Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

302 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMcomplete sway. The universe is the evolution of theOne. The Absolute Unity is immanent in the world,which is its eternal and necessary development, notmerely the human soul but matter itself being partof this procession. In it there is one life, one being,one substance. And as to the important point onwhich we have been treating, the assertion of a merelyquantitative difference between the human and theuniversal soul, no more conclusive proof of the beliefof Plotinus can be given than the words of the dyingphilosopher as recorded by his friend, admirer, anddisciple, Porphyrius: " I am going to lead back theGod that is in me to the God of the universe." Thatmovement of thought which is apparent at the startingof Greek philosophy, to reduce all things to aphysical unity, receives its completion in the systemof Plotinus. But in two hundred years which elapsefrom Seneca to that philosopher there had been afurther effort which shows itself equally in the Neostoicand the Neopythagorean school, an effort to reconcilethe gods of Polytheism and the worship of them withthis one power or cause. In Plotinus we find thisreconciliation carried out with the greatest completeness.His Absolute Unity admits into its capaciousbosom all gods, for the gods so admitted are simplyparts of one universal power, which is the substance ofall things. Pantheism and Polytheism share the sameerror iof giving the incommunicable Name to stocksand stones ; for if the being of God is the being of allthings, it is as true to say a stone is God, as to say astone is a being. If God be at once the matter andthe soul of the world, and in both, in spite of his1 See St. Thomas, Contra Gentiles, i. 26, and Kleutgen, Philosophieder Vorzeit, ii. 418.