VI LATER RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHIES

Plato and Aristotle mark the culmination of a great period in Greek thought. After them metaphysical speculation made little if any advance in antiquity. Indeed we are all aware of the fact that the greater part of the thinking world has been divided between Platonists and Aristotelians ever since, although in our own time we are seeing a return by some to the philosophic position of the Sophists and Heraclitus.

Now in our discussion of the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle you must have felt that their systems were for the intellectual élite. The large demands which they make upon the reason and the habit of reasoning unfit them for the great majority of mankind, since the average man desires a practical guide in life which he can readily follow, rather than a philosophical system which he can grasp only by the careful use of his intellect. Furthermore, in the period after Alexander, when national life and interests were weakened or destroyed by the Macedonian’s conquests and the struggles of his successors, the individual was forced to withdraw from public life; he lost the satisfactions which the politics of his community had once furnished, felt himself without the social supports which the compact life of his city-state had formerly given, and so, turned in on himself, he naturally sought for a sure rule of life and a guarantee of individual happiness. We shall now consider first a school of practical philosophy which followed Aristotle—that of the Stoics, and then some mystic philosophies of the early centuries of our era.

Socrates, the great teacher and the dramatic spokesman of Plato’s dialogues, gave the impulse to many philosophic systems. The only one we need to glance at now is that of the Cynics founded by Antisthenes, who had been one of Socrates’ many pupils. It was continued by the whimsical and notorious Diogenes of Sinope, whose name is familiar to us all. The founder of Cynicism emphasized the Socratic aim of individual virtue to the neglect of all else, for like his master he maintained that virtue was the only good, the sole aim in life, and that it was sufficient in itself for happiness. But he also went to the extreme of declaring that all external relations and obligations were to be neglected, and that there was no middle ground of the slightest importance between virtue and vice. Antisthenes also taught that whoever possessed virtue was wise, the rest of the world foolish; and that virtue was a thing which could be taught, and which once learned could never be lost. To the Cynic all pleasure was vicious, but sweat and toil blessings if associated with the individual freedom which was the aim of the school. Although the Cynics were concerned only with practical virtue in this world here and now, their puritanical and doctrinaire system deserves this place in our consideration, because it was the first to attempt to make philosophy a practical guide for the common man in everyday life. It is quite true that this was also Socrates’ position, but his mind and common sense took so large a view of the relations of man that he never fell into the narrow exclusiveness of the Cynics. With them philosophy was not speculative, but became the art of virtuous living; it easily degenerated into insolent and ostentatious show, and doubtless deserved many of the jibes which the later satirists threw at it. Within the sect, strictly speaking, the doctrine of virtue as man’s chief good came to little because it lacked the principle of moral activity. The will of man was not challenged to act in advancing him along the path of virtue. But Stoicism took over the doctrine, gave it life by insisting on the exercise of the will in the practice of virtue, and made thereby such a contribution to the practical life of virtue that we are still the Stoics’ heirs.

It was toward the close of the fourth century that Zeno of Citium in the island of Cyprus established a school in the Painted Porch (Στοὰ ποικίλη) at Athens. Zeno had been an adherent of no one school or philosophical sect: he had listened to both Cynic, Megarian, and Platonic teachers. It was natural, therefore, in view of the training of the founder and of the fact that he was born in a place distant from the great centers of the Greek world, that the Stoic school from the beginning should draw its tenets from many sources and that it should have a cosmopolitan character.

Furthermore the time in which it was founded had a potent and direct influence upon it. Alexander the Great died in 323 b.c., after carrying his arms to the banks of the Indus and enlarging the Greek world far beyond even his own vast dreams. The ideal state, even in the mind of Alexander’s great teacher Aristotle, was at this time thought to be one which corresponded closely to the actual Greek state, a community of limited size, whose free population should be all of the same stock, and one in which the manual toil should be performed by slaves. A sharp contrast to this was the mighty empire which Aristotle’s pupil carved in an incredible fashion out of Europe, Africa, and Asia. It is not to be wondered at that a philosophy, the principles of which were drawn from various Athenian schools, as I have just said, and which was developed by men like Zeno of Citium and Chrysippus of Soli in Cilicia should have a character which made it appeal to the enlarged and varied world of Hellenism, and to the Roman Empire which succeeded that of Alexander.

The development of Stoicism corresponded to its eclectic origin. The system established by Zeno was enlarged and rounded out by Chrysippus. It was welcomed by the Romans in the second century b.c. when Panaetius of Rhodes transplanted the system to Rome. In the hands of its earliest leaders the school had held to a severe and uncompromising doctrine, not dissimilar to that of the Cynics. But Panaetius greatly modified this teaching, and accommodated the school to the other great philosophic systems of the time, especially to the doctrines of Plato and Aristotle; and thus he made Stoicism suited to the educated Roman world. Among his disciples he numbered many of the Roman aristocracy of the second century b.c., the most famous of whom were Laelius and the younger Scipio. That unyielding dogmatism of the older school which had paralleled Cynicism in teaching that between virtue and vice there was no intermediate position, that the philosopher was the perfectly virtuous man, and that he and the vicious were absolutely separated, was replaced by a doctrine of the possibility of gradual progress in virtue. Indeed some with good sense held that this was the most to which man could attain, that he could never hope to reach perfection, but that his duty was to accomplish a daily advance toward excellence. Panaetius did a great service in adapting Stoicism to life. A famous pupil of Panaetius was Posidonius of Apamea in Syria, who drew many Romans to hear him at his school in Rhodes, among them Cicero and Pompey. He carried still further the synthesis of Stoicism with Platonism and Aristotelianism, and by the astounding range of his learning and the brilliancy of his style acquired a large influence. He seems also to have given Stoicism a strong religious cast.

