These views of course appear everywhere in
connection
with the doctrines of immortality or of the pre-existence and transmigration of souls, of the Fall through which or as a punishment for which man has been placed in matter, and of the purification through which he is to free himself from it again ; and just in this, too, the synthe sis in question is completed more and more effectively, inasmuch as the immutable Eternal which remains ever the same (the Platonic owri'a) is recognised in spirit; the perishable and changeable in matter.
Windelband - History of Philosophy
2, $ 18.
] Authority and Revelation : Neo-Plat<mi»m, Philo.
221
the New, which in turn confirms them. Here, too, in patristic literature, the fulfilment of prophecies is regarded as the connect ing link between the different phases of revelation.
These are the forms of thought in which the divine revelation became fixed for the Christian Church as historical authority. But the fundamental psychological power which was active in this pro cess remained, nevertheless, devotion in faith to the person of Jesus, who, as the sum total of divine revelation, formed the centre of Christian life.
6. The development of the doctrine of revelation in the Hellenistic philosophy took an entirely different direction. Here the scientific movement lacked the living connection with the Church community, and therefore the support of a historical authority ; here, therefore, revelation, which was demanded as a supplement for the natural
faculties of knowledge, must be sought in an immediate illumination of the individual by the deity. On this account revelation is here held to be a supra-rational apprehension of divine truth, an appre hension which the individual man comes to possess in immediate con tact (a^i;) with the deity itself: and though it must be admitted that there are but few who attain to this, and that even these attain only in rare moments, a definite, historically authenticated, special revelation, authoritative for all, is nevertheless here put aside. This conception of revelation was later called the mystic conception, and to this extent Neo-Platonism is the source of all later mysticism.
The origins of this conception again are to be sought with Philo. For he had already taught that all man's virtue can arise and con tinue only through the working of the divine Logos within us, and that the knowledge of God consists only in the renunciation of self, — in giving up individuality, and in becoming merged in the divine Primordial Being. 1 Knowledge of the Supreme Being is unity of life with him, — immediate contact. The mind that wishes to behold God must itself become God* In this state the soul's relation is entirely passive and receptive;5 it has to renounce all self-activity, all its own thought, and all reflection upon itself. Even the vow, the reason, must be silent in order that the blessedness of the per-
<"*ption
of God may come upon man. In this state of ecstasy
the divine spirit, according to Philo, dwells in man. Hence, in this state, he is a prophet of divine wisdom, a foreteller sad miracle-worker. As the Stoa had already traced mautic arts
1Phil. Leg All. 48 e. ; 66 d. ; 57 b. (63-62 M. )■
''KwtttHirmt U found also in the Hermetic writing*; Potmand. 10. 6 ft The Imv#Au (driJUalio) is later a general term of Mysticism.
(uoram)
•Cf. Plot. De PytA. Orac. 21 fl. (404 ff. ).
228 ' Hellenistic- Roman Thought: Religious Period. [Part II.
to the consubstantiality of human and divine spirits (irvev/iaTo), so too the Alexandrians conceive of this "deification" of man from the standpoint of his oneness in essence with the ground of the world. All thought, Plotinus teaches, is inferior to this state of ecstasy ; for thought is motion, — a desiring to know. Ecstasy, however, is certainty of God, blessed rest in him ; ' man has share in the divine Oaopia, or contemplation (Aristotle) only when he has raised himself entirely to the deity.
Ecstasy is then a state which transcends the self-consciousness of the individual, as its object transcends all particular determinate- ness (cf. § 20, 2). It is a sinking into the divine essence with an entire loss of self-consciousness : it is a possession of the deity, a unity of life with him, which mocks at all description, all percep tion, and all that abstract thought can frame. 2
How is this state to be attained ? It is, in all cases, a gift of the deity, a boon of the Infinite, which takes up the finite into itself. But man, with his free will, has to make himself worthy of this deification. He is to put off all his sensuous nature and all will of his own ; he is to turn back from the multitude of individual relations to his pure, simple, essential nature (an-Xoxris) ;3 the ways to this are, according to'Proclus, love, truth, and faith; but it is only in the last, which transcends. all reason, that the soul finds its complete unification with God, and the peace of blessed rapture. ' As the most effective aid in the preparation for this operation of divine grace, prayer8 and all acts6 of religious worship are commended. And if these do not always lead to the highest revelations of the deity, they yet secure at least, as Apuleius ' had before this sup posed, the comforting and helpful revelations of lower gods and demons, of saints and guardian spirits. So, also, in later Neo- Platonism, the raptures of prophecy which the Stoics had taught appear as lower and preparatory forms for the supreme ecstasy of deification. For, ultimately, all forms of worship are to the Neo- Platonist but exercises symbolic of that immediate union of the individual with God.
Thus the theory of inspiration diverged, in Christianity and Neo- Platonism, into two wholly different forms. In the former, divine
1 Plot. Ennead. VI. 7.
* lb. V. 8.
* An expression which is found even with Marcus Aurelius (Upis iavr. TV.
26), and which Plotinus also employs (Enn. VI. 7, 35). * Procl. Thtol. Plat. I. 24 f.
6 Jambl. in Procl. Tim. 64 C.
« De Mytt. jEg. II. 11 (96).
7 Apul. De Socr. 6 fl.
C'HAr. 2, § 19. ] Spirit and Matter: Stoics, Neo-Pythagoreans. 229
rerelation is fixed as historical authority ; jn thelatter. it is the process in which the individual man, freed from aUeternal relation^ sinks into the divine original Ground! The former is for the Middle Ages the source of Scholasticism ; the latter, that of Mysticism.
§ 19. Spirit ■ and Matter.
Among the arguments in which the felt need of revelation devel ops in the Alexandrian philosophy, none is so incisive as that which proceeds from the premise that man, ensnared in the world of sense, can attain to knowledge of the higher spiritual world only by super natural help: in this is shown the religious dualism which forms the fundamental mode of view of the period. Its roots are partly anthropological, partly metaphysical : the Stoic antithesis of reason and what is contrary to reason is united with the Platonic distinction between the supersensuous world, which remains ever the same, and the sensuous world which is always changing.
The identification of the spiritual and the immaterial, which was in nowise made complete with Plato although he prepared the way for it, had been limited by Aristotle to the divine self-consciousness. All the spiritual and mental activities of man, on the contrary, were regarded, even by Plato, as belonging to the world of phenomena
(yirurts ), and remained thus excluded from the world of incorporeal Being (ouo-ta), however much the rational might be opposed to the sensuous in the interest of ethics and of the theory of knowledge ; and while, in the antagonistic motives which crossed in the Aristo telian doctrine of the vmt, the attempt had been made to regard Reason as an immaterial principle, entering the animal soul from without, the development of the Peripatetic School (cf. § 15, 1) at once set this thought aside again. It was, however, in the doctrines of Epicurus and the Stoa that the conscious materialising of the psychical nature and activities attained its strongest expression.
On the other hand, the ethical dualism, which marked off as ttrongly as possible, man's inner nature, withdrawn into itself, as over against the sensuous outer world, became more and more
accentuated, and the more it took on religious form, the more it pressed, also, toward a theory of the world that made this opposition its metaphysical principle.
