No More Learning

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. 6, below) an entire spiritual world has been formed in the " fulness " above men tioned, the corporeal world is yet regarded as the work of a fallen •Eon (cf. $21) who builds his inner nature into matter. So, too, Satuminus set matter, as the domain of Satan, over against God's realm of light, and regarded the earthly world as a contested bound ary province for whose possession the good and evil spirits strive by their action upon man ; and in a similar manner the mythology of Bardesanes was arranged, which placed beside the " Father of Life " a female deity as the receptive power in the formation of the world.
But dualism reached its culmination in a mixed religion which arose in the third century under the influence of the Gnostic systems combined with a return to the old Persian mythology, —Mani- cktuUm. 1 The two realms of good and evil, of light and darkness,
1 The founder, Mani (probably 240-280 a. i>. ), regarded his doctrine as the consummation of Christianity and as a revelation of the Paraclete. He fell s victim to the persecution of the Persian priests, but his religion soon became
240 Hellenistic- Roman Thought: Religious Per ioa. [Part II
of peace and strife, stand here opposed as eternally as their princes, God and Satan. Here, too, the formation of the world is conceived of as a mixture of good and evil elements, — brought about by a viola tion of the boundaries ; in man the conflict of a good soul belonging to the realm of light, and of an evil soul arising from darkness, is assumed, and a redemption is expected that shall completely sepa rate both realms again.
Thus at the close of the period it is shown in the clearest manner that the dualism of the time rested essentially upon ethico-religious motives. By adopting as their point of view for theoretical explana tion the judgment of worth, in accordance with which men, things, and relations are characterised as good or bad, these thinkers came to trace the origin of the thus divided universe back to two different causes. In the proper sense of the judgment, only one of these causes, that of the good, should be regarded as positive and have the name of deity, but in a theoretical aspect the other also fully maintains its claim to metaphysical originality and eternity (owrii). But even from this relation it may be seen that as soon as the meta physical relation was completely adapted to the ethical, this must in itself lead to a removal of the dualism.
5. In fact, dualism, from motives that were most peculiarly its own, produced a series of ideas through which it prepared its own overcoming. For the sharper the antithesis between the spiritual God and the material world, and the greater the distance between man and the object of his religious longing, the more the need asserted itself of bringing about again, by intermediate links, a union of what was thus separated. The theoretical significance of this Was to render comprehensible and free from objections the action of the deity upon matter alien to him and unworthy of him ; prac tically these links had the significance of serving as mediators
between man and God, having the power to lead man out of his sen suous vileness to the Supreme Being. Both interests were alike suggestive of the methods by which the Stoics had known how to utilise, in their religion of Nature, the popular faith in the lower deities.
This mediation theory was first attempted on a large and thorough plan by Philo, who gave it its definite direction by bringing it into close relations, on the one hand, with the Neo-Pythagorean doctrine of Ideas, on the other hand with the doctrine of angels in his
greatly extended, and maintained itself in vigour far on into the Middle Ages. We are beat instructed with regard to it through Augustine, who was himself for a time an adherent of it. Cf. F. C. Baur, Das manichaische Religions- system (Tubingen, 1886); O. Fliigel, Sfani und seine Lehre (Leips. 1862).
Ciiaf. 2, § 20. ] God and the World : Philo. 241
religion. The mediating powers, in considering which Philo had in mind more the theoretical significance and the explanation of the influence of God upon the world, he designates according to the changing point of view of his investigation, now as Ideas, now as acting forces, or again as the angels of God ; but with this is always connected the thought that these intermediate members have part in God as in the world, that they belong to God and yet are different from him. So the Ideas are regarded, on the one hand, in Neo- Pythagorean fashion as thoughts of God and content of his wis dom, but again, after the old Platonic thought, as an intelligible world of archetypes, created by God : and if these archetypes are held to be at the same time the active forces which shape the unor dered matter according to their purposeful meaning, the forces appear in this case sometimes as powers so independent that by assigning them the formation and preservation of the world, all immediate relation between God and the world is avoided, and some times again as something attached to the divine essence and repre senting it. Finally, as angels they are indeed real mythical forms, and are designated as the servants, the ambassadors, the messengers, of God, but on the other hand they represent the different sides and qualities of the divine essence, which, it is true, is as a whole un knowable and inexpressible in its depth, but which reveals itself just in them. This double nature, conditioned by the fundamental thought of the system itself, brings with it the consequence that these ideal forces have the significance of the contents of general conceptions, and yet are at the same time furnished with all the marks of personality ; and just this peculiar amalgamation of scien
tific and mythical modes of thought, this indefinite twilight in which the entire doctrine remains, is the essential and important therein.
