PLOTINUS' THEOLOGY ECLECTIC.

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The theology of Plotinus was a combination of the theologies of Parmenides, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Parmenides and his followers had carried Dialectics to their last consequence, and the result was that God was the immoveable One. Socrates rebelled against the Eleatic deity, and, taking up the "mind" of Anaxagoras, which created the world, he ascribed to it also the preservation and moral government of the universe. Plato was partly faithful to his master Socrates. He too contended for the moveability of God, though had he followed out consistently the Dialectical method which he received from the Eleatics, he would have come to the same conclusion as they did; but he recoiled from the theology of Eleaticism, and made God a Creator. Aristotle combatted the God of Plato as being too much related to the sensuous world, and substituted a mover, who was moveable; and above him in another sphere, an immoveable Mover, who alone is God. Plotinus did not regard these theologies as contradictory. Each contained a truth of its own. He could not reconcile them by reason, but he could receive them and see their harmony by an intuition which was above reason. He admitted Plato's method, and Plato's God. He admitted, too, Aristotle's doctrine of the first principle, which must be immoveable, and his interpretation of the Dialectical method, that it could stop only at simple Unity; yet, he said, God must be a cause, hence a threefold God-a God in three hypostases, the Unity of Parmenides, the immoveable Mover of Aristotle, and the Demiurgus of Plato.

The Demiurgus, world maker, or world-soul, is the third hypostasis of the Trinity of Plotinus. It produces things moveable, and is itself moveable; but it is nevertheless universal, excluding from its bosom all particularity, and all phenomena; it is unlike our souls which are but "souls in part." The Demiurgus is God, but not the whole of God; it is entirely disengaged from matter, being the immediate product and the most perfect image of "mind." It does not desire that which is beneath it, but is intimately united to God, and derives from Him all its reality, and brings back to Him all its activity and all its power; or rather it is one with Him, though existing as a distinct hypostasis; it is the all of life in whose essence all things live. Plants and animals,-yea, minerals, stones, and pebbles, are all animated by it; for it is the only true element in nature. But, whatever its manifestations, it is still one and the same. We may see it manifested as the divine Socrates; or as a simple brute, leading the mere insect life; as one of the deities of the

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THE TRINITY OF PLOTINUS.

mythology, as a blade of grass or as a grain of dust. It is at once everywhere, and yet nowhere; for, as spirit, it has not any where. It proceeds from "mind" as the ray from the radiating centre, the heat from fire, or the discursive from the pure reason. This "mind" from which it proceeds, is the second hypostasis; Plato identified the two. Mind was the Demiurgus, or world-maker, and not different from the archetypal world. Plotinus made the distinction that he might separate God more from the world, and at the same time unite Him more closely to it. Mind is the divine Logos, God knowable and conceivable by man; but God is above human knowledge and finite conception; therefore, said Plotinus, repeating Plato, "O man, that mind which you suppose, is not the first God; He is another, more ancient and divine." This is the first hypostasis, the simple primordial Unity; the Being without acts and attributes, immutable, ineffable, without any relation to generation or change. We call Him Being, but we cannot stop at this; He is more than Being; He is above all that which our minds or senses reveal to us of being. In this sense He is above Being; He is Non-Being. The laws of reason cannot be applied to Him. We cannot declare the mode of His existence. He is the super-essential Unity; the only original and positive Reality; the source whence all reality emanates. What more can we say? In this Unity, by means of the Logos or mind, and the Demiurgus, all things exist. It is the universal bond, which folds in its bosom the germs of all existence. It is the enchained Saturn of mythology; the father of gods and men; superior to mind and being, thought and will; the absolute; the unconditioned; the unknown. The three persons of this Trinity are co-eternal and consubstantial; the second proceeding from the first, and the third from the first and second. Duality originates with mind, for mind only exists because it thinks existence; and existence being thought, causes mind to stand over against it as existing and thinking. Between the supreme God or first person of the Trinity, and the Demiurgus, there is the same connection as between him who sows and him who cultivates. The super-essential One being the seed of all souls, casts the germs into all things, which participate of Him. The Demiurgus cultivates, distributes, and transports into each the seeds which come from the supreme God. He creates and comprehends all true existences, so that all being is but the varieties of mind; and this being is the universal Soul, or third person in the Trinity. Thus all things exist in a triune God. The

supreme One is everywhere, by means of mind and soul, mind is in God, and in virtue of its relation to the things that proceed from it, it is everywhere. Soul is in mind, and in God, and by its relation to the material, it too is everywhere. The material is in the soul, and, consequently, in God. All things which possess being, or do not possess being, proceed from God, are of God, and in God.

