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possesses considerable interest, both on account of the information
which it was intended to supply, and also as affording indirect
evidence of the height to which superstition had risen during the
third century of our era. Plotinus gave his friends to understand that
he was born in Egypt about 205 A.D.; but so reluctant was he to
mention any circumstance connected with his physical existence,
that his race and parentage always remained a mystery. He showed
somewhat more communicativeness in speaking of his mental
history, and used to relate in after-life that at the age of twenty-
eight he had felt strongly attracted to the study of philosophy, but
remained utterly dissatisfied with what the most famous teachers of
Alexandria had to tell him on the subject. At last he found in
Ammonius Saccas the ideal sage for whom he had been seeking,
and continued to attend his lectures for eleven years. At the end of
that period, he joined an eastern expedition under the Emperor
Gordian, for the purpose of making himself acquainted with the
wisdom of the Persians and Indians, concerning which his curiosity
seems to have been excited by Ammonius. But his hopes of further
enlightenment in that quarter were not fulfilled. The campaign
terminated disastrously; the emperor himself fell at the head of his
troops in Mesopotamia, and Plotinus had great difficulty in escaping
with his life to Antioch. Soon afterwards he settled in Rome, and
remained there until near the end of his life, when ill-health obliged
him to retire to a country seat in Campania, the property of a
deceased friend, Zêthus. Here the philosopher died, in the sixty-sixth
year of his age.
Plotinus seems to have begun his career as a public teacher soon
after taking up his residence in Rome. His lectures at first assumed
the form of conversations with his private friends. Apparently by way
of reviving the traditions of Socrates and Plato, he encouraged them
to take an active part in the discussion: but either he did not possess
the authority of his great exemplars, or the rules of Greek dialogue
were not very strictly observed in Rome; for we learn from the
report of an eye-witness that interruptions were far too frequent,
and that a vast amount of nonsense was talked.408 Afterwards a
more regular system of lecturing was established, and papers were
read aloud by those who had any observations to offer, as in our
own philosophical societies.
The new teacher gathered round him a distinguished society,
comprising not only professional philosophers, but also physicians,
rhetors, senators, and statesmen. Among the last-mentioned class,
Rogatianus, who filled the office of praetor, showed the sincerity of
his conversion by renouncing the dignities of his position,
surrendering his worldly possessions, limiting himself to the barest
necessaries of life, and allowing himself to be dependent even for
these on the hospitality of his friends. Thanks to this asceticism, he
recovered the use of his hands and feet, which had before been
completely crippled with gout.409
The fascination exercised by Plotinus was not only intellectual, but
personal. Singularly affable, obliging, and patient, he was always
ready to answer the questions of his friends, even laying aside his
work in order to discuss the difficulties which they brought to him for
solution. His lectures were given in Greek; and although this always
remained to him a foreign language, the pronunciation and grammar
of which he never completely mastered, his expressions frequently
won admiration by their felicity and force; and the effect of his
eloquence was still further heightened by the glowing enthusiasm
which irradiated his whole countenance, naturally a very pleasing
one, during the delivery of the more impressive passages.410
As might be expected, the circle of admirers which surrounded
Plotinus included several women, beginning with his hostess Gemina
and her daughter. He also stood high in the favour of the Emperor
Galienus and his consort Salonina; so much so, indeed, that they
were nearly persuaded to let him try the experiment of restoring a
ruined city in Campania, and governing it according to Plato’s
laws.411 Porphyry attributes the failure of this project to the envy of
the courtiers; Hegel, with probably quite as much reason, to the
sound judgment of the imperial ministers.412
 Our philosopher had, however, abundant opportunity for showing
on a more modest scale that he was not destitute of practical ability.
So high did his character stand, that many persons of distinction,
when they felt their end approaching, brought their children to him
to be taken care of, and entrusted their property to his keeping. As a
result of the confidence thus reposed in him, his house was always
filled with young people of both sexes, to whose education and
material interests he paid the most scrupulous attention, observing
that as long as his wards did not make a profession of philosophy,
their estates and incomes ought to be preserved unimpaired. It is
also mentioned that, although frequently chosen to arbitrate in
disputes, he never made a single enemy among the Roman citizens
—a piece of good fortune which is more than one could safely
promise to anyone similarly circumstanced in an Italian city at the
present day.413
Plotinus possessed a remarkable power of reading the characters
and even the thoughts of those about him. It is said, probably with
some exaggeration, that he predicted the future fate of all the boys
placed under his care. Thus he foretold that a certain Polemo, in
whom he took particular interest, would devote himself to love and
die young; which proved only too true, and may well have been
anticipated by a good observer without the exercise of any
supernatural prescience. As another instance of his penetration, we
are told that a valuable necklace having been stolen from a widow
named Chione, who lived in his house with her family, the slaves
were all led into the presence of Plotinus that he might single out
the thief. After a careful scrutiny, the philosopher put his finger on
the guilty individual. The man at first protested his innocence, but
was soon induced by an application of the whip to confess, and,
what was a much more valuable verification of his accuser’s insight,
to restore the missing article. Porphyry himself could testify from
personal experience to his friend’s remarkable power of penetration.
