But the great problem that conversion evokes is analogous to the one we have found, on three occasions, in the notion of Procession. It is laid out entirely in one text of the Enneads: “That which is altogether without a share in the good would not ever seek the good.”56 That is to say: you would not look for me if you had not already found me.57 Or, in Plotinian terms: desire requires a certain immanence of that which is desired in that which desires. Will the One, then, be transcendent or immanent? This question is much debated, on the one hand by those partisans of Plotinus’s pantheism (Zeller), on the other hand, by those who see in the One a doctrine of transcendence (Caird).58Without pretending to resolve the question, we can nonetheless attempt to pose it differently.

In our view, God is therefore immanent. Desire demands it. And furthermore, we carry within ourselves the three hypostases, since it is through inner meditation that we attain ecstasy and Union with the One. On the other hand, we cannot deny Plotinus’s God an unquestionable transcendence in relation to other beings. When he creates he is not completed but superabounds without being depleted. In order to understand this contradiction, it is necessary to reverse the terms of the problem. If it is true that the one who learns to know himself knows also where he comes from,59 and if it is true that, being raised to his principle, he is to commune with himself, he must say that God is not immanent in any being, but that all things are immanent to God.

56. Ennead III, 5, 9: “Ce qui n’aurait absolument aucune part au Bien, ne saurait désirer le bien.”
    [Plotinus Ennead 3.5.9, trans. Armstrong, 203.—Trans.]
57. [This is a reference to Pascal’s famous remark: “Take comfort; you would not seek me if you had not found me.” Blaise Pascal, Pensées, trans. A. J. Krailsheimer (London: Penguin Books, 1995), 919 (553).—Trans.]
58. Edward Caird, The Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers, vol. 2 (Glasgow: James MacLehose and Sons, 1904), p. 315: “Thus the philosophy of Plotinus is the condemnation of the Greek dualism, just because it is he who carries it to its utmost point.” [In Camus’ note, the pages referenced for this quotation are 210 and 393.—Trans.] 59. Ennead V, 1, 1.

“The Soul is not in the universe, but the universe is in it . . . but soul is in Intellect and body in Soul, and Intellect in something else; but there is nothing other than this for it to be in: it is not, then, in anything; in this way therefore, it is nowhere. Where then are the other things? In it.”60 Let us consider, on the other hand, that all being has two actualities: the actuality of essence and an actuality that comes from essence; the former binds it to itself, the latter urges it to create and to leave its own nature. So it is with God. He rises up out of himself, but without failing to keep his essence. The whole error of all overly rigid interpretations of Plotinus is to place the One in space. Plotinus’s doctrine is an attempt at nonspatial thought. It is on this level, qualitative and inexpressible, that one must attempt to understand it. Or thus, to return to the previous analysis, to a psychological problem: does an abstract thought of space exist, that which is of another order? In attempting to assimilate the Plotinian experience, we see that the first principle is itself present in all Plotinus’s works,61namely, the principle that the One does not exist locally and that in a certain sense it is both transcendent and immanent to all things.62 All things considered, it is everywhere on the condition that it is nowhere, because what is bound nowhere has no place where it cannot be.

d) Ecstasy or Union with the One. Having examined this problem, we will be able to understand that in order to ascend to God, one must return to oneself. Carrying within itself the reflection of its origins, the

60. EnneadV, 5, 9: “L’Ame à son tour n’est pas dans le monde, mais le monde est en elle . . . l’Ame est dans l’Intelligence, le corps est dans l’Ame, l’Intelligence est en un autre principe; mais cet autre principe n’a plus rien de différent où il puisse être: il n’est donc pas en quoi que ce soit et, en ce sens, il n’est nulle part. Où sont donc les autres choses?
    En lui.”
    [Plotinus, Ennead 5.5.9, trans. Armstrong, 185.—Trans.]
61. Further, cf. EnneadVI, 5, 12: “Il n’est pas besoin qu’il vienne pour être présent, c’est vous qui êtes parti; partir ce n’est pas le quitter pour aller ailleurs; car il est là. Mais tout en restant près de lui vous vous en étiez détourné.”
    [Plotinus Ennead 6.5.12: “It did not come in order to be present, but you went away when it was not present. But if you went away, it was not from it—for it is present—and you did not even go away then, but were present and turned the opposite way.” Ennead 6, trans. Armstrong, 359.—Trans.]
62. On reconciling Christian mysticism. SUSO ex. no. 54: “C’est être en même tempsdans toutes choses et en dehors de toutes choses. C’est pourquoi un maître a dit que Dieu est comme un cercle dont le centre est partout et la circonférence nulle part.”
    [“It is to be simultaneously in all things and outside all things. This is why a master has said that God is like a circle of which the center is everywhere and the circumference is nowhere.”—Trans.]*

