Section 9 (Page xxxv)
IONIAN
PHILOSOPHY.
xxxv of matter was acknowledged in the pantheism of the sage, Phereand the polytheism of the multitude
; and by a natural deveTitle*. lopment the earliest form of Greek philosophy was the physical system of the Ionian school ; in which each of the four elements was successively adopted as the fundamental apyri or principle from whence the entire system of the material universe was evolved.
Notions with respect to a divine principle may have existed among races of an earlier civilisation, but these for a time were overlaid in the grosser material theories that formed the first foundation of Greek philosophy.
Half a dozen generations passed away before this higher principle could struggle once more
into light ; and the temple of Hellenic wisdom, most beau tiful in its symmetry as it came from the hands of Plato, concealed beneath its ground-line a rough misshapen mass of heterogeneous material.
So Pherecydes of Syrus imagined earth to be the ultimate principle from whence all originated, and to which all returned1.
His follower or in any case contemporary Thales, having studied in Egypt, where the rank growth of the year was so evidently dependent upon the fertilis ing waters of the Nile, taught, as we have already seen, that water was the first elementary principle, containing within itself the seeds of all physical development.
This view was in no degree less gross than the preceding.
It was fully as atheistical, and Cicero, as we are reminded by 2Archer Butler's learned editor, was not speaking in 1 Still the honour is ascribed to him a Led. v. vol. I. p. 308.
I subjoin of having been the first to teach in Greece these words of Prof. Thompson : "The the immortality of the soul, and to have hypothesis of a formative and formed attracted Pythagoras by this doctrine inprinciple is quite at variance with the to the paths of philosophy.
Cic.
Tusc. reported tenets of Thales, and with the I. 16, LHv. I. 50; MhlKS,
V. II. IV. 28;
earliest Ionian philosophy.
It would S. Aug. c. Acad. in.
37, Ep. cxxxvu. have been in effect an anticipation of II.
Xenophanes revived his principle :
Anaxagoras."
The inference based upZrvotpirrfi ii Ik yrjs ' Ik yip yap <pt\aai on the words of Cicero at p. 789, n. 5, r&rra, tort, Kal els rty y9p irdura reXevrequires modification. rji.
Hipp. Ph. x. 6.
A. Butl. i. 314.
xxxvi IONIAN Anaxihis own person, when he said, Thales Milesius .... aquam ' dixit esse initium rerum ; Deum autem mentem earn, quce ex aqua cuncta fingeret.
The deity of Thales appears to have been nothing else than the vital or plastic energy, that he conceived to be inherent in the elementary particles of water. b.c.870.
Anaximander, with whom Pythagoras is said to have spoken, first identified the term direipla with his first prin ciple or apXQ, a term that was 'incorporated by him in the philosophical terminology; but his apyri was physical, being the 'vital principle of creation, and the axeipla of which he spoke, is described to us by Aristotle and
Theophrastus, as the intermingling of various hetero geneous constituent particles, the aggregation of which was requisite for the formation of individual substance,
Principiis propriis semper res quasque creari, Singula qui quosdam fontes decrevit habere JEternum irriguos, ac rerum semine plenos.
Sidonius Apoll.
Carm, xv. 84.
Brucker, however, gives him credit for intending some such infinite immaterial principle, as the t|D-pX of CabB.c.M8. balistic theology.
His pupil, Anaximenes, adopting the same term, applied it to the element of air, with him the source of all.
The two preceding principles were here superseded, and a more rare and impalpable element was declared to be the true basis of the physical system.
Philosophy was to a certain degree sublimated, and released from its thraldom to grosser material principles.
At the same time, that which in preceding systems had been a mere vital energy, received gradually a higher development, and philosophy by degrees learned to refer the orderly arrangement of matter in the physical crea tion to one Supreme designing Mind.
Simpl.
Phys. ; Obig.
Philocal. ; with the editor's note.
Ritteb, H. Ph. L 235. a fity/ia, Abist.
Phys. Ause. m. 4, * Cf. A. Botleb, Led. v. p.
320, and see below, 290, n.
PHILOSOPHY.
xxxvii Thus Anaxagoras, retaining the term aireipos, as one Anaxanow well established in philosophical language, applied it to i-oDy, as well as to the physical world.
