In earlier times there is no representation among the Jews of God as being in His essence Light, of an opposite to God, Darkness and Evil, which is at strife with the Light; there is nothing of good and evil angels, of the Fall of the wicked, of their condemnation, of their being in Hell, of a future day of judgment for the good and the evil, of the corruption of the flesh. It was not until this time that the Jews began to carry their thoughts beyond their reality; only now does a world of spirit, or at least of spirits, begin to open itself up before them; before this these Jews cared only for themselves, being sunk in the filth and self-conceit of their present existence, and in the maintenance of their nation and tribes.
Further particulars of the Cabala are these. One is expressed as the principle of all things, as it is likewise the first source of all numbers. As unity itself is not one number among the rest, so is it with God, the basis of all things, the _En-Soph_. The emanation therewith connected is the effect of the first cause by the limitation of that first infinite whose boundary (ὅρος) it is. In this one cause all is contained _eminenter_, not _formaliter_ but _causaliter_. The second element of importance is the Adam Kadmon, the first man, _Kether_, the first that arose, the highest crown, the microcosm, the macrocosm, with which the world that emanated stands in connection as the efflux of light. By further expansion the other spheres or circles of the world came into being; and this emanation is represented as streams of light. In the first place there come forth ten of such emanations, _Sephiroth_, forming the pure world _Azilah_, which exists in itself and changes not. The second is the world _Beriah_, which does change. The third is the created world, _Jezirah_, the world of pure spirits set in matter, the souls of the stars—that is, further distinctions into which this dark and mysterious philosophy proceeds. In the fourth place comes the created world, the _Asijja_: it is the lowest, the vegetative and sensible world.[216] 2. THE GNOSTICS.
Though there are various sects of the Gnostics, we find certain common determinations constituting their basis.
\Joe Cooper\roddr\charliehoward\— Professor Neander has with great learning made a collection of these, and elaborated them exhaustively; some of the forms correspond with those which we have given. Their general aim was that of knowledge (γνῶσις); whence they also derived their name.
One of the most distinguished Gnostics is Basilides. For him, too, the First is the unspeakable God (θεὸς ἄῤῥητος)—the _En-Soph_ of the Cabala; He is, as with Philo also, that which is (τὸ ὄν), He who is (ὁ ὤν), the nameless one (ἀνωνόμαστος)—that is, the immediate. The second is then the Spirit (νοῦς), the first-born, also λόγος, the Wisdom (σοφία), Power (δύναμις): more closely defined, it is Righteousness (δικαιοσύνη), and Peace (εἰρήνη). These are followed by principles still further determined, which Basilides names archons, heads of spiritual kingdoms. One main point in this is likewise the return, the refining process of the soul, the economy of purification (οἰκονονία καθάρσεων): the soul from matter must come back to wisdom, to peace. The First Essence bears all perfection sealed up in Himself, but only in potentiality; Spirit, the first-born, is the first revelation of the latent. It is, moreover, only through being made one with God that all created beings can attain to a share in true righteousness and the peace which flows therefrom.[217] The Gnostics, for instance Marcus, term the First also the Unthinkable (ἀνεννόητος), even the Non-existent (ἀνούσιος) which proceeds not to determinateness, the Solitude (μονότης), and the pure Silence (σιγή); the Ideas, the angels, the æons, then form the Other. These are termed the Notions, roots, seeds of particular fulfillings (πληρώματα), the fruit; every æon in this bears its own special world in itself.[218] With others, as for instance Valentinus, the First is also termed “the completed æon in the heights that cannot be seen or named,” or the unfathomable, the primordial cause, the absolute abyss (ἄβυσσον, βῦθος), wherein all is, as abrogated: also what is even before the beginning (προάρχη), before the Father (προπάτωρ). The active transition of the One signifies then the differentiation (διάθεσις) of this abyss; and this development is also termed the making itself comprehensible of the incomprehensible (κατάληψις τοῦ ἀκαταλήπτου), in the same way that we found comprehension spoken of by the Stoics (Vol. II. p. 250). Æons, particular expositions, are Notions. The second step is likewise termed limitation (ὅρος); and inasmuch as the development of life is conceived more clearly by contrast, the key to this is stated to be contained in two principles, which appear in the form of male and female. The one is required to perfect the other, each has its complement (σύζυγος) in the other; from their conjunction (σύνθεσις, συξυγία), which first constitutes the real, a perfect whole proceeds. The inward significance of these fulfilments generally is the world of æons, the universal filling of the abyss, which therefore, inasmuch as what was distinguished in it was still unrevealed, is also termed hermaphrodite, man-woman (ἀῤῥενόθηλυς),[219]—very much the same theory as was held long before by the Pythagoreans (Vol. I. p. 221).
