotinus in speaking of his supreme principle seem
to have been suggested by the _Metaphysics_ and the last book of the
_Nicomachean Ethics_. The self-thinking thought of the Stagirite does
not, indeed, take the highest rank with him. But it is retained in his
system, and is only relegated to a secondary place because, for reasons
which we shall explain hereafter, it does not fulfil equally well
with Plato’s Idea of Good, the condition of absolute and indivisible
unity, without which a first principle could not be conceived by any
Greek philosopher. But this apparent return to the standpoint of the
_Republic_ really involves a still wider departure from its animating
spirit. In other words, Plotinus differs from Aristotle as Aristotle
himself had differed from Plato; he shares the same speculative
tendency, and carries it to a greater extreme.
We have also to note that Plotinus arrives at his Absolute by a method
apparently very different from that pursued by either of his teachers.
Plato’s primal beauty is, on the face of it, an abstraction and
generalisation from all the scattered and imperfect manifestations of
beauty to be met with in our objective experience. And Aristotle is
led to his conception of an eternal immaterial thought by two lines
of analysis, both starting from the phenomena of external Nature. The
problem of his _Physics_ is to account for the perpetuity of motion.
The problem of his _Metaphysics_ is to explain the transformation
of potential into actual existence. Plotinus, on the other hand, is
always bidding us look within. What we admire in the objective world
is but a reflex of ourselves. Mind is the sole reality; and to grasp
this reality under its highest form, we must become like it. Thus the
more we isolate our own personality and self-identity from the other
interests and experiences of life, the more nearly do we approach to
consciousness of and coalescence with the supreme identity wherein all
things have their source.
But on looking at the matter a little more closely, we shall find
that Plotinus only set in a clearer light what had all along been
the leading motive of his predecessors. We have already observed
that Plato’s whole mythological machinery is only a fanciful way
of expressing that independent experience which the mind derives
from the study of its own spontaneous activity. And the process of
generalisation described in the _Symposium_ is really limited to
moral phenomena. Plato’s standpoint is less individualistic than
that of Plotinus in so far as it involves a continual reference to
the beliefs, experiences, and wants of other men; but it is equally
subjective, in the sense of interpreting all Nature by the analogies
of human life. There are even occasions when his spiritualism goes the
length of inculcating complete withdrawal from the world of common
life into an ideal sphere, when he seems to identify evil with matter,
when he reduces all virtue to contempt for the interests of the body,
in language which his Alexandrian successor could adopt without any
modification of its obvious meaning.[434]
So also with Aristotle. As a naturalist, he is, indeed, purely
objective; but when he offers a general explanation of the world,
the subjective element introduced by Protagoras and Socrates at once
reappears. Simple absolute self-consciousness is for him the highest
good, the animating principle of Nature, the most complete reality,
and the only one that would remain, were the element of nonentity to
disappear from this world. The utter misconception of dynamic phenomena
which marks his physics and astronomy can only be accounted for by his
desire to give life the priority over mechanical motion, and reason
the priority over life. Thus his metaphysical method is essentially
identical with the introspective method recommended by Plotinus, and,
if fully worked out, might have led to the same results.
We cannot, then, agree with Zeller, when he groups the Neo-Platonists
together with the other post-Aristotelian schools, on the ground
that they are all alike distinguished from Plato and Aristotle by
the exclusive attention which they pay to subjective and practical,
as opposed to scientific and theoretical interests. It seems to us
that such distinctions are out of relation to the historical order in
which the different systems of Greek philosophy were evolved. It is
not in the substance of their teaching, but in their diminished power
of original speculation, that the thinkers who came after Aristotle
offer the strongest contrast to their predecessors. In so far as they
are exclusively practical and subjective, they follow the Humanists
and Socrates. In so far as they combine Socratic tendencies with
physical studies, they imitate the method of Plato and Aristotle. Their
cosmopolitan naturalism is inherited from the Cynics in the first
instance, more remotely from the physiocratic Sophists, and, perhaps,
in the last resort, from Heracleitus. Their religion is traceable
either to Pythagoras, to Socrates, or to Plato. Their scepticism is
only a little more developed than that of Protagoras and the Cyrenaics.
But if we seek for some one principle held in common by all these later
schools, and held by none of the earlier schools, we shall seek for
it in vain. The imitative systems are separated from one another by
the same fundamental differences as those which divide the original
systems. Now, in both periods, the deepest of all differences is that
which divides the spiritualists from the materialists. In both periods,
also, it is materialism that comes first. And in both, the transition
from one doctrine to the other is marked by the exclusive prominence
given to subjective, practical, sceptical, or theological interests
in philosophy; by the enthusiastic culture of rhetoric in general
education; and by a strong religious reaction in the upper ranks of
society.
