preserved by Strabo,' he planned-out with flour, because chalk had failed, has moved considerably from its ancient site. Silent now are the banks of the Mareotic Lake, once covered with villas and vineyards; and silent now is the Mediterranean beach of the eastward harbour, once lined with marts, libraries, and museums, palaces, theatres, and temples. Yet on this silent strand let us walk up and down for a little. The place is beyond measure suggestive of thought. For here once was the chief laboratory2 of a Revolution transcended in magnitude only by that amid which our own lives are cast. SECTION I. THE RELATION OF NEO-PLATONISM TO OLYMPIANISM. 1. We stand here between two great millennial ages of intellectual development. The first extends from Thales to Proclus; from the sixth century before, to the sixth century after Christ. The second reaches ters, der homerische Jüngling aus dem trojanischen Krieg. . . . Dagegen der zweite Jüngling Alexander die freieste und schönste Individualität, welche die Wirklichkeit je getragen, tritt an die Spitze des in sich reifen Jugendlebens und vollfährt die Rache gegen Asien.' See also 332, &c. But see on the other side, Grote, History of Greece, vol. VIII. pp. 464 flg.; and Niebuhr, Lectures on Ancient History, vol. II. lect. lxxiv. and lxxx. I agree, however, with Mr. Freeman (Historical Essays, 2nd series, p. 151) in his accordance with Bishop Thirlwall's estimate of the hero: 'His was an ambition which almost grew into one with the highest of which man is capable, the desire of knowledge and the love of good.' History of Greece, vol. vII. p. 119. J XVII. p. 793. Cette étonnante chimie intellectuelle qui avait établi son principal laboratoire à Alexandrie.'-Ménard, Hermes Trismegiste, Introd. p. x. from Boethius to Pomponatius; from the sixth to the sixteenth century of the Christian era. We stand in the midst of a vast revolution; in the midst of a great age of transition. On the one side, Classic and Imperial Antiquity; on the other, the Barbarian and Feudal Periods of Christianity. Between two Civilizations we stand which, in their intellectual conceptions, their poetic ideals, and their social polities, are in the most remarkable contrast. Amid the throng of questions and of thoughts that crowd upon us, we are first drawn to consider the relation of the thinkers of Alexandria, the then intellectual capital of the world, to the religious revolution in the midst of which they lived. They took, we know, the part of the Old Religion. Let us recall some of the chief facts connected with this very singular alliance between Neo-Platonism and Olympianism, the Greek form of that primitive class of Religions which-for the sake of a word, which does not, like Paganism, imply a Christian misjudgment-I have named Naturianism. For in considering the cause of this choice of the Alexandrian thinkers between the Old Religion and the New, we shall have, I think, a very penetrating light thrown on the intellectual character of the Christian Revolution. And besides, in Neo-Platonism, considered in its relation to Olympianism, there should seem to be a very interesting parallelism to a phenomenon which is one of the most distinctive features of the Modern Revolution, in that culminating era of it in which we now live. 2. The facts which we must first note with respect to See above, Introd., p. 218. the relation of Neo-Platonism to Olympianism are certainly such as must excite both our surprise and curiosity as to the cause of that alliance which we know subsisted between them to the end. Neo-Platonism was strictly monotheistic, and utterly opposed to the worship of idols, and the practice of magic. But Olympianism, as a general historical fact, was a magic-practising, and idol-worshipping Polytheism. Of the monotheism of the Neo-Platonists, it is here unnecessary to say more than that the unity of God had, since the Sixth Century Revolution, been the openly taught doctrine of all philosophers. As to the worship of idols, even the late and unknown author of the treatise De Mysteriis, expresses the same contempt for it as Plotinus and Porphyry; and, like them, he condemns all material intervention in the communications of the soul with the Divinity. Magical practices would seem to be the almost necessary result of the universally prevalent popular belief in, and philosophical doctrine of, Demons. Yet, even the later and most theurgical of the Neo-Platonists, though attributing such maleficent influences to demons as Plotinus denied, still prohibited the operations of magic. And the whole school from beginning to end showed an invincible repugnance to mixing the worship of idols and magic, properly so called, with their high and spiritual mysticism.1 3. But further, not only in point of intellectual doctrine, and religious practice, but in point also of moral spirit, Neo-Platonism was in direct opposition to Olympianism. The old religion with which the Neo 1 See Vacherot, Histoire de l'Ecole d'Alexandrie, t. 11. pp. 143-4. Platonists allied themselves instead of with that new religion with which they should, at first sight, seem to have had so much more in common; the old religion. was a worship of the senses and of the passions; a religion which not only made Deity descend into the world, but gave it all the forms and all the feelings of Humanity; a religion of which the heaven, Olympus, was but such a world as the Earth; and the other life, Elysium, but such a life as the present, only more calm, sweet, and serene. On the other hand, one of the most characteristic doctrines of Neo-Platonism was just the distinction and separation of the two worlds of Time and of Eternity; this life it regarded not as the fulfilment, but as the probation of human destinies ; it sought, therefore, to withdraw the soul from contact with the visible and material world, and to fix it in contemplation on the spiritual and invisible world; if it conceived the Cosmos as divine, it was so only as the realisation of the ideas of God in matter; and while urging to, and, in its chiefs, giving the example of, every moral virtue, it proposed as the true end of the soul the contemplation and love of God. 4. And yet, the next great fact which we have to note with respect to the relation of Neo-Platonism to Olympianism is, that, in order to defend this religion, to which it was thus even more profoundly opposed in its moral aspirations than in its intellectual conceptions; Neo-Platonism entered on a polemic, which gradually became an attempt at transformation not futile only with respect to Olympianism, but fatal to its champion. At first, the philosophers of the widely eclectic, yet 3 profoundly original School of the Porter-Ammonius Saccas, the founder of Neo-Platonism, was but a common porter, or cornsack-carrier, (Takkoþópos)1 here at Alexandria-pursued their speculations in congenial calm, and without disturbing themselves with any direct religious polemic. Christians and Neo-Platonists dispute to which of their sects Ammonius belongs. And even Plotinus, in his refutation of the Gnostics, had in view Oriental doctrines generally, rather than Christianism. But Porphyry not only endeavours to put new life into Olympianism, but Christianism he directly attacks. And Syrian as he was by birth, knowing Hebrew, and well versed in Judaic and Chaldean doctrines, he shows-up with a pitiless logic the improbabilities and contradictions of the Christian Scriptures, and devotes a whole book to the examination of the Prophecies of Daniel. Not yet, however, are Alexandrian thinkers drawn beyond the pale of the School. But Iamblichus marks the transition to a new epoch. Still philosopher, yet already priest, he unites the devoutness of faith to the enthusiasm of thought; opens to philosophy the sanctuaries of Greece and of the East; and initiates it in theurgic mysteries. After Iamblichus, philosophy quits the School, and enters boldly the Temple. Among his successors a few, such as Sopater, Edesius, and Eustathius, are still philosophers. But, for the most part, now the adepts of Neo-Platonism are less of philosophers than 3 See Vacherot, Op. cit., t. II. p. 148; and compare his Essais de Philosophie critique (Ennéades de Plotin traduits par M. Bouillet), p. 387. |