The association of matter with the soul arises from the voluntary determination of the individual consciousness towards the material plane. But it must not be supposed that this commingling of the soul and matter results in any actual union between the two in the same sense as in the chemical world hydrogen and oxygen combine to form water. For matter, as explained above, is in the nature of a mirror which the divine light of the soul illuminates but which is incapable of receiving into itself that light by which it is illuminated. “But [observes Plotinus][6] matter obscures by its sordid mixture and renders feeble the light which emanates from the soul and, by opposing the waters of generation, it occasions the soul’s entrance into the rapid stream, and by this means renders her light, which is in itself vigorous and pure, polluted and feeble, like the faint glimmerings from a watch tower beheld in a storm. For if matter were never present, the soul would never approach to generation; and this is the lapse of the soul, thus to descend into matter and become debilitated and impure, inasmuch as matter prohibits many of the soul’s powers from their natural activities, comprehending and as it were contracting the place which the soul contains, in her dark embrace.” Matter thus is the cause of the evil inherent in the material world, as without this the soul would have for ever remained “permanent and pure.” Matter, in itself, possesses no form, being unable to sustain order or measure. The soul, however, by its union with matter, imposes form upon it, this form being the result of the combination of the limitation inherent in matter, in union with the archetypal idea of which the soul is the expression. We have, then, a conception of the universe, of which the One represents Infinity, and matter, the opposite pole, or zero. Owing, however, to the fact that no attributes or qualities can be predicated of the One, and that this is, in a negative sense, also the case with matter, which is the privation of being, we arrive at a certain confusion, the attempts of our philosopher to explain matter leading to phrases which are equally applicable to Infinity or the One. The two extremes of Absolute Being and Non-Being appear, in short, to meet, and a resulting bewilderment arises in the mind, which one is rather inclined to gather, was not entirely absent from the thought of Plotinus himself. It may be suggested, tentatively, that this _impasse_ arises rather from the failure of Plotinus to describe the One in more positive terms, than in his defective description of the negative qualities of matter. The fact that the One of Plotinus is conceived of as such that no language is able to express it, does not, in reality, justify the philosopher in describing it in terms of negation, however much positive statements may fall short of portraying the Absolute Reality. Of matter itself, however, we ought perhaps to predicate a