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Updated: May 4, 2025
To this philosophy, or rather to this theory of life, Cicero was altogether opposed. He studied in all the schools among the Platonists, the Stoics, even with the Epicureans enough to know their dogmas so that he might criticise them proclaiming himself to belong to the new Academy, or younger school of Platonists, but in truth drawing no system of morals or rule of life from any of them.
In these words, which recall Plato's famous myth of the Cave, St. Paul is fundamentally at one with the Platonists; and it may well be that it is by this path that our contemporaries may recover that belief in eternal life which is at present burning very dimly among us. In conclusion, what has the religion of the Greeks to teach us that we are most in danger of forgetting?
Paul, still less Jesus Christ, but Plato, who in the Laws sketches out with wonderful prescience the conditions for such a polity, and the form which it would be compelled to take. Even in speculative thought we know that Augustine owed much to the Platonists, the Schoolmen to Aristotle, the mystics to the pupil of Proclus whom they called Dionysius.
"The word mystic," to quote Walter Pater, "has been derived from a Greek word which signifies to shut, as if one shut one's lips, brooding on what cannot be uttered; but the Platonists themselves derive it rather from the act of shutting the eyes, that one may see the more, inwardly." Of such is the counsel of St.
Not, of course, that Horsley approved of the attempts made at the close of the second century to meet the Platonists half-way by professing that the leading doctrines of the Gospel were contained in Plato's writings.
These are the true reasons, not only for the rapid spread of Christianity in Europe, but also for the philosophic systems of the Platonists and Alexandrines which preceded it.
His very deficiencies were all in his favour. Had he been a man of a more poetical temperament he might have been tempted, like Platonists and neo-Platonists, to soar into the heights of metaphysical speculations and either lose himself or at least render it difficult for ordinary readers to follow him. But no one can ever complain that Dr. Waterland is obscure.
You are free then to appreciate the more enduring portions of his work, to understand Santayana when he says of the Platonists, "their theories are so extravagant, yet their wisdom seems so great. Platonism is a very refined and beautiful expression of our natural instincts, it embodies conscience and utters our inmost hopes."
Augustine was sent to school at Madaura, and next to study at Carthage. His mother, Monica, early became an ardent Christian, and her saintly influence guided the youth towards the light; but entanglement in philosophic doubts constrained him to associate with the Manichæans, and then with the Platonists. His mental struggles lasted eleven years.
The most profound utterances of poets on this subject, however, show them to be, not rationalists, but thoroughgoing Platonists. The feeling in which they trust is a Platonic intuition which includes the reason, but exists above it. At least this is the view of Shelley, and Shelley has, more largely than any other man, moulded the beliefs of later English poets.
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