A STUDY IN THE HISTORY OF HELLENISM

CHAPTER IV

PLOTINUS AND HIS NEAREST PREDECESSORS

 

A NAME once customarily but incorrectly applied to the Neo-Platonist school was "the School of Alexandria." The historians who used the name were aware that it was not strictly correct, and now it seems to be again passing out of use. That the Neo-Platonic teachers were not in any close association with the scientific specialists and literary critics of the Alexandrian Museum was elaborately demonstrated by Matter in a work which is really a History of the School—or rather Schools—of Alexandria, and not, like those of Vacherot and Jules Simon bearing the same general title, of Neo-Platonism. In his third volume (1848) Matter devotes a special section to the Neo-Platonic philosophy, "falsely called Alexandrian," and there he treats it as representing a mode of thought secretly antipathetic to the scientific spirit of the Museum. This however, is an exaggeration. Of the obscure antipathy which he thinks existed, he does not bring any tangible evidence; and, in fact, when Neo-Platonism had become the philosophy of the Graeco-Roman world, it was received at Alexandria as elsewhere. What is to be avoided is merely the ascription of a peculiar local association that did not exist.

To the Jewish Platonism of Philo and to the Christian Platonism of Clement and Origen the name of "Alexandrian" may be correctly applied; for it was at Alexandria that both types of thought were elaborated. To the Hellenic Platonism of Plotinus and his school it has no proper application. Plotinus indeed received his philosophical training at Alexandria under Ammonius Saccas; but it was not till long after, at Rome, that he began to put forth a system of his own. After his death, knowledge of his system, through Porphyry and Iamblichus, diffused itself over all parts of the Roman Empire where there was any care for philosophy. Handed on by the successors of Iamblichus, the doctrine of Plotinus at last gained the assent of the occupants of Plato's chair in the Academy. The one brilliant period of Neo-Platonism at Alexandria was when it was expounded there by Hypatia. Its last great names are not those of Alexandrian teachers, but those of the "Platonic successors" at Athens, among whom by far the most distinguished was Proclus.

The school remained always in reality the school of Plotinus. From the direction impressed by him it derived its unity. A history of Neo-Platonism must therefore set out from the activity of Plotinus as teacher and thinker. Of this activity an account sufficient in the main points is given by his disciple Porphyry, who edited his writings and wrote his life.

Through the reticence of Plotinus himself, the date and place of his birth are not exactly recoverable. This reticence Porphyry connects with an ascetic repugnance to the body. It was only by stealth that a portrait of the master could be taken; his objection, when asked to sit to a painter, being the genuinely Platonic one that a picture was but an "image of an image." Why perpetuate this when the body itself is a mere image of reality? Hence also the philosopher did not wish to preserve the details of his outward history. Yet in his aesthetic criticism he is far from taking a merely depreciating view of the fine arts. His purpose seems to have been to prevent a cult of him from arising among his disciples. He would not tell his birthday, lest there should be a special celebration of it, as there had come to be of the birthdays of other philosophers; although he himself used to keep the traditional birthday-feasts of Socrates and Plato.

According to Eunapius, he was born at Lyco (or Lycopolis) in Egypt. From Porphyry's Life the year of his birth is inferred to be 204 or 205. In his twenty-eighth year, being dissatisfied with the other Alexandrian teachers of philosophy whom he frequented, he was taken by a friend to Ammonius. When he had heard him, he said to his companion: "This is the man of whom I was in search". With Ammonius he remained eleven years. At the end of that time, he became eager to learn something definite of the philosophy that was cultivated among the Persians and Indians. Accordingly, in his thirty-ninth year he joined the expedition which Gordian was preparing against Persia (242). The Emperor was killed in Mesopotamia, and, the expedition having failed, Plotinus with difficulty escaped to Antioch. At the age of forty, he went to Rome (244); where, for ten whole years, though giving philosophical instruction, he wrote nothing. He began to write in the first year of the reign of Gallienus (254). In 263, when Plotinus was about fifty-nine, Porphyry, then thirty years of age, first came into relation with him. Plotinus had by that time written twenty-one "books," on such topics as had presented themselves in lectures and discussions. These Porphyry found issued to a few. Under the stimulus of new discussions, and urged by himself and an earlier pupil, Amelius Gentilianus, who had come to him in his third year at Rome, Plotinus now, in the six years that Porphyry was with him, wrote twenty-four more books. The procedure was as before; the books taking their starting-point from the questions that occurred. While Porphyry was in Sicily, whither he had retired about 268, Plotinus sent him in all nine more books. In 270, during this absence, Plotinus died in Campania. After his death, Aurelius consulted the Delphic oracle on his lot, and received a response placing him among the happy daemons, which Porphyry transcribes in full.

