this anthology. The result of this Procrustean arrangement was the same as with the Bible: a confusion of mosaic, out of which pretty nearly anything could be proved, and into which almost everything has been read. Compare the outlines of the doctrines of Plotinos by Ritter, Zeller, Ueberweg, Chaignet, Mead, Guthrie, and Drews, and it will be seen that there is very little agreement between them, while none of them allow for the difference between the various parts of the Enneads.
How fearful the confusion is, will best be realized from the following two tables, made up from the indications given in Porphyry's Life of Plotinos.
Porphyry gives three lists of the works of the various periods.
Identifying these in the present Ennead arrangement, they are to be found as follows: The works of the Amelian period are now i. 6; iv. 7; iii. 1; iv. 2; v.
The works of the Porphyrian period are now vi. 5, 6; v. 6; ii. 5; iii.
The works of the latest or Eustochian period are: i. 4; iii. 2, 3; v.
Enn. iv. 4.29, ii. 7.86, Creuz. 1, 301 Kirchhof.)
A more convenient table will be the converse arrangement. Following the present normal order of the books in Enneads, we will describe its period by a letter, referring to the Amelian period by A, to the Porphyrian by P, and the Eustochian by E. I: EAAEPAEAA. II: PAEAPAPPP.
III: AEEAEAPPA. IV: AAPPPPAAA. V: AAEAPPAPA. VI: PPPPPPPPA.
This artificial arrangement into Enneads should therefore be abandoned, and in a new English translation that the writer has in mind, the books would appear in the order of their periods, while an index would allow easy reference by the old numbers. Then only will we be able to study the successive changes of Plotinos's thought, in their normal mutual relation; and it is not difficult to prophesy that important results would follow.
* * * * * Having thus achieved internal proof of development of doctrines in Plotinos, by examination of his views about Matter, we may with some confidence state that the externally known facts of the life of no philosopher lend themselves to such a progress of opinions more readily than that of Plotinos. His biographer, Porphyry, as we have seen, had already given us a list of the works of three easily characterized periods in Plotinos's life: the period before Porphyry came to him, the period while Porphyry staid with him, and the later period when Plotinos was alone, and Porphyry was in retirement (or banishment?) in Sicily.
An external division into periods is therefore openly acknowledged; but it remains for us to recall its significance.
In the first place, the reader will ask himself, how does it come about that Plotinos is so dependent on Porphyry, and before him, on Amelius?
The answer is that Plotinos himself was evidently somewhat deficient in the details of elementary education, however much proficiency in more general philosophical studies, and in independent thought, and personal magnetic touch with pupils he may have achieved. His pronunciation was defective, and in writing he was careless, so much so that he usually failed to affix proper headings or notice of definite authorship.[441] These peculiarities would to some extent put him in the power, and under the influence of his editors, and this explains why he was dependent on Porphyry later, and Amelius earlier.[442] These editors might easily have exerted potent, even if unconscious or merely suggestive influence; but we know that Porphyry did not scruple to add glosses of his own,[443] not to speak of hidden Stoic and Aristotelian pieces,[444] for he relied on Aristotle's "Metaphysics." Besides, Plotinos was so generally accused of pluming himself on writings of Numenius, falsely passed off as his own, that it became necessary for Amelius to write a book on the differences between Numenius and Plotinos, and for Porphyry to defend his master, as well as to quote a letter of Longinus on the subject;[445] but Porphyry does not deny that among the writings of the Platonists Kronius, Caius, and Attikus, and the Peripatetics Aspasius, Alexander and Adrastus, the writings of Numenius also were used as texts in the school of Plotinos (14).
Having thus shown the influence of the editors of Plotinos, we must examine who and what they were. Let us however first study the general trend of the Plotinic career.
His last period was Stoic practise, for so zealously did he practise austerities that his death was, at least, hastened thereby.[446] It is unlikely that he would have followed Stoic precepts without some sympathy for, or acquaintance with their philosophical doctrines; and as we saw above, Porphyry acknowledges Plotinos's writings contain hidden Stoic pieces.[447] Then, Plotinos spent the last period of his life in Rome, where ruled, in philosophical circles, the traditions of Cicero, Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius.
