CHAPTER II.

ANTAGONISM OF CHRISTIANITY AND NEO

PLATONISM.

§ I. PLOTINUS.

WHILE Christianity was making rapid and enduring progress in spite of every obstacle; while the Apostles wandered from city to city, sometimes honored as Evangelists, at other times insulted and stoned as enemies, the Neo-Platonists were developing the germ deposited by Philo, and not only constructing a theology, but endeavoring on that theology to found a Church. Whilst a new religion, Christianity, was daily usurping the souls of men, these philosophers fondly imagined that an old Religion could effectually oppose it.

Christianity triumphed without much difficulty. Looking at it in a purely moral view, its immense superiority is at once. apparent. The Alexandrians exaggerated the vicious tendency of which we have already seen the fruits in the Cynics and Stoics-the tendency to despise Humanity. Plotinus blushed because he had a body: contempt of human personality could go no further. What was offered in exchange? The ecstatic perception; the absorption of personality in that of the Deitya Deity inaccessible to knowledge as to love-a Deity which the soul can only attain by a complete annihilation of its personality.

The attempt of the Neo-Platonists failed, as it deserved to fail; but it had great talents in its service, and it made great noise in the world. It had, as M. Saisset remarks, three periods. The first of these, the least brilliant but the most fruitful, is that of Ammonius Saccas and Plotinus. A porter of Alexandria becomes

the chief of a School, and men of genius listen to him; amongst his disciples are Plotinus, Origen, and Longinus. This School is perfected in obscurity, and receives at last a solid basis by the development of a metaphysical system. Plotinus, the author of this system, shortly after lectures at Rome with amazing success. It is then that the Alexandrian School enters upon its second period. With Porphyry and Iamblicus it becomes a sort of Church, and disputes with Christianity the empire of the world. Christianity had ascended the throne in the person of Constantine; Neo-Platonism dethrones it, and usurps its place in the person of Julian the Apostate. But now mark the difference. In losing Constantine, Christianity lost nothing of its real power; for its power lay in the might of convictions, and not in the support of potentates; its power was a spiritual power, ever active, ever fruitful. In losing Julian, Neo-Platonism lost its power, political and religious. The third period commences with that loss and the genius of Proclus bestows on it one last gleam of splendor. In vain did he strive to revive the scientific spirit of Platonism, as Plotinus had endeavored to revive the religious spirit of Paganism: his efforts were vigorous, but sterile. Under Justinian the School of Alexandria became extinct.

Such is the outward history of the School: let us now cast a glance at the doctrines which were there elaborated. In the writings of thinkers professedly eclectic, such as were the Alexandrians, it is obvious that the greater portion will be repetitions and reproductions of former thinkers; and the historian will therefore neglect such opinions to confine himself to those which constitute the originality of the School. The originality of the Alexandrians consists in having employed the Platonic Dialectics as a guide to Mysticism and Pantheism; in having connected the doctrine of the East with the dialectics of the Greeks; in having made Reason the justification of Faith.

There are three essential points to be here examined: their Dialectics, their theory of the Trinity, and their principle of Emanation. By their Dialectics they were Platonists; by their

theory of the Trinity they were Mystics; by their principle of Emanation they were Pantheists.

§ II. THE ALEXANDRIAN DIALECTICS.

The nature of the Platonic Dialectics we hope to have already rendered intelligible; so that in saying Plotinus employed them we are saved from much needless repetition. But although Dialectics formed the basis of Alexandrian philosophy, they did not, as with Plato, furnish the grounds of belief. As far as human philosophy went, Dialectics were efficient; but there were problems which did not come within the sphere of human philosophy, and for these another Method was requisite.

Plotinus agreed with Plato that there could only be a science of Universals. Every individual thing was but a phenomenon, passing quickly away, and having no real existence; it could not therefore be the object of philosophy. But these universalsthese Ideas which are the only real existences-are they not also subordinate to some higher Existence? Phenomena were subordinate to Noumena; but Noumena themselves were subordinate to the One Noumenon. In other words, the Sensible world was but the Appearance of the Ideal World, and the Ideal World in its turn was but the mode of God's existence.

The question then arises: How do we know any thing of God? The sensible world we perceive through our senses; the Ideal World we gain glimpses of through the reminiscence which the sensible world awakens in us; but how are we to take the last step--how are we to know the Deity?