> [The German •' Oeitt," corresponding to both "mind" and "spirit," u aard in this period leans sometimes to one, sometimes to the oilier meaning. la view at the prevailingly religious character of the ideas of the period I have •anally rendered it in this section by " spirit," sometimes by the alternative ** mind or spirit. "]
sharply
230 Hellenistic-Roman Thought : Religiout Period. [Part II
1. This relation appears in clearest form, perhaps, in the expres sions of the later Stoics, who emphasise anthropological dualism so strongly that it comes into palpable contradiction with the meta physics of the school. The idea of the oneness of man's nature, which the Stoics had taught hitherto, had indeed been already questioned by Posidonius, when he expressed the Platonising opinion, that the passions could not arise from the yyipoviKov, but must come from other irrational parts of the soul. 1 Now, however, we find in Seneca 2 a bald opposition between soul and "flesh " ; the body is only a husk, it is a fetter, a prison for the mind. So, too, Epictetus calls reason and body the two constituent elements of man,3 and though Marcus Aurelius makes a distinction in man's sensuous nature between the coarse material and the psychical breath or pueuma which animates it, it is yet his intention to sep arate all the more sharply from the latter the soul proper, the
rational spirit or intelligence (fovs and b\avoux), as an incorporeal being. 4 In correspondence with this, we find in all these men an idej of the deity, that retains only the intellectual marks from the Stoit conception, and looks upon matter as a principle opposed to the deity, hostile to reason. *
These changes in the Stoa are due, perhaps, to the rising influence of Neo-Pythagoreanism, which at first made the Platonic dualism, with its motives of ethical and religious values, the centre of its system. By the adherents of this doctrine the essential difference of soul and body is emphasised in the strongest manner,' and with this are most intimately connected,7 on the one hand, the doctrine which will have God worshipped only spiritually, as a purely spiritual being,8 by prayer and virtuous intention, not by outward acts, — and on the other hand, the completely ascetic morals which aims to free the soul from its ensnarement in matter, and lead it back to its spiritual prime source by washings and purifications, by avoiding certain foods, especially flesh, by sexual continence, and by mortifying all sensuous impulses. Over against the deity, which is the principle of good, matter (tkr)) is regarded as the ground of all evil, propensity toward it as the peculiar sin of man.
1 Cf. Galen, De Hipp, et Plat. IV. 3 ff.
a Senec. Epist. 65, 22 ; 92, 13 ; Ad Marc. 24, 5.
» Epict. Dissert. I. 3, 3.
• Marc. Aur. Med. II. 2 ; XII. 3.
6 Senec. Ep. 66. 24 ; Epict. Diss. II. 8, 2 ; Marc. Aur. Med. XII. 2.
6 Claud. Mam. De Stratu Anim. II. 7.
' In so far as here, too, man is regarded as a microcosm. Ps. -Pythag. in
Phot. Cod. 249, p. 440 a.
* Apollonius of Tyana (rcpl (/wii. i in Eus. Prcep. Ev. IV. 13.
Caar. 2, $ 19. ] Spirit and Matter: Philo, Plutarch. 231
We meet this same conception ethically, among the Essenes, and theoretically, everywhere in the teaching of Philo. He, too, dis tinguishes between the soul, which as vital force of the bodily organism has its seat in the blood, and the pneuma, which as ema nation of the purely spiritual deity, constitutes the true essential nature of man. 1 He, too, finds that this latter is imprisoned in the body, and retarded in its unfolding by the body's sensuous nature
(aurtWif), so that since man's universal sinfulness* is rooted in this, salvation from this sinfulness must be sought only in the extirpa tion of all sensuous desires ; for him, too, matter is therefore the
substratum, which has indeed been arranged by the deity ■o as to form the purposive, good world, but which, at the same t:me, has remained the ground of evil and of imperfection.
2. The Christian Apologists' idea is related to this and yet differ ent. With them the Aristotelian conception of God as pure intel lect or spirit (nvt rcXoo? ) is united with the doctrine that God has created the world out of shapeless matter : yet here matter is not regarded immediately as an independent principle, but the ground of evil is sought rather in the perverted use of freedom on the part of man and of the demons who seduce him. Here the ethical and religious character of the dualism of the time appears in its com
plete purity : matter itself is regarded as something of an indiffer ent nature, which becomes good or evil only through its use by spiritual powers. In the same manner Hellenistic Platonists like Plutarch, proceeding from the conception of matter as formless Not- being, sought the principle of evil not in but rather in force or power, standing in opposition to the good deity,* — force which, to certain degree, contends with the deity about the formation of matter. Plutarch found this thought in the myths of different religions, but he might also have referred to passage where Plato had spoken of the evil world-soul in opposition to the good. 4
Meanwhile, the tendency to identify the antithesis of good and evil with that of mind (or spirit) and matter asserts itself here too, in the fact that the essence of evil sought again in a propensity
In this connection Philo calls xwtvua that which among the Stoics, Aristo telians, and Platoniats of the time called rovt cf. Teller V. »8»6, 3. Vet there nrrur with him again other expressions in which, <|uite in the Stoic fashion, the pnmmi appears as air, in the sense of most refined physical reality. Cf. H. Steheck, (inch. d. Ptyrh. 302 ff.
is also characteristic that the sinfulness of all men, doctrine which ■ completely at variance with the old Stoic faith in the realisation of the ideal of the wise man, generally acknowledged by the Stoics of the time of the Easpire. and regarded as motive for the necessity of supernatural help. Cf. Seneca. Bene/. 10 VII. 27 Bpict Di$*ert. II. 11,
Plut. Dt hid. 44 ff. Hat. Lwn, 896 E.
corporeal
••'■ It
a
I. ;
is
;
1.
it, a
a
a
a
I. b
is
a
is
;
232 Hellenistic- Roman Thought : Religious Period. [1'art II
toward the sensuous and fleshly, — toward matter ; while the good, on the contrary, is sought in love to the purely spiritual deity. This is not only a fundamental feature of the early Christian morals, but it is found also, in the same form, among the Platonists above mentioned. For Plutarch, too, liberation from the body is the necessary preparation for that reception of the working of divine grace which forms the goal of human life, and when Numenius carried out his theory further, by teaching that, as in the universe, so also in man, two souls, one good and one evil, contend with each other,1 he yet also seeks the seat of the evil soul in the body and its desires.
In these doctrines, also, we find everywhere emphasised, not only the pure spirituality and incorporeality of God, but likewise the incorporeality of the individual spirit or mind. With Plutarch this is shown once more in the form that he would separate the vovs, the rational spirit, from the ^uxVi which possesses the sensuous nature and the passions together with the power to move the body. So, too, Irenceus* distinguishes the psychical breath of life
which is of a temporal nature and bound to the body, from the ani mating spirit (nviv/xa [uxnroiovv) , which is in its nature eternal.
These views of course appear everywhere in connection with the doctrines of immortality or of the pre-existence and transmigration of souls, of the Fall through which or as a punishment for which man has been placed in matter, and of the purification through which he is to free himself from it again ; and just in this, too, the synthe sis in question is completed more and more effectively, inasmuch as the immutable Eternal which remains ever the same (the Platonic owri'a) is recognised in spirit; the perishable and changeable in matter.
3. In these connections we find developing gradually a separa tion of the two characteristics which had been originally united in the conception of the soul, — the physiological and the psycholog ical, the characteristic of vital force and that of the activity of con sciousness. As in the scheme that had already been employed by Aristotle, so now, side by side with the " soul " which moves the body, appears the "spirit " as self-subsisting and independent principle, and in this spirit is found no longer merely a general rational activ ity, but the proper essence of the individual (as also of the divine)
personality. The triple division of man into body, soul, and spirit is introduced in all lines, in the most various modes of expression,5
iJamfc. . in Stob. Eel. I. 894.
