a. Proclus says (Theol. Plat. III. p. 140): “Now this is the first triad of all that is thought—the limit, the infinite, and that which is mingled. The limit is God going forth to the culminating point of thought from the uncommunicable and first God, measuring and determining everything, admitting all that is paternal and coherent, and the unblemished race of gods. But the infinite” (quantity) “is the inexhaustible potentiality of this God, that which makes all productions and orders to appear, and the whole infinitude, the primeval essence as well as the substantial, and even the ultimate matter. What is mingled is, however, the first and highest order (διάκοσμος) of the gods, and it is that which holds everything concealed in itself, completed in accordance with the intelligible and all-embracing triad, comprehending in simple form the cause of all that exists, and establishing in the first objects of thought the culminating point which is derived from the wholes.” The first order is thus in its culminating point the abstract substance in which the three determinations as such are shut up without development and maintained in strict isolation; this pure reality is in so far the undisclosed. It is the greatest height reached by thought and likewise really the turning back, as this likewise appears in Plotinus; and this first begets in its culminating point the second order which in the whole is life, and culminates in its turn in the νοῦς.
b. This second triad is placed in the determination of the infinite. On making this step forward Proclus (Theol. Plat. III. pp. 141, 142) breaks into a transport of bacchanalian ecstasy, and says, “After this first triad which remains in unity, let us now in hymns praise the second which proceeds from this, and is brought to pass through the abolition of that which comes before it. As the first unity begets the culminating point of existence, the middle unity begets the middle existence; for it is likewise begetting and self-retaining.” In the second order three moments again appear as before: “Here the principle or the first is the substance which was the completion of the first triad; the second, which was there the infinite, is here potentiality (δύναμις). The unity of both these is Life (ζωή),” the centre, or what gives determinateness to the whole order; “the second existence is life as thought, for in the most external thought Ideas have their subsistence (ὑπόστασιν). The second order is a triad analogous to the first, for the second is likewise a God.” The relationship of these trinities is hence this: “As the first triad is everything, but is so intellectually (νοητῶς) and as proceeding immediately from the one (ἑνκαίως), and remaining within limits (περατοειδῶς), so the second is likewise everything, but in living fashion and in the principle of infinitude (ζωτικῶς καὶ ἀπειροειδῶς), and similarly the third has proceeded after the manner of what is mingled. Limitation determines the first trinity, the unlimited the second, the concrete (μικτόν) the third. Each determination of unity, the one placed beside the other, also explains the intelligible order of gods; each contains all three moments subordinate to itself, and each is this trinity set forth under one of these moments.” These three orders are the highest gods; later on, we find in Proclus (in Timæum, pp. 291, 299) four orders of gods appearing.
c. Proclus comes (Theol. Plat. III. p. 143) to the third triad, which is thought itself as such, the νούς: “The third monad places round itself the νούς as thought, and fills it with divine unity; it places the middle between itself and absolute existence, fills this last by means of the middle and turns it to itself. This third triad does not resemble cause (κατ̓ αἰτίαν), like the first existence, nor does it reveal the all like the second; but it is all as act and expression (ἐκφανῶς); hence it is also the limit of all that is thought. The first triad remains concealed in limit itself, and has all subsistence of intellectuality fixed in it. The second is likewise enduring, and at the same time steps forward;” the living appears, but is in so doing led back to unity. “The third after progression shifts and turns the intelligible limit back to the beginning, and bends the order back into itself; for the understanding is the turning back to what is thought” (to unity), “and the giving of conformity with it. And all this is one thought, one Idea: persistence, progression and return.” Each is a totality on its own account, but all three are led back into one. In the νοῦς the first two triads are themselves only moments; for spirit is just the grasping in itself of the totality of the first two spheres. “Now these three trinities announce in mystic form the entirely unknown (ἄγνωστον) cause of the first and unimparted (ἀμεθεκτοῦ) God,” who is the principle of the first unity, but is manifested in the three: “the one has inexpressible unity, the second the superfluity of all powers, but the third the perfect birth of all existence.” In this the mystic element is that these differences which are determined as totalities, as gods, become comprehended as one. The expression “mystic” often appears with the Neo-Platonists. Thus Proclus for example says (Theol. Plat. III. p. 131): “Let us once more obtain initiation into the mysteries (μυσταγωγίαν) of the one.” Mysticism is just this speculative consideration of Philosophy, this Being in thought, this self-satisfaction and this sensuous perception. However, μυστήριον has not to the Alexandrians the meaning that it has to us, for to them it indicates speculative philosophy generally. The mysteries in Christianity have likewise been to the understanding an incomprehensible secret, but because they are speculative, reason comprehends them, and they are not really secret, for they have been revealed.