Being once about to commit suicide, Plotinus divined his intention,
and told him that it proceeded, not from a rational resolution, but
from a fit of the blues, as a remedy for which he prescribed change
of scene, and this did in fact have the desired effect.414
Previous to his forty-ninth year, Plotinus wrote nothing. At that age
he began to compose short essays on subjects which suggested
themselves in the course of his oral teaching. During the next ten
years, he produced twenty-one such papers, some of them only a
page or two in length. At the end of that period, he made the
acquaintance of his future editor and biographer, Porphyry, a young
student of Semitic extraction, whose original name was Malchus. The
two soon became fast friends; and whatever speculative differences
at first divided them were quickly removed by an amicable
controversy between Porphyry and another disciple named Amelius,
which resulted in the unreserved adhesion of the former to the
doctrine of their common master.415 The literary activity of Plotinus
seems to have been powerfully stimulated by association with the
more methodical mind of Porphyry. During the five years416 of their
personal intercourse he produced nineteen essays, amounting
altogether to three times the bulk of the former series. Eight shorter
pieces followed during the period of failing health which preceded
his death, Porphyry being at that time absent in Sicily, whither he
had retired when suffering from the fit of depression already
mentioned.
Porphyry observes that the first series of essays show the
immaturity of youth—a period which he extends to what is generally
considered the sufficiently ripe age of fifty-nine;—the second series
the full-grown power of manhood; and the last the weakness of
declining years. The truth is that his method of criticism, at least in
this instance, was to judge of compositions as if their merit
depended on their length, and perhaps also with reference to the
circumstance whether their subject had or had not been previously
talked over with himself. In point of fact, the earlier pieces include
some of the very best things that Plotinus ever wrote; and, taking
them in the order of their composition, they form a connected
exposition of Neo-Platonic principles, to which nothing of importance
was ever added. This we shall attempt to show in the most effectual
manner possible by basing our own account of Neo-Platonism on an
analysis of their contents; and we strongly recommend them to the
attention of all Greek scholars who wish to make themselves
acquainted with Plotinus at first hand, but have not leisure to wade
through the whole of his works. It may also be mentioned that the
last series of essays are distinguished by the popular character of
their subjects rather than by any evidence of failing powers, one of
them, that on Providence,417 being remarkable for the vigour and
eloquence of its style.
By cutting up some of the longer essays into parts, Porphyry
succeeded, much to his delight, in bringing the whole number up to
fifty-four, which is a product of the two perfect numbers six and
nine. He then divided them into six volumes, each containing nine
books—the famous Enneads of Plotinus. His principle of arrangement
was to bring together the books in which similar subjects were
discussed, placing the easier disquisitions first. This disposition has
been adhered to by subsequent editors, with the single exception of
Kirchhoff, who has printed the works of Plotinus according to the
order in which they were written.418 Porphyry’s scrupulous
information has saved modern scholars an incalculable amount of
trouble, but has not, apparently, earned all the gratitude it deserved,
to judge by Zeller’s intimation that the chronological order of the
separate pieces cannot even now be precisely determined.419
Unfortunately, what could have been of priceless value in the case of
Plato and Aristotle, is of comparatively small value in the case of
Plotinus. His system must have been fully formed when he began to
write, and the dates in our possession give no clue to the manner in
which its leading principles were evolved.420
Such, so far as they can be ascertained, are the most important
facts in the life of Plotinus. Interwoven with these, we find some
legendary details which vividly illustrate the superstition and
credulity of the age. It is evident from his childish talk about the
numbers six and nine that Porphyry was imbued with Pythagorean
ideas. Accordingly, his whole account of Plotinus is dominated by the
wish to represent that philosopher under the guise of a Pythagorean
saint. We have already alluded to the manner in which he exalts his
hero’s remarkable sagacity into a power of supernatural prescience
and divination. He also tells us, with the most unsuspecting good
faith, how a certain Alexandrian philosopher whose jealousy had
been excited by the success of his illustrious countryman,
endeavoured to draw down the malignant influences of the stars on
the head of Plotinus, but was obliged to desist on finding that the
attack recoiled on himself.421 On another occasion, an Egyptian
priest, by way of exhibiting his skill in magic, offered to conjure up
the daemon or guardian spirit of Plotinus. The latter readily
consented, and the Temple of Isis was chosen for the scene of the
operations, as, according to the Egyptian, no other spot sufficiently
pure for the purpose could be found in Rome. The incantations were
duly pronounced, when, much to the admiration of those present, a
god made his appearance instead of the expected daemon. By what
particular marks the divinity of the apparition was determined,
Porphyry omits to mention. The philosopher was congratulated by
his countryman on the possession of such a distinguished patron,
but the celestial visitor vanished before any questions could be put
to him. This mishap was attributed to a friend ‘who, either from envy
or fear, choked the birds which had been given him to hold,’ and
which seem to have played a very important part in the incantation,
though what it was, we do not find more particularly specified.422
Another distinguished compliment was paid to Plotinus after his
death by no less an authority than the Pythian Apollo, who at this
period had fully recovered the use of his voice. On being consulted
respecting the fate of the philosopher’s soul, the god replied by a
flood of bombastic twaddle, in which the glorified spirit of Plotinus is
described as released from the chain of human necessity and the
surging uproar of the body, swimming stoutly to the storm-beaten
shore, and mounting the heaven-illumined path, not unknown to him
even in life, that leads to the blissful abodes of the immortals.423
In view of such tendencies, one hardly knows how much
confidence is to be placed in Porphyry’s well-known picture of his
master as one who lived so entirely for spiritual interests that he
seemed ashamed of having a body at all. We are told that, as a
consequence of this feeling, he avoided the subject of his past life,
refused to let his portrait be painted, neglected the care of his
health, and rigorously abstained from animal food, even when it was
prescribed for him under the form of medicine.424 All this may be
true, but it is not very consistent with the special doctrines of
Plotinus as recorded in his writings, nor should it be allowed to
influence our interpretation of them. In his personal character and
conduct he may have allowed himself to be carried away by the
prevalent asceticism and superstition of the age; in his philosophy he
is guided by the healthier traditions of Plato and Aristotle, and
stands in declared opposition to the mysticism which was a negation
of Nature and of life.
