Augustin

and Proclus.

Vision of

Unity and Good won through the

some nearer passage to it than through those orders of beings who, howsoever his intellect may arrange and compose them, introduce plurality into his thoughts, and disturb his efforts to dwell in a region that is above it. We will frankly own, that if we had not travelled this road before with Augustin, and had not learnt by what a painful and practical method he was led to behold the absolute Good, the absolute One, as inseparable from a Person in whom he lived, and moved, and had his being, if we had not learnt how he found in Whom this Unity and Goodness might be approached and apprehended, these enquiries of Proclus would seem to us utterly interminable, full of the profoundest interest and the profoundest despair, each step The highest involving a new contradiction, with the perpetual fear that if the mists ever should disperse, and the different forms which perplexed the vision while it was beset by them disappear, experience nothing would remain but vacancy. When the Commentary is read along with the Confessions, a light falls on it; all the hints of a philosophical method whereby a man may disengage himself from the phantoms of sense, and begin to see things as they are, to recognise a unity in them, to see a unity above and beyond them, for which Proclus is indebted to Socrates, promise to become practically helpful. The Theurgy which was derived from his own immediate masters, is translated from a vague, half believed superstition, necessary to fill up the blanks in philosophy, into a divine science which is at the root of it, and which quickens it. Even the pettinesses and paltrinesses of the sage give us a kind of interest in him, as witnesses that he shared our frailties, and that a complete system never shall be wrought out in God's living universe, which shall not betray its own feebleness, and let in the light and air of heaven through a thousand cracks and fissures.

of sorrow and evil.

Proclus

15. There are three treatises by Proclus, the original of which according to is lost, but of which the substance is preserved in a Latin Morbeka. translation by a Corinthian Archbishop of the twelfth century.

For the easy and tolerably flowing Greek of the Athenian scholar we have the uncouth version of a man who was trying to render philosophical thoughts into a language which he imperfectly understood, and which he must have considered more unfit for the purpose than it actually was. Yet we have the bad taste to think these on the whole the most valuable compositions which Proclus has bequeathed to us; valuable partly for the very cause which makes the reading of them painful. Merely to a philologer, the spectacle of a Greek struggling to find Latin equivalents for his words, or when that task is hopeless, giving them Latin terminations, is amusing and not unin

ed. Paris,

themselves.

structive. But to the historian of philosophy, who is about very value of the shortly to leave the original home of science, where all the translation, finest shades and distinctions of thought and speculation Vol. 1. had become familiar and conventional, to see a set of hardy Latinised Goths awakening to a new world of invisible things, and trying to make the visible world which they were subduing with sword and ploughshare, furnish them with instruments for expounding the secrets of it, books are of immense value which connect the perishing cultivation with the fresh and hopeful barbarism. Morbeka's translation serves this purpose. And as the works with which he has presented us are not lectures, And of the but letters or essays, Proclus appears less in the character of a Treatises verbal critic; his worship of Plato does not afford him the same excuse for endless gossiping. Not that Plato is ever forgotten. In the opening of the second of his treatises on Providence, he Etenim boldly affirms that the preservation of the sacred Platonical hanc ipsam oracles, and the handing down of them from age to age, through traditionem a series of worthy auditors, is itself a demonstration of Provi- Deorum dence, were others wanting. At the same time he declares with auditores much truth, as we have already intimated, that the study of Plato had awakened and not stifled his self-reflection, and that tissimam Mercury being their common teacher, it signified little whether demonstrathe words had been first uttered by the ancients or elaborated tionem, &c, by himself.

oraculorum

ad dignos

æstimo esse

aper

Providentiæ

p. 91.

Hanc Provi

dentiam

ut solum

Humanæ

16. The first of these treatises is " On Providence and Fate, Opinion of and that which is in us;" the second resolves ten doubts about Theodorus. P. 10, § 2. Providence; the third treats of the subsistence of evil things. Theodorus, to whom the first of these treatises is addressed, had adopted a theory of the universe which he was certainly not the first or the last to maintain. Looking at the various tragical and comical connections of human events, he supposed them to be held together by a certain mechanical law or fate. This he hymnizasti was disposed to call Providence, and to endue with free-will. modo But that which is called free-will in man, he rejected as merely avτegóvσLov. nominal and imaginary. Fate, then, and Providence differed autem according to Theodorus, in that the first expressed a series of animæ antecedents and consequents, the latter the necessity which pro- auтegóvσiov duces these. Proclus, on the contrary, proposes to show, 1st. nomen That Fate and Providence are both causes of the world, and of the things which come to pass in the world, but that Providence is antecedent to Fate, that all things which happen according to causas Fate come to pass by a much earlier law from Providence, but that the converse is not true, for that the whole order of things in mundo depending directly on Providence, is diviner than Fate. præexistere 2nd. That there is one soul which is separable from the body, ? videntiam

vulgatum

solum esse.

