THE EMPEROR JULIAN THE APOSTATE

CHAPTER III.

NEO-PLATONISM.

 

So far as concerns pagan religion and philosophy, the centuries preceding Julian have been depicted in the Introduction to this Essay as a time of exposure and disintegration. Along with the gradual extinction of patriotism under the incubus of an enormous centralized despotism, they witnessed a decay of morals, a despairing surrender of primitive faiths, and throughout the most honored schools a trepidation, a nerveless depression, and an impotence that presaged imminent extinction. The heartiest attempt at conservation was revived Platonism; that acknowledged the great truth of the unity of God, and renounced the balder fallacies of idol-worship: but it lacked sound basis and inherent vitality; it clung to extinct myths, and to solemn forms, and to edifying survivals of ritual, out of which all virtue and meaning had departed for generations, and which had long since become 'rudimentary' appendages. In the hour of distress Mystery-worship with mischievous and ill-directed sympathy had tried to drown men's legitimate and reasonable cravings, and to intoxicate them out of consciousness of their despair. Christianity meanwhile, had owed its strength and achieved its progress by recognizing the misery, the helplessness, the degradation of the world, and by supplying it with a solution of its misery, and also with a hope of redemption from it.

There was one other system which recognized the same unsatisfied aspirations and present discontent, and strove not altogether ineffectively to prescribe an explanation and a remedy. This system was Neo-Platonism. Historically it was collateral rather than antagonistic to Christianity. Its genius was philosophical, not sectarian; it was the intellectual expression of that revulsion against skepticism and materialism, which distinguishes third century thought. Not only did Pyrrhonism and Epicureanism die completely out, but the intellectual revolt against them took a positive form. The craving after worship, after some sure ground of belief, after communion with the deity, in a word the spiritual element in man's nature reasserted itself, and evolved a philosophic system at once reverential, dogmatic, and spiritual. To skepticism the new philosophy opposed dogmatism, to materialism an ascetic idealism. The astounding boldness of the attempt is one of its most striking features. Starting from no historical basis, and claiming no direct revelation, on the sole strength of intuitive belief, it assumed its fundamental truth, and thence passing from step to step, lost in excess of daring, framed a spacious and elaborate theology, by which it strove to solve or elucidate the inscrutable problems that on all sides confronted it. It reposed upon complete subjectivity: “the soul turned inwards upon itself, and there read the nature of God and the riddle of existence. Perfect abstraction from all without, when the soul centres upon itself, beholds beauty past understanding is the realization of the highest life and identification with the divine”. It remains, if nothing else, a standing witness to the permanent strength, the irresistible determination and the boundless daring of the spiritual instinct of man.

In its original and most worthy cast Neo-Platonism was a system of philosophy. The satisfaction it offered was primarily intellectual, though it did not neglect, but indeed gave a splendid primacy to the spiritual element in man. In religious precision and definiteness of aim it towered above previous tentative efforts. It threw its whole strength of abstract thought and exposition into the fundamental questions concerning the being and attributes of God, the 'origin and existence of evil, the constitution and government of the phenomenal world, the nature and powers of the human soul, and the relations connecting together matter, man and God. The foundation of the system was laid in a reconstruction or interpretation of Platonic teaching; but it claimed and not unsuccessfully, to absorb into itself all previous philosophies, all at least that acknowledged any active or even potential communion between God and man. It reconciled them not by arbitrary identification as offshoots from a common Platonic or Socratic stock, but as varying expressions of a single truth, which truth was declared to be perfectly enshrined and secreted in Plato. It is this which gives to Neo-Platonism its markedly eclectic character.

It assimilated mystic numerical formulae from Neo-Pythagoreanism; it accepted all that was truest in the syncretic liberalism of revived Platonism: it endorsed the austere morality of the Stoic, and by its emanation system appropriated his captivating Pantheism; so far as mere reason was concerned it admitted the contention of the sceptic; it practically borrowed from Aristotle his scientific methods and forms of thought; while its obligations to Plato require no mention. It went further afield than Greek philosophy. Its new and hazardous conception of God as above all quality and specification, and its metaphysical separation of the Divine Mind from the absolute God is found in germ if anywhere in the Judaeo-Alexandrine doctrines of Philo: its views of matter, its account of the communication of the Deity to phenomenal things through intermediate agencies and gradations of being, its transcendental conception of the Godhead itself exhibit striking analogies to Gnostic teaching, and at least a superficial resemblance to the most original results of Oriental speculation.