2 Iren. Adv. Hair. V. 12, 2.
* Of the various terminology (^vxi), anima, rrtifia, tpiritus, animus, etc. ), in
which these doctrines appear, examples have already been given above, and
(irvoi) far}s)
Cmap. 2, $ 1J». ] Spirit and Matter: Plotinus. 283
and it is easily understood that in this case, the boundaries, on the one hand between soul and body, and on the other to a still greater degree between soul and spirit, were very fluctuating ; for the soul plays here the part of a mean between the two extremes, matter and spirit
An immediate consequence of this was that a new and deeper idea could be gained of the activities of consciousness, which now as "mental" or "spiritual" were separated from the physiological functions of the soul. For, when once removed in essence from the corporeal world, the spirit could not be thought as dependent upon sensuous influences, either in its activity or in the object of its activity ; and while, in all Greek philosophy, cognition had been regarded as the perception and taking up of something given, and the attitude of thought as essentially receptive, now the idea of mind or spirit as an independent, productive principle forces its way through.
4. The beginnings for this lie already in the Neo- Pythagorean doc-trine, in so far as in it the spirituality of the immaterial world was first maintained. The immaterial substances of Platonic meta physics, the Ideas, appear no longer as self-subsistent essences, but as elements constituting the content of intellectual or spiritual activity ; and while they still remain for human cognition something given and determining, they become original thoughts of Ood? Thus the bodiless archetypes of the world of experience are taken up into the inward nature of mind ; reason is no longer merely something
which belongs to the otvia or which is only akin to the entire oUria itself; the immaterial world recognised as the world
mind or spirit. 1
In correspondence with this, the rational spirit or intellect (row)
defined by Plotinus* as the unity which has plurality within itself, i. e. in metaphysical language, as duality determined by unity bat in itself indeterminate (cf. 20), and in anthro[>ological lan
might Terr easily be multiplied. Thin doctrine wan developed In an especially Interesting way by Origen (Dt /Vine. III. 1-5), where the "soul" treated partly a* motire power, partly as faculty of ideation and desire, while the spirit. oc the contrary, presented as the principle of judging, on the one hand between good and evil, on the other hand between true and false in thla alone, teaches Origen, consist* man's freedom. The like triple division appears then with Plotinus in connection with his whole metaphysical construction. Knn. IL9. 8. Cf. §20.
Cf. Nicomachus, Arilhm. Intr.
With this change the I'latonic doctrine of Ideas passed over to the future, because Plotinus, and with him all Neo-Platonism, accepted it. Yet this did not take place without opposition. Longinus at least protested against it, and Por phyry aa bis disciple wrote a treatise of bis own *ri l{u> tov roi UcpiaTi)*t t* wi)t4. Porph. Vit. Plot. 18 ff.
•Plot. Enn V. 8; 16; ».
9, 3,
la
4,
'>
is
I. 6.
§
;
is
it, it is
is
of
234 Hellenistic- Roman Thought: Religious Period. [Part II.
guage, as the synthetic function which produces plurality out of its higher unity. From this general point of view the NeoPlatonists carried out the psychology of cognition under the principle of the activity of consciousness. For according to this, the higher soul can no longer be looked upon as passive, but must be regarded as essen tially active in all its functions. 1 All its intelligence (<rw«r«) rests upon the synthesis (o-wflttris) of various elements ; * even where the cognition refers to what is given by the senses, it is only the body which is passive, while the soul in becoming conscious (<7iWo-0to-«s and irapaKoXovdrja-it) is active ; * and the same is true of the sensuous feelings and passions. Thus in the field of sensation a distinction is made between the state of excitation and the conscious perception of this ; the former is a passive or receptive state of the body (or also of the lower soul); the latter even already in conscious per ception (mriX^is) is an act of the higher soul, which Plotinus describes as a kind of bending back of thought — reflection. 4
While consciousness was thus conceived as the active noting of the mind's own states, functions, and contents, — a theory, which, ac cording to Philoponus, was carried out especially by the Neo-Pla- tonic Plutarch also, — there resulted from this with Plotinus the conception of self-consciousness (irapaKoXovduv «avr<u). 5 His conception of this was that the intellect, as thought active and in motion
(vmjo-ts), has for its object itself as a resting, objective thought (votjtov) : intellect as knowledge, and intellect as Being, are in this
case identical.
But the conception of self-consciousness takes on also an ethico-
religious colouring in accordance with the thought of the time. The <ramn<t is at the same time o-wtiS^o-is — conscience, i. e. man's knowl edge, not only of his own states and acts, but also of their ethical worth, and of the commandment by the fulfilment of which the estimate of this worth is governed ; and for this reason the doctrine of self-consciousness is developed in the doctrine of the Church Fathers, not only as man's knowledge of his sins, but also as repent ance (/uravoui) in actively combating them.
5. The conception of mind or spirit as self-active, creative principle did not stop with its significance for psychology, ethics, and theory
I Porph. Sentent. 10, 19 et al.
II Plot. Enn. IV. 3, 26.
» lb. IV. 4, 18 f. The term <tvvai<i8i\<n% — whose meaning reminds us besides
of the Koivbv al<r$irriipu>y in Aristotle, and thus ultimately of Plato, Thecet. 184 f. —is found in similar use already in Alexander Aphrodisias, Qmest. III. 7, p. 177, and so, too, Galen employs the expression Sidyvuirii to designate the becoming conscious of the change in the bodily organ as contrasted with that change itself.
* Plot. Enn. I. 4, 10. * lb. III. 9.
Chap. 2, $ 20. J God and the World. 235
of knowledge, but as the ancient world passed out, this conception rose to be the dominant thought of religious metaphysics. For by making the attempt to derive matter also from this creative spirit, this conception offered the possibility of finally overcoming that dualism which formed the presupposition of the whole movement of the religious thought of the time.
Hence it became the last and highest problem of ancient philoso phy to understand the world as a product of spirit, to comprehend even the corporeal world with all of its phenomena as essentially intellectual or spiritual in its origin and content The spiritualisa- tion of the universe is the final result of ancient philosophy.
Christianity and Neo-Platonism, Origen and Plotinus, alike worked at this problem. The dualism of spirit and matter remains, indeed, persisting in full force for both so far as they have to do with the conception of the phenomenal world, and especially when they treat ethical questions. The sensuous is still regarded as that which is evil and alien to God, from which the soul must free itself in order to return to unity with pure spirit. But even this dark spot is to be illumined from the eternal light, matter is to be recog nised as a creation of spirit. The last standpoint of ancient philos ophy is thus spiritual monism.
But in the solution of this common problem the philosophy of Christianity and that of Neo-Platonism diverge widely ; for this de velopment of the divine spirit into the world of phenomena, even down to its material forms, must evidently be determined by the ideas which obtained of the nature of God and of his relation to the world, and just in this Hellenism found itself working under pre suppositions that were completely different from those of the doctrine of the new religion.
§ 20. God and the World.
The peculiar suspense between metaphysical monism and ethico- religious dualism, which defines the character of the entire Alex andrian philosophy, forces together all the thoughts of the time, and condenses them into the most difficult of problems, that of the relation of God and the World.
