1. The Academy becomes Neo-Platonic.

ABOUT the opening of the fifth century, the chair of Plato was occupied by Plutarch, an Athenian by birth and the first distinguished representative at Athens of Neo-Platonism. By what particular way the Neo-Platonic doctrine had reached Athens is unknown; but Plutarch and the "Platonic successors" who followed him, connected themselves directly with the school of Iamblichus, and through Iamblichus with Porphyry and Plotinus. Their entrance on the new line of thought was to be the beginning of a revival of philosophical and scientific activity which continued till the succession was closed by the edict of Justinian in 529. Strictly, it may be said to have continued a little longer; for the latest works of the school at Athens were written some years after that date. From that year, however, no other teacher was allowed to profess Hellenic philosophy publicly; so that it may with sufficient accuracy be taken as fixing the end of the Academy, and with it of the ancient schools.

Approximately coincident with the first phase of the revival at Athens, was the brilliant episode of the school at Alexandria, where Neo-Platonism was now taught by Hypatia as its authorized exponent. Of her writings nothing remains, though the titles of some mathematical ones are preserved. What is known is that she followed the tradition of Iamblichus, whose doctrines appear in the works of her pupil and correspondent Synesius. Her fate in 415 at the hands of the Alexandrian monks, under the patriarchate of Cyril (as recorded by the ecclesiastical historian Socrates), was not followed immediately by the cessation of the Alexandrian chair of philosophy, which indeed continued to have occupants longer than any other. Between 415 and 450, Hierocles, the author of the commentary on the Pythagorean Golden Verses, still professed Neo-Platonism. He was a pupil of Plutarch at Athens, but took up the office of teacher at Alexandria, of which he was a native. He too was an adherent of the old religion; and, for something he had said that was thought disrespectful towards the new, he was sentenced by a Christian magistrate of Constantinople to be scourged. Several more names of Alexandrian commentators are recorded; ending with Olympiodorus in the latter part of the sixth century. All these names, however—beginning with Hierocles—belong in reality to the Athenian successions.

Plutarch died at an advanced age in 431. His successor was Syrianus of Alexandria, who had been his pupil and for some time his associate in the chair. Among the opinions of Plutarch, it is recorded that with Iamblichus he extends immortality to the irrational part of the soul, whereas Proclus and Porphyry limit it to the rational part. A psychological position afterwards developed by Proclus may be noted in his mode of defining the place of imagination between thought and perception. By Plutarch first, and then by Syrianus, the use of Aristotle as an introduction to Plato, with insistence on their agreements rather than on their differences, was made systematic in the school. Most of its activity henceforth takes the form of exceedingly elaborate critical commentaries. It is not that originality or the recognition of it altogether ceases. When any philosopher introduces a distinctly new point of view, it is mentioned in his honour by his successors. In the main, however, the effort was towards systematizing what had been done. This was the work specially reserved for the untiring activity of Proclus.

 

2. Proclus.

We now come to the last great name among the Neo­Platonists. After Plotinus, Proclus was undoubtedly the most original thinker, as well as the ablest systematiser, of the school. His abilities were early recognised, and the story of an omen that occurred on his arrival at Athens was treasured up. He had lingered outside and arrived at the Acropolis a little late, as his biographer records; and the porter said to him, "If you had not come, I should have shut the gates." His life was written by his successor in the Academic chair, some time before the decree of Justinian; so that this anecdote has the interest of showing what the feeling already was in the school about its prospects for the future.

Proclus (or Proculus) was born at Constantinople in 410, but was of a Lycian family. His father was a jurist; and he himself studied at Alexandria first rhetoric and Roman law, afterwards mathematics and philosophy. Under Olympiodorus, his Alexandrian teacher, he rapidly acquired proficiency in the Aristotelian logic. Becoming dissatisfied with the philosophical teaching at Alexandria, he went to Athens when he was not quite twenty. There he was instructed both by Syrianus and by Plutarch, who, notwithstanding his great age, was willing to continue his teaching for the sake of a pupil of such promise. At that time Proclus abstained severely from animal food, and Plutarch advised him to eat a little flesh, but without avail; Syrianus for his part approving of this rigour. His abstinence remained all but complete throughout his life. When he deviated from it, it was only to avoid the appearance of singularity. By his twenty-eighth year he had written his commentary on the Timaeus, in addition to many other treatises. According to Marinas, he exercised influence on public affairs; but he was once obliged to leave Athens for a year. The school secretly adhered to the ancient religion, the practice of which was of course now illegal. His year's exile Proclus spent in acquiring a more exact knowledge of the ancient religious rites of Lycia. Marinus describes him as an illustration of the happiness of the sage in the type of perfection conceived of by Aristotle—for he enjoyed external good fortune and lived to the full period of human life—and as a model of the ascetic virtues in the ideal form set forth by Plotinus. He was of a temper at once hasty and placable; and examples are given of his practical sympathy with his friends. Besides his originality and critical spirit in philosophy, his proficiency in theurgy is celebrated, and various marvels are related of him. He died at Athens in 485.

