telligible world. Not only the Idea of man, but Ideas of Socrates, Plato, and so on, exist; that is to say, there are as many Ideas as individuals. Each one of us realizes a distinct Idea. Hence the Idea is not the species resolving itself into a number of passing individuals; it is the individual considered as eternal. From the fact that there are as many Ideas as individuals, it does not follow that the number of Ideas is unlimited. Though the number of existing individuals is infinite for our imagination, it is not actually infinite; if it were so, the universe would not be a perfect being, i. e., perfect in the Greek sense (@ov πavTEλés). So, too, a fixed and unchangeable number of Ideas τελές). or types of individuals exist in the intelligence, the creation of God.

2. The Soul. The intelligence, too, is creative, like the absolute whence it emanates, but its productive power is less. Its emanation or radiation is the soul (vxn),1 which is like the vous but inferior to it. The fact is, reason finds its Ideas in itself; they are its immanent possession and substance, while the soul must search for them or ascend to them by reflection (diávoia), and therefore reaches, not the Ideas themselves, but their more or less adequate images, the simple notions (Aoyo). The soul is not, like the intellect, endowed with immediate and complete intuition; it is restricted to discursive thought, or analysis.

It is subordinate to the intellect, and therefore strives towards it as reason itself strives towards God. Its mission is to become what the intellect is a priori; that is, intelligent (voepá). Just as there is but one absolute, one reason, and one intelligible world, so there is, at the bottom of all individual souls, but one single soul manifesting itself in infinitely different forms: the soul of the world (ψυχὴ τοῦ κόσμου). Like the νοῦς, which contemplates 1 Enneads, IV.

the absolute and also produces the vx, the soul has two functions, one of which is to contemplate and look inward, where it finds the Ideas and the absolute, while the other is expansive and creative. Its emanation, which is less perfect than itself, is the body.'

3. The Body. Though the body is far removed from the source of all things (God is the One, the body, the greatest plurality), it bears the stamp of the absolute. The intellect has its Ideas; the soul, its notions; the body, its forms. Through these the body still belongs to the higher spheres of being; they are to the body what perceptions are to the soul, what Ideas are to reason: a reflection of the absolute, a trace of the divine. The form of bodies represents what reality they have; their matter, what they lack of reality; their form is their being; their matter their non-being. Corporeal nature (púois) fluctuates between being and non-being; it is eternal becoming, and everything in it is in perpetual change.

After the world of bodies comes pure matter, or non being, an obscure and bottomless abyss (aπeрov), as it were, into which the ideal world projects its rays. Matter is not body, for every body is composed of matter and form; it is but the substratum, the principle of its inertia ; it has neither form, nor dimension, nor color, nor anything that characterizes the body; all these qualities proceed from the formal principle, the absolute; it has no other attribute than privation (σTépnois). Since all force and life has its source in the intellect and in God, matter is impotence, boundless indigence, the negation of unity, the cause of the infinite multitude of bodies, incoherence, diffusion, the absolute absence of form, i. e., ugliness itself; the absence of the good, i. e., evil itself. From the stand point of Plotinus as well as of Hellenism in general, unity, form, intelligence, beauty, and goodness are synonymous 2 Id., II.

1 Enneads. III.

terms, as are also, on the other hand, plurality, matter, ugliness, and evil.

It must not be understood that he considers matter and evil as non-existent. To assume that he denies the existence of matter and of evil would be equivalent to making him say that poverty is the absence of wealth and therefore nothing, that it does not exist, and, consequently, that charity is useless. Matter is so great a reality that its influence is exercised, not only upon the corporeal sphere, but also upon the soul and upon reason itself. We have seen that the body still, though vaguely, resembles the mind, because of the form which it assumes and which is nothing but an embodied Idea. Conversely, we shall say, however superior the mind may be to corporeal nature, it is not absolutely immaterial. Matter exists in the mind, though in another form than in nature; i. e., as the notion of matter ("λn voηTý), intelligibly, in the conceptual state, not corporeally. But more than that; not only is matter in the mind in so far as the mind conceives it; it is mingled with every one of its thoughts, indissolubly connected with all its conceptions. Without matter, the mind would not be distinct from the absolute. In fact, God alone is unity in the absolute sense; the intellect is not unity in the same sense; in it unity expands into a plurality of Ideas, which are distinct from one another, although they are perceived by one and the same intellectual intuition. It is true, the Ideas in our mind are not separated corporeally; but it is also certain that the mind contains them as pluralities. Now, matter is the very principle of plurality. Hence it lies at the very basis of the intellect, which, without it, would be swallowed up in the absolute unity of God.