1. This problem had already been suggested from the purely theoretical side, by the opposition between the Aristotelian and the Stoic philosophy. The former maintained the transcendence of God, i. e. his complete separation from the world, as strongly as the latter maintained the immanence of God, i. e. the doctrine that God is completely mergod in the world. The problem, and the fundamental tendency adopted in its solution, may, therefore, be
236 Hellenistic-Roman Thought : Religious Period. [Part II
recognised already in the eclectic mingling ' of Peripatetic and Stoic cosmology, as type of which the pseudo-Aristotelian treatise, Con cerning the World is regarded. * With the Aristotelian doctrine that the essence of God must be set far above Nature (as the sum- total of all particular things which are moved), and especially above the mutation of earthly existence, is connected here the Stoic en deavour to follow the working of the divine power through the entire universe, even into every detail. While, accordingly, the world was regarded among the Stoics as God himself, while Aristotle saw in it a living being, purposefully moved, whose outermost spheres
were set in revolution only by longing for the eternally unmoved, pure Form, — a revolution communicating itself with ever-lessening perfection to the lower spheres, — here the macrocosm appears as the system of individual things existing in relations of mutual sympathy, in which the power of the supra-mundane God is domi nant under the most varied forms as the principle of life. The mediation between theism and pantheism is gained, partly by the distinction between the essence and the power of God, partly by the graded scale of the divine workings, which descends from the heaven of the fixed stars to the earth. The pneuma doctrine is united with the Aristotelian conception of God, by conceiving of the forces of Nature's life as the workings of pure Spirit. 3
This turn, however, but increased the difficulty already inherent in the Aristotelian doctrine of the action of the deity upon the world. For this action was regarded as consisting in the motion of matter, and it was hard to reconcile this materialisation of the divine action with the pure spirituality which was to constitute the essence of the deity. Even Aristotle had not become clear as to the relation of the unmoved mover to that which was moved (cf. § 13. ). 4
2. The problem became more severe as the religious dualism became more pronounced, a dualism which, not satisfied with con trasting God as spirit with matter, the supersensuous sphere with the sensuous, rather followed the tendency to raise the divine being
1 Stratonism as a transformation of the Aristotelian doctrine in the direction of pantheistic immanence, a transformation allied to the doctrine of the Stoa, has been treated above, § 15, 1.
3 This book (printed among the writings of Aristotle, 391 ff. ) may perhaps have arisen in the first century a. d. Apuleius worked it over into Latin.
• Cf. principally Co. 6, 397 b 9.
* These difficulties in Aristotle's case became condensed in the concept of the difi-fi. For since the " contact " of the mover with the moved was regarded as the condition of motion, it was necessary to speak also of a "contact" between God and the heaven of the fixed stars. This, however, was liable to objection on account of the purely spiritual essence of the deity, and the <x$i} in this case received a restricted and intellectually transformed meaning ("immediate relation"). Cf. Arist. De Gen. et Corr. I. 6, 323 a 20.
Cmaf. 2, f 20. ] God and the World : Neo-Platonism. 237
above all that cau be experienced and above every definite content, and thus to make the God who is above the world also a Qod above mind or spirit. This is found already with the Neo-Pythagoreans, among whom a wavering between various stadia of dualism lurks behind their mode of expression in the symbolism of numbers.
When the " One " and the " indefinite duality " are maintained to be principles, the latter indeed always means matter as the impure, as the ground of the imperfect and the evil; the One, however, is treated now as pure Form, as spirit, now also as the "cause of causes" which lies above all reason, — as the primordial being which has caused to proceed forth from itself the opposition of the derivative One and duality, of spirit and matter. In this case the second One, the first-born One (irpwoyovov h) appears as the perfect image of the highest One. 1
Inasmuch as mind or spirit was thus made a product of the deity, though the first and most perfect product, this effort led to raising the conception of the deity even to complete absence of all qualities. This had been already shown in Philo. who emphasised so sharply the contrast between Qod and everything finite that he designated God expressly as devoid of qualities (airou**) : for since God is exalted above all, it can be said of him only that he has none of the finite predicates known to human intelligence; no name names him. This type of thought, later called " negative theology," we find also among those Christian Apologists that were influenced in their con ceptions by Philo, especially with Justin,3 and likewise in part among the Onostics.
The same meets us also in Neo-Platonism in a still more intensi fied form, if possible. As in the Hermetic writings * God had been considered as infinite and incomprehensible, as nameless, exalted above all Being, as the ground of Being and Reason, neither of which exists until created by him, so for Plotinus, the deity is the absolutely transcendent primordial being, exalted as a perfect unity above mind, which, as the principle that contains plurality already in ite unity (§ 19, 4), must have proceeded forth from God (and not have been eternal). This One, to h, precedes all thought and Being ; it is infinite, formless, and " beyond " ( irriKuva) the intel lectual as well as the sensuous world, and therefore without con sciousness and without activity. *
1 Xicomachus, Theol. Arilhm. p. 44.
> Phil. Leg. Alleg. 47 a ; D. S. linmut. 801 a.
• Jul Apol. I. 61 (I. Qu. « Puemand. 4 f.
* It Is euj to understand how a state of ecstasy devoid of will and conscious-
i and raised above reason, appeared requisite for man's relation to this supra- rational God-Being, exalted above all action, will, and thought. CI. above, $ 18, U
238 Hellenistic-Roman Thought : Religious Period. [Part II
Finally, while Plotinus still designates this inexpressible First (to npSnov) as the One, which is the cause of all thought and of all Being, and as the Good, as the absolute end of all that comes to
pass, even this did not satisfy the later members of the school. Jamblichus set above the h of Plotinus a still higher, completely ineffable One (warrr) appnrw: ap\ri and Proclus followed him in this.
In opposition to such dialectical subtilisations, the development of Christian thought in the Church preserved its impressive energy by holding fast to the conception of God as spiritual personality. It did this, not as the result of philosophical reflection and reasoning, but by virtue of its immediate attachment to the living belief of the Church community, and just in this consisted its psychological strength, its power in the world's history. This faith breathed in the New Testament; this defended by all the supporters of patristic theology, and just by this are the limits of the Christian doctrine everywhere defined, as against the Hellenistic solutions of the chief problem in the philosophy of religion.
Hellenism sees in personality, in however purely spiritual man ner may be conceived, restriction and characteristic of the finite, which would keep at a distance from the Supreme Being, and admit only for the particular gods. Christianity, as living religion, demands personal relation of man to the ground of the world conceived of as supreme personality, and expresses this demand in the thought of the divine sonship of man.
If, therefore, the conception of personality as intrinsic spiritual ity (geistiger Innerlichkeit) expresses the essentially new result, to yield which, theoretical and ethical motives intertwined in Greek and Hellenistic thought, then was Christianity which entered upon this inheritance of ancient thought, while Neo-Platonism turned back to the old idea that saw in personality only transi tory product of a life which as a whole impersonal. It the essential feature of the Christian conception of the world that regards the person and the relations of persons to one another as the essence of reality.
4. In spite of this important difference, all lines of the Alexan drian philosophy were confronted by the same problem, that of plac ing the deity, thus taken from the sensible world, in those relations which religious need demanded. For the more deeply the opposi tion between God and the world was felt, the more ardent became the longing to overcome — to overcome by knowledge that should understand the world also through God, and by a life that should return out of the world to God.
Damasc. De Princ. 43.
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Cmaf 2, § 20. ] God and the World : Christianity, Gnostic*. 239
Hence the dualism of God and the world, as well as that of spirit and matter, is but the starting-point — taken in the feelings — and the presupposition of the Alexandrian philosophy: its goal is everywhere, theoretically as well as practically, to vanquish this dualism. Just in this consists the peculiarity of this period, that
't is anxious to close, in knowledge and will, the cleft which it finds n its feelings.
This period, to be sure, produced also theories of the world in which dualism asserted itself so predominantly as to become fixed as their immovable basis. Here belong primarily Platonists like Plutarch, who not only treated matter as an original principle side by side with the deity, because the deity could in nowise be the ground of the evil, but also assumed beside God, the "evil world- soul " as a third principle in the formation of this indifferent matter into a world. A part of the Gnostic systems present themselves here, however, for especial consideration.
