9. Ideas of this or a similar order may be held not rashly to underlie the words of our text. The Cross of Life may well be called the Harmony--or articulation, or joining-together--of Wisdom, for it is by means of Wisdom that all the contraries are joined together, and this Articulation constitutes the "firm necessity" of Fate, which was also called in the Gnostic schools the Harmony. And if it is a Cross of Life, it is also a Cross of Light, for Life and Light are the eternally united twin-natures, female and male, of the Logos, the Good. Life is Passion and Light is Understanding. The Logos divides Himself to experience and know Himself. 10. All opposites unite in Wisdom as a ground; she is the pure substance in which all the powers play. It is only when the Cross is regarded as a separator, that it may be said to have a right and a left, with good forces on the one hand and evil on the other. The forces are in reality in themselves the same forces; it is the personality of the man (represented by the upright of the Cross), which refers all things to its incomplete self, that regards them as good and evil. This personality is rooted in the Lower Root or lower nature, and stretches upward towards the Above. But in reality there are roots above and branches below, or roots below and branches above, of the trunk of this Tree of Life and Light. Though the nomenclature is somewhat different, I cannot refrain from quoting a striking passage from a Gnostic scripture to give the reader some idea of the lofty region of thought to which the Gnosis accustomed its disciples. It is taken from _The Great Announcement_, a document ascribed by Hippolytus to the very beginning of the Christianized Gnosis. Strong efforts have been made to question this ascription, and to prove the document to be of a later date, but I think I have established a high probability that it may be even a pre-Christian writing (see _H._, i. 184). The text is to be found in Hippolytus' _Refutation of all Heresies_ (vi., 18): "To you, therefore, I say what I say and write what I write. And the writing is this: "Of the universal Æons (Eternities) there are two Branchings, without beginning or end, from one Root, which is the Power unseeable, incomprehensible Silence. "Of these Branchings one is manifested from Above--the Great Power, Mind of the universals, ordering all things, male; and the other from Below--Great Thought, female, generating all things. "Thence partnering one another they pair (lit. have union--_syzygía_), and bring into manifestation the Middle Distance, incomprehensible Air without beginning or end. "In this is that Father, who supports and nourishes the things which have beginning and end. "This is He who has stood, stands and shall stand--a male-female Power in accordance with the transcendent Boundless Power, which hath neither beginning nor end, subsisting in onlyness.