Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/348

334 NEOPLATONISM Neoplatonism thus represents a stage in the history of religion ; indeed this is precisely where its historical importance lies. In the progress of science and enlighten ment it has no positive significance, except as a necessary transition which the race had to make in order to get rid of nature-religion, and that undervaluing of the spiritual life which formed an insuperable obstacle to the advance of human knowledge. Neoplatonism, however, failed as signally in its religious enterprise as it did in its philoso phical. While seeking to perfect ancient philosophy, it really extinguished it ; and in like manner its attempted reconstruction of ancient religions only resulted in their destruction. For in requiring these religions to impart certain prescribed religious truths, and to inculcate the highest moral tone, it burdened them with problems to which they were unequal, and under whose weight they were crushed. And further, by inviting them to loosen, though not exactly to dissolve, their political allegiance the very thing that gave them stability it removed the foundation on which they rested. But might it not then have placed them on a broader and firmer foundation 1 Was not the universal empire of Rome ready at hand, and might not the new religion have stood to it in the same relation of dependence which the earlier religions had held to the smaller nations and states 1 So one might imagine, but in truth it was no longer possible. It is true that the political and spiritual histories of the peoples on the Mediterranean run in parallel lines, the one leading up to the universal monarchy of Rome, the other leading up to monotheism and universal human morality. But the spiritual development had shot far ahead of the political; even the Stoa occupied a height far beyond the reach of anything in the political sphere. It is also true that Neoplatonism sought to come to an understanding with the Byzantine Roman empire ; the noble Julian perished in the pursuit of this project. But even before his day the shrewder Neoplatonists had seen that their lofty religious philosophy could not stoop to an alliance with the despotic world-empire, because it could not come in contact with the world at all. To Neoplatonism political affairs are at bottom as indifferent as all other earthly things. The idealism of the new philosophy was too heavenly to be naturalized in a degenerate, tyrannical, and effete institution like the Byzantine empire, which stood more in need of despotic and unscrupulous police officials than of high-minded philosophers. Important and instructive, therefore, as are the attempts made from time to time by the state and by individual philosophers to unite Neoplatonism and the universal monarchy, their failure was a foregone conclusion. There is one other question which we are called upon to raise here. Why did not Neoplatonism set up an independent religious community 1 It had entirely remodelled the ancient religions, with a view to their restoration; it had tried to fill the old unsophisticated worships with profound philosophical ideas, and to make them the exponents of pure morality; why did it not address itself, in the last resort, to the creation of a religious society of its own 1 Why did it not provide for its mixed multitude of divinities by founding a church, destined to embrace all mankind, in which all the gods of all nations might be worshipped along with the one ineffable Deity 1 Why not 1 The answer to this question involves the answer to another Why was Neoplatonism defeated by Christianity? Three essentials of a permanent religious foundation were wanting in Neoplatonism; they are admirably indicated in Augustine s Confessions (vii. 18-21). First, and chiefly, it wanted a religious founder; second, it could not tell how the state of inward peace and blessedness could become permanent; third, it had no means to win those who were not endowed with the speculative faculty. The philosophical discipline which it recommended for the attainment of the highest good was beyond the reach of the masses; and the way by which the masses could attain the highest good was a secret unknown to Neoplatonism. Thus it remained a school for the "wise and prudent"; and when Julian tried to enlist the sympathies of the common rude man for the doctrines and worship of this school, he was met with scorn and ridicule. It is not as a philosophy, then, nor as a new religion, that Neoplatonism became a decisive factor in history, but, if one may use the expression, as a "mood." The instinctive certainty that there is a supreme good, lying beyond empirical experience, and yet not an intellectual good, this feeling, and the accompanying conviction of the utter vanity of all earthly things, were produced and sustained by Neoplatonism. Only, it could not describe the nature of this highest good ; and therefore it had to abandon itself to imagination and aesthetic impres sions. It was driven to explore " mysterious inward paths," which after all led nowhere. It changed thought into an emotional dream ; it plunged into the ocean of sentiment ; it treated the old world of fable as the reflexion of a higher reality, and transformed reality into poetry ; and after all these expedients, to borrow a phrase of Augustine s, it only saw afar off the land of its desire. It dashed this world in pieces, and then had nothing left but an indescribable " something," a faint glimmer from some world beyond. And yet the influence of Neoplatonism on the history of our ethical culture has been, and still is, immeasurable, not merely because it has refined and strengthened our emotions and susceptibilities, nor merely because it wove the fine veil with which all of us, whether religious or irreligious, cover the Gorgon face of brute reality, but above all because it begot the consciousness that the only blessedness which can satisfy the heart must be sought higher even than the sphere of reason. That man shall not live by bread alone, the world had learned before Neoplatonism ; but Neoplatonism has enforced the deeper truth a truth which the older philosophy had missed that man shall not live by knowledge alone. And, besides the propaedeutic importance which thus belongs to it, another fact has to be taken into account in estimating the influence of Neoplatonism. It is to this day the nursery of that whole type of devotion which affects renunciation of the world, which strives after an ideal, without the strength to rise above aesthetic impressions, and is never able to form a clear conception of the object of its own aspiration. Origin. As forerunners of Neoplatonism we may regard, on the one hand, those Stoics who accepted the Platonic distinction between the sensible world and the intelligible, and, on the other hand, the so-called Neo- pythagoreans and religious philosophers like Plutarch of Chaeronea and especially Numenius of Apamea. But these cannot be considered the actual progenitors of Neopla tonism ; their philosophic method is quite elementary as compared with the Neoplatonic, their fundamental principles are uncertain, and unbounded deference is still paid to the authority of Plato. The Jewish and Christian thinkers of the first two centuries approach considerably nearer than Numenius to the later Neoplatonism. 1 Here we have Philo, to begin with. Philo, who translated the Old Testament religion into the terms of Hellenic thought, 1 The resemblance would probably be still more apparent if we thoroughly understood the development of Christianity at Alexandrfti in the 2d cejitury; but unfortunately we have only very meagre frag ments to guide us here.