Nous Moves Man, and Vice Versa

Plato, H.P. Blavatsky · Constitution of Man Series · 15 pages

A comparative file, setting four divisions of the soul side by side so the sevenfold scheme can be seen as one option among several rather than an assertion. The Greeks divided the soul in two, noetic and phrenic; Pythagoras into three, Nous, Phren and Thymos; the Buddhists into seven; and the Theosophists also into seven — with Lord Buddha's comparison of man to the saptaparna, the seven-leaf plant, given as the image that reconciles them. A foreword distinguishes eternal vibration as Motion Unmanifested, a spiritual term, from vortical motion as Motion Manifested, a material one.

The larger half is Plato on the occult constituents of man, worked through in numbered order with the theosophical principle each answers to: Agathon as the Good at the seventh; Sophia as Wisdom at the sixth — with the Greek distinction between Sophia and Phronesis, and between Phronesis-wisdom and Sophrosyne or self-restraint, kept apart; Nous as Ideals and Phren as Ideality at the fifth, divided into two aspects. Two identifications carry the argument: that when Nous or purified mind is wedded to Sophia-wisdom the two are one again, and that Nous, the higher mind, is dikaiosyne, justice. The closing section brings Theosophists, Buddhists and Greeks together on man's triune nature.

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