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IN spite of his enormous importance for the history of
Christian philosophy, Plotinus is still one of the least known
and least understood among the great thinkers of the ancient
world. The extreme difficulty of his style, which Porphyry
well described as " dense with thought, and more lavish of
ideas than words," together with the natural laziness of man,
may perhaps account for this neglect. He was by choice
a thinker, contemplative, and teacher, not a writer. Therefore
the Enneads, which represent merely notes of lectures hastily
and unwillingly written clown during the last fifteen years
of his life, offer few inducements to hurried readers. The
fact that he was a "mystic" has been held a further excuse
for failure to understand the more cryptic passages of his
works; though as a matter of fact these are the precipitations
of a singularly clear and logical intellect, and will yield all
their secrets to a sympathetic and industrious attention.
His few translators have often been content to leave difficult
phrases unelucidated, or surrounded by a haze of suggestive
words; and though his splendid and poetic rhapsodies are
quoted again and again, even those later mystics who are
most indebted to him show few signs of first-hand study and
comprehension of his system as a whole. Thanks to this
same obscurity, and the richness, intricacy, and suggestive
quality of his thought, most of his interpreters have tended
to do for him that which he did for his master Plato: they
have re-handled him in the interests of their own religion or
philosophy. Of this, the Cambridge Platonists are the most
notorious example; but the same inclination is seen in modern
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scholars. Thus Baron von Hügel seeks to introduce a dualism
between his mysticism and his metaphysics. Even the brilliant
exposition of his philosophy in the Dean of St. Paul's Gifford
Lectures is not wholly exempt from this criticism. A comparison of his analysis with those of Baron von Hügel in Eternal
Life, and of Mr. Whittaker in The Neoplalonists makes plain
the part which temperament has played in each of these
works.
Plotinus himself would probably have been astonished
by this charge of obscurity. His teaching had by declaration
two aims. The first was the definitely religious aim of bringing
men to a knowledge of Divine reality; for he had the missionary
ardour inseparable from the saintly type. [I may allow that all saints are missionaries. I'm not sure whether "inseparable" implies also that all missionaries are saints, but if so, I take leave to doubt. DCW] The second was
the faithful interpretation of Platonic philosophy, especially
the doctrines of Plato, and of his own immediate master,
the unknown Alexandrian Ammonius: for his academic
teaching consisted wholly of a commentary on, and interpretation of, Plato's works. His system, therefore, is a synthesis
of practical spirituality and formal philosophy, and will only
be grasped by those who keep this twofold character in mind.
There must always seem to be a conflict between any closed
and self-consistent metaphysical system and the freedom
and richness of the spiritual life: but since few metaphysicians
are mystics, and few mystics are able to take metaphysics
more seriously than the soldier takes the lectures of the armchair strategist, these two readings of reality are seldom
brought into direct opposition. In Plotinus we have an
almost unique example of the philosopher who is also a practical
mystic; and consequently of a mind that cannot be satisfied
with anything less than an intellectual system which finds
room for the most profound experiences of the spiritual life.
In this peculiarity some scholars have found his principal
merit; others a source of weakness. The position of his
critics has been excellently stated by Baron von Hugel in
Eternal Life. He finds in the Enneads a "ceaseless conflict"
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between "the formal principles of the philosopher" and "the
experiences of a profoundly religious soul." The philosophy
issues in an utterly transcendent Godhead without qualities,
activity, or being: the mysticism issues in ecstatic union,
actual contact, with a God, "the atmosphere and home of
souls" whose richness is the sum of all affirmations. Yet,
as a matter of fact, this disharmony is only apparent; and is
resolved when we understand the formal character of the
Plotinian dialectic as a "way," a stepping-stone, the
reduction to terms of reason of some aspects of a reality beyond
reason's grasp. The discrepancy is like that which exists
between map and landscape. Plotinus, constantly passing
over from argument to vision, speaks sometimes the language
of geography, sometimes that of adventure: yet both, within
their spheres, are true. The Neoplatonic via negativa always
implies an unexpressed because ineffable affirmation. Therefore its Absolute, of which reason can predicate no qualities,
may yet be the "flower of all beauty" as apprehended by
the contemplative soul.
Since the doctrine of Ammonius is unknown to us, we have
no means of gauging the extent to which Plotinus depends on
him: but probably we shall not be far wrong if we attribute
to his influence the peculiar sense of reality, the deep spiritual
inwardness, colour and life, with which his great pupil invests
the dogmas of Platonism. The main elements of the Plotinian
philosophy, however, are undoubtedly Platonic. The Divine
Triad, the precession of spirit and its return to its origin,
the unreal world of sense, the universal soul, the " real "
or intelligible world of the Ideas — these and other ingredients
of his system are a part of the common stock of Platonism.
