Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 3.djvu/438

Rh 42G PLOTINUS. approaching nearer to Plato, substitutes the deve- lopment of eternal ideas, by the intuition {^ewpla) of the separate and independent soul, as directed to that absolute and unchangable Divine essence from which it first proceeded. The unconditional existence, or the good, is not supposed to enter into this development ; but its fluctuating image, the soul, by virtue of its innate intuition, can ex- plain the hidden fullness of the original being, and by virtue of its peculiar striving (ecpecns), can set it, as it were, out of itself, and so separate in itself the soul and the spirit. How far Ammonius Saccas entered into such a logical modification of the Emanation-theory we cannot decide, neither do we know how far he surpassed his teachers in the form of his logical definitions. We only learn that he pointed out the unanimity of Plato and Aris- totle in their essential doctrines, and chose them for his leaders. (Hierocles, de Provident, ap. Phot. Cod. 214, 251.) According to the fore-mentioned authority of Porphyry, Plotinus had joined him- self etdirely to Ammonius in the first years of his residence in Rome, and even afterwards, when he had the commentaries of Severus, Cronius, Nume- nius, Gaius, Atticus, as also those of the Peripa- tetics, Aspasius, Alexander, Adrastus, read in their meetings, without at the same time following them, the spirit of his former teacher was predo- minant in all their investigations. (Porphyr. c. 14.) Against the charge of having copied Numenius, Amelius had defended him in a letter to Porphyry (Porph. 17, where the letter referred to is given) ; and indeed from the worthless fragments that have been handed down to us from the books of Nume- nius, we could well judge of the matter, even if Plotinus had simply surpassed that Platonic in a few important points, and not in his whole method of philosophising. With the doctrines of Aristotle, of the Pytha- goreans and Stoics, of Heracleitus, of the Eleatics, of Anaxagoras and Empedocles, our philosopher was clearly acquainted ; he appropriates much from them, and opposes much often with great acnteness ; as, for example, in the books on the different species of existence, the Categories. {Ennead. vii. I — 3 ; conip. Trendelenburg's His- torische Beitr'iige zur Philosophies 1st vol., Ges- chichte der Kutegorienlehre.) Plato, however, is his constant guide and master. In him he finds the very basis and point of his philosophy more or less distinctly hinted at ; he quotes him often with a bare " ipse dixit," is fond of joining his own speculations upon his remarks, and of exhibiting his own agreement with that great Athenian. This connection with Plato is probably common to him with Numenius, as also the critical method of examining the other Grecian systems, which was borrowed from Aristotle. But to him Plato was not, as with Numenius, the Attic Moses ; on the contrary, he appears almost designedly to avoid any reference to the Oriental philosophy and reli- gion ; he attempts to find all this under the veil of the Greek mythologj-, and points out liere the germ of his own philosophical and religious convictions. Of the Egyptian and other Oriental doctrines of religion he hardly makes any mention at all ; and yet to one who was a born Egyptian, and had penetrated so far into Asia, such knowledge could not have been wanting. Plotinus, therefore, can- not be accused of that commixture and falsification of the Oriental mythology and mysticism, which is PLOTINUS. found in Tamblichus, Proclus,and others of the New Platonic school Probably it was at his suggestion that Amelius and Porphyry had written against the misuse which alreadj' began to be made of the doctrines of Zoroaster. Porphyry {Plotin. c. 16) mentions these writings in connection with the book which Plotinus aimed against the Gnostics, and there can be no doubt but that in this discus- sion he had to deal also with the Christian Gnostics. It is only their arbitrary Emanation-phantasies, however, their doctrines of matter and evil, and their astrological fatalism that he opposes ; the Christian doctrines respecting salvation, which were rather veiled than revealed by them, he leaves en- tirely untouched ; also in the different explanations he gives of his threefold principle, he makes no re- ference to the Christian Trinity. Porphyry was the first to enter decidedly into the lists against the Christian revelation, and we must attribute it to the manner in which he viewed the task com- mitted to his care, that in the books of Plotinus, which were edited by him, he introduced no un- favourable reference whatever to a religion which he detested. In order to estimate these writings correctly, we ought not to forget that they originated for the most part in some question or other of temporary interest. Only a few of them can be considered as the commencements of a complete development of their respective subjects ; as, for example, the three books on philosophical problems (iv. 3 — 5), on the different species of existence (vi. 1 — 3), and on unity and uniformity (vi. 4 — 5) ; yet it would be difficult to unite even them in one conti- nuous series of investigations, and still more so the others, especially those that were completed in the first period, which, however, bear more than those of the other periods the character of separate trea- tises, being adapted only in some few respects to stand in connection with them. We need not, therefore, blame Porphyry, that despairing of all such attempts, he has divided and arranged the books according to the similarity of their subject-matter ; perhaps it would have been still better it" he had entirely separated the treatises of the first period from those of both the others, and arranged con- secutively each of the other divisions separately for "itself, on the very same principles by which he had already been guided. These chronological references would, at least, have necessitated a more complete discussion of Plotinus's system, however little it might have been practicable to trace the gradual development of that system in the mind of the author. The fundamental and main doctrines of it appear to have been fixed when he first began to write (which was at a tolerably mature period of life), only in the earlier periods they seem to have been concealed behind the particulai object he had in view, more than was the case in those elaborations of a later date, which were directed towards the elucidation of the essential features of his own peculiar system. In these latter writ- ings, the endeavour which, as far as we can judge, characterised Plotinus more than any other philosopher of his age, was especially prominent, the endeavour, namely, to pave the wny to the solution of any question by a careful discussion of the difficulties of the case. However unsatis- factory this process may generally have proved, yet the insight which it afforded into the pecu- liarity of the problems was only second to that