Italian Renaissance. John Addington Symonds
childishness. Perhaps it is doing the sage injustice to treat his system seriously. Charity prompts us to regard it as a plaything invented for the amusement of his leisure hours. Yet nothing can be graver than his own language and that of his disciples.
The work in which he embodied his doctrine was called 'The Laws'—ἡ τῶν νόμων συγγραφή, or simply νόμοι. It comprised a metaphysical system, the outlines of a new religion, an elaborate psychology and theory of ethics, and a scheme of political administration. According to his notions, there is one Supreme God, Zeus, the absolute and eternal reality, existing as homogeneous and undiscriminated Being, Will, Activity, and Power. Zeus begets everlasting Ideas, or Gods of the second order; and these gods, to whom Gemistos gave the name of Greek divinities, constitute a hierarchy corresponding to the abstract notions of his logic. With the object of harmonising the double series of immortal and mortal existences they are subdivided, by a singularly clumsy contrivance, into genuine and spurious children of Zeus. First among the genuine sons stands Poseidon, the idea of ideas, the logical summum genus, who includes within himself the intellectual universe potentially. Next in rank is Hera, the female deity, created immediately by Zeus, but by a second act, and therefore inferior to Poseidon. These two are the primordial authors of the world as it exists. After them come three series, each of five deities, whereof the first set, including Apollo, Artemis, Hephæstus, Dionysus, and Athena, represent the most general categories. The second set, among whom we find Atlas and Pluto, are the ideas of immortal substance existing for ever in the world of living beings. The third, which reckons among others Hecate and Hestia, are the ideas of immortal substance existing for ever in the inanimate world. Next in the descending order come the spurious offspring of Zeus, or Titans, two of whom, Cronos and Aphrodite, are the ideas respectively of form and matter in things subject to decay and dissolution; while Koré, Pan, and Demeter are the specific ideas of men, beasts, and plants. Hitherto we have been recording the genealogy of divine beings subject to no laws of time or change, who are, in fact, pure thoughts or logical entities. We arrive in the last place at deities of the third degree, the genuine and the spurious children, no longer of Zeus, but of Poseidon, chieftain of the second order of the hierarchy. The planets and the fixed stars constitute the higher of these inferior powers, while the dæmons fill the lowest class of all. At the very bottom of the scale, below the gods of every quality, stand men, beasts, plants, and the inorganic world.
It will be perceived that this scheme is bastard Neoplatonism—a mystical fusion of Greek mythology and Greek logic, whereby the products of speculative analysis are hypostasised as divine persons. Of many difficulties patent in his doctrine Gemistos offered no solution. How, for example, can we ascribe to Zeus the procreation of spurious as well as genuine offspring? It is possible that the philosopher, if questioned on such topics, would have fallen back on the convenient theory of progressively diminished efficacy in the creative act; for though he guards against adopting the hypothesis of emanation, it is clear, from the simile of multiplied reflections in a series of mirrors, which he uses to explain the genealogy of gods, that some such conception modified his views. To point out the insults offered to the ancient myths, whereof he made such liberal and arbitrary use, or to insist upon the folly of the whole conceit, considered as the substance of a creed which should regenerate the world, would be superfluous; nothing can be more grotesque, for instance, than the personification of identity and self-determining motion under the titles of Apollo and Dionysus, nor any confusion more fatal than the attribution of sex to categories of the understanding. The sole merit of the system consists in the classification of notions, the conception of an intellectual hierarchy, descending by interdependent stages from the primordial cause through pure ideas to their copies and material manifestations in the world of things. Dreams of this kind have always haunted the metaphysical imagination, giving rise to hybrids between poetry and logic; and the system of Gemistos may fairly take rank among a hundred similar attempts between the days of Plato and of Hegel.
