A STUDY IN THE HISTORY OF HELLENISM

CHAPTER VII

THE DIFFUSION OF NEO-PLATONISM

 

1.      Porphyry.

 

BOTH for his own and for succeeding times, the name of Porphyry stands out conspicuous among the disciples of Plotinus. Eunapius, writing towards the end of the fourth century, observes that Plotinus is now more in the hands of educated readers than Plato himself; and that, if there is any popular knowledge of philosophy, it consists in some acquaintance with his doctrines. He then proceeds to give credit for this to the interpretations of Porphyry. And thus, he says, the honor was distributed from the first. Universally the doctrine was ascribed to Plotinus; while Porphyry gained fame by his clearness of exposition—as if some Hermaic chain had been let down to men. He then goes on to celebrate Porphyry's knowledge of all liberal science; of which we have independent evidence in his extant works and in the titles of those that are lost. Eunapius's biography seems to have been mostly compiled—not always with perfect accuracy—from the information given by Porphyry himself in his Life of Plotinus.

Porphyry was born in 233 and died later than 301. He was a Tyrian by birth. His name was originally "Malthus," the root of which, in the Semitic languages, means "a king." At the suggestion of his teachers he Hellenized it first into "Basileus" and then into "Porphyrius" (from the color of regal garments). After having studied under Longinus at Athens, he visited Rome, and there, as we have seen, became a disciple of Plotinus from the year 263. His journey to Sicily, with its cause, has been already mentioned. Afterwards he returned to Rome; and it was in Rome, according to Eunapius, that he gained reputation by his expositions of Plotinus. Late in life he married the widow—named Marcella—of a friend; for the sake of bringing up her children, as we learn both from Eunapius and from Porphyry's letter to her which is extant. She was subjected to some kind of persecution by her neighbors, who, Jules Simon conjectures, may have been Christians, and may have sought to detach her from philosophy. The letter is an exhortation to perseverance in philosophical principles, and is full of the characteristic ethical inwardness of Neo-Platonism. That Porphyry engaged in controversy with Christianity, now on the verge of triumph, is well known; and with him, as with Julian, the effect is a just perceptible reaction of Christian modes of thought or speech. As theological virtues he commends "faith, truth, love, hope"; adding only truth to the Christian three.

A distinctive character of his treatise against the Christians seems to have been its occupation with questions of historical criticism. Very little of it has been preserved even in fragmentary form, the set replies of apologists, as well as the treatise itself, being lost; but the view he took about the Book of Daniel is on record. According to Jerome, he maintained that it was written in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes; so that the historical events supposed to have been predicted were really events that had taken place before the time of the writer. This, Jerome says, proves the strength of the case in favor of its genuinely prophetic character; for if events subsequent to the time of Daniel had not been very clearly prefigured, Porphyry would not have found it necessary to argue against the ascription to him of the authorship.

In the time of Plotinus, Porphyry recounts, there were members of various sects, both Christians and others, who put forth apocalypses such as those attributed to Zoroaster and Zostrianus, by which they "deceived many, themselves also deceived." Amelius wrote against the book of "Zostrianus"; Porphyry himself against that of "Zoroaster," showing it to be spurious and recent and forged by the authors of the sect in order to give currency to the opinion that their own doctrines were those of the ancient Zoroaster. The spirit of critical inquiry thus aroused in Porphyry seems to have led him more and more to take the skeptical view about all claims to particular revelations from the gods, including the "theurgic" manifestations to which attention was paid by some members of the Neo-Platonic school. It was probably at a late period of his life that he wrote the letter to the Egyptian priest Anebo, to which an unknown member of the school of Iamblichus replied, under the name of "Abammon," in the famous book De Mysteriis.

