Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

THE STANDING-GROUND OF PHILOSOPHY 2OIsuccessors in the Platonic school. Three of these maybe mentioned whose lives extend from about the timeof Plutarch's death to the end of the second century.They are Maximus of Tyre, Apuleius of Madaura, andCelsus. These survive in part to tell us what wasprobably the teaching of the philosophers whose positionin the empire we have been sketching at least asconcerns the important points which most interest us.Maximus of Tyre lived under the Antonines: he washalf philosopher, half lecturer, that is a Rhetor.Forty-one of the compositions thus delivered remainto us. This then is what a fashionable Platonist wouldy to his audience at Rome in the time of MAurelius : " God, as the highest spirit and the highestgood, is one only, exalted above time and nature, in-ble, ineffable, to be known only by pure reason.He is the architect and ruler of the world, whosenever-resting providence embraces and maintainseverything, from whom good only comes, withoutwhom no one can be virtuous. Matter serves him asstuff for the forming of the world, and out of this inthe last resort all evils spring, the physical immediately,the moral mediately, inasmuch as free-will failsto control the sensual appetites. Between the supremegodhead and the world there are besides innumerablevisible gods, demons as middle beings, inferior godsof immortal but passible nature, who dwell on theborders of the heavenly and earthly world, servants ofthe gods and inspectors of men, various in perfection,temper, and occupation, assigned to the good as per-sonal guardian spirits/' Maximus considers thesemiddle beings as the connecting link between the1 This analysis is drawn by Zeller, v. 186-188, from a number ofpassages in the dissertations of Maximus.