The saying of Proclus has often been quoted from his biography, that the philosopher ought not to observe the religious customs of one city or country only, but to be the common hierophant of the whole world. The closeness, however, with which he anticipated in idea Comte's Religion of Humanity, does not seem to have been noticed. First, we are told that he practised the ceremonial abstinences prescribed for the sacred days of all religions, adding certain special days fixed by the appearance of the moon. In a later chapter, Marinus tells us about his cult of the dead. Every year, on certain days, he visited the tombs of the Attic heroes, then of the philosophers, then of his friends and connexions generally. After performing the customary rites, he went away to the Academy; where he poured libations first to the souls of his kindred and race, then to those of all philosophers, finally to those of all men. The last observance corresponds precisely to the Positivist "Day of All the Dead," and indeed is described by Marinus almost in the identical words.

A saying quoted with not less frequency than that referred to above, is the declaration of Proclus that if it were in his power he would withdraw from the knowledge of men for the present all ancient books except the Timaeus and the Sacred Oracles. The reason he gave was that persons coming to them without preparation are injured; but the manner in which the aspiration was soon to be fulfilled in the Western world suggests that the philosopher had a deeper reason. May he not have seen the necessity of a break in culture if a new line of intellectual development was ever to be struck out? He and his school, indeed, devoted themselves to the task, not of effacing accumulated knowledge for a time, but of storing it up. Still, in the latter part of the period, they must have been consciously preserving it for a dimly foreseen future rather than for the next age. Whatever may have been the intention of the utterance, it did as a matter of fact prefigure the conditions under which a new culture was to be evolved in the West.

That the Neo-Platonists had in some respects more of Hellenic moderation than Plato has been indicated already; and this may be noted especially in the case of Proclus, who on occasion protests against what is overstrained in the Platonic ethics. His biographer takes care to show that he possessed and exercised the political as a basis for the "cathartic" virtues. And while ascetic and contemplative virtue, in his view as in that of all the school, is higher than practical virtue, its conditions, he points out, are not to be imposed on the active life. Thus he is able to defend Homer's manner of describing his heroes. The soul of Achilles in Hades is rightly represented as still desiring association with the body, because that is the condition for the display of practical virtue. Men living the practical life could not live it strenuously if they were not intensely moved by feelings that have reference to particular persons and things. The heroic character, therefore, while it is apt for great deeds, is also subject to grief. Plato himself would have to be expelled from his own ideal State for the variety of his dramatic imitations. Only in societies falling short of that severe simplicity could lifelike representations of buffoons and men of inferior moral type, such as we meet with in Plato, be allowed. Besides, he varies from one dialogue to another in the opinions he seems to be conveying, and so himself departs from his ideal. Where Plato then is admitted, there is no reason why Homer too should not be admitted.

A large part of the activity of Proclus was given to commenting directly on Plato; but he also wrote mathematical works, philosophical expositions of a more independent kind, and Hymns to the Gods, in which the mythological personages are invoked as representatives of the powers by which the contemplative devotee rises from the realm of birth and change to that of immutable being. Of the philosophical works that do not take the form of commentaries on particular treatises, we possess an extensive one entitled Platonic Theology; three shorter ones on Providence, Fate, and Evils, preserved only in a Latin translation made in the thirteenth century by William of Morbeka, Archbishop of Corinth; and the Theological Elements. All these have been published. Of the last, an attempt will be made to set forth the substance. In its groundwork, it is an extremely condensed exposition of the Plotinian doctrine; but it also contains the most important modifications made in Neo­Platonism by Proclus himself. The whole is in the form of dialectical demonstration, and may perhaps best be compared, as regards method, with Spinoza's expositions of Cartesianism. An abstract of so condensed a treatise cannot of course do justice to its argumentative force, since much must necessarily be omitted that belongs to the logical development; but some idea may be given of the genuine individual power of Proclus as a thinker. A "scholastic" turn of expression, remarked on by the historians, will easily be observed; but Proclus is not a Scholastic in the sense that he in principle takes any doctrine whatever simply as given from without.

