[Sidenote: Neo-Platonism.]
[Sidenote: Resultant of Contact between East and West.]
If I have given more space to the great Alexandrian Jew than my narrow
limits ought to afford, it is because I think I may thus avoid the
necessity of saying much about the philosophic schemes of the
Neo-Platonists, the phantasies of the Gnostics, or the occasionally
daring speculations of the Christian Fathers. For whether the works of
Philo were much studied by the Greeks or not, they certainly described
the spiritual resultant--so to speak--emerging from the mutual impact of
Western and Oriental, especially Jewish, ideas. Which resultant was "in
the air" from the first century of the Christian age; and the later
epistles ascribed to St. Paul, as well as the Fourth Gospel, show clear
traces of it.[14]
[Sidenote: Its Religious Inspiration.]
[Sidenote: Suggestive of Pantheism, but not such in Spinoza's Sense.]
But the inspiration of the time-spirit was not confined to the Christian
Church. For the city of Alexandria, where that spirit seems to have been
peculiarly potent as shown in the transfigured Judaism of Philo, was the
birthplace of the Neo-Platonic school already mentioned above. And among
its greatest members, such as Plotinus, Porphyry, Proclus, the religious
influence of the East was distinctly apparent. True, they followed
Socrates and Plato in reverence for knowledge as the unfailing begetter
of virtue.
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