This first fantastic attempt at a Christian theology was ruled throughout by the thoughts of sin and redemption, and the funda mental character of Gnosticism consists in this, that from the point of view of these ruling thoughts the conceptions of Greek philos ophy were put in relation with the myths of Oriental religions. Thus with Valentinus, side by side with the deity (irpoirarup) poured out into the Pleroma or fulness (to ir\ripu>pa) of spiritual forms, appears the Void (ro xowpi), likewise original and from eternity; beside Form appears matter, beside the good appears the evil, and though from the self-unfolding of the deity (cf.
the New, which in turn confirms them. Here, too, in patristic literature, the fulfilment of prophecies is regarded as the connect ing link between the different phases of revelation.
These are the forms of thought in which the divine revelation became fixed for the Christian Church as historical authority. But the fundamental psychological power which was active in this pro cess remained, nevertheless, devotion in faith to the person of Jesus, who, as the sum total of divine revelation, formed the centre of Christian life.
6. The development of the doctrine of revelation in the Hellenistic philosophy took an entirely different direction. Here the scientific movement lacked the living connection with the Church community, and therefore the support of a historical authority ; here, therefore, revelation, which was demanded as a supplement for the natural
faculties of knowledge, must be sought in an immediate illumination of the individual by the deity. On this account revelation is here held to be a supra-rational apprehension of divine truth, an appre hension which the individual man comes to possess in immediate con tact (a^i;) with the deity itself: and though it must be admitted that there are but few who attain to this, and that even these attain only in rare moments, a definite, historically authenticated, special revelation, authoritative for all, is nevertheless here put aside. This conception of revelation was later called the mystic conception, and to this extent Neo-Platonism is the source of all later mysticism.
The origins of this conception again are to be sought with Philo. For he had already taught that all man's virtue can arise and con tinue only through the working of the divine Logos within us, and that the knowledge of God consists only in the renunciation of self, — in giving up individuality, and in becoming merged in the divine Primordial Being. 1 Knowledge of the Supreme Being is unity of life with him, — immediate contact. The mind that wishes to behold God must itself become God* In this state the soul's relation is entirely passive and receptive;5 it has to renounce all self-activity, all its own thought, and all reflection upon itself. Even the vow, the reason, must be silent in order that the blessedness of the per-
<"*ption
of God may come upon man. In this state of ecstasy
the divine spirit, according to Philo, dwells in man. Hence, in this state, he is a prophet of divine wisdom, a foreteller sad miracle-worker. As the Stoa had already traced mautic arts
1Phil. Leg All. 48 e. ; 66 d. ; 57 b. (63-62 M. )■
''KwtttHirmt U found also in the Hermetic writing*; Potmand. 10. 6 ft The Imv#Au (driJUalio) is later a general term of Mysticism.
(uoram)
•Cf. Plot. De PytA. Orac. 21 fl. (404 ff. ).
228 ' Hellenistic- Roman Thought: Religious Period. [Part II.
to the consubstantiality of human and divine spirits (irvev/iaTo), so too the Alexandrians conceive of this "deification" of man from the standpoint of his oneness in essence with the ground of the world. All thought, Plotinus teaches, is inferior to this state of ecstasy ; for thought is motion, — a desiring to know. Ecstasy, however, is certainty of God, blessed rest in him ; ' man has share in the divine Oaopia, or contemplation (Aristotle) only when he has raised himself entirely to the deity.
Ecstasy is then a state which transcends the self-consciousness of the individual, as its object transcends all particular determinate- ness (cf. § 20, 2). It is a sinking into the divine essence with an entire loss of self-consciousness : it is a possession of the deity, a unity of life with him, which mocks at all description, all percep tion, and all that abstract thought can frame. 2
How is this state to be attained ? It is, in all cases, a gift of the deity, a boon of the Infinite, which takes up the finite into itself. But man, with his free will, has to make himself worthy of this deification. He is to put off all his sensuous nature and all will of his own ; he is to turn back from the multitude of individual relations to his pure, simple, essential nature (an-Xoxris) ;3 the ways to this are, according to'Proclus, love, truth, and faith; but it is only in the last, which transcends. all reason, that the soul finds its complete unification with God, and the peace of blessed rapture. ' As the most effective aid in the preparation for this operation of divine grace, prayer8 and all acts6 of religious worship are commended. And if these do not always lead to the highest revelations of the deity, they yet secure at least, as Apuleius ' had before this sup posed, the comforting and helpful revelations of lower gods and demons, of saints and guardian spirits. So, also, in later Neo- Platonism, the raptures of prophecy which the Stoics had taught appear as lower and preparatory forms for the supreme ecstasy of deification. For, ultimately, all forms of worship are to the Neo- Platonist but exercises symbolic of that immediate union of the individual with God.
Thus the theory of inspiration diverged, in Christianity and Neo- Platonism, into two wholly different forms. In the former, divine
1 Plot. Ennead. VI. 7.
* lb. V. 8.
* An expression which is found even with Marcus Aurelius (Upis iavr. TV.
26), and which Plotinus also employs (Enn. VI. 7, 35). * Procl. Thtol. Plat. I. 24 f.
6 Jambl. in Procl. Tim. 64 C.
« De Mytt. jEg. II. 11 (96).
7 Apul. De Socr. 6 fl.
C'HAr. 2, § 19. ] Spirit and Matter: Stoics, Neo-Pythagoreans. 229
rerelation is fixed as historical authority ; jn thelatter. it is the process in which the individual man, freed from aUeternal relation^ sinks into the divine original Ground! The former is for the Middle Ages the source of Scholasticism ; the latter, that of Mysticism.
§ 19. Spirit ■ and Matter.
Among the arguments in which the felt need of revelation devel ops in the Alexandrian philosophy, none is so incisive as that which proceeds from the premise that man, ensnared in the world of sense, can attain to knowledge of the higher spiritual world only by super natural help: in this is shown the religious dualism which forms the fundamental mode of view of the period. Its roots are partly anthropological, partly metaphysical : the Stoic antithesis of reason and what is contrary to reason is united with the Platonic distinction between the supersensuous world, which remains ever the same, and the sensuous world which is always changing.
The identification of the spiritual and the immaterial, which was in nowise made complete with Plato although he prepared the way for it, had been limited by Aristotle to the divine self-consciousness. All the spiritual and mental activities of man, on the contrary, were regarded, even by Plato, as belonging to the world of phenomena
(yirurts ), and remained thus excluded from the world of incorporeal Being (ouo-ta), however much the rational might be opposed to the sensuous in the interest of ethics and of the theory of knowledge ; and while, in the antagonistic motives which crossed in the Aristo telian doctrine of the vmt, the attempt had been made to regard Reason as an immaterial principle, entering the animal soul from without, the development of the Peripatetic School (cf. § 15, 1) at once set this thought aside again. It was, however, in the doctrines of Epicurus and the Stoa that the conscious materialising of the psychical nature and activities attained its strongest expression.
On the other hand, the ethical dualism, which marked off as ttrongly as possible, man's inner nature, withdrawn into itself, as over against the sensuous outer world, became more and more
accentuated, and the more it took on religious form, the more it pressed, also, toward a theory of the world that made this opposition its metaphysical principle.
