288 



GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 



Potamo. 



Ammonius 

 Saccas. 



monly called Eclectic? and also, perhaps, with more propriety, by 

 reason of its fundamental principles, Neo- Platonic. Though experience 

 soon showed the difficulty of forming a consistent whole from materials 

 often discordant ; and though it naturally followed, that the diversity 

 of tastes and feelings which had occasioned an original difference of 

 views and schemes, would operate to prevent an universal acquiescence 

 in the propriety of subsequent rejection, or selection ; still this strange 

 system, conversant with themes which exalt the mind beyond " this 

 dim spot which men call earth," attractive, too, by its pantheistic r>ature 

 no less than by its spiritual ecstacies and theurgic pretensions, exerted 

 extraordinary influence on the course of philosophic opinions. 



Although the habit of uniting parts of different philosophical sys- 

 tems may be traced to much earlier times, and is particularly ob- 

 servable in the writings of Plutarch, Galen, and the learned of a later 

 period, the first who instituted the Eclectic sect, at least the first who 

 systematically introduced it into the Alexandrian school, is said to 

 have been Potamo, who appears to have flourished at the close of the 

 second century. 2 His works, one of which was a ' Commentary on 

 the Timasus of Plato,' and another, a treatise entitled * Elementary 

 Science,' are lost ; and the very meagre account of Diogenes Laertius 

 is wholly insufficient to enable us to judge of his method of reasoning, 3 

 which probably was not attended with distinguished success, but it 

 appears not from it that he made Platonism the basis of his new 

 scheme. 



The first philosopher of importance who attempted a regular com- 

 bination of the various elements of the different schools, especially the 

 Platonic, was Ammonius, surnamed Saccas, who lived about the com- 

 mencement of the third century. According to Porphyry, he passed 

 from Christianity, in which he had been educated, to paganism: 

 according to Eusebius he was converted from paganism to Christianity. 

 The contradiction may perhaps be correctly solved by supposing that 



andria, on the contrary, plunges deeply into mystic theology : it is a syncretism of 

 philosophical and religious opinions. The School of Athens, he thinks, holds a 

 middle course, adopting faith as a sort of medium between direct revelation and 

 reason, and preferring to reascend to the sources of Greek wisdom : Orpheus is its 

 hero. Hist. Comp. des Syst. Phil. torn. iii. p. 477, note m. 



1 Almost the only sect with which the Alexandrian school could not coalesce, was 

 the Epicurean, which was fundamentally different from the Platonic. It shrank 

 from the contact of a scheme of morals which would degrade and deaden the feelings 

 it was its aim to infuse, as well as from a system in which man is but 



" the abandon'd orphan of blind chance 



Dropp'd by wild atoms in disorder'd dance." 



2 Suidas places Potamo in the age of Augustus. But Diogenes Laertius, who 

 wrote in the beginning of the third century, says that Potamo founded the Eclectic 

 sect, irpl) 6\iyov, " a little before." Degerando thinks it probable that the Potamo 

 mentioned by Porphyry is a different person. Hist. Comp. des Syst. Phil. torn. iii. 

 p. 151. 



3 See, however, Diderot, (Euvres, torn. ii. pt. i. p. 402. See also Glaechner, 

 Dissert, de Potamon. Alexandrini Philosophia. Leips. 1745, in 4to. 