But Neo-Platonism did not concoct an undigested conglomerate of rival ideas, and call it a philosophy. It gave organic unity to the elements it incorporated. If it assimilated the strength, it radically modified the principle of Stoic Pantheism; it gave up the hard mechanical notion of the literal transfusion of the Deity through all parts of the universe, for it justly appeared a profane and illogical materializing of God to suppose him actually present as fire or air-current or animating soul in all phenomenal objects. It substituted for this the more elevated notion of a dynamic and not a mechanical inherence, of an inward sustainment and impulse, an ever-present effect of divine will constituting for each creature the law of its being and the condition of existence. It recognized an indestructible duality, where Stoics discerned an indissoluble unity.

To Chrysippus God was in all things; to Plotinus all things were in God. Again, Neo-Platonism, we have said, conceded, nay reaffirmed and emphasized the skeptic invalidation of reason; but it escaped the Nihilism, which appeared its logical corollary, by revealing and calling into play a new faculty transcending reason, superseding it both in scope and efficacy. Even to the dicta of Plato it yielded no servile obedience: it selected and developed at pleasure. Metaphysical hints from the Sophistes and Protagoras, enigmatic allusions or metaphors from the Republic, speculative imagery from the Timaeus equipped it with doctrines which so exceeded as almost to efface much of Plato's most essential teaching. Convinced of the untrustworthiness of phenomena and sense-knowledge, Plato had taken refuge in the Ideal theory. He had claimed objective reality for Thought and Knowledge. They alone  were   real;   their  embodied forms peopled a suprasensual world of pure being. But the Neo-Platonist improved upon this conception. To him the “Ideas”, the “Intelligible Forms” as he called them, were not the  highest and  last  grade. They retained indeed their exaltation above the world of sense, but became intermediary agents whereby the effects of the primal One, the First Principle of all things, were conveyed to that world. In a word, the Platonic dualism between Thought and Sense, Pure Being and Phenomena, was superseded and merged in a Unity transcending both. So far from asserting the truth and absolute existence of thought, this theory accomplished the reverse; for it represented the ground of thought as uncognizable.

Some ninety years before the birth of Julian there had come to Rome a stranger whose worn but philosophic garb, whose bright though sunken eye denoted at once the genius and the ascetic. The wisdom of Zoroaster, and the secret lore of India exercised it was said a strange spell over his imagination, but his training had been in the Greek philosophy; he was an adoring pupil of the Alexandrian, Ammonius Sakkas, who as an apostate Christian, under color of the faith he had abjured, gave catechetical instruction under a veil of Pythagorean secrecy in the new doctrine he professed. Plotinus, such was the stranger's name, opened a school at Rome, and became the Chrysippus of the Neo-Platonic philosophy. Disciplined austerity of person combined with rare acuteness and intensity of mind, and a philosophic fervor of conviction that bordered upon inspiration attracted pupils of every grade and temperament: emperors and titled dames mingled in his saloon with trained philosophers or threadbare students. For many years his characteristic and esoteric doctrines remained a secret, uncommitted to writing and but obscurely hinted in oral discourse. At length the representations or feigned attacks of favourite pupils, Amelius and Porphyry, induced him to systematize his philosophy. The result was the Enneads.

The central aim of Plotinus was to explain and establish the connection between God, man and the world. To this he pertinaciously adhered. He disregarded Physics; he meddled but little with Logic; even his Ethics were rigidly subordinated to his metaphysical inquiries. Only the roughest outline of his system can be here attempted; that is a necessary preface to any understanding of Julian's philosophical position.

Spirit and Matter stand at opposite poles. Man in his twofold nature implies the existence of both, testifies to the connection of the two, and craves after an explanation of that connection. Its nature and its mode are the problems set before him. In the Spirit world, such is the answer of Plotinus, there exists  a triad—the One, Intelligence, and Soul. These are not three persons or substances of a co-equal Trinity, but denote three descending orders of Spiritual Being.

At the summit of all, absolute, unconditioned, ineffable and incomprehensible stands the One. Unlike the One or the Good of Plato, the One of Plotinus is not an Idea, but rather the principle of all Ideas, itself raised above the sphere of the Ideas, and transcending all determinations of existence, so that neither rest nor motion, not even Being or not-Being can be predicated of it. It transcends thought, for thought implies a duality, still less can it be the Good, for that admits of a multiplicity of determinations. Its imperfect name, the One, is but an approximate description, correct only so far as absolute Oneness excludes the attribution of any but negative predicates.

