William Atkinson - The Complete Works of William Walker Atkinson

It is one of the ironies of history that Epicurus, the teacher of a system of happiness and pleasure based upon reason, prudence, justice, honor and virtue, should come to be popularly known as the teacher of gross sensualism and base gratification of the appetites. Nevertheless, to philosophers and students of philosophy, he is known for what he was and what he taught. His life and conduct were exemplary, and his influence operated for good. Many points of his teaching have survived, and have exerted a marked influence upon the thought of later days.

NEO-PLATONISM

Another great channel of the Platonic ideas, and one which has had a most marked influence upon the thought of the succeeding centuries, culminating in the modern revival of the old ideals of past thinkers, is that of the Neo-Platonic school. Neo-Platonism is the direct channel through which the thought of Plato reached Emerson and the Transcendentalists . The latter school and its great exponent freely acknowledge their indebtedness, and the connection becomes quite apparent when the two teachings are compared. Modern idealism and the inclination toward mysticism owe a similar debt, for the connection is direct and uninterrupted throughout the centuries. Neo-Platonism is the great connecting link between the transcendental philosophy of ancient Greece and that of modern Europe and America. Neo-Platonism is defined by Dewey as: “The revival and transformation of Platonic philosophy that took place, with Alexandria as its headquarters, under the influence of Oriental thought.” Here the headquarters of the Oriental and the Grecian thought met and mingled, and formed a new philosophical stream which was destined to carry the barque of thought down through the centuries, into lands then unknown and undreamed of. It will be well worth our time to acquaint ourself with its history.

Neo-Platonism had its original home in Alexandria, and was a phase of the Alexandrian School of philosophical thought. Professor Wenley says of the Alexandrian School:

“It Indicates that junction between Eastern and Western thought which took place at Alexandria and produced a new series of doctrines which mark an entire school. Although these tendencies may be traced as far back as 280 b.c.…It Is convenient to date the floreat of the school from 30 b.c. to 529 a.d.…The beginnings of the movement are almost lost in obscurity. Some profess to find traces of it so early as the Ceptuagint (280 b.c.), but it is usual to date the first overt traces from Aristobolus (160 b.c.). The Jewish line culminated in Philo (40 a.d.), who accepted Greek metaphysical ideas, and by the aid of allegorical interpretation found their justification in the Hebrew Scriptures.…East and West met and commingled at Alexandria. The operative ideas of the civilizations, cultures and religions of Rome, Greece, Palestine, and the further East found themselves in juxtaposition. Hence arose a new problem, developed partly by Occidental thought, partly by Oriental aspiration. Religion and philosophy became inextricably mixed, and the resultant doctrines consequently belong to neither sphere proper, but are rather witnesses to an attempt at combining both.”

Neo-Platonism was the expression of the philosophical side of the Alexandrian School. Lewes says that “their originality consisted in having employed the Platonic Dialectics as a guide to Mysticism and Pantheism; in having connected the doctrine of the East with the dialectics of the Greeks; in having made reason the justification of faith. By their dialectics they were Platonists; by their theory of the trinity they were Mystics; by their principle of emanation they were pantheists.” Wenley says: “Philosophically viewed, the school is eminently eclectic. Although relying upon Plato for its first principles, and especially for its dualism, it agrees with the post-Aristotelian skeptics in its contempt for knowledge; with the Stoics in its manifold tendencies toward pantheism, and in its regard for an ascetic morality; it bears traces, too, of the influence of Aristotle, especially in some aspects of its statement of the problem of the relation of God to the world.”

Speaking generally, it may be said that the Neo-Platonists held that the basis of nature was “The One,” an abstract principle of Unity. From this Unity, the source of all things, emanated the principle of Pure Intelligence. From the latter emanated the World-Soul, or anima mundi . The World-Soul then manifested in the individual souls of men and animals. The later Neo-Platonists went very far in asserting the Divine Immanence in the World-Soul, and consequently in the individual souls, and their conception was really that of a pantheistic idealism. Ammonius Saccas (a.d. 200) may be said to have been the father of Neo-Platonism in its aspect of mysticism. He devoted great attention to the soul, explaining its nature, fall, and destiny, including the possibility and means of its returning to the state of transcendental bliss from which it originally fell. The real home of the soul, he held, was on the transcendental plane, and its only hope of happiness was to be found in a return to that plane. To be saved, the soul must rise above the world of experience and enter into the higher realm of thought and life.

These mystics held (as have all other mystics, regardless of country or age) that the individual soul might rise above the world of sense experience, and enter into an ecstatic condition, in which they were transported to the transcendental plane. Some called this state of ecstasy, and its result, as “the Union with God.” Pringle-Pattison says of this feature of mystic practice: “Penetrated by the thought of the ultimate unity of all existence, and impatient of even a seeming separation from the creative source of things, mysticism succumbs to a species of metaphysical fascination. Its ideal becomes that of passive contemplation, in which the distinctions of individuality disappear, and the finite spirit achieves, as it were, utter union or identity with the Being of things. As this goal cannot be reached under the conditions of relation and distinction which ordinary human thought imposes, mysticism asserts the existence of a supra-rational experience in which this union is realized. Such is the intuition or ecstasy or mystical swoon of the Eastern mystics, the mystical or metaphysical ‘love’ of the Neo-Platonists, and the ‘gifts’ of the medieval saints.” The same authority says: “In its attempt to transcend the bounds of reason and to exalt the divine above all anthropomorphic predicates, mysticism leaves us, as in Neo-Platonism, with the empty abstraction of the nameless and supra-essential One— the One which transcends both knowledge and existence.”

It is interesting to note in this connection that the revival of the ideas of Neo-Platonism in modern thought has brought about a tendency on the part of certain schools of modern mystic metaphysics to revive the mystic swoon, visions and transcendental ecstasies of the older school. The frequent modern use of the term “cosmic consciousness” in this connection, and the numerous modern recitals of experiences of this kind, show an astonishing correspondence to the “Union with God” and “Ecstasy,” of the Neo-Platonist mystics. (It may be of some interest to note at this point that the Stoics had used the term “Cosmos” as one form of expression of the World-Soul or anima mundi .) The mysticism so noticeable in certain schools of modern popular metaphysics shows plainly its direct descent from Neo-Platonism, usually through Emerson and the Transcendental Movement.

Plotinus (a.d. 240) was one of the most brilliant of the Neo-Platonists. He was a Greek Theosophist and Mystic, and added to the popularity of the mystic Union with God, and similar transcendental beliefs and practices. Porphyry, Iamblichus, Sopater, Maximus, Plutarch and Proclus were prominent in the school, and gave to it a decided movement away from its former philosophic aspect, and toward its mystical, occult and fantastic semi-religious aspect. Coming in contact with the rising tide of Early Christianity, the movement gradually weakened, but, nevertheless, before dying out it managed to impress itself strongly upon the new religion.