As it seems to be difficult to decide between these three suggestions, it might be worth while to try and reconcile them with each other. It is a long way from India to Germany and to Gaul, and there might have been many stopping places between the country from which they started and their future home.
The Druids, like all other Celts, might very well have started from India, and choosing not the most direct way might have reached Europe only after making many a long halt in Persia and in Egypt.
'If that can be admitted, then there is no difficulty in assuming that the first Celts might very well have taken with them from the banks of the Indus and the Ganges only a few fragments of a sickly materialism taught by false teachers outside of the temple, while the Druids might have been initiated within the temple itself, thus learning to know the true nature of the Deity.
Their creed was founded upon a triple basis—one God; the immortality of the soul; and rewards and punishments in a future life.
These sound doctrines, which are as old as the world and form the foundation of all human morality, had ever been maintained by their wise men.
At a later period the Greeks, proud as they were of their Platonic philosophy, had not hesitated to acknowledge that they had obtained the first germ of it from the Celts, the Galati, and consequently from the Druids. One of the Fathers of the Church, Clement of Alexandria, openly admits that these same Celts had been orthodox in their religion, at least as far as their dogmas were concerned.
By what name was the Supreme Being known to the Druids? They called it Esus, which means the Lord, or they gave it the simple designation of Teut (God). Through this Teut the German races became afterwards Teutons, the sons and followers of Teut, and even in our day they call themselves in their own language Teutsche or Deutsche.
Three marvelously brief maxims contain almost the whole catechism of the Druids: Serve God; Abstain from evil; Be brave!
The Druids, being warriors as well as priests, displayed in the performance of their warlike priesthood all the energy, the severity, and the authority which must needs accompany such a strange combination of powers. Holding all the power of the state in their hands, and speaking in the name of God, commanding the army, controlling the public treasury, and acting not only as judges but also as physicians, they punished heresy and rebellion, and ended lawsuits as well as diseases, by the death of the person most interested.
Their laws, liberal and philanthropic in spite of their apparent severity, allowed a jury consisting of notables, to judge grave crimes; this fact of a jury suggests naturally the idea of extenuating circumstances, and thus the criminal, escaping more readily than the patient, frequently got off with a fine, if he was rich, or with banishment if he was poor.