* * * * * The mental evolution of Roman society was complete when Neo-Platonism took upon itself the office of directing minds. The powerful mysticism of Plotinus (205–262 A. D.) opened up the path which Greek philosophy was to follow until the world of antiquity reached its end. We shall not undertake to notice in this place the discrepancies of the latest teachers who theorised about the destiny of souls. In the course of these lectures we shall have occasion to quote some of the opinions of Porphyry, the chief disciple of Plotinus, and of his successor Jamblichus, who was, like himself, a Syrian. We will here do no more than indicate broadly what distinguished the theories of this school from those which had hitherto been dominant. The system generally accepted, by the mysteries as by philosophy, was a pantheism according to which divine energy was immanent in the universe and had its home in the celestial spheres. The souls, conceived as material, could in consequence rise to the stars but did not leave the world. The Neo-Pythagoreans themselves had not had a very firmly established doctrine on this point: while some of them stated that reason was incorporeal, others, as we have seen (p. 24), admitted with the Stoics that it was an igneous substance. It is true that even in paganism the appearance can be discerned of the belief in a Most High (Ὕψιστος) or an unknown god Ἄγνωστος, whom some people supposed to dwell above the starry heavens, beyond the limits of the world, and towards whom pious spirits could rise. The revivers of Platonic idealism asserted the transcendence of God and the spirituality of the soul more strongly and clearly. A whole chapter of the _Enneades_ of Plotinus is taken up with refuting those who held the soul to be material.[96] As a principle of life and movement, it is stated to be immortal by its very essence, so that if it kept its purity perfect, it would find after its passage here below eternal felicity in the intelligible world. The Neo-Platonists preserved the idea, which had previously been admitted, that this intellectual essence comes down to earth through the planetary spheres and the atmosphere, and that as it sinks in the luminous ether and the damp air, it becomes laden with particles of the elements through which it passes. It surrounds itself with a garment or, as it is sometimes called, with a vehicle (ὄχημα) which thickens as it gradually draws near us.[97] This subtle body, the seat of the passions and of feeling, is intermediary between the spiritual principle which has issued from God and the flesh in which it is to enclose itself, and for certain philosophers it survives death and accompanies the soul to the Beyond, at least if the soul, not being free from earthly admixture, cannot wholly leave the world of sense, and therefore rises only to the planetary circle or to that of the fixed stars.