It has been doubted whether Neo-Platonism ought to be included in Greek philosophy at all, and Erdmann, in his "History of Philosophy," places it in the medieval division. For, firstly, an interval of no less than five centuries separates the foundation of Neo-Platonism from the foundation of the preceding Greek schools, the Stoic, the Epicurean, and the Sceptic. How long a period this is will be seen if we remember that the entire development of Greek thought from Thales to the Sceptics occupied only about three centuries. Plotinus, the real founder of Neo-Platonism, was born in 205 A.D., so that it is, as far as historical time is concerned, a product of the Christian era. Secondly, its character is largely un-Greek and un-European. The Greek elements are largely swamped by oriental mysticism. Its seat was not in Greece, but at Alexandria, which was not a Greek, but a cosmopolitan, city. Men of all races met here, and, in particular, it was here that East and West joined hands, and the fusion of thought which resulted was Neo-Platonism. But, on the other hand, it seems wrong to include the thought of Plotinus and his successors in medieval philosophy. The whole character of what is usually called medieval philosophy was determined by its growth upon a distinctively Christian soil. It was {369} Christian philosophy. It was the product of the new era which Christianity had substituted for paganism. Neo-Platonism, on the other hand, is not only unchristian, but even anti-christian. The only Christian influence to be detected in it is that of opposition. It is a survival of the pagan spirit in Christian times. In it the old pagan spirit struggles desperately against its younger antagonist, and finally succumbs. In it we see the last gasp and final expiry of the ancient culture of the Greeks. So far as it is not Asiatic in its elements, it draws its inspiration wholly from the philosophies of the past, from the thought and culture of Greece. On the whole, therefore, it is properly classified as the last school of Greek philosophy.