That these Stoic practices became fatal to him is significant when we remember that this occurred during the final absence of Porphyry, who may, during his presence, have exerted a friendly restraint on the zealous master. At any rate, it was during Porphyry's regime that the chief works of Plotinos were written, including a bitter diatribe against the Gnostics, who remained the chief protagonists of dualism and belief in positive evil. Prophyry's work, "De Abstinentia," proves clearly enough his Stoic sympathies.
Such aggressive enmity is too positive to be accounted for by the mere removal to Rome from Alexandria, and suggests a break of some sort with former friends. Indications of such a break do exist, namely, the permanent departure to his earlier home, Apamea, of his former editor, Amelius. We hear[448] of an incident in which Amelius invited Plotinos to come and take part in the New Moon celebrations[449] of the mysteries. Plotinos, however, refused, on the grounds that "They must come to me, not I go to them." Then we hear[450] of bad blood between this Amelius and Porphyry, a long, bitter controversy, patched up, indeed, but which cannot have failed to leave its mark. Then this Amelius writes a book on the Differences between Plotinos and Numenius, which, in a long letter, he inscribes to Porphyry,[451] as if the latter were the chief one interested in these distinctions. Later, Amelius, who before this seems to have been the chief disciple and editor of Plotinos, departs, never to return, his place being taken by Porphyry. It is not necessary to possess a vivid imagination to read between the lines, especially when Plotinos, in the last work of this period, against the Gnostics, section 10, seems to refer to friends of his who still held to other doctrines.
Now in order to understand the nature of the period when Amelius was the chief disciple of Plotinos, we must recall who Amelius was. In the first place, he hailed from the home-town of Numenius, Apamea in Syria. He had adopted as son Hostilianus-Hesychius, who also hailed from Apamea. And it was to Apamea that Amelius withdrew, after he left Plotinos. We are therefore not surprised to learn that he had written out almost all the books of Numenius, that he had gathered them together, and learned most of them by heart.[452] Then we learn from Proclus (see Zeller's account) that Amelius taught the trine division of the divine creator, exactly as did Numenius. Is it any wonder, then, that he wrote a book on the differences between Plotinos and Numenius at a later date, when Porphyry had started a polemic with him? During his period as disciple of Plotinos, twenty-four years in duration, Plotinos would naturally have been under Numenian influence of some kind, and we cannot be very far wrong in thinking that this change of editors must have left some sort of impress on the dreamy thinker, Plotinos, ever seeking to experience an ecstasy.
* * * * * In this account of the matter we have restrained ourselves from mentioning one of the strangest coincidences in literature, which would have emphasized the nature of the break of Amelius with Plotinos, for the reason that it may be no more than a chance pun; but that even as such it must have been present to the actors in that drama, there is no doubt. We read above that Amelius invited Plotinos to accompany him to attend personally the mystery-celebrations at the "noumênia," a time sacred to such celebrations.[453] But this was practically the name of Numenius, and the text might well have been translated that Amelius invited him to visit the celebrations as Numenius would have done; and indeed, from all we know of Numenius, with his initiation at Eleusis and in Egypt, that is just of what we might have supposed he would have approved. In other words, we would discover Amelius in the painful act of choice between the two great influences of his life, Numenius, and Plotinos. Moreover, that the incident was important is revealed by Porphyry's calling Plotinos's answer a "great word," which was much commented on, and long remembered.
* * * * * In thus dividing the career of Plotinos in the Amelian, the Porphyrian, and Eustochian (98) we meet however one very interesting difficulty.
The Plotinic writings by Porphyry assigned to the last or Eustochian period are those which internal criticism would lead us to assign to his very earliest philosophising; and in our study of the development of the Plotinic views about Matter, we have taken the liberty of considering them as the earliest. We are however consoled in our regret at having to be so radical, by noticing that Porphyry, to whom we are indebted for our knowledge of the periods of the works, has done the same thing. He says that he has assigned the earliest place in each Ennead to the easier and simpler discussions;[454] yet these latest-issued works of Plotinos are assigned to the very beginning of each Ennead, four going to the First Ennead, one to the Second, three to the Third, and one only to the Fifth. If these had been the crowning works of the Master's life, especially the treatise on the First God and Happiness, it would have been by him placed at the very end of all, and not at the beginning. Porphyry must therefore have possessed some external knowledge which would agree with the conclusions of our internal criticism, which follows.
