interest
was ultimately practical and political, became ever more rare,
especially as from the death of Marcus Aurelius, the maintenance of the
state had to be left more and more to the sword of the Generals. The
general conditions from the end of the second century were favourable to
a philosophy which no longer in any respect took into real consideration
the old forms of the state.

The theosophic philosophy which was prepared for in the second
century,[131] was, from the stand-point of enlightenment and knowledge
of nature, a relapse: but it was the expression of a deeper religious
need, and of a self-knowledge such as had not been in existence at an
earlier period. The final consequences of that revolution in philosophy
which made consideration of the inner life the starting-point of thought
about the world, only now began to be developed. The ideas of a divine,
gracious providence, of the relationship of all men, of universal
brotherly love, of a ready forgiveness of wrong, of forbearing patience,
of insight into one's own weakness--affected no doubt with many
shadows--became, for wide circles, a result of the practical philosophy
of the Greeks as well as, the conviction of inherent sinfulness, the
need of redemption, and the eternal value and dignity of a human soul
which finds rest only in God. These ideas, convictions and rules, had
been picked up in the long journey from Socrates to Ammonius Saccas: at
first, and for long afterwards, they crippled the interest in a rational
knowledge of the world; but they deepened and enriched the inner life,
and therewith the source of all knowledge. Those ideas, however, lacked
as yet the certain coherence, but, above all, the authority which could
have raised them above the region of wishes, presentiments, and
strivings, and have given them normative authority in a community of
men. There was no sure revelation, and no view of history which could be
put in the place of the no longer prized political history of the nation
or state to which one belonged.[132] There was, in fact, no such thing
as certainty. In like manner, there was no power which might overturn
idolatry and abolish the old, and therefore one did not get beyond the
wavering between self-deification, fear of God, and deification of
nature. The glory is all the greater of those statesmen and jurists who,
in the second and third centuries, introduced human ideas of the Stoics
into the legal arrangements of the em