While Origen was working out his great system of ecclesiastical dogmatic, his younger contemporary Plotinus, outside the Christian pale, was laying the coping-stone on the edifice of Greek philosophy by a scheme of idealism which must always remain one of the greatest achievements of the human mind.[125] In the history of Mysticism he holds a more undisputed place than Plato; for some of the most characteristic doctrines of Mysticism, which in Plato are only thrown out tentatively, are in Plotinus welded into a compact whole. Among the doctrines which first receive a clear exposition in his writings are, his theory of the Absolute, whom he calls the One, or the Good; and his theory of the Ideas, which differs from Plato's; for Plato represents the mind of the World-Artist as immanent in the Idea of the Good, while Plotinus makes the Ideas immanent in the universal mind; in other words, the real world (which he calls the "intelligible world," the sphere of the Ideas) is in the mind of God. He also, in his doctrine of Vision, attaches an importance to revelation which was new in Greek philosophy. But his psychology is really the centre of his system, and it is here that the Christian Church and Christian Mysticism, in particular, is most indebted to him.
The soul is with him the meeting-point of the intelligible and the phenomenal. It is diffused everywhere.[126] Animals and vegetables participate in it;[127] and the earth has a soul which sees and hears.[128] The soul is immaterial and immortal, for it belongs to the world of real existence, and nothing that is can cease to be.[129] The body is in the soul, rather than the soul in the body. The soul creates the body by imposing form on matter, which in itself is No-thing, pure indetermination, and next door to absolute non-existence.[130] Space and time are only forms of our thought. The concepts formed by the soul, by classifying the things of sense, are said to be "Ideas unrolled and separate," that is, they are conceived as separate in space and time, instead of existing all together in eternity. The nature of the soul is triple; it is presented under three forms, which are at the same time the three stages of perfection which it can reach.[131] There is first and lowest the animal and sensual soul, which is closely bound up with the body; then there is the logical, reasoning soul, the distinctively human part; and, lastly, there is the superhuman stage or part, in which a man "thinks himself according to the higher intelligence, with which he has become identified, knowing himself no longer as a man, but as one who has become altogether changed, and has transferred himself into the higher region." The soul is thus "made one with Intelligence without losing herself; so that they two are both one and two." This is exactly Eckhart's doctrine of the funkelein, if we identify Plotinus' [Greek: Nous] with Eckhart's "God," as we may fairly do. The soul is not altogether incarnate in the body; part of it remains above, in the intelligible world, whither it desires to return in its entirety.
The world is an image of the Divine Mind, which is itself a reflection of the One. It is therefore not bad or evil. "What more beautiful image of the Divine could there be," he asks, "than this world, except the world yonder?" And so it is a great mistake to shut our eyes to the world around us, "and all beautiful things.[132]" The love of beauty will lead us up a long way—up to the point when the love of the Good is ready to receive us. Only we must not let ourselves be entangled by sensuous beauty. Those who do not quickly rise beyond this first stage, to contemplate "ideal form, the universal mould," share the fate of Hylas; they are engulfed in a swamp, from which they never emerge.
The universe resembles a vast chain, of which every being is a link. It may also be compared to rays of light shed abroad from one centre. Everything flowed from this centre, and everything desires to flow back towards it. God draws all men and all things towards Himself as a magnet draws iron, with a constant unvarying attraction. This theory of emanation is often sharply contrasted with that of evolution, and is supposed to be discredited by modern science; but that is only true if the emanation is regarded as a process in time, which for the Neoplatonist it is not.[133] In fact, Plotinus uses the word "evolution" to explain the process of nature.[134]
The whole universe is one vast organism,[135] and if one member suffer, all the members suffer with it.[136] This is why a "faint movement of sympathy[137]" stirs within us at the sight of any living creature. So Origen says, "As our body, while consisting of many members, is yet held together by one soul, so the universe is to be thought of as an immense living being, which is held together by one soul—the power and the Logos of God." All existence is drawn upwards towards God by a kind of centripetal attraction, which is unconscious in the lower, half conscious in the higher organisms.
Christian Neoplatonism tended to identify the Logos, as the Second
Person of the Trinity, with the [Greek: Nous], "Mind" or
"Intelligence," of Plotinus, and rightly; but in Plotinus the word
Logos has a less exalted position, being practically what we call
"law," regarded as a vital force.[138]
Plotinus' Trinity are the One or the Good, who is above existence, God as the Absolute; the Intelligence, who occupies the sphere of real existence, organic unity comprehending multiplicity—the One-Many, as he calls it, or, as we might call it, God as thought, God existing in and for Himself; and the Soul, the One and Many, occupying the sphere of appearance or imperfect reality—God as action. Soulless matter, which only exists as a logical abstraction, is arrived at by looking at things "in disconnexion, dull and spiritless." It is the sphere of the "merely many," and is zero, as "the One who is not" is Infinity.
The Intelligible World is timeless and spaceless, and contains the archetypes of the Sensible World. The Sensible World is our view of the Intelligible World. When we say it does not exist, we mean that we shall not always see it in this form. The "Ideas" are the ultimate form in which things are regarded by Intelligence, or by God. [Greek: Nous] is described as at once [Greek: stasis] and [Greek: kinêsis], that is, it is unchanging itself, but the whole cosmic process, which is ever in flux, is eternally present to it as a process.
Evil is disintegration.[139] In its essence it is not merely unreal, but unreality as such. It can only appear in conjunction with some low degree of goodness which suggests to Plotinus the fine saying that "vice at its worst is still human, being mixed with something opposite to itself.[140]"
The "lower virtues," as he calls the duties of the average citizen,[141] are not only purgative, but teach us the principles of measure and rule, which are Divine characteristics. This is immensely important, for it is the point where Platonism and Asiatic Mysticism finally part company.[142]