Isis Unveiled

Preface

THE work now submitted to public judgment is the fruit of a somewhat intimate acquaintance with Eastern adepts and study of their science. It is offered to such as are willing to accept truth wherever it may be found, and to defend it, even looking popular prejudice straight in the face. It is an attempt to aid the student to detect the vital principles which underlie the philosophical systems of old.

The book is written in all sincerity. It is meant to do even justice, and to speak the truth alike without malice or prejudice. But it shows neither mercy for enthroned error, nor reverence for usurped authority. It demands for a spoliated past, that credit for its achievements which has been too long withheld. It calls for a restitution of borrowed robes, and the vindication of calumniated but glorious reputations. Toward no form of worship, no religious faith, no scientific hypothesis has its criticism been directed in any other spirit. Men and parties, sects and schools are but the mere ephemera of the world's day. TRUTH, high-seated upon its rock of adamant, is alone eternal and supreme.

We believe in no Magic which transcends the scope and capacity of the human mind, nor in "miracle," whether divine or diabolical, if such imply a transgression of the laws of nature instituted from all eternity. Nevertheless, we accept the saying of the gifted author of Festus, that the human heart has not yet fully uttered itself, and that we have never attained or even understood the extent of its powers. Is it too much to believe that man should be developing new sensibilities and a closer relation with nature? The logic of evolution must teach as much, if carried to its legitimate conclusions. If, somewhere, in the line of ascent from vegetable or ascidian to the noblest man a soul was evolved, gifted with intellectual qualities, it cannot be unreasonable to infer and believe that a faculty of perception is also growing in man, enabling him to descry facts and truths even beyond our ordinary ken. Yet we do not hesitate to accept the assertion of Biffe, that "the essential is forever the same. Whether we cut away the marble inward that hides the statue in the block, or pile stone

Hi upon stone outward till the temple is completed, our NEW result is only an old idea. The latest of all the eternities will find its destined other half-soul in the earliest." When, years ago, we first travelled over the East, exploring the penetralia of its deserted sanctuaries, two saddening and ever-recurring questions oppressed our thoughts: Where, WHO, WHAT is God? Who ever saw the IMMORTAL SPIRIT of man, so as to be able to assure himself of man's immortality?

It was while most anxious to solve these perplexing problems that we came into contact with certain men, endowed with such mysterious powers and such profound knowledge that we may truly designate them as the sages of the Orient. To their instructions we lent a ready ear. They showed us that by combining science with religion, the existence of God and immortality of man's spirit may be demonstrated like a problem of Euclid. For the first time we received the assurance that the Oriental philosophy has room for no other faith than an absolute and immovable faith in the omnipotence of man's own immortal self. We were taught that this omnipotence comes from the kinship of man's spirit with the Universal Soul — God! The latter, they said, can never be demonstrated but by the former. Man-spirit proves God-spirit, as the one drop of water proves a source from which it must have come. Tell one who had never seen water, that there is an ocean of water, and he must accept it on faith or reject it altogether. But let one drop fall upon his hand, and he then has the fact from which all the rest may be inferred. After that he could by degrees understand that a boundless and fathomless ocean of water existed. Blind faith would no longer be necessary; he would have supplanted it with KNOWLEDGE. When one sees mortal man displaying tremendous capabilities, controlling the forces of nature and opening up to view the world of spirit, the reflective mind is overwhelmed with the conviction that if one man's spiritual Ego can do this much, the capabilities of the FATHER SPIRIT must be relatively as much vaster as the whole ocean surpasses the single drop in volume and potency. Ex nihilo nihil fit; prove the soul of man by its wondrous powers — you have proved God! In our studies, mysteries were shown to be no mysteries. Names and places that to the Western mind have only a significance derived from Eastern fable, were shown to be realities. Reverently we stepped in spirit within the temple of Isis; to lift aside the veil of "the one that is and was and shall be" at Sais; to look through the rent curtain of the Sanctum Sanctorum at Jerusalem; and even to interrogate within the crypts which once existed iv beneath the sacred edifice, the mysterious Bath-Kol. The Filia Vocis — the daughter of the divine voice — responded from the mercy-seat within the veil,’ 1 ' and science, theology, every human hypothesis and conception born of imperfect knowledge, lost forever their authoritative character in our sight. The one-living God had spoken through his oracle—man, and we were satisfied. Such knowledge is priceless; and it has been hidden only from those who overlooked it, derided it, or denied its existence.