As a commentator, no doubt his aim is to explain Plato; and here the critics cannot fairly complain when he says that his object is only to set forth what the master taught. Indeed the complaint that he is a "scholastic" in this sense is neutralized by the opposite objection that his Platonic Theology contains more of Neo-Platonism than of Plato. And one point of his teaching—not comprised in the treatise now to be expounded—seems to have been generally misunderstood. In more than one place he describes belief as higher than knowledge, because only by belief is that Good to be reached which is the supreme end of aspiration. This has been supposed to be part of a falling away from pure philosophy, though Zeller allows that, after all, the ultimate aim of Proclus "goes as much beyond positive religion as beyond methodical knowing." And in fact the notion of "belief," as Proclus formulates it, instead of being a resignation of the aims of earlier philosophy, seems rather to be a rendering into more precise subjective terms of Plato's meaning in the passage of the Republic where Socrates gives up the attempt at an adequate account of the Idea of the Good. As Plotinus had adopted for the highest point of his ontological system the Platonic position that the Good is beyond even Being, so Proclus formulated a definite principle of cognition agreeing with what Plato indicates as the attitude of the mind when it at last descries the object of its search. At the extreme of pure intellect—at the point, as we might say, which terminates the highest segment of the line representing the kinds of cognition with their objects—is a mode of apprehension which is not even "dialectical," because it is at the very origin of dialectic. And to call this "belief" is to prepare a return from the mysticism of Plotinus—which Proclus, however, does not give up—to the conception of a mental state which, while not strictly cognitive, is a common instead of a peculiar experience. The contradiction between this view and that which makes belief as "opinion" lower than knowledge is only apparent. A view of the kind has become more familiar since. Put in the most general terms it is this: that while belief in its sense of opinion is below scientific knowledge, belief as the apprehension of metaphysical principles is above it; because scientific knowledge, if not attached to some metaphysical principle, vanishes under analysis into mere relations of illusory appearances.

The method of discriminating subordinate triads within each successive stage of emanation, which is regarded as characteristic of Proclus, had been more and more elaborated during the whole interval from Plotinus. The increasing use of it by Porphyry, by Iamblichus, and by their disciple Theodore of Asine, is noted by the historians. Suggestions of the later developments are to be met with in Plotinus himself, who, for example, treats being, though in its essence identical with intellect, as prior if distinguished from it, and goes on further to distinguish life, as a third component of primal Being, from being in the special sense and from intellect. This is not indeed the order assigned to the same components by Proclus, who puts life, instead of intellect, in the second place; but the germ of the division is there. A doctrine in which he seems to have been quite original is that of the "divine henads," to which we shall come in expounding the Elements. For the rest, the originality of many things in the treatise, as well as its general agreement with Plotinus, will become evident as we proceed.

Every multitude, the treatise begins, participates in a manner in the One. For if in a multitude there were no unity, it would consist either of parts which are nothings, or of parts which are themselves multitudes to infinity. From this starting-point we are led to the position that every multitude, being at the same time one and not one, derives its real existence from the One in itself.

The producing, or that which is productive of another, is better than the nature of that which is produced.

  The first Good is that after which all beings strive, and is therefore before all beings. To add to it anything else is to lessen it by the addition, making it some particular good instead of the Good simply.

If there is to be knowledge, there must be an order of causation, and there must be a first in this order. Causes cannot go in a circle: if they did, the same things would be prior and posterior, better and worse. Nor can they go in an infinite series: to refer back one cause to another without a final term would make knowledge impossible.

Principle and primal cause of all being is the Good. For all things aspire to it; but if there were anything before it in the order of causes, that and not the Good would be the end of their aspiration. The One simply, and the Good simply, are the same. To be made one is to be preserved in being—which is a good to particular things; and to cease to be one is to be deprived of being.

In order that the derivation of motion may not go on in a circle or to infinity, there must be an unmoved, which is the first mover; and a self-moved, which is the first moved; as well as that which is moved by another. The self-moved is the mean which joins the extremes.

Whatever can turn back upon itself, the whole to the whole, is incorporeal. For this turning back is impossible for body, because of the division of its parts, which lie outside one another in space. That which can thus turn back upon itself, has an essence separable from all body. For if it is inseparable in essence, it must still more be inseparable in act; were it separable only in act, its act would go beyond its essence. That is, it would do what, by definition, is not in its power to do. But body does not actually turn back upon itself. Whatever does thus turn back is therefore separable in essence as in act.

"Beyond all bodies is the essence of soul, and beyond all souls the intellectual nature, and beyond all intellectual existences the One." Intellect is unmoved and the giver of motion, soul self-moving, body moved by another. If the living body moves itself, it is by participation in soul. Similarly, the soul through intellect participates in perpetual thought. For if in soul there were perpetual thinking primarily, this would be inherent in all souls, like self-motion. Since not all souls, as such, have this power, there must be before soul the primarily intelligent. Again, before intellect there must be the One. For intellect, though unmoved, is not one without duality, since it thinks itself; and all things whatsoever participate in the One, but not all things in intellect.

To every particular causal chain, there is a unity which is the cause of all that is ordered under it. Thus after the primal One there are henads; and after the first intellect, minds ; and after the first soul, souls; and after the whole of nature, natures.

First in order is always that which cannot be participated in,—the "one before all" as distinguished from the one in all. This generates the things that are participated in. Inferior to these again are the things that participate, as those that are participated in are inferior to the first.

The perfect in its kind, since in so far as it is perfect it imitates the cause of all, proceeds to the production of as many things as it can; as the Good causes the existence of everything. The more or the less perfect anything is, of the more or the fewer things is it the cause, as being nearer to or more remote from the cause of all. That which is furthest from the principle is unproductive and the cause of nothing.

The productive cause of other things remains in itself while producing. That which produces is productive of the things that are second to it, by the perfection and superabundance of its power. For if it gave being to other things through defect and weakness, they would receive their existence through its alteration; but it remains as it is.