In conclusion, Proclus institutes a comparison between these triads. “In the first order the concrete is itself substance, in the second it is life, and in the third the thought that is known.” Proclus calls substance likewise Ἑστία, the fixed, the principle. “The first trinity is the God of thought (θεὸς νοητός); the second the thought of and thinking (θεὸς νοητὸς καὶ νοερός)” the active; “the third the” pure, “thinking God (θεὸς νοερός),” who is in himself this return to unity in which, as return, all three are contained; for “God is the whole in them.” These three are thus clearly the absolute one, and this then constitutes one absolute concrete God. “God knows the divided as undivided, what pertains to time as timeless, what is not necessary as necessary, the changeable as unchangeable, and, speaking generally, all things more excellently than in accordance with their order. Whose are the thoughts, his also are the substances, because the thought of every man is identical with the existence of every man, and each is both the thought and the existence,” and so on.[255]
These are the principal points in the theology of Proclus, and it only remains to us to give some external facts. The individuality of consciousness is partially in the form of an actuality, as magic and theurgy; this often appears among the Neo-Platonists and with Proclus, and is called making a god. The element of theurgy is thus brought into relation with the heathen divinities: “The first and chief names of the gods, one must admit, are founded in the gods themselves. Divine thought makes names of its thoughts, and finally shows the images of the gods; each name gives rise, so to speak, to an image of a god. Now as theurgy through certain symbols calls forth the unenvying goodness of God to the light of the images of the artist, the science of thought makes the hidden reality of God appear through the uniting and separating of the tones.”[256] Thus the statues and pictures of artists show the inward speculative thought, the being replete with the divinity that brings itself into externality; thus the consecration of images is likewise represented. This connecting fact—that the Neo-Platonists have even inspired the mythical element with the divine—is thereby expressed, so that in images, &c., the divine power is present. Nevertheless I have only wished to call this moment to mind because it plays a great part at this particular time.
[5. The Successors of Proclus.]
In Proclus we have the culminating point of the Neo-Platonic philosophy; this method in philosophy is carried into later times, continuing even through the whole of the Middle Ages. Proclus had several successors who were scholarchs at Athens—Marinus, his biographer, and then Isidorus of Gaza, and finally Damascius. Of the latter we still possess some very interesting writings; he was the last teacher of the Neo-Platonic philosophy in the Academy. For in 529 A.D. the Emperor Justinian caused this school to be closed, and drove all heathen philosophers from his kingdom: amongst these was Simplicius, a celebrated commentator on Aristotle, several of whose commentaries are not yet printed. They sought and found protection and freedom in Persia under Chosroïs. After some time they ventured to return to the Roman Empire, but they could no longer form any school at Athens; thus as far as its external existence is concerned, the heathen philosophy went utterly to ruin.[257] Eunapius treats of this last period, and Cousin has dealt with it in a short treatise. Although the Neo-Platonic school ceased to exist outwardly, ideas of the Neo-Platonists, and specially the philosophy of Proclus, were long maintained and preserved in the Church; and later on we shall on several occasions refer to it. In the earlier, purer, mystical scholastics we find the same ideas as are seen in Proclus, and until comparatively recent times, when in the Catholic Church God is spoken of in a profound and mystical way, the ideas expressed are Neo-Platonic.
