United States or Gabon ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It would have been interesting to have known Porphyry's grounds for this not improbable opinion, as well as his general charges against the Christians; and if there is anything in the tradition of the survival of a copy of Porphyry in one of the libraries of Florence, the testimony of the distinguished Platonist may yet enlighten us on the causes of the growing darkness of the age in which he lived.
Satiric or hybrid growths, things due to hybris,+ insolence, insult, all that those fabled satyrs embodied the volcanic South is kindly prolific of this, and Bruno abounded in mockeries: it was by way of protest. So much of a Platonist, for Plato's genial humour he had nevertheless substituted the harsh laughter of Aristophanes.
I have felt ever since that the title of Platonist belongs by far better right to those who have been nourished in and have endeavoured to practise Plato's mode of investigation, than to those who are distinguished only by the adoption of certain dogmatical conclusions, drawn mostly from the least intelligible of his works, and which the character of his mind and writings makes it uncertain whether he himself regarded as anything more than poetic fancies, or philosophic conjectures.
Dion was an orator, who had been professor of rhetoric, but he had given up that study for philosophy. His orations, or declamations, gained for him the name of Chrysostom, or golden-mouthed. Euphrates, his friend, was a platonist, who afterwards married the daughter of the prefect of Syria, and removed to Rome.
I am no Platonist, I am nothing at all; but I would sooner be a Paulician, Manichean, Spinozist, Gentile, Pyrrhonian, Zoroastrian, than one of the seventy-two villainous sects who are tearing each other to pieces for the love of the Lord and hatred of each other. I will bring ten Mussulman, shall shame you all in good will towards men and prayer to God." On a similar outburst in verse, the Rev.
Ardent persuasion and deep feeling enkindle words, so that the weakest take on glory. The humblest and most despised of common phrases may be the chosen vessel for the next avatar of the spirit. It is the old problem, to be met only by the old solution of the Platonist, that Soul is form, and doth the body make.
Many were Eclectics, that is, adopted from various systems such elements as seemed to them most reasonable. For instance, Cicero was a Stoic more than anything else in his ethical theory, a New Academician in his logic, and in other respects a Platonist. But even he varied greatly at different times.
And he related to me the story of the conversion of Victorianus, the translator of those Platonist books, who was not ashamed to become the humble little child of Thy Christ, after he had for years with thundering eloquence inspired the people with the love of Anubis, the barking deity, and all the monster gods who fought against Neptune, Venus and Minerva, so that Rome now adored the deities she had formerly conquered.
If, as we both and old Bishop Clemens, too as good a Platonist as we, remember and Augustine himself, would agree, Plato in speaking those strange words, spoke not of himself, but by the Spirit of God, why should not others have spoken by the same Spirit when they spoke the same words? 'A crucified man.... Yes. But a crucified God, Raphael! I shudder at the blasphemy.
The old man, who looks like some Platonist philosopher, the beardless prince, surrounded by his noisy huntsmen and pages; and that dark-bearded youth in the Byzantine dress and shovel hat, the genuine king from the East, riding with ardent, wistful eyes, a beautiful kingly young Quixote: Sir Percival seeking the Holy Grail, or King Cophetua seeking for his beggar girl.
Word Of The Day