The author has not found occasion to alter anything essential in the preparation of this second edition. On the other hand, what was written eight years ago has been enlarged, and the endeavour has been made to express many things more exactly and circumstantially than was then possible. Unfortunately the author was obliged, through stress of work, to let a long period elapse between the time when the first edition was exhausted, and the appearance of the second.

Rudolf Steiner.

May, 1910.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] This book is to be had in an English translation, by F. Rothwell, under the title of The Great Initiates, A Sketch of the Secret History of Religions, by Edouard Schuré (Pub., Rider & Son, London).


CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE
[Preface to the Second Edition]iii
I.—[Points of View]1
II.—[The Mysteries and their Wisdom]10
III.—[The Greek Sages before Plato in the Light of the Wisdom of the Mysteries]39
IV.—[Plato as a Mystic]63
V.—[The Wisdom of the Mysteries and the Myth]93
VI.—[The Mystery Wisdom of Egypt]127
VII.—[The Gospels]147
VIII.—[The Lazarus Miracle]159
IX.—[The Apocalypse of St. John]177
X.—[Jesus and His Historical Background]198
XI.—[The Nature of Christianity]203
XII.—[Christianity and Heathen Wisdom]215
XIII.—[St. Augustine and the Church]227
[Notes]239