How far Plotinus was indebted to Ammonius Saccas for his
speculative ideas is another question with respect to which the
Pythagoreanising tendencies of his biographer may possibly have
contributed to the diffusion of a serious misconception. What
Porphyry tells us is this. Before leaving Alexandria, Plotinus had
bound himself by a mutual agreement with two of his fellow-pupils,
Herennius and Origines (not the Christian Father, but a pagan
philosopher of the same age and name), to keep secret what they
had learned by listening to the lectures of Ammonius. Herennius,
however, soon broke the compact, and Origines followed his
example. Plotinus then considered that the engagement was at an
end, and used the results of his studies under Ammonius as the
basis of his conversational lectures in Rome, the substance of which,
we are left to suppose, was subsequently embodied in his published
writings. But, as Zeller has pointed out, this whole story bears a
suspicious resemblance to what is related of the early Pythagorean
school. There also the doctrines of the master were regarded by his
disciples as a mystery which they pledged themselves to keep
secret, and were only divulged through the infidelity of one among
their number, Philolaus. And the same critic proves by a careful
examination of what are known to have been the opinions of
Origines and Longinus, both fellow-pupils of Plotinus, that they
differed from him on some points of essential importance to his
system. We cannot, therefore, suppose that these points were
included in the teaching of their common master, Ammonius.425 But
if this be so, it follows that Plotinus was the real founder of the Neo-
Platonic school; and, in all cases, his writings remain the great
source whence our knowledge of its first principles is derived.

III.
In point of style, Plotinus is much the most difficult of the ancient
philosophers, and, in this respect, is only surpassed by a very few of
the moderns. Even Longinus, who was one of the most intelligent
critics then living, and who, besides, had been educated in the same
school with our philosopher, could not make head or tail of his books
when copies of them were sent to him by Porphyry, and supposed,
after the manner of philologists, that the text must be corrupt, much
to the disgust of Porphyry, who assures us that its accuracy was
unimpeachable.426 Probably politeness prevented Longinus from
saying, what he must have seen at a glance, that Plotinus was a
total stranger to the art of literary composition. We are told that he
wrote as fast as if he were copying from a book; but he had never
mastered even the elements of the Greek language; and the
weakness of his eyesight prevented him from reading over what he
had written. The mistakes in spelling and grammar Porphyry
corrected, but it is evident that he has made no alterations in the
general style of the Enneads; and this is nearly as bad as bad can be
—disjointed, elliptical, redundant, and awkward. Chapter follows
chapter and paragraph succeeds to paragraph without any fixed
principle of arrangement; the connexion of the sentences is by no
means clear; some sentences are almost unintelligible from their
extreme brevity, others from their inordinate length and complexity.
The unpractised hand of a foreigner constantly reveals itself in the
choice and collocation of words and grammatical inflections.
Predicates and subjects are huddled together without any regard to
the harmonies of number and gender, so that even if false concords
do not occur, we are continually annoyed by the suggestion of their
presence.427
But even the most perfect mastery of Greek would not have made
Plotinus a successful writer. We are told that before taking up the
pen he had thoroughly thought out his whole subject; but this is not
the impression produced by a perusal of the Enneads. On the
contrary, he seems to be thinking as he goes along, and to be
continually beset by difficulties which he has not foreseen. The
frequent and disorderly interruptions by which his lectures were at
one time disturbed seem to have made their way into his solitary
meditations, breaking or tangling the thread of systematic exposition
at every turn. Irrelevant questions are constantly intruding
themselves, to be met by equally irrelevant answers. The first mode
of expressing an idea is frequently withdrawn, and another put in its
place, which is, in most cases, the less intelligible of the two; while,
as a general rule, when we want to know what a thing is, Plotinus
informs us with indefatigable prolixity what it is not.
Nevertheless, by dint of pertinacious repetition, the founder of
Neo-Platonism has succeeded in making the main outlines, and to a
great extent the details, of his system so perfectly clear that
probably no philosophy is now better understood than his. In this
respect, Plotinus offers a remarkable contrast to the two great
thinkers from whom his ideas are principally derived. While Plato and
Aristotle construct each particular sentence with masterly clearness,
the general drift of their speculations is by no means easy to
ascertain; and, even now, critics take diametrically opposite views of
the interpretation which is to be put on their teaching with regard to
several most important points. The expositors of Neo-Platonism, on
the contrary, show a rare unanimity in their accounts of its
constitutive principles. What they differ about is its origin and its
historical significance. And these are points on which we too shall
have to enter, since all the ancient systems are interesting to us
chiefly as historical phenomena, and Neo-Platonism more so than
any other. Plotinus effected a vast revolution in speculative opinion,
but he effected it by seizing on the thoughts of others rather than by
any new thoughts or even new developments or applications of his
own.
Whether Plotinus was or was not the disciple of Ammonius, it is
beyond all doubt that he considered himself the disciple of Plato.
