Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

2/8 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMgives itself up to an evil which is foreign to it, betermed evil.This doctrine,1 that the nature of evil consists inthe connection of the soul with matter, is the specialcharacteristic of Neoplatonism, and, it must be added,a special contradiction in itself, and one which leadsto a disarrangement and confusion in the whole viewof human nature. The contradiction consists in this,that Plotinus makes everything, without exception,including flatter itself, proceed forth in orderly sequencefrom the Primal Being, the absolute One andGood. But Matter is evil, as being privation and purewant. Thus, that which in quality is the absolutecontradiction of the One, the Good, and the Spiritual,is made to arise out of it by the quantitative way ofa progressive weakening or deterioration. The wholevisible universe, which Plotinus otherwise marks as awork of transcendent wisdom and power, is producedby the connection of the Soul with Matter. This veryconnection is at the same time stigmatised as evil.Yet to this predicament Plotinus was reduced, sincefrom his point of view he could neither derive Matterfrom, the Divinity as a positive condition of the Divinebeing carried into act, nor place it as a second originalprinciple beside the Divinity.But this conception of Matter as evil is neitherthat of the natural philosopher nor that of themetaphysician ; it arises clearly from the moralist'sview of the effect of a bodily nature on the humansubject. Let us proceed then from it to the doctrineof man, / as set forth bv * Plotinus.This divides itself into three parts: the first willconcern the condition of the human soul in its state1 Zeller, v. 490, 422.