Among the hearers of Plotinus, as Porphyry relates, were not a few senators. Of these was Rogatianus, who carried philosophic detachment so far as to give up all his possessions, dismiss all his slaves, and resign his senatorial rank. Having before suffered severely from the gout, he now, under the abstemious rule of life he adopted, completely recovered. To Plotinus were entrusted many wards of both sexes, to the interests of whose property he carefully attended. During the twenty-six years of his residence at Rome, he acted as umpire in a great number of disputes, which he was able to settle without ever exciting enmity. Porphyry gives some examples of his insight into character, and takes this occasion to explain the reason of his own retirement into Sicily. Plotinus had detected him meditating suicide; and, perceiving that the cause was only a "disease of melancholy," persuaded him to go away for a time. One or two marvelous stories are told in order to illustrate the power Plotinus had of resisting malignant influences, and the divine protection he was under. He was especially honored by the Emperor Gallienus and his wife Salonina, and was almost permitted to carry out a project of restoring a ruined city in Campania, —said to have been once a "city of philosophers',—which he was to govern according to the Platonic Laws, giving it the name of "Platonopolis." The fortunes of the scheme are curiously recalled by those of Berkeley's projected university in the Bermudas.

At the time of this project, Plotinus must have been already engaged in the composition of his philosophical books. As Porphyry relates, no external demands on his attention, with whatever good will and practical success he might respond to them, could break the continuity of his meditations, which he had always the power to resume exactly at the point where he had left off. Of the characteristics of his lecturing, his disciple gives a sympathetic picture. He did not care for personal controversy; as was shown by his commissioning his pupils to reply to attacks on his positions. Porphyry mentions a case in which he himself was set to answer an unedifying discourse of the rhetor Diophanes. The books of Plotinus, as we have seen, were not composed on any general plan. Porphyry relates that, through a weakness of the eyes, he never read over again what he had once written. His grammatical knowledge of Greek remained imperfect, and the revision as well as editing of his writings was committed to Porphyry, from whom proceeds the arrangement of the six "Enneads,"—the name the fifty-four books received from their ordering in groups of nine. While he worked in this irregular way, the character of his thought was extremely systematic. He evidently possessed his doctrine as a whole from the time when he began to write. Yet in detail, even to the very last books, in which Porphyry thought he observed a decline of power, he has always something effectively new to add.

In addition to the grouping according to subjects, which he adopted for his arrangement of the Enneads as we have them, Porphyry has put on record an alternative ordering which may be taken as at least approximately chronological. The chronological order is certain as regards the succession of the main groups. Of these there are three, or, more exactly, four; the third group being divided into two subgroups. At the beginning of the second main group also the order of four books is certain. For the rest, Porphyry does not definitely state that the books are all in chronological order; but, as his general arrangement in this enumeration is chronological, we may take it that he carried it through in detail as far as he could; and, as a matter of fact, links of association can often be detected in passing consecutively from one book to another. For reading, I have found this order on the whole more convenient than the actual grouping of the Enneads.

When the books are read in this chronological order, the psychological starting-point of the system becomes particularly obvious, the main positions about the soul coming early in the series. In the exposition that is to follow, these will be set forth first. After Psychology will come Metaphysics, then in succession Cosmology (with Theodicy), Aesthetics and Ethics. A separate chapter will be devoted to the Mysticism of Plotinus. For this order of exposition support might be found in what Plotinus himself says, where he points out that from the doctrine of the soul, as from a centre, we can equally ascend and descend.

