While Plato and Aristotle had sought to rise to the intelligible world from, and by means of, the sensible, Plotinus, believing that he has attained a direct, intuitional knowledge of the former, sets out from it and thence tries to reach the other. At the summit of being he finds the supreme Platonic principle, the One or the Good, absolutely transcendent and self-sufficient; next below this, the supreme Aristotelian principle, Intelligence or Absolute Knowing, the _locus_ of all ideas; and third, the supreme principle of the Stoics, Soul, Life, or Zeus, the animating principle of the world. Good, Intelligence, Life--these are Plotinus' divine trinity, evolved by a process of abstraction from the _Nous_ of Aristotle (see p. 161). The members of this trinity are neither personal, conscious, nor equal. Each lower is caused by, but does not emanate from, the next above it; and this causation is due, not to any act of free will, but to an inner necessity. Thus the trinity of Plotinus is a mere energy, acting according to necessary laws. The third member of it turns toward matter, which is mere poverty and hunger for being, and, in so doing, produces a world of gods, dæmons, and mundane beings, the highest of which last is man. All that has matter has multiplicity. It is easy enough to see what kind of ethics and education will spring from such a system as this. Inasmuch as the good means self-sufficiency, freedom from multiplicity and matter, evil means dependence, multiplicity, materiality. Whatever evil there is in man is due to his connection with matter, for which he is in no sense responsible. His sole business, if he desires blessedness, is to free himself from matter and multiplicity, and return to the unity of the Supreme Good. The steps by which this may be accomplished are, (1) Music or Art, (2) Love, (3) Philosophy or Dialectic: through all these he rises above multiplicity into unity. In all this there is, obviously, neither moral evil nor moral good, and, indeed, the world of Plotinus contains no moral element, for the simple reason that it contains nothing personal, either in God or man. Evil is the product of necessity, and consciousness, implying as it does, multiplicity, is part of it. The unethical character of Plotinus' teaching comes out very clearly in his reversal of the positions of instruction and purgation in the scheme of education. According to the old view, purgation was a mere medical process, preparatory to ethical training (see p. 7). According to the Neoplatonic view, ethical training and the "political virtues" are a mere preparation for purgation and the intellectual virtues. And this is perfectly logical; for evil, being physical, must be cured by physical means. And the means which Plotinus recommends are magical, rather than moral; rites and prayers, rather than heroic deeds; the suppression of the will, rather than its exercise.