Then yet again, the one word Intellection covers two distinct
Acts?

    Rather there is primal Intellection and there is Intellection
deriving from the Primal and of other scope.

    As speech is the echo of the thought in the Soul, so thought in
the Soul is an echo from elsewhere: that is to say, as the uttered
thought is an image of the soul-thought, so the soul-thought images
a thought above itself and is the interpreter of the higher sphere.

    Virtue, in the same way, is a thing of the Soul: it does not
belong to the Intellectual-Principle or to the Transcendence.

    4. We come, so, to the question whether Purification is the
whole of this human quality, virtue, or merely the forerunner upon
which virtue follows? Does virtue imply the achieved state of
purification or does the mere process suffice to it, Virtue being
something of less perfection than the accomplished pureness which is
almost the Term?

    To have been purified is to have cleansed away everything alien:
but Goodness is something more.

    If before the impurity entered there was Goodness, the Goodness
suffices; but even so, not the act of cleansing but the cleansed thing
that emerges will be The Good. And it remains to establish what this
emergent is.

    It can scarcely prove to be The Good: The Absolute Good cannot
be thought to have taken up its abode with Evil. We can think of it
only as something of the nature of good but paying a double allegiance
and unable to rest in the Authentic Good.

    The Soul's true Good is in devotion to the Intellectual-Principle,
its kin; evil to the Soul lies in frequenting strangers. There is no
other way for it than to purify itself and so enter into relation with
its own; the new phase begins by a new orientation.

    After the Purification, then, there is still this orientation to
be made? No: by the purification the true alignment stands
accomplished.

    The Soul's virtue, then, is this alignment? No: it is what the
alignment brings about within.

    And this is...?

    That it sees; that, like sight affected by the thing seen, the
soul admits the imprint, graven upon it and working within it, of
the vision it has come to.

    But was not the Soul possessed of all this always, or had it
forgotten?

    What it now sees, it certainly always possessed, but as lying away
in the dark, not as acting within it: to dispel the darkness, and thus
come to knowledge of its inner content, it must thrust towards the
light.

    Besides, it possessed not the originals but images, pictures;
and these it must bring into closer accord with the verities they
represent. And, further, if the Intellectual-Principle is said to be a
possession of the Soul, this is only in the sense that It is not alien
and that the link becomes very close when the Soul's sight is turned
towards It: otherwise, ever-present though It be, It remains
foreign, just as our knowledge, if it does not determine action, is
dead to us.

    5. So we come to the scope of the purification: that understood,
the nature of Likeness becomes clear. Likeness to what Principle?
Identity with what God?

    The question is substantially this: how far does purification
dispel the two orders of passion- anger, desire and the like, with
grief and its kin- and in what degree the disengagement from the
body is possible.

    Disengagement means simply that the soul withdraws to its own
place.

    It will hold itself above all passions and affections. Necessary
pleasures and all the activity of the senses it will employ only for
medicament and assuagement lest its work be impeded. Pain it may
combat, but, failing the cure, it will bear meekly and ease it by
refusing assent to it. All passionate action it will check: the
suppression will be complete if that be possible, but at worst the
Soul will never itself take fire but will keep the involuntary and
uncontrolled outside its precincts and rare and weak at that. The Soul
has nothing to dread, though no doubt the involuntary has some power
here too: fear therefore must cease, except so far as it is purely
monitory. What desire there may be can never be for the vile; even the
food and drink necessary for restoration will lie outside of the
Soul's attention, and not less the sexual appetite: or if such
desire there must be, it will turn upon the actual needs of the nature
and be entirely under control; or if any uncontrolled motion takes
place, it will reach no further than the imagination, be no more
than a fleeting fancy.