A STUDY IN THE HISTORY OF HELLENISM

CHAPTER VI

THE MYSTICISM OF PLOTINUS

 

THE aim of philosophic thought, for Plotinus as for Plato, is pure truth expressed with the utmost exactitude. And, much as he abounds in metaphor, he knows how to keep his intellectual conceptions clear of mixture with their imaginative illustration. On the interpretation of myths, whether poetic or philosophic, he is as explicit as intelligent readers could desire. After allegorizing the myth of Pandora and of Prometheus, for example, he remarks that the meaning of the story itself may be as any one likes, but that the particular interpretation has been given because it makes plain the philosophic theory of creation and agrees with what is set forth. Again, in interpreting the Platonic myth of Eros, he calls to mind that myths, if they are to be such, must separate in time things not temporally apart, and divide from one another things that are in reality together; seeing that even rational accounts have to resort to the same modes of separation and division. This relation between science and myth remained substantially the same for his successors. Some of them might devote greater attention to mythology, and indulge more seriously in fancies that a deep philosophic wisdom was embodied in it by the ancient "theologians"; but the theoretical distinction between truth of science and its clothing in imaginative form is made, if anything, sharper. The distinction comes to be used—as it is already to some extent by Plotinus—to explain the physical cosmogonies of early philosophers without supposing that they meant to teach an actual emergence of the world from some primordial element or chaotic aggregate and its return to this. What the oldest philosophers had in view, according to the Neo-Platonist system of interpretation, was only to render their logical analysis of the world into its permanent constituents easier to grasp. As the Neo-Platonist doctrine itself was thought out wholly on the line of the philosophical tradition, its relation to "positive religion" is quite the opposite of subservience. The myths are completely plastic in the hands of the philosophers. Of their original meaning, no doubt they have a less keen sense than Plato, who saw the real hostility of a naturalistic "theogony" like that of Hesiod to his own type of thought; but this only shows how dominant the philosophical point of view has become. Plato could not yet treat the myths of Greek religion so arbitrarily as would have been necessary for his purpose, or did not think it worth while. For the Neo­Platonists the poetic mythology has become like their own "matter," absolutely powerless to modify the essence of thought, but equally ready to take on an elusive reflexion of every idea in turn. Not in this quarter, therefore, need we look for any derogation from the scientific character of Neo­Platonic thought.

If Plotinus accepted Hellenic religion as the basis of culture, the reason was because he saw in it no obstacle to the adequate expression of philosophic truth; which, moving freely on its own plane, could turn the images of mythology themselves to the account of metaphysics and ethics. Some members of the school, as we know, were given to devotional practices and to theurgy; but in all this the master did not personally join. On one occasion indeed, he seemed to his disciples to speak too loftily on the subject, though, as Porphyry tells us, they did not venture to ask his meaning. Amelius had become diligent in sacrificing and in attending the feasts of the gods, and wished to take Plotinus with him. He declined, saying, "It is for them to come to me, not for me to go to them." The explanation is no doubt to be found in the contrast between the common religious need for a social form of worship and the subjective intensity of the mystic. That this was in the temperament of Plotinus is evident all through the Enneads. His religious attitude invariably is that the soul, having duly prepared itself, must wait for the divinity to appear. External excitement is the very reverse of the method he points out: he insists above all on internal quietude. Porphyry also has something to tell us on the subject. Four times while he was with him, he relates, Plotinus attained the end of union with the God who is over all, without form, above intellect and all the intelligible. Porphyry himself attained this union once, in his sixty-eighth year. The mystical "ecstasy" was not found by the later teachers of the school easier to attain, but more difficult; and the tendency became more and more to regard it as all but unattainable on earth. Are we to hold that it was the beginning of Plotinus's whole philosophy; that a peculiar subjective experience was therefore the source of the Neo­Platonic doctrines? This will hardly seem probable after the account that has been given of Plotinus's reasoned system; and, in fact, the possibility of the experience is inferred from the system, not the propositions of the system from the experience. It is described as a culminating point, to be reached after long discipline; and it can only be known from itself, not from any description. Not being properly a kind of cognition, it can become the ground of no inference. Now, since the philosophy of Plotinus undoubtedly claims to be a kind of knowledge, it must have its evidence for learners in something that comes within the forms of thought. While he was personally a mystic, his theory of knowledge could not be mystical without contradicting the mysticism itself.