Every productive cause brings into existence things like itself before things unlike. Equals it cannot produce, since it is necessarily better than its effects. The progression from the cause to its effects is accomplished by resemblance of the things that are second in order to those that are first. Being similar to that which produces it, the immediate product is in a manner at once the same with and other than its cause. It remains therefore and goes forth at the same time, and neither element of the process is apart from the other. Every product turns back and tries to reach its cause; for everything strives after the Good, which is the source of its being; and the mode of attaining the Good for each thing is through its own proximate cause. The return is accomplished by the resemblance the things that return bear to that which they return too; for the aim of the return is union, and it is always resemblance that unites. The progression and the return form a circular activity. There are lesser and greater circles according as the return is to things immediately above or to those that are higher. In the great circle to and from the principle of all, all things are involved.

Accordingly, everything that is caused remains in its own cause, and goes forth from it, and returns to it. The remaining signifies its community with its cause; the going forth, its distinction from it; the return, its innate endeavour after its own good, from which its particular being is. Of the things multiplied in progressive production, the first are more perfect than the second, these than the next, and so forth; for the "progressions" from cause to effect are remissions of being of the second as compared with the first. In the order of return, on the contrary, the things that are most imperfect come first, the most perfect last. Every process of return to a remoter cause is through the same intermediate stages as the corresponding causal progression. First in the order of return are the things that have received from their cause only being; next, those that have received life with being; last, those that have received also the power of cognition. The endeavour of the first to return is a mere fitness for participation in causes; the endeavour of the second is "vital," and is a motion to the better; that of the third is identical with conscious knowledge of the goodness of their causes.

Between the One without duality, and things that proceed from causes other than themselves, is the self-subsistent, or that which is the cause of itself. That which is in itself, not as in place, but as the effect in the cause, is self-subsistent. The self-subsistent has the power of turning back upon itself. If it did not thus return, it would not strive after nor attain its own good, and so would not be self-sufficing and perfect; but this belongs to the self-subsistent if to anything. Conversely, that which has the power of turning back upon itself is self-subsistent. For thus to return, and to attain the end, is to find the source of its perfection, and therefore of its being, within itself. The self-subsistent is ungenerated. For generation is the way from imperfection to the opposite perfections; but that which produces itself is ever perfect, and needs not completion from another, like things that have birth. The self-subsistent is incorruptible, for it never departs from the cause of its preservation, which is itself. It is indivisible and simple. For if divisible, it cannot turn back, the whole to the whole; and if composite, it must be in need of its own elements, of which it consists, and hence not self-sufficing.

After some propositions on the everlasting or imperishable and the eternal, and on eternity and time, not specially distinctive of his system, Proclus goes on to a characteristic doctrine of his own, according to which the higher cause—which is also the more general—continues its activity beyond that of the causes that follow it. Thus the causal efficacy of the One extends as far as to Matter, in the production of which the intermediate causes, from intelligible being downwards, have no share.

That which is produced by the things second in order, the series of propositions begins, is produced in a higher degree by the things that are first in order and of more causal efficacy; for the things that are second in order are themselves produced by the first, and derive their whole essence and causal efficacy from them. Thus intellect is the cause of all that soul is the cause of; and, where soul has ceased to energise, the intellect that produces it still continues its causal activity. For the inanimate, in so far as it participates in form, has part in intellect and the creative action of intellect. Further, the Good is the cause of all that intellect is the cause of; but not conversely. For privations of form are from the Good, since all is thence, but intellect, being form, is not the ground of privation.

The product of more causes is more composite than the product of fewer. For if every cause gives something to that which proceeds from it, more causes must confer more elements and fewer fewer. Now where there are more elements of the composition, the resultant is said to be more composite; where there are fewer, less. Hence the simple in essence is either superior to things composite or inferior. For if the extremes of being are produced by fewer concurrent causes and the means by more, the means must be composite while the extremes on both sides are simpler. But that the extremes are produced by fewer causes is evident, since the superior causes both begin to act before the inferior, and in their activity stretch out beyond the point where the activity of the latter ceases through remission of power. Therefore the last of things, like the first, is most simple, because it proceeds only from the first; but, of these two simplicities, one is above all composition, the other below it.

Of things that have plurality, that which is nearer the One is less in quantity than the more distant, greater in potency. Consequently there are more corporeal natures than souls, more of these than of minds, more minds than divine henads.

The more universal precedes in its causal action the more particular and continues after it. Thus "being" comes before "living being", and "living being" before "man," in the causal order as in the order of generality. Again, at a point below the agency of the rational power, where there is no longer "man," there is still a breathing and sentient living being; and where there is no longer life there is still being. That which comes from the more universal causes is the bearer of that which is communicated in the remitting stages of the progression. Matter, which is at the extreme bound, has its subsistence only from the most universal cause, namely, the One. Being the subject of all things, it proceeded from the cause of all. Body in itself, while it is below participation in soul, participates in a manner in being. As the subject of animation, it has its subsistence from that which is more universal than soul.