Like other philosophies Stoicism had embraced many subjects—logic, including dialectic and rhetoric, physical science, including cosmology and theology, and ethics. But by the first century of the Roman Empire it had become almost exclusively a philosophy of moral and religious edification, well calculated to steel men against the distress and trouble of that age. Its great representatives in this last period were Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, whose works are still a source of strength for many thoughtful men.

Let us now consider briefly the system of the Stoics. Our theme confines us chiefly to the moral and religious sides of their philosophy; but this is only a slight limitation, for true to the teachings of the Cynics, who had greatly influenced the founder of the school, throughout their history the Stoics laid much emphasis on ethics, that is, on the art of a righteous and virtuous life. They were never so much concerned with speculation as to the nature of virtue as with its practice. To them virtue was man’s highest aim, and by it they meant righteousness in the practical relations of life. They defined it as a condition of the soul in which the soul is in continuous harmony with itself. Virtue they subdivided into the four chief elements of intelligence, discretion, courage, and justice. Some also recognized subordinate virtues, but these I name were the four that made up the supreme excellence. Furthermore the Stoics, like Socrates and the Cynics, identified virtue with knowledge and regarded the ideal philosopher as the one who had attained to true and complete wisdom and consequently to perfect virtue. Therefore the ideal of the wise man became the very center of the Stoic doctrine. He was thought to combine in himself all perfection, and as Seneca says, differs from God only by being mortal. As I have already observed, the early Stoics had fixed an absolute gulf between the perfect wise man and the unwise; like the Cynics they had declared that virtue once attained could not be lost; but the practical good sense of a later age modified these extreme views and taught that there were degrees in virtue, and that the most that the ordinary man could do was daily to advance and make progress toward his goal. As Seneca says: “I am not yet wise, nor shall I ever be. Do not ask me to be equal to the best but rather to be better than the base. This is enough for me—to take away daily something from my faults and daily to reject my errors.”[225] That man might attain to virtue, according to the Stoic, he must free himself from the world and its influences, through the exercise of his will he must strive to attain to freedom from all excess of feeling and passion. The extremist said that he must raise himself to a position where he was entirely free from passion, where he had attained to complete ἀπάθεια. The milder Stoics held the view that the wise man would not be one who felt no passion or desire, but rather one in whom virtue overmastered the passions. The mastery, whether complete or partial, all agreed was to be attained by the exercise of the will; therefore man must regard as wholly indifferent to him all things that are not within the control of that faculty. On this point Epictetus discourses most interestingly.[226] He points out that the materials we employ in life are indifferent to us, neither good nor bad; they are like the dice with which we play our game. But like the gamester we must try to manage life dexterously; whatever happens we must say: “Externals are not within my power; choice is. Where then shall I seek good and evil? Why, within, in what is my own.” And then he continues, pointing out that we must count nothing good or evil, profitable or hurtful, or of any concern to us, that is controlled by others. In tranquillity and calm we must accept what life brings, concerned only with what actually depends on the will of each one of us. We must act in life as we do in a voyage: the individual can choose the pilot, the sailors, and the hour of his departure; after that he must meet quietly all that comes, for he has done his part; and if a storm arise, he must face with indifference disaster or safety, for these matters are quite beyond the control of his will. So sickness and health, abundance and need, high position or the loss of station are things which my will cannot control. Therefore to me as a philosopher they are indifferent; I must have no anxiety about them; they really are not my affair. But my thoughts and my acts are matters that I can control, and in them I must find all my concern. The external circumstances, the acts of others, do not touch me, but my own acts, my own relations, my own inner life are things to which I must give all of my attention. So the Stoic reasoned, holding that virtue was quite sufficient for happiness, and that it made man master of his world. Thus we see that to the doctrine of virtue, which the Cynics had magnified, the Stoics had added the vitalizing principle of the operation of man’s will, and thereby had made the pursuit of wisdom, which to them was identical with virtue, a powerful means of moral and spiritual edification.

But when the Stoic discoursed of virtue and wisdom, what did he conceive the highest aim of man to be? “To live in accord with Nature,” was the answer which the followers of Zeno usually gave. By that they meant that man must bring himself into accord with that Nature which rules all things; that he must make his will and reason agree with the universal will and reason of which in truth they are a part. Others said that one must live in harmony with himself. But as we shall presently see, their definition was essentially the same as that of their fellows, for to the Stoic man was in himself an epitome of the cosmos.

In their explanation of the universe the Stoics held to a materialism which they borrowed from the teachings of Heraclitus, who had maintained that only matter had any existence whatever; therefore their system was in theory a materialistic monism, but with their monistic principle they combined an idea which in reality they had derived from Aristotle, apparently without realizing the possible consequence to their view that matter alone exists. Although holding that everything is material, they recognized in all things the presence of an active and a passive principle, the active principle forming and directing, the other being formed and directed, so that by the operation of the active principle upon the passive all the phenomena of the world come into being. The passive principle corresponded to Aristotle’s material, while the active principle included both his efficient and final causes. To their active principle the Stoics gave all the characteristics that Heraclitus had given to his λόγος, reason, or Anaxagoras to his νοῦς, mind. In short they attributed to it all the characteristics of reason and intelligence, so that in spite of their argument that the active principle was no less material than the passive, that it was the element of fire or vapor or both, it was inevitable that in practice their philosophy should ultimately tend toward a dualism and that the ancient conflict of matter and mind, of body and soul, should have its place in their teaching. They thought that the operative principle, fire, the divine reason, expresses itself in every part of the universe, that everything which exists is permeated by this divine spirit and directed by it. It is nothing less than the world-reason, God, which begets all things; so that they called it λόγος σπερματικός, that is, the reason that contains within itself the germs of all things that are to be. Now since man is of course a part of the cosmos, the Stoic argued that in him the world-reason naturally expresses itself; it is that which guides him, in fact it is his reason, the directing portion of his soul. And it is the possession of this soul, itself a part of the universal reason, which makes it possible for man to live in accord with Nature, for he attains that aim whenever his soul is in agreement with the universal soul which is its source. In this way the Stoic, for all his materialism, emphasized the divine nature of man and the community of human reason with God.

