ENQ. You say that they accept and believe in the doctrines of Theosophy. But, as they do not belong to those Adepts you have just mentioned, then they must accept your teachings on _blind faith_. In what does this differ from that of conventional religions? THEO. As it differs on almost all the other points, so it differs on this one. What you call “faith,” and that which is _blind faith_, in reality, and with regard to the dogmas of the Christian religions, becomes with us “_knowledge_,” the logical sequence of things _we know_, about _facts_ in nature. Your Doctrines are based upon interpretation, therefore, upon the _second-hand_ testimony of Seers; ours upon the invariable and unvarying testimony of Seers. The ordinary Christian theology for instance, holds that man is a creature of God, of three component parts—body, soul, and spirit—all essential to his integrity, and all, either in the gross form of physical earthly existence or in the etherealized form of post-resurrection experience, needed to so constitute him for ever, each man having thus a permanent existence separate from other men, and from the Divine. Theosophy, on the other hand, holds that man, being an emanation from the Unknown, yet ever present and infinite Divine Essence, his body and everything else is impermanent, hence an illusion; Spirit alone in him being the one enduring substance, and even that losing its separated individuality at the moment of its complete reunion with the _Universal Spirit_. ENQ. If we lose even our individuality, then it becomes simply annihilation. THEO. I say it _does not_, since I speak of _separate_, not of universal individuality. The latter becomes as a part transformed into the whole; the _dewdrop_ is not evaporated, but becomes the sea. Is physical man _annihilated_, when from a fœtus he becomes an old man? What kind of Satanic pride must be ours if we place our infinitesimally small consciousness and individuality higher than the universal and infinite consciousness! ENQ. It follows, then, that there is, _de facto_, no man, but all is Spirit? THEO. You are mistaken. It thus follows that the union of Spirit with matter is but temporary; or, to put it more clearly, since Spirit and matter are one, being the two opposite poles of the _universal_ manifested substance—that Spirit loses its right to the name so long as the smallest particle and atom of its manifesting substance still clings to any form, the result of differentiation. To believe otherwise is _blind faith_. ENQ. Thus it is on _knowledge_, not on _faith_, that you assert that the permanent principle, the Spirit, simply makes a transit through matter?