Before beginning the exposition, an attempt must be made to ascertain the points of contact furnished to Plotinus by those nearest him in time. His general relation to his predecessors is on the whole clear, but not the details. Of the teachings of his Alexandrian master, nothing trustworthy is recorded. Ammonius left nothing written, and the short accounts preserved of his doctrine come from writers too late to have had any real means of knowing. What those writers do is to ascribe to him the reasoned positions of Plotinus, or even the special aims of still later thinkers contemporary with themselves. Porphyry, in a passage quoted by Eusebius, mentions that Ammonius had been brought up as a Christian, but, as soon as he came in contact with philosophy, returned to the religion publicly professed. He is spoken of as a native of Alexandria; and the name "Saccas" is explained by his having been originally a porter. Hierocles calls him "the divinely taught". Besides Plotinus he had as pupils Longinus the famous critic. Origen the Christian, and another Origen. With this Origen and a fellow-student named Herennius, Plotinus is said to have entered into a compact that none of them should divulge the doctrine of Ammonius. The compact was first broken by Herennius, then by Origen; lastly Plotinus thought himself at liberty to expound the master's doctrine orally. Not for ten more years did he begin to writes. Evidently this, even if accepted, does little towards explaining the source of the written doctrine of Plotinus,—in which there is no reference to Ammonius,—and Zeller throws doubt on the whole story, regarding it as suspiciously like what is related about a similar compact among the early Pythagoreans. It is to be observed that Porphyry does not say that he had it directly from Plotinus.

What is clear is this, that from Ammonius Plotinus must have received some impulse which was of great importance for his intellectual development. In the class-room of Plotinus, we learn from Porphyry, the later Platonic and Aristotelian commentators were read; but everywhere an original turn was given to the discussions, into which Plotinus carried the spirit of Ammonius. This probably indicates with sufficient clearness the real state of the case. Ammonius was one of those teachers who have the power of stirring up independent thought along a certain line; but he was not himself the formative mind of the movement. The general line of thought was already marked out. Neither Ammonius nor Plotinus had to create an audience. A large section of the philosophical world had for long been dissatisfied with the Stoic, no less than with the Epicurean, dogmatism. The opposition was partly skeptical, partly Neo-Pythagorean and Platonic. The skeptical opposition was represented first by the New Academy, as we see in Cicero; afterwards by the revived Pyrrhonism of Aenesidemus and Sextus. In Cicero we see also, set against both Epicureanism and Stoicism as a more positive kind of opposition, a sort of eclectic combination of Platonic and Peripatetic positions. A later stage of this movement is represented by Plutarch; when Platonism, though not yet assuming systematic form, is already more metaphysical or "theological," and less predominantly ethical, than the eclecticism of Cicero's time. On its positive side the movement gained strength in proportion as the skeptical attack weakened the prevailing dogmatic schools. These at the same time ceased to give internal satisfaction, as we perceive in the melancholy tone of Marcus Aurelius. By the end of the second century, the new positive current was by far the strongest; but no thinker of decisive originality had appeared, at least on the line of Greek thought. In Plotinus was now to appear the greatest individual thinker between Aristotle and Descartes. Under the attraction of his systematizing intellect, all that remained of aspiration after an independent philosophy was rallied to a common centre. Essentially, the explanation of the change is to be found in his individual power. Yet he had his precursors as well as his teachers. There were two thinkers at least who, however little they may have influenced him, anticipated some of his positions.

