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ONE:It is well for an apprentice to invent or demonstrate all that he can��the more the better; but as explained in a previous place, what is attempted should be according to some system, and with a proper object. Time spent groping in the dark after something of which no definite conception has been formed, or for any object not to fill an ascertained want, is generally time lost. To demonstrate or invent, one should begin methodically, like a bricklayer builds a wall, as he mortars and sets each brick, so should an engineer qualify, by careful study, each piece or movement that is added to a mechanical structure, so that when done, the result may be useful and enduring.Plotinus is driven by this perplexity to reconsider the whole theory of Matter.477 He takes Aristotle��s doctrine as the groundwork of his investigation. According to this, all existence is divided into Matter and Form. What we know of things��in other words, the sum of their differential characteristics��is their Form. Take away this, and the unknowable residuum is their Matter. Again, Matter is the vague indeterminate something out of which particular Forms are developed. The two are related as Possibility to Actuality, as the more generic to the more specific substance through every grade of classification and composition. Thus there are two Matters, the one sensible and the other intelligible. The former constitutes the common substratum of bodies, the other the common element of ideas.478 The general distinction between Matter and Form was originally suggested to Aristotle by Plato��s remarks on the same subject; but he differs325 from his master in two important particulars. Plato, in his Timaeus, seems to identify Matter with space.479 So far, it is a much more positive conception than the ?λη of the Metaphysics. On the other hand, he constantly opposes it to reality as something non-existent; and he at least implies that it is opposed to absolute good as a principle of absolute evil.480 Thus while the Aristotelian world is formed by the development of Power into Actuality, the Platonic world is composed by the union of Being and not-Being, of the Same and the Different, of the One and the Many, of the Limit and the Unlimited, of Good and Evil, in varying proportions with each other. TWO:

THREE:But the mystery had hardly begun!Besides the general religious movement which had long been in action, and was daily gaining strength from the increasing barbarisation of the empire, there was, at this juncture, a particular cause tending to bring Greek philosophy into close alliance with the mythology which it had formerly rejected and denounced. This was the rapid rise and spread of Christianity. St Augustine has said that of all heathen philosophers none came nearer to the Christian faith than the Neo-Platonists.528 Nevertheless, it was in them that the old religion found its only apologists and the new religion its most active assailants. We have already alluded to the elaborate polemic of Porphyry. Half a century later, the same principles could boast of a still more illustrious champion. The emperor Julian was imbued with the doctrines of Neo-Platonism, and was won back to the ancient faith by the teaching of its professors.