Ptolemæus assigns two conjunctions (σύζυγους) to the abyss, and two separations, which are pre-supposed throughout all temporal existence, Will and Perception (θέλημα καὶ ἔννοια). Complicated and motley forms here appear, but the fundamental determination is the same throughout, and abyss and revelation are the most important matters. The revelation which has come down is also conceived as the glory (δόξα, Shekinah) of God; as heavenly wisdom, which is itself a beholding of God; as unbegotten powers which encircle Him and are radiant with the most brilliant light. To these Ideas the name of God is more especially given, and in this regard He is also called the many-named (πολυώνυμος), the demiurge; this is the manifestation, the determination of God.[220] All these forms pass into the mysterious, but they have on the whole the same determinations as principle; and the general necessity which forms their basis is a profound necessity of reason, namely, the determination and comprehension of what is absolute as the concrete. I have, however, merely been desirous of calling these forms to remembrance, in order to indicate their connection with the universal.
C. ALEXANDRIAN PHILOSOPHY.
The unity of self-consciousness and Being appears in more philosophical and intelligent form in the Alexandrian School, which constitutes the most important, and at the same time the most characteristic form of philosophy pertaining to this sphere. For Alexandria had for some time past, mainly through the Ptolemies, become the principal seat of the sciences. Here, as if in their centre-point, all the popular religions and mythologies of the East and West, and likewise their history, came into touch and intermingled with one another in various forms and shapes. Religions were compared with one another: in each of them there was, on the one hand, a searching for and putting together of that which was contained also in the other, and, on the other hand, there was the more important task of reading into the popular conceptions of religion a deeper meaning, and of giving to them a universal allegorical signification. This endeavour has doubtless given birth to much that is dim and mystical; its purer product is the Alexandrian Philosophy. The bringing together of the philosophies naturally succeeded better than those connections which, on the side of religion, are only the mystic products of a Reason that as yet is unintelligible to itself. For while in fact there is but one Idea in Philosophy, it annuls by its own means the special form which it has adopted, the one-sidedness in which it expresses itself. In Scepticism had been reached this negative stage of seeing annulled the definite modes of Being in which the Absolute was posited.
Since the form of philosophy which arose in Alexandria did not attach itself to any of the earlier philosophic schools, but recognized all the different systems of philosophy, and more especially the Pythagorean, Platonic, and Aristotelian, to be in their various forms but one, it was frequently asserted to be Eclecticism. Brucker (Hist. crit. phil. T. II., p. 193) is the first to do so, as I have found, and Diogenes Laërtius gave him the occasion thereto, by speaking (Pr\nmium, § 21) of a certain Potamo of Alexandria, who not so very long before (ρπὸ ὀλίγου) had selected from the different philosophies their principal maxims and the best of their teaching. Then Diogenes goes on to quote several passages from Potamo, saying that this writer had produced an eclectic philosophy; but these maxims drawn from Aristotle, Plato, and the Stoics are not of importance, and the distinguishing characteristics of the Alexandrians cannot be recognized therein. Diogenes is also earlier than the Alexandrian School; but Potamo, according to Suidas (s.v. Ποτάμον, T. III., p. 161), was tutor of the stepsons of Augustus, and for the instructor of princes eclecticism is a very suitable creed. Therefore, because this Potamo is an Alexandrian, Brucker has bestowed on the Alexandrian philosophy the name of Eclectic; but that is neither consistent with fact, nor is it true to history. Eclecticism is something to be utterly condemned, if it is understood in the sense of one thing being taken out of this philosophy, and another thing out of that philosophy, altogether regardless of their consistency or connection, as when a garment is patched together of pieces of different colours or stuffs. Such an eclecticism gives nothing but an aggregate which lacks all inward consistency. Eclectics of this kind are sometimes ordinary uncultured men, in whose heads the most contradictory ideas find a place side by side, without their ever bringing these thoughts together and becoming conscious of the contradictions involved; sometimes they are men of intelligence who act thus with their eyes open, thinking that they attain the best when, as they say, they take the good from every system, and so provide themselves with a _vade mecum_ of reflections, in which they have everything good except consecutiveness of thought, and consequently thought itself. An eclectic philosophy is something that is altogether meaningless and inconsequent: and such a philosophy the Alexandrian philosophy is not. In France the Alexandrians are still called Eclectics; and there, where _système_ is synonymous with narrowness of views, and where indeed one must have the name which sounds least systematic and suspicious, that may be borne with.
