Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 3.djvu/547

Rh PROCLUS. his will he liberally remembered his slaves. As a philosopher he enjoyed the highest celebrity among his contemporaries and successors. Marinus does not scruple to call him absolutely inspired, and to affirm that when he uttered his profound dogmas his countenance shone with a preternatural light. Besides his other philosophical attainments he was a distinguished mathematician, astronomer and grammarian. Cousin considers that all the phi- losophic rays which ever emanated from the great thinkers of Greece, Orpheus, Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, Plotinus, &c. were concentrated in and re-emitted by Proclus {Fraef. p. xxvi.). Such laudation is extravagant and absurd. Pro- clus was a fanciful speculator, but nothing more, though the vagueness and incomprehensibility of his system may have led some moderns to imagine that they were interpreting Proclus when they were only giving utterance to their own vague spe- culations. That Proclus, with all his profundity, was utterly destitute of good sense, may be ga- thered from what Marinus tells of him, that he used to say that, if he could have his way, he would destroy all the writings that were extant, except the oracles and the Timaeus of Plato ; as indeed scarcely any other impression is left by the whole life which Marinus has written of him. That this want of good sense characterised the school generally is clear from the fact that as the successor of Proclus they could tolerate so very silly a person as Marinus. In the writings of Proclus there is a great effort to give an appearance (and it is nothing more) of strict logical connection to the system developed in them, that form being in his view superior to the methods of symbols and images. He professed that his design was not to bring forward views of his own, but simply to expound Plato, in doing which he proceeded on the idea that everything in Plato must be brought into accordance with the mystical theology of Orpheus. He wrote a sepa- rate work on the coincidence of the doctrines of Orpheus, Pythagoras, and Plato. It was in much the same spirit that he attempted to blend together the logical method of Aristotle and the fanciful speculations of Neoplatonic mysticism. Where rea- soning fails him, he takes refuge in the Triaris of Plotinus, which is superior to knowledge, con- ducting us to the operations of theurgy, which tran- scends all human wisdom, and comprises within itself all the advantages of divinations, purifica- tions, initiations, and all the activities of divine inspiration. Through it we are united with the primeval unity, in which every motion and energy of our souls comes to rest. It is this principle which unites not only men with gods, but the gods with each other, and with the one, — the good, which is of all things the most credible. Proclus held, in all its leading features, the doc- trine of emanations from one ultimate, primeval principle of all things, the absolute unity, towards union with which again all things strive. This union he did not, like Plotinus, conceive to be effected by means of pure reason, as even things destitute of reason and energy participate in it, purely as the result of their subsistence {virap^is, Theol. Plat. i. 25, ii. 1, 4). In some unaccount- able way, therefore, he must have conceived the irfo-Tts, by which he represents this union as being effected, as something which did not in- volve rational or thinking activity. All inferior PROCLUS. 535 existences are connected with the highest only through the intermediate ones, and can return to the higher only through that which is inter- mediate. P>ery multitude, in a certain way, par- takes of unity, and everything Avhich becomes one, becomes so by partaking of the one. (^Inst Theol. 3.) Every object is a union of the one and the many: that which unites the one and the many is nothing else than the pure, absolute one — the essential owe, which makes every thing else partake of unity. Proclus argued that there is either one prin- cipium, or many principia. If the latter, the prin- cipia must be either finite or infinite m number. If infinite, what is derived from them must be infi- nite, so that we should have a double infinite, or else, finite. But the finite can be derived only from the finite, so that the principia must be finite in number. There would then be a definite num- ber of them. But number presupposes unity. Unity is therefore the principium of principia, and the cause of the finite multiplicity and of the being of all things. (Theol. Plat, ill.) There is there- fore one principium which is incorporeal, for the corporeal consists of parts. It is inmioveable and unchangeable, for every thing that moves, moves towards some object or end, which it seeks after. If the principium were moveable it must be in want of the good, and there must be something desirable outside it. But this is impossible, for the principium has need of nothing, and is itself the end towards which everything else strives. The principium, or first cause of all things, is superior to all actual being (ovaia), and separated from it, and cannot even have it as an attribute. (/. c.) The absolutely one is not an object of cognition to any existing thing, nor can it be named {I. c. p. 95). But in contemplating the emanation of things from the one and their return into it we arrive at two words, the good, and the one, of which the first is analogical and positive, the latter negative only {I. c. p. 9Q). The absolutely one has produced not only earth and heaven, but all the gods which are above the world and in the world : it is the god of all gods, the unity of all unities (/. c. ii, p. 110). Every- thing which is perfect strives to produce something else, the full seeks to impart its fulness. Still more must this be the case with the absolute good, though in connection with that we must not con- ceive of any creative power or energy, for that would be to make the One imperfect and not simple, not fruitful through its very perfection (I.e. p. 101). Every emanation is less perfect than that from which it emanates {Inst. Theol. 7), but has a certain similarity with it, and, so far as this simi- larity goes, remains in it, departing from it so far as it is unlike, but as far as possible being one with it, and remaining in it {Inst. Tlteol. 31). What is produced from the absolutely one is produced as unity, or of the nature of unity. Thus the first produced things are independent unities (o^Tore- Aeis ei/aSes). Of these independent unities some are simple, others more composite. The nearer the unities are to the absolute unity the simpler they are, but the greater is the sphere of their operation and their productive power. Thus out of unity there arises a multitude of things which depart far- ther and farther from the simplicity of the absolute one ; and as the producing power diminishes, it in- troduces more and more conditions into things, while it diminishes their universality and simpli* M M 4