and came, he says, before the One-who-was-Not. For towards him every nature strains on account of his exceeding beauty and bloom,[47] but each differently. But the coarser part still remaining in the seed, although resembling the other,[48] could not go on high, for it lacked the fineness of division which the ascending Sonhood had of itself, and was (therefore) left behind. Then the coarser Sonhood wings itself with some such wing as that wherewith Plato, Aristotle’s teacher, equips the soul in the _Phaedrus_,[49] and Basilides calls the same not a wing but Holy Spirit, clothed wherewith the Sonhood both gives and receives benefit. It gives it because a bird’s wing taken by itself and severed from the bird would neither become uplifted nor high in [Sidenote: p. 351.] air, nor would the bird be uplifted and high in air if deprived of the wing. This then is the relation which the Sonhood bears to the Spirit and the Spirit to the Sonhood. For the Sonhood borne aloft by the Spirit as by a wing bears aloft the wing, (that is the Spirit) and draws nigh to the subtler Sonhood and to the God-who-was-Not and fashions all things from the non-existent. But [the Spirit] cannot abide with the Sonhood for it is not of the same essence,[50] nor has it the same nature as the Sonhood. But just as dry and pure air is naturally fatal to fishes, so naturally to the Holy Spirit was that place, more ineffable than the ineffable ones and higher than all names, which is the seat at once of the God-who-was-Not and of the [first] Sonhood. Therefore the Sonhood left the Spirit near that blessed place which cannot be conceived nor characterized[51] by any speech, [yet] not altogether alone nor [completely] severed from the Sonhood. For just as when a sweet perfume is poured into a jar, even if the jar is carefully emptied a certain fragrance of the perfume still remains and is left behind, and although [Sidenote: p. 352.] the perfume be removed from the jar, the jar retains the fragrance, but not the perfume--so the Holy Spirit remained bereft of and severed from the Sonhood. And this is the saying: “As the perfume on Aaron’s head ran down to his beard.”[52] This is the savour carried down by the Holy Spirit from on high into the Formlessness[53] and Space of this world of ours, whence the Sonhood first went on high as on the wings of an eagle and borne on his loins. For all things, he says, strain upward from below, from the worse to the better. But there is thus nothing of those things which are among the better which is immovable, so that it cannot come below. But the third Sonhood, he says, which is in need of purification, remains in the great heap of the Seed-mass giving and receiving benefits. And in what manner it does this, we shall see later in the fitting place.[54]