s towards Himself as
a magnet draws iron, with a constant unvarying attraction. This theory
of emanation is often sharply contrasted with that of evolution, and
is supposed to be discredited by modern science; but that is only true
if the emanation is regarded as a process in time, which for the
Neoplatonist it is not.[133] In fact, Plotinus uses the word
"evolution" to explain the process of nature.[134]

The whole universe is one vast organism,[135] and if one member
suffer, all the members suffer with it.[136] This is why a "faint
movement of sympathy[137]" stirs within us at the sight of any living
creature. So Origen says, "As our body, while consisting of many
members, is yet held together by one soul, so the universe is to be
thought of as an immense living being, which is held together by one
soul--the power and the Logos of God." All existence is drawn upwards
towards God by a kind of centripetal attraction, which is unconscious
in the lower, half conscious in the higher organisms.

Christian Neoplatonism tended to identify the Logos, as the Second
Person of the Trinity, with the [Greek: Nous], "Mind" or
"Intelligence," of Plotinus, and rightly; but in Plotinus the word
Logos has a less exalted position, being practically what we call
"law," regarded as a vital force.[138]

Plotinus' Trinity are the One or the Good, who is above existence,
God as the Absolute; the Intelligence, who occupies the sphere of real
existence, organic unity comprehending multiplicity--the One-Many, as
he calls it, or, as we might call it, God as thought, God existing in
and for Himself; and the Soul, the One and Many, occupying the sphere
of appearance or imperfect reality--God as action. Soulless matter,
which only exists as a logical abstraction, is arrived at by looking
at things "in disconnexion, dull and spiritless." It is the sphere of
the "merely many," and is zero, as "the One who is not" is Infinity.

The Intelligible World is timeless and spaceless, and contains the
archetypes of the Sensible World. The Sensible World is _our_ view of
the Intelligible World. When we say it does not exist, we mean that we
shall not always see it in this form. The "Ideas" are the ultimate
form in which things are regarded by Intelligence, or by God. [Greek:
Nous] is described as at once [Greek: stasis] and [Greek:
kinesis], that is, it is unchanging itself, but the whole cosmic
process, which is ever in flux, is eternally present to it as