He spoke indeed of the sky and air as dn<poTepa d-neipa eovra, but there are also expressions of his, in speaking of the infinity of Nod, that strongly remind us of the diretpla of the Supreme Principle in the Gnostic theories, and of the impossibility that it should come into contact with nmtter. lNovs li £o~tiv airetpov Kal auTOKpares, Kal (le/uKTai ovSevt yjprinaTt, ctXXa /uofo? ai/Toy ecp' ewvrov karivThe Gnostic axiom also, that things visible are the reflex of things unseen, agrees remarkably with his notion, st^s tok d&r/Xwv Kara-
Xi^ecus ra (pawofxeva elvai xpiTijptov.
Plato only illus trated this dictum of his predecessor, when he said with greater clearness, s7rdaa dvdyKtj tovSb rdv Kocr/uov e'tKova twos elvai, and more enigmatically, & tI nep irpos yeveatv *ovo~la, tovto irpo% it'icstiv dXqOeia.
Like Thales and Pythagoras, Anaxagoras also journeyed into Egypt in 6quest of knowledge, though nothing peculiarly Egyptian is to be detected in his system of physics ; but in all probability he derived from this source a higher notion of Divine causation ; so Aristotle describes his principle, 6apyrfv ye tov vow /xaKtaTa iravrtov, /xovov yovv (prjcriv uvtov twu ovtwv drrXovv elvai, Kal d/uiyrj tb Kal KaOapov' diroStSivcrt $e dufpo) Trj avTrj dpyrj to re ytvwaKeiv Kal to Ktvelv.
If there fore Thales wrapped up a Divine Principle in his primeval 1 Simpl. Phys. in Ab. Phys. I. 33. the antithesis in the text.
Being is to * Sext. Ehpib. vii.
140. product, as truth, or absolute certainty, 3 Tim. tg. is to belief.
* It may be found useful in the • He also parted with his property sequel to observe, that the word oMa is to devote himself more exclusively to the abstract of to 6v, whereby Plato the pursuit of knowledge.
Plut. De Vii. designates absolute indefectible existence; Mr. A I. ; ClO.
Tusc.
39 ; Plato in while yeveaii is a term intended to exHipp.; Philostb. v.
Apollon.
13; press the existence improperly so called, Plut. in Pericl. ; Suid. in Anaxag.; of things which are continuously proPhilo Jud. de v. Contempt.
2. duced, but abb never ; to yiyv6nevov ph
de An. I.
1 ; cf. also Plut. in ill, ov Si oiBtirore.
Tim.i'j'D.
Hence Pericl.
xxxviii IONIAN Anaxawatery element, Anaxagoras resolved the combination, and goraB' assigned to the Deity an independent action in the dispo sition and government of all things.
'NoDv iiaKoauwv was with him a moral as well as an intellectual principle, *'Ava%ayopas oe ws Ktvovy to dyaOdv apyrfv' o yap vous Kivei, aXXd Kivei evexd twos' and the source of to KaXoKayaQdv, as Aristotle again records; 3troXXa^ou fiev ydp to ainov tov KaXws Kai 6p9ws tov vouv Xeyei, though he still made a certain confusion between i/oSy and the vital principle ^u^y, affirming tov vouv etvai tov ovtov Trj >|/i/^»}.
For the ap proximation however that he made to the truth, Josephus speaks of him with the same terms of praise as Pytha-
c. Ap. 2. goras and Plato.
Kai ydp TluOaydpas Kal 'Ava^ayopa?
Kal nXaVcui/, Kal oi fxer eKewovs dvo t>Js arods (piXoaoCpoi, Kal HtKpov Setv dnavTes, ovrw (palvovrai irepl Ttjs tov 9eov (pvaeuys irecppovrjKoTes' aXX oi /xev irpds oX'iyov (piXoaocpovvtw eU irXtjOos cohorts TrpoKaTeiXrjfifxevov, Trjv aXt)9eiav tov Soyixaros e^eveyxeiv ovk eToXfjujaav.
It is not improbable, indeed, that at Athens some similarity was traced between his Material and Immaterial Principles, and the dualistic theory of the East, and that his fellow citizens, confound ing philosophical with political heresy, accused him of Medising, for we find that he ended his days in a voluntary exile at Lampsacus.
Pericles was his pupil, Thucydides Bnicker, the historian received instruction from him, as well as Hitter, H. rh. i. S48.
