is a paraphrase: "Since
matter," says he, "is neither soul, nor intellect, nor life, nor form, nor
reason, nor bound, but a certain indefiniteness; nor yet capacity, for
what can it produce? Since it is foreign from all these, it cannot
merit the appellation of being, but is deservedly called non-entity.
Nor yet is it non-entity in the manner as motion or station; but it is
true non-entity, the mere shadow and imagination of bulk and the
desire of subsistence; abiding without station, of itself invisible, and
avoiding the desire of him who wishes to perceive its nature. Hence,
when no one perceives it, it is then in a manner present, but cannot
be viewed by him who strives intently to behold it. Again, in itself
contraries always appear, the small and the great, the less and the
more, deficience and excess. So that it is a phantom, neither abiding
nor yet able to fly away; capable of no one denomination and
possessing no power from intellect, but constituted in the defect and
shade, as it were, of all real being. Hence, too, in each of its
vanishing appellations it eludes our search; for if we think of it as
something great, it is in the meantime small; if as something more, it
becomes less; and the apparent being which we meet with in its
image is non-being, and as it were a flying mockery. So that the
forms which appear in matter are merely ludicrous, shadows falling
upon shadow, as in a mirror, where the position of a thing is
different from its real situation; and which, though apparently full of
forms, possesses nothing real and true--but imitations of being and
semblances flowing about a formless semblance. They appear,
indeed, to affect something in the subject matter, but in reality
produce nothing; from their debile and flowing nature being endued
with no solidity and no rebounding power. And since matter,
likewise, has no solidity they penetrate it without division, like
images in water, or as if anyone should fill a vacuum with forms."

7 "In itself perfectly pure." This is analogous to the description of
the beautiful in the latter part of Diotima's Speech in the _Banquet_;
a speech which is surely unequalled, both for elegance of
composition and sublimity of sentiment. Indeed, all the disciples of
Plato are remarkable for nothing so much as their profound and
exalted conceptions of the Deity; and he who can read the works of
Plotinus and Proclus in particular, and afterwards pity the weakness
and erroneo