 

Omitting some auxiliary propositions, we may go on to the doctrine of infinity as formulated by Proclus. In passing, it may be noted that he explicitly demonstrates the proposition that that which can know itself has the power of turning back upon itself. The reason assigned is that in the act of self-knowledge that which knows and that which is known are one. And what is true of the act is true also of the essence. That only the incorporeal has the power of thus turning back upon itself was proved at an earlier stage.

Infinity in the sense in which it really exists, with Proclus as with Plotinus, means infinite power or potency. That which ever is, is infinite in potency; for if its power of being were finite, its being would some time fail. That which ever becomes, has an infinite power of becoming. For if the power is finite, it must cease in infinite time; and, the power ceasing, the process most cease. The real infinity of that which truly is, is neither of multitude nor of magnitude, but of potency alone. For self-subsistent being is indivisible and simple, and is in potency infinite as having most the form of unity; since the greatest causal power belongs to that which is nearest the One. The infinite in magnitude or multitude, on the other hand, is at once most divided and weakest. Indivisible power is infinite and undivided in the same relation; the divided powers are in a manner finite by reason of their division. From this sense of the finite, as limited power, is to be distinguished its sense as determinate number, by which it comes nearest to indivisible unity.

That which is infinite, is infinite neither to the things above it nor to itself, but to the things that are inferior. To these, there is that in it which can by no means be grasped; it has what exceeds all the unfolding of its powers: but by itself, and still more by the things above it, it is held and defined as a whole.

We have already met with the position that in a complete causal series the first term is "imparticipable". This means that in no way do the things it produces share it among them. The cause, thus imparticipable or transcendent, remains by itself in detachment from every succeeding stage. In drawing out the consequences of this position, Proclus introduces those intermediate terms which are held to be characteristic of his system. Within the Being or Intellect of the Plotinian Trinity, he constitutes the subordinate triad of being, life and mind. To these discriminated stages he applies his theory that causes descend in efficacy as they descend in generality. The series of things in which mind is immanent is preceded by imparticipable mind; similarly life and being precede the things that participate in them; but of these being is before life, life before mind. In the order of dependence, the cause of more things precedes the cause of fewer. Now all things have being that have life, and all things have life that have mind, but not conversely. Hence in the causal order being must come first, then life, then mind. All are in all; but in each each is present in the manner appropriate to the subsistence of that in which it inheres.

  All that is immortal is imperishable, but not all that is imperishable is immortal. For that which ever participates in life participates also in being, but not conversely. As being is to life, so is the imperishable, or that which cannot cease to be, to the immortal, or that which cannot cease to live. Since that which is altogether in time is in every respect unlike that which is altogether eternal, there must be something between them; for the causal progression is always through similars. This mean must be eternal in essence, temporal in act. Generation, which has its essence in time, is attached causally to that which on one side shares in being and on the other in birth, participating at once in eternity and in time; this, to that which is altogether eternal; and that which is altogether eternal to being before eternity.

The highest terms of each causal chain, and only those, are connected with the unitary principle of the chain next above. Thus only the highest minds are directly attached to a divine unity; only the most intellectual souls participate in mind; and only the most perfect corporeal natures have a soul present to them. Above all divine unities is the One, which is God; as it must be, since it is the Good; for that beyond which there is nothing, and after which all things strive, is God. But that there must also be many divine unities is evident, since every cause which is a principle takes the lead in a series of multiplied existences descending from itself by degrees of likeness. The self-complete unities or "divine henads," are "the gods," and every god is above being and life and mind. In all there is participation, except in the One.

 

Much has been written upon the question, what the henads of Proclus really mean. Usually the doctrine is treated as an attempt to find a more definite place for polytheism than was marked out in the system of Plotinus. This explanation, however, is obviously inadequate, and there have not been wanting attempts to find in it a more philosophical meaning. Now so far as the origin of the doctrine is concerned, it seems to be a perfectly consequent development from Plotinus. Proclus seeks the cause of plurality in things at a higher stage than the intelligible world, in which Plotinus had been content to find its beginning. Before being and mind are produced, the One acts as it were through many points of origin; from each of these start many minds; each of which again is the principle of further differences. As the primal unity is called eels, the derivative unities are in correspondence called Geol. Thus the doctrine is pure deductive metaphysics. There is hardly any indication that in thinking it out Proclus had in view special laws of nature or groups of natural facts. Though not otherwise closely resembling Spinoza's doctrine of the "infinite attributes," it resembles it in this, that it is a metaphysical deduction intended to give logical completeness, where intuitive completeness becomes impossible, to a system of pure conceptual truth.

From the divine henads, according to Proclus, the providential order of the world directly descends. This position he supports by a fanciful etymology, but deduces essentially from the priority of goodness as characterising the divinity.

