narrations with investigations of ethical dogmas, not for the sake of the
fables, but for the sake of the leading design, that we may not only
exercise the intellectual part of the soul, through contending reasons,
but that the divine part of the soul may more perfectly receive the
knowledge of beings, through its sympathy with more mystic concerns.
For from other discourses we resemble those who are compelled to the
reception of truth; but from fables we are affected in an ineffable
manner, and call forth our unperverted conceptions, venerating the mystic
information which they contain.

"Hence, as it appears to me, Timaeus with great propriety thinks it fit
that we should produce the divine genera, following the inventors of
fables as sons of the gods, and subscribe to their always generating
secondary natures from such as are first, though they should speak
without demonstration. For this kind of discourse is not demonstrative,
but entheastic, or the progeny of divine inspiration; and was invented by
the ancients, not through necessity, but for the sake of persuasion, not
regarding naked discipline, but sympathy with things themselves. But if
you are willing to speculate not only the causes of fables, but of other
theological dogmas, you will find that some of them are scattered in the
Platonic dialogues for the sake of ethical, and others for the sake of
physical considerations. For in the Philebus, Plato discourses concerning
bound and infinity, for the sake of pleasure, and a life according to
intellect. For I think the latter are species of the former. In the
Timaeus the discourse about the intelligible gods is assumed for the sake
of the proposed physiology. On which account, it is every where necessary
that images should be known from paradigms, but that the paradigms of
material things should be immaterial, of sensibles, intelligible, and of
physical forms, separate from nature. But in the Phaedrus, Plato
celebrates the supercelestial place, the subcelestial profundity, and