These Eustochian works make the least use of Stoic, or even Aristotelian terms, most closely following even the actual words of Numenius. For instance, we may glance at the very first book of the First Ennead, which though of the latest period, is thoroughly Numenian.
The first important point is the First Divinity "hovering over" Being,[455] using the same word as Numenius.[456] This was suggested by Prof. Thedinga. However, he applied the words "he says" to Numenius; but this cannot be the case, as a Platonic quotation immediately.
The whole subject of the Book is the composite soul, and this is thoroughly Numenian.[457] Then we have the giving without return.[458] Then we find the pilot-simile as illustration for the relation of soul to body,[459] although in Numenius it appears of the Logos and the world.
We find the animal divided in two souls, the irrational and the rational,[460] which reminds us of Numenius's division into two souls.[461] The soul consists of a peculiar kind of motion, which however is entirely different from that of other bodies, which is its own life.[462] This reminds us of Numenius's still-standing of the Supreme, which however is simultaneously innate motion.[463] Referring to the problem, discussed elsewhere, that these Plotinic works of the latest or Eustochian period, are the most Numenian, which we would be most likely to attribute to his early or formative stage, rather than to the last or perfected period, it is interesting to notice that these works seem to imply other works of the Amelian or Porphyrian periods, by the words,[464] "It has been said," or treated of, referring evidently to several passages.[465] Still this need not necessarily refer to this later work, it may even refer to Plato, or even to Numenius's allegory of the Cave of the Nymphs,[470] where the descent of the souls is most definitely studied. Or it might even refer to Num. 35a, where birth or genesis is referred to as the wetting of the souls in the matter of bodies.
Moreover, they contain an acknowledgment, and a study of positive evil, something which would be very unlikely after his elaborate explaining away of evil in his treatise against the Gnostics, of the Porphyrian period, and his last treatment of Matter, where he is even willing to grant the possibility of matter possessing Being. The natural process for any thinker must ever be to begin with comparative imitation of his master, and then to progress to independent treatment of the subject.
But for the process to be reversed is hardly likely.
Moreover, when we examine these Eustochian works in detail, they hardly seem to be such as would be the expressions of the last years of an ecstatic, suffering intense agony at times, his interest already directed heavenwards. The discussion of astrology must date from the earliest association with Gnostics, in Alexandria, who also might have inspired or demanded a special treatment of the nature of evil, which later he consistently denied. Then there is an amateurish treatment of anthropology in general, which the cumulatively-arranging Porphyry puts at the very beginning of the First Book. The treatise on the First Good and Happiness, is not unlike a beginner's first attempt at writing out his body of divinity, as George Herbert said, and Porphyry also puts it at the beginning. The Eros-article is only an amplification of Platonic myths, indeed making subtler distinctions, still not rising to the heights of pure, subjective speculation.
These general considerations may be supplemented by a few more definite indications. It is in the Eros-article that we find the Platonic myth of Poros and Penia. Yet these reappear in the earliest Amelian treatment of matter (ii. 4), as a sort of echo, mentioned only by the way, as if they had been earlier thoroughly threshed out. Here also we find only a stray, incidental use of the term "hypostasis," whereas the Stoic language in other Amelian and Porphyrian treatises has already been pointed out.
We are therefore driven to the following, very human and natural conclusion. Plotinos's first attempts at philosophical writing had consisted of chiefly Numenian disquisitions, which would be natural in Alexandria, where Numenius had probably resided, and had left friends and successors among the Gnostics. When Plotinos went to Rome, he took these writings with him, but was too absorbed in new original Amelian treatises to resurrect his youthful Numenian attempts, which he probably did not value highly, as being the least original, and because they taught doctrines he had left behind in his Aristotelian and Stoic progress. He laid them aside. Only when Porphyry had left him, and he felt the increasing feebleness due to old age and Stoic austerities, did his attendant Eustochius urge him to preserve these early works.