The same is true of the last inference, with which Philo con cluded this line of thought. The fulness of Ideas, forces, and angels was itself in turn an entire world, in which plurality and motion ruled : between it and the one unmoved, changeless deity there was need of still a higher intermediate link. As the Idea is related to the individual phenomena, so the highest of the Ideas
(t» ytvutmraror), the " Idea of the Ideas," must be related to the Ideas themselves, — as force is related to its activities in the world of sense, so the rational World-force in general must be related to the forces : the world of angels must find its unitary conclusion in
an archangel. This sum-total of the divine activity in the world, Philo designates by the Stoic conception of the Logos. This also appears with him, on this account, in wavering, changing light. The Logos is, on the one hand, the divine wisdom, resting within
242 Hellenistic- Roman Thought: Religious Period. [Part II
itself (ao<f>ui — Adyos ivStdBiroi ; cf. p. 200, note 1), and the producing rational power of the Supreme Being; it on the other hand, Reason as coming forth from the deity (\oy<* irptxpopucos, " uttered Reason "), the self-subsistent image, the first-born son, who not, as God, without origin, nor yet has he arisen, as have we men; he the second God. 1 Through him God formed the world, and he
in turn also the high priest, who, through his intercession, creates and preserves relations between man and the deity. He know- able, while God himself, as exalted above all determination, remains unknowable: he God in so far as God forms the life-principle of the world.
Thus the transcendence and immanence of God divide as separate potencies, to remain united, nevertheless the Logos, as the God within the world, is the "dwelling-place" of the God without the world. The more difficult the form which this relation assumes for abstract thought, the richer the imagery in which set forth by Philo. '
6. With this Logos doctrine the first step was taken toward filling the cleft between God and the sensible world by definite graded succession of forms, descending, with gradual transitions, from unity to plurality, from unchangeableness to changeableness, from the immaterial to the material, from the spiritual to the sen suous, from the perfect to the imperfect, from the good to the bad and when this series, thus arranged by rank, was conceived of at the same time as system of causes and effects which again were themselves causes, there resulted from this a new exposition of the cosmogonic process, in which the world of sense was derived from the divine essence by means of all these intermediate members. At the same time, the other thought was not far distant, that the stages of this process should be regarded also in their reverse order, as the stages by which man, ensnared in the world of sense, becomes reunited with God. And so, both theoretically and practically, the path broken on which dualism to be overcome.
A problem was thus taken up again which Plato in his latest Pythagoreanising period had had in mind, and the oldest Academi- cians as well, when they sought, with the aid of the number theory,
Philo in Eus. Prcep. Ev. VII. 13, With somewhat stronger emphasis upon personality, these same conceptions are found in Justin, Apol. 32 Dial. e. Tryph. 66
Connected with all these doctrines the fact, that with Philo the spiritual in the world of experience occupies doubtful position between the immaterial and the material the rout of man, the faculty of th aught and will, part of the divine Logos (even the demons are designated after the Stoic analogy a* XA-yoi), and yet again characterised as finest pneuma.
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C«a*. 2, $ 20. ] Ood and the World : Gnostics. 243
to comprehend how Ideas and things proceeded forth from the divine unity. But it had been shown at that time that this scheme of the development of plurality out of the One, as regards its relation to the predicates of worth, admitted two opposite interpre tations : viz. the Platonic mode of view, defended by Xenocrates, that the One is the good and the perfect, and that that which is derived from this is the imperfect and, ultimately, the bad, and the opposing theory, held by Speusippus, that the good is only the final product, not the starting-point of the development, and that this starting-point is to be sought, on the contrary, in the indefinite, the incomplete. ' It is customary to distinguish the above-described doctrines as the system of emanation and the system of evolution. The former term arises from the fact that in this system, which was decidedly prevalent in the religious philosophy of Alexandrianism, the separate formations of the world-producing " Logos were often designated by the Stoic terra, as " emanations (awoopouu) of the divine essence.
