Note (return) — APPENDIX III.

Not as philosophy and not as a new religion did Neoplatonism become a decisive factor in history, but, if I may say so, as a frame of mind.455 The feeling that there is an eternal highest good which lies beyond all outer experience and is not even the intelligible, this feeling, with which was united the conviction of the entire worthlessness of everything earthly, was produced and fostered by Neoplatonism. But it was unable to describe the contents of that highest being and highest good, and therefore it was here compelled to give itself entirely up to fancy and aesthetic feeling. Therefore it was forced to trace out "mysterious ways to that which is within", which, however, led nowhere. It transformed thought into a dream of feeling; it immersed itself in the sea of emotions; it viewed the old fabled world of the nations as the reflection of a higher reality, and transformed reality into poetry; but in spite of all these efforts it was only able, to use the words of Augustine, to see from afar the land which it desired. It broke this world into fragments; but nothing remained to it, save a ray from a world beyond, which was only an indescribable "something."