of oriental mysticism.

Philo taught that God, as the absolutely infinite, must be elevated
completely above all that is finite. No name, no thought, can
correspond to the infinity of God. He is the unthinkable and the
ineffable, and His nature is beyond the reach of reason. The human
soul reaches up to God, not through thought, but by means of a
mystical inner illumination and revelation that transcends thought.
God cannot act directly upon the world, for this would involve His
defilement by matter and the limitation of His infinity. There are
therefore intermediate spiritual beings, who, as the ministers of God,
created and control the world. All these intermediaries are included
in the Logos, which is the rational thought which governs the world.
The relation of God to the Logos, and of the Logos to the world, is
one of progressive emanation. Clearly the idea of emanation is a mere
metaphor which explains nothing, and this becomes more evident when
Philo compares the emanations to rays of light issuing from an
effulgent centre and growing less and less bright as they radiate
outwards. When we hear this, we know in what direction we are moving.
This has the characteristic ring of Asiatic pseudo-philosophy. It
reminds us forcibly of the Upanishads. We are passing out of the realm
of thought, reason, and philosophy, into the dream-and-shadow-land of
oriental mysticism, where the heavy scents of beautiful poison flowers
drug the intellect and obliterate thought in a blissful and languorous
repose.

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CHAPTER XIX

THE NEO-PLATONISTS

The word Neo-Platonism is a misnomer. It does not stand for a genuine
revival of Platonism. The Neo-Platonists were no doubt the offspring
of Plato, but they were the illegitimate offspring. The true greatness
of Plato lay in his rationalistic idealism; his defects were mostly
connected with his tendency to myth and mysticism. The Neo-Platonists
hailed his defects as the true and inner secret of his doctrine,
developed them out of all recognition, and combined them with the hazy
dream-philosophies of the East. The reputed founder was Ammonius
Saccas, but we may pass him over and come at once to his disciple
Plotinus, who was the first to develop Neo-Platonism into a system,
was the greatest of all its exponents, and may be regarded as its real
founder. He was born in 205 A.D. at Lycopolis in Egypt, went to Rome
in 245, founded his School there, and remained at the head of it