THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
ble or potential and the actual. Every change into actuality requires an actual as agent. God must be the first agent, and must be pure energy, which is absolute form or immaterial spirit, and therefore unchangeable and one. As Spirit he thinks and the object of his thought is himself, and this is his activity, in which he enjoys the supreme felicity. In relation with the world he moves all, but neither creates nor transacts, he is the good or end toward which all things strive, just as one beloved, though unmoved and at rest, always exercises an influence upon the lover. The world, uncreated, always existed and will never cease to be; and, ever gaining in form and losing in matter, it strives after perfection, toward a similarity with God, the highest form of all. The idea of deification as it occurs in the later mystics indeed did not materialize in Aristotle, but the efficacious forms in nature may be taken as the representative content of God. God is in the world with his ideas, and while elsewhere Aristotle holds firmly to the transcendence of God, here there appears an immanence. It would follow, that, alongside of an expressed theism, there exists a pantheism. Aristotle sought to illustrate the relation by that of a general who is outside of the army yet prevails within with his authoritative plans. He became the esteemed authority for scholasticism, by his doctrine of God as well as by his logic, physics, and ethics.
Neoplatonism (q.v.), starting from the idealistic tendencies of these two prototypes, far exceeded them in subtle speculation and emphasis upon the
„ __ religious. Not stopping at knowledge
platonism or mental activity as the highest aim of man with Aristotle, it pursued the example of Philo (q.v.) in the supreme union with the highest principle by means of ecstatic transport, indeed, only transiently, since the corporate soul can not wholly release itself from the earthly. In this unity which ultimately becomes continuous and eternal, man becomes deified, and a duality of the seeing and seen ceases in a complete unity caUed by Photinus, aplosis. Where the limit of intelligible thought is thus transgressed, it is doubtful if philosophy of religion can cover the ground. Certainly such doctrine issues not from speculation but inner experience; and those offshoots of superstition, such as the theurgy and magic of Jamblicus, must be excluded. But the theodicy is the most developed of all antiquity, and the prototype of that of the present. In Plotinus' argument for the divine justification, the individual must be viewed in the harmonious unity of the whole, and the worst fits into the harmony to set off the excellence of the good. He shrinks from defining the deity or unity, following Philo and the eclectic Platonists in regarding it as transcending all thought and being, of which there was to be predicated merely that it forbade all difference, multiplicity, or similarity. Here Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (see Dionysius), Scotus Erigena (q.v.), and other German mystics fixed their points of contact. The last of this school, Proclus, presents the world development from unity.
Stoicism (q.v.) was preeminently entitled to the name of religious philosophy. Although it was materialistic, both in principle and results, and
pantheistic, yet it not only presented the deity theoretically, but was richly tinged with religion, a 4 St c- fact which serves to account for its wide- ' spread popularity in the Roman world. The most distinguished save one of this school, the poet Cleanthes, proves his piety in his hymn to Zeus by praising the omnipresent, eternal reason of deity, which rules all and restores what human folly has subverted. The last representatives of the Stoic school, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius (qq.v.), display deep piety in connection with their philosophic thoughts. On the physical side, the Stoics follow the Heraclitean principle that the primal matter was fire. The active power in the whole cosmic process is deity, giving all things form and support, permeating the world as a warm breath, as reason ordering all things, and containing within itself the separate rational germ forms from which individual appearances develop. The beauty and adaptability of the whole world and its parts point to the existence of a thinking, foreseeing, creating Spirit. The universe or God is to be regarded as having a consciousness, and from this follows the conclusion that the world has conscious parts; and as the whole is more complete than any part, it must have consciousness in a real measure. If deity is absolute reason it must reign everywhere, and all that is must be logical or rational. Thus on the physical basis there was optimism; on the ethical otherwise. Chrysippos compared men to maniacs. Human life was full of errors and moral faults, and it was the most woful of all dramas. Like the later Neoplatonists, whom they anticipated in some essential elements, the Stoics had to develop a theodicy, in order to save their logical deistic principle. However, to win ordinary acceptance for their doctrine, they were wont to make application to the individual and carry it to the absurd. Moral evil, on the other hand, was a burden, imposed upon guilty man. The Stoics were fond of the antithesis that on the physical side ruled the law of necessity by the inevitable connection of cause and effect; on the ethical side, if it was a question of will and act, man should be capable of free choice. The efforts to demonstrate the transition from the possession of the Logos to the bad as well as the relation of necessity and freedom were unsuccessful. An interesting side to Stoicism is its explanation of myths, in which it is the successor of Cynicism. Anxious to make a connection with the popular mind and unable to adopt polytheism and its myths, it resorted to the allegorical method. Myths were explained as allegories of natural or moral life, and the gods as personifications of powers. This method was taken over by Jewish writers, particularly Philo, and became popular in patristic Christian Scripture interpretation. As the supernatural or supramundane did not come within the horizon of the Stoics, their physical theory was theocentric in the nature of their hylozoic heritage, and their ethics was in close adjustment with nature as a whole, as shown by their sharp ethical interest in necessity and freedom. To live in harmony with nature and reason was not infrequently a religious enthusiasm. Religious philosophy touches upon Epicureanism (q.v.) so far as this undertook to ex-