We cannot follow the “ascent of the Mind” through its various transmutations.  At one stage it is crucified, “with the soul on the right and the body on the left”; it is buried for three days; it descends into Hades;[154] then it ascends again, till it reaches Paradise, and is united to the tree of life:  then it descends below all essences, and sees a formless luminous essence, and marvels that it is the same essence that it has seen on high.  Now it comprehends the truth, that God is consubstantial with the Universe, and that there are no real distinctions anywhere.  So it ceases to wander.  “All these doctrines,” concludes the seer, “which are unknown even to angels, have I disclosed to thee, my son” (Dionysius, probably).  “Know, then, that all nature will be confused with the Father—­that nothing will perish or be destroyed, but all will return, be sanctified, united, and confused.  Thus God will be all in all.[155]”

There can be no difficulty in classifying this Syrian philosophy of religion.  It is the ancient religion of the Brahmins, masquerading in clothes borrowed from Jewish allegorists, half-Christian Gnostics, Manicheans, Platonising Christians, and pagan Neoplatonists.  We will now see what St. Dionysius makes of this system, which he accepts as from the hand of one who has “not only learned, but felt the things of God.[156]”

The date and nationality of Dionysius are still matters of dispute.[157] Mysticism changes so little that it is impossible to determine the question by internal evidence, and for our purposes it is not of great importance.  The author was a monk, perhaps a Syrian monk:  he probably perpetrated a deliberate fraud—­a pious fraud, in his own opinion—­by suppressing his own individuality, and fathering his books on St. Paul’s Athenian convert.  The success of the imposture is amazing, even in that uncritical age, and gives much food for reflection.  The sixth century saw nothing impossible in a book full of the later Neoplatonic theories—­those of Proclus rather than Plotinus[158]—­having been written in the first century.  And the mediaeval Church was ready to believe that this strange semi-pantheistic Mysticism dropped from the lips of St. Paul.[159]

Dionysius is a theologian, not a visionary like his master Hierotheus.  His main object is to present Christianity in the guise of a Platonic mysteriosophy, and he uses the technical terms of the mysteries whenever he can.[160] His philosophy is that of his day—­the later Neoplatonism, with its strong Oriental affinities.

Beginning with the Trinity, he identifies God the Father with the Neoplatonic Monad, and describes Him as “superessential Indetermination,” “super-rational Unity,” “the Unity which unifies every unity,” “superessential Essence,” “irrational Mind,” “unspoken Word,” “the absolute No-thing which is above all existence.[161]” Even now he is not satisfied with the tortures to which he has subjected the Greek language.  “No