Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/352

Rh 338 NEOPLATONISM arose at Athens was what may fairly be termed scholasti cism. For every philosophy is scholastic whose subject- matter is imaginative and mystical, and which handles this subject-matter according to established rules in logical categories and distinctions. Now to these Neoplatonists, the books of Plato, along with certain divine oracles, the Orphic poems, and much more which they assigned to a remote antiquity, were documents of canonical authority ; they were inspired divine writings. Out of these they drew the material of their philosophy, which they then proceeded to elaborate with the appliances of dialectic. The most distinguished teachers at Athens were Plutarch (ob. 433), his disciple Syrianus (who did important work as a commentator on Plato and Aristotle, and further deserves mention for his vigorous defence of the freedom of the will), but above all Proclus (411-485). Proclus is the great schoolman of Neoplatonism. It was he who, combining religious ardour with formal acuteness, con nected the whole mass of traditional lore into a huge system, making good defects, and smoothing away contra dictions by means of distinctions and speculations. &quot; It was reserved for Proclus, &quot; says Zeller, &quot; to bring the Neoplatonic philosophy to its formal conclusion by the rigorous consistency of his dialectic, and, keeping in view all the modifications which it had undergone in the course of two centuries, to give it that form in which it was transferred to Christianity and Mohammedanism in the Middle Ages.&quot; Forty-four years after the death of Proclus the school of Athens was closed by Justinian (529 A.D.) ; but it had fulfilled its mission in the work of Proclus, and might with advantage retire from the scene. It had nothing new to say ; it was ripe for the grave, and an honour able burial awaited it. The works of Proclus, as the last testament of Hellenism to the church and the Middle Ages, exerted an incalculable influence on the next thousand years. They not only formed one of the bridges by which the mediaeval thinkers got back to Plato and Aristotle; they determined the scientific method of thirty generations, and they partly created and partly nourished the Christian mysticism of the Middle Ages, both in the East and in the West. The disciples of Proclus are not eminent (Marinus, Asclepiodotus, Ammonius, Zenodotus, Isidorus, Hegias, Damascius). The last president of the Athenian school was Damascius. When Justinian issued the edict for the suppression of the school, Damascius along with Simplicius (the painstaking commentator of Aristotle) and five other Neoplatonists set out for Persia. They were under the delusion that Persia was the land of the East, the home of wisdom, righteousness, and devotion. In a few years they came back to the Byzantine empire, sadder and wiser men. At the beginning of the 6th century Neoplatonism had ceased to exist in the East as an independent philosophy. Almost at the same time, however and the coincidence is not accidental it made new conquests in the church theology through the writings of the pseudo-Dionysius. It began to bear fruit in Christian mysticism, and to diffuse a new magical leaven through the worship of the church. In the West, where philosophical efforts of any kind had been very rare since the 2d century, and where mystical contemplation did not meet with the necessary conditions, Neoplatonism found a congenial soil only in isolated indi viduals. We know that the rhetorician Marius Victorinus (c. 350) translated certain works of Plotinus, and that his translation had a decisive influence on the spiritual history of Augustine. It may be said that Neoplatonism influenced the West only through the medium of the church theology, or, in some instances, under that disguise. Even Boetius (it may now be considered certain) was a catholic Christian, although his whole mode of thought was certainly Neo platonic. His violent death in the year 525 marks the end of independent philosophy in the West. But indeed this last of the Roman philosophers stood quite alone in his century, and the philosophy for which he lived was neither original, nor well-grounded, nor methodically developed. Neoplatonism and the Theology of the Church. The question as to the influence of Neoplatonism on the development of Christianity is not easily answered, because it is scarcely possible to get a complete view of their mutual relations. The answer will depend, in the first instance, upon how much is included under the term &quot;Neoplatonism.&quot; If Neoplatonism is understood in the widest sense, as the highest and fittest expression of the religious movements at work in the Greece-Roman empire from the 2d to the 5th century, then it may be regarded as the twin-sister of the church dogmatic which grew up during the same period ; the younger sister was brought up by the elder, then rebelled against her, arid at last tyrannized over her. The Neoplatonists themselves characterized the theologians of the church as intruders, who had appropriated the Greek philosophy, and spoiled it by the admixture of strange fables. Thus Porphyry says of Origen (Euseb., //. E., vi. 19), &quot;The outer life of Origen was that of a Christian, and contrary to law ; but, as far as his views of things and of God are con cerned, he thought like the Greeks, whose conceptions he overlaid with foreign myths.&quot; This verdict of Porphyry s is at all events more just and apt than that of the theologians on the Greek philosophers, when they accused them of having borrowed all their really valuable doctrines from the ancient Christian books. But the important point is that the relationship was acknowledged on both sides. Now, in so far as both Neoplatonism and the church dogmatic set out from the felt need of redemption, in so far as both sought to deliver the soul from sensuality, and recognized man s inability without divine aid without a revelation to attain salvation and a sure knowledge of the truth, they are at once most intimately related, and at the same time mutually independent. It must be confessed that when Christianity began to project a theology it was already deeply impregnated by Hellenic influences. But the influence is to be traced, not so much to philosophy, as to the general culture of the time, and the whole set of conditions under which spiritual life was manifested. When Neoplatonism appeared, the Christian church had already laid down the main positions of her theology ; or if not, she worked them out alongside of Neoplatonism that is not a mere accident but still independently. It was only by identifying itself with the whole history of Greek philosophy, or by figuring as pure Platonism restored, that Neoplatonism could stigmatize the church theology of Alexandria as a plagiarism from itself. These assumptions, however, were fanciful. Although our sources are unfortunately very imperfect, the theology of the church does not appear to have learned much from Neoplatonism in the 3d century, partly because the latter had not yet reached the form in which its doctrines could be accepted by the church dogmatic, and partly because theology was otherwise occupied. Her first business was to plant herself firmly on her own territory, to make good her position, and clear away old and objectionable opinions. Origen was quite as independent a thinker as Plotinus ; only, they both drew on the same tradition. From the 4th century downwards, however, the influence of Neoplatonism on the Oriental theologians was of the utmost importance. The church gradually expressed her most peculiar convic tions in dogmas, which were formulated by philosophical