The pantheistic character of this philosophy is now evident. The world-reason, God, whatever the Stoic might call it, is all, embraces all within itself, and permeates all. This conception is in marked contrast to the teachings of Aristotle and the later Platonists, who conceived of God as transcendent, removed from the world about us. We have here the doctrine of the immanence of God, in whom all things live and move and have their being, because the world-reason is the principle on which all life and action directly depend. In this doctrine of the immanence of God the Stoics brought together again the worlds of matter and of reason which Plato had separated; and in the pantheistic character of this teaching they established a belief which later fitted in with the general course of pagan thought under the Roman Empire, when philosophy and religion were at one in recognizing the existence in the world of but a single divine principle, although all systems, including Stoicism, found a way to provide for the multitude of gods which popular belief demanded.

The Stoic theology then is in technical language a materialistic pantheism, and the world is only a mode of God. Such abstractions are difficult to grasp and have no personal meaning for the common man. But in practice the Stoic thought and spoke of God as a personality. Nowhere is this feeling expressed with so much devotion as in Cleanthes’ Hymn to Zeus; the language is largely that of poetic tradition, but the thought is not that of common polytheism:

Most glorious of immortals, many named, powerful over all, Zeus, thou author of all nature, guiding all with law, Hail to thee. Thee ’tis right all mortals should address, For from thee men derive their race, they who alone Of all things mortal, living, creeping on the ground, Have gift of speech. So will I hymn thee, and thy power forever sing. For thee this entire cosmos, circling earth around, Obeys where’er thou leadest, and ’tis gladly ruled by thee. Such servant hast thou in thy hands invincible, The two-edged thunderbolt, ever living flame. For by its strokes are all things in nature wrought; With it thou dost direct the common law, which throughout all Forever moves, with every gleam commingled, great and small. ’Tis this hath made thee supreme king o’er all; For naught e’er comes to pass on earth apart from thee, O God, Nor in the sacred pole of ether above nor in the deep, Save all the sin men do with folly cursed.[227]

But some of you have doubtless remembered that Fate (εἱμαρμένη) plays a large part in Stoicism, that the Stoic writers describe it as the cause that works through all things and brings all things to pass.[228] We must therefore consider what the Stoic meant by Fate, how he explained the existence of evil, and what provision he made for the freedom of the will. Fate was identified with reason or with what we call natural law; and since the Stoic held that it does not operate in a mechanical way, but is directed by reason to the best possible ends, it followed that Fate became identical with Providence (πρόνοια).[229] This world then for the Stoic is the best of all possible worlds. Yet the question will inevitably be asked as to why it is that evil can exist in such a world, in which a particular Providence rules all things for the best. We have already seen that Cleanthes held that God directed all things but the deeds of the wicked:

Naught e’er comes to pass on earth apart from thee, O God, Nor in the sacred pole of ether above nor in the deep, Save all the sin men do with folly cursed.

For the most part however the Stoics did not attempt to place evil outside the domain of Fate, but boldly maintained that the existence of good is inconceivable without the existence of its opposite, evil. They taught that many of the things which are ordinarily reckoned evils by men were nothing of the sort; what we call physical evils, for example, were for them not evils, because they could not affect the wise man, the philosopher; or if they affected him, they could serve only as discipline, and therefore contribute to good ends. Man has within him the possibility of good; he must also have the possibility of evil, and therefore he must possess the freedom of choice without which goodness or evil has no moral value. Evil therefore like the good must be part of a world in which God rules all things to the best and wisest ends.

Still there remains the difficulty that if man can determine his own choice, how can we still speak of Fate as directing the world. The answer is found in the nature of man, whose body is properly directed by his soul. This soul through experience develops reason, and the reasoning soul, as we have already seen, is a part of the universal reason, God. When the reason rules a man’s impulses and directs his will to follow the right course, it leads him into the path of freedom, for freedom consists in the complete subjugation of the impulses to reason. The Stoic had only to appeal to common experience to show that if the body and its impulses prevail, man obviously is a slave; but if reason dominates he is free. As Epictetus taught: “Freedom and slavery, the first is the name of virtue, the other of vice, but both are the effects of choice. Those who do not have the power of choice are touched by neither of these things. But the soul is accustomed to be master of the body, and the things of the body have properly nothing to do with the will to choose; for no man is a slave if he is free in his power to choose.”[230] The perfect philosopher, then, is wholly free, for his every act is guided by reason, and therefore he lives perfectly in accord with Nature and himself. Freedom lies in choice, but the choice once made, the consequences inevitably follow. So the freedom of the individual was reconciled with the rule of a determining Fate.

