certain respects. The idea of a perfect similarity
therefore arises within me without having its correspondence in
reality. And this idea helps me to form a judgment, as memory helps me
to a judgment and to knowledge. Just as one tree reminds me of others,
so am I reminded of the idea of similarity by looking at two things
from a certain point of view. Thoughts and memories therefore arise
within me which are not due to physical reality.

All kinds of knowledge not borrowed from sense-reality are grounded on
such thoughts. The whole of mathematics consists of them. He would be
a bad geometrician who could only bring into mathematical relations
what he can see with his eyes and touch with his hands. Thus we have
thoughts which do not originate in perishable nature, but arise out of
the spirit. And it is these that bear in them the mark of eternal
truth. What mathematics teach will be eternally true, even if
to-morrow the whole cosmic system should fall into ruins and an
entirely new one arise. Conditions might prevail in another cosmic
system, to which our present mathematical truths would not be
applicable, but these would be none the less true in themselves.

It is only when the soul is alone with itself that it can bring forth
these eternal truths. It is at these times related to the true and
eternal, and not to the ephemeral and apparent. Hence Socrates says:
"When the soul returning into itself reflects, it goes straight to
what is pure and everlasting and immortal and like unto itself; and
being related to this, cleaves unto it when the soul is alone, and is
not hindered. And then the soul rests from its mistakes, and is like
unto itself, even as the eternal is, with whom the soul is now in
touch. This state of soul is called wisdom.... Look now whether it
does not follow from all that has been said, that the soul is most
like the divine, immortal, reasonable, unique, indissoluble, what is
always the same and like unto itself; and that on the other hand the
body most resembles what is human and mortal, unreasonable, multiform,
soluble, never the same nor remaining equal to itself.... If,
therefore, this be so, the soul goes to what is like itself, to the
immaterial, to the divine, immortal, reasonable. There it attains to
bliss, freed from error and ignorance, from fear and undisciplined
love and all other human evils. There it lives, as the initiates say,
for the remaining time truly with God."

It is not with