Yet the Alexandrian philosophy is not lacking in attempts at evolutionary systems. In particular, these were especially avail able for Gnosticism; for, in consequence of the degree to which it had strained the dualism of spirit and matter, this system was necessarily inclined to seek the monistic way of escape rather in an indifferent, original ground, which divided itself into the opposites. Hence where the Gnostics sought to transcend dualism, — and this was the case with the most important of them, — they projected not only a cosmogonic but a theogonic process, by which the deity unfolded himself from the darkness of his primeval essence, through opposition, to complete revelation. Thus, with Basileides, the nameless, original ground is called the not (yet) existing God (o ow w $ios). This being, we hear, produced the world-seed
(rusmrtpfua), in which the spiritual forces (vI<Jrip-«) lay unordered ■ide by side with the material forces (&n*>p<pia). The forming and ordering of this chaos of forces is completed by their longing for the deity. In connection with this process the various "sonships," the spiritual world (vwtpKoafua), separate themselves from the material world («oo>u>f ), and in the course of the process of generation all the tpheres of the thus developed deity ultimately become separate; each attains its allotted place, the unrest of striving ceases, and the peace of glorification rests over the All.
Motives from both systems, that of evolution and that of emana tion, appear peculiarly mingled in the doctrine of Valentinus. For
Ct Arist Utt. XIV. 4, 1091 b 10 ; XII. 7, 1072 b 31.
244 Hellenistic- Roman Thought : Religious Period. [Part II
here the spiritual world (w\^pa>fia) or system of the "jEons," the eternal essences, is developed first as an unfolding of the dark and mysterious primitive Depth (/3>#os) to self-revelation, and in the second place as a descending production of more imperfect forms. The mythical schema in this is the Oriental pairing of male and female deities. In the highest pair or "syzygy " there appears side byside with the original Ground " Silence " (<nyi? ), which is also called "Thought " (tvvoui). From this union of the Original Being with the capacity of becoming conscious there proceeds as the firstborn the Spirit (here called vov%) which in the second syzygy has as its object " Truth," i. e. the intelligible world, the realm of Ideas. Thus, having itself come to full revelation, the deity in the third syzygy takes the form of " Reason " (Xdyot) and " Life " (0>J), and in the fourth syzygy becomes the principle of external revelation as " Ideal Man " (iv&pamos) and "Community" (titxAj^rto, church). While the de scending process has thus already begun, it is continued still farther by the fact that from the third and fourth syzygies still other ^Eons proceed, which, together with the sacred Eight, form the entire Pleroma, but which stand farther and farther removed from the original Ground. It is the last of these . Eons, " Wisdom "(ao<pia), that, by sinful longing after the original Ground, gives occasion for the separation of this Longing and of its being cast into the mate rial Void, the <e«Vuyta, there to lead to the formation of the earthly world.
If we look at the philosophical thoughts which lie back of these highly ambiguous myth-constructions, it is easy to understand that the school of the Valentinians diverged into various theories. For in no other system of that time are dualistic and monistic motives of both kinds, from the system of evolution as well a» from that of emanation, so intricately mingled.
7. Clarified conceptionally, and freed from mythical apparatus, the like motives appear in the doctrine of Plotinus, yet in such a manner that in the system as completed the principle of emanation almost entirely crowds out the other two.
The synthesis of transcendence and immanence is sought by Plotinus also in the direction of preserving the essence of God as the absolutely one and unchangeable, while plurality and changea bility belong only to his workings.
1 Of the " First," which is ex alted above all finite determinations and oppositions, nothing what ever can be predicated in the strict sense (cf. above, 2). It is
1 In so far we find here, coined into theological form, the problem of the Eleatics and Heraclitus, with which Greek metaphysics began, — a problem which also determined the nature of Platonism.
Chat. 2, § 20. J God and the World; Plotinut. 245
only in an improper sense, in its relation to the world, that it can be designated as the infinite One, as the Good, and as the highest Power or Force (wpurn owa/ut), and the workings of this Power which constitute the universe are to be regarded, not as ramifica tions and parts into which the substance of the First divides, and so
not as " emanations " in the proper sense, but rather as overflowing by-products which in nowise change the substance itself, even though they proceed from the necessity of its essence.
