associate with Providence in accomplishing truth, or, by following error, to fall beneath the law of destiny. The act of will joined to that of intelligence is nothing but a mathematical point, but from this point springs forth the spiritual universe. Every spirit partially feels by instinct what the theosophist totally understands by his intellect: that Evil is what causes man to descend to the fatality of matter, and that Good is what makes him rise towards the divine law of the Spirit. His true destiny is to be ever rising higher, and that from his own efforts. But to do this he must also be free to descend again to the very lowest. The circle of liberty widens out to the infinitely great in proportion as one ascends, it shrinks to the infinitely small in proportion as one descends. The higher one rises, the freer he becomes; for the more one enters into light, the more power for good he acquires. And the more one descends, the more enslaved does he become; for each fall into evil diminishes the intelligence of the true and the capacity for good. Destiny accordingly reigns over the past, Liberty over the future, and Providence over both, _i.e._ over the ever-existing present, which may be called Eternity.[20] From the combined action of Destiny, Liberty and Providence spring the innumerable destinies, the hells and the paradises of souls. Evil, being discord with divine law, is not the work of God but that of man, and has only a relative, an apparent and transitory existence. Good, being accord with divine law, alone really and eternally exists. Neither the priests of Delphi and Eleusis, nor the initiate philosophers would ever reveal these profound thoughts to the people, who might have misunderstood and misused them. In the Mysteries this doctrine was symbolically represented by the mutilation of Dionysos, though what was called _the sufferings of God_ was hidden from the profane by an impenetrable veil.