300 PHYSICAL SCIENCE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 



is well worth the notice of the religious philoso- 

 pher; 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 super- 

 natural 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 philo- 

 sophy requires our notice as one of the most re- 

 markable 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 disciple Plo- 

 tinus is, in reality, the great founder of the school, 

 both by his works, which still remain to us, and by 

 the enthusiasm which his character and manners 

 inspired among his followers. He lived a life of 

 meditation, gentleness, and self-denial, and died in 

 the second year of the reign of Claudius (A.D. 270). 

 His disciple, Porphyry, has given us a Life of him, 

 from which we may see how well his habitual 

 manners were suited to make his doctrines im- 

 pressive. " Plotinus, the philosopher of our time," 

 Porphyry thus begins his biography, "appeared 

 like a person ashamed that he was in the body. 

 In consequence of this disposition, he could not 



