But this divine action, which tended to become purely spiritual, was originally much more material. A very coarse substratum to the theological ideas is still apparent in the texts which mention them. Magic, which was addressed to the credulity of simple men, did not conceal it at all. Here the ascension of the spirit appeared as a journey to heaven. By appropriate formulae and processes the sorcerers pretended to secure immortality for their adepts, making them fly, body and soul, through the higher spheres to reach the dwelling of the gods.[[290]]
In short, the initiate of the mysteries believed that they found in them a warrant of immortality. By the virtue of the rites their souls were united to their god; thus they became themselves divine, and were ensured an everlasting life. Inevitably, every Oriental religion affirmed that it held the only sacred tradition leading surely to eternal felicity. Outside the sect there was no certain salvation. But philosophy always opposed these claims. Philosophy, too, thought itself able to lead through wisdom to happiness in this world and in the next, and there was rivalry between it and the positive cults, as soon as it took on a religious character and set up religious claims. The Neo-Pythagoreans who formed esoteric communities opposed their purifications and initiations to those of the mysteries. But the eschatological doctrine, of which Posidonius was, if not the author, at least the powerful promoter, and which was to be taken up again and transformed by the Neo-Platonists, exempted the wise man from any obligation to religious observances as ensuring his immortality. He was no longer in need of sacraments and sacrifices, but could by his own unaided force become a pure intelligence, win the complete mastery of himself by reason, and thereafter be certain of raising himself to the godhead.
At the most, certain thinkers granted a “propaedeutic” or preparatory value to ritual observances, and saw in them a means of predisposing the soul to ecstasy, but the mystic philosophers, of whom Plotinus represents the purest type, discarded for themselves all religious practices. Their proud doctrine places man alone face to face with God.[[291]] Or else, like Porphyry, they admit that sacred ceremonies can purify the spiritual or pneumatic soul but not its highest part, the intellectual soul; that they can raise it to the region of the stars but not bring it back to the Supreme Being. The late pagan philosophy asserts constantly and forcibly that the wise man’s reason is able by itself, or rather through a celestial grace, without the intervention of any liturgy, to ensure its own return to its divine source. “As,” says Porphyry, “he who is the priest of a particular god knows how to consecrate his statues, celebrate orgies, perform initiations and lustrations, so the true philosopher, who is the priest of the universal God, knows how to make His sacred images and to carry out His purifications and all the processes which will unite him to this God.”[[292]]
Philosophers were therefore the priests of the world. Their functions were parallel to those of the actual priests but higher. They tended more and more to form a sacerdotal order which was separated from the rest of human society by its customs and its way of life. Like the mysteries they taught that piety, temperance and continence were the indispensable conditions of obtaining true knowledge. This “gnosis” was no longer a traditional theology revealed in the shadow of the sanctuary, but a scientific truth perceived by a grace-illumined reason. The philosopher took no part in the ceremonies of a complicated ritual, but his prayer was the silent supplication of his intelligence seeking to understand creation. He did not become absorbed in the contemplation of idols but in the sight of the divine world and in particular of the starry heavens. The end which this lonely cult strove to attain was analogous to that sought by others in the conventicles of the initiate—a divine revelation which would give to the perfect wise man superhuman power, which would make him a prophet, sometimes a wonder-worker; and after death, already a god on earth, he went to live in the company of the gods on high.
The lifting of the reason to heaven, source of all intelligence, was thus the pledge of astral immortality, as the liturgical banquet was of the celestial feast. As physical drunkenness, being divine possession, was a prelude to the joy of the eternal repast, so spiritual ecstasy was the sign of future deification.[[293]]
The ancients found impassioned words to depict this communion of man with the starry heavens, and to express the divine love which transported the soul into radiant space.[[294]] In the splendour of night the spirit was intoxicated with the glow shed on it by the fires above. Like the possessed and the Corybantes in the delirium of their orgies, it abandoned itself to ecstasy, which set it free from its fleshly wrappings and lifted it up to the region of the everlasting stars. Borne on the wings of enthusiasm it sprang to the midst of this sacred chorus and followed its harmonious movements. Reason, illumined by the divine fires which surrounded it, understood the laws of nature and the secrets of destiny. It then partook of the life of the light-flashing beings which from the earth it saw glittering in the radiance of the ether; before the fated term of death it had part in their wisdom and received their revelations in a stream of light which dazzled even the eye of reason. This sublime rapture was an ephemeral foretaste of the endless felicity reserved for the sage when, after his death, rising to the celestial spheres, he penetrated all their mysteries.[[295]]
V
UNTIMELY DEATH
In the last lecture we endeavoured to show that in the ancient world immortality was at first conceived as being precarious and conditional, and that only the heroes, the exceptional men, who were in truth gods on earth, obtained apotheosis after their death. We afterwards saw that the mysteries extended the promise of eternal salvation to all the initiate, who by virtue of the rites were made equal to the gods, and finally that the philosophers contested the necessity of sacred ceremonies and affirmed that human reason by its own unaided power could win union with God.
We will now consider in more detail what lot was reserved for a special class of the dead, those whose life had been interrupted by an untimely end, and how in their case philosophy modified the old traditional beliefs.