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  • cance to the Holy Ghost (world-soul, moon). (See what

follows concerning Chi of Timæus.) According to Plotinus, the world-soul has a tendency toward a divided existence and towards divisibility, the conditio sine qua non of all change, creation and procreation (also a maternal quality). It is an "unending all of life" and wholly energy; it is a living organism of ideas, which attain in it effectiveness and reality.[22] The intellect is its procreator, its father, which, having conceived it, brings it to development in thought.[23]


"What lies enclosed in the intellect, comes to development in the world-soul as logos, fills it with meaning and makes it as if intoxicated with nectar."[24]


Nectar is analogous to soma, the drink of fertility and of life, also to sperma. The soul is fructified by the intellect; as oversoul it is called heavenly Aphrodite, as the undersoul the earthly Aphrodite. "It knows the birth pangs,"[25] and so on. The bird of Aphrodite, the dove, is not without good cause the symbol of the Holy Ghost.

This fragment of the history of philosophy, which may easily be enlarged, shows the significance of the endo-*psychic perception of the libido and of its symbolism in human thought.

In the diversity of natural phenomena we see the desire, the libido, in the most diverse applications and forms. We see the libido in the stage of childhood almost wholly occupied in the instinct of nutrition, which takes care of the upbuilding of the body. With the development of the body there are successively opened new spheres of appli-