Plotinos was willing, and sent them to Sicily where Porphyry had retired. And so it happened with Plotinos, as it has happened with many another writer, that the last things became first, and the first became last.
* * * * * The idea of classifying the works of Plotinos chronologically, therefore, has so much external proof, as well as internal indications, to support it, that, no doubt, in the future no reference will be made to Plotinos without specifying to which period it refers; and we may expect that future editions of his works will undo the grievous confusion introduced by Porphyry, and thus render Plotinos's works comparatively accessible to rational study.
There are besides many other minor proofs of the chronological order of the writings of Plotinos, most of which are noticed at the heading of each succeeding book; but the most startling human references are those to Amelius's departure as a false friend;[466] to Porphyry's desire to suicide at his departure,[467] and to his own impending dissolution,[468] each of these occurring at the exact time of the event chronologically, but certainly not according to the traditional order.
II. PLATONISM: SIGNIFICANCE, PROGRESS AND RESULTS.
Of all fetishes which have misled humanity, perhaps none is responsible for more error than that of originality. As if anything could be new that was true, or true that was new! The only possible lines along which novelty or progress can lie are our reports, combinations, and expressions. Some people think they have done for a poet if they have shown that he made use of suitable materials in the construction of his poem! So Shakespeare has been shown to have used whole scenes from earlier writers. So Virgil, by Macrobius, has been shown to have laid under contribution every writer then known to be worth ransacking.
Dante has also been shown to have re-edited contemporary apocalypses.
So Homer, even, has been shown to re-tell stories gathered from many sources. The result is that people generally consider Shakespeare, Virgil, or Homer great in spite of their borrowings, when, on the contrary, the statement should be that they were great because of their rootage in the best of their period. In other words, they are great not because of their own personality (which in many cases has dropped out of the ken of history), but because they more faithfully, completely, and harmoniously represent their periods than other now forgotten writers. Therein alone lay their cosmic value, and their assurance of immortality. They are the voices of their ages, and we are interested in the significance of their age, not in them personally.
It is from this standpoint that we must approach Plato. Of his personality what details are known are of no soteriologic significance; and the reason why the world has not been able to get away from him, and probably never will, is that he sums up prior Greek philosophy in as coherent a form as is possible without doing too great Procrustean violence to the elements in question. This means that Plato did not fuse them all into one absolutely, rigid, coherent, consistent system, in which case his utility would have been very much curtailed. The very form of his writings, the dialogue, left each element in the natural living condition to survive on its merits, not as an authoritative oracle, or Platonic pronunciamento, or creed.
For details, the reader is referred to Zeller's fuller account of these pre-Platonic elements.[471] But we may summarize as follows: the physical elements to which the Hylicists had in turn attributed finality Plato united into Pythagorean matter, which remained as an element of Dualism. The world of nature became the becoming of Heraclitus. Above that he placed the Being of Parmenides, in which the concepts of Socrates found place as ideas. These he identified with the numbers and harmonies of Pythagoras, and united them in an Eleatic unity of many, as an intelligible world, or reason, which he owed to Anaxagoras. The chief idea, that of the Good, was Megaro-Socratic. His cosmology was that of Timaeus. His psychology was based on Anaxagoras, as mind; on Pythagoras, as immortal. His ethics are Socratic, his politics are Pythagorean. Who therefore would flout Plato, has all earlier Greek philosophy to combat; and whoever recognizes the achievements of the Hellenic mind will find something to praise in Plato. When, therefore, we are studying Platonism, we are only studying a blending of the rays of Greece, and we are chiefly interested in Greece as one of the latest, clearest, and most kindred expressions of human thought.
If however we should seek some one special Platonic element, it would be that genuineness of reflection, that sincerity of thought, that makes of his dialogues no cut and dried literary figments, but soul-tragedies, with living, breathing, interest and emotion. Plato thus practised his doctrine of the double self,[472] the higher and the lower selves, of which the higher might be described as "superior to oneself." In his later period, that of the Laws, he applied this double psychology to cosmology, thereby producing doubleness in the world-Soul: besides the good one, appears the evil one, which introduces even into heaven things that are not good.
