Chapter 4, Section 1p

let us now yet further resume and compact them all together into the one and concentrated Yearning which is the Father of them all, and let us collect together into two kinds their general desiderative 109 powers, over which the entire mastery and primacy is in that Incomprehensible Causation of all yearning which cometh from Beyond them all, and whereunto the universal yearning of all creatures presseth upwards according to the nature of each.” 17. Words of the same, from the same Hymns of Yearning “Let us once more collect these powers into one and declare that there is but One Simple Power Which of Itself moveth all things to be mingled in an unity, starting from the Good and going unto the lowest of the creatures and thence again returning through all stages in due order unto the Good, and thus revolving from Itself, and through Itself and upon Itself 322 322 “That which is not” = formless matter. Plotinus (Enn. i. 8. 3) defines the Non-Existent as the world of sense-perception. It is, as it were, the stuff of which all things perceived by the senses are made. This stuff cannot exist without some kind of “form,” and therefore, if entirely bereft of all “form,” would simply disappear into nothingness. Thus, apart from that element of “form” which it derives from the Good, it is sheer Non-Entity. Each individual thing consists of “matter” and “form”— i. e. of this indeterminate “stuff” and of the particular qualities belonging to that thing. Remove those qualities and the thing is destroyed: e.g. remove the colours, shape, etc., of a tree, and the tree becomes nonexistent. It crumbles into dust, and thus the “stuff” takes on a new form. If, as M. Le Bon maintains, material particles sometimes lose their material qualities and are changed into energy, in such a case the “stuff” takes on yet another kind of form. The individual thing, in every case, becomes non-existent when it loses its “form,” or the sum total of its individual qualities, but the “stuff” persists because it at once assumes another “form.” Hence this “stuff,” being non-existent per se , draws its existence from the Good Which is the Source of all “form.” And thus the existence of this non-existent stuff is ultimately contained in the Good. D. tries to prove that evil is non-existent by showing that there is nothing that can have produced it. Good cannot have produced it because a thing cannot produce its own opposite; evil cannot have produced itself because evil is always destructive and never productive. All things that exist are produced by the Good or the desire for the Good-which comes to the same thing. and towards Itself, in an unceasing orbit.” 18. Now some one, perhaps, will say: “If the 110 Beautiful and Good is an Object of Yearning and desire and love to all (for even that which is not longs for It, as was said, 323 323 The “matter” or stuff of which the universe is made, exists ultimately in the Good, but evil does not. All force exists ultimately in the Good, but the warping of it, or the lawlessness of it (which is the evil of it), does not exist in the Good. Force, or energy, as such is a relative embodiment of the Absolute: evil as such is a contradiction of the Absolute. and strives to find its rest therein, and thus It creates a form even in formless things and thus is said super-essentially to contain, and does so contain, the non-existent) 324 324 i. e. There is an element of good in evil things enabling them to cohere and so to exist.