Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

THE NEOPLATONIC PHILOSOPHY AND EPOCH 289World-soul, the Third Deity, out of the Mind. ThisWorld-soul is Jupiter. Apollo is the One, as thenegation of the multiple. Hermes is intelligibleForm, the Logos. The most degrading symbol ofGreek worship represents the productive power of theLogos, and the mother of the gods is the abstractconception of Matter, as the general substratum ofForms. In fact, *" iust as the Stoic Monotheism withits one all-embracing god did not scruple to recogniseinnumerable particular gods under various apparentshapes, so Plotinus,1 laying down one great King ofwhom all things are the production, did not hesitateto assert that His greatness was shown by the multitudeof the gods who were ranged beneath Him anddependent on him, and that those who knew His powerwould not contract God into one, but declare Him tobe manv.t/ "Nor was it2 only the whole range of mythologywhich Plotinus defended by philosophical argument.He extended this defence to the concrete worshipcarried on in thousands of temples and paid to thestatues of the gods who represented the qualities whichhe interpreted after the manner we have just indicated.For inasmuch as the whole universe is bound togetherby sympathy, the higher powers communicate themselvesin preference to that which is like them. Nowas the statue is formed after the idea of a particulardefinite god, it is through this idea connected withthat god, in the same manner as the world of sense isconnected with the intelligible world by the mediumof the Soul. Thus, though he did not admit that thegodhead descended into the statue, yet the powerimparted from the godhead to the visible world has ir1 Plotinus. ii. 9, 9. Qnotpfi >ty Zeller, v. 557. 2 Zeller, v. 562.VOL. III. T