 Despite the considerable overlap between Plotinus and the Stoics on freedom, they differ significantly on fate. The Stoics think that god’s mind is a fiery breath. It is a material substance that pervades the cosmos and causally determines every event that will occur through its organization of the cosmos, which includes the matter that makes up our own minds. The motions in the cosmos, then, are the result of both the operations of matter and of reason. Plotinus, on the other hand, distinguishes the causal influences of matter and of mind. The One, the divine intellect, soul, and our intellects are all immaterial, and bodies are the lowest form of beings. For Plotinus, any purely materialistic metaphysics, such as the Epicureans’ scheme of atoms moving in the void, cannot explain the operations of mind, which stands above matter (Enn. III.1[3].3).