The next step was taken by Plutarch. The evil demons, had, in Stoic phraseology, been called "physical;" and so, in regard to matter, they came to stand in the relation of soul to body. Original matter, therefore, became two-fold; matter itself, and its moving principle, "the soul of matter." This was identified with the worse World-soul by a development, or historical event, which was the ordering of the cosmos, or, creation.
This then was the state of affairs at the advent of Numenius. Although his chief interest lay in practical comparative religion, he tried, philosophically, to return to a mythical "original" Platonism or Pythagoreanism. What Plato did for earlier Greek speculation, Numenius did for post-Platonic development. He harked back to the latter Platonic stage, which taught the evil world-Soul. He included the achievements of Plutarch, the "soul of matter," and the trine division of a separate principle, such as Providence. To the achievement of Xenocrates he was drawn by two powerful interests, the Egyptian, Hermetic, Serapistic, in connection with the evil demons; and the Pythagorean, in connection with the Indefinite-duality. Thus Numenius's History of the Platonic Succession is not a delusion; Numenius really did sum up the positive Platonic progress, not omitting even Maximus of Tyre's philosophical hierarchic explanation of the emanative or participative streaming forth of the Divine. But Numenius was not merely a philosopher: of this gathering of Platonic achievements he made a religion. In this he was also following the footsteps of Pythagoras, who limited his doctrines to a group of students. But Numenius did not merely copy Pythagoras. Numenius modernized him, connecting up the Platonic doctrinal aggregate with the mystery-rites current in his own day. Nor did Numenius shirk any unpleasant responsibilities of a restorer of Platonism: he continued the traditional Academico-Stoical feud. Strange to say, the last great Stoic philosopher, Posidonius (A.D. 135–151) hailed from Numenius's home-town, Apamea, so that this Stoic feud may have been forced on Numenius from home personalities or conditions. It would seem that in Numenius and Posidonius we have a re-enactment of the tragedy of Greek philosophy on a Syrian theatre, where dogmatic Stoicism died, and Platonism admitted Oriental ideas.
Apamea, however, had not yet ended its role in the development of thought. Numenius's pupil, Amelius, had gathered, copied, and learned by heart his master's works. It was in Apamea that he adopted as son Hostilianius-Hesychius. After a twenty-four years' sojourn in Rome he returned to Apamea, and was dwelling there still at the time of the death of Plotinos, with whom he had spent that quarter of a century. Here then we have a historical basis for a connection between Numenius and Plotinos, which we have elsewhere endeavored to demonstrate from inner grounds.
It was however by Amelius that philosophy is drawn into the maelstrom of the world-city. Plotinos, in his early periods a Numenian Platonist, will later go over to Stoicism, and conduct a polemic with the Gnostics, the Alexandrian heirs of Platonic dualism, under the influence of the Stoic Porphyry. However, Plotinos will not publicly abandon Platonism; he will fuse the two streams of thought, and interpret in Stoic terms the fundamentals of Platonism, producing something which, when translated into Latin, he will leave as inheritance to all the ages. Not in vain, therefore, did Amelius transport the torch of philosophy to the Capital.
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Let us in a few words dispose of the general outlines of the fate of the Platonic movement.
Plotinos was no religious leader; he was before everything else a philosopher, even if he centred his efforts on the practical aspects of the ecstatic union with God. Indeed, Porphyry relates to us the incident in which this matter was objectively exemplified. At the New Moon, Amelius invited him to join in a visit to the mystery celebrations. Plotinos refused, saying that "they would have to come to him, not he go over to them." This then is the chief difference between Numenius and Plotinos, and the result would be a recrudescence of pure philosophic contentions, as those of Plotinos against the Gnostics.
As to the general significance of Plotinos, we must here resume what we have elsewhere detailed: that with the change of editors, from Amelius to Porphyry, Plotinos changed from Numenian or Pythagorean dualism to Stoic monism, in which the philosophic feud was no longer with the Stoics, but with the Alexandrian descendants of Numenian dualism, the Gnostics. Even though Plotinos showed practical religious aspects in his studying and experiencing the ecstasy, there is no record of any of his pupils being encouraged to do so, and therefore Plotinos remains chiefly a philosopher.
The successors of Plotinos could not remain on this purely philosophic standpoint. Instead of practising the ecstasy, they followed the Gnostics in theorizing about practical religious reality in their cosmology and theology, which took on, more or less, the shape of magic, not inconsiderably aided by Stoic allegoric interpretations of myths, as in Porphyry's "Cave of the Nymphs."
What Plato did for early Greek philosophy, what Numenius did for post-Platonic thought, that Proclus Diadochus, the "Successor," did for Plotinos and his followers. For the first time since Numenius we find again a comparative method. By this time religion and philosophy have fused in magic, and so, instead of a comparative religion, we have a comparative philosophy. Proclus was the first genuine commentator, quoting authorities on all sides. He was sufficient of a philosopher to grasp Neoplatonism as a school of thought; and far from paying any attention to Ammonius, as recent philosophy has done, as source of Neoplatonism, he traces the movement as far as Plutarch, calling him the "father of us all," inasmuch as he introduced the conception of "hypostasis." Evidently, Proclus looked upon this as the centre of Neoplatonic development, and therefore we shall be justified in a closer study of this conception; and we may even say that its historic destiny was a continuation of the main stream of creative Greek philosophy; or, if you prefer, of Platonism, or Noumenianism, or even Plotinian thought.