Democritus, Empedocles, Metrodorus of Lampsacus, ^Esop the tragedian, Socrates and Themistocles, while Euripides lived on terms of intimacy with him.
But the element of fire was not omitted, exercising as it does a kind of natural ascendancy over the other ele ments ; reducing solids to their inorganic constituents ; driving water before it as vapour into air ; and assimi lating apparently this latter element as its own proper 1 See p. 290, n. 1.
' Arist. Met. in.
10.
3 de An. I.
1, t ; cf. Plato, Cratyl. pp.
100, 413.
PHILOSOPHY.
XXXIX pabulum.
The same half century that 8a w the Magian Heraworship of fire established in the east by Zoroaster, as the — purest material emblem of the deity, found Heraclitus of Ephesus giving a similar direction to the philosophical b.c. mo. mind in Asia Minor, by asserting that fire was the first principle.
Either teacher worked the self-same notion up into form, making it a symbol, the one of a re ligious, the other of a philosophical creed.
Heraclitus, as a native of a highly volcanic region, the Karcuce/cav/ievi] of the ancients, naturally enough adopted this theory.
It does not appear to have made many converts, though his speculations in other respects had
considerable influence upon the fortunes of philosophy.
The Stoics built upon his foundation; Plotinus applied his theory ; for if Heraclitus said that the Deity was irvp voepov, the founder of the Neo-Platonic school also taught cr. pwiode • ° M. Opif.a that the Divine Mind acted on matter through the eternal ideas, by an intimate combination, as the secret energy of fire, 'the Divine Ideal being a fiery efflux.
In other respects Heraclitus had his points of contact with Zoroas ter; Discord, or TroXe/xos, was as his Ahriman; and the idea of multiplicity in unity is contained in his dictum, that 3to yap ev (ptjcri unity divided out is a self-combination, Sia<pep6fxevov, avro avrip %vn<pepea9ai.
He gave a prece dent to Gnostic self-conceit, in affirming, avrov to. vavTa eidevai toi)s $e a\\ovs dv9 pwtrov<3 ovctev.
Simon Magus, though in the spirit rather of oriental theosophy, asserted a fiery first principle, which was afterwards inherited from him by the Marcionite.
Empedocles, b.c. 450, embodied the preceding prin ciples, and referred the origin of all things to six effecting causes ; two material, two organic, and two demiurgic; 1 Enn. VI. v. 8; vn. I. the name that, according to Clement of * If this may be taken as a epeciAlexandria, was given to him ;
kclI men of the way in which he explained St' afrrb tovto, aKorcwbs Trpoeayopciehis theories, we need scarcely wonder at rai.
Strom, v. 8, and cf. p. xliii.
xl SOURCES OF Recurrence
/uev vXtKa, yrjv Kal vSwp' Suo Se opyava, oh to. vXiko. koctto ancient - , /3 i V principles, t^eiTai Kat fxerapaWeTat, irvp Kai aepa ' ovo oe epya^ofxeva tois opyavois tj)i/ vXijv Kal Sr/uiovpyovvTa, veiKOs Kal (piX'iav.
The first four were in continual flux, dying and reviving, the last two were permanent, as two verses of the philo sopher preserved by Hippolytus state ; ei yap Kai irapw t]v, Kai y eaaerai, ovoe iror , oho, tovtwv aixcpoTepwv Keivwaerai aaireTos atwv.
His system in fact was an amalgam of the Ionian and Italic systems ; and it is instanced by Hippolytus as the proto typal form copied by Marcion.
Even this brief review of the earlier development of
Greek philosophy, has brought out several points after wards revived by the Gnostic sects ; when men of thought, offended with the sciolism, into which the great schools of Greece were subsiding, and acknowledging as a half truth that ex oriente lux, applied themselves to the restoration of ancient principles, that had been accepted of old, as good and true, by the master minds of the human race, and to the reconstitution of philosophy upon a broader and more comprehensive basis.
Matter, For Gnosticism does not merely date from the period H. Cr. 1.48, J r *" when names, venerable among Christians, were first inter mixed with the dregs of Greek and barbarian philosophy.
In its origin at Alexandria it professed to solve questions that had baffled the keenest intellects of antiquity; and amongst others, to demonstrate the substantial connexion that subsists between Truth and the appreciating Intellect.