It was only a step from this to the logical deduction of Xenocrates that these things in heaven were "spirits" or "guardians," both good and evil, assisting in the administration of human affairs.[473] Such is the result of doubleness introduced into anthropology; introduced into cosmology, it establishes Pythagorean indefinite duality as the principle opposing the unity of goodness.
The next step was taken by Plutarch. The evil demons, had, in Stoic phraseology, been called "physical;" and so, in regard to matter, they came to stand in the relation of soul to body. Original matter, therefore, became two-fold; matter itself, and its moving principle, "the soul of matter." This was identified with the worse World-soul by a development, or historical event, which was the ordering of the cosmos, or, creation.
This then was the state of affairs at the advent of Numenius.
Although his chief interest lay in practical comparative religion, he tried, philosophically, to return to a mythical "original" Platonism or Pythagoreanism. What Plato did for earlier Greek speculation, Numenius did for post-Platonic development. He harked back to the latter Platonic stage, which taught the evil world-Soul. He included the achievements of Plutarch, the "soul of matter," and the trine division of a separate principle, such as Providence. To the achievement of Xenocrates he was drawn by two powerful interests, the Egyptian, Hermetic, Serapistic, in connection with the evil demons; and the Pythagorean, in connection with the Indefinite-duality. Thus Numenius's History of the Platonic Succession is not a delusion; Numenius really did sum up the positive Platonic progress, not omitting even Maximus of Tyre's philosophical hierarchic explanation of the emanative or participative streaming forth of the Divine. But Numenius was not merely a philosopher: of this gathering of Platonic achievements he made a religion. In this he was also following the footsteps of Pythagoras, who limited his doctrines to a group of students. But Numenius did not merely copy Pythagoras. Numenius modernized him, connecting up the Platonic doctrinal aggregate with the mystery-rites current in his own day. Nor did Numenius shirk any unpleasant responsibilities of a restorer of Platonism: he continued the traditional Academico-Stoical feud. Strange to say, the last great Stoic philosopher, Posidonius (A.D. 135-151) hailed from Numenius's home-town, Apamea, so that this Stoic feud may have been forced on Numenius from home personalities or conditions. It would seem that in Numenius and Posidonius we have a re-enactment of the tragedy of Greek philosophy on a Syrian theatre, where dogmatic Stoicism died, and Platonism admitted Oriental ideas.
Apamea, however, had not yet ended its role in the development of thought. Numenius's pupil, Amelius, had gathered, copied, and learned by heart his master's works. It was in Apamea that he adopted as son Hostilianius-Hesychius. After a twenty-four years' sojourn in Rome he returned to Apamea, and was dwelling there still at the time of the death of Plotinos, with whom he had spent that quarter of a century.
Here then we have a historical basis for a connection between Numenius and Plotinos, which we have elsewhere endeavored to demonstrate from inner grounds.
It was however by Amelius that philosophy is drawn into the maelstrom of the world-city. Plotinos, in his early periods a Numenian Platonist, will later go over to Stoicism, and conduct a polemic with the Gnostics, the Alexandrian heirs of Platonic dualism, under the influence of the Stoic Porphyry. However, Plotinos will not publicly abandon Platonism; he will fuse the two streams of thought, and interpret in Stoic terms the fundamentals of Platonism, producing something which, when translated into Latin, he will leave as inheritance to all the ages. Not in vain, therefore, did Amelius transport the torch of philosophy to the Capital.
* * * * * Let us in a few words dispose of the general outlines of the fate of the Platonic movement.
Plotinos was no religious leader; he was before everything else a philosopher, even if he centred his efforts on the practical aspects of the ecstatic union with God. Indeed, Porphyry relates to us the incident in which this matter was objectively exemplified. At the New Moon, Amelius invited him to join in a visit to the mystery celebrations. Plotinos refused, saying that "they would have to come to him, not he go over to them." This then is the chief difference between Numenius and Plotinos, and the result would be a recrudescence of pure philosophic contentions, as those of Plotinos against the Gnostics.
