SUPRAMUNDANE GREEK HYPERKOSMIOI

Theoretically, the philosophy of Plotinus was an attempt to harmonize the principles of the various Greek schools. At the head of his system he placed the transcendent incommunicable one ([Greek: hen amethekton]), whose first-begotten is intellect ([Greek: nous]), from which proceeds soul ([Greek: psyche]), which in turn gives birth to [Greek: physis], the realm of nature. Immediately after the absolute one, Iamblichus introduced a second superexistent unity to stand between it and the many as the producer of intellect, and made the three succeeding moments of the development (intellect, soul and nature) undergo various modifications. He speaks of them as intellectual ([Greek: theoi noeroi]), supramundane ([Greek: hyperkosmioi]), and mundane gods ([Greek: egkosmioi]). The first of these--which Plotinus represented under the three stages of (objective) being ([Greek: on]), (subjective) life ([Greek: zoe]), and (realized) intellect ([Greek: nous])--is distinguished by him into spheres of intelligible gods ([Greek: theoi noetoi]) and of intellectual gods ([Greek: theoi noeroi]), each subdivided into triads, the latter sphere being the place of ideas, the former of the archetypes of these ideas. Between these two worlds, at once separating and uniting them, some scholars think there was inserted by Iamblichus, as afterwards by Proclus, a third sphere partaking of the nature of both ([Greek: theoi noetoi kai noeroi]). But this supposition depends on a merely conjectural emendation of the text. We read, however, that "in the intellectual hebdomad he assigned the third rank among the fathers to the Demiurge." The Demiurge, Zeus, or world-creating potency, is thus identified with the perfected [Greek: nous], the intellectual triad being increased to a hebdomad, probably (as Zeller supposes) through the subdivision of its first two members. As in Plotinus [Greek: nous] produced nature by mediation of [Greek: psyche], so here the intelligible gods are followed by a triad of psychic gods. The first of these is incommunicable and supramundane, while the other two seem to be mundane though rational. In the third class, or mundane gods ([Greek: theoi egkosmioi]), there is a still greater wealth of divinities, of various local position, function, and rank. We read of gods, angels, demons and heroes, of twelve heavenly gods whose number is increased to thirty-six or three

hundred and sixty, and of seventy-two other gods proceeding from them, of twenty-one chiefs ([Greek: hegemones]) and forty-two nature-gods ([Greek: theoi genesiourgoi]), besides guardian divinities, of particular individuals and nations. The world is thus peopled by a crowd of superhuman beings influencing natural events, possessing and communicating knowledge of the future, and not inaccessible to prayers and offerings.

The whole of this complex theory is ruled by a mathematical formulism of triad, hebdomad, &c., while the first principle is identified with the monad, [Greek: nous] with the dyad, and [Greek: psyche] with the triad, symbolic meanings being also assigned to the other numbers. "The theorems of mathematics," he says, "apply absolutely to all things," from things divine to original matter ([Greek: hyle]). But though he thus subjects all things to number, he holds elsewhere that numbers are independent existences, and occupy a middle place between the limited and unlimited.