In the examples given by us perhaps the best of the Neo-Platonic philosophy is found; in it the world of thought has, so to speak, consolidated itself, not as though the Neo-Platonists had possessed this world of thought alongside of a sensuous world, for the sensuous world has disappeared and the whole been raised into spirit, and this whole has been called God and His life in it. Here we witness a great revolution, and with this the first period, that of Greek philosophy, closes. The Greek principle is freedom as beauty, reconciliation in imagination, natural free reconciliation that is immediately realized, and thus represents an Idea in sensuous guise. Through philosophy thought, however, desires to tear itself away from what is sensuous, for philosophy is the constitution of thought into a totality beyond the sensuous and the imaginary. Herein is this simple progression contained, and the points of view which we have noticed are, as cursorily surveyed, the following.
First of all we saw the abstract in natural form: then abstract thought in its immediacy, and thus the one, Being. These are pure thoughts, but thought is not yet comprehended as thought; for us these thoughts are merely universal thoughts to which the consciousness of thought is still lacking. Socrates is the second stage, in which thought appears as self, the absolute is the thought of itself; the content is not only determined, e.g. Being, the atom, but is concrete thought, determined in itself and subjective. The self is the most simple form of the concrete, but it is still devoid of content; in as far as it is determined it is concrete, like the Platonic Idea. This content, however, is only implicitly concrete and is not yet known as such; Plato, beginning with what is given, takes the more determinate content out of sensuous perception. Aristotle attains to the highest idea; the thought about thought takes the highest place of all; but the content of the world is still outside of it. Now in as far as this manifold concrete is led back to the self as to the ultimate simple unity of the concrete, or, on the other hand, the abstract principle has content given to it, we saw the systems of dogmatism arising. That thought of thought is in Stoicism the principle of the whole world, and it has made the attempt to comprehend the world as thought. Scepticism, on the other hand, denies all content, for it is self-consciousness, thought, in its pure solitude with itself, and likewise reflection on that beginning of pre-suppositions. In the third place the absolute is known as concrete, and this is as far as Greek philosophy goes. That is to say, while in the system of Stoics the relation of difference to unity is present only as an “ought,” as an inward demand, without the identity coming to pass, in the Neo-Platonist school the absolute is finally set forth in its entirely concrete determination, the Idea consequently as a trinity, as a trinity of trinities, so that these ever continue to emanate more and more. But each sphere is a trinity in itself, so that each of the abstract moments of this triad is itself likewise grasped as a totality. Only that which manifests itself, and therein retains itself as the one, is held to be true. The Alexandrians thus represent the concrete totality in itself, and they have recognized the nature of spirit; they have, however, neither gone forth from the depths of infinite subjectivity and its absolute chasm, nor have they grasped the absolute, or, if we will, abstract freedom of the “I” as the infinite value of the subject.
The Neo-Platonic standpoint is thus not a philosophic freak, but a forward advance on the part of the human mind, the world and the world-spirit. The revelation of God has not come to it as from an alien source. What we here consider so dry and abstract is concrete. “Such rubbish,” it is said, “as we consider when in our study we see philosophers dispute and argue, and settle things this way and that at will, are verbal abstractions only.” No, no; they are the deeds of the world-spirit, gentlemen, and therefore of fate. The philosophers are in so doing nearer to God than those nurtured upon spiritual crumbs; they read or write the orders as they receive them in the original; they are obliged to continue writing on. Philosophers are the initiated ones—those who have taken part in the advance which has been made into the inmost sanctuary; others have their particular interests—this dominion, these riches, this girl. Hundreds and thousands of years are required by the world-spirit to reach the point which we attain more quickly, because we have the advantage of having objects which are past and of dealing with abstraction.