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The idea of classifying the works of Plotinos chronologically, therefore, has so much external proof, as well as internal indications, to support it, that, no doubt, in the future no reference will be made to Plotinos without specifying to which period it refers; and we may expect that future editions of his works will undo the grievous confusion introduced by Porphyry, and thus render Plotinos's works comparatively accessible to rational study.
There are besides many other minor proofs of the chronological order of the writings of Plotinos, most of which are noticed at the heading of each succeeding book; but the most startling human references are those to Amelius's departure as a false friend;[466] to Porphyry's desire to suicide at his departure,[467] and to his own impending dissolution,[468] each of these occurring at the exact time of the event chronologically, but certainly not according to the traditional order.
II. PLATONISM: SIGNIFICANCE, PROGRESS AND RESULTS.
Of all fetishes which have misled humanity, perhaps none is responsible for more error than that of originality. As if anything could be new that was true, or true that was new! The only possible lines along which novelty or progress can lie are our reports, combinations, and expressions. Some people think they have done for a poet if they have shown that he made use of suitable materials in the construction of his poem! So Shakespeare has been shown to have used whole scenes from earlier writers. So Virgil, by Macrobius, has been shown to have laid under contribution every writer then known to be worth ransacking. Dante has also been shown to have re-edited contemporary apocalypses. So Homer, even, has been shown to re-tell stories gathered from many sources. The result is that people generally consider Shakespeare, Virgil, or Homer great in spite of their borrowings, when, on the contrary, the statement should be that they were great because of their rootage in the best of their period. In other words, they are great not because of their own personality (which in many cases has dropped out of the ken of history), but because they more faithfully, completely, and harmoniously represent their periods than other now forgotten writers. Therein alone lay their cosmic value, and their assurance of immortality. They are the voices of their ages, and we are interested in the significance of their age, not in them personally.
It is from this standpoint that we must approach Plato. Of his personality what details are known are of no soteriologic significance; and the reason why the world has not been able to get away from him, and probably never will, is that he sums up prior Greek philosophy in as coherent a form as is possible without doing too great Procrustean violence to the elements in question. This means that Plato did not fuse them all into one absolutely, rigid, coherent, consistent system, in which case his utility would have been very much curtailed. The very form of his writings, the dialogue, left each element in the natural living condition to survive on its merits, not as an authoritative oracle, or Platonic pronunciamento, or creed.
For details, the reader is referred to Zeller's fuller account of these pre-Platonic elements.[471] But we may summarize as follows: the physical elements to which the Hylicists had in turn attributed finality Plato united into Pythagorean matter, which remained as an element of Dualism. The world of nature became the becoming of Heraclitus. Above that he placed the Being of Parmenides, in which the concepts of Socrates found place as ideas. These he identified with the numbers and harmonies of Pythagoras, and united them in an Eleatic unity of many, as an intelligible world, or reason, which he owed to Anaxagoras. The chief idea, that of the Good, was Megaro-Socratic. His cosmology was that of Timaeus. His psychology was based on Anaxagoras, as mind; on Pythagoras, as immortal. His ethics are Socratic, his politics are Pythagorean. Who therefore would flout Plato, has all earlier Greek philosophy to combat; and whoever recognizes the achievements of the Hellenic mind will find something to praise in Plato. When, therefore, we are studying Platonism, we are only studying a blending of the rays of Greece, and we are chiefly interested in Greece as one of the latest, clearest, and most kindred expressions of human thought.
If however we should seek some one special Platonic element, it would be that genuineness of reflection, that sincerity of thought, that makes of his dialogues no cut and dried literary figments, but soul-tragedies, with living, breathing, interest and emotion. Plato thus practised his doctrine of the double self,[472] the higher and the lower selves, of which the higher might be described as "superior to oneself." In his later period, that of the Laws, he applied this double psychology to cosmology, thereby producing doubleness in the world-Soul: besides the good one, appears the evil one, which introduces even into heaven things that are not good.
It was only a step from this to the logical deduction of Xenocrates that these things in heaven were "spirits" or "guardians," both good and evil, assisting in the administration of human affairs.[473] Such is the result of doubleness introduced into anthropology; introduced into cosmology, it establishes Pythagorean indefinite duality as the principle opposing the unity of goodness.