which in itself is No-thing, pure indetermination, and next door to absolute non-existence.[130] Space and time are only forms of our thought.  The concepts formed by the soul, by classifying the things of sense, are said to be “Ideas unrolled and separate,” that is, they are conceived as separate in space and time, instead of existing all together in eternity.  The nature of the soul is triple; it is presented under three forms, which are at the same time the three stages of perfection which it can reach.[131] There is first and lowest the animal and sensual soul, which is closely bound up with the body; then there is the logical, reasoning soul, the distinctively human part; and, lastly, there is the superhuman stage or part, in which a man “thinks himself according to the higher intelligence, with which he has become identified, knowing himself no longer as a man, but as one who has become altogether changed, and has transferred himself into the higher region.”  The soul is thus “made one with Intelligence without losing herself; so that they two are both one and two.”  This is exactly Eckhart’s doctrine of the funkelein, if we identify Plotinus’ [Greek:  Nous] with Eckhart’s “God,” as we may fairly do.  The soul is not altogether incarnate in the body; part of it remains above, in the intelligible world, whither it desires to return in its entirety.

The world is an image of the Divine Mind, which is itself a reflection of the One.  It is therefore not bad or evil.  “What more beautiful image of the Divine could there be,” he asks, “than this world, except the world yonder?” And so it is a great mistake to shut our eyes to the world around us, “and all beautiful things.[132]” The love of beauty will lead us up a long way—­up to the point when the love of the Good is ready to receive us.  Only we must not let ourselves be entangled by sensuous beauty.  Those who do not quickly rise beyond this first stage, to contemplate “ideal form, the universal mould,” share the fate of Hylas; they are engulfed in a swamp, from which they never emerge.

The universe resembles a vast chain, of which every being is a link.  It may also be compared to rays of light shed abroad from one centre.  Everything flowed from this centre, and everything desires to flow back towards it.  God draws all men and all things towards Himself as a magnet draws iron, with a constant unvarying attraction.  This theory of emanation is often sharply contrasted with that of evolution, and is supposed to be discredited by modern science; but that is only true if the emanation is regarded as a process in time, which for the Neoplatonist it is not.[133] In fact, Plotinus uses the word “evolution” to explain the process of nature.[134]

The whole universe is one vast organism,[135] and if one member suffer, all the members suffer with it.[136] This is why a “faint movement of sympathy[137]” stirs within us at the sight of any living creature.  So Origen says, “As our body, while consisting of many members, is yet held together by one soul, so the universe is to be thought of as an immense living being, which is held together by one soul—­the power and the Logos of God.”  All existence is drawn upwards towards God by a kind of centripetal attraction, which is unconscious in the lower, half conscious in the higher organisms.