A necessary mean, it was formerly thought, subsists be tween Truth and the act whereby we perceive it.
Much as in the act of vision, there is the eye that perceives, and the object that is perceived ; but there is also the medium of air, radiant with light, to convey the spectrum to the 1 Hipp. Ph. vir. 29. vwaerai dff/Seoros . . .
Hipp. Ph. vn. 19, * Cud. xal tarai obbtirw roLtf . . . iteand cf. 294, 2.
GNOSTICISM.
eye, and the various parts of the organ of vision, to convey not necessensation to the brain.
Even Plato had only approached oriental, the margin of this intermediate void ; Aristotle's subtlety had been foiled by it; but it was reserved for the new fusion of philosophical schools, in the eclectic system of Alexandria, to resolve the difficulty, negatively, by deny ing that there was any such void to be bridged over, and positively, by asserting the complete oneness of Truth with the Intellect.
Plotinus expressed only the theory of his a. pmi0 de r J J M. Opif. 23; 'precursors when he affirmed that "Intelligence is at once J|e6,?0<re"chthe object conceived, the subject conceiving, and the act M gr A""' of conception ;"
2in his words, ovk e%a> rod vov ra vorjTa.
Porphyry disputed the position, not because it was'porph.^ novel or strange, but that he might draw out the
master upon a subject of philosophic interest.
Thus the absolute unity of the Thinking Mind with the entities that it conceives, was one great distinguishing tenet of the Alexandrian or Neo-Platonic school of philosophy; and it very evidently coincided with the notion of the Gnostic heresiarchs, that a true yvuais can only subsist in souls that by a divine insemination are derived from and return to the /coayto? votjtos, the Pleroma of Intelligence.
Other points indicate a Western source for certain main 3the trouble of tracing out tenets of Gnostic theosophy ; these analogies has generally been avoided by assuming that all such tenets had an Oriental parentage
; but a brief review of the component elements of the Alexandrian philosophy, and a comparison of the principal Gnostic tenets, will shew which of these tenets are referrible to an Eastern, and which of them to a Western origin.
The Alexandrian philosophy then was principally dis tinguished by the larger infusion of Pythagorean notions 1 Ammonius Saccas, about 190 a.d., 8 Hippolytus reminds his reader, and Numenins his predecessor.
Iffrt flit oSv irbvov utarbv t6 iirixetpoi3 A. Bdtlek's Lect. vol.
11. p. 354. fiepov, ko! TdWijs htbuaiov laroplas. p. 4.
xlii
SOURCES OF
Pythagowith which its Platonism was tinctured.
The degree in Toso^iy! which Plato had been indebted to his predecessor, in laying the foundation of his system, made it proportio nately easy for his disciples of a later date, to engraft a liberal admixture of later Pythagorean notions upon the system handed down to them.
It is with schools of thought represented by these two great names that we are at present chiefly concerned ; for they were clearly represented in the Valentinian theory.
Of the first of these systems, the Pythagorean philo sophy, very little is known beyond a few leading principles
; the master having left 'nothing on record, and his im
mediate sdisciples nothing; while a glare of false light has been thrown upon this page of the history of philo sophy by many spurious productions.
This however we may safely assert; that Pythagoras learned in 3 Egypt to theorise upon the practical system of geometry that had subsisted in that country from ancient days.
His investi gations were rewarded by a discovery of the harmonious laws of this science, and of the orderly powers and pro portions of numbers, concealed from the plodding prac tice of his Egyptian instructors, but revealed to himself.
He first learned to appreciate regularity of action in the exact sciences, whose threshold he penetrated, and to venerate it as belonging to a more 4divine system of things than earth otherwise possessed.
The operations of laws, that had existed indeed from the beginning, but had existed without man's cognisance, were brought to light ; and why should not the universe be full of such laws ? or rather, why should not the universe itself be one eternal continuous harmony ?
The very term Koanos, first applied 1 The golden verses and other proDlOG. Laert. viii.
15.
See p. xxxi. 3. ductions bearing the name of Pythago3 toi>s Si dpiBfiois koX tA n(rpa rapA. ras are without doubt spurious.
AlyinrTtuiv tpturi rbv TUvBayipav iiadeiv.
* Philolaus, the earliest, as editHipp. Ph. p. 9. ed by Boeckh, lived with Socrates.