After goodness come power and knowledge. The divine knowledge is above intellect; and the providential government of the world is not by a reasoning process. By nothing that comes after it can the divinity in itself either be expressed or known. Since, however, it is knowable as henads from the things that participate in them, only the primal One is entirely unknowable, as not being participated in. The divinity knows indivisibly the things that are divided, and without time the things that are in time, and the things that are not necessary with necessity, and the things that are mutable immutably; and, in sum, all things better than according to their own order. Its knowledge of the multiple and of things subject to passion is unitary and without passivity. On the other hand, that which is below has to receive the impassible with passive affection, and the timeless under the form of time.

The order of the divine henads is graduated; some being more universal, some more particular. The causal efficacy of the former is greater; of the latter, less. The more particular divine henads are generated from the more universal, neither by division of these nor by alteration, nor yet by manifold relationships, but by the production of secondary progressions through superabundance of power. The divine henad first communicates its power to mind; through mind, it is present to soul; and through soul it gives a resonance of its own peculiar nature even to body. Thus body becomes not only animate and intelligential, but also divine, receiving life and motion from soul, indissoluble permanence from mind, divine union from the henad participated in. Not all the other henads together are equal to the primal Ones. There are as many kinds of beings that participate in the divine henads as there are henads participated in. The more universal henads are participated in by the more universal kinds of beings; the more particular by the more particular. Thus the order of beings is in precise accordance with the order of the henads. Each being has for its cause not only the henad in which it participates, but, along with that, the primal One.

All the powers of the divinity penetrate even to the terrestrial regions, being excluded by no limits of space from presence to all that is ready for participation. Beside that providence of the gods which is outside and above the order over which it is exercised, there is another, imitating it within the order and exercised over the things that are at a lower stage of remission by those that are higher in the causal series. The gods are present in the same manner to all things, but not all things are present in the same manner to the gods. It is unfitness of the things participating that causes obscuration of the divine presence. Total deprivation of it would mean their complete disappearance into not-being. At each stage of remission, the divinity is present, not only in the manner peculiar to each causal order, but in the manner appropriate to the particular stage. The progressions have the form of a circle; the end being made like the beginning through the return of all things within the order to its principle.

The whole multitude of the divine henads is finite in number. It is indeed more definitely limited than any other multitude, as being nearest to the One. Infinite multitude, on the other hand, is most remote from the Ones. There is at the same time, as has been shown, a sense in which all divine things are infinite. That is to say, they are infinite in potency, and incomprehensible to what is below them.

The henads participated in by being which is prior to intellect are intelligible; those that are participated in by intellect itself are intelligential, as producing intelligence; those that are participated in by soul are supramundane . As soul is attached to intellect, and intellect turns back upon intelligible being; so the supramundane gods depend on the intelligential, as those again on the intelligible gods. Something also of visible bodies being from the gods, there are also "mundane henads". These are mediated by mind and soul; which, according as they are more separable from the world and its divided con­tents, have more resemblance to the imparticipable.

Having dealt so far with the ontology of intellect, Proclus goes on to formulate the characters of intellectual knowledge. Intellect has itself for the object of its thought. Mind in act knows that it thinks; and it does not belong to one mind to think an object and to another to think the thought of the objects. The thought, the knowledge of the thought, and the cognisance of itself as thinking, are simultaneous activities of one subject. It is the character of mind to think all things together. Imparticipable mind thinks all of them together simply; each mind that follows thinks them all still together, but under the form of the singulars. That mind is incorporeal is shown by its turning back upon itself. In accordance with its being, it contains all things intellectually, both those before it and those after it; the former by participation, the latter by containing their causes intellectually.

Mind constitutes what is after it by thinking; and its creation is in thinking, and its thought in creating. It is first participated in by the things which, although their thought is according to the temporal and not according to the eternal order, which is timeless, yet have the power of thinking and actually think during the whole of time. That such existences should be interposed before particular souls, is required by the graduated mediation characteristic of every causal progression. Soul that is sometimes thinking and sometimes not, cannot participate without mediation in eternal mind.

The intellectual forms in mind are both in one another and each for itself without either spatial interval or confusion. This Proclus demonstrates from the nature of indivisible essence. If any one needs an analogy as well as a demonstration, then, he says, there is the case of the various theorems existing in one soul. The soul draws forth the propositions that constitute its knowledge, not by pulling them apart from one another, but by making separately clear to itself implicit distinctions that already exist. The minds that contain more universal forms are superior in causal efficacy to those that. contain more particular forms. The first by forms that are quantitatively less produce more effects; the second fewer by forms that are quantitatively more. From the second proceed the finer differences of kinds. The products of intellectual forms are imperishable. Kinds that are only for a time do not subsist from a formal or ideal cause of their own; nor have perishable things, as such, a pre-existent intellectual form. The number of minds is finite. Every mind is a whole; and each is at once united with other minds and discriminated from them. Imparticipable mind is a whole simply, since it has in itself all the parts under the form of the whole; of the partial minds each contains the whole as in a part.