One little book of Porphyry, entitled De Antro Nympharum, is an interesting example of the mode of interpreting poetic mythology current in the school. Porphyry there sets out to show that Homer, in his description of the Grotto of the Nymphs at Ithaca, probably did not give an account of an actual cavern to be found in the island—for topographers make no mention of any that resembles the description—but deposited in allegorical form an ancient "theological wisdom" identical with true philosophy. If there really is such a cavern, then those who wrought it had the hidden meaning, which in that case was only transmitted by the poet. This meaning Porphyry educes with an ingenuity that has an attractiveness of its own. It must be noted, however, that the philosophers do not add, and do not think they are adding, anything to the content or even to the authority of their doctrine. All such interpretations are in the interest of the old mythologists and no longer of the philosophers, who are not now putting themselves under the protection of the legends, but on the contrary are seeking if possible to save them.

Of all Porphyry's writings, that which had the most far-reaching influence on culture was his short introduction to the Aristotelian Categories. Coming down to the Middle Ages in the Latin translation of Boethius, it sufficed, by a few words at the opening, to set going the whole discussion on "universals" with which early Scholasticism was preoccupied. This of course was not due to any special originality, but to its summing up clearly and briefly the points of the rival theories maintained by Platonists, Peripatetics and Stoics. Porphyry's logical works generally were expository, and well adapted for use in the schools through keeping the subject clear of metaphysics. Besides devoting much labor to commenting on Aristotle, he wrote a History of Philosophy, to which his extant Life of Pythagoras probably belonged; psychological works from which many passages are cited by Stobaeus; and mathematical works referred to by Proclus. Among his occasional writings of a more original kind, the most extensive now remaining is the De Abstinentia, a treatise against the eating of animal food. His expositions of Plotinus, already referred to, are still represented in the Sententiae.

In what is recorded of Porphyry's metaphysical doctrines, a tendency is found to greater elaboration of the triadic method of grouping, carried out still more systematically by later Neo­Platonism. The real importance of the writings in which he set forth the doctrine of his school was due, however, as his contemporaries recognized, to the insight with which he penetrated to his master's essential thought and to his lucidity in expounding it. Some illustration of this may be furnished from the Sententiae. Then, as an example of his more personal work, an exposition may be given of the De Abstinentia. The treatise has, besides, a more general interest in the specimens it offers of the ethical questions raised and discussed in later antiquity, not in a spirit of scholastic casuistry but with a genuine desire for their solution in the light of reflective conscience.

Preoccupation with ethics may be noticed in the Sententiae, which contain a more systematic classification of the virtues than Plotinus had explicitly given. Porphyry classifies them into Political, Cathartic, Theoretic and Paradigmatic. The virtues of the first class set the soul free from excess of passionate attachment to the body, and produce moderation; those of the second class liberate it altogether from this attachment, so that it can now turn to its true good. The third class comprises the virtues of the soul energizing intellectually; the fourth, those that are in intellect itself, to which the soul looks up as patterns. Our care must be chiefly about the virtues of the second class, seeing that they are to be acquired in this life. Through them is the ascent to the contemplative virtues of soul and to those that are their models in pure intellect. The condition of purification is self-knowledge.

When the soul knows itself, it knows itself as other than the corporeal nature to which it is bound. The error to which we are especially liable is ascription of the properties of body to incorporeal being. The body of the world is everywhere spatially, its parts being spread out so that they can be discriminated by the intervals between them. To God, Mind and Soul, local situation does not apply. One part of intelligible being is not here and another there. Where it is, it is as a whole. The union of an incorporeal nature with a body is altogether peculiar. It is present indivisibly, and as numerically one, to the multitude of parts, each and all. What appears to be added—as locality or relation—in departing from incorporeal being, is really taken away. Not to know being and not to know oneself, have the same source, namely, an addition of what is not, constituting a diminution of being which is all—and which, except in appearance, cannot be diminished. Recovery of yourself by knowledge is recovery of being which was never absent—which is as inseparable from you in essence as you are from yourself.

