Plotinus
The Philosophy of Plotinus. By' William Ralph Inge, Dean of St. Paul's. 2 Vols. 3rd Edition. (Longmans. 218.)
THE appearance of the third, and, as thin Inge lelts, us, the final edition of his great work on Plotinus is a welcome event in literature. . The original Gifford Lectures were the outcome of some sixteen years of study, and they dealt with Neoplatonism in the spirit, explicitly,, of a disciple, and of one who regarded his subject as a living, not a dead, philosophy. The aphorism as to Christinnity carrying off to its hives the honey of Plotinus is well known, and it represents a historical fact.
.Neoplatonisni is inextricably intertwined with the Christian Faith, to which, indeed, it rendered inestimable services in, its exaltation of " the good life,", and its adumbration of a Trinity in Unity. Moreover, the Catholic Church recognizes the "validity of Plotinus's mystical Ecstasy, and, like Virgil, he became for centuries a sort of seer haunting the frontiers of the Faith. Iskoplatonism, at its earliest and best, was Vastly more . than Harnack'i " incomparable' climdland:" It was the euhnination, as the Dean has said, of seven hundred years of untrammelled _ Griek thought, and he who would experience anything like Plotinus's final revelation must elithb first the most difficult of metaphysical ascents. Nor is that ascent made easier by the Greek of the Fame-ads, terse and compressed to the last -degree.- Fortunately, Mr. Stephen McKenna has,- as a labour of love, translated all birt the sixth Ennead 'for us. In the ten years' interval between the first appearance of his Plotinus and this. edition, Dein Inge notes with pleasure the increase of recognition of 'his author as " one of the greatest names in the history of ',philosophy." The works of Heinemann, Arnou, . and Lossky have appeared. Mr. Whittaker has enlarged his The Neoplatcrnists. Dr. Inge has revised his own book throughout, and has made some hundreds of small emen- dations. We cannot see how the historical Incarnation fits' in with the system of Plotinus, who studiously ignored
the idea, but there is no doubt his system was _one Of the greatest. Of all contributions to human 'thought.
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