Thus we can quite agree with Zeller when he observes[435] that
Neo-Platonism only carried out a tendency towards spiritualism which
had been already manifesting itself among the later Stoics, and had
been still further developed by the Neo-Pythagoreans. But what does
this prove? Not what Zeller contends for, which is that Neo-Platonism
stands on the same ground with the other post-Aristotelian systems,
but simply that a recurrence of the same intellectual conditions was
being followed by a recurrence of the same results. Now, as before,
materialism was proving its inadequacy to account for the facts of
mental experience. Now, as before, morality, after being cut off from
physical laws, was seeking a basis in religious or metaphysical ideas.
Now, as before, the study of thoughts was succeeding to the study of
words, and the methods of popular persuasion were giving place to the
methods of dialectical demonstration. Of course, the age of Plotinus
was far inferior to the age of Plato in vitality, in genius, and in
general enlightenment, notwithstanding the enormous extension which
Roman conquest had given to the superficial area of civilisation, as
the difference between the _Enneads_ and the _Dialogues_ would alone
suffice to prove. But this does not alter the fact that the general
direction of their movement proceeds in parallel lines.
In saying that the post-Aristotelian philosophers were not original
thinkers, we must guard against the supposition that they contributed
nothing of value to thought. On the contrary, while not putting forward
any new theories, they generalised some of the principles borrowed from
their predecessors, worked out others in minute detail, and stated
the arguments on both sides of every controverted point with superior
dialectic precision. Thus, while materialism had been assumed as
self-evidently true by the pre-Socratic schools, it was maintained by
the Stoics and Epicureans on what seemed to be grounds of experience
and reason. And, similarly, we find that Plotinus, having arrived at
the consciousness that spiritualism is the common ground on which
Plato and Aristotle stand, the connecting trait which most completely
distinguishes them from their successors, proceeds in his second
essay[436] to argue the case against materialism more powerfully than
it had ever been argued before, and with nearly as much effect as it
has ever been argued since.
V.
Our personality, says the Alexandrian philosopher, cannot be a property
of the body, for this is composed of parts, and is in a state of
perpetual flux. A man’s self, then, is his soul; and the soul cannot
be material, for the ultimate elements of matter are inanimate, and
it is inconceivable that animation and reason should result from the
aggregation of particles which, taken singly, are destitute of both;
while, even were it possible, their disposition in a certain order
would argue the presence of an intelligence controlling them from
without. The Stoics themselves admit the force of these considerations,
when they attribute reason to the fiery element or vital breath by
which, according to them, all things are shaped. They do, indeed, talk
about a certain elementary disposition as the principle of animation,
but this disposition is either identical with the matter possessing it,
in which case the difficulties already mentioned recur, or distinct
from it, in which case the animating principle still remains to be
accounted for.
Again, to suppose that the soul shares in the changes of the body is
incompatible with the self-identity which memory reveals. To suppose
that it is an extended substance is incompatible with its simultaneous
presence, as an indivisible whole, at every point to which its activity
reaches; as well as with the circumstance that all our sensations,
though received through different organs, are referred to a common
centre of consciousness. If the sensorium is a fluid body it will have
no more power of retaining impressions than water; while, if it is a
solid, new impressions will either not be received at all, or only when
the old impressions are effaced.
Passing from sensation to thought, it is admitted that abstract
conceptions are incorporeal: how, then, can they be received and
entertained by a corporeal substance? Or what possible connexion can
there be between different arrangements of material particles and such
notions as temperance and justice? This is already a sufficiently near
approach to the language of modern philosophy. In another essay, which
according to the original arrangement stands third, and must have
been composed immediately after that whence the foregoing arguments
are transcribed, there is more than an approach, there is complete
coincidence.[437] To deduce mind from atoms is, says Plotinus, if
we may so speak, still more impossible than to deduce it from the
elementary bodies. Granting that the atoms have a natural movement
downwards, granting that they suffer a lateral deflection and so
impinge on one another, still this could do no more than produce a
disturbance in the bodies against which they strike. But to what atomic
movement can one attribute psychic energies and affections? What sort
of collision in the vertical line of descent, or in the oblique line
of deflection, or in any direction you please, will account for the
appearance of a particular kind of reasoning or mental impulse or
thought, or how can it account for the existence of such processes at
all? Here, of course, Plotinus is alluding to the Epicureans; but it is
with the Stoic and other schools that he is principally concerned, and
we return to his attack on their psychology.
