3. Porphyry and Iamblichus

Porphyry and Iamblichus, who have already been mentioned as the biographers of Pythagoras (Vol. I. p. 197), are distinguished followers of Plotinus. The first, a Syrian, died in 304: the latter, likewise of Syria, in the year 333. Amongst other works by Porphyrius, we possess an “Introduction to the Organon of Aristotle on Genera, Species, and Judgments,” in which his logic is propounded in its principal elements. This work is one which has at all times been the text-book of Aristotelian Logic, and also an authority from which the knowledge of its form has been derived; and our ordinary books of logic contain little more than what is found in this Introduction. The fact that Porphyry devoted himself to logic shows that a determinate form of thought was coming into favour with the Neo-Platonists; but this is something pertaining altogether to the understanding and very formal. Thus we here have the characteristic fact that with the Neo-Platonists the logic of the understanding, the quite empiric treatment of the sciences, is found in conjunction with the entirely speculative Idea, and in respect of practical life with a belief in theurgy, the marvellous and strange: in his life of Plotinus, Porphyry, indeed, describes him a miracle-worker, which statement we, however, must set aside as appertaining to literature.

Iamblichus evinces more mistiness and confusion still; he certainly was a teacher highly esteemed in his time, so that he even received the name of divine instructor; but his philosophic writings form a compilation without much specially to characterize them, and his biography of Pythagoras does not do much credit to his understanding. It was likewise in the Pythagorean philosophy that the Neo-Platonists gloried, and more particularly they revived the form of number-determination which pertains to it. In Iamblichus thought sinks into imagination, the intellectual universe to a kingdom of demons and angels with a classification of the same, and speculation comes down to the methods of magic. The Neo-Platonists called this theurgy (θεουργία); for in the miracle speculation, the divine Idea, is, so to speak, brought into immediate contact with actuality, and not set forth in a universal way. As to the work De mysteriis Ægyptiorum, it is not known for certain whether it had Iamblichus as its author or not; later on Proclus makes great ado concerning him, and testifies that he was indebted to Iamblichus for his main ideas.