His originality and his attraction consist in the use which he
makes of them, the colour and atmosphere with which they
are endowed. That which is truly his own is the living vision
which creates from these formulae a vivid world both actual
and poetic, answering with fresh revelations of reality the
widening demands and apprehensions of the human soul.
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This spiritual world is not merely arrived at by a dialectic
process. It is the world of his own intense experience from
which he speaks to us; using his texts, as Christian mystics
have often used the Bible, to support doctrines inspired by his
personal vision of truth. In spite of his passion for exactitude,
the sharpness and detail of his universe, he is thrown back,
again and again, on the methods of symbol and poetry. We
must always be ready to look past his formal words to the
felt reality which he is struggling to impart; a reality which
is beyond the grasp of reason, and can only be apprehended
by the faculty which he calls spiritual intuition. To this we
owe the richness and suppleness of his system, the absence
of watertight compartments, the intimate relation with life.
Whilst many philosophers have spent their powers on proving the necessary existence of an unglimpsed universe which
shall satisfy the cravings of the mind, Plotinus spent his in
making a map, based on his own adventures in "that country
which is no mere vision, but a home;" and his apparently
rigid contours and gradients are attempts to tell at least the
characteristics of a living land.
Though the Enneads are a storehouse of profound and subtle
thought, the main principles on which their philosophy is
based are simple, and can be expressed briefly. All things,
according to Plotinus, have come forth from the Absolute
Godhead or One, and only fulfil their destiny when they return
to their origin. The real life of the universe consists in this
flux and reflux: the outflow and self-expression of spirit
in matter, the "conversion" or return of spirit to the One.
With the rest of the Neoplatonists, he conceives of the Universe
as an emanation, eternally poured forth from this One, and
diminishing in reality and splendour the further it is removed
from its source. The general position is somewhat like that
given by Dante in the opening of the Paradiso:
"La gloria di colui the tutto move
Per l'universo penetra, e resplende
In una parte pia, e meno altrove,"
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though Plotinus would have rejected the spatial implications
of the last line, for to him the One was present everywhere.
The Divine nature is a trinity; but not, as in Christian theology,
of co-equal persons. Its three descending degrees, or hypostases, are the unconditioned One or the Good — a term which
implies perfection but carries no ethical implications — the
Divine Mind, Spirit, or Nous, and the Soul or Life of the World.
Nothing is real which does not participate in one or other
of these principles. Though the first two hypostases are
roughly parallel to the Eternal Father and Logos-Christ of
Christian Platonism, and some have found in the Plotinian
Psyche a likeness to the immanent Holy Spirit, this superficial resemblance must not be pressed. Fatherhood cannot
be ascribed to the One save in so far as it is the first cause of
life, for it transcends all our notions of personality. Its real
parallel in Christian theology is that conception of the "Superessential Godhead, beyond and above the Trinity of Persons,"
which Eckhart and a few other daring mystics took through
Dionysius the Areopagite from the Neoplatonists. The One
is, in fact, the Absolute as apprehended by a religious soul.
Nor is the Plotinian Nous a person, in any sense in which
orthodox Christianity has understood that term, though it
is called by Plotinus our Father and Companion. Further,
the triadic series does not involve a succession either in
time, or order of generation; but only in value. The worlds
of spirit and of soul are co-eternal with the Absolute, the
inevitable and unceasing expressions of its creative activity.
The utterly transcendent Perfect manifests as Mind or Spirit
(Nous); and this is the world of being. Mind or Spirit manifests as Life or Soul (Psyche); and this is the reality of the
world of becoming. The lower orders are contained in the
higher, which are everywhere present, though each "remains
in its own place." "Of all things the governance and existence
are in these three."
Whilst every image of the universe is deceptive, since its
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true nature is beyond our apprehension, Plotinus invites us
to picture the Triad, as Dante did, by concentric circles through
which radiate the energy and splendour of the "flower of all
beauty," the Transcendent One." The first act is the act
of the Good, at rest within itself, and the first existence is
the self-contained existence of the Good. But there is also
an act upon it, that of the Nous; which, as it were, lives about
it. And the Soul, outside, circles about the Nous, and by
gazing upon it, seeing into the depths of it, through it sees
God" (I. 8. 2). Again, "The One is not a Being, but the
Source of being, which is its first offspring. The One is perfect,
that is, it has nothing, seeks nothing, needs nothing; but as we
may say it overflows, and this overflowing is creative " (V.