The activities of the soul are thought, sensation, reasoning, desire,
attention, and so forth: the activities of body are heat, cold, impact,
and gravitation; if to these we add the characteristics of mind, the
latter will have no special properties by which it can be known. And
even in body we distinguish between quantity and quality; the former,
at most, being corporeal, and the latter not corporeal at all. Here
Plotinus just touches the idealistic method of modern spiritualism, but
fails to follow it any further. He seems to have adopted Aristotle’s
natural realism as a sufficient theory of external perception, and to
have remained uninfluenced by Plato’s distrust of sensible appearances.
After disposing of the Stoic materialism, according to which the soul,
though distinct from the body, is, equally with it, an extended and
resisting substance, our philosopher proceeds to discuss the theories
which make it a property or function of the body. The Pythagorean
notion of the soul as a harmony of the body is met by a reproduction
of the well-known arguments used against it in Plato’s _Phaedo_. Then
comes the Aristotelian doctrine that the soul is the entelechy—that
is to say, the realised purpose and perfection—of the physical
organism to which it belongs. This is an idea which Aristotle himself
had failed to make very clear, and the inadequacy of which he had
virtually acknowledged by ascribing a different origin to reason,
although this is counted as one of the psychic faculties. Plotinus,
at any rate, could not appreciate an explanation which, whatever else
it implied, certainly involved a considerable departure from his own
dualistic interpretation of the difference between spirit and matter.
He could not enter into Aristotle’s view of the one as a lower and less
concentrated form of the other. The same arguments which had already
been employed against Stoicism are now turned against the Peripatetic
psychology. The soul as a principle, not only of memory and desire,
but even of nutrition, is declared to be independent of and separable
from the body. And, finally, as a result of the whole controversy, its
immortality is affirmed. But how far this immortality involves the
belief in a prolongation of personal existence after death, is a point
which still remains uncertain. We shall return to the question in
dealing with the religious opinions of Plotinus.
Closely connected with the materialism of the Stoics, and equally
adverse to the principles of Plato and Aristotle, was their fatalism.
In opposition to this, Plotinus proceeds to develop the spiritualistic
doctrine of free-will.[438] In the previous discussion, we had to
notice how closely his arguments resemble those employed by more
modern controversialists. We have here to point out no less wide a
difference between the two. Instead of presenting free-will as a fact
of consciousness which is itself irreconcilable with the dependence
of mental on material changes, our philosopher, conversely, infers
that the soul must be free both from the conditions of mechanical
causation and from the general interdependence of natural forces,
because it is an individual substance.[439] In truth, the phenomena
of volition were handled by the ancient philosophers with a vagueness
and a feebleness offering the most singular contrast to their
powerful and discriminating grasp of other psychological problems.
Of necessarianism, in the modern sense, they had no idea. Aristotle
failed to see that, quite apart from external restraints, our choice
may conceivably be determined with the utmost rigour by an internal
motive; nor could he understand that the circumstances which make a
man responsible for his actions do not amount to a release of his
conduct from the law of universal causation. In this respect, Plato
saw somewhat deeper than his disciple, but created fresh confusion
by identifying freedom with the supremacy of reason over irrational
desire.[440] Plotinus generally adopts the Platonist point of view.
According to this, the soul is free when she is extricated from the
bonds of matter, and determined solely by the conditions of her
spiritual existence. Thus virtue is not so much free as identical with
freedom; while, contrariwise, vice means enslavement to the affections
of the body, and therefore comes under the domain of material
causation.[441] Yet, again, in criticising the fatalistic theories
which represent human actions as entirely predetermined by divine
providence, he protests against the ascription of so much that is evil
to so good a source, and insists that at least the bad actions of men
are due to their own free choice.[442]
In vindicating human freedom, Plotinus had to encounter a difficulty
exceedingly characteristic of his age. This was the astrological
superstition that everything depended on the stars, and that the future
fate of every person might be predicted by observing their movements
and configurations at the time of his birth. Philosophers found it
much easier to demolish the pretensions of astrology by an abstract
demonstration of their absurdity, than to get rid of the supposed facts
which were currently quoted in their favour. That fortunes could be
foretold on the strength of astronomical calculations with as much
certainty as eclipses, seems to have been an accepted article of belief
in the time of Plotinus, and one which he does not venture to dispute.