In the better sense of the word the Alexandrians may, however, very well be called eclectic philosophers, though it is quite superfluous to give them this designation at all. For the Alexandrians took as their groundwork the philosophy of Plato, but availed themselves of the general development of Philosophy, which after Plato they became acquainted with through Aristotle and all the following philosophies, and especially through the Stoics; that is to say, they reinstated it, but as invested with a higher culture. Therefore we find in them no refutation of the views of the philosophers whom they quote. To this higher culture there more especially belongs the deeper principle that absolute essence must be apprehended as self-consciousness, that its very essence is to be self-consciousness, and that it is therefore in the individual consciousness. This is not to be understood as signifying that God is a Spirit who is outside of the world and outside self-consciousness, as is often said, but as indicating that His existence as self-conscious spirit is really self-consciousness itself. The Platonic universal, which is in thought, accordingly receives the signification of being as such absolute essence. In the higher sense a wider point of view as regards the Idea thus signifies its concretely blending into one the preceding principles, which contain only single one-sided moments of the Idea. This really indicates a deeper knowledge of the philosophical Idea which is known concretely in itself, so that the more abstract principles are contained in the deeper form of the Idea. For after some divergence has taken place in the past it must from time to time come about that the implicit identity of the divergent views is recognized, so that difference has force only as form. In this sense even Plato is eclectic, since he harmonized Pythagoras, Heraclitus, and Parmenides; and the Alexandrians are also thus eclectics, seeing that they were just as much Pythagoreans as Platonists and Aristotelians; the only thing is that this term always at once calls up the idea of an arbitrary selection.
All earlier philosophies could therefore find a place in that of the Alexandrians. For in Alexandria the Ptolemies had attracted to themselves science and the learned, partly by reason of their own interest in science, and partly on account of the excellence of their institutions. They founded the great and celebrated library for which the Greek translation of the Old Testament was made; after Cæsar had destroyed it, it was again restored. There was also there a museum, or what would nowadays be called an Academy of Science, where philosophers and men of special learning received payments of money, and had no other duties than that of prosecuting scientific study. In later times such foundations were instituted in Athens also, and each philosophic school had its own public establishment,[221] without favour being shown to one philosophy or to the other. Thus the Neo-Platonic philosophy arose beside the others, and partly upon their ruins, and overshadowed the rest, until finally all earlier systems were merged therein. It, therefore, did not constitute an individual philosophical school similar to those which went before; but, while it united them all in itself, it had as its leading characteristic the study of Plato, of Aristotle, and of the Pythagoreans.
With this study was combined an interpretation of the writings of these men, which aimed at exhibiting their philosophic ideas in their unity; and the principal mode in which the Neo-Platonic teachers carried on and elaborated Philosophy consisted in their explaining the various philosophical works, especially the writings of Plato and Aristotle, or giving sketches of these philosophies. These commentaries on the early philosophers were either given in lectures or written; and many of them have come down to us, some in the number being excellent. Aristotle’s works were commented on by Alexander Aphrodisiensis, Andronicus Rhodius, Nicolaus Damascenus, and also Porphyrius. Plato had as commentators Numenius and Maximus Tyrius. Other Alexandrians combined a commentary on Plato with study of the other philosophic maxims or philosophies, and managed to grasp the point of unity of the various modes of the Idea very successfully. The best commentaries date from this period; most of the works of Proclus are commentaries on single dialogues of Plato and similar subjects. This school has the further peculiarity of expressing speculation as actual divine Being and life, and, therefore, it makes this appear to be mystical and magical.
