doubts which he entertained with regard to the popular superstition. These doubts he set forth in a letter to the Egyptian prophet Anebos, in a series of questions. The distrust there expressed respecting the popular no- tions of the gods, divinations, incantations, and other theurgic arts, may have been, as Ritter believes (Gesch. der Philosophie, i v, 678), the modified opinion of his later years, provoked, perhaps, by the progress of that super- stition to which at an earlier period he had been less opposed. The observation of Augustine is, doubtless, in the main correct: " Ut videas eum inter vitium sacri- lege curiositatis et philosophise professionem rluctuasse, et nunc hanc artem tamquam fallacem, et in ipsa actione periculosam, et legibus prohibitara, cavendam monere, nunc autem velut ejus laudatoribus cedentem, utilem di- cere esse mundanae parti animae, non quidem intellec- tuali qua rerum intelligibilium percipiatur Veritas, nul- las habendum similitudines corporum, sed spirituali, qua rerum corporalium capiantur imagines." The let- ter to Anebos called forth a reply, which is still extant, and known under the title Ilepi Mtiar/jpiW, and is the production probably of Iamblichus (q. v.).
So many are the variations of Porphyry in his philo- sophic views from those of Plotinus, that Porphyry must really be assigned to a class of his own rather than called an exponent of Plotinus. Not only did Porphyry popu- larize the Neo-Platonism of Plotinus, but he distin- guished it by the more practical and religious charac- ter which he gave to the system. Understanding the power of the Christian religion, which was fast super- seding the national creeds, he felt the necessity for an- tagonizing it. He therefore undertook to spiritualize the old creeds, and to harmonize them with philosophy by treating them as symbolic. He perceived the national craving for a theology (Farrar, p. 57) which rested on some divine authority, or revelation from the world in- visible (comp. Augustine's criticism on him in De Civ. Dei, x, c. 9, 11, 26, 28) ; and hence he drew such a system from the real or pretended answers of oracles in his Tttpi Trie t/c XoyiW <pi\oao<plac, of which fragments exist in Eusebius and Augustine (Fabricius, Bibl. Gr. v, 744). Heathens, it would seem, had consulted oracles on this very subject of Christianity; and it is these, the genuineness of which may be doubted, that he uses.
The end of philosophizing, according to Porphyry, is the salvation of the soul (>'/ tFjc faxfe cnort}pia). The cause of evil is to be found in the soul, in its desires after the low and base, and not in the body as such (A d Marc. 29). The means of deliverance from evil are self-puri- fication (icaSapGie) through asceticism and the philo- sophical cognition of God. To divination and theurgical initiations Porphyry conceded only a subordinate signif- icance ; in his later years, especially, he was instant in warning his followers against their misuse (see, in par- ticular, his epistle to Anebos, the Egyptian priest). He acknowledged one absolute, supreme Deity, who is to be worshipped with pure words and thoughts (Ad Marc. 18). He also, however, distinguished two classes of visible and invisible gods, the former being composed of body and soul, and consequently neither eternal nor immutable (De Abst. ii, 34, 36, 37-39). He also distin- guished between good and evil daemons, and held that the latter ought to be appeased, but that it should be the object of the philosopher to free himself as much as possible from everything placed under the power of evil daemons. For that reason, among others, he rejected all animal sacrifices (De Abst. ii, 38, 39, 43). The ascetic tendency of his philosophy, as connected with his ex- alted ideas of the power of reason, which is superior to nature and the influence of daemons, conduced to raise him above the superstitious tendencies of his age ; the spirit of the philosopher being, in his view, superior to all impressions from without. The object of the philos- opher should be to free himself as much as possible from all desires of or dependence on that which is ex- ternal, such appetites being the most hateful tyrants, from which we should be glad to be set free, even with
PORPHYRY
422
PORPHYRY
thelossof the whole body (Ad Marc 34). We should. therefore, restrain out Bensual desires as much as possi- ble It was mainly in this point of view that he reject- eel all enjoyment of animal food (see Bernays, Theosoph, Schr. iiber Frommigkeit, mil hit. u. erkU Bemerh. zu Porpk. Schr, iiber Enthaltsanikeit. p. 4-38). Though bad genii hare some power over us, yet through absti- nence and the steady resistance of all disturbing influ- enci - we can pursue the good in spite of them. If we could abstain from vegetable as well as animal thought we should become still more like the gods i Di Abst.il\,27). It is by means of reason only thai we are exalted to the supreme God, to whom nothing material should be offered, for everything material is unclean (De Abst i, 39, .".7: ii, 34; Ad Mure 15). He distin- guishes lour degrees of virtues, the lowest being politi- cal virtue, the virtue ofa good man who moderates his
much that to a casual observer the two streams of thought and speculation Beemed likely to unite and How on in a single channel. Like Christianity, l'la- tonism opened a spiritual world superior to thai of sense, and revealed a Supreme Being, if not absolutely free, yet capable of giving Bhape to the visible as the art Ion. t of the universe. It awakened also in man the consciousness of the supernatural, the divine, so that man was attracted towards tin supreme spiritual exist- ence, was permitted to have cognition of fellowship with it : not absorbed on the one hand in the depths of the infinite spirit, nor sunk on the other into the mate- rial. The one radical point of separation between the philosophy of the schools and that of the < Ihurch a « med to be the views of matter entertained by the former — that it was eternal, and the seat of evil in opposition to God. lint even this view was softened as tin- system