He is therefore obliged to satisfy himself with maintaining that the
stars do not cause, but merely foreshow the future, in the same manner
as the flight of birds, to the prophetic virtue of which he also
attaches implicit credence. All parts of Nature are connected by such
an intimate sympathy, that each serves as a clue to the rest; and, on
this principle, the stars may be regarded as the letters of a scripture
in which the secrets of futurity are revealed.[443]
How much originality there may be in the anti-materialistic arguments
of Plotinus we cannot tell. He certainly marks a great advance on Plato
and Aristotle, approximating, in this respect, much more closely than
they do to the modern standpoint. The indivisibility and permanence of
mind had, no doubt, been strongly insisted on by those teachers, in
contrast with the extended and fluctuating nature of body. But they did
not, like him, deduce these characteristics from a direct analysis of
consciousness as such. Plato inferred the simplicity and self-identity
of mind from the simplicity and self-identity of the ideas which it
contemplates. Aristotle went a step further, or perhaps only expressed
the same meaning more clearly, when he associated immateriality with
the identity of subject and object in thought.[444] Moreover, both
Plato and Aristotle seem to have rested the whole spiritualistic case
on objective rather than on subjective considerations; although, as we
have seen, the subjective interest was what dominated all the while
in their thoughts. Starting with the analogy of a living body, Plato
argues, both in the _Phaedrus_ and in the _Laws_, that soul must
everywhere be the first cause of motion, and therefore must exist
prior to body.[445] The elaborate scientific analysis of Aristotle’s
_Physics_ leads up to a similar conclusion; and the ontological
analysis of the _Metaphysics_ starts with the distinction between
Form and Matter in bodies, to end with the question of their relative
priority, and of the objective machinery by which they are united.
Plotinus, too, sometimes refers to mind as the source of physical
order; but this is rather in deference to his authorities than because
the necessity of such an explanation seemed to him, as it did to them,
the deepest ground of a spiritualistic philosophy. On the other hand,
his psychological arguments for the immateriality of the soul are drawn
from a wider area of experience than theirs, feeling being taken into
account no less than thought; instead of restricting himself to one
particular kind of cognition for evidence of spiritual power, he looks
for it in every manifestation of living personality.
In criticising the Stoic system as a whole, the New Academy and the
later Sceptics had incidentally dwelt on sundry absurdities which
followed from the materialistic interpretation of knowledge; and
Plotinus evidently derived some of his most forcible objections from
their writings; but no previous philosopher that we know of had set
forth the whole case for spiritualism and against materialism with
such telling effect. And what is, perhaps, more important than any
originality in detail, is the profound insight shown in choosing this
whole question of spiritualism _versus_ materialism for the ground
whereon the combined forces of Plato and Aristotle were to fight their
first battle against the naturalistic system which had triumphed
over them five centuries before. It was on dialectical and ethical
grounds that the controversy between Porch and Academy, on ethical
and religious grounds that the controversy between Epicureanism and
all other schools of philosophy, had hitherto been conducted. Cicero
and Plutarch never allude to their opponents as materialists. Only
once, in his polemic against Colôtes, does Plutarch observe that
neither a soul nor anything else could be made out of atoms, but this
is because they are discrete, not because they are extended.[446] For
the rest, his method is to trip up his opponents by pointing out their
inconsistencies, rather than to cut the ground from under their feet by
proving that their theory of the universe is wrong.
Under such guidance as this. Platonism had made but little way. We
saw, in the concluding sections of the last chapter and in the opening
section of the present chapter, that it profited by the religious and
literary revival of the second century, just as it was to profit long
afterwards by the greater revival of the fifteenth century, so much so
as to become the fashionable philosophy of the age. Yet, even in that
period of its renewed splendour, the noblest of contemporary thinkers
was not a Platonist but a Stoic; and although it would be unfair to
measure the moral distance between the Porch and the Academy by the
interval which separates an Aurelius from an Apuleius, still it would
seem as if naturalism continued to be the chosen creed of strenuous and
dutiful endeavour, while spiritualism was drifting into an alliance
with hysterical and sensuous superstition. If we may judge by the
points which Sextus Empiricus selects for controversial treatment,
Stoicism was still the reigning system in his time, that is to say,
about the beginning of the third century; and if, a generation later,
it had sunk into neglect, every rival school, except that of Epicurus,
was in exactly the same condition. Thus the only advance made was to
substitute one form of materialism for another, until Neo-Platonism
came and put an end to their disputes by destroying the common
foundation on which they stood; while, at the same time, it supplied a
completely organised doctrine round which the nobler elements of the
Hellenic revival could rally for a last stand against the foes that
were threatening it from every side.
VI.
