Note 455 — APPENDIX III.

Footnote 455:

(return)

Excellent remarks on the nature of Neoplatonism may be found in Eucken, Gött. Gel. Anz., 1 März, 1884 p. 176 ff.: this sketch was already written before I saw them. "We find the characteristic of the Neoplatonic epoch in the effort to make the inward, which till then had had alongside of it an independent outer world as a contrast, the exclusive and all-determining element. The movement which makes itself felt here, outlasts antiquity and prepares the way for the modern period; it brings about the dissolution of that which marked the culminating point of ancient life, that which we are wont to call specifically classic. The life of the spirit, till then conceived as a member of an ordered world and subject to its laws, now freely passes beyond these bounds, and attempts to mould, and even to create, the universe from itself. No doubt the different attempts to realise this desire reveal, for the most part, a deep gulf between will and deed; usually ethical and religious requirements of the naive human consciousness must replace universally creative spiritual power, but all the insufficient and unsatisfactory elements of this period should not obscure the fact that, in one instance, it reached the height of a great philosophic achievement, in the case of Plotinus."