The first was Philo of Alexandria, who was born about 30 BC, and died later than AD 40. The second was Numenius of Apamea, who is said to have flourished between 160 and 180 AD. Philo was pretty certainly unknown to Plotinus. Numenius was read in his class-room; but his disciple Amelius wrote a treatise, dedicated to Porphyry, in which, replying to an accusation of plagiarism, he pointed out the differences between their master's teaching and that of Numenius. Amelius, it may be remarked, had acquired a great reputation by his thorough knowledge of the writings of Numenius. Porphyry cites also the testimony of Longinus. The judgment of the eminent critic was for the unquestionable originality of Plotinus among the philosophers of his own and the preceding age. In what that originality consisted, Plotinus, who spoke of him as "a philologist but by no means a philosopher," might not have allowed his competence to decide. He himself confessed that he did not understand some treatises of Plotinus that were sent to him. What he ascribes to him in the passage quoted by Porphyry is simply a more accurate mode of interpreting the Pythagorean and Platonic principles than had been attempted by others who took the same general direction. This, however, only renders his judgment the more decisive as to the impression Plotinus made in spite of the difficulties of his style.

To make clear what doctrines of Plotinus were anticipated, the principles of his metaphysics must be stated in brief preliminary outline. Of the causes above the visible world, he placed highest of all the One beyond thought and being. To the One, in the Neo-Platonic philosophy, the name of God is applicable in a peculiar manner. Everything after it that is called divine is regarded as derivative. Next in order, as the effect of the Cause and Principle, comes the divine Mind, identical with the "intelligible world" which is its object. Last in the order of supramundane causes comes the Soul of the whole, produced by Mind. Thence the descent is to the world of particular souls and changing things. The series composed of the primal One, the divine Mind, and the Soul of the whole, is sometimes called the "Neo-Platonic Trinity." Now Numenius put forth the idea of a Trinity which in one point resembles that of Plotinus.

According to Proclus, Numenius distinguished "three Gods." The first he called the Father, the second the Maker, while the third was the World, or that which is made. The point of resemblance here to Plotinus is the distinction of "the first God" from the Platonic Demiurgus, signified by "the Maker." With Numenius, however, the first God is Being and Mind; not, as with Plotinus, a principle beyond these. Zeller remarks that, since a similar distinction of the highest God from the Creator of the world appears before Numenius in the Christian Gnostics, among whom the Valentinians adopted the name "Demiurgus" from Plato, it was probably from them that Numenius got the hint for his theory; and that in addition Philo's theory of the Logos doubtless influenced him. To this accordingly we must turn as possibly the original starting-point for the Neo-Platonic doctrine.

With Philo, the Logos is the principle that mediates between the supreme God and the world formed out of matter. Essentially the conception, in so far as it means a rational order of production running through nature, is of Greek origin, being taken directly from the Stoics, who got at least the suggestion of it from Heraclitus. Philo regards the Logos as containing the Ideas in accordance with which the visible world was formed. By this Platonizing turn, it becomes in the end a different conception from the divine "Reason" of the Stoics, embodied as that is in the material element of fire. On the other hand, by placing the Platonic Ideas in the divine Mind, Philo interprets Plato in a sense which many scholars, both in antiquity and in modern times, have refused to allow. Here Plotinus coincides with Philo. Among those who dissented from this view was Longinus. Porphyry, who, before he came to Rome, had been the pupil of Longinus at Athens, was not without difficulty brought over, by controversy with Amelius, to the view of Plotinus, "that intelligibles do not exist outside intellect." Thus by Plotinus as by Philo the cause and principle of things is distinguished from the reason or intellect which is its proximate effect; and, in the interpretation of Plato, the divine mind is regarded as containing the ideas, whereas in the Timaeus they are figured as existing outside the mind of the Demiurgus. On the other hand, Plotinus differs both from Philo and from the Gnostics in consistently treating as mythical the representation of a maker setting out from a certain moment of time to shape things according to a pattern out of preexistent matter. And, in spite of his agreement with Philo up to a certain point, there is nothing to show that their views were historically connected. Against the attempt to connect Plotinus, or even Numenius, with Philo, a strong argument is urged by Dr Bigg. Neither Plotinus nor Numenius, as he points out, ever uses Logos as a technical term for the "second hypostasis." Yet, if they had derived their theory from Philo, this is evidently what they would have done; for the Philonian Logos, on the philosophical side, was not alien from Greek thought, but was a genuine product of it. In truth, to adapt the conception to their own systems by means of a change of name, would have been more difficult than to arrive at their actual terminology directly by combining Stoical and Aristotelian positions with their Platonism. This kind of combination is what we find in the eclectic thinkers, of whom Numenius was one. Plotinus made use of the same elements; the presence of which in his system Porphyry has expressly noted. And, so far as the relation of the Neo-Platonic Trinity to Plato is concerned, the exact derivation of the three "hypostases" is pointed out in a fragment of Porphyry's lost History of Philosophy. The highest God, we there learn, is the Idea of the Good in the Republic; the second and third hypostases are the Demiurgus and the Soul of the World in the Timaeus. To explain the triadic form of such speculations, no theory of individual borrowing on any side is necessary. All the thinkers of the period, whether Hellenic, Jewish or Christian, had grown up in an atmosphere of Neo-Pythagorean speculation about numbers, for which the triad was of peculiar significance. Thus on the whole it seems that Numenius and Plotinus drew independently from sources common to them with Philo, but cannot well have been influenced by him.

