  According to Plotinus, matter is to be identified with evil and privation of all form or intelligibility (see II 4).  Plotinus holds this in conscious opposition to Aristotle, who distinguished matter from privation (see II 4. 16, 3–8).  Matter is what accounts for the diminished reality of the sensible world, for all natural things are composed of forms in matter.  The fact that matter is in principle deprived of all intelligibility and is still ultimately dependent on the One is an important clue as to how the causality of the latter operates.  