Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

THE NEOPLATONIC PHILOSOPHY AND EPOCH 277quality, and of body, would be no object of perception.So far Plotinus,1 following Plato and Aristotle, considersMatter as the basis of everything which meetsthe senses, and distinguishes it from the Intelligible.It is a universal Substratum of that which has body,distinct from every particular body. It is the merepossibility of being. Only by the accession of Formto it, it becomes definite.By this coming down of the Soul upon Matter, thewhole visible world starts into being,2 not by an act ofthought and will, but by simple natural necessity, forthe Soul could do no otherwise than give shape to theMatter which needed shaping, no otherwise than enlightenthat which lay beneath it. And since thisnecessity ever equally existed and will ever equallyexist, Plotinus absolutely contradicts any temporalbeginning and any temporal end of the world. Butthough this operation of the Soul in forming theworld is necessary, yet its connection with Matter is asinking down into an unfitting state, a fall of theSoul. For Plotinus,3 passing herein beyond Plato,places the cause of evil in the connection of the Soulwith Matter. The Soul, in virtue of its higher nature,is of itself free from evil. Evil can only arise to itfrom the polluting connection with something in itselfevil. For, if evil is the absence of good, Matter isthe original and absolute privation, pure want. Ifevil consists in motion without rest, in absence oflimit, in want of form, proportion, and definiteness,of Matter alone these properties are not only predicated,but make up its essence. Hence Matter is thePrimal Evil; corporeality is a secondary evil; andonly in the third degree can the Soul, in so far as it1 Zeller, v. 486. 2 Ibid. v. 493. 3 2bid. v. 489.