Such as it was, his metaphysic supplied Gemistos with the basis of a cult, a psychology, a theory of ethics, and a political programme. He founded a sect, and was called by his esoteric followers 'the mystagogue of sublime and celestial dogmas.'[177] They believed that the soul of Plato had been reincarnated in their master, and that the new creed, professed by him, would supersede the faiths existing in the world. Among the most distinguished of these neophytes was the famous Bessarion, who adopted so much at any rate of his teacher's doctrine as rendered him indifferent to the points at issue between the Greek and Latin Churches, when a cardinal's hat was offered as the price of his apostasy. Bessarion, however, was too much a man of the world to dream that Gemistos would triumph over Christ and Mahomet.[178] While using the language of the mystic, and recording his conviction that Plato's soul, released from the body of Gemistos, had joined the choir of the Olympian deities,[179] it is probable that he was only playing, after the fashion of his age, with speculations that amused his fancy though they took no serious hold upon his life. It was a period, we must remember, when scholars affected the manners of the antique world, Latinised their names, and adopted fantastic titles in their academies and learned clubs. At no time of the world's history has this kind of masquerading attained to so much earnestness of rather more than half-belief. The attitude assumed by Gemistos and his disciples is, therefore, not without its value for illustrating the intellectual conditions of the earlier Renaissance. Practical religion had but little energy among the educated classes. The interests of the Church were more political than spiritual. Science had not yet asserted her real rights in any sphere of thought. Art and literature, invigorated by the passion for antiquity, meanwhile absorbed the genius of the Italians; and through a dim æsthetic haze the waning lights of Hellas mingled with the dayspring of the modern world.
The most important event of Gemistos's life was the journey which he took to Italy in the train of John Palæologus in 1438. Secretly disliking Christianity in general, and the Latin form of it in particular, he had endeavoured to dissuade the emperor from attending the Council. Now he found himself elected as one of the six champions of the cause of the Greek Church. For the subtle Greek intellect in that dotage of a doomed civilisation, no greater interest survived than could be found in dialectic; and to dispute about the filioque of the Christian creed was fair sport, when no chance offered itself of forcing rationalistic Paganism down the throat of popes and cardinals. Therefore it is probable that Gemistos did not find his position at the Council peculiarly irksome, even though he had to listen to reasonings about purgatory and the procession of the Holy Ghost, and to suggest arguments in favour of the Eastern dogma, while in his inmost soul he equally despised the combatants on either side.
The effect he produced outside the Council was far more flattering than the part he had to play within the walls of Santa Maria Novella. Instead of power-loving ecclesiastics and pig-headed theologians, anxious only to extend their privileges and establish their supremacy, he found a multitude of sympathetic and enthusiastic listeners. The Florentines were just then in the first flush of their passion for Greek study. Plato, worshipped as an unknown god, whose rising would dispel the mists of scholastic theology, was upon the lips of every student. Men were thirsting for the philosophy that had the charm of poetry, that delighted the imagination while it fortified the understanding, and that lent its glamour to the dreams and yearnings of a youthful age. What they wanted, Gemistos possessed in abundance. From the treasures of a memory stored with Platonic, Pythagorean, and Alexandrian mysticism he poured forth copious streams of indiscriminate erudition. The ears of his audience were open; their intellects were far from critical. They accepted the gold and dross of his discourse alike as purest metal. Hanging upon the lips of the eloquent, grave, beautiful old man, who knew so much that they desired to learn, they called him Socrates and Plato in their ecstasy. It was during this visit to Florence that he adopted the name of Plethon, which, while it played upon Gemistos, had in it the ring of his great master's surname.[180] The devotion of his Greek disciples bore no comparison with the popularity he acquired among Italians; and he had the satisfaction of being sure that the seed of Platonic philosophy sown by him would spring up in the rich soil of those powerful and eager minds. Cosimo de' Medici, convinced of the importance of Platonic studies by his conversations with Gemistos, founded the famous Florentine Academy, and designated the young Marsilio Ficino for the special task of translating and explaining the Platonic writings.[181] When we call to mind the influence which the Platonic Academy of Florence, through Ficino and Pico della Mirandola, exerted over the whole