According to some, however, Socrates in what he here says about Orithya and Boreas does not admit the explanation of fables. But it is evident that he frequently does admit and employ fables. Now, indeed, he blames those explanations which make fables to be nothing more than certain histories, and unfold them into material causes, airs, and earth, and winds, which do not revert to true beings, nor harmonize with divine concerns. Hence, Socrates now says, If unfolding this fable I should recur to physical causes, and should assert that the wind Boreas, blowing vehemently, hurled Orithya as she was playing from the rock, and thus dying she was said to have been ravished by Boreas,--should I not speak absurdly? For this explanation which is adopted by the _wise_, viz. by those who are employed in physical speculations, is meagre and conjectural; since it does not recur to true beings, but to natures, and winds, airs and vortices, as he also says in the Phædo. He rejects, therefore, these naturalists, and those who thus explain this fable, as falling into the indefinite and infinite, and not recurring to soul, intellect, and the Gods. But when Socrates says that he considers such interpretations as the province of a man _very curious and laborious, and not entirely happy_, these words indicate the being conversant with things sensible and material. And the Centaurs, Chimæras, Gorgons, and Pegasuses, are powers which preside over a material nature, and the region about the earth.[168] When Socrates also says, that he is not yet able to know himself, his meaning may be, either that he does not yet know himself as pure soul itself, but that as being in body he knows himself; or that he does not yet know himself, as he is known by divinity. For if ever any man knew himself, this was certainly the case with Socrates. When likewise he says, “I do not contemplate these, but myself;” this is because he who knows himself knows all things. For in consequence of the soul being παμμορφον αγαλμα an omniform image, he beholds all things in himself. But by Typhon here we must understand that power which presides over the confused and disordered in the universe, or in other words over the last procession of things. The term _manifold_, therefore, in this place, must not be applied to the God Typhon, but to that over which he presides, as being in its own nature moved in a confused, disordered, and manifold manner. For it is usual with fables to refer the properties of the objects of providential care to the providing powers themselves.