This is of course the doctrine of Plotinus taken at its centre. With equal exactitude Porphyry reproduces his conception of being as differentiated intrinsically and not by participation in anything externals. Plurality of souls is prior to plurality of bodies, and is not incompatible with the continued unity of all souls in one. They exist without diremption, yet unconfused, like the many parts of knowledge in a single souls. Time accompanies the cognitive process in soul, as eternity accompanies the timeless cognition of intellect. In such process, however, the earlier thought does not go out to give place to the later. It appears to have gone out, but it remains; and what appears to have come in is from the movement of the soul returning on itself.

Thus closely does the disciple follow the master into the psychological subtleties by which he anticipated the modern position that, as the idea of extension is not extended, so the succession of thoughts does not suffice to give the thought of succession. After the illustration offered of his penetrating clearness of exposition, we may go on to a work which shows him in a more distinctive light.

Plotinus, though personally an ascetic, laid no stress in his writings on particular ascetic practices. His precepts reduce themselves in effect to a general recommendation to thin down the material vehicle so that the soul may be borne quietly upon it. There is no suggestion in the Enneads that the perfection of philosophic life requires abstinence from animal food. Not infrequently, however, both earlier and later, this abstinence was practiced as a strict duty by those who traced their philosophic ancestry to Pythagoras. Now the Neo­Platonists, on the practical side, continued the movement of religious and moral reform represented by teachers like Apollonius of Tyana. Thus many of them refrained on principle from flesh-eating. Among these was Porphyry. The occasion of his treatise was that Castricius Firmus, disciples of Plotinus, having begun to practice abstinence from flesh, had returned to the ordinary custom. He could easily defend himself on theoretical ground; for Peripatetics, Stoics and Epicureans had all their systematic refutation of the Pythagorean abstinence. To the arguments current in the schools, accordingly, Porphyry first sets himself to reply.

The contention of the Stoics and Peripatetics was that the idea of justice is applicable only to rational beings; to extend it beyond them to irrational beings, as those do who refuse to kill animals for food, is to subvert its nature and to destroy the possibility of that in it which is practicable. The Epicurean argument which Porphyry cites is founded on a conjectural account of the origin of laws. The primitive legislator perceived some utility, and other men, who had not perceived it at first, as soon as their attention was drawn willingly attached to its violation a social prohibition and a penalty. It is for reasons of utility that there are laws against homicide but not against the slaughter of animals: If indeed a contract could have been made, not only among men but also between men and animals, to refrain from killing one another at random, it would have been well that justice should be so far extended, for thus safety would have been promoted; but it is impossible for animals that do not understand discourse to share in law. To the general argument Porphyry in the first book replies provisionally that he does not recommend this abstinence to all men—not for example to those who have to do with the mechanical arts, nor to athletes, nor to soldiers, nor to men of affairs—but only to those who live the life of philosophy. Legislators make laws not with a view to the theoretic life, but to a kind of average life. Thus we cannot adopt their concessions as rules for a life that is to be better than written law. The asceticism of the philosopher consists in a withdrawal from the things of ordinary life, if possible without trial of them. No one can dwell at once with the things of sense and the things of the mind. The life of the body generally, and such matters as diet in particular, cannot safely be left unregulated by reason. The more completely they are put in order once for all, the less attention they will occupy, and the freer the mind will be for its own life. The Epicureans have to some extent recognized this in advising abstinence from flesh, if not on the ground of justice yet as a means of reducing needs and so making life simpler.

