_Matter_ is the emanation which is most distant from the One. The Nous is the emanation of the One, the world-soul is the emanation from the Nous, individual souls are a kind of intermediate emanation from the world-soul, and matter is the emanation of the individual souls. That is to say, the world-soul, with the forces that are native to it, generates matter and then, by uniting itself through its forces with matter, produces the world of corporeal things. _What is the character of matter_ with which the world-soul forms this union? _It is space._ Space conditions all earthly existence. It is the same as Plato’s conception of the absolutely negative non-Being and the merely possible. It is absolute sterility, entirely evil and devoid of good. Matter has no dualistic independence of the One. _What is the character of the nature world?_ It has the same character and quality as the formative forces that unite with this negative matter――it is no more and no less eternal. The world of nature to Plotinus is one of magic, and not merely teleological. He says that the heavens are the union of a perfect soul with matter; the stars are the visible gods united with matter; the powers of the air and sky are dæmons, which mediate between the stars and the souls of men, united with matter; the body of man is the human soul united with matter; inorganic nature is the lowest of the plastic forces united with matter. Wherever there is matter (space), there is found imperfection and limitation and evil. Man as an individual is sympathetically and mysteriously bound to all parts of the universe. Scientific investigation of nature is entirely ruled out by this neo-Platonic teaching. It never could be the instrument for penetrating a magical universe. Faith and superstition take the place of science, and prophecy alone undertakes to solve nature’s riddle. The world of nature is thus broken in two. In one sense it is bad, ugly, and irrational. In another sense it is good, beautiful, and rational, because it is formed by the souls that enter into it. In opposition to the Gnostics Plotinus praised the harmony and beauty of the world, and promulgated his metaphysics of the beautiful as a last farewell of Hellenic civilization. Beauty is not composite, but the simple Idea of worth shining through the world of sense. Beauty is from the inner and for the inner. Art does not imitate nature, but expresses the reason; it supplements the defects of nature and creates something new. Yet the world of nature is beautiful, because down to the lowest deeps it is permeated by the divine.