The Soul itself will be inviolately free and will be working to
set the irrational part of the nature above all attack, or if that may
not be, then at least to preserve it from violent assault, so that any
wound it takes may be slight and be healed at once by virtue of the
Soul's presence, just as a man living next door to a Sage would profit
by the neighbourhood, either in becoming wise and good himself or, for
sheer shame, never venturing any act which the nobler mind would
disapprove.

    There will be no battling in the Soul: the mere intervention of
Reason is enough: the lower nature will stand in such awe of Reason
that for any slightest movement it has made it will grieve, and
censure its own weakness, in not having kept low and still in the
presence of its lord.

    6. In all this there is no sin- there is only matter of
discipline- but our concern is not merely to be sinless but to be God.

    As long as there is any such involuntary action, the nature is
twofold, God and Demi-God, or rather God in association with a
nature of a lower power: when all the involuntary is suppressed, there
is God unmingled, a Divine Being of those that follow upon The First.

    For, at this height, the man is the very being that came from
the Supreme. The primal excellence restored, the essential man is
There: entering this sphere, he has associated himself with the
reasoning phase of his nature and this he will lead up into likeness
with his highest self, as far as earthly mind is capable, so that if
possible it shall never be inclined to, and at the least never
adopt, any course displeasing to its overlord.

    What form, then, does virtue take in one so lofty?

    It appears as Wisdom, which consists in the contemplation of all
that exists in the Intellectual-Principle, and as the immediate
presence of the Intellectual-Principle itself.

    And each of these has two modes or aspects: there is Wisdom as
it is in the Intellectual-Principle and as in the Soul; and there is
the Intellectual-Principle as it is present to itself and as it is
present to the Soul: this gives what in the Soul is Virtue, in the
Supreme not Virtue.

    In the Supreme, then, what is it?

    Its proper Act and Its Essence.

    That Act and Essence of the Supreme, manifested in a new form,
constitute the virtue of this sphere. For the Supreme is not
self-existent justice, or the Absolute of any defined virtue: it is,
so to speak, an exemplar, the source of what in the soul becomes
virtue: for virtue is dependent, seated in something not itself; the
Supreme is self-standing, independent.

    But taking Rectitude to be the due ordering of faculty, does it
not always imply the existence of diverse parts?

    No: There is a Rectitude of Diversity appropriate to what has
parts, but there is another, not less Rectitude than the former though
it resides in a Unity. And the authentic Absolute-Rectitude is the Act
of a Unity upon itself, of a Unity in which there is no this and
that and the other.

    On this principle, the supreme Rectitude of the Soul is that it
direct its Act towards the Intellectual-Principle: its Restraint
(Sophrosyne) is its inward bending towards the Intellectual-Principle;
its Fortitude is its being impassive in the likeness of That towards
which its gaze is set, Whose nature comports an impassivity which
the Soul acquires by virtue and must acquire if it is not to be at the
mercy of every state arising in its less noble companion.

    7. The virtues in the Soul run in a sequence correspondent to that
existing in the over-world, that is among their exemplars in the
Intellectual-Principle.

    In the Supreme, Intellection constitutes Knowledge and Wisdom;
self-concentration is Sophrosyne; Its proper Act is Its Dutifulness;
Its Immateriality, by which It remains inviolate within Itself is
the equivalent of Fortitude.

    In the Soul, the direction of vision towards the
Intellectual-Principle is Wisdom and Prudence, soul-virtues not
appropriate to the Supreme where Thinker and Thought are identical.
All the other virtues have similar correspondences.

    And if the term of purification is the production of a pure being,
then the purification of the Soul must produce all the virtues; if any
are lacking, then not one of them is perfect.

    And to possess the greater is potentially to possess the minor,
though the minor need not carry the greater with them.

    Thus we have indicated the dominant note in the life of the
Sage; but whether his possession of the minor virtues be actual as
well as potential, whether even the greater are in Act in him or yield
to qualities higher still, must be decided afresh in each several
case.

    Take, for example, Contemplative-Wisdom. If other guides of
conduct must be called in to meet a given need, can this virtue hold