They concealed nothing moral from their
disciples: only they forbade them to meddle with intellectual matters,
before they had had a regular intellectual training. The witnesses of
reason and conscience were sufficient guides for all men, and at them
the many might well stop short. The teacher only needed to proceed
further, not into a higher region, but into a lower one, namely, into
the region of the logical understanding, and there make deductions from,
and illustrations of, those higher truths which he held in common with
every slave, and held on the same ground as they.
And the consequence of this method of philosophising was patent. They
were enabled to produce, in the lives of millions, generation after
generation, a more immense moral improvement than the world had ever
seen before. Their disciples did actually become righteous and good
men, just in proportion as they were true to the lessons they learnt.
They did, for centuries, work a distinct and palpable deliverance on the
earth; while all the solemn and earnest meditation of the Neoplatonists,
however good or true, worked no deliverance whatsoever. Plotinus longed
at one time to make a practical attempt. He asked the Emperor
Gallienus, his patron, to rebuild for him a city in Campania; to allow
him to call it Platonopolis, and put it into the hands of him and his
disciples, that they might there realise Plato's ideal republic.
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