This cause, therefore, of all existing things cannot be any one of them. - Plotinus

The proof of the mightiest power is to be able to use the ignoble nobly, and given formlessness, to make it the material of unknown forms.

The soul in its nature loves God and longs to be at one with Him in the noble love of a daughter for a noble father; but coming to human birth and lured by the courtships of this sphere, she takes up with another love, a mortal, leaves her father and falls.

For the life it leads is dark with evil, sunk in manifold death. It sees no longer what the soul should see. It can no longer rest within itself but is forever being dragged towards the external, the lower, the dark.