divinity furnishes a historical foundation for Edouard Hartmann's philosophy of the Unconscious. It would seem, however, to be a mistake to use the latter term, for it is true only as a doubtful corollary.
If the Supreme is super-conscious, it is possible to describe this logically as unconscious. But generally, however, unconsciousness is a term used to denote the sub-conscious, rather than the super-conscious, and the use of that term must inevitably entail misunderstandings. It would be better then to follow Pragmatism into the super-conscious, rather than to sink with Hartmann into the sub-conscious. It was directly from Plotinos[481] that Hartmann took his expression "beyond good and evil."
Having watched Numenius, for Platonic dualism; and Plotinos for Stoic monism, both appeal to a miracle as court of last resort, we may now return to that result of Platonism which has left the most vital impress on our civilization, its conception of the divine.
IV. PLOTINOS'S CREATION OF THE TRINITY.
Elsewhere we have seen how Numenius waged the traditional Academic feud with the Stoics bravely, but uselessly, inasmuch as it was chiefly a difference of dialects that separated them. In the course of this struggle, Numenius had made certain distinctions within the divinity, which were followed by Amelius, but are difficult to trace in Plotinos because, as a matter of principle, Plotinos[482] was averse to thus "dividing the divinity." Why so? Because he was waging a struggle with the Gnostics, who had followed in the footsteps of the Hermetic writings (with their Demiurge and Seven Governors); Philo Judaeus (with his five Subordinate Powers); Numenius and Amelius (with their triply divided First and Second gods);--after which we come to Basilides (with his seven Powers); Saturninus (with his Seven Angels); and Valentinus (with his 33 Aeons).
This new feud between Plotinos and the Gnostics is however just as illusory as the earlier one between Numenius and the Stoics. It was merely a matter of dialects. Plotinos indeed found fault with the Gnostics for making divisions within the Divinity; but wherever he himself is considering the divinity minutely, he, just as much as the Gnostics, is compelled to draw distinctions, even though he avoided acknowledged divisions by borrowing from Plutarch a new, non-Platonic, non-Numenian, but Aristotelian, Stoic (Cornutus and Sextus) and still Alexandrian (Philo, Septuagint, Lucian) term "hypostasis."
The difference he pretended to find between the Gnostic distinctions within the Divinity and his new term hypostasis was that the former introduced manifoldness into the divinity, by splitting Him,[483] thus allowing the influence of matter to pervade the pure realm of Being.
Hypostasis, on the contrary, wholly existed within the realm of pure Being, and was no more than a trend, a direction, a characterization, a function, a face, or orientation of activity of the unaffected unity of Being. Thus the divinity retained its unity, and still could be active in several directions, without admixture of what philosophy had till then recognized as constituting manifoldness. But reflection shows that this is a mere quibble, an evasion, a paralogism, a quaternio terminorum, a pun. How it came about we shall attempt to show below.
In thus achieving a manifoldness in the divinity without divisions, Plotinos did indeed keep out of the divinity the splitting influence of matter, which it was now possible to banish to the realm of unreality, as a negation, and a lie. Monism was thus achieved...but at the cost of two errors: denial of the common-sense reality of the phenomenal world,[484] and that quibble about three hypostases without manifoldness, genuinely a "distinction without a difference."
This intellectual dishonesty must not however be foisted on Aristotle[485] or Plutarch. The latter, for instance,[486] adopted this term only to denote the primary and original characteristics (or distinctions within) existing things, from a comparative study of Aristotle's "de Anima," and Plato's "Phaedo."[487] These five hypostases were the divinity, mind, soul, forms immanent in inorganic nature, "hexis," in Stoic dialect, and to matter, as apart from these forms.
So important to Neoplatonism did this term seem to Proclus, that he did not hesitate to say that Plutarch, by the use thereof, became "our first forefather." He therefore develops it further. Among the hidden and intelligible gods are three hypostases. The first is characterized by the Good; it thinks the Good itself, and dwells with the paternal Monad. The second is characterized by knowledge, and resides in the first thought; while the third is characterized by beauty, and dwells with the most beautiful of the intelligible. They are the causes from which proceed three monads which are self-existent but under the form of a unity, and as in a germ, in their cause. Where they manifest, they take a distinct form: faith, truth, and love (Cousin's title: "Du Vrai, du Beau, et du Bien"). This trinity pervades all the divine worlds.
