known things, a spirit
temporarily united to an animal body?'

'Enchanted in it, as in a dungeon, rather,' said she sighing.

'Be it so if you will. But--must we not say that the archetype--the very
man--that if he is the archetype, he too will be, or must have been,
once at least, temporarily enchanted into an animal body?.... You
are silent. I will not press you.... Only ask you to consider at your
leisure whether Plato may not justify somewhat from the charge of
absurdity the fisherman of Galilee, where he said that He in whose
image man is made was made flesh, and dwelt with him bodily there by the
lake-side at Tiberias, and that he beheld His Glory, the glory as of the
only-begotten of the Father.'

'That last question is a very different one. God made flesh! My reason
revolts at it.'

'Old Homer's reason did not.'

Hypatia started, for she recollected her yesterday's cravings after
those old, palpable, and human deities. And--'Go on,' she cried eagerly.

'Tell me, then--This archetype of man, if it exists anywhere, it must
exist eternally in the mind of God? At least, Plato would have so said?'

'Yes.'

'And derive its existence immediately from Him?'

'Yes.'

'But a man is one willing person, unlike to all others.'

'Yes.'

'Then this archetype must be such.'

'I suppose so.'

'But possessing the faculties and properties of all men in their highest
perfection.'

'Of course.'

'How sweetly and obediently my late teacher becomes my pupil!'

Hypatia looked at him with her eyes full of tears.

'I never taught you anything, Raphael.'

'You taught me most, beloved lady, when you least thought of it. But
tell me one thing more. Is it not the property of every man to be a
son? For you can conceive of a man as not being a father, but not as not
being a son.'

'Be it so.'

'Then this archetype must be a son also.'

'Whose son, Raphael?'

'Why not of "Zeus, father of gods and men"? For we agreed that it--we
will call it he, now, having agreed that it is a person--could owe its
existence to none but God Himself.'

'And what then?' said Hypatia, fixing those glorious eyes full on his
face, in an agony of doubt, but yet, as Raphael declared to his dying
day, of hope and joy.

'Well, Hypatia, and must not a son be of the same species as his father?
"Eagles," says the poet, "do not beget doves." Is the word son anything
but an empty and false metaphor, unless the son be the perfect and equal
l