osophy the soul raises itself from material and sensual things, o those images impressed upon it, and from these to the elf-existing beings; and by aid of these, without material means, to the truth itself,-to the simple and unmixed riginal source. That which Plato says upon this subject very distinct in his Politicus, Protagoras, Gorgias, Phærus, Phædon, and Timæus.

He says: "All present conditions proceed from a revoution in man and the whole of nature. There was a time when mankind did not perpetuate itself (vide Jacob Böhme) : his was followed by the earthly human race, in which the primitive history was gradually forgotten, and man sank leeper and deeper. Originally man required neither arts aor laws, because he had everything, carried a living law within himself, and was himself a living image of truth." (Timæus.)

In the " Gorgias" he says,-" Our present state rather resembles death than life, and without purification man e cannot be freed from the ills of this life." He also describes the original man as combining male and female nature in one person (anthropin; hermaphrodite; Kamiost of the Persians; Adam of the Cabbalists, &c.) Phædrus contains an incomparable presage of that which man once was, and which he may again become. "Before his soul sank into sensuality and was embodied with it through the loss of the wings, he lived among the gods in the airy world, where everything was true and clear. Here he saw things only as a pure spirit. But now he is happy if he can use the forms of the imagination as copies, and collect gradually from them that which smooths his path and points out the way to the lost knowledge of the great, universal light. To this end the mysteries are especially serviceable, in part to remind him. of the holiest, in part to open the senses of his soul, to use the images of the visible for this purpose, but which are understood by few because their original and present connection is no longer understood."

"An excellent man in divine ecstasy, who is better than one in sane consciousness, declares divine things, in which the soul recognises, as in a radiant reflection, that which it saw in the hour of ecstasy; he following God and being filled with joy and love," "Madness," says

Socrates, in Phædrus, "is not exactly an evil, for by it the greatest blessings came to Hellas." The Seia pavía had four principal forms,—the μαντικὴ ἐπίπνοια, the τελεστική, ποηιτικὴ, and ἐρωτική μανία. In this the negative as well as the positive elements of humanity are to be found. Of philosophers we find, φιλοσοφοῦ μανία τε καί βαλία ; and of poets we find in Ion,-a light, winged, sacred being, which is able to be moved by a nothing. The infection of ecstasy is there spread by the magnet and rings. "The mantic," says Socrates," is rather μavix (soothsaying art), for it does many and glorious things."

In Phædon we see that the mysteries taught much corcerning the future state of man. In Timæus, we find they distinctly stated and maintained that everthing visible has been created after the fashion of the invisible and eternal, as our present nature is composed of the eternal and unchangeable in the world of light and the divisibility of matter. In Timæus we find the following:"Man does not participate in the divinely inspired and true prophecy as a reasoning being, but alone when he either is deprived, during sleep, or through sickness, of the exercise of reason, or when, by some inspiration, he cannot command himself."

To this place belong the remaining Pythagoreans and Platonists, in whom, besides the teachings of their masters, we often find much that is instructive, but which, mostly, already has been mentioned. I shall, therefore, only quote a few principal passages.

One of the most celebrated Pythagoreans was Empedocles, of Agrigentum. On account of his agreeable exterior and miraculous cures, he was regarded as a confidant of the gods and a great prophet, who could even stay the course of nature, and command death. During a plague which arose from an eclipse of the sun, he is said to have saved many lives by fumigations and magical fires. According to Philostratus, he arrested a waterspout which had broken over the city. He recalled a woman to life who had long appeared to be dead, and is said to have performed many other astonishing cures. It is evident from one of his numerous poems, that he was deeply versed in magic; it treats of natural philosophy, and is ornamented with many poetical similes and much remarkable colouring. In it he

traces the origin of all to Monas-God and matter, whose chief principles he calls friendship and enmity :

"Good spirits love the rue and laurel well,

But base ones it doth conquer and expel."

The lines concerning his magic powers, as they are to be seen in Diogenes Laertius, are as follows:

"Thou shalt medicines learn that avert every species of evil,
And lighten old age, and these I disclose to thee only.
Storms shalt thou lay that rage o'er the outstanding harvests,
And career in wild wrath, and waste with a fury unwearied.
Again, I empower thee to give to the dying winds motion,
And afresh to restore the azure serene to the welkin;

Cheering mankind; watering the parched earth in summer;
Loading the fruit trees through soft breathing winds of Erato,
From Hades below shalt thou bear too the vigour of manhood."

Empedocles believed a spirit to be the universal principle which influences all things, and that the material portions are connected by love and hatred. I must here call especial attention to the significant, the poetic, and philosophic spirit which fills some of the most ancient Greek sages,—as, for instance, the poet Orpheus, who also wrote verses upon medical and philosophical subjects: this is equally the case with both Parmenides and Empedocles. This shows that in the highest antiquity (in the pre-historical age) natural philosophy, poetry, and theology, were intimately connected in their being: of this we shall speak later.

