This portion of his defence falls into four main divisions. In the first he explains the nature of the body’s dependence upon the soul. Through the power that the soul has by virtue of its lowest centre of life, called the plantal, the soul frames the body in order to exercise through it the functions of life. (III. i. 17.) The more perfect this body is the more awake the soul is. (III. i. 17.) But after the work of framing the body is finished, the soul dismisses it as an old thought and begins its life of contemplation. (III. i. 16.) The main desire is to see God. (III. ii. 11.) Next More shows how the soul can direct her own thoughts within herself without in any way considering the body. Her intellectual part dives within her nature in its quest for self-knowledge and her will affects herself after this knowledge has been gained. All this is accomplished free from any bodily assistance. (III. ii. 25, 26.) The third division shows how the soul is so independent of the body that she can resist its desires. Often the sensual impulse of our nature would lead us to be content with mere satisfaction of our bodily desires; but the soul desirous of truth and gifted with an insight into God’s true nature enables us to resist all such impulses. (III. ii. 38, 39.) The fourth division contrasts the vitality of the soul with that of sense, fancy, and memory. These three faculties are weakened by age and by disease, and also by excessive stimulation; but the soul never fades, but grows stronger with each contemplative act. (III. ii. 48, 49, 56.) The attraction which the philosophy of Plotinus had for More’s mind lay in its scheme of speculative mysticism. The metaphysical system of Plotinus had taught that The One, which is the truly existing being, is everywhere present and yet nowhere wholly present. (“Enneads,” VI. iv.) It had explained also that the only way in which the individual soul could apprehend this truly existing being was by a mystical union with it, in which state the soul did not know in the sense of energizing intellectually, but was one with The One. (“Enneads,” VI. ix. 10.) These two ideas lie at the basis of More’s theosophic mysticism. Their presence can be felt throughout his “Psychathanasia” as its controlling idea and also in his two less important treatises, “Anti-psychopannychia” and “Anti-monopsychia.”