From the practical side the objection was raised that to reject the flesh of animals as food is inconsistent with the custom of offering them as sacrifices to the gods. Porphyry replies by an unsparing attack on the custom. This fills the second book. An account of the origin of animal sacrifices is quoted from Theophrastus, who with reason, Porphyry says, forbids those who would be truly pious to sacrifice living things. Offerings of fruits and corn and flowers and spices came earliest. The custom of sacrificing animals was not earlier than the use of them for food, which began, together with cannibalism, in a dearth of fruits. Living things then came to be sacrificed because men had been accustomed to make first offerings to the gods of all that they used. Responses of oracles and sayings from the poets are quoted to show that the least costly sacrifices with purity of mind are the most pleasing to the gods. Porphyry disclaims any intention of overthrowing established customs; but remarks that the laws of the actual State allow private persons to offer the plainest sacrifices, and such as consist of things without life. To make an offering to the gods of food from which we ourselves undoubtedly be unholy; but we are not required to do it. We too must sacrifice, but in accordance with the nature of the different powers. To the God over all, as a certain wise man said, we must neither offer nor even name anything material. Our offering must be contemplation without even inward discourse. To all the gods the  special thank-offering of the philosopher will be fair thoughts regarding them. Some of those who are devoted to philosophy, Porphyry allows, hesitate here, and make too much of externals. We will not quarrel with them, lest we too should be over-precise on such a matter, but will add contemplation, as our own offering, to their observance of pious tradition.

He who cares about piety knows that to the gods none but bloodless sacrifices are to be offered. Sacrifices of another kind are offered only to the daemons—which name Plato applied without distinction to the multitude of invisible powers below the stars. On the subject of daemons, Porphyry then proceeds to give an account of the views popularly expounded by some of the Platonists. One of the worst injuries done by the bad among the daemons is to persuade us that those beings are the causes of earthly ills who are really the causes of quite the opposite. After this, they turn us to entreaties and sacrifices to the beneficent gods as if they were angry they inflame the desires of them with love of riches and power and pleasure, whence spring factions and wars. And, what is most terrible, they reach the point of persuading them that all this has been stirred up by the highest God. Nor are the philosophers altogether blameless. For some of them have not kept far enough apart from the ideas of the multitude, who, hearing from those that appeared wise things in harmony with their own opinions, were still further encouraged in unworthy thoughts about the gods.

If cities must propitiate such powers, that is nothing to us. For by these wealth and external and bodily things are thought to be goods and deprivation of them an evil, and they have little care about the soul. The same position must be taken as regards divination by the entrails of victims. This, it may be said, will be done away with if we refrain from killing and eating animals. Why not, then, kill men also for the purpose? It is said that better premonitions are to be got in that way, and many of the barbarians really practice this mode of divination. As a matter of fact, whether the victim is human or is an irrational animal, thus to gain knowledge of the future belongs to injustice and greed.

Here Porphyry recounts a number of cases of human sacrifice in former times, and their commutation into animal or symbolical sacrifices; appealing to historical authority for the statement that it was not until the time of Hadrian that all survivals of such rites throughout the Empire were practically abolished. Before concluding the book, he observes that even the unperverted ideas of the multitude make some approach to right opinion about the gods; and illustrates the remark by passages from comic poets ridiculing the notion that divine powers are pleased with such things as are usually offered to them. Then he points to the swarm of evils brought in by those who introduced costly sacrifices. To think that the gods delight in this kind of expenditure must have a specially bad influence on the minds of youth, teaching them to neglect conduct; whereas to think that they have regard above all to the disposition must tend to make them pious and just. The philosopher, in Plato's view, ought not to accommodate himself to bad customs, but to try to win men to the better; if he cannot, let him go the right way himself, caring neither for dangers nor abuse from the many. And surely if Syrians and Hebrews and Phoenicians and Egyptians could resist even to the death kings that strove to make them depart from their national laws in the matter of food, we ought not to transgress the laws of nature and divine precepts for the fear of men.