To express this relation in figurative form Plotinus employs the analogy of light, —an analogy which, in turn, has also an influence in determining his conception. Light, without suffering at all in its own essence or itself entering into motion, shines into the darkness and produces about itself an atmosphere of brightness that decreases in intensity more and more from the point which is its source, and finally of itself loses itself in darkness. So likewise the workings of the One and Good, as they become more and more separate from their source, proceeding through the individual spheres, become more and more imperfect and at last change suddenly into the dark, ••ril opposite — matter.
The first sphere of this divine activity according to Plotinus, mind or rational itpirit {vovt), in which the sublime unity differen tiates itself into the duality of thought and Being, i. e. into that of consciousness and its objects. In mind the essence of the deity is preserved as the unity of the thought-function (vtipns) for this thought which identical with Being not regarded as an activity that begins or ceases, changing as were with its objects, but as the eternal, pure perception, ever the same, of its own content, which
of like essence with itself. But this content, the world of Ideas, the eternal Being (ovata in the Platonic sense) as contrasted with phenomena, is, as intelligible world 00710s vonrot) a. t the same time the principle of plurality. For the Ideas are not merely thoughts and archetypes, but are at the same time the moving forces (vol irvvjMif) of lower reality. Because, therefore, unity and variety arc united in this intelligible world as the principles of persistence and of occurrence and change, and are yet again separated, the fun damental conceptions (categories) of this world are these five,' vix, B»-ing or Existing (to 5V), Rest (o-rao-tc)i Motion or Change (iciVipnc),
Identity (rauroVip), and Difference (frcponp). Mind, then, as function which has determinate contents, and carries plurality within itself, is the form through which the deity causes all empiri-
Well known from the dialogue, the Sophist, of the Corpus Flatonicum. Cf. m B. ft.
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246 Hellenistic- Roman Thought : Religious Period. [Part IL
cal reality to proceed forth from itself : God as productive principle, as ground of the world, is mind or rational spirit.
But spirit needs to shine out in a similar manner in order to pro duce the world from itself; its most immediate product is the soul, and this in turn evinces its activity by shaping matter into cor poreality. The peculiar position of the " soul " therefore consists in this, that perceiving or beholding, receives the content of spirit, the world of Ideas, and after this archetype (iUu>v) forms the world of sense. Contrasted with the creative spirit, the receptive, contrasted with matter, the active principle. And this duality of the relations toward the higher and the lower here so strongly emphasised that just as " spirit " divided into thought and Being, so the soul, for Plotinus, out and out doubled as sunk into the blissful contemplation of the Ideas the higher soul, the soul proper, the furf in the narrower sense of the word; as formative power, the lower soul, the <£wris (equivalent to the Xoyos o-Trcp/iariKos of the Stoics).
All these determinations apply on the one hand to the universal soul (world-soul — Plato), and on the other to the individual souls which have proceeded from as the particular forms which has taken on, especially therefore to human souls. The <f>van, the for mative power of Nature, distinguished from the pure, ideal world- soul from the latter emanate the gods, from the former the demons. Beneath man's knowing soul, which turns back to the spirit, its home, stands the vital force which forms the body. Thus the sepa ration in the characteristics of the concept of the soul — a separation which developed materially from dualism (cf. 19, — here de manded formally by the connected whole of the metaphysical system
In this connection, this working of the soul upon matter of course conceived of as purposive, that as appropriate or adapted for ends, because ultimately goes back to spirit and reason
(Xoyos) but since work of the lower soul, regarded as undesigned, unconscious direction, which proceeds according to natural necessity. As the outer portions of the rays of light pene trate into the darkness, so belongs to the nature of the soul to illumine matter with its glory which arises from spirit and from the One.