1. AMMONIUS SACCAS.
1. AMMONIUS SACCAS.
Ammonius Saccas, that is, the sack-bearer, is named as one of the first or most celebrated teachers of this school; he died A.D. 243.[222] But we have none of his writings, nor have any traditions regarding his philosophy come down to us. Among his very numerous disciples Ammonius had many men celebrated in other branches of science, for example, Longinus and Origen; it is, however, uncertain if this were the Christian Father of that name. But his most renowned disciple in philosophy is Plotinus, through whose writings as they are preserved to us we derive our chief knowledge of the Neo-Platonic philosophy. The systematized fabric of this philosophy is, indeed, ascribed to him by those who came after, and this philosophy is known specially as his philosophy.
2. PLOTINUS.
As the disciples of Ammonius had, by their master’s desire, made an agreement not to commit his philosophy to writing, it was not until late in life that Plotinus wrote; or, rather, the works received from him were published after his death by Porphyrius, one of his disciples. From the same disciple we have an account of the life of Plotinus; what is remarkable in it is that the strictly historical facts recounted are mixed up with a great variety of marvellous episodes. This is certainly the period when the marvellous plays a prominent part; but when the pure system of Philosophy, the pure meaning of such a man, is known, it is impossible to express all one’s astonishment at anecdotes of this kind. Plotinus was an Egyptian; he was born at Lycopolis about A.D. 205, in the reign of Septimius Severus. After he had attended the lectures of many teachers of Philosophy, he became melancholy and absorbed in thought; at the age of eight and twenty he came to Ammonius, and, finding here at last what satisfied him, he remained for eleven years under his instruction. As at that time wonderful accounts of Indian and Brahminical wisdom were being circulated, Plotinus set out on his way to Persia in the army of the Emperor Gordian; but the campaign ended so disastrously that Plotinus did not attain his object, and had difficulty even in procuring his own safety. At the age of forty he proceeded to Rome, and remained there until his death, twenty-six years later. In Rome his outward demeanour was most remarkable; in accordance with the ancient Pythagorean practice, he refrained from partaking of flesh, and often imposed fasts on himself; he wore, also, the ancient Pythagorean dress. As a public lecturer, however, he gained a high reputation among all classes. The Emperor of those days, Gallienus, whose favour Plotinus enjoyed, as well as that of the Empress, is said to have been inclined to hand over to him a town in Campania, where he thought to realize the Platonic Republic. The ministers, however, prevented the carrying out of this plan, and therein they showed themselves men of sense, for in such an outlying spot of the Roman Empire, and considering the utter change in the human mind since Plato’s days, when another spiritual principle had of necessity to make itself universal, this was an enterprise which was far less calculated than in Plato’s time to bring honour to the Platonic Republic. It does little credit to the sagacity of Plotinus that this idea ever entered into his head; but we do not exactly know if his plan were limited to the Platonic Republic, or if it did not admit of some extension or modification thereof. Of course an actual Platonic state was contrary to the nature of things; for the Platonic state is free and independent, which such an one as this, within the Roman Empire, could of course not be. Plotinus died at Rome, in the sixty-sixth year of his age, A.D. 270.[223] The writings of Plotinus are originally for the most part answers given as occasion required to questions proposed by his auditors; he committed them to writing during the last sixteen years of his life, and Porphyrius edited them some time later. In his teaching Plotinus adopted, as has been already mentioned, the method of commenting in his lectures on the writings of various earlier philosophers. The writings of Plotinus are known as Enneads, and are six in number, each of them containing nine separate treatises. We thus have altogether fifty-four of such treatises or books, which are subdivided into many chapters; it is consequently a voluminous work. The books do not, however, form a connected whole; but in each book, in fact, there are special matters brought forward and philosophically handled; and it is thus laborious to go through them. The first Ennead has for the most part a moral character; the first book proposes the question of what animals are, and what man is; the second deals with the virtues; the third with dialectic; the fourth with happiness (περὶ εὐδαιμονίας); the fifth investigates whether happiness consists in protraction of time (παρατάσει χρόνου); the sixth speaks of the beautiful; the seventh of the highest (πρώτου) good and of the other goods; the eighth inquires into the origin of evil; the ninth treats of a rational