Having ascertained its date, we now come to the origin of the Kabbalah. Nothing can be more evident than that the cardinal and distinctive tenets of the Kabbalah in its original form, as stated at the beginning of the second part of this Essay, are derived from Neo-Platonism. Any doubt upon this subject must be relinquished when the two systems are compared. The very expression En Soph (‏אין סוף‎) which the Kabbalah uses to designate the Incomprehensible One, is foreign, and is evidently an imitation of the Greek ἄπειρος. The speculations about the En Soph, that he is superior to actual being, thinking and knowing, are thoroughly Neo-Platonic (ἐπέκεινα οὐσίας, ἐνεργίας, νοῦ καὶ νοήσεως); and R. Azariel, whose work, as we have seen, is the first Kabbalistic production, candidly tells us that in viewing the Deity as purely negative, and divesting him of all attributes, he followed the opinion of the philosophers. [80] When R. Azariel moreover tells us that “the En Soph can neither be comprehended by the intellect, nor described in words; for there is no letter or word which can grasp him,” we have here almost the very words of Proclus, who tells us that, “although he is generally called the unity (τὸ ἕν) or the first, it would be better if no name were given him; for there is no word which can depict his nature—he is (ἄῤῥητος, ἄγνωστος), the inexpressible, the unknown.” (Theol. Plat. ii, 6.) The Kabbalah propounds that the En Soph, not being an object of cognition, made his existence known in the creation of the world by the Sephiroth, or Emanations, or Intelligences. So Neo-Platonism. The Sephiroth are divided in the Kabbalah into a trinity of triads respectively denominated ‏עולם השכל‎ the Intellectual World, ‏עולם הנפש‎ the Sensuous World, and ‏עולם הטבע‎ the Material World, which exactly corresponds to the three triads of Neo-Platonism νοῦς, ψύχη, and φύσις. The Kabbalah teaches that these Sephiroth are both infinite and perfect, and finite and imperfect, in so far as the source from which they emanate imparts or withholds his fulness from them. Neo-Platonism also teaches that “every emanation, though less perfect than that from which it emanates, has yet a similarity with it, and, so far as this similarity goes, remains in it, departing from it so far as it is unlike, but as far as possible being one with it and remaining in it.” [81] Even the comparison between the emanation of the Sephiroth from the En Soph, and the rays proceeding from light to describe the immanency and perfect unity of the two, is the same as the Neo-Platonic figure employed to illustrate the emanations from one principium (οἷον ἐκ φωτὸς τὴν ἐξ αὐτοῦ περίλαμψιν). III.