Ambo

quidem

mundi et eorum quæ

fiunt, esse,

autem Pro

Fato et onia

quidem

fiunt secundùm Fatum

multò prius à Provi

dentiâ fieri,

p. 12.

Scientiam et

aliam

quidem inexistere

animabus

quamvis sint

vitam;

1efugienti

and comes down from above from the gods into this mortal sphere; that there is another dwelling in bodies which cannot quæcunque be separated from the things that are lying about it and beneath, that the latter indeed depends upon Fate, but the other upon Providence, in virtue of its own substance. 3d. That there is one kind of knowledge and truth in souls brought under the law of generation and birth, even though they be spotless in life, another to those who fly from this mortal sphere and have Veritatem established themselves in that place whence they first fell and descended hither. If these distinctions are fully recognised, he thinks that all the difficulties of the subject will be cleared in genera- away. It will be evident in what wise many things escape tione versis Fate, but Providence nothing. It will be evident from the immaculata second proposition, how truly there is a free-will in that prinsecundùm ciple which is within us, but how when this obeys necessity, aliam autem and is led by Fate, its freedom becomes languid and dead, in bus ex hoc consequence of an evil life, though it still participates in a loco et factis certain phantom of choice in virtue of the better soul which is its neighbour. From the third position we discover what casus, et qui Parmenides, Socrates, and Plato meant when they said that the soul, after it is purged from earthly passions and mixtures, may even here perceive truth, and will enjoy a nobler and purer science after it has been released the laws of birth and matter. 17. Our readers will not be surprised that Proclus should devote his chief diligence to the illustration of the second of these principles, or that the really valuable part of his treatise should be that which treats of the principle in us—that which is immediately under the divine direction, which is free while it acknowledges that direction, which becomes slavish by acknowledging itself merely as a part of nature, and therefore subject to necessity, and yet which can never lose the tokens of a higher origin and life. We must express our gratitude to him for That which having untied with great dexterity some of the knots in

ibi et locatis

unde prius

in hunc

mortalem

locum descensus, page 12.

Palam erit qualiter multa

diffugiunt

Fatum, Providentiam

autem nihil;

(pp 12, 13).

is in us.

The Doubts

on

Providence, p. 91-179.

this most difficult and interesting of all questions: untied them, we mean, so far as to make the logical statement of the problems of human life more precise and clear. The problems themselves have to be worked out by other aid, and under other guidance, than that which he can afford us; but quod dat accipimus, not without some shame for having perhaps undervalued other presents of his by which we might have profited.

17. The ten Doubts on Providence have been in most of our minds, and on the greater part of them Proclus has something to say which is worth listening to. The first (a) is, whether Pro(a) p. 92–98. vidence takes account of all things, of wholes, of parts, even down to the most individual things in the heavens and under

the heavens, eternal things and corruptible. The second (b) () 98—100is, whether Providence takes cognisance of contingencies. The third (e), if Providence is the cause both of things determinate (c) 100–116. and things indeterminate. Is it the cause of both in the same way or in a different way? The fourth (d), is on the question (d) 116–123, how it is possible to participate in the nature of the gods. The fifth (e) is the more terrible question, how evil can have (e) 123-131. place among beings while there is a Providence. The sixth (ƒ) (ƒ)131–144. concerns the inequality of the lives of men in the universe.