The material world presented the same difficulty to Plotinus that it had done to other philosophers. It flowed necessarily from God, and being necessary, it could have had no beginning, and can have no end. Yet it was created by the Demiurgus, that is, it existed in the Demiurgus; for creation was out of time, it was in eternity, and, consequently eternal.*

Before the creation, according to Plato, there existed God the Creator, the idea of creation, and the matter from which to create. These three are eternal and co-existent. But the existence of matter is a non-existence; for, being a thing of change, it is next to nothing, if it is anything; but more probably it is nothing. The real existences then are God and His thoughts, the Creator and the ideas of things. And as these thoughts existed always in the mind of the Deity, creation is eternal; for the things which we see, are but images of those which are not seen. If Plato left any doubt about the nothingness of matter, Plotinus expelled it. Like a true chemist, he reduces matter to a viewless state. He deprives it of the qualities with which our minds endow it, which we commonly suppose to be its properties, and when deprived of these it evanishes. It is found to be nothing, having neither soul, intelligence, nor life. It is unformed, changeable, indeterminate, and without power. It is therefore non-being. Not in the sense in which motion is non-being, but truly non-being. It is the image and phantom of extension. To the senses, it seems to include in itself, contraries-the large and the small, the least and the greatest, deficiency and excess; but this is all illusion, for it lacks all being, and is only a becoming. Often when it great, it is small. As a phantom, it is, and then it is not. It

appears

"The Alexandrians did not make the phenomenal world eternal. Eternity meant with them the plenitude of being. Now the world is divisible and moveable; it is therefore not perfect, and, consequently, not eternal. It has a cause, and that cause is God." This is M. Simon's judgment; bnt all Platonists, including Plato, contradict themselves when they speak about creation. Even S. Augustine, in his "City of God,” makes creation eternal; he likens it to an impress on the sand. The impress and the hand that made it are both eternal. The impress is the eternal effect of an eternal Cause,

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THE BURDEN OF THE FLESH.

becomes nothing, not by change of place, but because it lacks. reality. The images in matter are above matter. It is the mirror or image in which objects present divine appearances, according to the position in which they are placed: a mirror which seems full, and appears to be all things, though in reality it possesses nothing, and has no reality except as non-being. God and His thoughts are the only true existences. Material things are, only in so far as they exist relatively to true beings. Subtract the true existences, and they are not. God and His thoughts or emanations, in their totality, embrace all existences throughout the universe. God is so far separated from His emanations, that we must not confound Him with any one of them; but they are all in and by Him. There are grades of being from that which is everywhere and yet nowhere, to that which must be somewhere; from God who is pure spirit, to that which has a finite material form, and occupies a definite space.

Plotinus found the germs, at least, of all his doctrines, in Plato. The supreme Good he identified with the absolute Unity; and though in some places Plato calls God a soul, and ascribes to Him the creation of the world, yet in the Timaeus he evidently regards mind as the Demiurgus; and this Demiurgus produces the soul of the world. Plotinus thus sums up Plato's doctrine: "All is outside of the King of all; He is the cause of all beauty. That which is of the second order, is outside of the second principle; and that which is of the third order, is outside of the third principle. Plato has also said that the cause of all had a Father, and that the cause or Demiurgus produced the soul in the vase in which he makes the mingling of the like and the unlike. The cause is mind, and its Father the Good, that which is above mind and essence. Thus Plato knew that the Good engendered Mind, and that Mind engendered Soul." Matter being the non-existent or the deprivation of existence, by coming into relation with it, the human soul was so far alienated from God; therefore Plotinus despised the material. Our bodies are that from which we should strive to be freed, for they keep us from a complete union with the Divine. We ought then to mortify the flesh, and live an ascetic life, that we may be delivered from the participation of the body. tinus practised what he taught; his mind fixed on the invisible, and foretasting the joys of the divine union, he lived indifferent to sensuous pleasures; wishing to attenuate his body into spirit. Regarding it as a calamity that he had ever been born into this world, he refused to tell his friends his birthday, lest they

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should celebrate an event so sad. When asked for his portrait, he said it was surely enough for us to bear the image with which nature had veiled us, without committing the folly of leaving to posterity a copy of that image; and when dying, he took leave of his friends with joy, saying, That he was about to lead back the divine within him to that God who is all in all.

PORPHYRY.-To follow the other Neo-Platonists is but to follow the copyists of Plotinus. His most ardent and most distinguished disciple was the celebrated Porphyry. When Porphyry differs from his master, the difference is only in details. His supreme God is the same super-essential Unity in three hypostases which, if differently named, are yet the counterpart of the Plotinian Trinity. We have the same expressions of the Unity being everywhere, and yet nowhere; all being, and yet no being; called by no names, and yet the eternal source of all beings that have names; outside of whom there is neither thought nor idea, nor existence; before whom the totality of the world is as nothing, but because He is pure Unity, and superior to all things called by pre-eminence, God. With Porphyry NeoPlatonism made a closer alliance with religion. Philosophy, which had formerly banished the popular deities, now re-called them to its aid. The ancient religion, about to expire, once more glowed with life. At the root of Polytheism there had been a Monotheism, but their harmonious co-existence had hitherto been apparently impossible. Now they shake hands; the philosopher sees his philosophy in the popular worship; and the devout worshippor sees his religion sanctioned by the speculations of philosophy. Plato had conjectured that there was a chain of being from the throne of God to the meanest existence. To make up the links of this chain was the favorite work of the Neo-Platonists of Alexandria, both Heathen and Christian. Porphyry undertook it, and for this purpose he required all the gods, heroes, and demons of antiquity, with all the essences, substances, emanations that had been cogitated by all the schools of all the philosophers. He erected a pyramid of being. First: God, or the One in three hypostases. Next the soul of the world. Here Porphyry differed from Plotinus, who made the world-soul the same as the third person of the Trinity. Porphyry admitted it to be a being-the first of creatures but begotten-the great intermedial between God and man. It consists of the world, the fixed stars, the planets, the intelligible gods, all of which are children and servants of the Supreme. Under these were demons, and genii, principalities and powers, archangels, angels,