In order to understand the attitude of Plotinos on the subject, we must try to put ourselves in his position. In the first place, on Porphyry's own admission, he had added to Platonism Peripatetic and Stoic views.
From Aristotle his chief borrowings were the categories of form and matter, and the distinction between potentiality and actuality,[488] as well as the Aristotelian psychology of various souls. To the Stoics he was drawn by their monism, which led him to drop the traditional Academico-Stoic feud, or rather to take the side of the Stoics against Numenius the Platonist dualist and the dualistic successors, the Gnostics. But there was a difference between the Stoics and Plotinos.
The Stoics assimilated spirit to matter, while Plotinos, reminiscent of Plato, preferred to assimilate matter to spirit. Still, he used their terminology, and categories, including the conception of a hypostasis, or form of existence. With this equipment, he held to the traditional Platonic trinity of the "Letters," the King, the intellect, and the soul. Philosophically, however, he had received from Numenius the inheritance of a double name of the Divinity, Being and Essence. As a thinker, he was therefore forced to accommodate Numenius to Plato, and by adding to Numenius's name of the divinity, to complete Numenius's theology by Numenius's own cosmology. This then he did by adding as third hypostasis the Aristotelian dynamic energy.
But as Intellect is permanent, how can Energy arise therefrom? Here this eternal puzzle is solved by distinguishing energy into indwelling and out-flowing. As indwelling, Energy constitutes Intellect; but its energetic nature could not be demonstrated except by out-flowing, which produces a distinction.
Similarly, there are two kinds of heat, that of the fire itself, and that emitted by the fire, so that the fire may remain itself while exerting its influence without. It is thus also there: in that it remains itself in its inmost being, and from its own inherent perfection, and energy, the developed energy assumes hypostasis, as if from a Dynamis that is great, nay, greatest; and so it joins the Essence and the Being. For that was beyond all Being, and that was the Dynamis of all things, and already was all things. If then it is all, it must be above all; consequently also above Being. "And if this is all, then the One is before all; not of an essence equal to all, and this must be above Being, as this is above intellect; for there is something above intellect."[489] This is the most definite statement of Plotinos's solution of the problem; other references thereto are abundant. So we have a trinity of energy, being and essence,[490] and each of us, like the world-Soul has an Eros which is essence and hypostasis.[491] Reason is a hypostasis after the nous, and Aphrodite gains an hypostasis in the Ousia.[492] The One is intellect, the intelligible, and ousia; or, energy, being, and the intelligible (essence).[493] The soul is activity.[494] The soul is the third God,[495] we are the third rank proceeding from the upper undivided Nature,[496] the whole being God, nous, and essence.
The Nous is activity, and the First essence. There are three stages of the Good: the King, the nous, and the soul.[497] We find energy,[498] thinking and being, then[499] the soul, the nous, and the One. We find Providence threefold (as in Plutarch)[500] and three ranks of Gods, demons and world-life.[501] Elsewhere, untheologically, or, rather, merely philosophically, he speaks of the hypostasis of wisdom.[502] Chaignet's summary of this is[503] that[504] Plotinos holds that every force in the intelligible is both Being and Substance simultaneously; and reciprocally that no Being, could be conceived without hypostasis, or directed force. Again,[505] the world, the universe of things, contains three natures or divine hypostases, soul, mind and unity; which indeed are found in our own nature, and of which the divinest is unity or divinity.
Let us now try to understand the matter. Why should the word hypostasis, which unquestionably in earlier times meant "substance," have later come to mean "distinctions" within the divinity? For "substance," on the contrary, represents to our mind an unity, the underlying unity, and not individual forms of existence. How did the change occur?
Now Plotinos, as we remember, found fault with the Gnostics in that they taught distinctions within the divinity.[506] He would therefore be disposed to remove from within the divinity those distinctions of Plotinic, Plutarchian, Numenian, or Gnostic theology; although he himself in early times did not scruple to speak of a hypostasis of wisdom, or of Eros, or other matter he might be considering. Such terms of Numenius or Amelius as he seems to ignore are the various Demiurges; the three Plutarchian Providences he himself still uses. Still, all these terms he would be disposed to eradicate from within the divinity.
