part depending wholly on men, on local circumstances,

and the political destinies of nations. The worship of Ceres and the worship of Bacchus must belong to one
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principle alone, and this principle is found in the active force of Nature, viewed in the immense variety of its functions and its attributes."
A dignified treatise on the Mysteries, by W. M. Ramsay, is to be found in the ninth edition of the " Encyclopaedia Britannica." The author begins, it is true, by speaking with respect of Lobeck's great work, the " Aglaophamus " (1829), in which that author endeavours to destroy the theory that the Mysteries u enshrined a primitive revelation of divine truth," but he recognises the weakness of some of Lobeck's argu- ments, and especially points out that additional evidence has been accumulated since his time, " making it certain that statements which Lobeck set aside as not referring to the Eleusinian religion do really relate to it."
The article is to be regarded as representing the severely erudite view of the subject brought up to date, and it is in no way inspired with any appreciation of the psychic aspect of the Mysteries. But all the more on that account it may be useful as showing how much serious dignity and grandeur of thought is seen to be associated with them. Mr. Ramsay writes :
" The saving and healthy effect of the Eleusinian Mysteries was believed in not only by the mass of the people but by many of the most thoughtful and educated intellects — Pindar, Sophocles, Socrates, Plutarch, &c. Plato, who finds no language too strong to stigmatise the demoralising effect of the Orphic Mysteries, speaks of the Eleusinian with great respect. ... He that has been initiated has learned what will ensure his happiness hereafter. . . . According to Sopater, initiation establishes a kinship of the soul with the divine Nature; and Theon Smyrnaeus says that the final stage of initia-
THE ANCIENT MYSTERIES 285
tion is the state of bliss and Divine favour which results from it. . . . There is overwhelming proof in ancient writers that the effect of the Mysteries was not dependent on any dogmatic instruction. Even the doctrine of a future life, which is always associated in the old writers with the Mysteries, was not expressly inculcated in them, but left to the spectators to gather for themselves from the spectacle presented to them."
The serious view of the Mysteries suggested by all these •quotations brings them into line with what we now call theosophic teaching, and with the help of that teaching we can fill up all gaps in the explanation. In the ancient world the priests were really qualified to impart religious teaching by .reason of being themselves in true psychic relation with fountains of superior wisdom. But the state of evolution of the humanity around them made it im- possible for them to proclaim their knowledge to the multitude. The spiritual civilisation of the people at large was not such as would have prepared them to accept and profit by the pure ethical severity of occult wisdom.
In saying that I brush the surface of a problem that might be dealt with more fully, but it is enough for the moment to indicate the motives for reserve which are easily intelligible as actuating the ancient custodians of spiritual science. By the operation of natural laws that are plainly referred to in many biblical passages not always appre- hended correctly, knowledge concerning the possibilities of spiritual progress greatly augments responsibility. A human being who has never been enabled or compelled to realise that he has it in his own power, if he lives a suffi- ciently ennobled life, to rise in the scale of existence to conditions superior to that of the commonplace human life around him, does not incur great moral responsibility
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in leading a less noble life. If he does wrong, natural laws will entail suffering upon him, if not in the life in which he sins, then in another; if he does right, he will be rewarded sooner or later with happiness; and this will happen whether he understands the law or not. But if in any way he acquires spiritual knowledge and appreciates the scope of his opportunties as a human being and the law which renders certain lines of conduct favourable to, and certain other lines antagonistic to his higher development, then if he follows the lower path while really seeing the higher, it is much worse for him than if he had never seen it. So the wise priests of old — in the days when priests were really wise and studied the mysteries of Nature instead of fantastic rituals — forebore from* pouring out their knowledge too recklessly into vessels ill-qualified to contain it. Modern objectors often fail to understand the motive of their reticence, unfamiliar with the notion that religion can be a more powerful agency than we find it now. Our churches have forgotten all that religion once represented, except the glittering generalities that may lightly be scattered abroad because they tell so little. Those who believe may be the better, and those who do not, but may still assimilate some morsels of good precept, can hardly be the worse. The Masters of the Mysteries had a different kind of teaching to deal with. They had to put those who were qualified on the path of upward spiritual progress. It is the main purpose of this book to try and explain to what that progress may lead, but at all events if it is merely taken for granted that it may lead to something, then the otherwise unintelligible secrecy of the Mysteries will be seen to have had a comprehensible theory.
In Egypt — where most occult students will see reason
THE ANCIENT MYSTERIES 287
to believe that the Mysteries meant more than in the Grecian reproduction — their secrets seem to have been even more closely kept. Sir Gardner, who has so patiently elaborated every scrap of evidence that could throw light on the manners and social and* religious life of the early Egyptians, is very frank in avowing the great difficulty he experiences in working out any information bearing on the secrets of initiation. He bears his testimony, however, to the earnestness of the current feeling on the subject.
;' The chief cause of the ascendancy they (the priests) acquired over the minds of the people was the import- ance attached to the Mysteries, to a thorough understand- ing of which the priests alone could arrive, and so sacred did they hold those secrets that many members of the sacerdotal order were not admitted to a participation of them, and those alone were selected for initiation who had proved themselves virtuous and deserving of the honour — a fact satisfactorily proved by the evidence of Clement of Alexandria, who says : ' The Egyptians neither en- trusted their secrets to everyone nor degraded the secrets of Divine matters by disclosing them to the profane, reserv- ing them for the heir-apparent to the throne and for such of the priests as excelled in virtue and wisdom.'
" From all we can learn of the subject it appears that the Mysteries consisted of degrees denominated the Greater and the Less, and in order to become qualified for admission into the higher class it was necessary to have passed through those of the inferior degrees, and each of them was prob- ably divided into ten different grades. It was necessary that the character of the candidate for initiation should be pure and unsullied; and the novices were commanded to study those lessons which tended to purify the mind and to encourage morality. The honour of ascending from
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the less to the greater Mysteries was as highly esteemed as it was difficult to obtain. No ordinary qualification recommended the aspirant to this important privilege; and independent of enjoying an acknowledged reputation for learning and morality, he was required to undergo the most severe ordeal and to show the greatest moral resignation; but the ceremony of passing under the knife of the Hiero- phant was merely emblematic of the regeneration of the neophyte.
" That no one except the priests was privileged to in- struction into the greater Mysteries is evident from the fact that a prince, even the heir-apparent and of the military order, was not made partaker of these important secrets nor instructed in them until his accession to the throne, when in virtue of his kingly office he became ;i member of the priesthood and the head of the religion. It is not, however, less certain that at a later period many besides the priests, and even some Greeks, were admitted into the lesser Mysteries; yet in these cases also their advancement through the different grades must have depended on a strict conformance to prescribed rules."
The law which prescribed reticence in respect to exalted spiritual science in ancient times was fortified in the Middle Ages by an entirely new consideration. As the exoteric Christian Church grew into a more and more powerful engine of secular tyranny, the teacher who might too rashly proclaim the higher wisdom embodied in the secrets of initiation ran the risk not only of unduly augmenting the moral reponsibility of those who might listen to him, but of being burned himself at the stake. With this peril in their way, it is not surprising that the mediaeval occul- tists were careful in the extreme to veil any statements they ventured to make in the disguise of an almost impene-
THE ANCIENT MYSTERIES 289
trable symbolism. But, again, with the light of modern theosophic teaching to show us the solution of their riddle, we may easily recognise the philosophy of the ancient Mysteries reappearing in that of the much-talked- of and much-misunderstood fraternity of the Rosicrucians.
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