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We must not treat legend as if it were history
at all, but we should adopt that which is appropriate
in each legend in accordance with its verisimilitude.
Whenever, therefore, we speak of material we must
not be swept away to the opinions of some philosophers,1 and conceive of an inanimate and indifferentiated body, which is of itself inert and inactive.
The fact is that we call oil the material of perfume
and gold the material of a statue, and these are not
destitute of all differentiation. We provide the very
soul and thought of Man as the basic material of
understanding and virtue for Reason to adorn and to
harmonize, and some have declared the Mind to be
a place for the assembling of forms and for the impression of concepts, as it were.2
[p. 141]
Some think the seed of Woman is not a power or
origin, but only material and nurture of generation.3
To this thought we should eling fast and conceive that
this Goddess also who participates always with the
first God and is associated with him in the love4 of
the fair and lovely things about him is not opposed
to him, but, just as we say that an honourable and
just man is in love if his relations are just, and a good
woman who has a husband and consorts with him we
say yearns for him ; thus we may conceive of her as
always clinging close to him and being importunate
over him and constantly filled with the most dominant and purest principles.
Plutarch. Moralia. with an English Translation by. Frank Cole Babbitt. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. London. William Heinemann Ltd. 1936. 5.
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