4 Cf. Philolacs a Boeckh, 141,145.
GNOSTICISM.
xliii by him to the universe, betrays its inductive origin.
The Pythagoharmony of the spheres also, for ever, as he affirmed, losophy. ringing in mortal ears, but unpereeived, because never absent, indicated the deeper meaning of his theory of the powers of numbers, whose continual presence in esse, bore the stamp of the Eternal; though as regards man, they had existed hitherto only as a latent and unsuspected energy.
This harmony, symmetry, proportion, or whatever else Pythagoras may have termed the ultimate principle of his system, was as the 1Divine Soul of the whole ; it was the Unit out of which the entire progression of numbers piumum^ emanated; and so represented multiplicity in unity.
The
Monad in itself could not constitute number; but *by reaction upon its own nature it evolved the Dyad, the symbol of matter, the fruitful mother of an infinite evolu tional series of products; while the 3Monad, sole origin of a world of harmonies, and wholly abstracted from matter, was as the divine principle in this theory.
Further, these numerical laws and properties were considered, not only to have a definite relation to the particular combinations or powers in which they were observed, but to have an universal subsistence, an essen tial 4 being.
So the progression 3, 4, and 5 had its parallel in the right-angled triangle, the squares of the first two numbers representing the squares of base and perpen dicular, and equalling that of the third quantity, or hypothenuse.
And if this relation subsists in two such different elements as numbers and a plane geometrical figure, its character, as it seems to have been reasoned, may be presumed to be universal ; and if universality attaches to this, so also may it attach to every other numerical property or power whose more extended relations it is 8 See p.
106, n. i.
1 See p. 194, 3.
2 See p. 297, 1.
* Compare Plato, Rep.
1. p. 515 c.
SOURCES OF
Pythagounreasonable to deny merely because they are undetected losophy. by our dull senses.
Hence the properties of numbers cf. Phiiouui, were extended to moral qualities and principles, and even ' to the attributes of popular deities.
The nlfinais Ttav iju^is. « dptOfiwv had in this way an universal character.
So the Monad, as the source of Light in this system, was Apollo; piut u. et the Dyad, qua unity resolved, represented Discord, but it Os. 60, 76* was also the symbol of Artemis; the Triad was Justice, which was also symbolised by quadrature, dpi9fidi utokk Buticr, h. tffos.
The equilateral triangle was A8rjvn Tpiroyeveia.
Ph. I. 33, 2. noteofEcL-, The Tetrad was the source and root of all, and extended rhilolaus, pp. 140, us. jts myStical properties to the Decad, that numerically clal str. summed its progressive digits (1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10).
The
Hexad, in the same way, was called ydy-os, and signified the phiiodeM. material world, lws av yovi/xos doi9/i6s.
Upon the same Opif. 3.
principle, the idea of sex that attaches so universally to Hippoi. the products of nature was extended to numbers.
The Ph. 6. r odd numbers being male, 2the even numbers female.
Thus the arithmetical features of this system justify the term applied to it by Xenophon, who called it, YlvOaydpov TeparcoSris tro(f>ta, but the generalisations educed by it, were followed in due course of time by the definitions of Socrates, and the ideas of Plato.
Hippolytus, —and he quotes Further, if we may trust
his authority for the assertion, —Pythagoras learned from Zaratas the Chaldrean the dualistic principle, that Light was the father of the warm, the dry, the light, the swift ; and Darkness the mother of the opposite qualities of the cold, the moist, the heavy, the slow.
If this was part of See p. 294, n.
«. ri» XaXSaTov A^XuMcai Xlv$aybpav riv
297, 2.
The MoSi inffiirBat airrQ Svo thai dx' ipxys See 80,4; 296, * 7; nad however was supposed to include rots ofow atria, xaripa nal purripa' either gender.
See the passage from k.t.\. quoted at p. xxx. note from Stob«ds at p.
18, n. i.
Hipp.
Ph. p.
8, ed. Miller.
Com8, ''Eptrpiebt col 'Aptpare also VI. 23, ib.; and below, p. 294, AiSSapos Si * i powrixSs <paot rpit Zapdrav n.
2, arAfevot (end). i
GNOSTICISM.
xlv his teaching, it can hardly admit of a doubt, but that he Pythagolearned from the same source to refer the origin of all to "tosophy. the antagonising action of d>i\/a and pel/cos1.