There are more than a hundred references to that philosopher in the
Enneads, against less than thirty references to all the other ancient
thinkers put together;428 and, what is more remarkable, in only
about half of them is he mentioned by name. The reader is expected
to know that ‘he’ always means Plato. And it is an article of faith
with Plotinus that his master cannot be mistaken; when the words of
oracular wisdom seem to contradict one another, there must be
some way of harmonising them. When they contradict what he
teaches himself, the difficulty must be removed by skilful
interpretation; or, better still, it must be discreetly ignored.429 On
the other hand, when a principle is palpably borrowed from Aristotle,
not only is its derivation unacknowledged, but we are given to
understand by implication that it belongs to the system which
Aristotle was at most pains to controvert.430
But numerous as are the obligations, whether real or imaginary, of
the Alexandrian to the Athenian teacher, they range over a
comparatively limited field. What most interests a modern student in
Platonism—its critical preparation, its conversational dialectic, its
personal episodes, its moral enthusiasm, its political superstructure—
had apparently no interest for Plotinus as a writer. He goes straight
to the metaphysical core of the system, and occupies himself with
re-thinking it in its minutest details. Now this was just the part which
had either not been discussed at all, or had been very insufficiently
discussed by his predecessors. It would seem that the revival of
Platonic studies had followed an order somewhat similar to the order
in which Plato’s own ideas were evolved. The scepticism of the
Apologia had been taken up and worked out to its last consequences
by the New Academy. The theory of intuitive knowledge, the ethical
antithesis between reason and passion, and the doctrine of
immortality under its more popular form, had been resumed by the
Greek and Roman Eclectics. Plutarch busied himself with the erotic
philosophy of the Phaedrus and the Symposium, as also did his
successor, Maximus Tyrius. In addition to this, he and the other
Platonists of the second century paid great attention to the theology
adumbrated in those dialogues, and in the earlier books of the
Republic. But meanwhile Neo-Pythagoreanism had intervened to
break the normal line of development, and, under its influence,
Plutarch passed at once to the mathematical puzzles of the Timaeus.
With Plato himself the next step had been to found a state for the
application of his new principles; and such was the logic of his
system, that the whole stress of adverse circumstances could not
prevent the realisation of a similar scheme from being mooted in the
third century; while, as we have seen, something more remotely
analogous to it was at that very time being carried out by the
Christian Church. Plato’s own disappointed hopes had found relief in
the profoundest metaphysical speculations; and now the time has
come when his labours in this direction were to engage the attention
hitherto absorbed by the more popular or literary aspects of his
teaching.
Now it was by this side of Platonism that Aristotle also had been
most deeply fascinated. While constantly criticising the ideal theory,
he had, in truth, accepted it under a modified form. His universal
classification is derived from the dialectic method. His psychology
and theology are constructed on the spiritualistic basis of the
Academy, and out of materials which the founder of the Academy
had supplied. It was therefore natural that Plotinus should avail
himself largely of the Stagirite’s help in endeavouring to reproduce
what a tradition of six centuries had obscured or confused. To
reconcile the two Attic masters was, as we know, a common school
exercise. Learned commentators had, indeed, placed their
disagreement beyond all dispute. But there remained the simpler
course of bringing their common standpoint into greater
prominence, and combining their theories where this seemed
possible without too openly renouncing the respect due to what
almost all considered the superior authority of Plato. To which of the
two masters Neo-Platonism really owed most is a question that must
be postponed until we have made ourselves acquainted with the
outlines of the system as they appear in the works of Plotinus.

IV.
It has been already mentioned how large a place was given to
erotic questions by the literary Platonists of the second century. Even
in the school of Plotinus, Platonic love continued to be discussed,
sometimes with a freedom which pained and disgusted the master
beyond measure.431 His first essay was apparently suggested by a
question put to him in the course of some such debate.432 The
subject is beauty. In his treatment of it, we find our philosopher at
once rising superior to the indecorous frivolities of his predecessors.
Physical beauty he declares to be the ideal element in objects, that
which they have received from the creative soul, and which the
perceptive soul recognises as akin to her own essence. Love is
nothing but the excitement and joy occasioned by this discovery. But
to understand the truer and higher forms of beauty, we must turn
away from sensible perceptions, and study it as manifested in wise
institutions, virtuous habits, and scientific theories. The passionate
enthusiasm excited by the contemplation of such qualities as
magnanimity, or justice, or wisdom, or valour can only be explained
by assuming that they reveal our inmost nature, showing us what
we were destined for, what we originally were, and what we have
ceased to be. For we need only enumerate the vices which make a
soul hideous—injustice, sensuality, cowardice, and the like—to
perceive that they are foreign to her real nature, and are imposed on
her by contamination with the principle of all evil, which is matter. To
be brave means not to dread death, because death is the separation
of the soul from the body. Magnanimity means the neglect of earthly
interests. Wisdom means the elevation of our thoughts to a higher
world. The soul that virtue has thus released becomes pure reason,
and reason is just what constitutes her intrinsic beauty. It is also
what alone really exists; without it all the rest of Nature is nothing.