We have seen how Plotinus establishes the spiritualistic basis of
his philosophy. We have now to see how he works out from it in all
directions, developing the results of his previous enquiries into a
complete metaphysical system. It will have been observed that the whole
method of reasoning by which materialism was overthrown, rested on the
antithesis between the unity of consciousness and the divisibility of
corporeal substance. Very much the same method was afterwards employed
by Cartesianism to demonstrate the same conclusion. But with Descartes
and his followers, the opposition between soul and body was absolute,
the former being defined as pure thought, the latter as pure extension.
Hence the extreme difficulty which they experienced in accounting for
the evident connexion between the two. The spiritualism of Plotinus
did not involve any such impassable chasm between consciousness and
its object. According to him, although the soul is contained in or
depends on an absolutely self-identical unity, she is not herself
that unity, but in some degree shares the characters of divisibility
and extension.[447] If we conceive all existence as bounded at either
extremity by two principles, the one extended and the other inextended,
then soul will still stand midway between them; not divided in herself,
but divided in respect to the bodies which she animates. Plotinus holds
that such an assumption is necessitated by the facts of sensation.
A feeling of pain, for example, is located in a particular point of
the body, and is, at the same time, apprehended as my feeling, not
as some one else’s. A similar synthesis obtains through the whole of
Nature. The visible universe consists of many heterogeneous parts, held
together by a single animating principle. And we can trace the same
qualities and figures through a multitude of concrete individuals,
their essential unity remaining unbroken, notwithstanding the
dispersion of the objects in which they inhere.
Here Plotinus avowedly follows the teaching of Plato, who, in the
_Timaeus_, describes Being or Substance as composed by mingling
the indivisible and unchanging with the divisible and corporeal
principle.[448] And, although there is no express reference, we know
that in placing soul between the two, he was equally following Plato.
It is otherwise in the next essay, which undertakes to give a more
explicit analysis of psychical phenomena.[449] The soul, we are told,
consists, like external objects, of two elements related to one another
as Form and Matter. These are reason and sense. The office of the
former is, primarily, to enlighten and control the latter. Plato had
already pointed to such a distinction; but Aristotle was the first to
work it out clearly, and to make it the hinge of his whole system.
It is, accordingly, under the guidance of Aristotle that Plotinus
proceeds in what he has next to say. Just as there is a soul of the
world corresponding to our soul, so also, he argues, there must be a
universal objective Reason outside and above the world. In speaking
of this Reason, we shall, for clearness’ sake, in general call it by
its Greek name, Nous. Nous, according to Aristotle, is the faculty
by which we apprehend abstract ideas; it is self-thinking thought;
and, as such, it is the prime mover of Nature. Plotinus adopts the
first two positions unreservedly, and the third to a certain extent;
while he brings all three into combination with the Platonic theory
of ideas. It had always been an insuperable difficulty in the way of
Plato’s teaching that it necessitated, or seemed to necessitate, the
unintelligible notion of ideas existing without any mind to think
them. For a disciple of Aristotle, the difficulty ceases to exist if
the archetypal essences assumed by Plato are conceived as residing
in an eternal Nous. But, on the other hand, how are we to reconcile
such an accommodation with Aristotle’s principle, that the Supreme
Intelligence can think nothing but itself? Simply by generalising from
the same master’s doctrine that the human Nous is identical with the
ideas which it contemplates. Thought and its object are everywhere one.
Thus, according to Plotinus, the absolute Nous embraces the totality of
archetypes or forms which we see reflected and embodied in the material
universe. In thinking them, it thinks itself, not passing from one to
the other as in discursive reasoning, nor bringing them into existence
by the act of thought, but apprehending them as simultaneously present
realities.
To explain how the Nous could be identical with a number of distinct
ideas was a difficult problem. We shall have to show at a more
advanced stage of our exposition how Plotinus endeavoured to solve
it with the help of Plato’s _Sophist_. In the essay where his theory
is first put forward, he cuts the knot by asserting that each idea
virtually contains every other, while each in its actual and separate
existence is, so to speak, an independent Nous. But correlation is
not identity; and to say that each idea thinks itself is not to
explain how the same subject can think, and in thinking be identical
with all. The personal identity of the thinking subject still stands
in unreconciled opposition to the multitude of thoughts which it
entertains, whether successively or in a single intuition. Of two
things one: either the unity of the Nous or the diversity of its ideas
must be sacrificed. Plotinus evades the alternative by a kind of
three-card trick. Sometimes his ideal unity is to be found under the
notion of convergence to a common centre, sometimes under the notion
of participation in a common property, sometimes under the notion of
mutual equivalence.
