Adolf von Harnack and John Malcolm Mitchell

“ Just as the Later Roman empire was at once the supreme effort of the old world and the outcome of its exhaustion, so Neoplatonism is in one aspect the consummation, in another the collapse, of ancient philosophy. Never before in Greek or in Roman speculation had the consciousness of man's dignity and superiority to nature found such adequate expression; never before had real science and pure knowledge been so undervalued and despised by the leaders of culture as they were by the Neoplatonists. ”

“ Then the soul, a moving essence, generates the corporeal or phenomenal world. This world ought to be so pervaded by the soul that its various parts should remain in perfect harmony. Plotinus is no dualist, like the Christian Gnostics; he admires the beauty and splendour of the world. So long as idea governs matter, or the soul governs the body, the world is fair and good. It is an image—though a shadowy image—of the upper world, and the degrees of better and worse in it are essential to the harmony of the whole. ”

“ Beginning with the contemplation of corporeal things in their multiplicity and harmony, it then retires upon itself and withdraws into the depths of its own being, rising thence to the nous, the world of ideas. But even there it does not find the Highest, the One; it still hears a voice saying, “not we have made ourselves.” The last stage is reached when, in the highest tension and concentration, beholding in silence and utter forgetfulness of all things, it is able as it were to lose itself. ”

“ But in the actual phenomenal world unity and harmony are replaced by strife and discord; the result is a conflict, a becoming and vanishing, an illusive existence. And the reason for this state of things is that bodies rest on a substratum of matter. Matter is the basework of each (τὸ βάθος ἑκάστου ἡ ὕλη) ; it is the dark principle, the indeterminate, that which has no qualities, the μὴ ὄν. Destitute of form and idea, it is evil; as capable of form it is neutral. ”

“ 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 the Byzantine empire, which stood more in need of police officials than of philosophers. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Here, then, we enter upon the practical philosophy. Along the same road by which it descended the soul must retrace its steps back to the supreme Good. It must first of all return to itself. This is accomplished by the practice of virtue, which aims at likeness to God, and leads up to God. In the ethics of Plotinus all the older schemes of virtue are taken over and arranged in a graduated series. The lowest stage is that of the civil virtues, then follow the purifying, and last of all the divine virtues. The civil virtues merely adorn the life, without elevating the soul. ”

“ It is a proof of the strength of the moral instincts of mankind that the only phase of culture which we can survey in all its stages from beginning to end culminated not in materialism, but in the boldest idealism. This idealism, however, is also in its way a mark of intellectual bankruptcy. Contempt for reason and science leads in the end to barbarism—its necessary consequence being the rudest superstition. As a matter of fact, barbarism did break out after the flower had fallen from Neoplatonism. The philosophers themselves, no doubt, still lived on the knowledge they repudiated ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ He was not an original thinker, but a diligent student, 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. ”

“ Now, in so far as both Neoplatonism and the church dogmatic set out from the felt need of redemption, in so far as both sought to deliver the soul from sensuality and recognized man's inability without divine aid—without a revelation—to attain salvation an a sure knowledge of the truth, they are at once most intimately related and at the same time mutually independent. ”

“ But undoubtedly the victory of Christianity in the age of Valentinian and Theodosius had a purifying influence on Neoplatonism. Influence of Christianity. 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 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 doctrine of Plotinus is mysticism, and like all mysticism it consists of two main divisions. The first or theoretical part deals with the high origin of the human soul, and shows how it has departed from its first estate. In the second or practical part the way is pointed out by which the soul may again return to the Eternal and Supreme. Since the soul in its longings reaches forth beyond all sensible things, beyond the world of ideas even, it follows that the highest being must be something supra-rational. ”

“ If he will not allow his thought to be determined by experience, he falls a victim to his imagination. In other words, thought, which will not stop, takes to mythology; and in the place of reason we have superstition. Still, as we cannot allow every fancy of the subjective reason to assert itself, we require some new and potent principle to keep the imagination within bounds. ”

“ The highest sphere of knowledge—the supra-rational—as well as the very possibility of knowledge, must depend on divine communications—that is, on revelations. In short, philosophy as represented by Neoplatonism, its sole interest being a religious interest, and its highest object the supra-rational, must be a philosophy of revelation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ By means of ascetic observances the man becomes once more a spiritual and enduring being, free from all sin. But there is still a higher attainment; it is not enough to be sinless, one must become “God.” This is reached through contemplation of the primeval Being, the One—in other words, through an ecstatic approach to it. Thought cannot attain to this, for thought reaches only to the nous, and is itself a kind of motion. It is only in a state of perfect passivity and repose that the soul can recognize and touch the primeval Being. Hence the soul must first pass through a spiritual curriculum. ”

“ The doctrines of the incarnation, the resurrection of the flesh and the creation of the world in time marked the boundary line between the church's dogmatic and Neoplatonism: in every other respect, theologians and Neoplatonists drew so closely together that many of them are completely at one. ”

“ Historical Position and Significance.—The political history of the ancient world ends with the formation, under Diocletian and Constantine, of a universal state bearing the cast of Oriental as well as Graeco-Roman civilization. The history of ancient philosophy ends in like manner with a universal philosophy which assimilated elements of almost all the earlier systems, and worked up the results of Eastern and Western culture. ”

“ Ancient myths are admitted without undergoing analysis; the most naïve realism alternates with daring efforts at spiritualizing. Philosophically considered, therefore, the Gnostic systems are very unlike the rigorous self-consistency of Neoplatonism; although they certainly contain almost all the elements which enter into the Neoplatonic theory of the universe.
But were the oldest Neoplatonists really acquainted with the speculations of Philo, or Justin, or Valentinus, or Basilides? Did they know the Oriental religions, Judaism and Christianity in particular? ”

“ It is only when these and all other circumstances of the case are duly realized that we have a right to inquire how much the essential doctrines of Christianity contributed to the victory, and what share must be assigned to the organization of the church.
In medieval theology and philosophy mysticism appears as the powerful opponent of rationalistic dogmatism. The empirical science of the Renaissance and the two following centuries was itself a new development of Platonism and Neoplatonism, as opposed to rationalistic dogmatism, with its contempt for experience. ”

“ The older any religious tradition or mode of worship is, the more venerable is it, the richer in divine ideas. Hence the ancient religions of the East had a peculiar interest for the Neoplatonist. In the interpretation of myths Neoplatonism followed the allegorical method, as practised especially by the Stoa; but the importance it attached to the spiritualized myths was unknown to the Stoic philosophers. The latter interpreted the myths and were done with them; the later Neoplatonists treated them as the proper material and the secure foundation of philosophy. ”

“ This principle is not to be identified with the “idea” of Plato or with the “form” of Aristotle. Neoplatonism perceived that neither sense perception nor rational cognition is a sufficient basis or justification for religious ethics; consequently it broke away from rationalistic ethics as decidedly as from utilitarian morality. It had therefore to find out a new world and a new spiritual function, in order first to establish the existence of what it desiderated, and then to realize and describe what it had proved to exist. Man, however, cannot transcend his psychological endowment. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ In short, Neoplatonism seizes on the aspiration of the human soul after a higher life, and treats this psychological fact as the key to the interpretation of the universe. Hence the existing religions, after being refined and spiritualized, were made the basis of philosophy. ”

“ As a single soul (world-soul) it belongs in essence and destination to the intelligible world; but it also embraces innumerable individual souls; and these can either submit to be ruled by the nous, or turn aside to the sensual and lose themselves in the finite. ”

“ 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. ”