We have thus far seen that Stoicism was a philosophy for the individual; that it demanded that man, being a free agent, recognize his high calling as a reasonable being and put himself by the exercise of his will into accord with Nature and himself, and so attain or at least advance toward perfection. But in contrast to Cynicism Stoicism did not demand that its sectaries should cut themselves off from society; on the contrary it recognized that man is normally a member of a social group. If in its doctrine of personal edification it was strongly individualistic, it was no less cosmopolitan in its social philosophy. Although the earlier Stoics had not taken part in political life—probably because of the conditions of the time,—none had forbidden participation in public affairs, but on the contrary all favored it. Moreover the Stoic could not limit his view to the small political unit or to the society contained therein; but inasmuch as each individual possesses a soul that is a part of the cosmic reason, all mankind is a community of reasoning beings, and every man is a brother of every other.[231] Thus Stoicism gave a philosophic basis to the idea of the brotherhood of man. It taught also that external circumstances, birth, wealth, high position, physical freedom or slavery, are indifferent matters; that the slave if a philosopher is the equal of the philosophic emperor. Such doctrines as these gave a new dignity to the individual and were destined to produce great social effects in the course of time: they resulted toward the close of the first century of our era in a new humanitarian spirit which began to care for the poor and the weak. Ultimately the Stoic Roman jurists wrote into the great law-codes the doctrine of the brotherhood of man, distinguishing between natural law, according to which all men are brothers on an equal footing, and human law which has brought about distinctions. These law-codes saved the written doctrine for the later centuries, and Christianity on its part absorbed much of Stoic teaching; through these two channels we have inherited many of the ideas which are moving forces in modern democracy.

These matters touch us so closely that we may well pause for a moment and listen to some ancient witnesses. On the question whether a slave could be said to confer benefits on his master, Seneca wrote that whoever denied the possibility of this was ignorant of the principles of all human law: “for the question is as to the spirit of the one who confers the benefit, not as to his position in life. Virtue is closed to no man; but she is open for all, admits all, invites all, both freeborn and freedmen, slaves, kings, and exiles all alike. She does not choose house or wealth; she is satisfied with the bare man and asks nothing more.”[232] Again he points out that only the body can be enslaved; that no prison can hold the mind and keep it from consorting with the divine.[233] He sums up: “All of us have the same origin, the same source; no man is nobler than another save he who has a more upright character and one better fitted to honorable pursuits.”[234] The great jurists speak no less plainly than the philosopher. Julius Paulus, at the beginning of the third century of our era, laid down the principle that nature has established between men a certain relationship; this his contemporary Ulpian expressed more plainly in these words: “By natural law all men are equal.” And Florentinus wrote: “Slavery is a provision of the law of nations, by which one man, contrary to the law of nature, is subject to the domination of another.”[235]

Such doctrines as these naturally broke down allegiance to city and nation, and made men feel that they were citizens of the world. Seneca distinguished two states, the one that into which a man is born; the other, the great and true commonwealth where dwell both gods and men, in which one looks not to this corner or to that, but measures its borders by the course of the sun.[236] In like language Musonius taught that the wise man, i.e., the philosopher, believes himself to be a citizen of the city of God, which consists of gods and men.[237] So the Emperor Marcus Aurelius reflected: “To me as Antoninus my city is Rome, but as a man it is the universe.”[238]

We may seem to have wandered somewhat from the religious aspect of Stoicism, but the digression finds its justification not only in the fact that both the belief in the natural equality of men and the cosmopolitan character of Stoicism grew out of the doctrine that each man’s reason is a part of the universal reason, but also in the significance these things had for that time and for ours.

The Stoic felt himself commissioned to preach and to turn men from their evil ways; he became a missionary to the world, exhorting men to the pursuit of sobriety, patience, virtue, and to the imitation of God. Seneca recalled with new emphasis Plato’s definition of man’s duty: “The first point in the worship of the gods is to believe that the gods exist; second to render unto them their majesty; to render likewise their goodness without which there is no majesty; to know that the gods preside over the world, that they direct the universe by their power, protect mankind, and sometimes have regard for individuals. The gods neither bring evil nor have it in themselves; but they chastise and check some men, they inflict penalties, sometimes they punish under the guise of blessings. Would’st thou propitiate the gods? Be thou good thyself. He has worshipped them aright who has imitated them.” And again: “The divine nature is not worshipped with the fat bodies of slain bulls, or with gold or silver votive offerings, or with money collected for the sacred treasury, but with a pious and upright will.”[239] Epictetus reviews the gifts of providence to men and asks: “What words can praise the works of providence in us and set them forth according to their worth? If we have understanding, ought we to do anything else, individually or all together, save sing hymns and bless the deity and tell of his benefits?... But since most of you have become blind, should there not be someone to fulfill this duty and on behalf of all to sing the hymn to God? For what else can I do, a lame old man, but sing hymns to God? If I were a nightingale, I should do the part of a nightingale; if I were a swan, I should do the part of a swan. But now I am a rational creature, and therefore must praise God. This is my task. I will do it, nor will I leave my post, so long as I may keep it; and I urge you to join in this same song.”[240]

Under the Empire Stoicism lost the moderate interest in speculation which it had once had, and became almost exclusively a moral philosophy. It was an age which called for moral resistance, when men were obliged to steel themselves to endure oppression and disaster, to “endure and refrain.” This is the motto of the later Stoics, ἀνέχου καὶ ἀπέχου, by which they meant: “Refrain from all that thy will cannot control; endure all that may assault thee; practise thyself in following the guide of reason; resist all passions.” This is almost the sum total of the discourses of Epictetus. The ancient conflict between body and soul also came to the front once more, and Stoicism showed the same ascetic tendency that is found in all the later philosophies. To it Marcus Aurelius gives clearest expression. Reflecting on his own nature the Emperor quotes a saying of Epictetus: “Thou art a poor soul burdened with a corpse.”[241] Again in self-exhortation he says: “ This thing I am is but flesh, breath, and the guiding reason. Farewell my books! strain after them no more. They are not for thee. As if already in the presence of death, despise thy flesh—it is only foul blood and bones, a web and tissue of sinews and veins and arteries. Consider breath too! What is it? A puff of wind never the same, but every moment exhaled and again inhaled. Last comes the guiding reason—on that set all thy mind.”[242]

The Emperor bids his books farewell. Philosophy was no longer a thing for the closet and the scholar’s study, but a matter of practical life in the market place and public square; the unlettered might pursue it as well as the learned, for it was the art of living—an art which the noblest pursued with all the enthusiasm of religious emotion. Although the Stoic was most concerned with the present, and could offer no continued life for the individual soul beyond the time when all the universe should sink back into the original fire, his fervor could be that of the seer with a vision of eternity.

