CHAPTER IV.

THE NEO-PLATONISTS.

IT may appear strange to some that in a work like this, where we have not scrupled to represent such men as Pythagoras and the Ionians as having in more or less degree influenced and opened the way up to pantheistic philosophy (although, of course, they themselves cannot be called wholly pantheistic in their tenets), that we should not reckon Plato amongst the number of those whom we might at all events denominate imperfect pantheists. Plato with his three principles of God, Matter, and Ideas; Plato with his doctrines of Reminiscence and of innate ideas; Plato with his strong belief in the immortality of the soul; Plato with his doctrine of the One Universal Existence, of which all other objects were but transitory phenomena: surely such a teacher should, to say the least of it, be considered as pantheistic in his tenets as a Thales or an Anaximander. Yet we have two reasons which we think may be considered sufficient justification for our not thus treating of him. The first is that he never repudiated the popular belief in polytheism, but, on the contrary, tacitly implied his entire acceptance of it; in which case, if he really believed in a plurality of gods, by no possible means could he have been a pantheist; for, as we have often remarked, pantheism is always the strictest monotheism. Secondly, and chiefly, it is almost as difficult for us to decide upon what were the real opinions of Plato, either religious or philosophical, as it would be for us to decide upon what were the

Plato

philosophical or religious opinions of Shakspere. almost entirely wrote in dialogues, but we have no reason to infer that his own opinions were such as he put into the mouths of his several dramatis persona; even if we did so infer we should not know which of those opinions to choose, for he is almost as catholic in his views as Shakspere himself. And we might nearly as well maintain, for instance, that Shakspere was strongly opposed to the marriage between a woman and her deceased husband's brother, because he has made an injured Hamlet designate such a marriage as incestuous, as maintain that Plato was portraying his own opinions through the speeches of any of the dramatis persona of the dialogues. If there were any one of these dramatis persone more likely than another for Plato to select as his mouthpiece, it would surely be his revered master and teacher Socrates. Yet what do we find? In the Protagoras, Plato represents Socrates as maintaining that the Good is identical with the Pleasurable, and the Evil identical with the Painful; and in the Gorgias he is represented as maintaining exactly the reverse. time we find Plato displaying a sort of theological rancour against those who ventured to question the authenticity of the Greek fables and legends. At another time we find him exhibiting as great a purity of pantheistic conception as the Eleatics themselves; we find him declaring that God, or the Good, was the supreme Idea, the Cause of all things celestial and terrestrial, the One Being who comprised within Himself all other beings. It is hopeless, therefore, to seek to gain any real knowledge of the true opinions of Plato; and we have, consequently, thought it wiser not to borrow so doubtful an aid in illustration of the general tenets of pantheism.

At one

But although we have refused to designate the teaching of Plato as pantheistic, that teaching, nevertheless, gave rise to a system of philosophy calling itself by his name, though arising nearly four hundred years after his death,

which was wholly and entirely pantheistic in its principles. That system called itself by the name of the Neo-Platonic Philosophy; and its disciples were pantheists, not in the doubtful sense of Anaximenes or Pythagoras, but wholly and completely pantheists as much as were the Eleatics themselves. The pantheism of the Neo-Platonists, it is true, differed from that of the Eleatics, but it differed in kind, not in degree. The pantheism of the Eleatics was a philosophy; the pantheism of the Neo-Platonists was a Theology; and in order to be able to trace the reason why Theology had thus taken the place of Philosophy, it is necessary to give a slight sketch of the gradual changes through which Philosophy had passed during these four hundred years.

