Page:Apollonius of Tyana - the pagan Christ of the third century.pdf/51

 moral light, because they are constantly drawing from the true source of all physical light. Here we have the same method of reasoning as in that gross myth, the birth of Minerva, the pure light which follows the storm issuing from the cleft forehead of her father the sky. According to the myth, the physical deity became the symbol of clear and penetrating wisdom. It was hardly worth while that Apollonius should have made such a display of Pagan rationalism if he was so soon to fall again into the most complete mythological system.

A contrast, or rather an inconsistency, of the same character may be noticed in the views of Apollonius on humanity in general. On the one hand, the whole of his life and the whole of his teaching are founded on the idea that all men are called to receive and practise truth. In one sense he can say, like St. Paul, that for him there is neither Greek nor barbarian. He speaks and acts as a reformer, on the banks of the Euphrates as well as on the Nile, and in Spain as well as in Æthiopia. The highest wisdom, according to his view, is