Carlyle has it, "the
bottomless pit got roofed over," as it may be again ere long.
Are we then to say, that Neoplatonism was a failure? That Alexandria,
during four centuries of profound and earnest thought, added nothing?
Heaven forbid that we should say so of a philosophy which has exercised
on European thought, at the crisis of its noblest life and action, an
influence as great as did the Aristotelian system during the Middle
Ages. We must never forget, that during the two centuries which
commence with the fall of Constantinople, and end with our civil wars,
not merely almost all great thinkers, but courtiers, statesmen,
warriors, poets, were more or less Neoplatonists. The Greek
grammarians, who migrated into Italy, brought with them the works of
Plotinus, Iamblichus, and Proclus; and their gorgeous reveries were
welcomed eagerly by the European mind, just revelling in the free
thought of youthful manhood. And yet the Alexandrian impotence for any
practical and social purposes was to be manifested, as utterly as it was
in Alexandria or in Athens of old. Ficinus and Picus of Mirandola
worked no deliverance, either for Italian morals or polity, at a time
when such deliverance was needed bitterly enough.
Pages:
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139