And these ^ Piut. u. et Os. 30* peculiarities of the Pythagorean system were reflected afterwards in every successive phase of Gnosticism.
With the moral bearings of this system we are only so far concerned as to remark, that Pythagoras according to Plutarch, maintained the Oriental account of the origin of evil ; evil having been necessarily inherent in the dyad representative of the multitudinous 8universe ; but he held simultaneously, as we have seen, the dualistic theory of the East, and these assertions at least may shew that the
Gnostic heresiarchs need not have derived their dualism immediately from Eastern sources ; it had already pos session of men's minds in the West.
The psychology of Pythagoras harmonised with his pantheistic teaching.
Eor here, as the world of nature was the material counter part of the abstract laws of numbers, pt'/uqcnc rwv dpid/xwv, so the soul was an efflux from the Monadic source of all.
Like its divine exemplar, it had its own independent power of action and progression, it was apiQuo<s eavrov see Phiio- *
lain, p. 177kivwv, and to auro kivouv.
This theory consisted well enough with the notion that the supreme Monad was an objective harmony, a definite Law of that which is Good and True, rather than subjective Goodness and Truth itself ; but it was wholly inconsistent with a belief in the independent
1 See Hippoltt. Ph. ed. Miller, And he adds a saying of Plato, who p.
18 1, where, for the absurd reading, when asked, What is philosophy? anovtu) rtf tlnovTTiii ovtrlaii tov ic6<rfwv, swered, %wpiani>i ^iCCTS <iird aii/iaros.
(pTjal, riimei tls £&a, <pvrd, k.t.X. read So in the Phced.
8 1 A. the philosophic outu t& vcikos rty> ovtrtav k.t.X.
Hippolife is /teX^ri; Bavdrov and Crai., <rr)/ia lytus also ascribes to Pythagoras the 7Ws <pajju>airrS (<ruifw.) rrjs '/'"XVfThese
Brahminical notion, that life in the body notions also have their bearing upon is a penal condition ; e.g. efcai Si avris Gnosticism.
189; 218, 3; 370. Cf. Philo (r4t <j/vxb.s sc.) 0v7)t4s pin bWav uSaw in de Migr. Abr.
1 ; de Sotnn, I. 22.
T$ owpMTt, olorel {yKaTopupvy/ifras lis 3 T^P Si iipurrov SvdSa 5a.ifj.ova nal tV rdtpif, iylaraadai koX ylveg-Otu ifftwdrh Kanbv, repl ijv eVrl to v\ik6v jrXijfos. rovs, bray twv aupAruv diroXutfu/iev. v. Casadb. in DlOO. La. Alan. VIII. 83.
xlvi SOURCES OF Platonic substance of the Deity, as 'Cicero has remarked.
The sophy.
Gnostic soul was no less an emanation from the Infinite.
The analogies afforded by the theories of Plato are striking ; perhaps portions of his system, that reflect the greatest light upon the Valentinian heresy, originally rhiicvj.M. came from "Egypt.
Hence Hippolytus says of it; 17 nev ovv apx*l TW virodeaetif eanv 17 ev rip Ti/nalif tou TlXdrcovos ao(pla 3Alyv7rrla)v.
The points of Plato's teaching with which we are chiefly concerned, are, his theory of the Divine iSeai, and his views respecting the material world and the mundane soul ; which suggested on the one hand, the sys tem of yEons within the Pleroma, and on the other, the ex
ternal world of Valentinus without it ; while the imitative process by which all things create were made the counter part of eternally subsisting heavenly types, both in the Platonic and Gnostic theories, plainly marks that the latter were formed upon models furnished by the great master of philosophy.
Now in several points connected with these three main topics, a very remarkable coincidence may be observed between the doctrine of Plato and the Egyptian theories detailed by Plutarch and Iamblichus ; and a community of origin, so far as these resemblances 1 Nam Pythagoras, qui ccnsuit aniper universam rerum naturam comniemura esse per naturam rerum omnium an8 et intentus ; ex quo etiam animalium omnium vita capiatur.