The confusion was partly inherited from Aristotle. When discussing
the psychology of that philosopher, we showed that his active Nous
is no other than the idea of which we are at any moment actually
conscious. Our own reason is the passive Nous, whose identity is lost
in the multiplicity of objects with which it becomes identified in
turn. But Aristotle was careful not to let the personality of God, or
the supreme Nous, be endangered by resolving it into the totality of
substantial forms which constitute Nature. God is self-conscious in the
strictest sense. He thinks nothing but himself. Again, the subjective
starting-point of Plotinus may have affected his conception of the
universal Nous. A single individual may isolate himself from his
fellows in so far as he is a sentient being; he cannot do so in so far
as he is a rational being. His reason always addresses itself to the
reason of some one else—a fact nowhere brought out so clearly as in the
dialectic philosophy of Socrates and Plato. Then, when an agreement
has been established, their minds, before so sharply divided, seem to
be, after all, only different personifications of the same universal
spirit. Hence reason, no less than its objects, comes to be conceived
as both many and one. And this synthesis of contradictories meets us in
modern German as well as in ancient Greek philosophy.
After his preliminary analysis of Nous, we find Plotinus working out
in two directions from the conception so obtained.[450] He begins by
explaining in what relation the human soul stands to the universal
reason. To him, personally, it seemed as if the world of thought into
which he penetrated by reflecting on his own inmost essence, was so
much the real home of his soul that her presence in a bodily habitation
presented itself as a difficulty requiring to be cleared up. In this
connexion, he refers to the opinions of the Pythagoreans, who looked
on our earthly life as an unmixed evil, a punishment for some sin
committed in a former stage of existence. Their views seem to have
been partly shared by Plato. Sometimes he calls the body a prison and
a tomb into which the soul has fallen from her original abode. Yet, in
his _Timaeus_, he glorifies the visible world, and tells us that the
universal soul was divinely appointed to give it life and reason; while
our individual souls have also their part to play in perfecting the
same providential scheme.
It is to the second theory that Plotinus evidently leans. However
closely his life may have been conformed to the Pythagorean model—a
point with respect to which we have nothing better than the very
prejudiced statements of Porphyry to rely on—there is no trace of
Pythagorean asceticism in his writings. Hereafter we shall see how
hostile he was to Gnostic pessimism. In the preceding essay, he had
already specified admiration for physical beauty as a first and
necessary step in the soul’s ascent to a contemplation of spiritual
realities;[451] and now it is under the guidance of Plato’s later
speculations that he proceeds to account for her descent from that
higher world to the restraints of matter and of sense.
With regard to the universal soul of Nature, there is, indeed, no
difficulty at all. In giving a sensible realisation to the noetic
ideas, she suffers no degradation or pollution by contact with the
lower elements of matter. Enthroned on the outer verge of the cosmos,
she governs the whole course of Nature by a simple exercise of
volition, and in the enjoyment of a felicity which remains undisturbed
by passion or desire. But just as we have seen the supreme Nous
resolving itself into a multitude of individual intelligences, so also
does the cosmic soul produce many lesser or partial souls of which
our own is one. Now these derivative souls cannot all be equal, for
that would be to defeat the purpose of creation, which is to realise
all the possibilities of creation from the highest to the lowest.
Thus each has an office corresponding to her place in the scale of
perfection.[452] We may say of the human soul that she stoops to
conquer. Her mission is to cope with the more recalcitrant forms of
matter. It is to the struggle with their impurities that the troubles
and passions of our life are due. By yielding to earthly temptations,
we suffer a second fall, and one much more real than the first; by
overcoming them, as is perfectly in our power to do, we give scope and
exercise to faculties which would otherwise have remained dormant
and unknown. Moreover, our soul retains the privilege of returning
to her former abode, enriched by the experience acquired in this
world, and with that clearer perception of good which the knowledge
of its opposite alone can supply. Nay, paradoxical as the assertion
may seem, she has not entirely descended to earth, but remains in
partial communication with the noetic world by virtue of her reasoning
faculty; that is to say, when its intuitions are not darkened and
disturbed by the triumph of sensuous impressions over the lower soul.
