THE MEDI/EVAL MINI) 63 



any estimate of the different streams of thought on 

 which the patristic theologians floated their Ark. For 

 the Stoic, the central reality was the human will. 

 Metaphysics and knowledge of the natural world were 

 only of import as they subserved the ends of his philo- 

 sophy to be a guide of life and conduct. Stoicism was 

 essentially a scheme of ethics, and physics this time 

 were turned from truthful observation by the pre- 

 conceptions of morals. 



The modes of thought inaugurated by Plato were 

 developed into still more super-rational heights by 

 the Neo-Platonists, whose philosophy was the last 

 product of late paganism. From the Egyptian 

 Plotinus (d. 270 A.D.) to Porphyry (d. 300) and lam- 

 blicus, philosophy became less and less physical and 

 experimental, and more and more concerned with 

 super-rational ideas. In Plotinus, the highest good 

 was the super-rational contemplation of the Absolute. 

 Plotinus lived in a pure region of " metaphysics 

 warmed with occasional ecstasy." In Porphyry, who 

 had a rational side, and still more in lamblicus, these 

 views were brought down to practical life, and their 

 application led to growing credulity in magic and 

 sorcery. The soul needs the aid of god, angel, 

 daemon ; the divine is essentially miraculous, and magic 

 is the path to the divine. Thus Neo-Platonism 

 countenanced and absorbed every popular superstition, 

 every development of sorcery and astrology, and every 

 morbid craving for asceticism, of which a decadent 

 age was prodigal. The life of lamblicus, as told by 

 a Neo-Platonic biographer, is as full of miracle as 

 Athanasius' contemporary life of St Anthony. 



This philosophic atmosphere was mixed with currents 