The One is not all things, but before all things. Unapproachable by thought, it is  known only in its effects. In what way all things, the Many, were evolved from the One, transcends human treason to conceive. It is the overflowing source of essential Being, but as such even in emitting energy experiences no change, nor is its pre-existent Oneness affected or impaired.

From this excess of radiated energy, related to the One, as the image to the original,  the sun to light, proceeded Nous or Intelligence. Classed next to the One, towards which it constantly turns, it represents the smallest degree of departure from absolute Oneness and perfection. Thought and Being, the latter being the posterior of the two and definable as Thought made stationary, are regarded as its fundamental determinations. It is pure spirit still, hampered by none of the limitations or imperfections that attend on matter, independent of space or time, enjoying a repose which consists in equable and unchanging motion, so that its whole being is absolute activity. Emanating from the One, this Nous becomes in its turn the basis of all existence, for it includes as immanent parts of itself all the Ideas. In fact the whole sum of Ideas, regarded as a unity, constitutes the N0us, which thus becomes the determining source of all being and all thought. The spiritual order which it contains and pervades is called the Intelligible World. From this every element of phenomenal finiteness is absent, and it combines in itself the apparent contradictories of absolute plurality, as containing perfectly all forms of being, and yet of perfect unity, with which it is imbued by the primal One. Harmony with this Now is the highest goal to which the spiritual part of man can attain.

The third factor in the Trinity, Soul, stands in the same relation to Nous, as Nous to the One. It is the image or reflection of Nous, as the moon's light to the sun's. It too belongs still to the order of Spirit, but is as it were on the outer fringe of the circle illumined by the central One. Nous may be represented by an inner immovable sphere described about the great centre of all Being, Soul as an outer movable sphere turning about the interior Nous. Spirit has now by a series of acts of self-estrangement from its creative centre reached the lowest gradation of which it is capable. Light has reached the confines of darkness, and potential connection with matter has been secured: by another metaphor Soul is spoken of as extended Nous, which, just as the point extended becomes a line, is now brought within touch of matter. Thus Soul is made the link between the Many and the One, Best and Motion, Eternity and Time. Into the subtler minutiae of the double World-Soul, Earth-Soul, and Separate Souls, it is needless to enter. The final contact with Matter is established by emanative action analogous to that by which the One passed into Nous and Nous into Soul. On the nature of this so-called emanation it behoves to speak shortly.

Emanation is only a clumsy mode, imposed by the limitations of human thought and expression, of representing a transcendental act or series of acts. It should be called rather eternal procession, for it must not be regarded as occurring in time at all. The divisions of the triad as just described are all alike co-eternal; so too is matter, and the interdependence and relations of all these to each other. Further in Neo-Platonic emanation there is no communication of being, passing into or calling into existence lower intermediary orders: herein it is quite distinct from the emanation of Oriental philosophies. The First Cause is in essence incommunicable: there is a communication of force or effect only, not of being. The One, Nous and Soul are in themselves absolutely unaffected by any emanation to which they give rise: it does not take place at their expense: they are occupied solely with that from which they emanated. Emanation  is  not even  produced  by any act of volition, still less of self-impartition: it takes place by an internal land natural necessity, which is a part of the nature of Spirit, no more consciously exercised than gravity by a particle. Lastly, each act of emanation represents a degradation: Nous is lower than the One, and the Soul than Nous, though in its proper sphere each is perfect. By such progressive stages of imperfection is it alone possible to bridge the illimitable gulf between Spirit and Matter.

With regard to Matter, some substratum appeared to Plotinus a necessary assumption involved by the existence of the phenomenal world. This substratum he regards as the absolute privation of all being or quality. As such it is wholly unthinkable, and can be described by negatives only, as formless, indeterminate, unqualified and the like. One positive attribute it does appear at first sight to possess. It is the cause and origin of all Evil, which cannot by possibility be derived from the spiritual nature of the emanative Soul. This is explained however by representing Evil as a negative quantity, a certain absence or deprivation of Good which belongs properly to Matter. Into Matter so conceived Soul entering by voluntary emanation produces the phenomenal world, almost every degree of intermixture or rather propor­tionate prevalence of the elements being provided for by gradations descending from angels, daemons and heroes through men to animals and inanimate matter.

Of Neo-Platonic anthropology or ethics no analysis need be given, but its most original and characteristic tenet demands an allusion. Intelligence the highest rational faculty of man might, as in the Platonic scheme, be trained more and more to harmony with the supreme Nous. Yet by no conceivable perfection of mere reason could the finite attain to communion with the incomprehensible infinite. The nature of the two things forbade it. Reduced by rigorous metaphysical reasoning to this result, and yet intuitively assured that knowledge of the infinite was within the range of man, Plotinus fell back on the doctrine of Ecstasy. Above reason and above intelligence man, so he taught, possesses an energy kindred to the One whereby he may attain to direct communion with it.

