Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

THE NEOPLATONIC PHILOSOPHY AND EPOCH281uperior to us, and that the Soul is made equivaleno the human I, at one time as distinguished fromthe Mind, at another as identified with it.The result is that in the Plotinic theory, soul andbody do not make up one nature of man.1 But ifhere is no real unit in the parts which comphim during his life on earth, with the end of thlife these parts separate again, and the return of thesoul from the world of sense to the world which isabove the senses follows. This is a simple consequenceof what precedes. If the soul before this lifewas bodiless, it can be so likewise after it. If thepresent life is merely a disturbing of its originalstate, we shall consider the leaving it only a returnto a higher and more natural being. Further,Plotinus points to the soul's relationship with " theDivine." If any soul, for instance, the World-soul,be immortal, our soul must be so likewise, since itis of the like essence. Yet as it is of the soul'sessence to be immortal, so a restoration of the bodyis not to be thought of, since it would be a perpetuationof the prison in which the soul now finds itself." The true waking up/' says Plotinus,2 " is a resurrectionnot together with the body, but away from it :to wake ^^^^^^^I^^H^H ^^^^^^^^^^^^K up with the body would be only a changeas it were of bed from one sleep to another. Towake up absolutely without bodies is the real waking."Plotinus, like the whole Greek philosophy, abhors thedoctrine of the resurrection of the body. But heembraces the old Pythagorean and Platonic doctrineof the transmigration of souls. As souls were originally1 The difficulties and inconsistencies of the theory in this respect aredwelt upon by Zeller, v. 519-527.2 Ennead, iii. 6, 6. Quoted by Zeller, v. 528.