The contributions which the Stoics made to the ethical and religious life were large. They showed that there is a moral order in nature to which man as a part of nature must conform; by emphasizing the community of reason between man and God, so that in Epictetus’ phrase we are but fragments of God,[243] they gave a religious sanction to duty toward God and man which had hitherto been lacking; and by the conclusions which they logically drew as to the brotherhood of man, disregarding distinctions of birth, position, or race, and looking to character alone, they gave a great impulse to the improvement of morals, to the spread of justice and kindliness in private relations, and to a genuine love for humanity. The stimulus which a belief in personal immortality might have given them was replaced by a sense of divine kinship and a challenge to the will to choose the nobler course under the guide of reason.

On the theological side they established the doctrine of the immanence of God in opposition to the transcendental views of the Platonists and Aristotelians. Since the whole cosmos is in their view animated by the universal reason, every part of it is alive. The heavenly bodies were therefore naturally regarded as divine, gods to whom the names of the greater gods of popular theology were conveniently given. But on the whole the traditional gods were explained allegorically, being regarded as the names assigned to various manifestations of God in nature. So Zeus was the heavens or the ether, Hera air, Poseidon the waters, Demeter earth, Hephaestus fire, Hades darkness, and so on. Now this physical allegorizing tended to destroy all belief in the mythological divinities more effectually perhaps than any other assault that had been made since the attacks began in the sixth century. But we must not think that the Stoics disbelieved in the existence of gods. I have just spoken of their doctrine that the heavenly bodies are divine; and they held that the spirits of the wisest and best survive the body as lesser divinities, as daemons. All these, however, will cease to be when the present age comes to an end and the cosmos sinks back into universal fire.

In the religious philosophies which we have thus far considered the reason and the will were the chief means by which security and happiness here or hereafter could be obtained. These systems taught that salvation was a matter of man’s own effort, and within his own power. Yet in Marcus Aurelius, for example, we have again and again clear evidence that the last great Stoic was conscious of the insufficiency of man to save his own soul unaided, and the philosophies to which we are now to turn recognize man’s weakness and make salvation an act of grace from God.

As we have remarked before, the last three centuries before our era among the Greeks were centuries in which their national life and culture decayed. Autocratic forms of government arose which cut men off from active participation in politics and turned their attention in upon themselves. There was a loss of creative power in literature, art, and speculative thought; and men were conscious of a failure of the sense which their forefathers had had, that this life could give them great satisfaction. These things, and the extremes of wealth and poverty, terror of the imperial power, the selfish greed and hopelessness of the mass of the people, all combined under the early Empire to fill the minds of the thoughtful with sadness and pessimism. We find these sentiments in every writer of the first two centuries of our era who deals with contemporary society. Seneca feels that the world is lost and helpless; that life itself is a fatal gift compared with which nothing is so deceitful and treacherous. Filled with ardour for his philosophy and with confidence in the efficacy of its moral teachings, he nevertheless at times loses heart. This is likewise true of the rest. As we read the pages of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, in spite of the inspiring words of that halting slave who in Nicopolis preached high fortitude to his hearers and of the Emperor who in distant camp among the Quadi on the banks of the Gran or in winter quarters at Carnuntum recounted his blessings and exhorted his own soul to endure, we have at times an inevitable sense of the hopelessness of the struggle. Furthermore, as has been frequently pointed out, the last centuries before our era had been marked by a feeling on the part of many of a separation from God and by a longing in some way to bridge the gulf between the human and the divine, to secure a revelation from heaven, and to attain to direct vision and knowledge of God. As the satisfactions of life, which the earlier, freer centuries had given, grew less, in weariness of spirit, conscious of his own weakness and lack of power to secure his soul’s freedom and happiness, man turned for help from outside himself. The reason and the will alone had failed. God’s grace was needed for salvation.

The conquests of Alexander had not only diffused Hellenic speech and thought over a wide area, but they had also opened the way by which the nearer East could influence the western part of the ancient world. Alexandria in Egypt became the chief intellectual center; from it especially spread intellectual movements to the remoter parts of the Roman world. As I hope to show in my next lecture, Greek culture became the common property of all educated men. It was natural also that some of the philosophies cultivated at Alexandria should show the influence of Jewish thought, for this metropolis had been from its founding a center for Jews as well as Greeks.

The longing for tranquillity in this life, for a revelation of God, and for the assurance of personal salvation which could not find satisfaction in Stoicism, Epicureanism, and the later Aristotelian schools, led to a revival of Pythagorean mysticism and of Platonism. These elements, combined in more than one case with Jewish thought, were the materials out of which the principal mystic schools developed at Alexandria. The three with which we are chiefly concerned are Neopythagoreanism, Judeo-Aexandrian philosophy, and Neoplatonism.