In modern phraseology, it was a form of Rationalism. Cognition at its highest degree of certainty, as Plotinus understands it, may best be compared to Spinoza's "knowledge of the third kind," or "scientia intuitiva." Exactly as with Spinoza, the inferior degrees that lead up to it are: first, the "opinion" that is sufficient for practical life; second, the discursive "reason" that thinks out one thing adequately from another, but does it only through a process, not grasping the relation at once in its totality. The difference is that Plotinus conceives the highest kind of knowledge not as mathematical in form but as "dialectal." By "dialectic" he means, not a purely formal method, a mere "organon," but a method of which the use, when once attained, gives along with the form of thought its content, which is true beings. Before the learner can reach this stage, he must be disciplined in the other branches of liberal science. As with Plato, dialectic is the crown of a philosophical education. Nor does Plotinus altogether neglect the logical topics he regards as subsidiary to this. At the beginning of the sixth Ennead is placed a considerable treatise in which he criticizes first the Stoic and then the Aristotelian categories, and goes on to expound a scheme of his own. This scheme, as Zeller remarks, has not the same importance for his system as those of Aristotle and of the Stoics for theirs. Porphyry, in his larger commentary on the Categories, defended Aristotle's treatment against the objections of Plotinus, and thenceforth the Aristotelian categories maintained their authority in the school. On the other hand, it must be observed that this affects only a subsidiary part of Plotinus's theory of knowledge. His general view regarding the supremacy of dialectic as conceived by Plato, was also that of his successors. In subordination to this, Aristotle's list of the most general forms of assertion about being held its own against the newer scheme of Plotinus. By the Athenian successors of Plotinus more definitely than by himself, Aristotle came to be regarded as furnishing the needful preliminary training for the study of Plato.

The philosophic wisdom of which dialectic is the method, Plotinus expressly declares, cannot be achieved without first going through the process of learning to know by experience. Knowledge and virtue at lower stages can exist, though not in perfection, without philosophy; but except by starting from these, the height of theoretic philosophy is unattainable. Even when that height is attained, and being is known in intuitive thought, there is something remaining still. The One and Good, which is the first principle of things, is beyond thought. If it is to be apprehended at all, and not simply inferred as the metaphysical unity on which all things necessarily depend, there must be some peculiar mode of apprehending it. Here Plotinus definitely enters upon the mystical phase of his doctrine. The One is to be seen with "the eyes of the soul," now closed to other sights. It becomes impossible, as he recognizes, to use terms quite consistently, and he cannot altogether dispense with those that signify cognition; but it is always to be understood that they are not used in their strict sense. That which apprehends the One is intellect—or the soul when it has become pure intellect; so that the principle above intelligence has sometimes to be spoken of as an "intelligible," and as that which mind, when it "turns back," thinks before it thinks itself. For by this reflexive process—in the logical order of causes—mind comes to be, and its essence is to think. On the other hand, the One does not "think"; its possession of itself is too complete for the need to exist even of intuitive thought. Accordingly, since it can only be apprehended by the identification with it of that which apprehends, mind, to apprehend it, must dismiss even the activity of thought, and become passive. At last, unexpectedly, the vision of the One dawns on the purified intellectual soul. The vision is "ineffable"; for while it can only be indicated in words that belong to being, its object is beyond being. All that can be done is to describe the process through which it comes to pass, and, with the help of inadequate metaphors, to make it recognizable by those who may also attain it themselves.

Since that which is sought is one, he who would have the vision of it must have gone back to the principle of unity in himself; must have become one instead of many. To see it, we must entrust our soul to intellect, and must quit sense and phantasy and opinion, and pay no regard to that which comes from them to the soul. The One is an object of apprehension not by knowledge, like the other intelligibles, but by a presence which is more than knowledge. If we are to apprehend it, we must depart in no way from being one, but must stand away from knowledge and knowables, with their still remaining plurality. That which is the object of the vision is apart from no one, but is of all; yet so as being present not to be present except to those that are able and have prepared themselves to see it. As was said of matter, that it must be without the qualities of all things if it is to receive the impressions of all, so and much more so, the soul must become unformed if it is to contain nothing to hinder its being filled and shone upon by the first nature. The vision is not properly a vision, for the seer no longer distinguishes himself from that which is seen—if indeed we are to speak of them as two and not as one—but as it were having become another and not himself, is one with that other as the centre of the soul touching the centre of all. While here, the soul cannot retain the vision; but it can retreat to it in alternation with the life of knowledge and virtue which is the preparation for it. "And this is the life of gods and of godlike and happy men, a deliverance from the other things here, a life untroubled by the pleasures here, a flight of the alone to the alone."

