Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

THE NEOPLATONIC PHILOSOPHY AND EPOCH 269system of Plotinus when considered over againstChristian doctrine. As in the one a complete heathenstanding-ground did not exclude a tacit imitation ofChrist, so in the other the summing up, classifying,and rearranging heathen elements derived from Plato,Aristotle, and the Stoics, will not exclude that forceof Christian thought permeating the lettered world,which caused heathenism to collect its whole strengthagainst an advancing enemy.The system of Plotinus is nothingl but a methodicaldescription of the gradations by which the processionof the world from the divinity and the return of manto the divinity is brought about. Its motive 2 may besaid to be a yearning after perfect union with the divinity.It may be divided objectively into three mainparts : his view of the world above the senses, that is,the intellectual and invisible world; and,, springingout of this, his view of the world which meets thesenses, and specially of man its chief denizen; andthirdly, the raising of the mind to the invisible worldand its return thither, which it is the proper functionof philosophy to direct and effectuate.I. As to the first point, Plato had3 distinguishedthe world of ideas from the world of appearance, andplaced the soul in the mean between them. Thoughhe had set the Idea of the Good above all the rest, yetit was only the first of them. And he had attemptedto explain the world of appearance by the existenceof Matter, which he made independent of Ideas. Inthese respects Plotinus differed from him. Plato hadtwo original principles, one positive, the Ideas, andone negative, Matter. Plotinus distinguished, as Platohad done, * between the world bevond *' the senses and1 Zeller, v. 370. - Ibid. v. 420. :j Ibid. \. 422.