Thus foul is opposed to fair, as evil to good and false to true. Once
more, as the soul is beautiful by participation in reason, so reason in
its turn depends on a still higher principle, the absolute good to
which all things aspire, and from which they are derived—the one
source of life, of reason, and of existence. Behind all other loves is
the longing for this ultimate good; and in proportion to its superiority
over their objects is the intensity of the passion which it inspires, the
happiness which its attainment and fruition must bestow. He who
would behold this supreme beauty must not seek for it in the fair
forms of the external world, for these are but the images and
shadows of its glory. It can only be seen with the inward eye, only
found in the recesses of our own soul. To comprehend the good we
must be good ourselves; or, what is the same thing, we must be
ourselves and nothing else. In this process of abstraction, we first
arrive at pure reason, and then we say that the ideas of reason are
what constitutes beauty. But beyond reason is that highest good of
which beauty is merely the outward vesture, the source and principle
from which beauty springs.
It is evident that what Plotinus says about beauty and love was
suggested by the well-known passages on the same subject in the
Phaedrus and the Symposium. His analysis of aesthetic emotion has,
however, a much more abstract and metaphysical character than
that of his great model. The whole fiction of an antenatal existence
is quietly let drop. What the sight of sensible beauty awakens in a
philosophic soul is not the memory of an ideal beauty beheld in
some other world, but the consciousness of its own idealising
activity, the dominion which it exercises over unformed and
fluctuating matter. And, in all probability, Plato meant no more than
this—in fact he hints as much elsewhere,433—but he was not able or
did not choose to express himself with such unmistakable clearness.
Again, this preference for mythological imagery on the part of the
more original and poetical thinker seems to be closely connected
with a more vivid interest in the practical duties of life. With Plotinus,
the primal beauty or supreme good is something that can be isolated
from all other beauty and goodness, something to be perceived and
enjoyed in absolute seclusion from one’s fellow-men. God is, indeed,
described as the source and cause of all other good. But neither
here nor elsewhere is there a hint that we should strive to resemble
him by becoming, in our turn, the cause of good to others. Platonic
love, on the contrary, first finds its reality and truth in unremitting
efforts for the enlightenment and elevation of others, being related
to the transmission of spiritual life just as the love inspired by visible
beauty is related to the perpetuation and physical ennoblement of
the race.
This preference of pure abstract speculation to beneficent action
may be traced to the influence of Aristotle. Some of the most
enthusiastic expressions used by Plotinus in speaking of his supreme
principle seem to have been suggested by the Metaphysics and the
last book of the Nicomachean Ethics. The self-thinking thought of
the Stagirite does not, indeed, take the highest rank with him. But it
is retained in his system, and is only relegated to a secondary place
because, for reasons which we shall explain hereafter, it does not
fulfil equally well with Plato’s Idea of Good, the condition of absolute
and indivisible unity, without which a first principle could not be
conceived by any Greek philosopher. But this apparent return to the
standpoint of the Republic really involves a still wider departure from
its animating spirit. In other words, Plotinus differs from Aristotle as
Aristotle himself had differed from Plato; he shares the same
speculative tendency, and carries it to a greater extreme.
We have also to note that Plotinus arrives at his Absolute by a
method apparently very different from that pursued by either of his
teachers. Plato’s primal beauty is, on the face of it, an abstraction
and generalisation from all the scattered and imperfect
manifestations of beauty to be met with in our objective experience.
And Aristotle is led to his conception of an eternal immaterial
thought by two lines of analysis, both starting from the phenomena
of external Nature. The problem of his Physics is to account for the
perpetuity of motion. The problem of his Metaphysics is to explain
the transformation of potential into actual existence. Plotinus, on the
other hand, is always bidding us look within. What we admire in the
objective world is but a reflex of ourselves. Mind is the sole reality;
and to grasp this reality under its highest form, we must become like
it. Thus the more we isolate our own personality and self-identity
from the other interests and experiences of life, the more nearly do
we approach to consciousness of and coalescence with the supreme
identity wherein all things have their source.
But on looking at the matter a little more closely, we shall find that
Plotinus only set in a clearer light what had all along been the
leading motive of his predecessors. We have already observed that
Plato’s whole mythological machinery is only a fanciful way of
expressing that independent experience which the mind derives from
the study of its own spontaneous activity. And the process of
generalisation described in the Symposium is really limited to moral
phenomena. Plato’s standpoint is less individualistic than that of
Plotinus in so far as it involves a continual reference to the beliefs,
experiences, and wants of other men; but it is equally subjective, in
the sense of interpreting all Nature by the analogies of human life.
There are even occasions when his spiritualism goes the length of
inculcating complete withdrawal from the world of common life into
an ideal sphere, when he seems to identify evil with matter, when he
reduces all virtue to contempt for the interests of the body, in
language which his Alexandrian successor could adopt without any
modification of its obvious meaning.434
So also with Aristotle. As a naturalist, he is, indeed, purely
objective; but when he offers a general explanation of the world, the
subjective element introduced by Protagoras and Socrates at once
reappears. Simple absolute self-consciousness is for him the highest
good, the animating principle of Nature, the most complete reality,
and the only one that would remain, were the element of nonentity
to disappear from this world. The utter misconception of dynamic
phenomena which marks his physics and astronomy can only be
accounted for by his desire to give life the priority over mechanical
motion, and reason the priority over life. Thus his metaphysical
method is essentially identical with the introspective method
recommended by Plotinus, and, if fully worked out, might have led
to the same results.