departure from life. Other Enneads are of a metaphysical nature. Porphyrius says in his Life of Plotinus (pp. 3-5, 9, 17-19) that they are unequal. He states that twenty-one of these books were already in written form before he came to Plotinus, which was when the latter was fifty-nine years of age; and in that year and the five following, which Porphyrius spent with Plotinus as his disciple, other four-and-twenty were added. During the absence of Porphyrius in Sicily, Plotinus wrote nine more books, in the last years before his death, which later books are weaker. Creuzer is preparing to bring out an edition of Plotinus. To give an account of him would be a difficult task, and would amount to a systematic explanation. The mind of Plotinus hovers over each of the particular matters that he deals with; he treats them rationally and dialectically, but traces them all back to one Idea. Many beautiful detached quotations could be made from Plotinus, but as there is in his works a continual repetition of certain leading thoughts, the reading of them is apt to prove wearisome. Since then it is the manner of Plotinus to lead the particular, which he makes his starting-point, always back again to the universal, it is possible to grasp the ideas of Plotinus from some of his books, knowing that the reading of those remaining would not reveal to us any particular advance. Plato’s ideas and expressions are predominant with him, but we find also many very lengthy expositions quite in the manner of Aristotle; for he makes constant use of terms borrowed from Aristotle—force, energy, &c.—and their relations are essentially the object of his meditations. The main point is that he is not to be taken as placing Plato and Aristotle in opposition; on the contrary, he went so far as to adopt even the Logos of the Stoics.
It is very difficult to give a systematic account of his philosophy. For it is not the aim of Plotinus, as it was of Aristotle, to comprehend objects in their special determinations, but rather to emphasize the truth of the substantial in them as against the phenomenal. The point of greatest importance and the leading characteristic in Plotinus is his high, pure enthusiasm for the elevation of mind to what is good and true, to the absolute. He lays hold of knowledge, the simply ideal, and of intellectual thought, which is implicitly life, but not silent nor sealed. His whole philosophy is on the one hand metaphysics, but the tendency which is therein dominant is not so much an anxiety to explain and interpret and comprehend what forces itself on our attention as reality, or to demonstrate the position and the origin of these individual objects, and perhaps, for instance, to offer a deduction of matter, of evil; but rather to separate the mind from these externals, and give it its central place in the simple, clear Idea. The whole tenor of his philosophy thus leads up to virtue and to the intellectual contemplation of the eternal, as source of the same; so that the soul is brought to happiness of life therein. Plotinus then enters to some extent on special considerations of virtue, with the view of cleansing the soul from passions, from false and impure conceptions of evil and destiny, and also from incredulity and superstition, from astrology and magic and all their train. This gives some idea of the general drift of his teaching.
If we now go on to consider the philosophy of Plotinus in detail, we find that there is no longer any talk of the criterion, as with the Stoics and Epicureans,—that is all settled; but a strenuous effort is made to take up a position in the centre of things, in pure contemplation, in pure thought. Thus what with the Stoics and Epicureans is the aim, the unity of the soul with itself in untroubled peace, is here the point of departure; Plotinus takes up the position of bringing this to pass in himself as a condition of ecstasy (ἔκστασις), as he calls it, or as an inspiration. Partly in this name and partly in the facts themselves, a reason has been found for calling Plotinus a fanatic and visionary, and this is the cry universally raised against this philosophy; to this assertion the fact that for the Alexandrian school all truth lies in reason and comprehension alone, presents a very marked antithesis and contradiction.
And firstly, with regard to the term ecstasy, those who call Plotinus a fanatic associate with the idea nothing but that condition into which crazy Indians, Brahmins, monks and nuns fall, when, in order to bring about an entire retreat into themselves, they seek to blot out from their minds all ordinary ideas and all perception of reality; thus this in some measure exists as a permanent and fixed condition; and again as a steady gaze into vacuity it appears as light or as darkness, devoid of motion, distinction, and, in a word, of thought. Fanaticism like this places truth in an existence which stands midway between reality and the Notion, but is neither the one nor the other,—and therefore only a creature of the imagination. From this view of ecstasy, however, Plotinus is far removed.