This matter, however, — and this one of the most essential
points in the metaphysics of Plotinus, — must not be looked
as corporeal mass subsisting in itself beside the One is, rather, itself without body, immaterial. 1 Bodies are indeed formed out of
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it, but itself no body and since thus neither spiritual nor corporeal in its nature, cannot be determined by any qualities
But for Plotinus, this epistemological
has, at the same time, the force of metaphysical indeterminateness. Matter for him absolute negativity, pure privation {<rriprj<ri<:), complete absence of Being, absolute Non-being related to the One as darkness to light, as the empty to the full. This Zkr) of the Neo-Platonists not the Aristotelian or the Stoic, but once more the Platonic empty, dark space. 1 So far in ancient thought does the working of the Eleatic identification of empty space with Non-being, and of the farther extension of this doctrine
Democritus and Plato, extend: in Neo-Platonism, also, space serves as the presupposition for the multiplication which the Ideas
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Plotinus, also, the lower soul, or <£w7is, whose office to shine
out upon matter, the principle of divisibility,* while the higher soul possesses the indivisibility which akin to the rational spirit. In this pure negativity lies a ground for the possibility of deter
mining by predicate of worth this matter thus devoid of quali ties the evil. As absolute want (nWu ravriXys), as the negation of the One and of Being, also the negation of the Good, Amnaia. iyaffov. But by introducing the conception of evil in this manner, receives a special form evil not itself something positively existent want, or deficiency lack of the Good, Non-being. This conception thus formed gave Plotinus a welcome argument for theodicy the evil not, need not be justified, and so follows from the sheer conceptions as so deter mined that all that is, good.
For Plotinus, therefore, the world of the senses not in itself evil any more than in itself good; but because in light passes over into darkness, because thus presents mixture of Being and Non-being (the Platonic conception of y«Wi? here comes into force anew), good so far as has part in God or the Good; i. e. so far as is; and on the other hand, eri7 in so far as has part in matter or the Evil i. e. in so far as not [has no real, positive existence]. Evil proper, the true evil twpwrov •uor), matter, negation the corporeal world can be called evil only because formed out of matter secondary evil (Scvrcpor «w); and the predicate " evil " belongs to souls only they give
Knntail III. 18. Universal empty space forms the possibility (intoKtliuron} tut the exlutence of bodies, while, on the other hand, the particular spatial deter- ■unatenau conditioned by the nature of the bodies, II. 12.
lb III.
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themselves over to matter. To be sure, this entrance into matter belongs to the essential characteristics of the soul itself; the soul forms just that sphere in which the shining forth of the deity passes over into matter, and this participation in evil is, therefore, for the soul, a natural necessity which is to be conceived of as a continuation of its own proceeding forth from the rational spirit. '
By this distinction of the world of sense from matter, Plotinus was able to do justice, also, to the positive element in phenomena,1 For since the original power works through spirit and soul upon matter, all that in the world of sense really exists or
itself soul and spirit. In this rooted the spiritualisation of the
world, the idealising of the universe, which forms the characteristic element in the conception of Nature held by Plotinus. The material but the outer husk, behiud which, as the truly active reality, are souls and spirits. body or corporeal substance
the copy or shadow of the Idea which in has shaped itself to matter; its true essence this spiritual or intellectual element which appears as phenomenon in the image seen by sense.
It in such shining of the ideal essence through its sensuous phenomenon that beauty consists. By virtue of this streaming of the spiritual light into matter the entire world of the senses beautiful, and likewise the individual thing, formed after its arche type. Here in the treatise of Plotinus on beauty (Ennead. 6) this conception meets us for the first time among the fundamental conceptions of theory of the world; the first attempt at
metaphysical aesthetics. Hitherto the beautiful had always appeared only in homonomy with the good and the perfect, and the mild attempts to separate the conception and make independent, which were contained in Plato's Symposium, were now taken up again for the first time by Plotinus for even the theory of art, to which aesthetic science had restricted itself as appeared most clearly in the fragment of the Aristotelian Poetic, considered the beautiful essentially according to its ethical effects (cf. 13, 14). Ancient life must run its entire course, and that turning toward the inner life, that internalising, as were, which this life experienced in the religious period, must be completed, to bring about the scientific
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Therefore, though Plotinus in his ethics emphasised strongly freedom in the sense of responsibility, the great tendency of his metaphysical thought shown just in this, that he did not make this freedom of -- power to the con trary " his explaining principle, but sought to understand the transition of the world into evil as a metaphysical necessity.
Very characteristic in this respect the treatise {Emuad. II. which he wrote against the barbarian contempt of Nature shown by the Gnostics.
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consciousness of this finest and highest content of the Grecian world and the conception in which this takes place on this account characteristic for the development from which comes forth the beauty which the Greeks had created and enjoyed now recognised as the victorious power of spirit in externalising its sensuous phenomena. This conception also triumph of the spirit, which in unfolding its activities has at last apprehended its own essential nature, and has conceived as world-principle.
