Sopater, a Syrian philosopher of this school, was beheaded by the former emperor, on a charge that he had bound the winds by the power of magic. But Julian, who shortly after succeeded to the purple, embraced with ardour the opinions of Iamblichus. Proclus (who died A. D. 487,) was one of the greatest of the teachers of this school'; and was, both in his life and doctrines, a worthy successor of Plotinus, Porphyry, and Iamblichus. We possess a biography, or rather a panegyric of him, by his disciple Marinus, in which he is exhibited as a representation of the ideal perfection of the philosophic character, according to the views of the Neoplatonists. His virtues are arranged as physical, moral, purificatory, theoretic, and theurgic. Even in his boyhood, Apollo and Minerva visited him in his dreams: he studied oratory at Alexandria, but it was at Athens that Plutarch and Lysianus initiated him in the mysteries of the New Platonists. He received a kind of consecration at the hands of the daughter of Plutarch, the celebrated Asclepigenia, who introduced him to the traditions of the Chaldeans, and the practices of theurgy; he was also admitted to the mysteries of Eleusis. He became celebrated for his knowledge and eloquence; but especially for his skill in the supernatural arts which were connected with the doctrines of his sect. He appears before us rather as a hierophant than a philosopher. A large portion of his life was spent in 8 • Gibbon, iii. 352. 9 O Deg. iii. 419. evocations, purifications, fastings, prayers, hymns, intercourse with apparitions, and with the gods, and in the celebration of the festivals of Paganism, especially those which were held in honour of the Mother of the Gods. His religious admiration extended to all forms of mythology. The philosopher, said he, is not the priest of a single religion, but of all the religions in the world. Accordingly, he composed hymns in honour of all the divinities of Greece, Rome, Egypt, Arabia;-Christianity alone was excluded from his favour. 2. Mystical Arithmetic.-It is unnecessary further to exemplify, from Proclus, the general mystical character of the school and time to which he belonged; but we may notice more specially one of the forms of this mysticism, which very frequently offers itself to our notice, especially in him; and which we may call mystical arithmetic. Like all the kinds of mysticism, this consists in the attempt to connect our conceptions of external objects by general and inappropriate notions of goodness, perfection, and relation to the divine essence and government; instead of referring such conceptions to those appropriate ideas, which, by due attention, become perfectly distinct, and capable of being positively applied and verified. The subject which is thus dealt with, in the doctrines of which we now speak, is number; a notion which tempts men into these visionary speculations more naturally than any other. For number is really applicable to moral VOL. I. U notions, to emotions and feelings, and to their objects, as well as to the things of the material world. Moreover, by the discovery of the principle of musical concords, it had been found, probably most unexpectedly, that numerical relations were closely connected with sounds which could hardly be distinguished from the expression of thought and feeling; and a suspicion might easily arise, that the universe, both of matter and of thought, might contain many general and abstract truths of some analogous kind. The relations of number have so wide a bearing, that the ramifications of such a suspicion could not easily be exhausted, when men were willing to follow them into darkness and vagueness; which it is precisely the mystical tendency to do. Accordingly, this kind of speculation appeared very early, and showed itself first among the Pythagoreans, as we might have expected, from the attention which they gave to the theory of harmony: and this, as well as some other of the doctrines of the Pythagorean philosophy, was adopted by the later Platonists, and, indeed, by Plato himself, whose speculations concerning number have decidedly a mystical character. The mere mathematical proportions of numbers,—as odd and even, perfect and imperfect, abundant and defective,-were, by a willing submission to an enthusiastic bias, connected with the notions of good and beauty, which the terms suggested; and principles resulting from such a connexion were woven into a wide and complex system. It is not necessary to dwell long on this subject; the mere titles of the works which treated of it show its nature. Archytas" is said to have written a treatise on the number ten: Telauge, the daughter of Pythagoras, wrote on the number four. This number, indeed, which was known by the name of the Tetractys, was very celebrated in the school of Pythagoras. It is mentioned in the "Golden Verses," which are ascribed to him: the pupil is conjured to be virtuous, Νὰι μὰ τὸν ἁμετέρᾳ ψυχῇ παραδόντα τετραχτὺν By him who stampt The Four upon the mind, The Four, the fount of nature's endless stream. In Plato's works, we have evidences of a similar belief in religious relations of number; and in the New Platonists, this doctrine was established as a system. Proclus, of whom we have been speaking, founds his philosophy, in a great measure, on the relation of unity and multiple; from this, he is led to represent the causality of the Divine Mind by three triads of abstractions; and in the developement of one part of this system, the number seven is introduced". "The intelligible and intellectual gods produce all things triadically; for the monads in these are divided according to number; and what the monad was in the former, the number is in the latter. And the intellectual gods produce all things 10 Mont. ii. 123. 11 Procl. v. 3., Taylor's Translation. by a decree of the senate, both during the times of the republic and of the empire". The recurrence of this act of legislation shows that it was not effectual; "It is a class of men," says Tacitus," which, in our city, will always be prohibited, and will always exist." In Greece, it does not appear that the state showed any hostility to the professors of this art. They undertook, it would seem, then, as at a later period, to determine the course of a man's character and life from the configuration of the stars at the moment of his birth. We do not possess any of the speculations of the earlier astrologers; and we cannot therefore be certain that the feelings which operated in men's minds when the art had its birth, agreed with the views on which it was afterwards defended, when it became a matter of controversy. But it appears probable, that, though it was at later periods supported by physical analogies, it was originally suggested by mythological belief. The Greeks spoke of the influences or effluxes (aπóppotas) which proceeded from the stars; but the Chaldeans had probably thought rather of the powers which they exercised as deities. In whatever manner the sun, moon, and planets came to be identified with gods and goddesses, it is clear that the characters ascribed to these gods and goddesses regulate the virtues and powers of the stars which bear their names. This association, so manifestly visionary, was retained, 14 Tacit. Ann. ii. 32. xii. 52. Hist. I. 22, II. 62. |