These are the concluding words of the Enneads in Porphyry's redaction. In another book, which comes earlier but was written later, Plotinus describes more psychologically the method of preparation for the vision. The process, which may begin at any point, even with the lowest part of the soul, consists in stripping off everything extraneous till the principle is reached. First the body is to be taken away as not belonging to the true nature of the self; then the soul that shapes the body; then sense-perception with appetites and emotions. What now remains is the image of pure intellect. Even when intellect itself is reached by the soul turning to it, there still remains, it must be repeated, the duality and even, plurality implied in synthetic cognition of self as mind. Mind is self-sufficing, because it has all that it needs for self-knowledge; but it needs to think itself. The principle, which gives mind its being and makes it self-sufficing, is beyond even this need; and the true end for the soul is, by the light it sees by, to touch and gaze upon that light. How is this to be done? Take away all.

All other things, as Plotinus says elsewhere, in comparison with the principle have no reality, and nothing that can be affirmed of them can be affirmed of it. It has neither shape nor form, and is not to be sought with mortal eyes. For those things which, as perceptible by sense, are thought most of all to be, in reality most of all are not. To think the things of sense to be most real is as if men sleeping away all their lives should put trust in what they saw in their dreams, and, if one were to wake them up, should distrust what they saw with open eyes and go off to sleep again 4. Men have forgotten what even from the beginning until now they desire and aspire after. "For all things strive after that and aspire after it by necessity of nature, as if having a divination that without it they cannot be."

Much as all this may resemble Oriental mysticism, it does not seem to have come from any direct contact with the East. Zeller indeed finds in the idea of a mental state beyond cognition a decisive break with the whole direction of classical thought, and makes Philo here the sole predecessor of Plotinus. But, we may ask, whence came the notion to Philo himself? The combination of the most complete "immanence" in one sense with absolute transcendence of Deity in another, does not seem native to Jewish religion, any more than the asceticism for which, in the Essenes, Zeller finds it necessary to recur to a Greek origin. Once get rid of the presupposition that Neo-Platonism sprang from a new contact with Eastern theosophy, and the solution is clear. To Philo and to Plotinus alike, the direct suggestion for the doctrine of "ecstasy" came from Plato. The germinal idea that there is a mode of apprehension above that of perfectly sane and sober mind appears already in more than one Platonic dialogue. During the period of almost exclusively ethical thinking, between Aristotle arid revived Pythagoreanism and Platonism, hints of the kind naturally found little response. After the revival of speculative thought, it is not surprising that they should have appealed to thinkers of widely different surroundings. The astonishing thing would have been if in all the study then given to Plato they had been entirely over­looked. That neither Philo nor Plotinus overlooked them may be seen from the references and quotations given by Zeller himself. What is more, Plotinus definitely contrasts intellect soberly contemplating the intelligible with intellect rapt into enthusiasm and borne above it; and explains the Platonic imagery of "insanity" and "intoxication" as referring to the latter state. Mind is still sane while contemplating intellectual beauty, and is seized upon by the "divine madness" only in rising above beauty to its cause beyond. That Plotinus derived from Plato his conception of the Good beyond being is generally admitted. It is equally clear that for the theory of its apprehension also there presented itself a Platonic point of view. Thus even the mystical consummation of his philosophy may be traced to a Hellenic source.

Plato's own imagery, and in connection with it his occasional mention of "bacchants" and "initiates," may of course have been suggested by forms of worship that were already colored by contact with the East; but this does not affect the character of the Neo-Platonic school as in its own age essentially a classical revival. It was not inhospitable to Oriental cults, being indeed vaguely conscious of an affinity to those that were associated, in the higher order of their devotees, with a contemplative asceticism; and, as willingly as Plato, it found adumbrations of philosophic truth in religious mysteries. These, however, as we have seen, in no case determined the doctrine, which was the outcome of a long intellectual tradition worked upon by thinkers of original power. The system left by Plotinus was further elaborated by the best minds of his own period; and, during the century after his death, we find it making its way over all the Graeco-Roman world. Defeated in the practical struggle, it became, all the more, the accepted philosophy of the surviving Greek schools; to take up at last its abode at Athens with the acknowledged successors of Plato. These stages will be described in the chapters that follow.