As to the general significance of Plotinos, we must here resume what we have elsewhere detailed: that with the change of editors, from Amelius to Porphyry, Plotinos changed from Numenian or Pythagorean dualism to Stoic monism, in which the philosophic feud was no longer with the Stoics, but with the Alexandrian descendants of Numenian dualism, the Gnostics. Even though Plotinos showed practical religious aspects in his studying and experiencing the ecstasy, there is no record of any of his pupils being encouraged to do so, and therefore Plotinos remains chiefly a philosopher.
The successors of Plotinos could not remain on this purely philosophic standpoint. Instead of practising the ecstasy, they followed the Gnostics in theorizing about practical religious reality in their cosmology and theology, which took on, more or less, the shape of magic, not inconsiderably aided by Stoic allegoric interpretations of myths, as in Porphyry's "Cave of the Nymphs."
What Plato did for early Greek philosophy, what Numenius did for post-Platonic thought, that Proclus Diadochus, the "Successor," did for Plotinos and his followers. For the first time since Numenius we find again a comparative method. By this time religion and philosophy have fused in magic, and so, instead of a comparative religion, we have a comparative philosophy. Proclus was the first genuine commentator, quoting authorities on all sides. He was sufficient of a philosopher to grasp Neoplatonism as a school of thought; and far from paying any attention to Ammonius, as recent philosophy has done, as source of Neoplatonism, he traces the movement as far as Plutarch, calling him the "father of us all," inasmuch as he introduced the conception of "hypostasis." Evidently, Proclus looked upon this as the centre of Neoplatonic development, and therefore we shall be justified in a closer study of this conception; and we may even say that its historic destiny was a continuation of the main stream of creative Greek philosophy; or, if you prefer, of Platonism, or Noumenianism, or even Plotinian thought.
Did Greek philosophy die with Proclus? The political changes of the time forced alteration of dialect and position; but the accumulations of mental achievements could not perish. This again we owe to Proclus.
Besides being the first great commentator he precipitated his most valuable achievements in logical form, in analytic arrangement, in the form of crystal-clear propositions, theorems, demonstrations, and corollaries. Such a highly abstract form was inevitable, inasmuch as Numenius had turned away from Aristotelian observation of nature. Just like the Hebrew thinkers, who finally became commentators and abstract theorizers, nothing else was left for a philosophy without connection with experiment, when whittled down by the keenest intellects of the times.
This abstract method, still familiarly used by geometry, reappeared among the School-men, notably in Thomas Aquinas. Later it persisted with Spinoza and Descartes. However, rising experimentalism has gradually terminated it, its last form appearing in Kant and Hegel.
Kant's "Ding in sich," reached after abstracting all qualities, is only a re-statement of Numenius and Plotinos's "subject," or, definition of matter; and Hegel's dialectic, beginning with Being and Not-being, more definitely proclaimed by Plotinos, goes as far back as the Eleatics and Heraclitus, not to mention Plato. However, Kant and Hegel are the great masters of modern thought; and although at one time the rising tide of materialism and cruder forms of evolution threatened to obscure it, Karl Pearson's "Grammar of Science," generous as it is in invective against Kant and Hegel, in modern terms clinches Berkeley's and Kant's demonstration of the reality of the super-sensual, thus vindicating Plotinos, and, before him, Numenius.
It must not be supposed that in thus tracing the springs of our modern thought we necessarily approve of all the thought of Plotinos, Numenius or Plato. On the contrary, they were far more likely to have committed logical errors than we are, because they were hypnotized by the glamor of the terms they used, which to us are mere laboratory tools. The best way to prove this will be to appraise at its logical value for us Plotinos's discussion of Matter, elsewhere studied in its value for us.