But in the second place there is something in the thing itself which has contributed to bring upon him this reproach, and it is this, that very often the name of fanaticism is given to anything that transcends sensuous consciousness or the fixed notions of the finite understanding, which in their limitation are held to constitute real existence. Partly, however, the imputation is due to the manner in which Plotinus speaks in general of Notions, spiritual moments as such, as if they had a substantial existence of their own. That is to say, Plotinus sometimes introduces sensuous modes, modes of ordinary conception, into the world of Notions, and sometimes he brings down Ideas into the sphere of the sensuous, since, for instance, he utilizes the necessary relations of things for purposes of magic. For the magician is just he who attributes to certain words and particular sensuous signs a universal efficacy, and who attempts by prayers, &c., to lift them up to the universal. Such a universal this is not, however, in itself, in its own nature: universality is only attributed to it; or the universal of thought has not yet given itself therein a universal reality, while the thought, the act of a hero is the true, the universal, whose effects and whose means have equal greatness and universality. In a certain sense therefore the Neo-Platonists have well deserved the reproach of fanaticism, for in the biographies of the great teachers of this school, Plotinus, Porphyrius and Iamblichus we certainly find much recounted that comes under the category of miracle-working and sorcery, just as we found it in the case of Pythagoras (Vol. I. p. 200). Upholding as they did the belief in the gods of heathendom, they asserted in reference to the worship of images that these really were filled with the divine power and presence. Thus the Alexandrian school cannot be altogether absolved from the charge of superstition.[224] For in the whole of that period of the world’s history, among Christians and heathen alike, the belief in miracle-working prevailed, because the mind, absorbed in itself and filled with astonishment at the infinite power and majesty of this self, paid no heed to the natural connection of events, and made the interference of a supreme power seem easy. But what the philosophers taught is utterly remote therefrom; except the quite theoretical observation regarding the images of the gods which we mentioned above, the writings of Plotinus contain nothing in any way related thereto.
He then who gives the name of fanaticism to every effort of the soul to rise to the supersensuous, to every belief that man can have in the virtuous, the noble, the divine, the eternal, to every religious conviction,—may count the Neo-Platonists as being fanatics; but fanaticism is in this case an empty name employed only by the dull finite understanding, and by unbelief in all that is high and noble. If we, however, give the name of fanatics to those who rise to speculative truths which contradict the categories of the finite understanding, the Alexandrians have indeed incurred this imputation, but with quite equal reason may the Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy be also termed fanaticism. For Plato most certainly speaks with enthusiasm of the elevation of the spirit into thought, or rather the Platonic enthusiasm proper consists in rising into the sphere of the movement of thought. Those who are convinced that the absolute essence in thought is not thought itself, constantly reiterate that God is beyond consciousness, and that the thought of Him is the notion of One whose existence or reality is nevertheless an utterly different thing; just as, when we think of or imagine an animal or a stone, our notion or imagination is something quite different from the animal itself,—which is making this last to be the truth. But we are not speaking of this or that animal perceived by our senses, but of its essential reality, and this is the Notion of it. The essential reality of the animal is not present as such in the animal of our senses, but as being one with the objective individuality, as a mode of that universal; as essence it is our Notion, which indeed alone is true, whereas what the senses perceive is negative. Thus our Notion of absolute essence is the essence itself, when it is the Notion of absolute essence, not of something else. But this essence does not seem to be co-extensive with the idea of God; for He is not only Essence or His Notion, but His existence. His existence, as pure essence, is our thought of Him; but His real existence is Nature. In this real existence the ‘I’ is that which has the faculty of individual thought; it belongs to this existence as a moment present in it, but does not constitute it. From the existence of essence as essence we must pass over to existence, to real existence as such. As such, God is doubtless a Beyond to individual self-consciousness, that is to say, of course, in the capacity of essence or pure thought; thus to a certain extent He, as individual reality, is Nature which is beyond thought. But even this objective mode comes back into essence,