Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

THE STANDING-GROUND OF PHILOSOPHY167temporary manifestations. But the character of Plutarch'spiety was essentially different, for he attemptedto range all souls of men, heroes, demons, stellar orheavenly gods under the headship of one supremeGod, and all these were to him real beings, as the lastand highest was real. His conception of personalityno doubt imperfect, as was that of his master Plato ;id on his mind, as on that of Plato, the eternity anddependence of matter impinged as a hostile powerwhich he could not subdue. Nevertheless, souls fromthe highest to the lowest have in his conceptionnot only intelligence but will. Thus worship to himwas a reality, and his attitude to his country's godswas that of a religious mind. He would undo thework of mythology, disengage from the fables of thepoets the truths which lay beneath them, and so restorethe divine monarchv. The reconciliation here betweenphilosophy and religion was genuine. The philosophy,if it prevailed, did not tend to transform the characterof the religion, but to purify and renovate it. Howevermuch the Neostoic and Neoplatonic school, underthe influences surrounding them, inclined to agreetogether in certain humanitarian doctrines, which arevery marked both in Epictetus and in Plutarch, suchas the recognition of man's dignity in the slave, theenforcement of men's universal brotherhood, the in-junction of kindness to all and sympathy with all,there is this essential divergence between them. TheStoic is simply a pantheist ; the Platonist acknowledgesa God independent of matter, though unablefully to subdue it, whose will corresponds to hisintelligence.Epictetus and Plutarch were the most distinguishedof their own time, the former as a teacher, the latter