Leaving thought and spirit behind, divesting itself of personality and individual consciousness, the soul by an ecstatic elevation of being might enter into actual unification or contact with God, and become absorbed in the Infinite Intelligence from which it emanated. For that rapturous space reminiscence might be changed into intuition. Weaned altogether from the flesh, disenthralled of desire and lust, trained to the sincere unalloyed contemplation of the divine Ideas, four times in a lifetime was Plotinus caught up to the seventh heaven and admitted to this transcending and ineffable communion: and once, when he was an old man of near seventy, the same exalted privilege was vouchsafed to Porphyry. For this supreme end, this final term of knowledge, the Neo-Platonist was invited to mortify the flesh, to pursue after virtue and to purify the soul.  Such was his incentive and his reward.

As regards all forms of religion Plotinus himself had the Popular intellectual strength to take a singularly independent attitude. The spirit of his system was doubtless antagonistic to Christianity: that reposed on objective historical facts by which it declared God was brought down to man; while Neo-Platonism from a purely subjective basis claimed to enable men to rise to God. The analogies that appear between the two are more verbal than real. On the other hand, Neo-Platonism lent itself readily to current Pagan beliefs: its final monotheism left abundant room for any amount of subordinate polytheism. This Plotinus admitted without turning aside to corroborate or refute details. To him Paganism was an amplified and not always trustworthy commentary, which fell short of deserving a place in his text.

Such is a rough outline of Plotinus' solution of the great world-problem. It attained its purest and most masculine successors development in his hands. His successor Porphyrius did indeed add details and advance individual arguments a step or two further, but was little more than a skilful and trusty expositor: such real modification as he did introduce was in the direction of coordination of Pagan beliefs with Neo-Platonic philosophy, and the abandonment of the free position taken by Plotinus towards all extant forms of religion.

But under Iamblichus the school entered upon what is justly regarded as a new stage. Though overflowing with intellectual pretentiousness he added nothing of metaphysical or ethical value. To him the religious attitude of the philosophy became all in all. He caught at numerical formula of the Pythagoreans, and though in that department he discovered nothing new and misunderstood much that was old, proclaimed that there lay deep secrets of religion and philosophy. He multiplied Gods ad nauseam: he accumulated insipid divisions and subdivisions of spiritual genera. In fact, he and the Syrian School used to fatal effect the mysticism which Plotinus' own intellect had not always kept in bounds.

They employed Neo-Platonism as an engine against Christianity, as the new and last stronghold of Polytheism. They converted a school of inquirers into a church of believers. In order to this they recklessly degraded their philosophy. In attempting to popularize they also irremediably vulgarized: they depreciated the intellectual side, to expand the mystical or theurgic. They exalted Pythagoras and deposed Aristotle. Iamblichus, foiled in a dialectical discussion, coolly replied that the intuitions of virtue were above logic. Julian fell into the hands of this school when he was referred by his first teachers to one who “for the grandeur and power of his natural intellect could discard philosophical demonstration”. In spite of the protests of the aged Porphyry, magic or theurgy was made the highest branch of philosophy. “The philosopher” while admitting a true art of augury and divination, in a series of skeptical questions and doubts partly practical and partly metaphysical, criticized many current manifestations of the art as interposing material obstacles between man and God, with whom the heart was the one true organ of communion and revealer of oracles, and did not conceal his perplexity concerning the modes, and causes, and tests of divination depending on the strange material mediums or adjuncts which were coming into vogue.

Thus in his Epistle to Anebon, the cygneus cantus of the dying sage, he enters his final protest against the new-fangled hocus-pocus of priestcraft. But in vain: cabbalistic fatuity, fantastic ceremonies, bloody initiative rites, miracles, evocation of spirits, theophanies, sorceries, with their accompanying abominations came crowding in. Superstition and philosophy signed an adulterous compact, and were made one flesh. The intellectual  ingenuity with which Iamblichus made necromancy and thaumaturgy the handmaids of philosophy only wakens a regret that his talents were not better employed than in stultifying the learned and imposing on the incredulous.

With the third stage of Neo-Platonism, the acute but sterile scholastic period of Proclus, an essay on Julian has no concern.

 

IV.

JULIAN'S   THEOLOGY.