=The Return of the Soul to God.――The Ethical Problem of Plotinus.= In his discussion of moral conduct Plotinus started from the point opposite to that of his metaphysics. He looked from the point of view of man up the series which descended from the Godhead. Men immersed in matter have nevertheless a share in the divine life, and their goal is independence of the world. They must free themselves from sense. Man’s ethical task is to separate the two worlds and to turn away from the material, not only in its abnormalities but in every way. The practical virtues have little value in such a sublimation of the soul, for these only bind the soul more closely to the world of matter. The political virtues are only a preparation by which the soul learns how to be free from sense. The intellectual virtues are necessary, but the goal of salvation is not reached by knowledge alone. “The wizard king builds his tower of speculation by the hands of human workmen till he reaches the top story, and then he summons his genii to fashion the battlements of adamant and crown them with starry fire.” Out of the mental condition of contemplation the soul will rise on the wings of ecstasy to the God from whom it came. The call of Plotinus is to the ascetic life. The development required is that of spirituality. Ethically Plotinus’ doctrine is dualistic, because it requires the rejection of matter as evil. The return is not an evolution nor an innovation in which reform of the old world is demanded. There is no individual progress, but a penetration into the foundation of things. But what incentive has man to undertake this return? What arouses him from his sleep? Not sense-perception nor reflection, but his love for the beautiful. The innate impulse of Platonic love turns the soul away from matter to the illuminating Idea. He who has an immediate recognition of the pure Idea is gaining the higher perfection. Only when man is in ecstasy――an ecstasy which transcends every subjective state――does he get complete contact and union with God. In such a moment of consecration he forgets himself and becomes God. This final step never comes unless God himself illuminates the soul by a special light so that it can see God. This final state comes only to few souls, and to those but seldom. =The Syrian School.――The Systematizing of Polytheisms.――Jamblichus.= This school existed about a generation after the death of Plotinus. Its founder was Jamblichus (d. about 330), whose teacher was Porphyry, the pupil of Plotinus. Jamblichus was a Syrian, who got his instruction from Porphyry at Rome, and then went back to his native country to set up for himself a school of neo-Platonism. He soon became reverenced as teacher, religious reformer, and worker of miracles. He wrote commentaries on Plato, Aristotle, and the theological works of the Orphics, Chaldeans, and the Pythagoreans. Among the crowd of his enthusiastic disciples, one notes the names of the Emperor Julian and Hypatia.[43]