212 PHYSICAL SCIENCE IX THE MIDDLE AGES. 



tendencies of thought which accompanied the retrogradation of induc- 

 tive science. And of these, the leading feature which demands our 

 notice is that already alluded to ; namely, the practice of referring 

 things and events, not to clear and distinct relations, obviously appli- 

 cable to such cases ; not to general rules capable of direct verifica- 

 tion ; but to notions vague, distant, and vast, which we cannot bring 

 into contact with facts, because they belong to a different region from 

 the facts ; as when we connect natural events with moral or historical 

 causes, or seek spiritual meanings in the properties of number and 

 figure. Thus the character of Mysticism is, that it refers particulars, 

 not to generalizations homogeneous and immediate, but to such as are 

 heterogeneous and remote ; to which we must add, that the process of 

 this reference is not a calm act of the intellect, but is accompanied 

 with a glow of enthusiastic feeling. 



1. Neoplatonic Theosophy. The Newer Platonism is the first ex- 

 ample of this Mystical Philosophy which I shall consider. The main 

 points which here require our notice are, the doctrine of an Intel- 

 lectual World resulting from the act of the Divine Mind, as the only 

 reality ; and the aspiration after the union of the human soul with 

 this Divine Mind, as the object of human existence. The " Ideas" of 

 Plato were Forms of our knowledge ; but among the Neoplatonists 

 they became really existing, indeed the only really existing, Objects; 

 and the inaccessible scheme of the universe which these ideas consti- 

 tute, was offered as the great subject of philosophical contemplation. 

 The desire of the human mind to approach towards its Creator and 

 Preserver, and to obtain a spiritual access to Him, leads to an employ- 

 ment of the thoughts which is well worth the notice of the religious 

 philosopher ; but such an effort, even when founded on revelation and 

 well regulated, is not a means of advance in physics ; and when it is 

 the mere result of natural enthusiasm, it may easily obtain such a 

 place in men's minds as to unfit them for the successful prosecution of 

 natural philosophy. The temper, therefore, which introduces such 

 supernatural communion into the general course of its speculations, 

 may be properly treated as mystical, and as one of the causes of the 

 decline of science in the Stationary Period. The Neoplatonic philoso- 

 phy requires our notice as one of the most remarkable forms of this 

 Mysticism. 



Though Ammonius Saccas, who flourished at the end of the second 

 century, is looked upon as the beginner of the Neoplatonists, his disci- 

 ple Plotinus is, in reality, the great founder of the school, both by his 