1. 2). Yet this eternal creative action " beyond spirit, sense,
and life," involves no self-loss. It is the welling forth of an
unquenchable spring, the eternal fountain of life.
As Christian Platonists described the Son as the self-expression of the Father, so Plotinus describes his second Divine
Principle as the eternal irradiation of the Absolute — il ciel
the piis della sua Luce prende. This principle he calls Nous;
a word carrying many shades of meaning, which the older
commentators generally rendered as Divine Mind, or Intelligible Principle. Dean Inge has shown good reason for translating it as " Spirit," thus bringing the language of Plotinus
into line with the many later mystics who derive from him.
As a matter of fact, Nous contains both meanings. It is
more spiritual than mind, more intellectual than spirit, in
the sense in which that word is commonly employed. Those
mediæval theologians who made a mystical identification
between the Hebrew conception of the Eternal Wisdom as
we find it described in Proverbs and Ecclesiasticus, and the
Second Person of the Trinity, came very near the Plotinian
concept of Nous, which is at once Intelligence and the intelligible sphere, Spirit and the spiritual universe; the home of
reality, and object of religious and poetic intuition. It is,
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in one aspect, the "Father and Companion " of the soul (V.
I. 3), in another "the Intellectual Universe, that sphere
constituted by a Principle wholly unlike what is known as
intelligence in us " (I. 8. 2). This is the " Yonder" to which
he so often refers; the "middle heaven" of Indian philosophy,
Ruysbroeck's "clear-shining world between ourselves and
God.
". . . e questo cielo non ha altro dov
Che la mente divina,"
says Dante; once more condensing the whole Neoplatonic
vision in one vivid phrase.
This rich and suggestive conception of the Second Principle,
as at once King and Creator of the world of life, and also itself
the archetypal world of true values, is the central fact of the
Plotinian philosophy. Its apprehension, he says, is beyond
ordinary human reason, which is fitted for correspondence
with the world of life or soul. It is the function of spiritual
intuition; "a faculty which all possess, though few use."
Such communion with the world of supernal reality is possible,
because man is potentially an inhabitant of it. "The Fatherland to us is there, whence we have come: and there is the
Father" (I. 6. 8). The "apex" or celestial aspect of our
soul is domiciled there. It "never leaves the Divine Mind;
but, while it clings yonder, allows the lower soul, as it were,
to hang down" (VI. 7. 5). Man is, in fact, intermediary
between the two Plotinian worlds of Spirit and Soul, and
participates in both. Eucken, in describing him as the meeting-place of two orders of reality, is merely restating the
doctrine of the Neoplatonists.
As Spirit is the outbirth and manifestation of the One, so
Soul, or Life — the third member of the Triad — is the manifestation or matter of Spirit; and forms the link between
the physical and the supersensual worlds. Spirit is "at once
its Father and ever-present Companion" (V. 1. 3). Soul
is a term covering the whole vital essence (a) of the world,
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and (b) of the individual. It has two aspects. The celestial
soul aspires toward, and is in communion with, the spiritual
order; the natural soul hangs down and inspires the physical
order, thereby conferring on it a measure of reality. We are
not, however, to understand by Soul merely the aggregate
of individuals. Psyche is the divine and eternal life of the
created universe, comprehending its infinite variety in a unity
which embraces every object in the sense-known scheme, and
makes it "like one animal" (IV. 4. 32). It is:
"A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things."
The whole creation, says Plotinus, in one of his great poetic
passages, is "awake and alive at every point." Each thing
has its own peculiar life in the all; though we, because our
senses cannot discern the life within wood and stone, deny
that life. "Their living is in secret, but they live " (IV. 4. 36).
Here we are reminded of the Logos-Christ of the "Sayings" — "Raise the stone and thou shalt find me: cleave the wood,
and there am I." By this conception, which is elaborated
from the doctrine of the world-soul in the Timaeus, Neoplatonism bridges the gap between appearance and reality, and also
solves the paradox of multitude in unity. "We do not declare
the Soul to be one in the sense of entirely excluding multiplicity. This absolute oneness belongs only to the higher
nature. We make it both one and manifold; it has part
in the nature which is divided among bodies, but it has part
also in the indivisible, and so again we find it to be one"
(IV. 9. 2).