On this and on many other occasions, Plotinus betrays a glimmering
consciousness that his philosophy is purely subjective, and that its
attempted transcendentalism is, in truth, a projection of psychological
distinctions into the external world. Starting with the familiar
division of human nature into body, soul, and spirit (or reason),
he endeavours to find an objective counterpart for each. Body is
represented by the material universe, soul by the animating principle
of Nature, reason by the extramundane Nous. Under these three heads is
comprised the totality of real existence; but existence itself has to
be accounted for by a principle lying above and beyond it, which has
still to be obtained by an effort of abstraction from the data that
self-consciousness supplies.[453]
In his very first essay, Plotinus had hinted at a principle higher and
more primordial than the absolute Nous, something with which the soul
is connected by the mediation of Nous, just as she herself mediates
between Nous and the material world. The notion of such a supreme
principle was derived from Plato. In the sixth and seventh books of
the _Republic_, we are told that at the summit of the dialectic series
stands an idea to grasp which is the ultimate object of all reasoning.
Plato calls this the Idea of Good, and describes it as holding a place
in the intellectual world analogous to that held by the sun in the
physical world. For, just as the sun brings all visible things into
being, and also gives the light by which they are seen, so also the
Good is not only that by which the objects of knowledge are known, but
also that whence their existence is derived, while at the same time
itself transcending existence in dignity and power.[454]
In a former part of this work[455] we found reason to believe that
Plato’s supreme good is no other than the Idea of Sameness which occurs
in the _Sophist_ and in the _Timaeus_, where it is correlated with
the Idea of Difference; and we also concluded that the divine creator
of the last-named dialogue is intended to represent it under a more
concrete and popular form.[456] We may, perhaps, also discover it in
the Limit of the _Philêbus_; and if we are to believe what Aristotle
tells us about the later teaching of Plato, it seems to have finally
coalesced with the Pythagorean One, which combines with the unlimited
Dyad to form first number, and then everything else, just as the Same
combines with the Different to form existence in the _Timaeus_.[457]
For the Platonic Idea of Good, Aristotle had substituted his own
conception of self-thinking thought, as the absolute on which all
Nature hangs: and we have seen how Plotinus follows him to the extent
of admitting that this visible universe is under the immediate control
of an incorporeal Reason, which also serves as a receptacle for the
Platonic Ideas. But what satisfied Aristotle does not fully satisfy
him. The first principle must be one, and Nous fails to answer the
conditions of absolute unity, Even self-thinking thought involves the
elementary dualism of object and subject. Again, as Plotinus somewhat
inconsistently argues, Nous, being knowledge, must cognise something
simpler than itself.[458] Or, perhaps, what he means is that in Nous,
which is its product, the first principle becomes self-conscious.
Consciousness means a check on the outflow of energy due to the
restraining action of the One, a return to and reflection on itself of
the creative power.[459]
If the necessity of the One is proved by the inward differentiation
of what seemed most simple, it is also proved by the integration of
what seems most divided. In his next essay, our philosopher wanders
off from the investigation of what he has just begun, by abruptly
starting the question whether all souls are one.[460] This question
is, however, most intimately connected with his main theme. He answers
it in the affirmative. Strictly personal as our feelings seem, we are,
in reality, one with each other, through our joint participation in
the world-soul. Love and sympathy among human beings are solely due to
this connexion. Plotinus mentions, as another evidence of its reality,
the secret affinities called into play even at a great distance by
magical spells—an allusion very characteristic of his age.[461] What
prevents us from more fully perceiving the unity of all souls is the
separateness of the bodies with which they are associated. Matter is
the principle of individuation. But even within the soul there is a
division between the rational and the irrational part, concentration
being the characteristic of the one and dispersion of the other. The
latter is fitted by its divided nature for presiding over the bodily
functions of sensation and nutrition; and with the dissolution of the
body it returns to the unity of the higher soul. There are two ways in
which we can account for this pervading unity. It is either as products
or as portions of the universal soul that all particular souls are
one. Plotinus combines both explanations. The world-soul first gives
birth to an image of itself, and then this is subdivided into as many
partial souls as there are bodies requiring animation.
On extending our survey still wider, we find that the existence of
a thing everywhere depends on its unity.[462] All bodies perish by
dissolution, and dissolution means the loss of unity. Health, beauty,
and virtue are merely so many different kinds of harmony and unison.
Shall we then say that soul, as the great unifying power in Nature, is
the One of which we are in search? Not so; for preceding investigations
have taught us that soul is only an agent for transmitting ideas
received from a higher power; and the psychic faculties themselves are
held together by a unifying principle for which we have to account.
Neither is the whole sum of existence the One, for its very name
implies a plurality of parts. And the claims of the Nous to that
distinction have been already disproved. In short, nothing that exists
can be the One, for, as we have seen, unity is the cause of existence
and must therefore precede it.