As a constructive metaphysician, however, he could not well get along without some titles for the different phases of the divinity; and even if he dispensed with the old names, there would still remain as their underlying support the reality or substance of the distinction. So he removed the offensive, aggressive, historically known and recognized terms, while leaving their underlying substances, or supports. Now "substance" had become "substances," and to differentiate these it was necessary to interpret them as differing forms of existence. The change was most definitely made by Athanasius, who at a synod in Alexandria, in A.D. 362,[507] fastened on the church, as synonymous with hypostasis the popular term "prosopon" or "face." That this was an innovation appears from the fact that the Nicene Council had stated that it was heretical to say that Christ was of a hypostasis different from that of the Father, in which case the word evidently meant still the original underlying (singular) substance. With this official definition in vogue, the original (singular) substance became forgotten, and it became possible to speak in the plural, of three faces, as indeed Plotinos had done.
In other words, so necessary were distinctions in the divinity, that the popular mind supplied other individual names to designate the distinctions Plotinos had successfully banished, for Demiurges and Providences no longer return. Thus more manifold differences re-entered into the divinity, than Plotinos had ever emptied out of it, although under a name which the poverty of the Latin language rendered as "persons," which represents to us individual consciousness of a far more distinctive kind than was ever implied in three phases of Providence, or of the Demiurge. Thus the translation into Latin clinched the illicit linguistic process, and the result of Plotinos's attempt to distinguish in the Divinity phases so subtle as not to demand or allow of manifoldness, resulted in the most pronounced differences of personality. This was finally clinched by Plotinos's illustration of the three faces around a single head,[508] which established the idea of three "persons" (masks, from "per-sonare") in one God.
Not only in the abstract realm of Metaphysics, therefore, is the world indebted to Greek thought; but even in the realm of religion a Stoic reinterpretation of Platonism, itself reinterpreted in a different language has given a lasting inheritance to the spiritual aspirations of the ages.
V. RESEMBLANCES TO CHRISTIANITY.
TRINITARIAN SIGNIFICANCE OF PLOTINOS.
Plotinos's date being about A.D. 262, he stands midway between the Christian writings of the New Testament, and the Council of Nicaea, A.D. 325. As a philosopher dealing with the kindred topics--the soul and its salvation,--and deriving terminology and inspiration from the same sources, Platonism and Stoicism, we would expect extensive parallelism and correspondence. Though Plotinos does not mention any contemporaneous writings, we will surely be able to detect indirect references to Old and New Testaments. But what will be of most vital interest will be his anticipations of Nicene formulations, or reflection of current expressions of Christian philosophic comment.
While we cannot positively assert this Christian development was exclusively Plotinian, we are justified in saying that the development of Christian philosophy was not due exclusively to the Alexandrian catechetical school; that what later appears as Christian theology was only earlier current Neoplatonic metaphysics, without any exclusive dogmatic connection with the distinctively Christian biography. This avoids the flat assertion of Drews that the Christian doctrine of the Trinity was dependent on Plotinos, although it admits Bouillet's more cautious statement that Plotinos was the rationalizer of the doctrine of the Trinity.[509] This much is certain, that no other contemporaneous discussion of the trinity has survived, if any ever existed; and we must remember that it was not until the council of Constantinople in A.D. 381, that the Nicene Creed, by the addition of the Filioque clause, became trinitarian in a thoroughgoing way; and not until fifty years later that Augustine, again in the West, fully expressed a philosophy and psychology of the trinity.
To Plotinos therefore is due the historical position of protagonist of trinitarian philosophy.
NON-CHRISTIAN ORIGIN OF PARALELLISMS TO CHRISTIANITY.
Christian parallelisms in Plotinos have a historical origin in Christian parallelisms in his sources, namely, Stoicism, Numenius and Plato.
To Christian origins in Plato never has justice been done, not even by Bigg. His suggestion of the crucifixion of the just man, his reference to the son of God are only common-places, to which should be added many minor references.
The Christian origins in Numenius are quite explicit; mention of the Hebrews as among the races whose scriptures are important, of Moses among the great religious teachers, of the Spirit hovering over the waters, of the names of the Egyptian magicians which, together with Pliny, he hands down to posterity. He also was said to have told many stories about Jesus, in an allegorical manner.