% * Proolus gives, as a matter of intent urn et coromeantem, ex quo anirui nostri caperentur, non vidit distraetione Egyptian record, the names of three of hunianorum animorum discerpi et dilathe priestly instructors of Plato ; at cerari Deum ; et cum miseri animi esSais he conversed with Pateneith, at sent, quod plerisque contingeret, turn Dei partem esse animam ; quod fieri non Heliopolis with Ochlapis, at Sebennite with Ethimori.
In Tim. p.
31.
* klyim-ov -fip&aOri, though words potest.
Curautem quidquam ignoraret animus hominij, si esset Deus ?
Quomodo porro Deus iatc, si nihil esset nisi used with reference to Plato's early stu dies, not by Xenophon, but by a peranimus, aut infixus, aut infusus esset in mundo. de N. D. I. xi.
In truth the sonator of the historian, express the sense of a perpetual tradition as regards deity of Pythagoras, though one, had no subjective personality; but he was the one main source of his information. vis vita of the world, as Min. Felix has See Prof. Thompson's note on A. But ler, 11. p.
15. remarked : Pytbagorse Deus est animus
GNOSTICISM.
xlvii reach, may be inferred.
Choice indeed must be made Platonic of one from three alternatives.
Either Plato borrowed Sophy. the groundwork of some of his most striking developments of thought from his Egyptian instructors, which still held their ground in the Egypt of Plutarch's day; or the system that Plutarch describes was adapted from the writings of Plato ; or, which was more probably the case, the Egyptian notions that received a certain determinate colouring from Plato, were subsequently interpreted to the initiated by the Egyptian priests, consistently with that Platonic colouring : so that if the philosopher received the rude forms of his ideas from Egypt, and shaped them
variously into one harmonious theory, Egypt received her own back again in a higher state of elaboration.
Thus the wild flowers of southern climes are transplanted to our shores, and are sent back again to their native habitat in their highest form of development, more beauti fully radiant, and jlore pleno.
But there is a marked distinction to be observed between the language of the master in speaking of his system of eternal Ideas, and that of Philo, Plutarch, and Iamblichus.
With later writers these ideas were little phtiode v. else than a divine model or exemplar of things create, having a necessary subsistence in the mind of the Deity ; they were the engraved type of the impressed seal.
They had no other true existence ; and this simple notion may well have existed in Egypt before the day of Plato.
But the Platonic ideas, 'or irapaSe'iyna, had a true subjec tive existence, and formed an intermediate world of real intelligible being, lower than the Supreme Good, but higher than this created world; eternal laws, having a necessary existence independently of, though incidentally 1 This TapaSciy/ia is defined by Hipand adds, 8«4v Si riy ra&rris (tt)s iTX^s polyiub to be the Divine Mind.
He sc.) ehai S-n/uovpybv, to Si rapaSeiypM says that the Platonic principles are vovs.
Ph. X.
See 293, I. three —Qeir Kal S\rjv /col irapaSeiyiia,
xlviii
SOURCES OF
Pphil"C *n connexi°n with this world of sense ; and cognisable, Bophy. not through the senses, nor through the imagination, but alone by pure reason.
They were the real and eternal substance of every principle of proportion and harmony, and of all that is true and just and beautiful
; and in this way, however true it may be that the fundamental notion of his ideas was derived by Plato from the definitions of his master Socrates, or more remotely from the Pytha gorean harmony of numbers, or even from sources of a yet higher antiquity ; still in their ultimate form they were a creation of the wonderful intelligence of Plato ; and the nearer approximation that he made in other
respects to inspired Truth, only made it more certain that his would be the system singled out by heresy as its exemplar.
In its cruder form then the doctrine of divine iSeai may evidently have had a niche in the intellectual system of more primitive times.
The notion is in fact inse parable from belief in the existence of .an eternal and forecasting Divine Intellect.
Iamblichus, as a NeoPlatonist, would hardly have expressed himself in such a way, as to imply that the founder of his philosophy followed the Egyptian teaching with respect to the ideology of things create, if he had not felt very certain of his ground.
He accounts for the symbolical character of the Egyptian religious system, by saying, that it was intended to symbolise the Divine ideas veiled beneath forms of matter1.
The goddess Isis herself was the per sonification of the same notion2; and if we had the means of following the theory back to its more remote source, we should in all probability trace it to the great emporium of intellectual as well as of commercial antiquity, on the banks of the Euphrates ; it was a live ember perhaps from altars of a yet more remote period.