The mean between divine imparticipable mind and mind participated in and intelligential but not divine, is divine mind participated in. In this participate divine souls. Of souls there are three kinds: first, those that are divine; second, those that are not divine but that always participate in intelligible mind; third, those that change between mind and deprivation of it. Every soul is an incorporeal essence and separable from the body. For since it knows that which is above it, namely, mind and intellectual things in their purity, much more is it the nature of the soul to know itself. Now that which knows itself turns back upon itself. And that which turns back upon itself is neither body nor inseparable from body; for the mere turning back upon itself, of which body is incapable, necessitates separability. Every soul is indestructible and incorruptible. For everything that can in any way be dissolved and destroyed is either corporeal and composite or has its existence in a subject. That which is dissolved undergoes corruption as consisting of a multitude of divisible parts; that of which it is the nature to exist in another, being separated from its subject vanishes into not-being. But the soul comes under neither of these determinations; existent as it is in the act of turning back upon itself. Hence it is indestructible and incorruptible.

 

Proclus now goes on to define more exactly the characters of the soul in relation to things prior and posterior to it. It is self-subsistent and is the principle of life to itself and to all that participates in it. As it is a mean between things primarily indivisible and those that have the divisibility belonging to body, so also it is a mean between things wholly eternal and those that are wholly temporal. Eternal in essence and temporal in act, it is the first of things that have part in the world of generation. In the logical order of causes, it comes next after mind, and contains all the intellectual forms that mind possesses primarily. These it has by participation, and as products of the things before it. Things perceptible it anticipates in their pre-formed models. Thus it holds the reasons of things material immaterially, and of corporeal things incorporeally, and of things apart in space without spatially separating them. Things intelligible, on the other hand, it receives in their expression by images; divisibly the forms of those that are undivided, by multiplication the forms of those that are unitary, by self-motion the forms of those that are unmoved.

Every soul participated in has for its first organ an imperishable body, ungenerated and incorruptible. For if every soul is imperishable in essence and primarily animates something corporeal, then, since its being is immutable, it animates it always. If that which has soul has it always, it also participates ever in the life of soul. But that which is ever living ever is, that is to say, is imperishable.

All that participates in time yet is perpetually moved, is measured by circuits. For since things are determinate both in multitude and in magnitude, transition cannot go on through different collocations to infinity. On the other hand, the transitions of that which is ever moved can have no term. They must therefore go from the same to the same; the time of the circuit furnishing the measure of the motion. Every mundane soul, since it passes without limit through transitions of which time is the measure, has circuits of its proper life, and restitutions to its former position. While other souls have some particular time for the measure of their circuit, the circuit of the first soul measured by time coincides with the whole of time. 

With greater distance of souls from the One there goes, according to the general principle already set forth, increase of number and diminution of causal efficacy. Every particular soul may descend to birth infinite times and reascend from birth to being. For it now follows after the divine and now falls away; and such alternation must evidently be recurrent. The soul cannot be an infinite time among the gods, and then the whole succeeding time among bodies; for that which has no temporal beginning can never have an end, and that which has no end necessarily has no beginning.

Every particular soul, descending to birth, descends as a whole. It does not partly remain above and partly descend. For if part of the soul remains in the intelligible world, it must either think ever without transition, or by a transitive process. But if without transition, then it thinks as pure intellect, and not as a part of the soul; and so must be the soul immediately participating in mind, that is, the general soul. If it thinks by a transitive process, then, out of that which is always thinking and that which sometimes thinks one essence is composed. But this also is impossible. Besides, it is absurd that the highest part of the soul, being, as it is if it does not descend, ever perfect, should not rule the other powers and make them also perfect. Every particular soul therefore descends as a whole.

 

3. The End of the Platonic Succession.

 

Of the successors to Plato's chair after Proclus, the most noteworthy was Damascius, the last of all. A native of Damascus, he had studied at Alexandria and at Athens. Among his teachers was Marinus, the immediate successor and the biographer of Proclus. The skill in dialectic for which he was celebrated, he himself attributed to the instructions of Isidore, his predecessor in the chair, whose biography he wrote. In an extensive work on First Principles, he maintained with the utmost elaboration that the principle of things is unknowable. This we have met with as a general position in Proclus; and it is already laid down distinctly by Plotinus, who says for example that we can learn by intellect that the One is, but not what it is. Even to call it the One is rather to deny of it plurality than to assert any truth regarding it that can be grasped by the intelligences. Still, with Plotinus and Proclus, this is more a recognition of the inadequacy of all forms of thought to convey true knowledge of the principle which is the source of thought, than a doctrine standing out by itself as the last word of their philosophy. Damascius on the other hand seems to exhaust human language in the effort to make plain how absolutely unknowable the principle is. Thus his doctrine has the effect of a new departure, and presents itself as the most definitely agnostic phase of ancient metaphysics. Zeller treats this renunciation of all knowledge of the principle as a symptom of the exhaustion of Greek philosophy; a view which perhaps, at certain points of time, would not have allowed us to hope much more from modern philosophy. The ancient schools, however, did not die till a final blow was struck at them on behalf of the spiritual authority that now ruled the world.