The Pythagorean school had ceased to have a separate existence by the fourth century b.c., but the ideas which the school had cherished were not lost. In the last century before our era these doctrines were revived, and in accordance with the syncretistic spirit of the age were combined with Platonic teachings into a philosophic, or as we may more truly say, a theosophic system. The first representative of this revival known to us by name is Nigidius Figulus, a friend and contemporary of Cicero. Its most famous leader was Apollonius of Tyana in Cappadocia, who lived under Nero. By the third century a mass of marvellous legends had gathered about this Apollonius which is preserved in his life, written about 210 a.d. by Philostratus at the request of the Empress Julia Domna.

The extant evidence shows us clearly that by the second century b.c. the process had begun at Alexandria of reconciling Jewish theology with Greek philosophy. The first, however, to combine the two into a system, known to us as the Judeo-Aexandrian, was the learned Philo, who was born about 25 b.c. He belonged to one of the most prominent Jewish families; in 40 a.d., he was chosen to head a delegation of Aexandrian Jews which was sent to the Emperor Caligula. His purpose in common with the other adherents of this school was primarily religious, and he aimed at a better understanding of his own religion rather than at building up a system of philosophic thought. To accomplish his purpose he took from the Hellenic schools whatever seemed useful, without troubling himself overmuch about the logical relation of the parts which he wove together. The movement actually developed a school which had a large historical significance.

The third philosophy is Neoplatonism, founded at Alexandria, according to tradition, by Ammonius Saccas at the beginning of the third century. Ammonius had been reared in the Christian faith, but on reaching maturity returned to pagan philosophy. His instruction was given wholly by word of mouth. Of his numerous pupils the most famous were Origen, the church father, and Plotinus. The latter and his pupil Porphyry were the chief representatives of the school in the period we have now under consideration.

Obviously in the time at our disposal we cannot consider in detail all the several doctrines of these three schools, but we must focus our attention on certain elements which are of prime importance in the pagan philosophy of the day and most significant because of their relation to Christianity. Before we proceed to this, however, I must ask you to remember that we are now dealing not with rigidly logical systems, but with mystic philosophies, with theosophies. There is much in them, therefore, that we cannot hope to understand clearly, because these philosophers themselves abandoned the path of reason alone and let intuition and emotion guide them in their loftiest experiences.

Let us first examine certain characteristics common to all these schools. They all combine large elements drawn from Platonism with borrowings from later philosophies, especially Stoicism; and, as I have already indicated, Judeo-Alexandrianism shows the influence of Jewish thought. All hold to the dual nature of man, a view which first became of religious significance with the Orphics in the sixth century. Plato, you will remember, emphasized the conflict of flesh and spirit, and we have seen how the Stoics, for all their monistic theory, came finally to the same dualism. Closely connected with this view was the contempt for the world of the senses which these schools show. This was due to a development of the Platonic doctrines of matter and of the descent of souls into corporeal dwellings; these teachings in their turn led to a confirmation of the belief that the ascetic life was the proper one for the philosopher—a doctrine which had been held in considerable degree by the Stoics and Cynics. In theology all maintained the transcendence of God, and postulated between God and this world intermediary powers, which work God’s will and cause all the sensible phenomena with which we are acquainted. Finally all believed in the possibility of a direct revelation of God to man, when in a state of enthusiasm or ecstasy. This belief in direct divine revelation, together with the ascetic tendencies of the several schools, led to the establishment of the ideal of sanctity as that toward which the faithful sectary should strive. Pythagoras was canonized by his later followers, Plato became “the divine”; Apollonius of Tyana grew in tradition to be the model of the saint on earth. He was regarded as one filled with divine inspiration, a worker of miracles. He ate no flesh, but lived solely on bread, fruits, and ordinary herbs; water was his only drink; he practised silence and neglected his person. The same description almost fits Plotinus, as made known to us by his biographer Porphyry. In all the essential practices these pagan saints anticipated their later Christian counterparts.

Let us look at the theology of these schools a little more closely. But before we proceed, it is important to define clearly what we mean by the transcendence of God, for the term is often loosely used. A transcendent god is one who is absolutely above the world and above man’s knowledge, a god who is so far removed that man can have no dealings with him directly, nor can he deal directly with man or make his works manifest to man, save through an intermediary. Such essentially was Aristotle’s God, his First Cause. The opposite idea is that of the immanence of God, such as we have seen in the Stoic teachings, in which God is conceived of as existing in all things. Now it is evident that in any system of philosophy or theology which believes in a transcendent God, and yet regards the visible world, including man, as the creation of the divine, some provision must be made for a being or beings, mediary between the transcendent God and the world, which shall express God’s will and make God intelligible to man. If such a being or beings do not exist to serve as mediators between the world and God, then man can have no knowledge of the divine whatsoever, and God cannot express himself in the world. Now in Plato’s philosophy the transcendency of God was at least implicit, it was clearly defined in Aristotle’s thought, and the idea certainly belonged to the Jewish-Alexandrian thought of the last two centuries before the beginning of the Christian era. Philo sets forth the doctrine most plainly. According to him God is so far above all mortal things that he must be defined in a negative way. All that we can say of him is that he is pure being, incorporeal, invisible, without qualities, above all virtue, and above all knowledge. We therefore cannot say that God is good or beautiful, because he is above all beauty and goodness; he is eternal, unchanging, existing in and for himself alone. His perfection is beyond our power to comprehend; our intellect cannot grasp his nature. All that man can know or say of God is that God is.[244] Yet naturally Philo is not content with negative definitions, but does attempt to express in a more or less traditional fashion the perfection of God; he speaks of him as that being which includes all reality within himself, or as the only being of whom real existence can be predicated; again as the absolute happy and perfect being; or as the original of all beauty. He likewise pictures God as the source of all activity, as the being to whom endless activity is as proper as it is for fire to burn or snow to chill; God is therefore the cause of all the activity in the world, as he is the supreme cause of all things.