soul must be immersed in God. From God to God, such is its journey;63 but it must be purified, that is to say, it must be cleansed of what is bound to the soul during generation. It must not cling to what is not the soul,64 but must return to that homeland,65 the memory of which occasionally colors our souls’ restlessness. The soul, to that end, is destroyed and allows itself to be absorbed into intelligence, which dominates it, and intelligence in its turn endeavors to disappear in order to leave only the One that illuminates it. This union, so complete and so rare,66 is ecstasy.67 But here it is up to inner meditation to take over, and Plotinus stops at this point in his journey. The analysis can go no further nor any deeper. This sentiment, so nuanced and so “full” of divinity, this exquisite melancholy of certain Plotinian texts, leads us to the heart of the thought of its author. “Often I have woken up out of the body to my self and have entered into myself.”68 Solitary meditation, in love with the world to the extent that it is only a crystal in which the divinity is reflected, thought wholly penetrated by the silent rhythm of stars, but concerned about the God who orders them, Plotinus thinks as an artist and feels as a philosopher, according to a reason full of light and before a world in which intelligence breathes.

But before bringing into relief the original themes of Plotinus’s philosophy, and above all before examining how they serve or disadvantage the evolution of Christian metaphysics, let us consider, according to the texts, what Neoplatonism’s attitude was regarding Christianity. We will then have what is necessary in order to judge the originality of Neoplatonism in relation to Christian thought.

63. Arnou, [Le Désir de Dieu,] 191.
64. Ennead V, 5, 8.
65. Ennead I, VI, 8.
    [In “Summer in Algiers” Camus mentions Plotinus by name and uses his notion of a homeland to explain his own experience of unity with the world. “But at certain moments everything yearns for this homeland of the soul. ‘Yes, it is to this we must return.’ What is strange about finding on earth the unity Plotinus longed for?” Camus, “Summer in Algiers,” in Lyrical and Critical Essays, ed. Philip Thody, trans. Ellen Conroy Kennedy (New York: Knopf, 1968), 90. The notions of exile and homeland later became important images in the iconography of Camus’ work and in his critical assessment of modernity.—Trans.]
66. Porphyry, Vie de Plotin, 23.
    [The Life of Plotinus.—Trans.]
67. Principal texts: Enneads IV, 8, 1; VI, 9, 9; VI, 7, 39; VI, 8, 19.
68. Ennead IV, 8, 1: “Souvent je m’éveille à moi-même en m’échappant de mon corps.” [Plotinus Ennead 4.8.1, trans. Armstrong, 397.—Trans.]

II. The Resistance

The fervor with which Plotinus ascends toward God could delude us and tempt us to believe him more Christian than he was capable of being. His attitude toward the Gnostics, that is to say, regarding a certain form of Christian thought, and the more categorical position of his disciple Porphyry, will permit us, on the contrary, to judge prudently.

a) It is in the ninth treatise of Ennead II that Plotinus writes against a Gnostic sect that has yet to be defined precisely.69 There he contrasts eloquently his own coherent and harmonious universe with the romantic universe of the Gnostics. Through this contrast, we can grasp instantly a certain number of insurmountable oppositions between them. Plotinus’s reproaches bear on roughly four points, of varying importance moreover. He reproaches the Gnostics for despising the created world and for believing that a new world awaits them,70 for believing themselves to be children of God and for substituting for universal harmony a providence that will satisfy their egoism,71 for calling the most vile men brothers, even though they do not accord this name to the gods,72 and for having substituted for the virtue of wisdom the idea of an arbitrary salvation in which man has no part.73

This treatise is actually entitled “Against those who say that the