The Christian origins in Stoicism have been widely discussed; for instance, by Chaignet. But it is likely that this influence affected Christianity indirectly through Plotinos, along with the other Christian ideas we shall later find. At any rate Plotinos is the philosopher who uses the term "spiritual body" most like the Christians.[510] The soul is a slave to the body,[511] and has a celestial body[512] as well as a spiritual body.[513] Within us are two men opposing each other,[514] the better part often being mastered by the worse part, as thought St. Paul,[515] in the struggle between the inner and outer man.[516] With Plotinos the idea of "procession" is not only cosmic but psychological. In other words, when Plotinos speaks of the "procession" of the God-head, he is not, as in Christian doctrine, depicting something unique, which has no connection with the world. He is only referring to the cosmic aspect of an evolution which, in the soul, appears as educational development.[517] As the opposite of the soul's procession upwards, there is the soul's descent into hell,[518] or, in other words, the soul's descent and ascension.[519] This double aspect of man's fate upward or downward is referred to by Plotinos in the regular Christian term "sin," as consisting in missing one's aim.[520] The soul repents,[521] and its duty is conversion.[522] As a result of this conversion comes forgiveness.[523] OLD TESTAMENT REFERENCES.
The famous "terrors of Jeremiah"[524] might have come mediately through the Gnostics, who indeed may have been the persons referred to as Christians.[525] More direct no doubt was God admiring his handiwork[526] and the soul breathing the spirit of life into animals.[527] God is called both the "I am what I am"[528] and "He is what He ought to be."[528] He sits above the world,[529] as the king of kings.[530] NEW TESTAMENT REFERENCES.
Plotinos says that it would be a poor artist who would conceive of an animal as all covered with eyes. There is hardly such a reference outside of Revelations,[531] to which we must also look for a new heaven and a new earth.[532] Then we have practically a quotation of the Johannine prologue "In the beginning was the Logos," and by him were all things made.[533] Light was in the beginning.[534] We are told not to leave the world, but not to be of it.[535] The divinity prepares mansions in heaven for good souls.[536] Pauline references seem to be that sin exists because of the law.[537] God is above all height or depth.[538] The vulgar who attend mystery-banquets only to gorge are condemned.[539] There are several heavens.[540] The beggarly principles and elements towards which some turn, are mentioned.[541] The genealogies of the Gnostics are held up to ridicule.[542] General references are numerous. Diseases are caused by evil spirits.[543] We must cut off any offending member.[544] Thus we are saved.[545] In him we breathe and move and have our being.[546] The higher divinity begets a Son, one among many brethren.[547] As the father of intelligence, God is the father of lights.[548] However, the most interesting incident is that scriptural text which, to the reflecting, is always so much of a puzzle: "If the light that is in them be darkness," etc.[549] This is explained by the Platonic theory[550] that we see because of a special light that is within the eye.
THEOLOGICAL REFERENCES.
General theological references may be grouped under three heads: the soul's salvation, the procession of the divinity, and the trinity.
As to the soul's salvation, God is the opposite of the evil of beings,[551] which, when created in honor of the divinity[552] is the image of the Word, the interpreter of the One,[553] and is composed of several elements;[554] but it is a fall from God,[555] and its fate is connected with the "parousia."[556] This going forth of the soul from God, when considered cosmically, becomes the "procession of the soul."[557] This is the "eternal generation,"[558] whereby the Son is begotten from eternity,[559] so that there could be no (Arian) "ên hote ouk ên," or, "time when he was not."[560] This is expressed as "light of light,"[561] and explained by the Athanasian light and ray simile.[562] We find even the Johannine and Philonic distinction between God and the Good.[563] The world is the first-begotten,[564] and the Intelligence is the logos of the first God,[565] as the hypostasis of wisdom is "ousia," or "being,"[566] and it is the "universal reason."[567] As to the trinity, Plotinos is the first and chief rationalizer of the cosmic trinity, which he continuously and at length discusses.[568] God is father and son,[569] and they are "homoousian," or "consubstantial."[570] The human soul (as image of the cosmic divinity), is one nature in three powers.[571] Elsewhere we have discussed the history of the term "persons," but we may understand the result of that process best by Plotinos's simile of the trinity as one head with three faces,[572] in which the "persons" bear out their original meaning of masks, "personare." Henceforward the trinity was an objective idea.