We cannot, then, agree with Zeller, when he groups the Neo-
Platonists together with the other post-Aristotelian schools, on the
ground that they are all alike distinguished from Plato and Aristotle
by the exclusive attention which they pay to subjective and practical,
as opposed to scientific and theoretical interests. It seems to us that
such distinctions are out of relation to the historical order in which
the different systems of Greek philosophy were evolved. It is not in
the substance of their teaching, but in their diminished power of
original speculation, that the thinkers who came after Aristotle offer
the strongest contrast to their predecessors. In so far as they are
exclusively practical and subjective, they follow the Humanists and
Socrates. In so far as they combine Socratic tendencies with physical
studies, they imitate the method of Plato and Aristotle. Their
cosmopolitan naturalism is inherited from the Cynics in the first
instance, more remotely from the physiocratic Sophists, and,
perhaps, in the last resort, from Heracleitus. Their religion is
traceable either to Pythagoras, to Socrates, or to Plato. Their
scepticism is only a little more developed than that of Protagoras
and the Cyrenaics. But if we seek for some one principle held in
common by all these later schools, and held by none of the earlier
schools, we shall seek for it in vain. The imitative systems are
separated from one another by the same fundamental differences as
those which divide the original systems. Now, in both periods, the
deepest of all differences is that which divides the spiritualists from
the materialists. In both periods, also, it is materialism that comes
first. And in both, the transition from one doctrine to the other is
marked by the exclusive prominence given to subjective, practical,
sceptical, or theological interests in philosophy; by the enthusiastic
culture of rhetoric in general education; and by a strong religious
reaction in the upper ranks of society.

Thus we can quite agree with Zeller when he observes435 that

Neo-Platonism only carried out a tendency towards spiritualism
which had been already manifesting itself among the later Stoics,
and had been still further developed by the Neo-Pythagoreans. But
what does this prove? Not what Zeller contends for, which is that
Neo-Platonism stands on the same ground with the other post-
Aristotelian systems, but simply that a recurrence of the same
intellectual conditions was being followed by a recurrence of the
same results. Now, as before, materialism was proving its
inadequacy to account for the facts of mental experience. Now, as
before, morality, after being cut off from physical laws, was seeking
a basis in religious or metaphysical ideas. Now, as before, the study
of thoughts was succeeding to the study of words, and the methods
of popular persuasion were giving place to the methods of dialectical
demonstration. Of course, the age of Plotinus was far inferior to the
age of Plato in vitality, in genius, and in general enlightenment,
notwithstanding the enormous extension which Roman conquest had
given to the superficial area of civilisation, as the difference between
the Enneads and the Dialogues would alone suffice to prove. But this
does not alter the fact that the general direction of their movement
proceeds in parallel lines.
In saying that the post-Aristotelian philosophers were not original
thinkers, we must guard against the supposition that they
contributed nothing of value to thought. On the contrary, while not
putting forward any new theories, they generalised some of the
principles borrowed from their predecessors, worked out others in
minute detail, and stated the arguments on both sides of every
controverted point with superior dialectic precision. Thus, while
materialism had been assumed as self-evidently true by the pre-
Socratic schools, it was maintained by the Stoics and Epicureans on
what seemed to be grounds of experience and reason. And,
similarly, we find that Plotinus, having arrived at the consciousness
that spiritualism is the common ground on which Plato and Aristotle
stand, the connecting trait which most completely distinguishes
them from their successors, proceeds in his second essay436 to
argue the case against materialism more powerfully than it had ever
been argued before, and with nearly as much effect as it has ever
been argued since.

V.
Our personality, says the Alexandrian philosopher, cannot be a
property of the body, for this is composed of parts, and is in a state
of perpetual flux. A man’s self, then, is his soul; and the soul cannot
be material, for the ultimate elements of matter are inanimate, and
it is inconceivable that animation and reason should result from the
aggregation of particles which, taken singly, are destitute of both;
while, even were it possible, their disposition in a certain order
would argue the presence of an intelligence controlling them from
without. The Stoics themselves admit the force of these
considerations, when they attribute reason to the fiery element or
vital breath by which, according to them, all things are shaped. They
do, indeed, talk about a certain elementary disposition as the
principle of animation, but this disposition is either identical with the
matter possessing it, in which case the difficulties already mentioned
recur, or distinct from it, in which case the animating principle still
remains to be accounted for.
Again, to suppose that the soul shares in the changes of the body
is incompatible with the self-identity which memory reveals. To
suppose that it is an extended substance is incompatible with its
simultaneous presence, as an indivisible whole, at every point to
which its activity reaches; as well as with the circumstance that all
our sensations, though received through different organs, are
referred to a common centre of consciousness. If the sensorium is a
fluid body it will have no more power of retaining impressions than
water; while, if it is a solid, new impressions will either not be
received at all, or only when the old impressions are effaced.
Passing from sensation to thought, it is admitted that abstract
conceptions are incorporeal: how, then, can they be received and
entertained by a corporeal substance? Or what possible connexion
can there be between different arrangements of material particles
and such notions as temperance and justice? This is already a
sufficiently near approach to the language of modern philosophy. In
another essay, which according to the original arrangement stands
third, and must have been composed immediately after that whence
the foregoing arguments are transcribed, there is more than an
approach, there is complete coincidence.437 To deduce mind from
atoms is, says Plotinus, if we may so speak, still more impossible
than to deduce it from the elementary bodies. Granting that the
atoms have a natural movement downwards, granting that they
suffer a lateral deflection and so impinge on one another, still this
could do no more than produce a disturbance in the bodies against
which they strike. But to what atomic movement can one attribute
psychic energies and affections? What sort of collision in the vertical
line of descent, or in the oblique line of deflection, or in any direction
you please, will account for the appearance of a particular kind of
reasoning or mental impulse or thought, or how can it account for
the existence of such processes at all? Here, of course, Plotinus is
alluding to the Epicureans; but it is with the Stoic and other schools
that he is principally concerned, and we return to his attack on their
psychology.