We must recollect that Anaxagoras, as well as the Eleatics, had come to the conclusion that the Senses were deceptive and unreliable, and gave us no criterion of Truth; and that consequently Reason was to take the place of Sense as a guide in life. But for the investigation of the physical universe, or of Being, even Reason seemed scarcely adequate or sufficient; and a kind of dreary, painful uncertainty was the result. After the Eleatics arose Socrates, who, perceiving the uselessness and futility of all enquiry into the Why or Wherefore of phenomena, was determined to devote himself instead to the study and investigation of Conduct. With Socrates, therefore, Philosophy was passing into an ethical phase. After Socrates came Plato, whose chief doctrine (as far as we can glean from such a conflicting and contradictory confusion of doctrines) was that all knowledge was Reminiscence, a revival of preexisting Ideas. Then followed Aristotle, utterly opposed to the Subjective Method of Plato. He taught that complete knowledge could only be gained by complete experience; and it is Reason alone that is capable of teaching us how to profit by the lessons of Experience. He did not disdain Reminiscence; but by Reminiscence he meant a

past experience, whereas Plato by the same word meant a remembrance, a recollection or recalling of things that had happened in a supposed previous state of existence. Thus with Aristotle, Moral Philosophy was again changing into Mental Philosophy; and the study of Logic was taking the place of the study of Ethics. After Aristotle arose Pyrrho, the founder of the sceptical school of philosophy. In the last chapter we slightly touched upon the logical and impregnable character of his philosophy. His principal occupation consisted in the exposure of the futility of all the philosophical systems alike. He showed how the Ionians had been succeeded by Pythagoras, Pythagoras in his turn by the Eleatics, and that the Eleatics, after demolishing or rejecting the systems preceding their own, were forced to acknowledge with Anaxagoras that 'nothing could be known; nothing was certain; everything is as it appears, and as it is seldom things appear in the same light to two different persons, it follows that all sense knowledge must be utterly untrustworthy.' Pyrrho then showed how completely the Ideal theory of Plato had been refuted by Aristotle, who had exposed it by showing that it had only a Subjective and not an Objective reality. Pyrrho therefore declared all attempts at philosophy to be equally futile; that as a criterion of Truth even Reason itself had proved very little superior to Sense. Now, although Pyrrho, who was a good, honourable man, and held in universal esteem, was undoubtedly unconscious of where his system was leading, it is obvious that, by his exposure of the futility of Reason as a guide in life, he was in reality destroying the moral system of Socrates quite as much as he was destroying the philosophical systems of Aristotle, Plato, or the Ionians and Eleatics. Not that he intended to do so; on the contrary, he insisted most strongly on the cultivation of moral principles; but it is obvious that his philosophy, if logically carried out, would destroy all faith in moral investigation quite as much as it would destroy all faith in physical or

philosophical investigation. For where would be the utility of striving to seek the Good and shun the Evil, if there be no criterion of Truth to enlighten us as to what really is the Good, what really is the Evil? Pyrrho, then, may well be called the founder of the Sceptical philosophy. Consciously or unconsciously there was not a single system he had not destroyed.

How, then, or in what, was the future life of man to be spent? Should he fold his hands in silent despair, and wait till death released him from so profitless and inane a thing as life; or should he content himself with being a mere animal and leading the life of one? But man is more than an animal; or rather when he ceases to be more, he will become less than one. He will never be able to live a life completely and entirely that of an animal. Being possessed and endowed with thoughts, he must of necessity employ them; if therefore he ceases to be a man, he will quickly become a devil, and employ those thoughts in imaginations of wickedness utterly beyond the capability of any animal. How, then, should he spend his life? Were there no ways but these two-the listless idleness of despair and indifference, or the wild excesses of utter demoralisation? Yes, there was one system yet to be tried. Amongst all the philosophical systems that had been built up only to fall helplessly to pieces at the first rough blow of an outsider, there was yet one that had not been tried ; one that was at least worth the experiment of erecting and waiting to see if its foundations were more sure than those of its predecessors. The groundwork of that system was the cultivation and study of Happiness, and the name of its founder was Epicurus.

Though the objective quality Goodness or the Good were a phantasm (or if a reality, a reality past the discovery of man), yet there could surely be no delusion about the subjective sensation of Happiness. Men might indeed differ as to the objects and pursuits most capable of giving