NOTE Although mentioned above, special attention should be given to the parable of the vine and the branches (iii. 3.7.--48, 1088 with Jno.
xv. 1-8), and the divinity's begetting a Son (v. 8.12--31, 571). The significant aspect of this is that it is represented as being the content of the supreme ecstatic vision; what you might call the crown of Plotinos' message. "He tells us that he has seen the divinity beget an offspring of an incomparable beauty, producing everything in Himself, and without pain preserving within Himself what He has begotten...His Son has manifested Himself externally. By Him, as by an image (Col. i. 15), you may judge of the greatness of His Father...enjoying the privilege of being the image of His eternity."
VII. PLOTINOS'S INDEBTEDNESS TO NUMENIUS.
1. HISTORICAL RELATIONS BETWEEN NUMENIUS AND PLOTINOS.
We have, elsewhere, pointed out the historic connections between Numenius and Plotinos. Here, it may be sufficient to recall that Amelius, native of Numenius's home-town of Apamea, and who had copied and learned by heart all the works of Numenius, and who later returned to Apamea to spend his declining days, bequeathing his copy of Numenius's works to his adopted son Gentilianus Hesychius, was the companion and friend of Plotinos during his earliest period, editing all Plotinos's books, until displaced by Porphyry. We remember also that Porphyry was Amelius's disciple, before his spectacular quarrel with Amelius, later supplanting him as editor of the works of Plotinos.
Plotinos also came from Alexandria, where Numenius had been carefully studied and quoted by Origen and Clement of Alexandria. Further, Porphyry records twice that accusations were popularly made against Plotinos, that he had plagiarized from Numenius. In view of all this historical background, we have the prima-facie right to consider Plotinos chiefly as a later re-stater of the views of Numenius, at least during his earlier or Amelian period. Such a conception of the state of affairs must have been in the mind of that monk who, in the Escoreal manuscript, substituted the name of Numenius for that of Plotinos on that fragment[573] about matter, which begins directly with Numenius's name of the divinity, "being and essence."[574] 2. NUMENIUS AS FATHER OF NEO-PLATONISM.
Let us compare with this historical evidence, that which supports the universally admitted dependence of Plotinos on his teacher Ammonius.
We have only two witnesses: Hierocles and Nemesius; and the latter attributes the argument for the immateriality of the soul to Ammonius and Numenius jointly. No doubt, Ammonius may have taught Plotinos in his youth; but so no doubt did other teachers; and of Ammonius the only survivals are a few pages preserved by Nemesius. The testimony for Plotinos's dependence on Numenius is therefore much more historical, as well as significant, in view of Numenius having left written records that were widely quoted. The title of "Father of Neo-platonism," therefore, if it must at all be awarded, should go to Numenius, who had written a "History of the Platonic Succession," wherein he attempts to restore "original" Platonism. This fits the title "Neo-platonism," whereas the philosophy of Ammonius, would be better described as an eclectic synthesis of Platonism and Aristotelianism.
3. CONTRAST BETWEEN THEM.
Of course we shall admit that there are differences between Plotinos and Numenius, at least during his Porphyrian period; this was inevitable while dismissing his Numenian secretary Amelius,[575] a friend "who had become imbued with" such doctrines before becoming the friend of Plotinos, who persevered in them, and wrote in justification thereof. We find that the book chronologically preceding this one is v.
5, on the very subject at issue between Amelius and Porphyry. Plotinos took his stand with the latter, and therefore against the former, and through him, against Numenius; and indeed we find him opposing several Gnostic opinions which can be substantiated in Numenius: the creation by illumination or emanation,[576] the threefoldness of the creator,[577] and the pilot's forgetting himself in his work.[578] But, after all, these points are not as important as they might seem; for in a very little while we find Plotinos himself admitting the substance of all of these ideas, except the verbiage; he himself uses the light and ray simile, the "light of light;"[579] he himself distinguishes various phases of the allegedly single intelligence,[580] and the soul, as pilot of the body incarnates by the very forgetfulness by which the creator created.[581] Further, as we shall show, during his last or Eustochian period after Porphyry had taken a trip to Sicily to avoid suicide, he himself was to return to Numenian standpoints. This may be shown in a general way as follows. Of the nine Eustochian essays[582] only two[583] betray no similarities to Numenian ideas, while seven[584] do. On the contrary, in the Amelio-Porphyrian period,[585] written immediately on Amelius's dismissal, only six[586] are Numenian, and six[587] are non-Numenian.
