An even more controversial doctrine connected to matter was the explanation of evil. Plotinus had tried to uphold the view, consistent with his entire ontology, that at no point in the great chain of Being coming from above does anything emerge that could be regarded as evil, or the cause of evil. Nevertheless, evil, and in particular moral evil, is obviously part of our experience of the world, and an explanation had to be given as to where it originated. Plotinus’ answer was that evil arises from below, not above, and is intimately connected with matter. Yet importantly, matter is not an independent principle of evil in any Manichean or Gnostic sense, as it has no active power on its own. Rather, evil arises if and when higher beings, and in particular human beings, direct their attention towards the material world below, instead of the intelligible world above, and have an all-encompassing concern for it. The regard downwards, as it were, rather than upwards towards Consciousness and the divine essences, is what contaminates the soul and renders it morally evil.  Even though it is surprising how much explanatory force for the nature and existence of moral evil this theory affords, it remained controversial even among Neoplatonists. Proclus, in the fifth century, dedicated an entire treatise to repudiating Plotinus on this point.  Proclus abandoned the comforting notion of the essential goodness of humanity and, not unlike Augustine before him, insisted on the real possibility of the moral depravity of the human soul qua soul.