love is the dominant principle of all life and describes how love operates in human beings’ lives. Sophia asks Philo to expound on his ideas of love's origin and universality. As the translation by F. Friedeberg-Seeley and Jean H. Barnes in The Philosophy of Love reads, The third and most lengthy dialogue, “Philo and Sophia on the Origin of Love” is a discussion about God's love and how it encompasses all of existence, from the lowest creatures to the heavens and is the “cohesion of the universe.” A discussion of beauty and the soul follows, with an analysis of Plato's ideas. The third dialogue is considered the most important at the aesthetic level. In this dialogue, Philo and Sophia meet unexpectedly. After Philo apologizes for not recognizing Sophia because he was struck by her beauteous image, he begins to discuss a comparison between the soul and intellect. As the translation by F. Friedeberg-Seeley and Jean H. Barnes in The Philosophy of Love reads, "The intellect is purely spiritual, whereas the soul is partly spiritual and partly corporeal, and is ever-moving to and fro between body and mind." Philo [later] defines the essence of love: Philo then turns to Sophia's first question, and shows her that love must have been created and is subject to birth, because it presupposes both lover and beloved, from whom it takes its origin. The answer to the second question—when was love first born?—must depend on yet another—when was the world first created? The first love and procreative cause of the universe is that of God for Himself as eternal lover and beloved, and whenever the universe was first created, then love was first born. As to the birthplace of love, this must have been the angelic world, which is the most perfect of all created being and has, therefore, the most perfect knowledge of the divine beauty it lacks. In answer to the fourth question—who were the parents of love?—Philo tells Sophia of the allegorical meaning of the birth of Cupid, and that of the ancient and mythological figure, Androgynous, and of the creation of Adam and Eve and the fall of man. The universal father of all love is the beautiful, and the universal mother a knowledge of the beautiful together with privation. Beauty is the necessity a prior condition of all love, because it is upon the world. The supremely beautiful is God,