PLOTINUS.--Plotinus taught this: God and matter exist. God is one,
matter is multiple and divisible. God in Himself is incomprehensible, and
is only to be apprehended in his manifestations. Man rises not to
comprehension of Him but to the perception of Him by a series of degrees
which are, as it were, the progressive purification of faith, and which
lead us to a kind of union with Him resembling that of one being with
another whom he could never see, but of whose presence he could have no
doubt. Matter, that is, the universe, is an emanation from God, as perfume
comes from a flower. All is not God, and only God can be God, but all is
divine and all participates in God, just as each of our thoughts
participates of our soul. Now, if all emanates from God, all also tends to
return to Him, as bodies born of earth, nourished by earth, invigorated by
the forces proceeding from the earth, tend to return to the earth. This is
what makes the harmony of the world. The law of laws is, that every
fragment of the universe derived from God returns to Him and desires to
return to Him. The universe is an emanation from the perfect, and an
effort towards perfection. The universe is a God in exile who has
nostalgia for himself. The universe is a progressive descent from God with
a tendency towards reintegration with Him.

How does this emanation from God becoming matter take place? That is a
mystery; but it may be supposed to take place by successive stages. From
God emanates spirit, impersonal spirit which is not spirit of this or that,
but universal spirit spread through the whole world and animating it. From
spirit emanates the soul, which can unite itself to a body and form an
individual. The soul is less divine than spirit, which in turn is less
divine than God, but yet retains divinity. From the soul emanates the body
to which it unites itself. The body is less divine than the soul, which was
less divine than spirit, which was less divine than God; but it still