Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

296 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMaccording to the Creed, between the Impersonal andthe Personal God. The problem of God and theWorld, as stated by the one and the other, makes thesecond opposition. The relation between God andman, issuing out of these two several conceptions ofthis problem, forms the third.The Primal Being of Plotinus appears to be formedby logical abstraction after this wise. All which meetsthe senses he generalises under the conception ofMatter ; all which thinks he generalises under the conceptionof Mind, as Spinoza did after him.1 Furthermore,beyond both Mind and Matter lies the conceptionof Being. Not content, however, with this, he triesto invent something beyond not only Mind but Being,which he terms the Absolute Unity. He personifies2the result of his abstraction, holds it for the principleof that from which it is abstracted, and identifies itaccordingly with what he calls the Godhead. Then,following the inverse process, and descending fromthe abstraction to which he had mounted, he makesthe first production of the Absolute Unity to be Mind,that is, the conception of Intellect as distinct fromMatter. The second, according to him, is Soul, whichhe considers already to touch upon the corporeal world,or Matter. Then through the connection of the Soulwith Matter he supposes the whole visible world toroll itself out into existence.The procession of all things from this so conceivedUnity is necessary and eternal: not of thought orpurpose. And all that which so proceeds has no realsubstance of its own. It is mere accident, an appearanceof the Divine: for it is one operation which1 See note at the end of the chapter.- Ueberweg, p. 251.