III. PLOTINOS'S VIEW OF MATTER.
We have elsewhere pointed out the hopelessness of escaping either aspect of the problem of the One and the Many; and that the attempt of the Stoics to avoid the Platonic dualism by a materialistic monism was merely a change of names, the substance of the dualism remaining as the opposition of the contraries, such as active and passive, male and female, the predominant elements,[474] etc. Plotinos, in his abandonment of Numenian dualism, and championing of Stoicism, undertaking the feud with the Gnostics, the successors of Numenius, must therefore have inherited the same difficulties of thought, and we shall see how in spite of his mental agility he is caught in the same traditional meshes, and that these irreducible difficulties occur in each one of his three periods of life, the Eustochian, the Amelian, and the Porphyrian.
In the Amelian, he teaches two matters, the physical and the intelligible, by which device he seeks to avoid the difficulties of dualism, crediting to intelligible matter any necessary form of Being, thus pushing physical matter into the outer darkness of non-being.
So intelligible matter is still a form of Being, and we still hold to monism; as intelligible matter may participate in the good; while matter physical remains evil, being a deprivation of good, not possessing it. This, of course is dualism; and he thus has a convenient pun on the word matter, by which he can be monist or dualist, as the fancy takes him, or as exigencies demand. This participation, therefore, does not eliminate the dualism, while formally professing monism. Therefore Plotinos tries to choose between monism and dualism by surreptitiously accepting both.
In the Porphyrian period, he rejected the idea of intelligible matter.[475] Forced to fashion entirely new arguments, he seizes as tool the Aristotelian distinction between potentiality and actuality, or energy as dynamic accomplishment.[476] But no logical device can help a man to pull himself up by his boot-straps. If by Being you mean existence, then its opposite must be negative, and to speak of real non-being, as something that shares being, is an evasion. To say that matter remains non-being, while having the possibility of future Being, which however can never be actualized, is mere juggling with words. Even if matter is no more than a weak, confused image, it is not non-being. If it is a positive lie, it is not non-being. To talk of a higher degree of Non-being, that is real non-being, is simply to confuse the actuality intended with the thought of non-being, which of course is a thought as actually existing as any other. Moreover if matter is imperishable, it cannot be non-being; and if it possesses Being potentially, it certainly is not non-existence. The Aristotelian potentiality could help to create this evasion, but did not remove its real nature; it merely supplied Plotinos with an intellectual device to characterize something that would not be actually existing as still having the possibility of existence; but this is not non-existence. In another writing[477] of this period Plotinos continues his evasions about the origin and nature of matter. First, he grants that it is something that is not original, being later than many earthly, and all intelligible objects; although, if he had returned to the conception of intelligible matter, he would have been at liberty to assert the originality of the latter. Then he holds that Being is common to both form and matter, as to quality, but not as to quantity. Last, he closes the paragraph by saying that perhaps form and matter do not come from the same origin, as there is a difference between them.
In Plotinos's third, or Eustochian period, the same evasions occur.
For instance[478] he limits Being to goodness. Then he acknowledges the existence of evil things, and derives their evil quality from a primary evil, the "image of essence," the Being of evil. That he is conscious of having strained a point is evident from the fact that he adds the clause, "if there can be a Being of evil." Likewise,[479] while discussing evil, which is generally recognized because in our daily lives there is positive pain, and sensations of pain, he defines evil as lack of qualities. To say that evil is not such as to form, but as to nature is opposite to form is nonsense, inasmuch as life is full of positive evils, as Numenius brought out in 16, and Plotinos acknowledged even in spite of his polemic against the Gnostics.
Finally Plotinos takes refuge in a miracle[480] as explanation of "unparticipating participation." This is commentary enough; it shows he realized the futility of any arguments. But Plotinos was not alone in despairing of establishing an ironclad system; before him Numenius had, just as pathetically, despaired of a logical dualism, and he acknowledged in fragment 16 that Pythagoras's arguments, however true, were "wonderful and opposed to the belief of a majority of humanity."
In other words, monism is as unsatisfactory to reason as dualism. This was the chief point of agreement between Pythagoras and the Stoics; and Pragmatism has in modern times attempted to show a way out by a higher sanction of another kind.
Perhaps the reader may be interested in a side-light on this subject.
Drews is interested in Plotinos only because Plotinos's super-rational