The seventh (g) refers to the differences of condition in inani- (g) 144–153. mate creatures apparently not susceptible of moral evil. The eighth (h), refers to the delay of punishments and the apparent (4) 153–168. disconnection between crime and punishment. The ninth (i), (i) 168-174. is on the question how the evils of one generation can be visited upon another. The tenth (k) is in what sense, seeing that Pro- (k) 174–179. vidence has been connected with the unity and with the perfect good, angels, and dæmons, and heroes, can be said to exercise it. The statement of these difficulties may shew us with what awful questionings of the human spirit the Neo-Platonist was willing to engage. Are we to mourn that he did not provide us with formulas for the settlement of them which could save us from the necessity of encountering them ourselves?

treatise,

p. 197.

tractasse

illius

18. The questions mooted in the third treatise are these. Third Whether Evil is or not. If it is, whether in things intellectual or not. If in things sensible, whether in virtue of that which is their original cause. If not, whether substance is in any wise to be ascribed to it, or it is to be set down as wholly unsubstantial. If it has subsistence, in what wise it subsists, and whither it tends: how, there being a Providence, Evil is and whence it is. On all these points he says, and before all, he must adhere to the doctrine of Plato; he can do nothing Nibil if he departs from him. As we have already made copious reputabimur extracts from the book of Plotinus which refers to this subject, nobis ab we shall not trouble our readers with a discussion proceeding theoria deckfrom what, in spite of M. Cousin, we must consider an infe- dentibus, rior mind. Both sages arrive at the same conclusion. The P. 198. following passage will perhaps assist us as much in understanding the object and the result of the treatise as any we could select. "Of all things it would seem to be the most difficult to know the nature of Evil in itself, seeing that all knowledge P. 273–274, is the knowledge of species or form. But Evil is without $5. form, and, so to speak, privation. Perhaps, however, we may arrive at some satisfaction on this point, too, by contemplating Good in itself, and the nature of things which are good. For as the primary good is beyond and above all things, so Evil in itself is that which is divested of all

ipsam

secundùm

esse ait ;

good. In so far forth as it is evil, it is the defect and privation of this. In what wise Good subsists, and what degrees it has, has been set forth elsewhere. But Evil, as Evil, is that which is separated from the fountain of Good; separated in so far as it is objectless and vague from the primary object; in so far as it is weakness, from the power which dwells in that object; in so far as it is want of harmony, falsehood, or baseness, from beauty and truth, and that by which things are united; in so far as it is restless and unstable from the abiding Injustitiam and eternal unity; in so far as it is privation and unvitality, from the first Monad and the life which is in it; in so far as it se debilem tends to corrupt, and divide, and make imperfect, the things et inactivam with which it hath to do, from the goodness which is bringing justitiæ the universe to perfection. For the corruptive draws from that autem which is to that which is not; the divisive destroys the contipotentiam nuity and union of being; the imperfect takes from each thing habere et ad the perfection and order which belongs to its own nature. He goes on to explain with considerable skill and subtlety, in sui ipsius though confessing that all he says has been said before by Plato, how that which is evil and unjust while in itself it is only negative, yet derives a kind of positiveness and reality from the presence of the goodness and justice to which it is opposed. quoniam et And thus it is intelligible how might should belong essentially to right, and be inseparable from it; the very power which seems to belong to wrong being in fact derived from the fellowship of participatio- that which it is weakening and undermining.

præsentiâ et

agere duci

non

manentem

naturâ,

neque in

ζωία privatione solùm,

præjacens

Ipsum vitale ens dat et malo vitæ

nem, p. 276.

Proclus

practically the last of

an age.

Recapitula

tion.

19. With this precious moral truth upon his lips we take a friendly farewell of Proclus. The parting is somewhat more solemn, because, as our readers must have gathered from our previous remarks, it is not from a man merely but from a period. Whatever be the merits or the defects of this Platonical teacher, it is with him the Greek philosophy, as such, closes its records. We do not mean that he left no successors. It was in the next century, not in this, that the Athenian schools were closed. But it had done whatever it had to do when Proclus delivered his last lecture. Our friend the Corinthian Archbishop, in his barbarous Latin-Greek lingo, signifies to us that whatever had been once spoken in the proper tongue of the wise men, must undergo a transformation before it could live again. And, therefore, we must stand still for a moment, though we have studied the different parts of the landscape with some care, that we may consider it as a whole before it vanishes from us.

20. We spoke in the former part of this treatise of the Platonical dialogues as treating of Being, or that which is and which may be detected amidst all the confused appearances of things; of Ideas, which could neither be said to exist in the