In order to understand this paradox, which is essentially Platonic, it must be remembered that the matter of Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus, is not the matter of the materialists, but what Schelling and Schopenhauer would call

will, or the will-to-be; it is not body, but the transcendent substratum, the principle of corporeality, that which makes the body a body, but is itself an incorporeal thing like the mind. It even transcends the intelligence; it rises above it like an impenetrable mystery that defies the reason even of the gods. Moreover, Plotinus does not place matter among the genera; he places it beyond the world of Ideas in the supra-intelligible realm which reason cannot reach, although we may recognize the Idea of matter in the ideas of otherness and movement. If we call what can be the object of intelligence, what the intelligence can define, comprehend, or embrace under an exact formula, "intelligible," then matter is evidently not intelligible; for it is the opposite of form; it resists all limitation and consequently all comprehension. To comprehend matter is to see darkness; to see darkness is to see nothing; hence, to comprehend matter is to comprehend nothing.

Is matter a second absolute? One is sometimes tempted to regard Plotinus as a decided dualist; his system of ethics, especially, lays itself open to the charge of dualism. But the metaphysician cannot assume two absolutes. Plotinus, therefore, recalling the statement of Aristotle that the first matter and the first form are identical,1 conceives the supra-intelligent matter, or, in other terms, the first cause of bodies, as identical with God, Matter, which Platonism loves to call the infinite, is, in the last analysis, nothing but infinite potentiality, unlimited productivity, the creative power of God. The highest évépyeta is also the highest dúvapus. How is that possible? The question is the same as the one raised above: How can plurality emanate from divine unity? How can we explain emanation, creation? That is a mystery.

III. ETHICS. The soul, which is intermediate between the intellect and the body, contains elements of both, and

1 Metaphysics, VIII., 6, 19.

is an epitome of the universe. It is, as it were, the meeting place of all cosmical powers. Logical necessity reigns in the intellectual sphere; physical necessity, in the world of bodies. The soul is the seat of the free will. It is subject to the allurements of the body and those of the intellect. It may therefore turn towards reason and live a purely intellectual life, but it may also turn towards matter, fall, and become embodied in a low and earthly body. Hence, there are three kinds of souls: (1) souls which live for reason and for God, or divine souls; (2) souls which waver between mind and body, heaven and earth: demons, or geniuses which are partly good and partly bad; (3) souls which dwell in matter and inhabit base bodies. The heavenly souls, like the soul of the world itself, are supremely happy. Their happiness consists in their apathy, in their obedience to divine reason, and in the contemplation of the absolute. Their bodies consist wholly of light, and have nothing material in them, using this term in the sense of terrestrial.2 Eternally perfect and always the same, they have neither memory nor prevision, neither hope nor regret; for only such beings have memory and hope as change their conditions, be it for better or for worse. They are not even, like the human soul, conscious of themselves; they are absorbed in the contemplation of Ideas and of the absolute. It is this unconsciousness, this exclusive apperception of divine things, which constitutes their supreme happiness.

Human souls were not always enclosed in base bodies; they were at first heavenly souls, conscious of God alone and not of themselves; but they separated their lives from the universal life, in order to become selfish individuals and to assume vulgar bodies, which isolate them from each other. The assumption of an earthly body is a fall for

1 Enneads, II., 3, 9; III., 5, 6; IV., 3, 8.

2 Cf. St. Paul, First Letter to the Corinthians, XV.. 40.