In the succeeding wholly Porphyrian period,[588] we have the same equal number of Numenian[589] and non-Numenian[590] books. An explanation of this reversion to Numenian ideas has been attempted in the study of the development in Plotinos's views. On the whole, therefore, Plotinos's opposition to Numenius may be considered no more than episodic.
4. DIRECT INDEBTEDNESS OF PLOTINOS TO NUMENIUS.
As Plotinos was in the habit of not even putting his name to his own notes; as even in the times of Porphyry the actual authorship of much that he wrote was already disputed; as even Porphyry acknowledges principles and quotations were borrowed, we must discover Numenian passages by their content, rather than by any external indications.
As the great majority of Numenius's works are irretrievably lost, we may never hope to arrive at a final solution of the matter; and we shall have to restrict ourselves to that which, in Plotinos, may be identified by what Numenian fragments remain. What little we can thus trace definitely will give us a right to draw the conclusion to much more, and to the opinion that, especially in his Amelian period, Plotinos was chiefly indebted to Numenian inspiration. We can consider[591] the mention of Pythagoreans who had treated of the intelligible as applying to Numenius, whose chief work was "On the Good," and on the "Immateriality of the Soul."
The first class of passages will be such as bear explicit reference to quotation from an ancient source. Of such we have five: "That is why the Pythagoreans were, among each other, accustomed to refer to this principle in a symbolic manner, calling him 'A-pollo,' which name means a denial of manifoldness."[592] "That is the reason of the saying, 'The ideas and numbers are born from the indefinite doubleness, and the One;' for this is intelligence."[593] "That is why the ancients said that ideas are essences and beings."[594] "Let us examine the (general) view that evils cannot be destroyed, but are necessary."[595] "The Divinity is above being."[596] A sixth case is, "How manifoldness is derived from the First."[597] A seventh case is the whole passage on the triunity of the divinity, including the term "Father."[598] Among doctrines said to be handed down from the ancient philosophers[599] are the ascents and descents of souls[600] and the migrations of souls into bodies other than human.[601] The soul is a number.[602] Moreover, Plotinos wrote a book on the Incorruptibility of the soul,[603] as Numenius had done;[604] and both authors discuss the incorporeity of qualities.[605] Besides these passages where there is a definite expression of dependence on earlier sources, there are two in which the verbal similarity[606] is striking enough to justify their being considered references: "Besides, no body could subsist without the power of the universal Soul." "Because bodies, according to their own nature, are changeable, inconstant, and infinitely divisible, and nothing unchangeable remains in them, there is evidently need of a principle that would lead them, gather them, and bind them fast together; and this we name soul."[607] This similarity is so striking that it had already been observed and noted by Bouillet. Compare "We consider that all things called essences are composite, and that not a single one of them is simple," with "Numenius, who believes that everything is thoroughly mingled together, and that nothing is simple."[608] 5. UNCERTAIN INDEBTEDNESS OF PLOTINOS.
As Plotinos does not give exact quotations and references, it is difficult always to give their undoubted source. As probably Platonic we may mention the passage about the universal Soul taking care of all that is inanimate;[609] and "When one has arrived at individuals, they must be abandoned to infinity."[610] Also other quotations.[611] The line "It might be said that virtues are actualizations,"[612] might be Aristotelian. We also find:[613] "Thus, according to the ancient maxim, 'Courage, temperance, all the virtues, even prudence, are but purifications.'" "That is the reason that it is right to say that the 'soul's welfare and beauty lie in assimilating herself to the divinity.'" This sounds Platonic, but might be Numenian.
In this connection it might not be uninteresting to note passages in Numenius which are attributed to Plato, but which are not to be identified: "O Men, the Mind which you dimly perceive is not the First Mind; but before this Mind is another one, which is older and diviner." "That the Good is One."[614] We turn now to thoughts found identically in Plotinos and Numenius, although no textual identity is to be noted. We may group these according to the subject, the universe, and the soul.
6. PARTICULAR SIMILARITIES.
God is supreme king.[615] Eternity is now, but neither past nor future.[616] The King in heaven is surrounded by leisure.[617] The Good is above Being;[618] the divinity is the unity above the "Being and Essence;[619] and connected with this is the unitary interpretation of the name A-pollo,[620] following in the footsteps of Plutarch.
