Take, again, a totally different mystic, Jacob Boehme. He says that he saw in the Divine Essence three principles or aspects. The first he calls “the deepest Deity, without and beyond Nature,” and the next its manifestation in the Eternal Light-world. The third is that outer world in which we dwell according to the body, which is a manifestation, image or similitude of the Eternal. “And we are thus,” he says, “to understand reality as a threefold being, or three worlds _in one another_.” We observe again the absence of water-tight compartments. The whole of reality is present in every part of it; and the power of correspondence with all these aspects of it is latent in man. “If one sees a right man,” says Boehme again, “he may say, I see here three worlds standing.” We have now to distinguish the essential element in all this. How does it correspond with psychological facts? Some mystics, like Richard of St. Victor, have frankly exhibited its subjective side and so helped us to translate the statements of their fellows. Thus Dionysius the Areopagite says in a celebrated passage: “Threefold is the way to God. The first is the way of purification, in which the mind is inclined to learn true wisdom. The second is the way of illumination, in which the mind by contemplation is kindled to the burning of love. The third is the way of union, in which the mind by understanding, reason and spirit is led up by God alone.” This formula restates the Plotinian law; for the “contemplation” of Dionysius is the “spiritual intuition” of Plotinus, which inducts man into the intelligible world; his “union” is the Plotinian ecstatic vision of the One. It profoundly impressed the later Christian mystics, and has long been accepted as the classic description of spiritual growth, because it has been found again and again to answer to experience. It is therefore worth our while to examine it with some care.