> [The German •' Oeitt," corresponding to both "mind" and "spirit," u aard in this period leans sometimes to one, sometimes to the oilier meaning. la view at the prevailingly religious character of the ideas of the period I have •anally rendered it in this section by " spirit," sometimes by the alternative ** mind or spirit. "]
sharply
230 Hellenistic-Roman Thought : Religiout Period. [Part II
1. This relation appears in clearest form, perhaps, in the expres sions of the later Stoics, who emphasise anthropological dualism so strongly that it comes into palpable contradiction with the meta physics of the school. The idea of the oneness of man's nature, which the Stoics had taught hitherto, had indeed been already questioned by Posidonius, when he expressed the Platonising opinion, that the passions could not arise from the yyipoviKov, but must come from other irrational parts of the soul. 1 Now, however, we find in Seneca 2 a bald opposition between soul and "flesh " ; the body is only a husk, it is a fetter, a prison for the mind. So, too, Epictetus calls reason and body the two constituent elements of man,3 and though Marcus Aurelius makes a distinction in man's sensuous nature between the coarse material and the psychical breath or pueuma which animates it, it is yet his intention to sep arate all the more sharply from the latter the soul proper, the
rational spirit or intelligence (fovs and b\avoux), as an incorporeal being. 4 In correspondence with this, we find in all these men an idej of the deity, that retains only the intellectual marks from the Stoit conception, and looks upon matter as a principle opposed to the deity, hostile to reason. *
These changes in the Stoa are due, perhaps, to the rising influence of Neo-Pythagoreanism, which at first made the Platonic dualism, with its motives of ethical and religious values, the centre of its system. By the adherents of this doctrine the essential difference of soul and body is emphasised in the strongest manner,' and with this are most intimately connected,7 on the one hand, the doctrine which will have God worshipped only spiritually, as a purely spiritual being,8 by prayer and virtuous intention, not by outward acts, — and on the other hand, the completely ascetic morals which aims to free the soul from its ensnarement in matter, and lead it back to its spiritual prime source by washings and purifications, by avoiding certain foods, especially flesh, by sexual continence, and by mortifying all sensuous impulses. Over against the deity, which is the principle of good, matter (tkr)) is regarded as the ground of all evil, propensity toward it as the peculiar sin of man.
1 Cf. Galen, De Hipp, et Plat. IV. 3 ff.
a Senec. Epist. 65, 22 ; 92, 13 ; Ad Marc. 24, 5.
» Epict. Dissert. I. 3, 3.
• Marc. Aur. Med. II. 2 ; XII. 3.
6 Senec. Ep. 66. 24 ; Epict. Diss. II. 8, 2 ; Marc. Aur. Med. XII. 2.
6 Claud. Mam. De Stratu Anim. II. 7.
' In so far as here, too, man is regarded as a microcosm. Ps. -Pythag. in
Phot. Cod. 249, p. 440 a.
* Apollonius of Tyana (rcpl (/wii. i in Eus. Prcep. Ev. IV. 13.
Caar. 2, $ 19. ] Spirit and Matter: Philo, Plutarch. 231
We meet this same conception ethically, among the Essenes, and theoretically, everywhere in the teaching of Philo. He, too, dis tinguishes between the soul, which as vital force of the bodily organism has its seat in the blood, and the pneuma, which as ema nation of the purely spiritual deity, constitutes the true essential nature of man. 1 He, too, finds that this latter is imprisoned in the body, and retarded in its unfolding by the body's sensuous nature
(aurtWif), so that since man's universal sinfulness* is rooted in this, salvation from this sinfulness must be sought only in the extirpa tion of all sensuous desires ; for him, too, matter is therefore the
substratum, which has indeed been arranged by the deity ■o as to form the purposive, good world, but which, at the same t:me, has remained the ground of evil and of imperfection.
2. The Christian Apologists' idea is related to this and yet differ ent. With them the Aristotelian conception of God as pure intel lect or spirit (nvt rcXoo? ) is united with the doctrine that God has created the world out of shapeless matter : yet here matter is not regarded immediately as an independent principle, but the ground of evil is sought rather in the perverted use of freedom on the part of man and of the demons who seduce him. Here the ethical and religious character of the dualism of the time appears in its com
plete purity : matter itself is regarded as something of an indiffer ent nature, which becomes good or evil only through its use by spiritual powers. In the same manner Hellenistic Platonists like Plutarch, proceeding from the conception of matter as formless Not- being, sought the principle of evil not in but rather in force or power, standing in opposition to the good deity,* — force which, to certain degree, contends with the deity about the formation of matter. Plutarch found this thought in the myths of different religions, but he might also have referred to passage where Plato had spoken of the evil world-soul in opposition to the good. 4
Meanwhile, the tendency to identify the antithesis of good and evil with that of mind (or spirit) and matter asserts itself here too, in the fact that the essence of evil sought again in a propensity
In this connection Philo calls xwtvua that which among the Stoics, Aristo telians, and Platoniats of the time called rovt cf. Teller V. »8»6, 3. Vet there nrrur with him again other expressions in which, <|uite in the Stoic fashion, the pnmmi appears as air, in the sense of most refined physical reality. Cf. H. Steheck, (inch. d. Ptyrh. 302 ff.
is also characteristic that the sinfulness of all men, doctrine which ■ completely at variance with the old Stoic faith in the realisation of the ideal of the wise man, generally acknowledged by the Stoics of the time of the Easpire. and regarded as motive for the necessity of supernatural help. Cf. Seneca. Bene/. 10 VII. 27 Bpict Di$*ert. II. 11,
Plut. Dt hid. 44 ff. Hat. Lwn, 896 E.
corporeal
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;
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232 Hellenistic- Roman Thought : Religious Period. [1'art II
toward the sensuous and fleshly, — toward matter ; while the good, on the contrary, is sought in love to the purely spiritual deity. This is not only a fundamental feature of the early Christian morals, but it is found also, in the same form, among the Platonists above mentioned. For Plutarch, too, liberation from the body is the necessary preparation for that reception of the working of divine grace which forms the goal of human life, and when Numenius carried out his theory further, by teaching that, as in the universe, so also in man, two souls, one good and one evil, contend with each other,1 he yet also seeks the seat of the evil soul in the body and its desires.
In these doctrines, also, we find everywhere emphasised, not only the pure spirituality and incorporeality of God, but likewise the incorporeality of the individual spirit or mind. With Plutarch this is shown once more in the form that he would separate the vovs, the rational spirit, from the ^uxVi which possesses the sensuous nature and the passions together with the power to move the body. So, too, Irenceus* distinguishes the psychical breath of life
which is of a temporal nature and bound to the body, from the ani mating spirit (nviv/xa [uxnroiovv) , which is in its nature eternal.
These views of course appear everywhere in connection with the doctrines of immortality or of the pre-existence and transmigration of souls, of the Fall through which or as a punishment for which man has been placed in matter, and of the purification through which he is to free himself from it again ; and just in this, too, the synthe sis in question is completed more and more effectively, inasmuch as the immutable Eternal which remains ever the same (the Platonic owri'a) is recognised in spirit; the perishable and changeable in matter.
3. In these connections we find developing gradually a separa tion of the two characteristics which had been originally united in the conception of the soul, — the physiological and the psycholog ical, the characteristic of vital force and that of the activity of con sciousness. As in the scheme that had already been employed by Aristotle, so now, side by side with the " soul " which moves the body, appears the "spirit " as self-subsisting and independent principle, and in this spirit is found no longer merely a general rational activ ity, but the proper essence of the individual (as also of the divine)
personality. The triple division of man into body, soul, and spirit is introduced in all lines, in the most various modes of expression,5
iJamfc. . in Stob. Eel. I. 894.
2 Iren. Adv. Hair. V. 12, 2.
* Of the various terminology (^vxi), anima, rrtifia, tpiritus, animus, etc. ), in
which these doctrines appear, examples have already been given above, and
(irvoi) far}s)
Cmap. 2, $ 1J». ] Spirit and Matter: Plotinus. 283
and it is easily understood that in this case, the boundaries, on the one hand between soul and body, and on the other to a still greater degree between soul and spirit, were very fluctuating ; for the soul plays here the part of a mean between the two extremes, matter and spirit
An immediate consequence of this was that a new and deeper idea could be gained of the activities of consciousness, which now as "mental" or "spiritual" were separated from the physiological functions of the soul. For, when once removed in essence from the corporeal world, the spirit could not be thought as dependent upon sensuous influences, either in its activity or in the object of its activity ; and while, in all Greek philosophy, cognition had been regarded as the perception and taking up of something given, and the attitude of thought as essentially receptive, now the idea of mind or spirit as an independent, productive principle forces its way through.