Plotinus, as we have seen, had some knowledge of Numenius; but, where a special point of contact has been sought, the difference is as obvious as the resemblance. The great difference, however, is not in any detail of the triadic theory. It is that Plotinus was able to bring all the elements of his system under the direction of an organizing thought. That thought was a definitely conceived immaterialist monism which, so far as we know, neither Philo nor Numenius had done anything substantially to anticipate. He succeeded in clearly developing out of Plato the conception of incorporeal essence, which his precursors had rather tended by their eclecticism to confuse. That the conception was in Plato, the Neo-Platonists not only admitted but strongly maintained. Yet Plato's metaphorical expressions had misled even Aristotle, who seriously thought that he found presupposed in them a spatial extension of the soul. And if Aristotle had got rid of semi-materialistic "animism" even in expression, this had not prevented his successors from running into a new materialism of their own. Much as the Platonizing schools had all along protested against the tendency to make the soul a kind of body or an outcome of body, they had not hitherto overcome it by clear definitions and distinctions. This is one thing that Plotinus and his successors achieved in their effort after an idealist metaphysic.

It was on this side especially that the thought of the school influenced the Fathers and Doctors of the Church. On the specific dogmas of Christian theology, Neo-Platonism probably exercised little influence. From Platonizing Judaism or Christianity, it received none at all. At most an isolated expression occurs showing that the antipathy to alien religions was not so unqualified as to prevent appreciation, for example, of the Platonism in the Fourth Gospel. Numenius, it is interesting to note, was one of the few earlier writers who attach themselves to the Hellenic tradition and yet show traces of sympathetic contact with Hebraic religion. He is said to have called Plato "a Moses writing Attics." On the other side Philo, though by faith a Jew, was as a philosopher essentially Greek both in thought and in terminology. What divided him from the Hellenic thinkers was simply his acceptance of formal limitations on thought prescribed by a positive religion.

In concluding the present chapter, a word may be said on the literary style of Plotinus, and on the temper of himself and his school in relation to life. His writing is admittedly difficult; yet it is not wanting in beautiful passages that leave an impression even of facility. He is in general, as Porphyry says, concentrated, "abounding more in thoughts than in words." The clearness of his systematic thought has been recognized by expositors in spite of obscurities in detail; and the obscurities often disappear with close study. On the thought when it comes in contact with life is impressed the character of ethical purity and inwardness which always continued to mark the school. At the same time, there is a return to the Hellenic love of beauty and knowledge for themselves. Stoical elements are incorporated, but the exaggerated "tension" of Stoicism has disappeared. While the Neo-Platonists are more consistently ascetic than the Stoics, there is nothing harsh or repulsive in their asceticism. The ascetic life was for them not a mode of self-torture, but the means to a happiness which on the whole they succeeded in attaining. Perhaps the explanation is that they had restored the idea of theoretic virtue, against the too narrowly practical tone of the preceding schools. Hence abstinence from the ordinary objects of pursuit left no blank. It was not felt as a deprivation, but as a source of power to think and feel. And in thinking they knew that indirectly they were acting. For theory, with them, is the remoter source of all practice, which bears to it the relation of the outward effect to the inward cause.