‘What then,’ asks Plotinus, ‘is the One? No easy question to answer
for us whose knowledge is based on ideas, and who can hardly tell what
ideas are, or what is existence itself. The farther the soul advances
in this formless region, where there is nothing for her to grasp,
nothing whose impress she can receive, the more does her footing fail
her, the more helpless and desolate does she feel. Oftentimes she
wearies of such searching and is glad to leave it all and to descend
into the world of sense until she finds rest on the solid earth,
as the eyes are relieved in turning from small objects to large.
For she does not know that to be one herself is to have gained the
object of her search, for then she is no other than that which she
knows. Nevertheless it is only by this method that we can master the
philosophy of the One. Since, then, what we seek is one, and since we
are considering the first principle of all things and the Good, he who
enters on this quest must not place himself afar from the things that
are first by descending to the things that are last, but he must leave
the objects of sense, and, freed from all evil, ascend to the first
principle of his own nature, that by becoming one, instead of many, he
may behold the beginning and the One. Therefore he must become Reason,
trusting his soul to Reason for guidance and support, that she may
wakefully receive what it sees, and with this he must behold the One,
not admitting any element of sense, but gazing on the purest with pure
Reason and with that which in Reason is first. Should he who addresses
himself to this enterprise imagine that the object of his vision
possesses magnitude or form or bulk, then Reason is not his guide,
for such perceptions do not belong to its nature but to sense and to
the opinion which follows on sense. No; we must only pledge Reason to
perform what it can do. Reason sees what precedes, or what contains,
or what is derived from itself. Pure are the things in it, purer
still those which precede, or rather, that which precedes it. This is
neither reason nor anything that is; for whatever is has the form of
existence, whereas this has none, not even an ideal form. For the One,
whose nature is to generate all things, cannot be any of those things
itself. Therefore it is neither substance, nor quality, nor reason,
nor soul; neither moving nor at rest, not in place, not in time, but
unique of its kind, or rather kindless, being before all kind, before
motion and before rest, for these belong to being, and are that to
which its multiplicity is due. Why, then, if it does not move, is it
not at rest? Because while one or both of these must be attributed
to being, the very act of attribution involves a distinction between
subject and predicate, which is impossible in the case of what is
absolutely simple.’[463]
The One cannot, properly speaking, be an object of knowledge, but is
apprehended by something higher than knowledge. This is why Plato
calls it ineffable and indescribable. What we can describe is the
way to the view, not the view itself. The soul which has never been
irradiated with the light of that supreme splendour, nor filled with
the passionate joy of a lover finding rest in the contemplation of his
beloved, cannot be given that experience in words. But the beatific
vision is open to all. He from whom it is hidden has only himself
to blame. Let him break away from the restraints of sense and place
himself under the guidance of philosophy, that philosophy which leads
from matter to spirit, from soul to Nous, from Nous to the One.
Plotinus himself, we are told, reached the climax of complete
unification several times in his life, Porphyry only once, in the
sixty-eighth year of his age. Probably the condition so denominated
was a species of hypnotic trance. Its importance in the Neo-Platonic
system has been considerably exaggerated, and on the strength of this
single point some critics have summarily disposed of Plotinus and his
whole school as unreasoning mystics. Mysticism is a vague word capable
of very various applications. In the present instance, we presume that
it is used to express a belief in the existence of some method for the
discovery of truth apart from tradition; observation, and reasoning.
And, taken in this sense, the Neo-Platonic method of arriving at a
full apprehension of the One would be considered an extreme instance
of mysticism. We must bear in mind, however, that Plotinus arrives
at an intellectual conception of absolute unity by the most strictly
logical process. It makes no difference that his reasoning is unsound,
for the same criticism applies to other philosophers who have never
been accused of mysticism. It may be said that after leading us up
to a certain point, reason is replaced by intuition. Rather, what
the ultimate intuition does is not to take the place of logic, but
to substitute a living realisation for an abstract and negative
conception. Moreover, the intuition is won not by forsaking logic,
but by straining its resources to the very utmost. Again, one great
characteristic of mysticism, as ordinarily understood, is to deny the
truth of common observation and reasoning. Now Plotinus never goes this
length. As we have already remarked, he does not even share Plato’s
distrust of sensible impressions, but rather follows the example of
Aristotle in recognising their validity within a certain sphere. Nor
does he mention having received any revelations of divine truth during
his intercourse with the absolute One. This alone marks an immense
difference between his ecstasies—if such they can be called—and those
of the Christian mystics with whom he is associated by M. Barthélemy
Saint-Hilaire.[464]