ce, of
empirical knowledge of the world, the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle
marks a momentous turning-point, the post-Aristotelian a retrogression,
the Neoplatonic a complete declension. But judging from the stand-point
of religion and morality, it must be admitted that the ethical temper
which Neoplatonism sought to beget and confirm, was the highest and
purest which the culture of the ancient world produced. This necessarily
took place at the expense of science: for on the soil of polytheistic
natural religions, the knowledge of nature must either fetter and
finally abolish religion, or be fettered and abolished by religion.
Religion and ethic, however, proved the stronger powers. Placed between
these and the knowledge of nature, philosophy, after a period of
fluctuation, finally follows the stronger force. Since the ethical
itself, in the sphere of natural religions, is unhesitatingly conceived
as a higher kind of "nature", conflict with the empirical knowledge of
the world is unavoidable. The higher "physics", for that is what
religious ethics is here, must displace the lower or be itself
displaced. Philosophy must renounce its scientific aspect, in order that
man's claim to a supernatural value of his person and life may be
legitimised.

It is an evidence of the vigour of man's moral endowments that the only
epoch of culture which we are able to survey in its beginnings, its
progress, and its close, ended not with materialism, but with the most
decided idealism. It is true that in its way this idealism also denotes
a bankruptcy; as the contempt for reason and science, and these are
contemned when relegated to the second place, finally leads to
barbarism, because it results in the crassest superstition, and is
exposed to all manner of imposture. And, as a matter of fact, barbarism
succeeded the flourishing period of Neoplatonism. Philosophers
themselves no doubt found their mental food in the knowledge which they
thought themselves able to surpass; but the masses grew up in
superstition, and the Christian Church, which entered on the inheritance
of Neoplatonism, was compelled to reckon with that and come to terms
with it. Just when the bankruptcy of the ancient civilisation and its
lapse into barbarism could not have failed to reveal themselves, a
kindly destiny placed on the stage of history barbarian nations, for
whom the work of a thousand years had as yet no existence. Thus the fact
is concealed, which, howe