1 IaMbl. de Mytl. Ej. vn. I.
* See pp. xx—xxiv.
SOURCES OF GNOSTICISM.
xlix The Platonic theory of matter, also, harmonises with so Platonic much as we know of Egyptian speculations with respect to BOphy. that subject, so full of mystery to the heathen mind, and the cause of so much inconsistent and inconclusive reason ing in the wisest teachers.
Of course we must not expect to find anything like the Platonic refinements in these specu lations.
For this reason we might pass over the abstruse theory of Plato, if it were not very evident that it forms the groundwork of the Valentinian notion of the Demi urge and of the material creation.
Matter, then, in the system of Plato is considered in a threefold point of view ; occupying space, it had an eternal subsistence as x™Pa or
X0 7TO?, the formal vehiculum of matter devoid of organisa tion or order.
But unorganised matter, thus comprehended within determinate limits, had eternally a bodily nature; and that which is corporeal is subject to change; therefore, antecedently to its organisation by the Creator, matter was for ever in a transitional state, and passing from one chaotic condition, void of order, to another.
To these two phases succeeded now a third, in which matter was organised, and its erratic tendencies brought under the Divine rule of form and order by a ne9e%ts, or adunation with the ideal types, that had subsisted eternally in the Divine mind; but in this again we trace Pythagorean and Platonic theories back to one common source ; Aristotle evidently identifies the two systems with each other, as virtually one, in saying,
TlvOayopetoi /ujjui/crei to ovra (paaiv elvai twv aptOmwv, HXarwn 5e ixede^et.
Met.
I. 6.
Now if Plato borrowed anything from Egypt, the more ancient portions of Egyptian teaching, without doubt, are to be sought in the myths that have been preserved to us ; and the main features of the Platonic theory of matter are discernible in an Egyptian fable recorded by Plutarch.
The substantial eternity of matter, its acosmic corporeity, and its subsequent organisation, when the passive power vol. I. d
SOURCES OF GNOSTICISM.
Platonic of the Deity revealed itself at length in active energy, sophy! are of them points to be traced in the following story :— <l>^cri icepl tou Aios
EuSo^os /uu9o\oyelv AlyvirTiovs, ws twv GKeXwv aunTrecpuKOTcov auTtp Suvd/uevos ($a8lXetv, eir a'io"^vvt}i eprin'iq Sierpifiev' t} oe 'itris hiarefiouaa Kal StaaTtjaacra to V-ept) tclutci tou cw/uaros, dpTlwoSa Tqp iropelav nrapeo"^ev' aiviTTerai 5e Kal Sid toutwv o fxuOos, oti Kaff eavTov
tou deou vous Kal Xo^os ev Tip dopaTw Kal d(pavel &e(3t]KWs, els yeveaiv utto Kivr]aews irporjXOev.
The terms voui Kal \6yos, as applied to the Divine Being, may be neo-Platonic, but the general teaching of this myth is, if I mistake not, 1prse-Platonic ; it is far more likely
that the doctrine that it veils, was in substance handed to the father of Greek philosophy by his priestly instructors, than that the fable should have been framed in Egypt at a later date, when the tidal wave of Greek civilisation spreading southwards, made it so much the more difficult for such stories to be palmed upon the people with any hope of their acceptation.
The same observations apply to the Platonic theory of the mundane soul.
The universe, in this theory, was ani mated by a soul of Divine harmony ; and without offering to lead the reader through the arithmetical maze, from which Plato makes the mundane soul to be evolved, a maze that Cicero, in speaking of an intellectual crux as numero Platonis obscurius, takes to be the abstract type of all that is obscure, it may be sufficient to observe, first, that a community of origin is clearly indicated between this portion of the Platonic theory and the Pythagorean derivation of all things from the mystical powers of 2num-
1 El'DOXCB
like his predecessors, as BtiBos.
Compare also xxi. n. 3. well as Plato, to whom he was slightly a The word &pi8/iAs is usually derived senior, studied in Egypt.
The myth from dpu, apto, q. d. apfiit and epenthetherefore is remarkable for the light tice, with loss also of the aspirate, d/xflthat it throws upon the ancient Egyp- /xis.
But ipvffp.6t may have been the tian theory of matter ; it also indicates original form of spelling the word, the original development of the Gnostic which would give an easier analysis,