THEO. Because your translators, their great learning notwithstanding, have made of the philosophers, the Greeks especially, _misty_ instead of mystic writers. Take as an instance Plutarch, and read what he says of “the principles” of man. That which he describes was accepted literally and attributed to metaphysical superstition and ignorance. Let me give you an illustration in point: “Man,” says Plutarch, “is compound; and they are _mistaken who think him to be compounded of two parts only_. For they imagine that the understanding (brain intellect) is a part of the soul (the upper Triad), but they err in this no less than those who make the soul to be a part of the body, _i.e._, those who make of the _Triad_ part of the corruptible mortal _quaternary_. For the understanding (nous) as far exceeds the soul, as the soul is better and diviner than the body. Now this composition of the soul (ψυχη) with the understanding (νοῦς) makes reason; and with the body (or thumos, the animal soul) passion; of which the one is the beginning or principle of pleasure and pain, and the other of virtue and vice. Of these three parts conjoined and compacted together, the earth has given the body, the moon the soul, and the sun the understanding to the generation of man.” This last sentence is purely allegorical, and will be comprehended only by those who are versed in the esoteric science of correspondences and know which planet is _related to every principle_. Plutarch divides the latter into three groups, and makes of the body a compound of physical frame, astral shadow, and breath, or the triple lower part, which “from earth was taken and to earth returns”; of the middle principle and the instinctual soul, the second part, derived _from_ and _through_ and ever influenced by the moon[22]; and only of the higher part or the _Spiritual Soul_, with the Atmic and Manasic elements in it does he make a direct emanation of the Sun, who stands here for _Agathon_ the Supreme Deity. This is proven by what he says further as follows: “Now of the deaths we die, the one makes man two of three and the other one of (out of) two. The former is in the region and jurisdiction of Demeter, whence the name given to the Mysteries, τελειν, resembled that given to death, τελευταν. The Athenians also heretofore called the deceased sacred to Demeter. As for the other death, it is in the moon or region of Persephone.”