Soul, which has in its highest manifestations many of the
characters of Spirit, is the eternal upholder of the world of
change. "Things have a beginning, and perish when the
soul that leads the chorus-dance of life departs; but the soul
itself is eternal and cannot suffer change . . . what the soul
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is, and what its power, will be more manifestly, more splendidly
evident, if we think how its counsel comprehends and conducts
the heavens; how it communicates itself to all this vast bulk
and ensouls it through all its extension, so that every fragment lives by the soul entire, which is present everywhere
like the Father which begat it" (V. 1. 2). Soul, then, which
is in one sense the reality of the world of becoming and immanent therein, is also a denizen of eternity, in virtue of its continuity with and direct dependence on Nous. An unbroken
series of ascending values unites the world of living effort
with the One. It is this which makes the system of Plotinus
a philosophy of infinite adventure and infinite hope.
Soul is the lowest of the Divine hypostases. Below it in
the scale of values is the material universe to which its lower
activities give form, slumbering in the rocks and dreaming
in the plants. In plants, says Plotinus, "the more rebellious
and self-willed phase of soul is expressed": a doctrine which
will find an echo in many a gardener's heart. The sensible
beauty of the world is the signature of soul, and points to
something "Yonder"; for through loveliness it participates
in the world of spiritual values, and we in apprehending beauty
turn away from matter to Nous (I. 8. 4). Matter, as such,
has no reality except as the stuff from which soul weaves up
its outward vesture. Deprived of soul, it is in itself, he says, "not-being" and "no-thing": "its very nature is one long
want " (I. 8. 5). As a picture is the crude and partial condensation of an artist's dream — all that he can force his recalcitrant material to express — so the physical world is but a
fragmentary manifestation of the great and vivid universe of
soul, and the body is the smallest part of the real man. When
we grasp this, we see how great is the sum of possibilities
opened to us by the Cosmos; how easily the country "Yonder"
can find room for all the visions and intuitions of artists,
poets, and saints.
The Plotinian doctrine of man, which became in due course
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the classical doctrine of Christian mysticism, is the logical
outcome of this cosmology. Man, like the rest of Creation,
has come forth from God and will only find happiness and full
life when his true being is re-united, first with the Divine Mind,
and ultimately with the One. "When the phantasm has
returned to the Original, the journey is achieved" (VI. 9. II).
Hence "our quest is of an End, and not of Ends. That only
can be chosen which is ultimate and noblest, that which calls
to the tenderest longings of the soul" (I. 4. 6). As the descending stages of reality are three, so the stages of the ascent are three. They are called in the Enneads purification, the work
of reason, which marks the transference of interest from sense
to soul; enlightenment — the work of spiritual intuition — which lifts life into communion with the eternal world of
spirit; and ecstasy, that profound transfiguration of consciousness whereby the " spirit in love " achieves union with the
One. These stages are familiar to all students of Christian
asceticism, as the codified "mystic way" of purgation, illumination, and union: a formula which Dionysius the Areopagite took from the Neoplatonists. But it is important to
remember that in Plotinus this "way" is not — as it sometimes
becomes in medieval writers — a rigid series of mutually exclusive psychological states, separated by water-tight bulkheads.
It is rather a diagram by which he seeks to describe one undivided movement of life; a prolonged effort and adventure,
which has for its object a deeper and deeper penetration into
Reality, the achievement of a true scale of values, in order
that the real proportions of existence may be grasped. In this
movement nothing is left behind; but everything is carried
up into a higher synthesis, as the latent possibilities of humanity
are gradually realized, and man grows up into eternal life.
"Since your soul is so exalted a power, so divine, be confident that in virtue of its possession you are close to God.
Begin therefore with the help of this principle to make your
way to Him. You have not far to go: there is not much
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between. Lay hold of that which is more divine than this
god-like thing; lay hold of that apex of the soul which borders
on the Supreme (Nous), from which the soul immediately
derives" (V. 1. 3).
