Athens, and thus a lively interchange of thought, and a thorough comparison of each other's teaching were rendered comparatively easy among them. That they would not long exist side by side without making some overtures towards union and agreement was a perfectly natural prospect; and these overtures were hastened by Scepticism, which, denying the possibility of knowledge, only allowed a choice between probabilities, leaving that choice to be decided by the standard of practical needs. Hence, towards the close of the second century before Christ, these philosophic Schools may be observed to emerge more or less from their exclusiveness. An eclectic tendency stole over philosophy, aiming not so much at scientific knowledge as at attaining certain results of a practical kind. The distinctive doctrines of each School were suffered to drop; and in the belief that infallibility resided solely in the mind itself, such portions were selected from each system as seemed most in harmony with the selecting mind. In Scepticism this eclectic mode of thought was concealed in germ. On the other hand, Eclecticism also involved doubt, and suggested a new phase of doubt, which appeared soon after the Christian era, in a peculiar sceptical School, and continued until the third century. Thus Scepticism and Eclecticism, the one openly, the other secretly, betrayed the need which was felt by philosophers of scientific knowledge in the interests of morals and religion. At the same time they also disclosed a feeling of distrust towards the existing knowledge, and, in fact, towards CHAP. II. CHAP. (3) Religious School of Neopla tonists. knowledge in general. When brought into mutual relation, they further suggested the thought that truth, which could not be attained in the form of intellectual knowledge, might be discovered by some other means. Possibly it might exist concealed among the religious traditions of the early days of Greece and the East, or it might be reached by immediate divine revelation. Connected with this thought, a notion of God, and of His relations to the world, had gained ground, which confirmed the belief in the possibility of revelation. Regarding truth as something external to themselves, and doubting their own capacities to attain to truth, men had come to look upon God as far removed from themselves, and to look up to Him as the absolute source of truth. Convinced, moreover, that truth to be known must be revealed, they had peopled the interval between God and the world with intermediate beings, who were sometimes conceived of as purely metaphysical entities, and at others appeared, according to the popular belief, as demons. This mental habit, connected with the Platonic and Pythagorean systems more immediately than with any other ancient system, forms the transition to Neoplatonism, Neoplatonism itself being the last stage in the historical development of the philosophy of Greece. Yet even this last phase of Greek philosophy was not uninfluenced by the circumstances of history. The decline of the Roman Empire, the dangers which threatened it on all sides, the pressure and the necessity of the time, were steadily advancing since the end of the second century after Christ. All means of defence hitherto employed had proved unavailing to stem destruction. With ruin everywhere staring in the face, the desire and longing for some higher assistance increased. Such assistance could no longer be obtained from the old Gods of Rome or the religious faith of the day, notwithstanding the existence of which circumstances were daily becoming more hopeless. Stronger and stronger became the longing, which had been gradually spreading over the Roman world since the last days of the Republic, and which the circumstances of the Empire had greatly favoured, to have recourse to foreign forms of worship. The highest power in the state had, moreover, favoured this longing under the Oriental and half Oriental emperors who for nearly half a century after Septimius Severus occupied the imperial throne. The state and the Gods of the state were continually losing their hold on the respect of men, whilst Oriental worships, mysteries new and old, and foreign heathen religions of the most varying kinds, were ever gaining fresh adherents. Above all, Christianity was rapidly advancing to an extent which would enable it to enter the lists for supremacy, and to claim a recognised position as the religion of the state. The attempts of a series of powerful monarchs about the middle of the third century to build up the Empire afresh, could not have for their object a restoration of a specifically Roman form of government. Their only aim could be to bring the various elements which composed the Empire under one sovereign will by D СНАР. II. CHAP. II. fixed forms of administration; a result which was actually reached under Diocletian and Constantine. The Roman character asserted itself, indeed, as a ruling and regulating power, but it was at the same time subordinate to another of an originally foreign character. The Empire was a congeries of nations artificially held together, and arranged on a carefullydesigned plan; not concentrated round a national centre, but round the will of a prince, standing above all rules and laws of state, and deciding everything without appeal and without responsibility. In a similar manner Neoplatonism united all the elements of existing philosophical Schools into one comprehensive and well-arranged system, in which each class of existences had its definite place assigned it. The initial point in this system, the allembracing unity, was a being lying beyond it, soaring above every notion that experience and conception can supply, unmixed with the process of life going on in the world, and from his unattainable height. causing all things, but himself subject to no conditions of causality. Neoplatonism is the intellectual reproduction of Byzantine Imperialism. As Byzantine Imperialism combines Oriental despotism with the Roman idea of the state, so Neoplatonism fills out with Oriental mysticism the scientific forms of Greek philosophy. It is clear that in Neoplatonism the post-Aristotelian philosophy had lost its original character. Self-dependence, and the self-sufficingness of thought, have made way for a resignation to higher powers, for a longing for some revelation, for an ecstatic departure from the domain of conscious mental activity. Man has resigned the idea of truth within for truth to be found only in God. God has been removed into another world, and stands over against man and the world of appearances, in an abstract spiritual world. All the attempts of thought have but one aim to explain how it was that the finite proceeded from the infinite, and under what conditions its return to God is possible. But neither the one nor the other of these problems could meet with a satisfactory intellectual solution. That even this form of thought bears undeniably the personal character of the post-Aristotelian philosophy has been 1 already seen, and will be seen still more in the sequel. With it the creative powers of the Greek mind set for ever. After defending her national existence for centuries, after losing her intellectual prestige step by step, Greece saw the last remaining fragments torn from her grasp by the victory of Christianity. But these fragments she did not surrender before she had made one more futile attempt to rescue the forms of Greek culture from her mighty rival. With the failure of that attempt Greek religion and Greek philosophy set together. CHAP. II. |