From such as these we apprehend criticism, censure, and perhaps hostility, although the obstacles in our way neither spring from the validity of proof, the authenticated facts of history, nor the lack of common sense among the public whom we address. The drift of modern thought is palpably in the direction of liberalism in religion as well as science. Each day brings the reactionists nearer to the point where they must surrender the despotic authority over the public conscience, which they have so long enjoyed and exercised. When the Pope can go to the extreme of fulminating anathemas against all who maintain the liberty of the Press and of speech, or who insist that in the conflict of laws, civil and ecclesiastical, the civil law should prevail, or that any method of instruction solely secular, may be approved;+ and Mr. Tyndall, as the mouth-piece of nineteenth century science, says, ". . . the impregnable position of science may be stated in a few words: we claim, and we shall wrest from theology, the entire domain of cosmological theory":):—the end is not difficult to foresee.

Centuries of subjection have not quite congealed the life-blood of men into crystals around the nucleus of blind faith; and the nineteenth is witnessing the struggles of the giant as he shakes off the Liliputian cordage and rises to his feet. Even the Protestant communion of England and America, now engaged in the revision of the text of its Oracles, will be compelled to show the origin and merits of the text itself. The day of domineering over men with dogmas has reached its gloaming.

* Lightfoot assures us that this voice, which had been used in times past for a testimony from heaven, "was indeed performed by magic art” (vol. ii., p. 128). This latter term is used as a supercilious expression, just because it was and is still misunderstood. It is the object of this work to correct the erroneous opinions concerning "magic art." t Encyclical of 1864. j :"Fragments of Science."

v

Our work, then, is a plea for the recognition of the Hermetic philosophy, the anciently universal Wisdom-Religion, as the only possible key to the Absolute in science and theology. To show that we do not at all conceal from ourselves the gravity of our undertaking, we may say in advance that it would not be strange if the following classes should array themselves against us:

The Christians, who will see that we question the evidences of the genuineness of their faith. The Scientists, who will find their pretensions placed in the same bundle with those of the Roman Catholic Church for infallibility, and, in certain particulars, the sages and philosophers of the ancient world classed higher than they. Pseudo-Scientists will, of course, denounce us furiously. Broad Churchmen and Freethinkers will find that we do not accept what they do, but demand the recognition of the whole truth. Men of letters and various authorities, who hide their real belief in deference to popular prejudices. The mercenaries and parasites of the Press, who prostitute its more than royal power, and dishonor a noble profession, will find it easy to mock at things too wonderful for them to understand; for to them the price of a paragraph is more than the value of sincerity. From many will come honest criticism; from many — cant. But we look to the future. The contest now going on between the party of public conscience and the party of reaction, has already developed a healthier tone of thought. It will hardly fail to result ultimately in the overthrow of error and the triumph of Truth. We repeat again — we are laboring for the brighter morrow. And yet, when we consider the bitter opposition that we are called upon to face, who is better entitled than we upon entering the arena to write upon our shield the hail of the Roman gladiator to Caesar: MORITURUS TE SALUTAt!

