Page:The age of Justinian and Theodora (Volume 1).djvu/287

 associated with a particular star, to whose blissful abode it might return as the reward of a life well spent on earth. The unrighteous soul, however, must first be chastened by an ordeal of transmigration through descending grades of lower animal natures, the least abased being that of a woman.

This cosmological phantasy of Plato was destined, after lying dormant for more than five centuries, to breathe a new spirit into the almost inanimate body of polytheism. The higher social caste, still adhering languidly to the old belief, counted among them many elevated minds devoted to the traditions of the past, who apprehended with dismay the dissolution of all they prized in the ebbing tide of Paganism. The effete superstition could only be sustained by some process of depuration capable of reconciling it with the more refined perceptions of the age. The required influence was at hand. From Alexandria, where an international fusion of philosophies and religions had been in progress almost since the foundation of the city, a new dispensation proceeded before the middle of the third century. In that capital, the Greek was penetrated by the spirit of Oriental mysticism, and the Jew was fascinated by the intellectual ascendancy of the schools of Athens. The ancient rivalry of sects had almost died out, and a later generation of inquirers adopted freely whatever they could assimilate from various systems of philosophy. After passing tentatively through several stages from the first years of our era, a theological doctrine under the name of Platonism was elaborated by the Egyptian,