All practical mysticism is at bottom a process of transcendence, "passing on the upward way all that is other than God"
(I. 6. 7): and this process, in different temperaments, assumes
different forms. Since Plotinus united in his own person
the characteristics of the metaphysician, the poet and the
saint, he tends to present it under three aspects; as the logical
outcome of a reasoned philosophy, as a moral purification
which strips us of all unreality, and as a progressive initiation
into beauty. "Beholding this Being, the Conductor of all
existence, the self-intent that ever gives and never takes,
resting rapt in the vision and possession of so lofty a loveliness,
what beauty can the soul then lack? For this, the beauty
supreme, the absolute and the primal, fashions its lovers to
beauty and makes them also worthy of love. And for this
the sternest and uttermost combat is set before these souls; all
our labour is for this, lest we be left without part in this noblest
vision, which to attain is to be blessed in the blissful sight,
which to fail of is to fail utterly " (I. 6. 7). In the high place
which he gives to the category of beauty, which is to him one
of the three final attributes of God, the strongly poetic character of his vision of Reality becomes evident. He anticipates
Hegel in regarding natural beauty as the sensuous manifestation of spirit and signature of the world-soul "fragment as
it were of the Primal Beauty, making beautiful to the fullness
of their capacity whatsoever it grasps and moulds " (I. 6. 6):
and those lovers, artists, and musicians who can apprehend it
have already made the first step towards the inner vision of
the One. Therefore the harsh other-worldliness which made
some mediæval ascetics turn from visible loveliness as a snare,
would have seemed blasphemy to Plotinus, who would certainly have argued with St. Augustine that "there is no health
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in those who find fault with any part of Thy creation " (Conf.
vii. 14). On the contrary, his doctrine gives a religious sanction and a philosophic explanation to those special experiences
and apprehensions of artists, poets, and so-called "nature-mystics" — known to many normal persons in moments of
exaltation — when
"The world is so charged with the grandeur of God
It must shine out, like shining from shook foil."
In such hours, he would say, we perceive through matter
the inhabiting Psyche, and by it reach out to communion
with Nous, for "this is how the material becomes beautiful;
by participating in the thought which flows from the Divine"
(I. 6. 2). He would have understood Blake's claim to see
the universe as "a world of imagination and vision," and
accepted Erigena's great saying, "every visible and invisible
creature is a theophany or appearance of God."
Thus the whole mystic ascent can be conceived as a movement through visible beauty to its invisible source, and thence
to "the inaccessible Beauty, dwelling as if in consecrated
precincts apart from the common ways" (I. 6. 8). Yet this
progress is not so much a change in our consciousness of the
world and of ourselves, as a shifting of the centre of our being
from sense to soul, from soul to spirit, whereby we come
actually to live at new levels of existence. "For all there
are two stages of the path, according to whether they are
ascending or have already gained the upper sphere. The first
stage is conversion from the lower life: the second — taken
by those who have already reached the Spiritual sphere, as
it were set a footprint there, but must still advance within
that realm — lasts till they reach its extreme summit, the term
attained when the topmost peak of the Spiritual realm is
won" (I. 3. I).
The process is both intellectual and moral, since its goal
is the absolute Truth and Beauty no less than the absolute
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Good. "Each must become God-like and beautiful who
cares to see God and Beauty" (I. 6. 9). It involves deliberate effort and drastic purification of mind and heart, "cutting away all that is excessive, straightening all that
is crooked, bringing light to all that is in shadow, labouring
to make all one glow of beauty" (I. 6. 9). As "all knowing
comes by likeness" (I. 8. 1), we must ourselves have moral
beauty if we would see the "Beauty There." But whether
this way be conceived under aesthetic or ascetic symbols,
Plotinus is at one with all the mystics in declaring that the
driving force which urges the soul along the pathway to
reality is love. This inspires its labour, supports its stern
purifications, "detaches it from the body and lifts it to the
Intelligible World" (III. 6. 5), and gives it at last "the
only eye that sees the mighty Beauty" (I. 6. 9). Love means
for him active desire; "the longing for conjunction and
rest." All shades of spiritual and poetic passion, the graded
meanings of admiration, enthusiasm, and worship, are included in it. It is "the true magic of the universe"; an
attribute of Nous, and an earnest of real life. "The fullest
life is the fullest love, and the love comes from the celestial
light which streams forth from the Absolute One" (VI.
7. 23). It is true that the impersonal nature of the Neoplatonic One gives no apparent scope to the intimate feeling
which plays so large a part in Christian devotion. But the
reality and warmth of the true mystical passion for the
Absolute — its complete independence of anthropomorphic
conceptions — is strikingly demonstrated by those glowing
passages in which Plotinus allows his overpowering emotion, "that veritable love, that sharp desire," to speak; and appeals
to the experience of those fellow-mystics who have attained
the vision of "the splendour yonder, and felt the burning
of the flame of love for that which is there to know; the
passion of the lover resting on the bosom of his love" (VI.
9. 4).
continued