As regards the phenomenal world, Plotinus takes point of view which must be designated as the interpretation of Nature in terms psychical life, and so turns out that with reference to this antithe sis ancient thought described its course from one extreme to the other. The oldest science knew the soul only as one of Nature's products side by side with many others, — for Neo-Platonism the whole of Nature regarded as real only in so far as soul.
But by employing this idealistic principle for explaining individ ual things and processes in the world of sense, all sobriety and clearness in natural research at an end. In place of regular, causal connections appears the mysterious, dreamily unconscious weaving of the world-soul, the rule of gods and demons, the spirit ual sympathy of all things expressing itself in strange relations among them. All forms of divination, astrology, faith in miracles, naturally stream into this mode of regarding Nature, and man seems to be surrounded by nothing but higher and mysterious forces this world created by spirit, full of souls, embraces him like
magic circle.
The whole process in which the world proceeds forth from the
deity appears, accordingly, as timeless, eternal necessity, and . hough Plotinus speaks also of periodical return of the same (Articular formations, the world-process itself yet for him without beginning or end. As belongs to t^e nature of light to shine forever into the darkness, so God does not exist without the stream ing forth with which he creates the world out of matter.
In this universal life of spirit the individual personality vanishes, m a subordinate, particular phenomenon. Released from the all- •oul as one of countless forms in which that unfolds, cast into the sensuous body out of the purer pre-existent state, on account of its guilty inclination toward what void and vain, and
its task to estrange itself from the body and from material essence in general, and to "purify" itself again from the body. Only when
has succeeded in this can hope to traverse backward the stages by which has proceeded forth frcm the deity, and so to return to the deity. The first positive step to this exaltation civic and
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political virtue, by which man asserts himself as a rationally forma tive force in the phenomenal world ; but since this virtue evinces itself only in reference to objects of the senses, the dianoetic virtue of knowledge stands far above it (cf. Aristotle), — the virtue by which the soul sinks into its own spiritual intrinsic life. As a help stimulating to this virtue, Plotinus praises the contemplation of the beautiful, which finds a presentiment of the Idea in the thing of sense, and, in overcoming the inclination toward matter, rises from the sensuously beautiful to the spiritually beautiful. And even this dianoetic virtue, this aesthetic duapia and self-beholding of the spirit, is only the preliminary stage for that ecstatic rapture with which the individual, losing all consciousness, enters into unity with the ground of the world (§ 18, 6). The salvation and the blessed
ness of the individual is his sinking into the All-One.
The later Neo-Platoniats, — Porphyry first, and, still more, Jamblichus and Proclus, — in the case of this exaltation emphasise, far more than Plotinus, the help which the individual finds for it in positive religion and its acts of worship. For these men largely increased the number of different stages through which the world proceeds forth from the " One," and identified them with the forms of the deities in the different ethnic religions by all kinds of more or less arbi trary allegories. It was therefore natural, in connection with the return of the soul to God, since it must traverse the same stages up to the state of ecstatic deification, to claim the support of these lower gods : and thus as the metaphys ics of the Neo-Platonist8 degenerated into mythology, their ethics degenerated into theurgic arts.
8. On the whole, therefore, the derivation of the world from God as set forth by Plotinus, in spite of all its idealising and spiritualising of Nature, follows the physical schema of natural processes. This streaming forth of things from the original Power is an eternal necessity, founded in the essence of this Power ; creation is a pur posive working, but unconscious and without design.
But at the same time, a logical motive comes into play here, which has its origin in the old Platonic character of Ideas as class-concepts. For just as the Idea is related to individual things of sense, so in turn the deity is related to Ideas, as the universal to the particular. God is the absolute universal, and according to a law of formal logic, in accordance with which concepts become poorer in contents or intension in proportion as their extension increases so that the content 0 must correspond to the extension ao, the absolutely uni versal is also the concept of the " First," void of all content. Bui if from this First proceed first the intelligible, then the psychical, and finally the sensuous world, this metaphysical relation corre sponds to the logical process of determination or partition. This point of view, according to which the more general is throughout regarded as the higher, metaphysically more primitive reality, while
Caar. 2, § 20. J Qod and the World : Proclus, Christianity. 251
the particular is held to be, in its metaphysical reality also, a deriv ative product from the more general, — a view which resulted from hypostatising the syllogistic methods of Aristotle (cf. § 12, 3), — was expressed among the older Neo-Platonists
Porphyry, in his exegesis of Aristotle's categories.