The activities of the soul are thought, sensation, reasoning, desire,
attention, and so forth: the activities of body are heat, cold, impact,
and gravitation; if to these we add the characteristics of mind, the
latter will have no special properties by which it can be known. And
even in body we distinguish between quantity and quality; the
former, at most, being corporeal, and the latter not corporeal at all.
Here Plotinus just touches the idealistic method of modern
spiritualism, but fails to follow it any further. He seems to have
adopted Aristotle’s natural realism as a sufficient theory of external
perception, and to have remained uninfluenced by Plato’s distrust of
sensible appearances.
After disposing of the Stoic materialism, according to which the
soul, though distinct from the body, is, equally with it, an extended
and resisting substance, our philosopher proceeds to discuss the
theories which make it a property or function of the body. The
Pythagorean notion of the soul as a harmony of the body is met by a
reproduction of the well-known arguments used against it in Plato’s
Phaedo. Then comes the Aristotelian doctrine that the soul is the
entelechy—that is to say, the realised purpose and perfection—of the
physical organism to which it belongs. This is an idea which Aristotle
himself had failed to make very clear, and the inadequacy of which
he had virtually acknowledged by ascribing a different origin to
reason, although this is counted as one of the psychic faculties.
Plotinus, at any rate, could not appreciate an explanation which,
whatever else it implied, certainly involved a considerable departure
from his own dualistic interpretation of the difference between spirit
and matter. He could not enter into Aristotle’s view of the one as a
lower and less concentrated form of the other. The same arguments
which had already been employed against Stoicism are now turned
against the Peripatetic psychology. The soul as a principle, not only
of memory and desire, but even of nutrition, is declared to be
independent of and separable from the body. And, finally, as a result
of the whole controversy, its immortality is affirmed. But how far this
immortality involves the belief in a prolongation of personal
existence after death, is a point which still remains uncertain. We
shall return to the question in dealing with the religious opinions of
Plotinus.
Closely connected with the materialism of the Stoics, and equally
adverse to the principles of Plato and Aristotle, was their fatalism. In
opposition to this, Plotinus proceeds to develop the spiritualistic
doctrine of free-will.438 In the previous discussion, we had to notice
how closely his arguments resemble those employed by more
modern controversialists. We have here to point out no less wide a
difference between the two. Instead of presenting free-will as a fact
of consciousness which is itself irreconcilable with the dependence of
mental on material changes, our philosopher, conversely, infers that
the soul must be free both from the conditions of mechanical
causation and from the general interdependence of natural forces,
because it is an individual substance.439 In truth, the phenomena of
volition were handled by the ancient philosophers with a vagueness
and a feebleness offering the most singular contrast to their
powerful and discriminating grasp of other psychological problems.
Of necessarianism, in the modern sense, they had no idea. Aristotle
failed to see that, quite apart from external restraints, our choice
may conceivably be determined with the utmost rigour by an internal
motive; nor could he understand that the circumstances which make
a man responsible for his actions do not amount to a release of his
conduct from the law of universal causation. In this respect, Plato
saw somewhat deeper than his disciple, but created fresh confusion
by identifying freedom with the supremacy of reason over irrational
desire.440 Plotinus generally adopts the Platonist point of view.
According to this, the soul is free when she is extricated from the
bonds of matter, and determined solely by the conditions of her
spiritual existence. Thus virtue is not so much free as identical with
freedom; while, contrariwise, vice means enslavement to the
affections of the body, and therefore comes under the domain of
material causation.441 Yet, again, in criticising the fatalistic theories
which represent human actions as entirely predetermined by divine
providence, he protests against the ascription of so much that is evil
to so good a source, and insists that at least the bad actions of men
are due to their own free choice.442
In vindicating human freedom, Plotinus had to encounter a
difficulty exceedingly characteristic of his age. This was the
astrological superstition that everything depended on the stars, and
that the future fate of every person might be predicted by observing
their movements and configurations at the time of his birth.
Philosophers found it much easier to demolish the pretensions of
astrology by an abstract demonstration of their absurdity, than to get
rid of the supposed facts which were currently quoted in their favour.
That fortunes could be foretold on the strength of astronomical
calculations with as much certainty as eclipses, seems to have been
an accepted article of belief in the time of Plotinus, and one which
he does not venture to dispute. He is therefore obliged to satisfy
himself with maintaining that the stars do not cause, but merely
foreshow the future, in the same manner as the flight of birds, to
the prophetic virtue of which he also attaches implicit credence. All
parts of Nature are connected by such an intimate sympathy, that
each serves as a clue to the rest; and, on this principle, the stars
may be regarded as the letters of a scripture in which the secrets of
futurity are revealed.443
How much originality there may be in the anti-materialistic
arguments of Plotinus we cannot tell. He certainly marks a great
advance on Plato and Aristotle, approximating, in this respect, much
more closely than they do to the modern standpoint. The
indivisibility and permanence of mind had, no doubt, been strongly
insisted on by those teachers, in contrast with the extended and
fluctuating nature of body. But they did not, like him, deduce these
characteristics from a direct analysis of consciousness as such. Plato
inferred the simplicity and self-identity of mind from the simplicity
and self-identity of the ideas which it contemplates. Aristotle went a
step further, or perhaps only expressed the same meaning more
clearly, when he associated immateriality with the identity of subject
and object in thought.444 Moreover, both Plato and Aristotle seem to
have rested the whole spiritualistic case on objective rather than on
subjective considerations; although, as we have seen, the subjective
interest was what dominated all the while in their thoughts. Starting
with the analogy of a living body, Plato argues, both in the Phaedrus
and in the Laws, that soul must everywhere be the first cause of
motion, and therefore must exist prior to body.445 The elaborate
scientific analysis of Aristotle’s Physics leads up to a similar
conclusion; and the ontological analysis of the Metaphysics starts
with the distinction between Form and Matter in bodies, to end with
the question of their relative priority, and of the objective machinery
by which they are united. Plotinus, too, sometimes refers to mind as
the source of physical order; but this is rather in deference to his
authorities than because the necessity of such an explanation
seemed to him, as it did to them, the deepest ground of a
spiritualistic philosophy. On the other hand, his psychological
arguments for the immateriality of the soul are drawn from a wider
area of experience than theirs, feeling being taken into account no
less than thought; instead of restricting himself to one particular
kind of cognition for evidence of spiritual power, he looks for it in
every manifestation of living personality.
