Proclus was a theologian like Jamblichus, excepting that he tried to put theology upon a philosophical basis. By means of the dialectic he sought to systematize the entire philosophical thought of the Greeks. His insatiable desire for faith was accompanied by wonderful dialectical ability, with the result that his teaching was an intricate formalism united with mythology. He carried out his dialectical plans to the minutest detail. He drew the materials of his system from both barbarians and Greeks, and he himself had been initiated into all the Mysteries. Every superstition of the past and present influenced him, and in framing a universal system he did not feel satisfied until every transmitted doctrine had found a place in that system. He was the systematizer of paganism and its scholastic. He conceived that the fundamental problem was that of the One and the Many, and that the One is related to the Many in three stages,――permanence, going-forth, and return. The Many as a manifold effect is similar to the unity of the original cause and yet different from it. Development is the striving of the effect to return to the original cause, and this strife for a return to God was illustrated by Proclus in every realm of life, and he repeated it again and again in application to every detail. He conceived that the development of the world from the Godhead was continually going through this triad system of change. His philosophy, however, shows no originality other than being an ingenious formal classification in which every polytheism found a place. CHAPTER XIV PATRISTICS.――THE HELLENIZING OF THE GOSPEL