Nevertheless, the inferior divinity traverses the heavens,[621] in a circular motion.[622] While Numenius does not specify this motion as circular,[623] it is implied, inasmuch as the creator's passing through the heavens must have followed their circular course. With this perfect motion is connected the peculiar Numenian doctrine of inexhaustible giving,[624] which gave a philosophical basis for the old simile of radiation of light,[625] so that irradiation is the method of creation,[626] and this is not far removed from emanationism. This process consists of the descent of the intelligible into the material, or, as Numenius puts it, that both the intelligible and the perceptible participate in the ideas.[627] Thus intelligence is the uniting principle that holds together the bodies whose tendency is to split up, and scatter,[628] making a leakage or waste,[629] which process invades even the divinity.[630] This uniting of scattering elements produces a mixture or mingling,[608] of matter and reason,[631] which, however, is limited to the energies of the existent, not to the existent itself.[632] All things are in a flow,[633] and the whole all is in all.[634] The divinity creates by glancing at the intelligence above,[635] as a pilot.[636] The divinity is split by over-attention to its charges.[637] This leads us over to consideration of the soul. The chief effort of Numenius is a polemic against the materialism of the Stoics, and to it Plotinos devotes a whole book.[638] All souls, even the lowest, are immortal.[639] Even qualities are incorporeal.[640] The soul, therefore, remains incorporeal.[641] The soul, however, is divisible.[642] This explains the report that Numenius taught not various parts of the soul,[643] but two souls, which would be opposed by Plotinos in his polemic against the Stoics,[644] but taught in another place.[645] Such divisibility is indeed implied in the formation of presentation as a by-product,[646] or a "common part."[647] Moreover, the soul has to choose its own demon, or guardian divinity.[648] Salvation as a goal appears in Numenius,[649] but not in Plotinos, who opposes the Gnostic idea of the "saved souls,"[650] though elsewhere he speaks of the paths of the musician,[651] lover[652] and philosopher[653] in reaching ecstasy.[654] Still both Gnostics and Plotinos insisted on the need of a savior.[655] Memory is actualization of the soul.[656] In the highest ecstasy the soul is alone with the alone.[657] 7. SIMILARITIES APPLIED DIFFERENTLY.
This comparison of philosophy would have been much stronger had we added thereto the following points in which we find similar terms and ideas, but which are applied differently. The soul is indissolubly united to intelligence according to Plotinos, but to its source with Numenius.[658] Plotinos makes discord the result of their fall, while with Numenius it is its cause.[659] Guilt is the cause of the fall of souls, with Plotinos,[660] but with Numenius it is impulsive passion.
The great evolution or world-process is by Plotinos called the "eternal procession," while with Numenius it is progress.[661] The simile of the pilot is by Plotinos applied to the soul within the body; while with Numenius, it refers to the logos, or creator in the universe,[662] while in both cases the cause,--of creation for the creator,[663] and incarnation for the soul[664]--is forgetfulness. There is practically no difference here, however. Doubleness is, by Plotinos, predicated of the sun and stars, but by Numenius, of the demiurge himself,[665] which Plotinos opposes as a Gnostic teaching.[666] The Philonic term "legislator" is, by Plotinos, applied to intelligence, while Numenius applies it to the third divinity, and not the second.[667] Plotinos extends immortality to animals, but Numenius even to the inorganic realm, including everything.[668] While Numenius seems to believe in the Serapistic and Gnostic demons,[669] Plotinos opposes them,[670] although in his biography[671] he is represented as taking part in the evocation of his guardian spirit in a temple of Isis.
We thus find a tolerably complete body of philosophy shared by Plotinos and Numenius, out of the few fragments of the latter that have come down to us. It would therefore be reasonable to suppose that if Numenius's complete works had survived we could make out a still far stronger case for Plotinos's dependence on Numenius. At any rate, the Dominican scribe at the Escoreal who inserted the name of Numenius in the place of that of Plotinos in the heading of[672] the fragment about matter, must have felt a strong confusion between the two authors.
8. PHILOSOPHICAL RELATIONS BETWEEN NUMENIUS AND PLOTINOS.
To begin with, we have the controversy with the Stoics, which, though it appears in the works of both, bears in each a different