Yet with his view of the transcendence of God, Philo could not say that God is present in the world save in his acts; and these acts he does not perform directly, for if God were to deal directly with the matter out of which the visible world is made, contact with that matter would defile the divine perfection. The creation of the world, therefore, God accomplished by incorporeal powers (δυνάμεις), by ideas (ἰδέαι), which are his servants.[245] The chief of these is the supreme reason, the word, the logos. In this logos all the ideas have their place, as the plan of a city has its place in the soul of its architect. The logos stands midway between God and the created world; it is not eternal as God is, or mortal as we, but occupies a middle position. The indebtedness of Philo to Plato is self-evident. Plato’s absolute and Plato’s ideas have been made mediary between the transcendent God and the visible world. This term, logos, the word, had been familiar not only to Greek philosophy from the time of Heraclitus but it had also a verbal parallel at least in certain Jewish expressions, “the wisdom of God,” “the word of God,” which Philo interprets in terms of the logos.

According to Philo the logos has a double rôle. Through the logos God created the world out of inert and formless matter, and continues to reveal himself through it to the world. The logos also serves as the high priest, the intercessor and advocate of the world with God.[246] Let me here note, however, that in Philo’s thought the logos could not take corporeal form; it could not become flesh and dwell among us, and therefore it was not possible that the logos should be identified completely with the idea of the Jewish Messiah.

Following Plato and the Stoics Philo teaches that man’s reason, his soul, is a particle, so to speak, of the divine intelligence that has entered into the human body. The human spirit, therefore, is divine, but man’s body is mortal and sinful. Here then, as in most of the philosophies which were influenced by Platonism, a discipline is necessary to subdue the flesh and free the spirit: man must constantly exercise his choice in preferring the things of the spirit, for through the gift of God man is free with power to choose the right or wrong. The moral obligation of man and the path of his salvation is the same as we have seen in earlier Greek thought. To this end Philo lays much weight on practice and education as contributing to advance in virtue; he is fired with a passionate longing for purity. In a notable passage he speaks thus to his own soul: “Haste thee, O my soul, to become God’s dwelling place, pure, holy; to become strong instead of utterly weak, powerful instead of impotent, wise instead of foolish, most reasonable instead of wandering.”[247] Yet he goes beyond his predecessors in teaching that man is so possessed by sin that he can escape from the bondage only by divine help; that his own reason and his own will are insufficient for the task. Knowledge and virtue are not acquired by unaided human effort, but are the gifts of God. Philo outdoes even the Stoics in requiring man to free himself from the passions of the body, and yet he points out that just because man is subject to these passions, because he is a sinner, he cannot unaided follow and imitate God, or make himself God’s holy temple. Man’s goodness then is due to the favor of God; salvation is an act of grace.

The end of man’s effort and hope is to attain to knowledge of God and thereby to find supreme happiness. But man cannot reach this by his own will or intellect, for God is so far removed from the world that he cannot be fully apprehended by one dwelling here, so that the gulf between man and God must be bridged. This is possible, Philo teaches, when the soul in ecstasy passes out of itself, beyond the sensuous world, the realm of ideas and the logos, to be at one with God. This vision of God is the supreme blessing, accorded only to the most perfect and holy among men; in it the human soul finds not only its rest and full satisfaction, but its own consummation.[248]

You recognize at once that we have here philosophy fired with religious emotion, that in Philo’s system at the end reason gives way before a passionate desire for revelation through union with God. Philosophy has become theosophy. The ecstacy which we have hitherto seen, has been connected chiefly with the worship of Dionysus, in which it was stimulated by means which we find offensive. But this ecstasy is not aroused by dance or music, or indeed by contemplation, but is attained in a purely passive condition when the soul is emptied of itself and becomes one with the Absolute.

These same ideas—the transcendence of God, the existence of mediary powers between God and the world, the ascetic life as a means of growth, the dependence of man on God’s grace for his salvation, the possibility of the Beatific Vision—all are common in varying degrees to all the mystic philosophies of the day. In the third century Neoplatonism became the most popular and influential. Through Origen and St. Augustine it passed into Christian theology. The real problem for Neoplatonism, as for the other religious philosophies of this time, was to set forth the way by which the soul of man could grasp the Divine directly and find its happiness and complete satisfaction in perfect unity with him. We have just seen how Philo had conceived of God as wholly transcendent, and had established the logos as the mediator who furnishes the necessary connection between the eternal, transcendent God and the created, temporal world. Plotinus outdid Philo in that he removed his God one stage still farther away. His definition of God is necessarily similar to that of Philo, but he endeavors to give a notion of an Absolute more remote, if possible, than that of his predecessors. God he says is neither reason itself nor can he be grasped by the use of reason, but is above all knowledge and reason.[249] We must conceive of him as absolute unity, as at once pure creative activity, the first cause, the power on which the world depends, and at the same time as the final cause toward which the world is tending. The acts of creation are constant; yet God does not create the visible world directly, but as the sun without effort or loss to itself sends out its rays, so God out of the fullness of his perfection emanates Intelligence (Νοῦς), in which are immanent the Ideas: these are the causes of all things which come into being. The second grade of emanation is that of the World-soul (Ψυχή), which pours itself out, so to speak, into the individual souls. The last stage of emanation is that of Matter, the material which in itself has no characteristics of being. The sensible world is produced by the action of the Ideas on Matter, forming and shaping it through Intelligence.[250] You will note here the four stages, God, Intelligence, Soul, and Matter, as compared with Philo’s three, God, the Logos, and Matter.

