Let me repeat to you again. Pythagoras, Plato, Timaeus of Locris, and the old Alexandrian School, derived the _Soul_ of man (or his higher “principles” and attributes) from the Universal World Soul, the latter being, according to their teachings, _Aether_ (Pater-Zeus). Therefore, neither of these “principles” can be _unalloyed_ essence of the Pythagorean Monas, or our _Atma-Buddhi_, because the _Anima Mundi_ is but the effect, the subjective emanation or rather radiation of the former. Both the _human_ Spirit (or the individuality), the reincarnating Spiritual Ego, and Buddhi, the Spiritual soul, are pre-existent. But, while the former exists as a distinct entity, an individualization, the soul exists as pre-existing breath, an unscient portion of an intelligent whole. Both were originally formed from the Eternal Ocean of light; but as the Fire-Philosophers, the mediæval Theosophists, expressed it, there is a visible as well as invisible spirit in fire. They made a difference between the _anima bruta_ and the _anima divina_. Empedocles firmly believed all men and animals to possess two souls; and in Aristotle we find that he calls one the reasoning soul, νους and the other, the animal soul, ψυχη. According to these philosophers, the reasoning soul comes from _within_ the universal soul, and the other from _without_. ENQ. Would you call the Soul, _i.e._, the human thinking Soul, or what you call the Ego—matter? THEO. Not matter, but substance assuredly; nor would the word “matter,” if prefixed with the adjective, _primordial_, be a word to avoid. That matter, we say, is co-eternal with Spirit, and is not our visible, tangible, and divisible matter, but its extreme sublimation. Pure Spirit is but one remove from the _no_-Spirit, or the absolute _all_. Unless you admit that man was evolved out of this primordial Spirit-matter, and represents a regular progressive scale of “principles” from _meta_-Spirit down to the grossest matter, how can we ever come to regard the _inner_ man as immortal, and at the same time as a spiritual Entity and a mortal man? ENQ. Then why should you not believe in God as such an Entity? THEO. Because that which is infinite and unconditioned can have no form, and cannot be a being, not in any Eastern philosophy worthy of the name, at any rate. An “entity” is immortal, but is so only in its ultimate essence, not in its individual form. When at the last point of its cycle, it is absorbed into its primordial nature; and it becomes spirit, when it loses its name of Entity.