Meanwhile Proclus undertook to carry out methodically this
logical schema of emanation, and out of regard for this principle subordinated a number of simple and likewise unknowable " henads" beneath the highest, completely characterless h>. In so doing he found himself under the necessity of demanding a proper dialectical principle for this logical procession of the particular from the uni
versal. Such a schematism the systematiser of Hellenism found in the logico-metaphysical relation which Plotinus had laid at the basis
of the development of the world from the deity. The procession of the Many forth from the One involves, in the first place, that the particular remains like the universal, and thus that the effect abides or persists within the cause; in the second place, that this product is a new self-subsisting entity in contrast with that which has pro duced and that proceeds forth from the same and finally, that by virtue of just this antithetic relation the individual strives to return again to its ground. Persistence, procession, and return (nmrq, rpoo&K, triorpo*f>jj), or identity, difference and union of that which has been distinguished, are accordingly the three momenta of the dialectical process; and into this formula of emauistic development, by virtue of which every concept should be thought of as in itself — out of itself — returning into itself, Proclus pressed his entire combined metaphysical and mythological construction, — construc tion in which he assigned to the systems of deities of the different religions their place in the mystical and magical universe, arranging
them in the series divided again and again by threes, according to kis law of the determination of concepts. 1
In contrast with this, the peculiarity of Cliristian philosophy consists essentially in this, that in its apprehension of the relation of God to the world, sought to employ throughout the ethical
point of view of free, creative action. Since from the standpoint of its religious conviction held fast to the conception of the person ality of the Original Being, conceived of the procedure of the world forth from God, not as a physical or logical necessity of the
Personally, Proclua characterised by the mingling of superabundant credulous piety with logical formalism carried even to pedantry, combina tion which is highly interesting psychologically. Juki for thin reason lie is, fvrhapa, the most pronounced type of this period which concerned in putting iu ardent religiosity into a scientific system.
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unfolding of his essence, but as an act of will, and in consequence of this the creation of the world was regarded not as an eternal process, but as a fact in time that had occurred once for all. The conception, however, in which these motives of thought became concentrated, was that of the freedom of the will.
This conception had had at first the meaning (with Aristotle) of conceding to the finite personality acting ethically the capacity of a decision between different given possibilities, independently of external influence and compulsion. The conception had then taken on, with Epicurus, the metaphysical meaning of a causeless activity of individual beings. Applied to the absolute, and regarded as a quality of God, it is developed in the Christian philosophy into the thought of " creation out of nothing," into the doctrine of an un caused production of the world from the will of Ood. Every attempt at an explanation of the world is thereby put aside ; the world is
because God has willed and such as because God has willed so to be. At no point the contrast between Neo-Pla- tonism and orthodox Christianity sharper than at this.
Meanwhile, this same principle of the freedom of the will is employed to overcome the very difficulties which resulted from it. For the unlimited creative activity of the omnipotent God forces the problem of " theodicy " forward still more urgently than in the other theories of the universe, — the problem how the reality of evil in the world can be united with God's perfect goodness. The optimism involved in the doctrine of creation, and the pessimism in volved in the felt need of redemption, the theoretical and the practical, the metaphysical and the ethical momenta of religious faith strike hard against each other. But faith, supported by the feeling of responsibility, finds its way of escape out of these difficulties in the assumption that God provided the spirits and human souls which he created, with freedom analogous to his own, and that through their guilt evil came into the good world. 1
This guilt, the thinkers of the Church find not to consist properly in the inclination toward matter or the sensuous; for matter- as created by God cannot in itself be evil. * The sin of free spirits consists rather in their rebellion against the will of God, in their
This expressed abstractly by Clement of Alexandria (Strom. IV. 13, 606) in the form, that evil only an action, not substance (oiVm), and that there fore cannot be regarded as the work of God.