I am a finite being; but how can I comprehend the Infinite? As soon as I comprehend the Infinite, I am Infinite myself; that is to say, I am no longer myself, no longer that finite being, having a consciousness of his own separate existence.* If, therefore, I attain to a knowledge of the Infinite, it is not by my Rea

* Τίς ἂν οὖν τὴν δύναμιν αὐτοῦ ἔλοι ὁμοῦ πᾶσαν; εἰ γὰρ ὁμοῦ πᾶσαν, τί ἄν τις avrov diapépoi.—Plotinus, Enn. v. lib. 5. c. 10.

son, which is finite and embraces only finite objects, but by some higher faculty, a faculty altogether impersonal, which identifies itself with its object.

The identity of Subject and Object-of the thought with the thing thought of—is the only possible ground of knowledge. This position, which some of our readers will recognize as the fundamental position of modern German speculation, is so removed from all ordinary conceptions, that we must digress awhile in order to explain it. Neo-Platonism is a blank without it.

Knowledge and Being are Identical; to know more is to be more. This is not, of course, maintaining the absurd proposition that to know a horse is to be a horse: all we know of that horse is only what we know of the changes in ourselves occasioned by some external cause, and identifying our internal change with that external cause, we call it a horse. Here knowledge and being are identical. We really know nothing of the external cause (horse), we only know our own state of being; and to say, therefore, that "in our knowledge of the horse we are the horse,” is only saying, in unusual language, that our knowledge is a state of our being, and nothing more. The discussion in the fourth Chapter of the foregoing Epoch respecting perception, was an attempt to prove that knowledge is only a state of our own consciousness, excited by some unknown cause. The cause must remain unknown, because knowledge is effect, not cause.

An apple is presented to you; you see it, feel it, taste it, smell it, and are said to know it. What is this knowledge? Simply a consciousness of the various ways in which the apple affects you. You are blind and cannot see it: there is one quality less which it possesses, i. e. one mode less in which it is possible for you to be affected. You are without the senses of smell and taste: there are two other deficiencies in your knowledge of the apple. So that, by taking away your senses, we take away from the apple each of its qualities: in other words, we take away the means of your being affected. Your knowledge of the apple is reduced to nothing. In a similar way, by endowing you with

more senses we increase the qualities of the apple; we increase your knowledge by enlarging your being. Thus are Knowledge and Being identical; knowledge is a state of Being as knowing.

"If," said Plotinus, "knowledge is the same as the thing known, the Finite, as Finite, never can know the Infinite, because it cannot be the Infinite. To attempt, therefore, to know the Infinite by Reason is futile, it can only be known in immediate presence, rapovoía. The faculty by which the mind divests itself of its personality is Ecstasy. In this Ecstasy the soul becomes. loosened from its material prison, separated from individual consciousness, and becomes absorbed in the Infinite Intelligence from which it emanated. In this Ecstasy it contemplates real existence; it identifies itself with that which it contemplates."

The enthusiasm upon which this Ecstasy is founded is not a faculty which we constantly possess, such as Reason or Perception it is only a transitory state, at least so long as our personal existence in this world continues. It is a flash of rapturous light, in which reminiscence is changed into intuition, because in that moment the captive soul is given back to its parent, its God. The bonds which attach the soul to the body are mortal; and God, our father, pitying us, has made those bonds, from which we suffer, fragile and delicate, and in his goodness he gives us certain intervals of respite: Ζεὺς δὲ πατὴρ ἐλέησας πονουμένας, θνητὰ αὐτῶν τὰ δεσμὰ ποιῶν περὶ ἃ πονοῦνται, δίδωσιν ἀναπαύλας ἐν χρόνοις.

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The Oriental and mystical character of this conception is worth remarking; at the same time there is a Platonic element in it, which may be noticed. Plato, in the Ion, speaks of a chain of inspiration, which descends from Apollo to poets, who transmit the inspiration to the rhapsodists; the last links of the chain are the souls of lovers and philosophers, who, unable to transmit the divine gift, are nevertheless agitated by it. The Alexandrians. also admit the divine inspiration: not that inspiration which only warms and exalts the heart, but that inspiration revealing the Truth which Reason can neither discern nor comprehend.