Socrates must be mentioned here. It is admitted on all hands, that Socrates, the great teacher of virtue and truth, the apostle of morality, had a spirit who was his guide and instructor ("esse divinum, quiddam dæmonion appellat, cui semper ipse paruerit nunquam impellenti, sæpe revocanti." Cicero de divin. lib. i. § 54). Apuleius says, "The wise man may not have required an incitement to good, but may very well have been warned against evil." This genius, or demon, as he was accustomed to call it, did not, by his own account, warn him alone of impending danger; but others also, through him, as it foretold futurity to him, and always showed him, beforehand, the propriety and im

propriety of his actions. His circumspect scholar, Xenophon, speaks, in his Apology, of the truthfulness of the Socratic warnings. "I call this the dæmoniac or divine influence, and believe it to be nearer the truth than those divine powers attributed to birds. And that I do not speak falsely of the gods, I am confident from the proofs: I imparted many of their divine warnings to my friends, yet was I never convicted of error." Of this Socratic dæmon many remarkable stories are related at great length in the French "Annales du Magnétisme animale," No. 24, to which the reader is referred for further particulars. "If in Socrates the magnetic instinct was developed more in its own peculiar form, giving evidence of almost somnambulic appearances, Plato's soul, on the contrary, dwelt only in the magnetic sphere, in so far as he felt himself elevated to the contemplation of the divine and to higher inspiration; but this state was enduring, like a continuous stream, not subject to single flashes of divine light" (Thoughts upon Animal Magnetism, p. 76.)

Aristotle, the greatest investigator of nature in antiquity, furnishes us with much in his writings upon the subject of dreams. He speaks of the oracles, de Historiis Animalium, c. 20; in Rhetorica; in Libro de Veneficis, lib. vi. c. 22; de Carminibus et Incantationibus, lib. xxiv. c. 8; de Auguriis, c. i. lib. ix. c. 17; de Vatibus in problemate, sect. 21. "Many," says the latter passage," who prophesy, have diseases of madness" ("morbis afficiuntur maniacis et lymphaticis, unde Sibyllæ et Bacchides, et qui numine afflati dicuntur, cum morbo tales non fiant, sed naturali temperie").

Even in his theory of dreams, he maintains that prediction is no work of the gods, but a purely natural property of the imagination. Soothsaying is, therefore, not a divine or demoniac work, but entirely a consequence of temperament, and, to this, the melancholy temperament-says Buccafierri, one of the commentators of Aristotle-is the most adapted; the temperament is, however, a gift of nature, and soothsaying is, therefore, natural. Qui habet habitum melancholicum, habet per se causam prædicendi de futuris, et ideo per istum habitum prophetia erit secundum naturam, et melancholicus habitus erit pro propheta naturaliter, quia

ille habitus est naturalis," Lud. Buccafierri, Lectiones in Aristotelis libros, Venetiis, 1570, p. 102.

One of the most severe and able followers of Pythagoras, who made himself so renowned by his miraculous cures and magical arts, that his name even now produces terror, was Apollonius of Tyana. He is the first of whom it can be said. that his cures and teachings were purely magnetic. In his sixteenth year he commenced his travels with intent to visit the temples of various countries, and become initiated in their various secrets. Philostratus, who has described his life very minutely, says that Apollonius visited the Temple of Esculapius at Egea; the Oracles of Amphiaraus, Delphi, and Dodona; the Magi of Nineveh and Babylon; the Brahmins of India, Eygpt, Ethiopia, Crete, Sicily, and Rome; and lastly, remained some time at Smyrna, Ephesus, and Tyana; and that he died in the year 96 after Christ, at about one hundred years of age. Wherever he went he incited to piety, to prayer, and morality; cured the most dangerous diseases with miraculous power, and predicted futurity; on which account he was even placed by the heathens in contrast to Christ; and because nothing certain was known of his death, the inhabitants of Tyana declared him to be immortal; they dedicated a temple in their town to him, and his likeness was hung up in many temples. The Emperor Antonius Caracalla worshipped him as divine; and Alexander Severus and other emperors showed him great honour and esteem; and the first also placed him among his household gods, which included many sacred persons-Christ, Abraham, and Orpheus (Lampiad. in Alex. Sever. c. 29.)

During the raging of a plague at Ephesus, he was called upon to arrest the evil; he hastened to the spot, and the plague ceased on his arrival. It was often not necessary for him to be present, and he could heal the sick at several places at the same time (Philost. de vita Apollonii, iv. c. 10). His talismans also performed no small wonders, as they are said not only to have restrained disease, but also had power over the winds and the storms of the ocean. It would occupy too much space to enumerate all his cures and predictions, which often border on the incredible; but it is worth while to become somewhat more intimately acquainted with his philosophy.