(14.) Among the adherents and teachers of Neo-Pla- tonism in the early part of the 5th century was the cel- ebrated female philosopher Hypatia, whose life, genius, learning, beauty, accomplishments, and untimely fate have been made, by a writer of distinction recently de- ceased, the groundwork of an imeresting and vivid pict- ure of the social condition, the iiliiloso]ihical conflicts, and the religious animosities of that age (Ih'patia, or Old Foes icith a New Face, by Charles Kiiig>l( y, Limd. 1872, cr. 8vo). She Avas the daughter of Theim, and by him was taught philosophy and matlieniatics. Her learning and eloquence were such as to entitle her to the honor of presiding over the Neo-Platonic school at Alexandria, where she lectured to large audiences. Hav- ing incurred the enmity of some ignorant bigots among the Christian populace of that city, she was one day seized in the street, dragged from her carriage into one of the churches, and most cruelly murdered by a mob of fanatics headed by one Peter, a reader of one of the churches. Her tragic death made her a martyr among the pagans, while the spirit and conduct of her murder- ers merit the execration of Christians, whose princiijles were thereby grossly violated.
(15.) Boethius, the author of the Consolation, a work which was the most influential medium for the trans- mission of (Jreek philosophy to the West during the early part of the Middle Ages, was one of the last Neo- Platonists of antiquity. Other less conspicuous names follow in the history of the school, whose doctrines con- tinued to be taught publicly until, in the year A.D. 529,
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the emperor Justinian by an edict forbade the teaching of [ihilosophy at Athens, and confiscated the property of J lie Platonic school. In consequence of this edict, Damascius, Siraplicius, and other teachers of the hea- then pliilosophy, fled to the protection of Chosroes, king of I'ersia; but, disappointed in their hopes of gaining new life and honors for their philosophy, they were glad to avail themsches of the terms of peace between tlie Persians and tiic lioinans to return to tiieir country again in A.U. i>'.y.i. Thus ended as an organi/.ed system of doctrines tliis type of Hellenic philosophy, which a recent autlior regards "as a progressive evolution out of the combined action of Platonism, Judaism, and mys- ticism before tlie Christian aira, completed by the adili- tional forces of Christianity and Aristotelianism in the 1st and 2d centuries of the Christian a;ra, and thus the result of seven centuries of growth and conflict in hu- man thought" (.1 merican Cyclopedia).
11. Resume of General Principles. — 1. Viewed from the stand-point of doctrine regarding the number of tir,-<t iirinciples, Neo-Platoiiism was a monism, as it traced all things back ultimately to the Absolute One, but its concef)tioiis of the Ueity as manifested were not mono- theistic in the Jewish and Cliristian sense, but panthe- istic. It rejected the Biblical idea of an objectire rere- liition of man's relations to God, and of the means by which man could attain to a saving knowledge of him, and claimed to unite man with the Deity by a subjec- tive intuition, called the ecstisy, wherein the subject, man's soul, and the object, the Absolute, or God, are so intimately united as to lose their separate identity. This unilication with tiod is attainable by asceticism and ijrofound contemplation, and, according to some later Neo-Platonists, by theurgic and magic rites. This conception of a mystic blending, so to speak, of the hu- man with the divine gave to Neo-Platonism its peculiar character, in contrast with the purely Grecian systems of pliilosophy.
'2. Closely connected with this theory of the ecstasj' stands the doctrine of the three cosmical principles, the Neo-Platonic trinity. To the two hitherto admitted ones, viz. the reason and the soul, they added a third one, as the ultimate uiiiter of all distinctions, the primal One. This One is inexpressible and inconceivable. All things are derived from it not by division, which would diminish it, but by a radiation or flowing forth, as rays of light from the sun. This conception of the iirst as proihicer, in relation to the second, gives a basis for their doctrine of emanations.
3. The Neo-Platonic doctrine of emanations repre- sents the world as outflowing from God in such a man- ner that each remoter emanation is possessed of a lower degree of perfection than its principle. Fire gives forth heat, snow causes coldness, odorous substances exhale odors, and every organism, so soon as it has reached its full development, begets something like itself. So the perfect and eternal One, in the overflow of his perfec- tions, allows to proceed from liimself (Imt without him- self being weakened or diminished thereby) that which is also ever-endiiring and, next to himself, the best, viz. the Reason or World-Intelligence, his own immediate reflection and image. The Iteason is, next to the pri- mal One, the most perfect, and contains in itself the world of ideas.
As the Hcason emanates from the jirimal One, so the World-Soul flows forth from the Reason as its image, and in turn gives rise to sensible matter, the last and lowest of the emanations. In this way is tlie ^\'orld- Soul the plastic artist of the visible universe, which closes the series of emanations. The aim of the ema- nation theory is attained in a continuous process from God to the sensible world. Individual souls, like the World-Soul, partake of the life of the Reason and of the Sensible, just as a sun-ray tonciies alike liie sun and the earth. From the world of reason, their orig- inal and i)roper liome, they have descended, each in its allotted time, not voluntarily, but following an inherent