New York, September, 1877 vi

Table Of Contents

PREFACE.iii

BEFORE THE VEIL

Dogmatic Assumptions of Modern Science and Theology .xviii

Chapter I Old Things With New Names

The Oriental Kabala.1

Ancient Traditions Supported by Modern Research.2

The Progress of Mankind Marked by Cycles.4

Ancient Cryptic Science.6

Priceless Value of the Vedas.10

Mutilations of the Jewish Sacred Books in Translation.11

Magic Always Regarded as a Divine Science.22

Achievements of its Adepts and Hypotheses of their Modern Detractors.22

Man's Yearning for Immortality.32

Chapter II Phenomena And Forces

The Servility of Society.34

Prejudice and Bigotry of Men of Science.35

They Are Chased by Psychical Phenomena.36

Lost Arts.43

The Human Will the Master-Force of Forces.50

Superficial Generalizations of the French Savants.53

Mediumistic Phenomena, to What Attributable.59

viii

Their Relation to Crime

Chapter III Blind Leaders Of The Blind

Huxley's Derivation from the Orohippus. 65

Comte, His System and Disciples.66

The London Materialists.75

Borrowed Robes. 79

Emanation of the Objective Universe from the Subjective.82

Chapter IV Theories Respecting Psychic Phenomena

Theory of de Gasparin.88

Theory of Thury.88

Theory of des Mousseaux, de Mirville.88

Theory of Babinet.89

Theory of Houdin.90

Theory of MM. Royer and Jobart de Lamballe. 90

The Twins "Unconscious Cerebration" and "Unconscious Ventriloquism".93

Theory of Crookes. 99

IX

Theory of Faraday .103

Theory of Chevreuil .103

The Mendeleyeff Commission of 1876.104

Soul Blindness.107

Chapter V The Ether, Or "astral Light"

One Primal Force, but Many Correlations.111

Tyndall Narrowly Escapes a Great Discovery.113

The Impossibility of Miracle .114

Nature of the Primordial Substance.118

Interpretation of Certain Ancient Myths.119

Experiments of the Fakirs .123

Evolution in Hindu Allegory .136

Chapter VI Psycho-physical Phenomena

The Debt We Owe to Paracelsus.145

Mesmerism — Its Parentage, Reception, Potentiality.146

"PSYCHOMETRY" .162

X

Time, Space, Eternity.163

Transfer of Energy from the Visible to the Invisible Universe.165

The Crookes Experiments and Cox Theory.174

Chapter VII The Elements, Elementals, And Element Aries

Attraction and Repulsion Universal in All the Kingdoms of Nature.183

Psychical Phenomena Depend on Physical Surroundings.188

Observations in Siam.191

Music in Nervous Disorders.192

The "World-Soul" and its Potentialities.193

Healing by Touch, and Healers.193

"Diakka" and Porphyry's Bad Demons.195

The Quenchless Lamp.200

Modern Ignorance of Vital Force.212

Antiquity of the Theory of Force-Correlation.215

Universality of Belief in Magic.221

Chapter VIII Some Mysteries Of Nature

XI

Do the Planets Affect Human Destiny?.226

Very Curious Passage from Hermes.227

The Restlessness of Matter.229

Prophecy of Nostradamus Fulfilled.232

Sympathies between Planets and Plants.236

Hindu Knowledge of the Properties of Colors.236

"Coincidences" the Panacea of Modern Science.240

The Moon and the Tides.244

Epidemic Mental and Moral Disorders.245

The Gods of the Pantheons Only Natural Forces.250

Proofs of the Magical Powers of Pythagoras.253

The Viewless Races of Ethereal Space.254

The "Four Truths” of Buddhism.260

Chapter IX Cyclic Phenomena

Meaning of the Expression "Coats of Skin".262

Natural Selection and its Results.264

The Egyptian "Circle of Necessity".265

Pre-Adamite Races.268

Descent of Spirit into Matter.270

The Triune Nature of Man.276

The Lowest Creatures in the Scale of Being.277

xii

Elementals Specifically Described.279

Proclus on the Beings of the Air.279

Various Names for Elementals.281

SWEDENBORGIAN VIEWS ON SOUL-DEATH .284

Earth-Bound Human Souls.286

Impure Mediums and their "Guides".291

PSYCHOMETRY AN AlD TO SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH .298

Chapter X The Inner And Outer Man

Pere Felix Arraigns the Scientists.302

The "Unknowable".304

Danger of Evocations by Tyros.306

Lares and Lemures.308

Secrets of Hindu Temples.313

Reincarnation.314

Witchcraft and Witches.315

The Sacred Soma Trance.319

Vulnerability of Certain "Shadows".324

Experiment of Clearchus on a Sleeping Boy.326

The Author Witnesses a Trial of Magic in India.329

Case of the Cevennois.331

xiii

Chapter XI Psychological And Physical Marvels

Invulnerability Attainable by Man.338

Projecting the Force of the Will .339

Insensibility to Snake-Poison .340

Charming Serpents by Music.342

Teratological Phenomena Discussed.344

The Psychological Domain Confessedly Unexplored.363

Despairing Regrets of Berzelius .368

Turning a River into Blood a Vegetable Phenomenon.370

Chapter XII The "impassable Chasm"