It may be read in Gibbon how the Emperor Justinian (527–565), while he directed the codification of the Roman law, succeeded in effacing in considerable measure the record of stages of jurisprudence less conformable to the later imperial absolutism. To make that absolutism unbroken even in name, he afterwards suppressed the Roman Consulship, which had gone on till his time. Before the completion of his Code—the great positive achievement to which he owes his fame he had already promulgated a decree for securing uniformity in the spiritual sphere. So far, in spite of the formal prohibition of the ancient religion, the philosophers at Athens had retained some freedom to oppose Christian positions on speculative questions. This seems clear from the fact that Proclus had been able to issue a tractate in which he set forth the arguments for the perpetuity of the world against the Christian doctrine of creations. Justinian, who was desirous of a reputation for strictness of orthodoxy, resolved that even this freedom should cease; and in 529 he enacted that henceforth no one should teach the ancient philosophy. In the previous year, when there was a "great persecution of the Greeks" (that is, of all who showed attachment to the ancient religion), it had been made a law that those who "Hellenized" should be incapable of holding offices. Suppression of the philosophical lectures was accompanied by confiscation of the endowments of the school. And these were private endowments; the public payments to the occupants of the chairs having long ceased. The liberty of philosophising was now everywhere brought within the limits prescribed by the Christian Church. Not till the dawn of modern Europe was a larger freedom to be reassumed; and not even then without peril.

The narrative of the historian Agathias (fl. 570) is well known, how Damascius, Simplicius, Eulalius, Priscianus, Hermias, Diogenes and Isidorus departed from Athens for Persia, having been invited by King Chosroes, and hoping to find in the East an ideal kingdom and a philosophic king. Though Chosroes himself was not without a real interest in philosophy, as he showed by the translations he caused to be made of Platonic and Aristotelian writings, their expectations were thoroughly disappointed. They found that the genuine unmodified East was worse than the Roman Empire in its decline. At length they entreated to return to their own country under any conditions; and Chosroes, though pressing them to stay, not only allowed them to go, but in a special clause of a treaty of peace with Justinian, stipulated that they should not be constrained to forsake their own opinions, but should retain their freedom while they lived. This was in 533. The date of their voluntary exile was probably 532.

After their return, as has been already indicated, the philosophers devoted themselves to the writing of learned commentaries. The most illustrious of the commentators was Simplicius, whose works on Aristotle's Categories, Physics, De Caelo and De Anima, and on the Encheiridion of Epietetus, are extant. Even this last period was not marked by complete inability to enter on a new path. What the speculative exhaustion animadverted on by Zeller really led to was a return to the most positive kind of knowledge that then seemed, attainable. Aristotle now came to be studied with renewed zeal; and it was in fact by a tradition from the very close of antiquity that he afterwards acquired his predominant authority, first among the Arabians and then among the school-men of the West. The last Neo-Platonists thus had the merit of comprehending his unapproached greatness as the master in antiquity of all human and natural knowledge. If to some extent they were wrong in trying to prove his thoroughgoing agreement with Plato, their view was at any rate nearer the mark than that which makes the two philosophers types of opposition. The most recent students of Plato would perfectly agree with one at least of the distinctions by which Simplicius reconciles apparently conflicting positions. When Plato, he says, describes the world as having come to be, he means that it proceeds from a higher cause; when Aristotle describes it as not having become, he means that it has no beginning in time. Apart from learned research, subtleties may still be found in the commentators that had never before been expressed with such precision. For the rest, they are themselves as conscious of the decline as their modern critics. What they actually did was in truth all that was possible, and the very thing that was needed, in their own age.

To the latest period, as was said at the beginning of the chapter, belong the names of several Alexandrian teachers. Among these are Hermias, the pupil of Syrianus; Ammonius, the son of Hermias and the pupil of Proclus; Asclepiodotus, a physician, who, according to Damascius, surpassed all his contemporaries in knowledge of mathematics and natural science; and Olympiodorus, a pupil of Ammonius and the last teacher of the Platonic philosophy whose name has been preserved. Commentaries by Hermias and Ammonius, as well as by Olympiodorus, are still extant.

An exhaustive history of Neo-Platonism would find in the writings of the Athenian school materials especially abundant. Much has been printed, though many works still remain unpublished. In the present chapter, only a very general account is attempted. The object, here as elsewhere, has been to bring out the essential originality of the Neo-Platonic movement; not to trace minutely the various currents that contributed to its formation and those into which it afterwards diverged as it passed into later systems of culture. To follow, "per incertam lunam sub lute maligna," the exact ways by which it modified the culture of mediaeval Europe, would be a work of research for a separate volume. The general direction, however, and its principal stages, are sufficiently clear; and some attempt will be made in the next chapter to trace first the continued influence of Neo-Platonism in the Middle Ages, and then its renewed influence at the Renaissance and in modern times. For the earliest period—for the unmistakably "dark ages" of the West—the transmission was in great part through Christian writers, who, living at the close of the ancient world, had received instruction as pupils in the still surviving philosophic schools.