s,
Isidorus, Hegias, Damascius, are not regarded as prominent. Damascius
was the last head of the school at Athens. He, Simplicius, the masterly
commentator on Aristotle, and five other Neoplatonists, migrated to
Persia after Justinian had issued the edict closing the school. They
lived in the illusion that Persia, the land of the East, was the seat of
wisdom, righteousness and piety. After a few years they returned with
blasted hopes to the Byzantine kingdom.

At the beginning of the sixth century Neoplatonism died out as an
independent philosophy in the East; but almost at the same time, and
this is no accident, it conquered new regions in the dogmatic of the
Church through the spread of the writings of the pseudo-Dionysius; it
began to fertilize Christian mysticism, and filled the worship with a
new charm.

In the West, where, from the second century, we meet with few attempts
at philosophic speculation, and where the necessary conditions for
mystical contemplation were wanting, Neoplatonism only gained a few
adherents here and there. We know that the rhetorician, Marius
Victorinus, (about 350) translated the writings of Plotinus. This
translation exercised decisive influence on the mental history of
Augustine, who borrowed from Neoplatonism the best it had, its
psychology, introduced it into the dogmatic of the Church, and developed
it still further. It may be said that Neoplatonism influenced the West
at first only through the medium or under the cloak of ecclesiastical
theology. Even Boethius--we can now regard this as certain--was a
Catholic Christian. But in his mode of thought he was certainly a
Neoplatonist. His violent death in the year 525, marks the end of
independent philosophic effort in the West. This last Roman philosopher
stood indeed almost completely alone in his century, and the philosophy
for which he lived was neither original, nor firmly grounded and
methodically carried out.

_Neoplatonism and Ecclesiastical Dogmatic._

The question as to the influence which Neoplatonism had on the history
of the development of Christianity, is not easy to answer; it is hardly
possible to get a clear view of the relation between them. Above all,
the answers will diverge according as we take a wider or a narrower view
of so-called "Neoplatonism." If we view Neoplatonism as the highest and
only appropriate expression for the religious hopes and moods which
moved the nations of Graeco-Roman Empire from the s