Confessions of Ignorance by Men of Science.373

The Pantheon of Nihilism .377

Triple Composition of Fire .379

Instinct and Reason Defined.380

Philosophy of the Hindu Jains .384

Deliberate Misrepresentations of Lempriere.386

Man's Astral Soul Not Immortal .387

The Reincarnation of Buddha .391

XIV

Magical Sun and Moon Pictures of Thibet.396

Vampirism — Its Phenomena Explained.402

Bengalese Jugglery.410

Chapter XIII Realities And Illusion

The Rationale of Talismans.414

Unexplained Mysteries.418

Magical Experiment in Bengal.420

Chibh Chondor's Surprising Feats.423

The Indian Tape-Climbing Trick an Illusion.425

Resuscitation of Buried Fakirs.428

Limits of Suspended Animation.432

Mediumship Totally Antagonistic to Adeptship.437

What Are "Materialized Spirits"?.443

The Shudala Mad an .444

Philosophy of Levitation.446

The Elixir and Alkahest.452

XV

Chapter XIV Egyptian Wisdom

Origin of the Egyptians.462

Their Mighty Engineering Works.464

The Ancient Land of the Pharaohs.468

Antiquity of the Nilotic Monuments.475

Arts of War and Peace.476

Mexican Myths and Ruins.489

Resemblances to the Egyptian.495

Moses a Priest of Osiris.498

The Lessons Taught by the Ruins of Siam.505

The Egyptian Tau at Palenque.514

Chapter XV India The Cradle Of The Race

Acquisition of the "Secret Doctrine".516

Two Relics Owned by a Pali scholar.518

Jealous Exclusiveness of the Hindus.519

Lydia Maria Child on Phallic Symbolism.524

The Age of the Vedas and Manu.527

XVI

Traditions of Pre-Diluvian Races. 529

Atlantis and Its Peoples. 532

Peruvian Relics.536

The Gobi Desert and Its Secrets. 538

Thibetan and Chinese Legends. 539

The Magician Aids, Not Impedes, Nature. 555

Philosophy, Religion, Arts and Sciences Bequeathed by

Mother India to Posterity. 556 xvii

BEFORE THE VEIL

Joan. — Advance our waving colors on the walls! —

King Henry VI. Act IV

"My life has been devoted to the study of man, his destiny and his happiness." —

J. R. BUCHANAN, M.D., Outlines of Lectures on Anthropology

IT is nineteen centuries since, as we are told, the night of Heathenism and Paganism was first dispelled by the divine light of Christianity; and two-and-a-half centuries since the bright lamp of Modern Science began to shine on the darkness of the ignorance of the ages. Within these respective epochs, we are required to believe, the true moral and intellectual progress of the race has occurred. The ancient philosophers were well enough for their respective generations, but they were illiterate as compared with modern men of science.

Dogmatic Assumptions of Modern Science and Theology

The ethics of Paganism perhaps met the wants of the uncultivated people of antiquity, but not until the advent of the luminous "Star of Bethlehem," was the true road to moral perfection and the way to salvation made plain. Of old, brutishness was the rule, virtue and spirituality the exception.

Now, the dullest may read the will of God in His revealed word; men have every incentive to be good, and are constantly becoming better.

This is the assumption; what are the facts? On the one hand an unspiritual, dogmatic, too often debauched clergy; a host of sects, and three warring great religions; discord instead of union, dogmas without proofs, sensation-loving preachers, and wealth and pleasure-seeking parishioners' hypocrisy and bigotry, begotten by the tyrannical exigencies of respectability, the rule of the day, sincerity and real piety exceptional. On the other hand, scientific hypotheses built on sand; no accord upon a single question; rancorous quarrels and jealousy; a general drift into materialism. A deathgrapple of Science with Theology for infallibility — "a conflict of ages."

