10. PLATONIC TRACES.
Platonic traces, there would naturally be; but it will be noticed that they are far less numerous than the Pythagorean. To begin with, we find the reverent spirit towards the divinities, which prays for their blessing at the inception of all tasks.[710] To us who live in these latter days, such a prayer seems out of place in philosophy; but that is only because we have divorced philosophy from theology; in other words, because our theology has left the realm of living thought, and, being fixed once for all, we are allowed to pursue any theory of existence we please as if it had nothing whatever to do with any reality; in other words, we are deceiving ourselves. On the contrary, in those days, every philosophical speculation was a genuine adventure in the spiritual world, a magical operation that might unexpectedly lead to the threshold of the cosmic sanctuary. Wise, indeed, therefore, was he who began it by prayer.
Of other technical Platonic terms there are quite a few. The lower is always the image of the higher.[711] So the world might be considered the statue of the Divinity.[712] The ideas are in a realm above the world.[713] The soul here below is as in a prison.[714] There is a divinity higher than the one generally known.[715] The divinity is in a stability resultant of firmness and perfect motion.[716] The perfect movement, therefore, is circular.[717] This inter-communion of the universe therefore results in matter appearing in the intelligible world as "intelligible matter."[718] By dialectics, also called "bastard reasoning,"[719] we abstract everything[720] till we reach the thing-in-itself,[721] or, in other words, matter as a substrate of the world.[722] Thus we metaphysically reach ineffable solitude.[723]
The same goal is reached psychologically, however, in the ecstasy.[724] This idea occurred in Plato only as a poetic expression of metaphysical attainment; and in the case of Plotinos at least may have been used as a practical experience chiefly to explain his epileptic attacks; and this would be all the more likely as this disease was generally called the "sacred disease." Whether Numenius also was an epileptic, we are not told; it is more likely he took the idea from Philo, or Philo's oriental sources; at least Numenius seems to claim no personal ecstatic experiences such as those of Plotinos.
We have entered the realm of psychology; and this teaches us that that in which Numenius and Plotinos differ from Plato and Philo is chiefly their psychological or experimental application of pure philosophy. No body could subsist without the soul to keep it together.[725] Various attempts are made to describe the nature of the soul; it is the extent or relation of circumference to circle.[726] Or it is like a line and its divergence.[727] In any case, the divinity and the soul move around the heavens,[728] and this may explain the otherwise problematical progress or evolution ("prosodos" or "stolos") of ours.[729]