You may well ask at this point why these later philosophers with their desire to know God, should still lay so much emphasis on his transcendence, apparently vying with one another in pushing the Divine beyond the universe, which they still regarded as his creation. Now we have already seen that Plato implied that his material principle was imperfect and thereby the source of evil, and that his Absolute, the supreme Idea, was separate from matter. In the period we are now considering all schools which owed ultimate allegiance to Plato or the Pythagoreans held to a clearly defined dualistic view of the universe. Conscious that the visible, material world is imperfect and full of evil, unstable and decaying, they argued that God cannot be immanent in the world, for if he were, he would be subject to evil, imperfection, and change, whereas we must conceive him to be good, perfect, and unchanging unity. Therefore the motive which prompted all these theologians was their desire to save the unity and perfection of God by removing him from all possible contact with matter, to which some like the Neoplatonists, following Plato, absolutely denied all the attributes of being. And the doctrine of divine transcendence was the more natural for Philo and all who had come under the influence of Jewish thought, since the Old Testament constantly affirms the absolute exaltation and perfection of God. In like manner the doctrine of mediary powers was helped by the Jewish idea of the wisdom of God and the popular post-exilic belief in angels.

Yet when the theologians had removed God beyond the confines of the world, beyond all knowledge, they had still to deal with the passionate longing for knowledge of God and for assurance of salvation which was strong in large numbers of the uninstructed, as well as in the philosophic élite. This knowledge and assurance could only be supplied by a belief in the direct revelation of God to man. Such a belief was traditional in the Old Testament; on the Greek side it was fostered by the feeling that the great teachers Pythagoras and Plato were divinely inspired; and in the popular Oriental religions which we shall consider in a later lecture, divine revelation was a fundamental article of faith. But let us return to Plotinus.

The second grade of emanation in the Neoplatonic system is the World-soul (Ψυχή),[251] which, though inferior to Intelligence (Νοῦς), is nevertheless divine and immaterial. It stands midway between Intelligence and Matter and is related to both. Within the World-soul, which is the highest of all souls, corresponding to Plato’s idea of the Good, are all individual souls.[252] These descend into matter and, pervading bodies in all their parts, give them sensation, reason, and all their life. But even as the sunlight descending into darkness is dimmed or wholly lost, so by their descent and birth into corporeal forms souls are made to forget their divine origin. They wish to be independent; like children who leave their parents and dwell apart from them, the souls of men forget their own nature and their divine father; they lose their freedom; they honor that which is not honorable, and so fall deeper into sin. The sinner therefore must be turned from his ways, must be made to remember his divine race, to honor the things of the spirit, and to cease reverencing those things which are not the soul’s concern.[253] The soul’s return is to be accomplished by an asceticism with which we are now familiar. This the leaders illustrated in their own lives. Porphyry tells us that his master remained unmarried, abstained from animal food, lived in the simplest fashion, and so despised his body that he seemed ashamed of its possession.[254] The pupil laid even more stress on the subjugation of the flesh that the soul might be free and return toward God. “The more we turn toward that which is mortal,” he says, “the more we unfit our minds for the infinite grandeur, and the more we withdraw from attachment to the body, in that same measure we approach the divine.”[255] He taught that men must regard their bodies as garments, which not only burden but actually defile them, and which they like athletes must lay aside that naked and unclothed they may enter the stadium to contend in the Olympia of the soul.[256]

Plotinus, however, held that men would not all rise above the plane of the senses, but that many would remain caught by them, thinking that the good is identical with pleasure and pain with evil; others are more capable, he said, but they cannot turn their gaze upward, and so they devote themselves to the virtues of the practical life. But there is a third class of divine men of greater strength and keener insight, who can see and follow the gleam from above, so that they rise beyond the mists of this world to their true and natural abode, like men returning to their native city after long wandering.[257]

The soul’s final aim in its flight from evil Plotinus defines in Plato’s words: it is likeness to God.[258] That is the sum of all virtue. But the master distinguishes grades and degrees of virtue in practice. There are the social virtues of wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice, which serve to regulate the passions and help man to form right opinions. At this stage these cardinal virtues are related solely to external objects, and serve primarily to better man in his mundane activities. Next come those virtues which purify the soul from the pollution of the body, the activities which have nothing to do with the body but belong wholly to the soul; they are concerned with thought and reason. But in the highest range the virtues of the lower stages are no longer related to external objects, but have to do with the Intelligence (Νοῦς) alone. This is the contemplative life, man’s highest activity, in which he becomes himself divine.[259]

Yet the Neoplatonist held that there is a still higher stage. When man’s soul has mounted upward to Intelligence and lives the contemplative life, the space between Intelligence and God is yet unbridged. This gulf can only be crossed when the soul in ecstasy, forgetful of all thought and of self, rises to complete knowledge and union with the One.[260] This supreme privilege, according to Porphyry, was vouchsafed his master four times in the years he was his pupil; and once he too had seen the Beatific Vision.[261]

It is evident that Neoplatonism, the last stage of Greek philosophy, is no isolated or strange phenomenon. On its metaphysical side it is the consummation and final synthesis of the whole course of Greek thought from the sixth century to its own day; likewise in ethics it combined the views of its chief predecessors as its leaders understood them; and finally in the doctrine of the soul’s union with God it only carried the mystical tendencies of previous centuries to their natural conclusion.

If time allowed, we might consider the way in which the Neoplatonists reconciled their theology with the polytheism and demonology of popular belief, but that would lead us too far; indeed it would take us away from our own proper subject and from the main interest of the great leaders of this school. They were most concerned with finding out and showing men the true path to the soul’s peace and happiness, and we are chiefly interested in the history of their thought on this high theme. They found their object not in the exercise of the reason or the will alone, but in mysticism.