William Atkinson - The Complete Works of William Walker Atkinson

Many of the early fathers of the Church were strongly impressed by the Neo-Platonic influence, and their writings read strangely in the light of the later theology of the Church, although closely akin to the still later writings of the mystics of the last few centuries of European thought. Clement of Alexandria, and Origen, early fathers of the Church, were strongly impressed with Neo-Platonism. The sect of Gnostics, which arose in the early Christian Church in the second and third centuries of the Christian era, were largely influenced by the Neo-Platonic teachings, especially regarding the relation of the universe to God, in which they held to the theory of “emanation.” Students of the early history of the Christian Church are constantly confronted with the influence of Neo-Platonism, and many writers have traced the effect of the same upon the Church doctrines of to-day. Finally driven from Alexandria and Rome, Neo-Platonism took refuge in Athens, its original source, and was finally suppressed by Justinian in 529 a.d.

But though supposedly dead and safely buried, the spirit of Neo-Platonism persisted in appearing to its friends. In the fifteenth century a remarkable revival of the old teachings took place. Nicolas of Cusa and other mystics found life in the old flame when the breath of interest was applied to its smoldering embers. Nicolas taught the doctrine of the possibility of divine knowledge through ecstatic states and transcendental “intuition.” Others, at different intervals, would bring the attention of the world to the almost forgotten doctrines.

Finally in the seventeenth century there occurred that remarkable revival of Neo-Platonism in England, under the influence of Cudworth and Henry More, the followers of whom became known as “the Cambridge Platonists,” the movement being centered chiefly at the University of Cambridge. The Cambridge Platonists were principally clergymen and scholars who had become dissatisfied with the trend of theological and philosophical thought of their day. Showing a strong tendency toward mysticism, idealism and a modified pantheism, they soon formed an important school of thought of their time. Plato, the Neo-Platonists, especially Plotinus, Descartes, Mallebranche and Boehme, the mystic philosopher, were their principal sources of thought and inspiration. Cudworth postulated the existence of a plastic nature which was akin to the Demiurge or World-Soul of the Greeks, although he held that it was a working instrument and aid to God, rather than God himself. More presented a subtle and fascinating doctrine of mysticism. The movement attracted many men of note and distinction, both to its inner circle and to its affiliated schools of general sympathizers. Traces of its influence still exist in English literature and philosophy.

It may interest the reader to have presented to him the idea of plastic nature, as advanced by Ralph Cudworth (a.d. 1617–88), the English Neo-Platonist, particularly as the detailed teaching is seldom met with in works upon the subject. Cudworth says:

“It seems not so agreeable to reason that Nature, as a distinct thing from the Deity, should be quite superseded or made to signify nothing, God, Himself, doing all things immediately and miraculously; from whence it would follow also that they are all done either forcibly and violently, or else artificially only, and none of them by any inward principle of their own. This opinion is further confuted by that slow and gradual process that in the generation of things; which would seem to be but a vain and idle pomp or a trifling formality if the moving power were omnipotent; as also by those errors and bungles which are committed where the matter is inept and contumacious; which argue that the moving power be not irresistible, and that Nature is such a thing as is not altogether incapable (as well as human art) of being sometimes frustrated and disappointed by the indisposition of matter. Whereas all omnipotent moving power, as it could dispatch its work in a moment, so would it always do it infallibly and irresistibly, no ineptitude and stubbornness of matter being ever able to hinder such a one, or make him bungle or fumble in anything. Wherefore, since neither all things are produced fortuitously, or by the unguided mechanism of matter, nor God himself may be reasonably thought to do all things immediately and miraculously, it may well be concluded that there is a Plastic Nature under him, which, as an inferior and subordinate instrument, doth drudgingly execute that part of the providence which consists in the regular and orderly motion of matter; yet so as there is also besides this a higher providence to be acknowledged, which, presiding over it, doth often supply the defects in it, and sometimes overrules it, forasmuch as the Plastic Nature cannot act electively nor with discretion.”

The reader will recognize in this conception of “Plastic Nature” a successor of the “Universal Flame” of Heraclitus, and the “Will-to-Live” of the Buddhists, as well as a predecessor of the “Will” of Schopenhauer, von Hartmann, and Nietzche, and the “Life-Forces” of Bernard Shaw—with this difference, that in these conceptions nature and God are identified, instead of being considered as co-existent. Cudworth anticipated Schopenhauer’s objection that when one identifies God with nature he really “shows God to the door”—for a self-existent nature is a no less-thinkable proposition than a self-existent God manifesting as nature. Cudworth’s conception is interesting not only by reason of its quaint presentation, but also as a notable attempt to bridge the chasm between theism and pantheism. It deserves greater recognition than is generally accorded it by modern writers on the history of philosophy.

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THE STUDENT of the changing conceptions of modern Western thought is keenly aware of the remarkable influence being exerted by the centuries-old philosophies and metaphysics of India and other countries of the Orient. This is all the more remarkable when it is remembered that until about fifty or sixty years ago it was practically impossible to obtain an English translation of the leading Hindu philosophical works. And other countries were but little better off, as we may see when we consider that Schopenhauer, when he wished to study the Upanishads , was unable to find the principal books translated into English or German, and was compelled to gather up fragments translated in several languages, and then to have them retranslated into German. But the work of Max Muller and other Orientalists have now placed in our hands careful translations of the Sacred Books of the East, and the result is that the subtle essence of the Oriental thought has permeated every circle of philosophical, metaphysical and religious thought. The influence of the Theosophical Society has done much in the direction of familiarizing the Western world with certain of the Oriental ideas, and the World’s Fair Parliament of Religions did much to call the attention of the West to the buried riches of the Eastern thought.

The student who begins the task of penetrating into the maze of Hindu thought is at once struck with the remarkable resemblance of the ideas enunciated thousands of years ago in India to the much later ideas of ancient Greece, and the two thousand years still later conception of modern Western thinkers. There is an unbroken thread of thought running through them all, upon which the various philosophical and metaphysical systems have been strung like beads. Edward Carpenter has well said:

“We seem to be arriving at a time when, with the circling of our knowledge of the globe, a great synthesis of all human thought on the ancient and ever-engrossing problem of Creation is quite naturally and inevitably taking shape. The world-old wisdom of the Upanishads, with their profound and impregnable doctrine of the Universal Self, the teachings of Buddha or of Lao-Tze, the poetic insight of Plato, the inspired sayings of Jesus and Paul, the speculations of Plotinus, or of the Gnostics, and the wonderful contributions of later European thought, from the fourteenth century mystics down through Spinoza, Berkeley, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Ferrier and others; all these, combining with the immense mass of material furnished by modern physical and biological science, and psychology, are preparing a great birth, as it were; and out of this meeting of elements is already arising a dim outline of a philosophy, which must surely dominate human thought for a long period. A new philosophy we can hardly expect, or wish for; since indeed the same germinal thoughts of the Vedic authors come all the way down history , even to Schopenhauer and Whitman, inspiring philosophy after philosophy and religion after religion.”