In the third book, Porphyry undertakes to show that animals, in so far as they have perception and memory, have some share in reason, and therefore are not beyond the range of justice. Defining uttered discourse, not according to the doctrine of any particular school but in the perfectly general sense of "a voice significant through the tongue of internal affections in the soul," we shall find that animals capable of uttering sounds have a kind of discourse among themselves. And before utterance, why should we not suppose the thought of the affection to have been there? Even if we pass over some of the stories about men that are aid to have understood the tongues of animals, enough is recorded to show that the voices of birds and beasts, if intently listened to, are not wholly unintelligible. Voiceless animals too, such as fishes, come to understand the voices of men; which they could not do without some mental resemblance. To the truth of Aristotle's assertion that animals learn much both from one another and from men, every trainer can bear witness. Those who will not see all these evidences of their intelligence take the part of calumniating the creatures they mean to treat ruthlessly. Animals are subject not only to the same bodily diseases as men but to the same affections of the soul. Some have even acuter senses. That animals do indeed possess internal reason is shown by the knowledge they display of their own strength and weakness and by the provisions they make for their life. To say that all this belongs to them "by nature" amounts to saying that by nature they are rationale. We too arrive at reason because it is our nature; and animals, as has been said, learn by being taught, as we do. They have vices of their own, though these are lighter than those of men; and the virtues of the social animals are undeniable, however difficult their mental processes may be for us to follow.

Against the external teleology of Chrysippus, according to which all other animals were created for the use of man, Porphyry cites the argument of Carneades, that where there is a natural end for any being, the attainment of the end must be marked by some profit to that being, and not to some other. If we were to follow the teleological method of the Stoics, we could not well escape the admission that it is we who have been produced for the sake of the most destructive brutes; for while they are of no use to us, they sometimes make their prey of men. This they do driven by hunger, whereas we in our sports and public games kill in wantonness. Returning to the question about the reason of animals, Porphyry argues, after Plutarch, that to an animal that could not reason at all, its senses would be of no use towards action for ends. Inferiority in reasoning power is not the same as total deprivation of it. We do not say that we are entirely without the faculty of vision because the hawk has sharper sight. If normally animals had not reason, how could they go mad, as some do? Porphyry next cites from Theophrastus an argument for a relation of kinship not only among all men, but between men and all animals. In the bodies and souls of both, we find the same principles. For our bodies consist not only of the same primary elements but of the same tissues—"skin, flesh, and the kind of humours natural to animals." Likewise the souls of animals resemble those of men by their desires and impulses, by their reasonings, and above all by their sense-perceptions. The difference, in the case of souls as of bodies, is in degree of fineness. Therefore, in abstaining from the flesh of animals, Porphyry concludes, we are more just in that we avoid harming what is of kindred nature; and, from thus extending justice, we shall be less prone to injure our fellow­men. We cannot indeed live in need of nothing, like the divinity; but we can at least make ourselves more like God by reducing our wants. Let us then imitate the "golden race," for which the fruits of the earth sufficed.

The fourth book, which is incomplete, accumulates testimonies to show that abstinence from flesh is not a mere eccentric precept of Pythagoras and Empedocles, but has been practiced by primitive and uncorrupted races, by communities of ascetics like the Essenes, and by the Egyptian and other priesthoods, some of whom have abstained from all kinds of animal food, some from particular kinds. Then, after giving an account of the Brahmans and of the Buddhist monks on the authority of Bardesanes (perhaps the Gnostic), who derived his information from an Indian embassy to the imperial court early in the third century, Porphyry returns to the general ascetic argument for abstinence. One who would philosophize ought not to live like the mass of mankind, but ought rather to observe such rules as are prescribed to priests, who take upon themselves the obligation of a holier kind of lifer.

This is the strain in which the work breaks off, but it will be observed that on the whole the point of view is as much humanitarian as ascetic. Transmigration of human souls into the bodies of animals Porphyry explicitly denied. Here he mentions it only as a topic of ridicule used against Pythagoras. The stories of men who have been transformed into animals, he interprets as a mythical indication that the souls of animals have something in common with our own. The way in which the whole subject is discussed reveals a degree of reflectiveness with regard to it in the ancient schools which has scarcely been reached again by civilized Europe till quite modern times. And perhaps, for those who wish to preserve the mean, no more judicious solution will be found than Plutarch came upon incidentally in his Life of Cato the Censor; where he contends that, while justice in the proper sense is applicable only among men, irrational animals also may claim a share of benevolence.