At Rome, the self-styled seat of Christianity, the putative successor to the chair of Peter is undermining social order with his invisible but omnipresent net-work of bigoted agents, and incites them to revolutionize Europe for his temporal as well as spiritual supremacy. We see him who calls himself the "Vicar of Christ," fraternizing with the anti- Christian Moslem against another Christian nation, publicly invoking the blessing of God upon the arms of those who have for centuries withstood, with fire and sword, the pretensions of his Christ to Godhood! At Berlin — one of the great seats of learning — professors of modern exact sciences, turning their backs on the boasted results of enlightenment of the post-Galileonian period, are quietly snuffing out the xviii candle of the great Florentine; seeking, in short, to prove the heliocentric system, and even the earth's rotation, but the dreams of deluded scientists, Newton a visionary, and all past and present astronomers but clever calculators of unverifiable problems.’ 1 '

Between these two conflicting Titans — Science and Theology — is a bewildered public, fast losing all belief in man's personal immortality, in a deity of any kind, and rapidly descending to the level of a mere animal existence. Such is the picture of the hour, illumined by the bright noonday sun of this Christian and scientific era!

Would it be strict justice to condemn to critical lapidation the most humble and modest of authors for entirely rejecting the authority of both these combatants? Are we not bound rather to take as the true aphorism of this century, the declaration of Horace Greeley: "I accept unreservedly the views of no man, living or dead"?+ Such, at all events, will be our motto, and we mean that principle to be our constant guide throughout this work.

Among the many phenomenal outgrowths of our century, the strange creed of the so-called Spiritualists has arisen amid the tottering ruins of self-styled revealed religions and materialistic philosophies; and yet it alone offers a possible last refuge of compromise between the two. That this unexpected ghost of pre-Christian days finds poor welcome from our sober and positive century, is not surprising. Times have strangely changed; and it is but recently that a well-known Brooklyn preacher pointedly remarked in a sermon, that could Jesus come back and behave in the streets of New York, as he did in those of Jerusalem, he would find himself confined in the prison of the Tombs.J: What sort of welcome, then, could Spiritualism ever expect? True enough, the weird stranger seems neither attractive nor promising at first sight. Shapeless and uncouth, like an infant attended by seven nurses, it is coming out of its teens lame and mutilated. The name of its enemies is legion; its friends and protectors are a handful. But what of that? When was ever truth accepted a priori? Because the champions of Spiritualism have in their fanaticism magnified its qualities, and remained blind to its imperfections, that gives no excuse to doubt its reality. A forgery is impossible when we have no model to forge after. The fanaticism of Spiritualists is itself a proof of the genuineness and possibility of their phenomena. They give us facts that we may investigate, not assertions that we must believe without proof. Millions of reasonable men and women do not so easily succumb to collective hallucination. And so, while the clergy, following their own interpretations of the Bible, and science its self-made Codex of possibilities in nature, refuse it a fair hearing, real science and true religion are silent, and gravely wait further developments.

* See the last chapter of this volume, p. 622. t "Recollections of a Busy Life," p. 147.

XIX

J Henry Ward Beecher.

The Platonic Philosophy Allords the Only Middle Ground

The whole question of phenomena rests on the correct comprehension of old philosophies. Whither, then, should we turn, in our perplexity, but to the ancient sages, since, on the pretext of superstition, we are refused an explanation by the modern? Let us ask them what they know of genuine science and religion; not in the matter of mere details, but in all the broad conception of these twin truths — so strong in their unity, so weak when divided. Besides, we may find our profit in comparing this boasted modern science with ancient ignorance; this improved modern theology with the "Secret doctrines" of the ancient universal religion. Perhaps we may thus discover a neutral ground whence we can reach and profit by both.

It is the Platonic philosophy, the most elaborate compend of the abstruse systems of old India, that can alone afford us this middle ground. Although twenty-two and a quarter centuries have elapsed since the death of Plato, the great minds of the world are still occupied with his writings. He was, in the fullest sense of the word, the world's interpreter. And the greatest philosopher of the pre-Christian era mirrored faithfully in his works the spiritualism of the Vedic philosophers who lived thousands of years before himself, and its metaphysical expression. Vyasa, Djeminy, Kapila, Vrihaspati, Sumati, and so many others, will be found to have transmitted their indelible imprint through the intervening centuries upon Plato and his school. Thus is warranted the inference that to Plato and the ancient Hindu sages was alike revealed the same wisdom. So surviving the shock of time, what can this wisdom be but divine and eternal?