4. The beginnings for this lie already in the Neo- Pythagorean doc-trine, in so far as in it the spirituality of the immaterial world was first maintained. The immaterial substances of Platonic meta physics, the Ideas, appear no longer as self-subsistent essences, but as elements constituting the content of intellectual or spiritual activity ; and while they still remain for human cognition something given and determining, they become original thoughts of Ood? Thus the bodiless archetypes of the world of experience are taken up into the inward nature of mind ; reason is no longer merely something
which belongs to the otvia or which is only akin to the entire oUria itself; the immaterial world recognised as the world
mind or spirit. 1
In correspondence with this, the rational spirit or intellect (row)
defined by Plotinus* as the unity which has plurality within itself, i. e. in metaphysical language, as duality determined by unity bat in itself indeterminate (cf. 20), and in anthro[>ological lan
might Terr easily be multiplied. Thin doctrine wan developed In an especially Interesting way by Origen (Dt /Vine. III. 1-5), where the "soul" treated partly a* motire power, partly as faculty of ideation and desire, while the spirit. oc the contrary, presented as the principle of judging, on the one hand between good and evil, on the other hand between true and false in thla alone, teaches Origen, consist* man's freedom. The like triple division appears then with Plotinus in connection with his whole metaphysical construction. Knn. IL9. 8. Cf. §20.
Cf. Nicomachus, Arilhm. Intr.
With this change the I'latonic doctrine of Ideas passed over to the future, because Plotinus, and with him all Neo-Platonism, accepted it. Yet this did not take place without opposition. Longinus at least protested against it, and Por phyry aa bis disciple wrote a treatise of bis own *ri l{u> tov roi UcpiaTi)*t t* wi)t4. Porph. Vit. Plot. 18 ff.
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234 Hellenistic- Roman Thought: Religious Period. [Part II.
guage, as the synthetic function which produces plurality out of its higher unity. From this general point of view the NeoPlatonists carried out the psychology of cognition under the principle of the activity of consciousness. For according to this, the higher soul can no longer be looked upon as passive, but must be regarded as essen tially active in all its functions. 1 All its intelligence (<rw«r«) rests upon the synthesis (o-wflttris) of various elements ; * even where the cognition refers to what is given by the senses, it is only the body which is passive, while the soul in becoming conscious (<7iWo-0to-«s and irapaKoXovdrja-it) is active ; * and the same is true of the sensuous feelings and passions. Thus in the field of sensation a distinction is made between the state of excitation and the conscious perception of this ; the former is a passive or receptive state of the body (or also of the lower soul); the latter even already in conscious per ception (mriX^is) is an act of the higher soul, which Plotinus describes as a kind of bending back of thought — reflection. 4
While consciousness was thus conceived as the active noting of the mind's own states, functions, and contents, — a theory, which, ac cording to Philoponus, was carried out especially by the Neo-Pla- tonic Plutarch also, — there resulted from this with Plotinus the conception of self-consciousness (irapaKoXovduv «avr<u). 5 His conception of this was that the intellect, as thought active and in motion
(vmjo-ts), has for its object itself as a resting, objective thought (votjtov) : intellect as knowledge, and intellect as Being, are in this
case identical.
But the conception of self-consciousness takes on also an ethico-
religious colouring in accordance with the thought of the time. The <ramn<t is at the same time o-wtiS^o-is — conscience, i. e. man's knowl edge, not only of his own states and acts, but also of their ethical worth, and of the commandment by the fulfilment of which the estimate of this worth is governed ; and for this reason the doctrine of self-consciousness is developed in the doctrine of the Church Fathers, not only as man's knowledge of his sins, but also as repent ance (/uravoui) in actively combating them.
5. The conception of mind or spirit as self-active, creative principle did not stop with its significance for psychology, ethics, and theory
I Porph. Sentent. 10, 19 et al.
II Plot. Enn. IV. 3, 26.
» lb. IV. 4, 18 f. The term <tvvai<i8i\<n% — whose meaning reminds us besides
of the Koivbv al<r$irriipu>y in Aristotle, and thus ultimately of Plato, Thecet. 184 f. —is found in similar use already in Alexander Aphrodisias, Qmest. III. 7, p. 177, and so, too, Galen employs the expression Sidyvuirii to designate the becoming conscious of the change in the bodily organ as contrasted with that change itself.
* Plot. Enn. I. 4, 10. * lb. III. 9.
Chap. 2, $ 20. J God and the World. 235
of knowledge, but as the ancient world passed out, this conception rose to be the dominant thought of religious metaphysics. For by making the attempt to derive matter also from this creative spirit, this conception offered the possibility of finally overcoming that dualism which formed the presupposition of the whole movement of the religious thought of the time.
Hence it became the last and highest problem of ancient philoso phy to understand the world as a product of spirit, to comprehend even the corporeal world with all of its phenomena as essentially intellectual or spiritual in its origin and content The spiritualisa- tion of the universe is the final result of ancient philosophy.
Christianity and Neo-Platonism, Origen and Plotinus, alike worked at this problem. The dualism of spirit and matter remains, indeed, persisting in full force for both so far as they have to do with the conception of the phenomenal world, and especially when they treat ethical questions. The sensuous is still regarded as that which is evil and alien to God, from which the soul must free itself in order to return to unity with pure spirit. But even this dark spot is to be illumined from the eternal light, matter is to be recog nised as a creation of spirit. The last standpoint of ancient philos ophy is thus spiritual monism.
But in the solution of this common problem the philosophy of Christianity and that of Neo-Platonism diverge widely ; for this de velopment of the divine spirit into the world of phenomena, even down to its material forms, must evidently be determined by the ideas which obtained of the nature of God and of his relation to the world, and just in this Hellenism found itself working under pre suppositions that were completely different from those of the doctrine of the new religion.
§ 20. God and the World.
The peculiar suspense between metaphysical monism and ethico- religious dualism, which defines the character of the entire Alex andrian philosophy, forces together all the thoughts of the time, and condenses them into the most difficult of problems, that of the relation of God and the World.
1. This problem had already been suggested from the purely theoretical side, by the opposition between the Aristotelian and the Stoic philosophy. The former maintained the transcendence of God, i. e. his complete separation from the world, as strongly as the latter maintained the immanence of God, i. e. the doctrine that God is completely mergod in the world. The problem, and the fundamental tendency adopted in its solution, may, therefore, be
236 Hellenistic-Roman Thought : Religious Period. [Part II
recognised already in the eclectic mingling ' of Peripatetic and Stoic cosmology, as type of which the pseudo-Aristotelian treatise, Con cerning the World is regarded. * With the Aristotelian doctrine that the essence of God must be set far above Nature (as the sum- total of all particular things which are moved), and especially above the mutation of earthly existence, is connected here the Stoic en deavour to follow the working of the divine power through the entire universe, even into every detail. While, accordingly, the world was regarded among the Stoics as God himself, while Aristotle saw in it a living being, purposefully moved, whose outermost spheres
were set in revolution only by longing for the eternally unmoved, pure Form, — a revolution communicating itself with ever-lessening perfection to the lower spheres, — here the macrocosm appears as the system of individual things existing in relations of mutual sympathy, in which the power of the supra-mundane God is domi nant under the most varied forms as the principle of life. The mediation between theism and pantheism is gained, partly by the distinction between the essence and the power of God, partly by the graded scale of the divine workings, which descends from the heaven of the fixed stars to the earth. The pneuma doctrine is united with the Aristotelian conception of God, by conceiving of the forces of Nature's life as the workings of pure Spirit. 3
This turn, however, but increased the difficulty already inherent in the Aristotelian doctrine of the action of the deity upon the world. For this action was regarded as consisting in the motion of matter, and it was hard to reconcile this materialisation of the divine action with the pure spirituality which was to constitute the essence of the deity. Even Aristotle had not become clear as to the relation of the unmoved mover to that which was moved (cf. § 13. ). 4
2. The problem became more severe as the religious dualism became more pronounced, a dualism which, not satisfied with con trasting God as spirit with matter, the supersensuous sphere with the sensuous, rather followed the tendency to raise the divine being
1 Stratonism as a transformation of the Aristotelian doctrine in the direction of pantheistic immanence, a transformation allied to the doctrine of the Stoa, has been treated above, § 15, 1.
