arguments which were afterwards adopted by the Christian image-worshippers. Still, as compared with the later Neoplatonists, he is comparatively free from crass superstition and wild fanaticism. He is not to be classed amongst the “deceived deceivers,” and the restoration of the worship of the old gods was by no means his chief object.
Amongst his pupils, Amelius and Porphyry are the most eminent. Amelius modified the teaching of Plotinus on certain points; and he also put some value on the prologue to the Gospel of John. To Porphyry (q.v.) belongs the credit of having recast and popularized the system of his master Plotinus. He was not an original thinker, but a diligent student, Porphyry. distinguished by great learning, by a turn for historical and philological criticism, and by an earnest purpose to uproot false teaching—especially Christianity, to ennoble men and train them to goodness. The system of Porphyry is more emphatically practical and religious than that of Plotinus. The object of philosophy, according to Porphyry, is the salvation of the soul. The origin and the blame of evil are not in the body, but in the desires of the soul. Hence the strictest asceticism (abstinence from flesh, and wine, and sexual intercourse) is demanded, as well as the knowledge of God. As he advanced in life, Porphyry protested more and more earnestly against the rude faith of the common people and their immoral worships. But, outspoken as he was in his criticism of the popular religions, he had no wish to give them up. He stood up for a pure worship of the many gods, and maintained the cause of every old national religion and the ceremonial duties of its adherents. His work Against the Christians was directed, not against Christ, nor even against what he believed to be Christ’s teaching, but against the Christians of his own day and their sacred books, which, according to Porphyry, were the work of deceivers and ignorant people. In his trenchant criticism of the origin of what passed for Christianity in his time, he spoke bitter and severe truths, which have gained for him the reputation of the most rabid and wicked of all the enemies of Christianity. His work was destroyed,[1] but the copious extracts which we find in Lactantius, Augustine, Jerome, Macarius Magnus and others show how profoundly he had studied the Christian writings, and how great was his talent for real historical research.
Porphyry marks the transition to a new phase of Neoplatonism, in which it becomes completely subservient to polytheism, and seeks before everything else to protect the Greek and Oriental religions from the formidable assault of Christianity. In the hands of Iamblichus (q.v.), the pupil of Porphyry, Neoplatonism is changed “from a philosophical Iamblichus. theory to a theological doctrine.” The distinctive tenets of Iamblichus cannot be accounted for from scientific but only from practical considerations. In order to justify superstition and the ancient forms of worship, philosophy becomes in his hands a theurgy, a knowledge of mysteries, a sort of spiritualism.
To this period also belongs a set of “philosophers,” with regard to whom it is impossible to say whether they are dupes or impostors—the “decepti deceptores” of whom Augustine speaks. In this philosophy the mystical properties of numbers are a leading feature; absurd and mechanical notions are glossed over with the sheen of sacramental mystery; myths are explained by pious fancies and fine-sounding pietistic reflections; miracles, even the most ridiculous, are believed in, and miracles are wrought. The “philosopher” has become a priest of magic and philosophy a method of incantation. Moreover, in the unbridled exercise of speculation, the number of divine beings was increased indefinitely; and these fantastic accessions to Olympus in the system of Iamblichus show that Greek philosophy is returning to mythology, and that nature-religion is still a power in the world. And yet it is undeniable that the very noblest and choicest minds of the 4th century are to be found in the ranks of the Neoplatonists. So great was the general decline that this Neoplatonic philosophy offered a welcome shelter to many earnest and influential men, in spite of the charlatans and hypocrites who were gathered under the same roof. On certain points of doctrine, too, the dogmatic of Iamblichus indicates a real advance. Thus his emphatic assertion of the truth that the seat of evil is in the will is noteworthy; and so also is his repudiation of Plotinus’s theory of the divinity of the soul.
The numerous followers of Iamblichus—Aedesius, Chrysanthius, Eusebius, Priscus, Sopater, Sallust, and, most famous of all, Maximus (q.v.), rendered little service to speculation. Some of them (Themistius in particular) are known as commentators on the older philosophers, and others as the missionaries of mysticism. The work De mysteriis Aegyptiorum is the best sample of the views and aims of these philosophers. Their hopes rose high when Julian ascended the imperial throne (361–363). But the emperor himself lived long enough to see that his romantic policy of restoration was to leave no results; and after his early death all hope of extinguishing Christianity was abandoned.
But undoubtedly the victory of Christianity in the age of Valentinian and Theodosius had a purifying influence on Neoplatonism. During the struggle for supremacy, the philosophers had been driven to make common cause with everything that was hostile to Christianity. But now Neoplatonism was thrust from the great stage Influence of Christianity. of history. The church and church theology, to whose guidance the masses now surrendered themselves, took in along with them their superstition, their polytheism, their magic, their myths, and all the machinery of religious witchcraft. The more all this settled and established itself—certainly not without opposition—in the church the purer did Neoplatonism become. While maintaining intact its religious attitude and its theory of knowledge, it returned with new zest to scientific studies, especially the study of the old philosophers. If Plato still remains the divine philosopher, yet we can perceive that after the year 400 the writings of Aristotle are increasingly read and valued. In the chief cities of the empire Neoplatonic schools flourished till the beginning of the 5th century; during this period, indeed, they were the training-schools of Christian theologians. At Alexandria the noble Hypatia (q.v.) taught, to whose memory her impassioned disciple Synesius, afterwards a bishop, reared a splendid monument. But after the beginning of the 5th century the fanaticism of the church could no longer endure the presence of “heathenism.” The murder of Hypatia was the death of philosophy in Alexandria, although the school there maintained a lingering existence till the middle of the 6th century. But there was one city of the East which, lying apart from the crowded highways of the world, had sunk to a mere provincial town, and yet possessed associations which the church of the 5th century felt herself powerless to eradicate. In Athens a Neoplatonic school still flourished. There, under the monuments of its glorious past, Hellenism found its last retreat. The school of Athens returned to a stricter philosophical method and the cultivation of scholarship. Still holding by a religious philosophy, it undertook to reduce the whole Greek tradition, as seen in the light of Plotinus, to a comprehensive and closely knit system. Hence the philosophy which arose at Athens was what may fairly be termed scholasticism. For every philosophy is scholastic whose subject-matter is imaginative and mystical, and which handles this subject-matter according to established rules in logical categories and distinctions. Now to these Neoplatonists, the books of Plato, along with certain divine oracles, the Orphic poems, and much more which they assigned to a remote antiquity, were documents of canonical authority; they were inspired divine writings. Out of these they drew the material of their philosophy, which they then proceeded to elaborate with the appliances of dialectic.
The most distinguished teachers at Athens were Plutarch (q.v.), his disciple Syrianus (who did important work as a commentator on Plato and Aristotle, and further deserves mention for his vigorous defence of the freedom of the will), but above all Proclus (411–485). Proclus is the great schoolman of Neoplatonism. It was he who, combining religious Proclus.
- ↑ It was condemned by an edict of the emperors Theodosius II. and Valentinian in the year 448.
