Volume III of The History of Philosophy. (The End of Greek Philosophy, Medieval and Modern Philosophy up to Schelling, p

Note that this document has undergone special formating to ensure that Lenin’s sidenotes fit on the page, marking as best as possible where they were located in the original manuscript.

...“The return to God....” (5), “self- consciousness is absolute Essence”..., “the world-spirit”... (7), “Christian religion”.... (8)And a mass of thin porridge ladled out about God.... (8-18)

But this philosophical idealism, open- ly, “seriously” leading to God, is more honest than modern agnosticism with its hypocrisy and cowardice.

A. Philo—(about the time of the birth

of Christ), a Jewish savant, a mystic, “finds Plato present in Moses” (19), etc. The main point is “the knowl- edge of God” (21), etc. God is λόγοζ, “the epitome of all Ideas,” “pure Be- ing” (22) (“according to Plato”).... (22) Ideas are “angels” (messengers of God).... (24) The sensuous world, however, “as with Plato” = ούχ όν = = not-Being. (25)

B. Cabbala, the Gnostics——————

idem...

C. Alexandrian philosophy—(= eclectic

ism) (=Platonists, Pythagoreans, Ari- stotelians). (33, 35)

Eclectics are either uncultured men, or cunning (die klugen Leute —they take the good from every system, but...

—they collect every good but do not have “consistency of thought, and consequently thought itself.” (33)

They developed Plato....

“The Platonic universal, which is in thought, accordingly receives the significa- tion of being as such absolute essence”(33)....