A literary history of Persia

THEORIES OF ITS ORIGIN 421extent did the seven Neo-Platonist philosophers who, driven fromtheir homes by the intolerance of Justinian, took refuge at thePersian court in the reign of Nushirwan (about A.D. 532) found aschool or propagate their ideas in that country ? " xIn the ninthcentury of our era, in the Golden Age of Islam, the Neo-Platonistphilosophy was certainly pretty well known to thinking Muslims,but till the two questions posed above have received a definiteanswer we cannot exclude the possibility that its main doctrineswere familiar to, if not derived from, the East at a very much earlierdate.(4) The theory of independent origin. As has been alreadyhinted, there remains the possibility that the Sufi mysticism may bean entirely independent and spontaneous growth. " The identityof two beliefs," as Mr. Nicholson well remarks (op. cit., p. xxx)," does not prove that one is generated by the other : they may beresults of a like cause." Any one who has read that charming work,Vaughan's Hours with the Mystics, will easily recall to mind some ofthe many striking resemblances, both in substance and form, in theutterances of mystics of the most various creeds, countries, andepochs, between whom it is practically certain that no externalrelation whatever can have existed ;and I would venture to assertthat many of the utterances of Eckart, Tauler, or Santa Teresawould, if translated into Persian, easily pass current as the words ofSufi Shaykhs.Now we must not fallinto the error of regarding Sufiism asa doctrine equally definite and systematised with that, forexample, of the Isma'flls,which was considered in the lastchapter. The Sufi is essentially an eclectic, and generally alatitudinarian :" the ways of God," saysone of his favouriteaphorisms, " are as the number of the souls of men ;" whilethe tradition," Seek knowledge, were it even in China," isconstantly on his tongue. No one, perhaps, did more to gainfor Sufiism a good repute and to give it a philosophical forma la suite de 1'armee. II avait passe dix a onze annees entieres presd'Ammonius. Gordien ayant etc tue en Mesopotamie, Plotin cut assez depeine a se sauver a Antioche."1See ch. xl of Gibbon's Decline and Fall (ed. 1813, vol. vii, pp. 149-152).Agathius is Ihe chief authority for this curious episode. The philosophersin question were Diogenes, Hermias, Eulalius, Priscian, Damascius,Uidore, and Simplicius.