Just for this reason the metaphysical dualism of the Gnostics must be in its principle heterodox, and that, too, no matter whether bore the stamp rather of Oriental mythology or of Hellenistic abstract thought — even though in the ethical consequences which drew coincided in great part with the doctrine of the Church.
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longing after an unlimited power of self-determination, and only secondarily in the fact that they have turned their love toward God's creations, toward the world instead of toward God himself. Here too, therefore, there prevails in the content of the conception of evil the negative element of departure and falling away from God; ' but the whole earnestness of the religious consciousness asserts itself in this, that this falling away is conceived of not merely as absence of the good, but as a positive, perverted act of will.
In accordance with this the dualism of God and the world, and that of spirit and matter, become indeed deeply involved in the Christian theory of the world. God and the eternal life of the spirit, the world and the transitory life of the flesh, — these are here, too, sharply enough contrasted. In contradiction with the divine pneuma the world of sense is filled with "hylic" spirits,' evil demons, who ensnare man in their pursuits which are animated by hostility to God, stifle in him the voice of universal natural reve lation, and thereby make special revelation necessary ; and without departure from them and from the sensuous nature there is for the early Christian ethics, also, no rescue of the soul possible.
But still this dualism is not regarded as being in its intrinsic nature either necessary or original. It is not the opposition be tween God and matter, but that between God and fallen spirits; it is the purely inner antagonism of the infinite and the finite will. In this direction Christian philosophy completed through Origen the metaphysical spiritualising and internalising or idealising of the world of the senses. In it the corporeal world appears as completely permeated and maintained by spiritual functions, — yes, even as much reduced to spiritual functions, as is the case with Plotinus; but here the essential element in these functions is relations of will.
As the passing over of God into the world is not physical necessity, bnt ethical freedom, so the material world is not a last streaming forth of spirit and soul, but a creation of God for the punishment and for the overcoming of sin.
To be sure, Origen, in developing these thoughts, took up a motive which was allied to Xeo-1'latonism, a motive which brought, him ioto conflict with the current mode of thought in the Church. For strongly as he held fast to the conception of the divine personality and to that of creation as a free act of divine goodness, the scientific thought which desires to see action grounded in essence was yet too strong in him to allow him to regard this creation as a causeless
' In this «ttBM (Ten Origen could call the evil ri ewe t* (in Joh. II. 7, 6o). > Tatiaa. Oral, ad Or<sc 4.
254 Hellenistic- Roman Thought : Religious Period. [Part U.
act taking place once for all in time. The eternal, unchangeable essence of God demands rather the thought that he is creator from eternity even to all eternity, that he never can be without creating, that he creates timelessly. '
But this creation of the eternal will is, therefore, only one that relates to eternal Being, to the spiritual world (owria). In this eternal manner, so Origen teaches, God begets the eternal Son, the Logos, as the sum-total of his world-thoughts (ISia t&cwy), and through him the realm of free spirits, which, limited within itself, surrounds the deity as an ever-living garment. Those of the spirits that continue in the knowledge and love of the Creator remain in unchanged blessedness with him ; but those that become weary and negligent, and turn from him in pride and vainglory, are, for pun ishment, cast into matter created for this purpose. So arises the world of sense, which is, therefore, nothing self-subsistent, but a symbolic eternalisation of spiritual functions. For what may be regarded as Real in it is not the individual bodies, but rather the spiritual Ideas which are present, connected and changing within them. "
So, with Origen, Platonism becomes united with the theory of the creative will. The eternal world of spirits is the eternal prod uct of the changeless divine will. The principle of the temporal and the sensuous (yo>e<w) is the changing will of the spirits. Corporeality arises on account of their sin, and will vanish again with their improvement and purification. Thus will, and the rela-
1 Orig. De Princ. I. 2, 10 ; III. 4, 3.
9 This idealising of the world of sense was treated in great detail, quite ac cording to the Platonic model, by the most important of the Oriental Church fathers, Gregory of Nyssa (331-394). His main treatise is the XAvot «arijx'? - tikAj. Edition of his works by Morellus (Paris, 1675) [Eng. tr. in Vol. V. , 2d series, Lib. Nicene and Poet-Nicene Fathers, ed. Schaff and Wace, Oxford, Lond. , and N. Y. 1890]. Cf. J. Rupp, 0. des Bisehoft von Jv". Leben tout
Meinungen, Leips.