3 This book (printed among the writings of Aristotle, 391 ff. ) may perhaps have arisen in the first century a. d. Apuleius worked it over into Latin.
• Cf. principally Co. 6, 397 b 9.
* These difficulties in Aristotle's case became condensed in the concept of the difi-fi. For since the " contact " of the mover with the moved was regarded as the condition of motion, it was necessary to speak also of a "contact" between God and the heaven of the fixed stars. This, however, was liable to objection on account of the purely spiritual essence of the deity, and the <x$i} in this case received a restricted and intellectually transformed meaning ("immediate relation"). Cf. Arist. De Gen. et Corr. I. 6, 323 a 20.
Cmaf. 2, f 20. ] God and the World : Neo-Platonism. 237
above all that cau be experienced and above every definite content, and thus to make the God who is above the world also a Qod above mind or spirit. This is found already with the Neo-Pythagoreans, among whom a wavering between various stadia of dualism lurks behind their mode of expression in the symbolism of numbers.
When the " One " and the " indefinite duality " are maintained to be principles, the latter indeed always means matter as the impure, as the ground of the imperfect and the evil; the One, however, is treated now as pure Form, as spirit, now also as the "cause of causes" which lies above all reason, — as the primordial being which has caused to proceed forth from itself the opposition of the derivative One and duality, of spirit and matter. In this case the second One, the first-born One (irpwoyovov h) appears as the perfect image of the highest One. 1
Inasmuch as mind or spirit was thus made a product of the deity, though the first and most perfect product, this effort led to raising the conception of the deity even to complete absence of all qualities. This had been already shown in Philo. who emphasised so sharply the contrast between Qod and everything finite that he designated God expressly as devoid of qualities (airou**) : for since God is exalted above all, it can be said of him only that he has none of the finite predicates known to human intelligence; no name names him. This type of thought, later called " negative theology," we find also among those Christian Apologists that were influenced in their con ceptions by Philo, especially with Justin,3 and likewise in part among the Onostics.
The same meets us also in Neo-Platonism in a still more intensi fied form, if possible. As in the Hermetic writings * God had been considered as infinite and incomprehensible, as nameless, exalted above all Being, as the ground of Being and Reason, neither of which exists until created by him, so for Plotinus, the deity is the absolutely transcendent primordial being, exalted as a perfect unity above mind, which, as the principle that contains plurality already in ite unity (§ 19, 4), must have proceeded forth from God (and not have been eternal). This One, to h, precedes all thought and Being ; it is infinite, formless, and " beyond " ( irriKuva) the intel lectual as well as the sensuous world, and therefore without con sciousness and without activity. *
1 Xicomachus, Theol. Arilhm. p. 44.
> Phil. Leg. Alleg. 47 a ; D. S. linmut. 801 a.
• Jul Apol. I. 61 (I. Qu. « Puemand. 4 f.
* It Is euj to understand how a state of ecstasy devoid of will and conscious-
i and raised above reason, appeared requisite for man's relation to this supra- rational God-Being, exalted above all action, will, and thought. CI. above, $ 18, U
238 Hellenistic-Roman Thought : Religious Period. [Part II
Finally, while Plotinus still designates this inexpressible First (to npSnov) as the One, which is the cause of all thought and of all Being, and as the Good, as the absolute end of all that comes to
pass, even this did not satisfy the later members of the school. Jamblichus set above the h of Plotinus a still higher, completely ineffable One (warrr) appnrw: ap\ri and Proclus followed him in this.
In opposition to such dialectical subtilisations, the development of Christian thought in the Church preserved its impressive energy by holding fast to the conception of God as spiritual personality. It did this, not as the result of philosophical reflection and reasoning, but by virtue of its immediate attachment to the living belief of the Church community, and just in this consisted its psychological strength, its power in the world's history. This faith breathed in the New Testament; this defended by all the supporters of patristic theology, and just by this are the limits of the Christian doctrine everywhere defined, as against the Hellenistic solutions of the chief problem in the philosophy of religion.
Hellenism sees in personality, in however purely spiritual man ner may be conceived, restriction and characteristic of the finite, which would keep at a distance from the Supreme Being, and admit only for the particular gods. Christianity, as living religion, demands personal relation of man to the ground of the world conceived of as supreme personality, and expresses this demand in the thought of the divine sonship of man.
If, therefore, the conception of personality as intrinsic spiritual ity (geistiger Innerlichkeit) expresses the essentially new result, to yield which, theoretical and ethical motives intertwined in Greek and Hellenistic thought, then was Christianity which entered upon this inheritance of ancient thought, while Neo-Platonism turned back to the old idea that saw in personality only transi tory product of a life which as a whole impersonal. It the essential feature of the Christian conception of the world that regards the person and the relations of persons to one another as the essence of reality.
4. In spite of this important difference, all lines of the Alexan drian philosophy were confronted by the same problem, that of plac ing the deity, thus taken from the sensible world, in those relations which religious need demanded. For the more deeply the opposi tion between God and the world was felt, the more ardent became the longing to overcome — to overcome by knowledge that should understand the world also through God, and by a life that should return out of the world to God.
Damasc. De Princ. 43.
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Cmaf 2, § 20. ] God and the World : Christianity, Gnostic*. 239
Hence the dualism of God and the world, as well as that of spirit and matter, is but the starting-point — taken in the feelings — and the presupposition of the Alexandrian philosophy: its goal is everywhere, theoretically as well as practically, to vanquish this dualism. Just in this consists the peculiarity of this period, that
't is anxious to close, in knowledge and will, the cleft which it finds n its feelings.
This period, to be sure, produced also theories of the world in which dualism asserted itself so predominantly as to become fixed as their immovable basis. Here belong primarily Platonists like Plutarch, who not only treated matter as an original principle side by side with the deity, because the deity could in nowise be the ground of the evil, but also assumed beside God, the "evil world- soul " as a third principle in the formation of this indifferent matter into a world. A part of the Gnostic systems present themselves here, however, for especial consideration.
This first fantastic attempt at a Christian theology was ruled throughout by the thoughts of sin and redemption, and the funda mental character of Gnosticism consists in this, that from the point of view of these ruling thoughts the conceptions of Greek philos ophy were put in relation with the myths of Oriental religions. Thus with Valentinus, side by side with the deity (irpoirarup) poured out into the Pleroma or fulness (to ir\ripu>pa) of spiritual forms, appears the Void (ro xowpi), likewise original and from eternity; beside Form appears matter, beside the good appears the evil, and though from the self-unfolding of the deity (cf.
