look from him we revolve about him: we do not always look at him, but when we do, we have satisfaction and rest, and the harmony which belongs to that divine movement. In this movement, the mind beholds the fountain of life, the fountain of mind, the origin of being, the cause of good, the root of the soul." "There will be a time when this vision shall be continual; the mind being no more interrupted, nor suffering any perturbation from the body. Yet that which beholds is not that which is disturbed; and when this vision becomes dim, it does not obscure the knowledge which resides in demonstration, and faith, and reasoning; but the vision itself is not reason, but greater than reason, and before reason.' The fifth book of the third Ennead has for its subject the Dæmon which belongs to each man. It is entitled "Concerning Love;" and the doctrine appears to be, that the Love, or common source of the passions which is in each man's mind, is "the Dæmon which they say accompanies each man." These dæmons were, however (at least by later writers), invested with a visible aspect and with a personal character, including a resemblance of human passions and motives. It is curious thus to see an untenable and visionary generalization falling back into the domain of the senses and the fancy, after a vain attempt to support itself in the region of the reason. This imagination soon produced pretensions to the power of making these dæmons or genii visible; and the Treatise on the Mysteries of the Egyptians, which is attributed to Iamblichus, gives an account of the secret ceremonies, the mysterious words, the sacrifices and expiations, by which this was to be done. It is unnecessary for us to dwell on the progress of this school; to point out the growth of the Theurgy which thus arose; or to describe the attempts to claim a high antiquity for this system, and to make Orpheus, the poet, the first promulgator of its doctrines. The system, like all mystical systems, assumed the character rather of religion than of a theory. The opinions of its disciples materially influenced their lives. It gave the world the spectacle of an austere morality, a devotional exaltation, combined with the grossest superstitions of Paganism. The successors of Iambichus appeared rather to hold a priesthood, than the chair of a philosophical school. They were persecuted by Constantine and Constantius, as opponents of Christianity. Sopater, a vi. Enn. ix. 9. 6 vi. Enn. ix. 10. Ficinus, Comm. in. v. Enn. iii. 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 ardor 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 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 honor 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 of the world. Accordingly, he composed hymns in honor of all the divinities of Greece, Rome, Egypt, Arabia ;—Christianity alone was excluded from his favor. The reader will find an interesting view of the School of Alexandria, in M. Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire's Rapport on the Mémoires sent to the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences at Paris, in consequence of its having, in 1841, proposed this as the subject of a prize, which was awarded in 1844. M. Saint-Hilaire has prefixed to this Rapport a dissertation on the Mysticism of that school. He, however, uses the term Mysticism in a wider sense than my purpose, which regarded mainly the bearing of the doctrines of this school upon the progress of the Inductive Sciences, has led me to do. Although he finds much to ad mire in the Alexandrian philosophy, he declares that they were incapable of treating scientific questions. The extent to which this is true is well illustrated by the extract which he gives from Plotinus, on the question, "Why objects appear smaller in proportion as they are more distant." Plotinus denies that the reason of this is that the angles of vision become smaller. His reason for this denial is curious enough. If it were so, he says, how could the heaven appear smaller than it is, since it occupies the whole of the visual angle? 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 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, supposing men 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 relations 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 were suggested by the terms expressing their relations; and principles. resulting from such a connection 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. Archytas1 is said to have written a treatise on the number ter: Telaugé, 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, In Plato's works, we have evidence 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 development 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 latter are divided according to number; and what the monad was in the former, the number is in these latter. And the intellectual gods produce all things hebdomically; for they evolve the intelligible, and at the same time intellectual triads, into intellectual hebdomads, and expand their contracted powers into intellectual variety." Seven is what is called by arithmeticians a prime number, that is, it cannot be produced by the multiplication of other numbers. In the language of the New Platonists, the number seven is said to be a virgin, and without a mother, and it is therefore sacred to Minerva. The number six is a perfect number, and is consecrated to Venus. The relations of space were dealt with in like manner, the Geometrical properties being associated with such physical and metaphysical notions as vague thought and lively feeling could anyhow connect with them. We may consider, as an example of this," Plato's opinion 10 Mont. ii. 123. u Procl. v. 3, Taylor's translation. 12 Stanley, Hist. Phil. concerning the particles of the four elements. He gave to each kind of particle one of the five regular solids, about which the geometrical speculations of himself and his pupils had been employed. The particles of fire were pyramids, because they are sharp, and tend upwards; those of earth are cubes, because they are stable, and fill space; the particles of air are octahedral, as most nearly resembling those of fire; those of water are the icositetrahedron, as most nearly spherical. The dodecahedron is the figure of the element of the heavens, and shows its influence in other things, as in the twelve signs of the zodiac. In such examples we see how loosely space and number are combined or confounded by these mystical visionaries. These numerical dreams of ancient philosophers have been imitated by modern writers; for instance, by Peter Bungo and Kircher, who have written De Mysteriis Numerorum. Bungo treats of the mystical properties of each of the numbers in order, at great length. And such speculations have influenced astronomical theories. In the first edition of the Alphonsine Tables," the precession was represented by making the first point of Aries move, in a period of 7000 years, through a circle of which the radius was 18 degrees, while the circle moved round the ecliptic in 49,000 years; and these numbers, 7000 and 49,000, were chosen probably by Jewish calculators, or with reference to Jewish Sabbatarian notions. 3. Astrology. Of all the forms which mysticism assumed, none was cultivated more assiduously than astrology. Although this art prevailed most universally and powerfully during the stationary period, its existence, even as a detailed technical system, goes back to a very early age. It probably had its origin in the East; it is universally ascribed to the Babylonians and Chaldeans; the name Chaldean was, at Rome, synonymous with mathematicus, or astrologer; and we read repeatedly that this class of persons were expelled from Italy 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 14 18 Montucla, i. 511. 14 Tacit. Ann. ii. 32. xii. 52. Hist. I. 22, II. 62. |