Note 672 — Chapter VI

Footnote 672:

(return)

The fact that Clement appeals in support of the Gnosis to an esoteric tradition (Strom. VI. 7. 61: VI. 8. 68: VII. 10. 55) proves how much this writer, belonging as he did to a sceptical age, underestimated the efficacy of all human thought in determining the ultimate truth of things. The existence of sacred writings containing all truth was not even enough for him; the content of these writings had also to be guaranteed by divine communication. But no doubt the ultimate cause of this, as of all similar cases of scepticism, was the dim perception that ethics and religion do not at all come within the sphere of the intellectual, and that the intellect can produce nothing of religious value. As, however, in consequence of philosophical tradition, neither Philo, nor the Gnostics, nor Clement, nor the Neoplatonists were able to shake themselves free from the intellectual scheme, those things which—as they instinctively felt, but did not recognise—could really not be ascertained by knowledge at all received from them the name of suprarational and were traced to divine revelation. We may say that the extinction or pernicious extravagancies to which Greek philosophy was subjected in Neoplatonism, and the absurdities into which the Christian dogmatic was led, arose from the fact that the tradition of placing the ethical and religious feelings and the development of character within the sphere of knowledge, as had been the case for nearly a thousand years, could not be got rid of, though the incongruity was no doubt felt. Contempt for empiricism, scepticism, the extravagancies of religious metaphysics which finally become mythology, have their origin here. Knowledge still continues to be viewed as the highest possession; it is, however, no longer knowledge, but character and feeling; and it must be nourished by the fancy in order to be able to assert itself as knowledge.