Plato taught justice as subsisting in the soul of its possessor and his greatest good. "Men, in proportion to their intellect, have admitted his transcendent claims." Yet his commentators, almost with one consent, shrink from every passage which implies that his metaphysics are based on a solid foundation, and not on ideal conceptions.

But Plato could not accept a philosophy destitute of spiritual aspirations; the two were at one with him. For the old Grecian sage there was a single object of attainment: REAL KNOWLEDGE. He considered those only to be genuine philosophers, or students of truth, who possess the knowledge of the really-existing, in opposition to the mere seeing; of the always-existing, in opposition to the transitory; and of that which exists permanently, in opposition to that which waxes, wanes, and is developed and destroyed alternately. "Beyond all finite existences and secondary causes, all laws, ideas, and principles, there is an Intelligence or Mind [vobq, nous , the spirit], the first principle of all principles, the Supreme Idea on which all other ideas are grounded; the Monarch and Lawgiver of the universe; the ultimate substance from which all things derive their being and essence, the first and efficient Cause of all the order, and harmony, and beauty, and excellency, and goodness, which pervades the universe — who is called, by xx way of preeminence and excellence, the Supreme Good, the God (o Geoc) 'the God over all' (o era naoi deoc)."* He is not the truth nor the intelligence, but "the father of it." Though this eternal essence of things may not be perceptible by our physical senses, it may be apprehended by the mind of those who are not wilfully obtuse. "To you," said Jesus to his elect disciples, "it is given to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of God, but to them [the noAAoi] it is not given; . . . therefore speak I to them in parables [or allegories]; because they seeing, see not, and hearing, they hear not, neither do they understand." +

The philosophy of Plato, we are assured by Porphyry, of the Neoplatonic School was taught and illustrated in the MYSTERIES. Many have questioned and even denied this; and Lobeck, in his Aglaophomus, has gone to the extreme of representing the sacred orgies as little more than an empty show to captivate the imagination. As though Athens and Greece would for twenty centuries and more have repaired every fifth year to Eleusis to witness a solemn religious farce! Augustine, the papa-bishop of Hippo, has resolved such assertions. He declares that the doctrines of the Alexandrian Platonists were the original esoteric doctrines of the first followers of Plato, and describes Plotinus as a Plato resuscitated. He also explains the motives of the great

* Cocker, "Christianity and Greek Philosophy," xi., p. 377. t Gospel According to Matthew, xiii. 11,13.

philosopher for veiling the interior sense of what he taught.];

As to the myths, Plato declares in the Gorgias and the Phsedon that they were the vehicles of great truths well worth the seeking. But commentators are so little en rapport with the great philosopher as to be compelled to acknowledge that they are ignorant where "the doctrinal ends, and the mythical begins." Plato put to flight the popular superstition concerning magic and daemons, and developed the exaggerated notions of the time into rational theories and metaphysical conceptions. Perhaps these would not quite stand the inductive method of reasoning established by

J "The accusations of atheism, the introducing of foreign deities, and corrupting of the Athenian youth, which were made against Socrates, afforded ample justification for Plato to conceal the arcane preaching of his doctrines. Doubtless the peculiar diction or ’jargon' of the alchemists was employed for a like purpose. The dungeon, the rack, and the fagot were employed without scruple by Christians of every shade, the Roman Catholics especially, against all who taught even natural science contrary to the theories entertained by the Church. Pope Gregory the Great even inhibited the grammatical use of Latin as heathenish. The offense of Socrates consisted in unfolding to his disciples the arcane doctrine concerning the gods, which was taught in the Mysteries and was a capital crime. He also was charged by Aristophanes with introducing the new god Dinos into the republic as the demiurgos or artificer, and the lord of the solar universe. The Heliocentric system was also a doctrine of the Mysteries; and hence, when Aristarchus the Pythagorean taught it openly, Cleanthes declared that the Greeks ought to have called him to account and condemned him for blasphemy against the gods," — ("Plutarch"). But Socrates had never been initiated, and hence divulged nothing which had ever been imparted to him.

