Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

THE NEOPLATONIC PHILOSOPHY AND EPOCH 309his hand. The soul, as such, in virtue of its di\origin and nature, is incapable of error, while matas such, is incapable of good ; and so far as concehe whole question ^^ of moral evil and the freedomf human actions, its two parts, mind and matter,start asunder, and we are left in an insuperablecontradiction.This contradiction indeed had beset Greek philosophyeven in the hands of Aristotle. Strongly as hemaintained that man is the master of his own actions,1and has it in his own power to be good or bad, yet hecould find no place for true freedom of the will betweenthe movement which proceeds from sensuous desire,and the other which proceeds from the divine minddwelling in the soul. Necessity broke in on bothsides, from the action of things on the sensuous soul,and from the divine intelligence.At least so much as this is plain. In the systemof Plotinus man is not bound to God as a creatureto the Creator. He has not that dependence whichone whose whole being is made by another owes tothat other. Thus in this, as in the Stoic system, thespring of virtue lay in the pride engendered by thebelief that the soul is of4the same nature as God.This God is not self-conscious, not free, but a blindforce of nature, Power without Will. Somehow oranother the soul, a portion of this God, has beenjoined with a portion of matter, and human life is theresult.But in the practical scope at which it aims is seenthe closest point of connection and at the same timethe fundamental opposition between this system andthe Christian Faith. The divine intelligence dwell-1 Dollinger, Heidenthum und Judenthum, p. 311.