In criticising the Stoic system as a whole, the New Academy and
the later Sceptics had incidentally dwelt on sundry absurdities which
followed from the materialistic interpretation of knowledge; and
Plotinus evidently derived some of his most forcible objections from
their writings; but no previous philosopher that we know of had set
forth the whole case for spiritualism and against materialism with
such telling effect. And what is, perhaps, more important than any
originality in detail, is the profound insight shown in choosing this
whole question of spiritualism versus materialism for the ground
whereon the combined forces of Plato and Aristotle were to fight
their first battle against the naturalistic system which had triumphed
over them five centuries before. It was on dialectical and ethical
grounds that the controversy between Porch and Academy, on
ethical and religious grounds that the controversy between
Epicureanism and all other schools of philosophy, had hitherto been
conducted. Cicero and Plutarch never allude to their opponents as
materialists. Only once, in his polemic against Colôtes, does Plutarch
observe that neither a soul nor anything else could be made out of
atoms, but this is because they are discrete, not because they are
extended.446 For the rest, his method is to trip up his opponents by
pointing out their inconsistencies, rather than to cut the ground from
under their feet by proving that their theory of the universe is
wrong.
Under such guidance as this. Platonism had made but little way.
We saw, in the concluding sections of the last chapter and in the
opening section of the present chapter, that it profited by the
religious and literary revival of the second century, just as it was to
profit long afterwards by the greater revival of the fifteenth century,
so much so as to become the fashionable philosophy of the age. Yet,
even in that period of its renewed splendour, the noblest of
contemporary thinkers was not a Platonist but a Stoic; and although
it would be unfair to measure the moral distance between the Porch
and the Academy by the interval which separates an Aurelius from
an Apuleius, still it would seem as if naturalism continued to be the
chosen creed of strenuous and dutiful endeavour, while spiritualism
was drifting into an alliance with hysterical and sensuous
superstition. If we may judge by the points which Sextus Empiricus
selects for controversial treatment, Stoicism was still the reigning
system in his time, that is to say, about the beginning of the third
century; and if, a generation later, it had sunk into neglect, every
rival school, except that of Epicurus, was in exactly the same
condition. Thus the only advance made was to substitute one form
of materialism for another, until Neo-Platonism came and put an end
to their disputes by destroying the common foundation on which
they stood; while, at the same time, it supplied a completely
organised doctrine round which the nobler elements of the Hellenic
revival could rally for a last stand against the foes that were
threatening it from every side.

VI.
We have seen how Plotinus establishes the spiritualistic basis of
his philosophy. We have now to see how he works out from it in all
directions, developing the results of his previous enquiries into a
complete metaphysical system. It will have been observed that the
whole method of reasoning by which materialism was overthrown,
rested on the antithesis between the unity of consciousness and the
divisibility of corporeal substance. Very much the same method was
afterwards employed by Cartesianism to demonstrate the same
conclusion. But with Descartes and his followers, the opposition
between soul and body was absolute, the former being defined as
pure thought, the latter as pure extension. Hence the extreme
difficulty which they experienced in accounting for the evident
connexion between the two. The spiritualism of Plotinus did not
involve any such impassable chasm between consciousness and its
object. According to him, although the soul is contained in or
depends on an absolutely self-identical unity, she is not herself that
unity, but in some degree shares the characters of divisibility and
extension.447 If we conceive all existence as bounded at either
extremity by two principles, the one extended and the other
inextended, then soul will still stand midway between them; not
divided in herself, but divided in respect to the bodies which she
animates. Plotinus holds that such an assumption is necessitated by
the facts of sensation. A feeling of pain, for example, is located in a
particular point of the body, and is, at the same time, apprehended
as my feeling, not as some one else’s. A similar synthesis obtains
through the whole of Nature. The visible universe consists of many
heterogeneous parts, held together by a single animating principle.
And we can trace the same qualities and figures through a multitude
of concrete individuals, their essential unity remaining unbroken,
notwithstanding the dispersion of the objects in which they inhere.
Here Plotinus avowedly follows the teaching of Plato, who, in the
Timaeus, describes Being or Substance as composed by mingling the
indivisible and unchanging with the divisible and corporeal
principle.448 And, although there is no express reference, we know
that in placing soul between the two, he was equally following Plato.
It is otherwise in the next essay, which undertakes to give a more
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