XXI

Aristotle; nevertheless they are satisfactory in the highest degree to those who apprehend the existence of that higher faculty of insight or intuition, as affording a criterion for ascertaining truth.

Basing all his doctrines upon the presence of the Supreme Mind, Plato taught that the nous , spirit, or rational soul of man, being "generated by the Divine Father," possessed a nature kindred, or even homogeneous, with the Divinity, and was capable of beholding the eternal realities. This faculty of contemplating reality in a direct and immediate manner belongs to God alone; the aspiration for this knowledge constitutes what is really meant by philosophy — the love of wisdom. The love of truth is inherently the love of good; and so predominating over every desire of the soul, purifying it and assimilating it to the divine, thus governing every act of the individual, it raises man to a participation and communion with Divinity, and restores him to the likeness of God. "This flight," says Plato in the Thesetetus, "consists in becoming like God, and this assimilation is the becoming just and holy with wisdom."

The basis of this assimilation is always asserted to be the preexistence of the spirit or nous. In the allegory of the chariot and winged steeds, given in the Phsedrus, he represents the psychical nature as composite and two-fold; the thumos, or epithumetic part, formed from the substances of the world of phenomena; and the gwmoeidev" thumoeides, the essence of which is linked to the eternal world. The present earth-life is a fall and punishment. The soul dwells in "the grave which we call the body,” and in its incorporate state, and previous to the discipline of education, the noetic or spiritual element is "asleep." Life is thus a dream, rather than a reality. Like the captives in the subterranean cave, described in The Republic, the back is turned to the light, we perceive only the shadows of objects, and think them the actual realities. Is not this the idea of Maya, or the illusion of the senses in physical life, which is so marked a feature in Buddhistical philosophy? But these shadows, if we have not given ourselves up absolutely to the sensuous nature, arouse in us the reminiscence of that higher world that we once inhabited. "The interior spirit has some dim and shadowy recollection of its antenatal state of bliss, and some instinctive and proleptic yearnings for its return." It is the province of the discipline of philosophy to disinthrall it from the bondage of sense, and raise it into the empyrean of pure thought, to the vision of eternal truth, goodness, and beauty. "The soul," says Plato, in the Thesetetus, "cannot come into the form of a man if it has never seen the truth. This is a recollection of those things which our soul formerly saw when journeying with Deity, despising the things which we now say are, and looking up to that which REALLY IS. Wherefore the nous, or spirit, of the philosopher (or student of the higher truth) alone is furnished with wings; because he, to the best of his ability, keeps these things in mind, of which the contemplation renders even Deity itself divine. By making the right use of these things remembered from the former life, by constantly perfecting himself in the perfect mysteries, a man becomes truly perfect — an initiate xxn into the diviner wisdom."

Hence we may understand why the sublimer scenes in the Mysteries were always in the night. The life of the interior spirit is the death of the external nature; and the night of the physical world denotes the day of the spiritual. Dionysus, the night-sun, is, therefore, worshipped rather than Helios, orb of day. In the Mysteries were symbolized the preexistent condition of the spirit and soul, and the lapse of the latter into earth-life and Hades, the miseries of that life, the purification of the soul, and its restoration to divine bliss, or reunion with spirit. Theon, of Smyrna, aptly compares the philosophical discipline to the mystic rites: "Philosophy," says he, "may be called the initiation into the true arcana, and the instruction in the genuine Mysteries. There are five parts of this initiation: I., the previous purification; II., the admission to participation in the arcane rites; III., the epoptic revelation; IV., the investiture or enthroning; V. — the fifth, which is produced from all these, is friendship and interior communion with God, and the enjoyment of that felicity which arises from intimate converse with divine beings. . . . Plato denominates the epopteia, or personal view, the perfect contemplation of things which are apprehended intuitively, absolute truths and ideas. He also considers the binding of the head and crowning as analogous to the authority which any one receives from his instructors, of leading others into the same contemplation. The fifth gradation is the most perfect felicity arising from hence, and, according to Plato, an assimilation to divinity as far as is possible to human beings."*