Fragments of a Faith Forgotten

The Holy Spirit, which in reality permeates everything, but phenomenally separates the sensible universe from the noumenal, constitutes what Basilides terms the Limitary Spirit, midway between things cosmic and supercosmic. This Firmament is far beyond the visible firmament whose locus is the moon's track. " After this, from the universal Seed and conThe Great glomeration of seed-mixture there burst forth and came into existence the Great Ruler, the head of the sensible universe, a beauty and magnitude and potency that nought can destroy." This is the demiurge ; but let no mortal think that he can comprehend so great a being, " for he is more ineffable than ineffables, more potent than potencies, wiser than the wise, superior to every excellence that one can name.

" Coming into existence he raised himself aloft, and soared upward, and was borne above in all his entirety as far as the Great Firmament. There he remained, because he thought there was none above him, and so he became the most potent power of the universe," save only the third Sonship which yet remained in the seed-mixture. His limit, therefore, was his own ignorance of the supercosmic spaces, although his wisdom was the greatest of all in the cosmic realms. "Thus thinking himself lord, and ruler, and a wise master-builder, he betook himself to the creation of the creatures of the universe." This is the supercelestial or setherial creation, which has its physical correspondence in the spaces beyond the moon ; below the moon was our world and its " atmosphere." This atmosphere (the sublunary regions) terminated at the visible heaven, or lower firmament, its periphery, marked by the moon's path. In the sun-space lay the setherial realms, which apparently no mortal eye has seen, but only the reflection of their inhabitants, the stars, in the surface of the sublunary waters of space.

The setherial creation of the Great Ruler proceeds on the theory of similarity and analogy. "First of all the Great Ruler, thinking it not right that he should be alone, made for himself, and The brought into existence from the universal Seed, a Creation. Son far better and wiser than himself. For all this had been predetermined by the God beyond being, when He deposited the universal Seed. "And the Great Ruler, on beholding his Son, was struck with wonder and love and amazement at his marvellously great beauty, and he caused him to sit at his right hand." And this space where is the throne of the Great Ruler they called the Ogdoad. " And the Great Demiurgos, the wise one, fabricated the whole aether ial creation with his own hand ; but it was his Son, who was wiser still, who infused energy into him and suggested to him ideas."

That is to say, that the Great Ruler made the creatures of the setherial spaces, and these evolved souls, or rather were ensouled. And thus it is that the son is, as it were, greater than the father, and sits on his right hand, or above him ; the right hand in Gnostic symbolism signifying a higher condition. They mutually confer benefits also, one giving the body and the other the mind or soul to setherial beings. All setherial spaces then, down to the moon, are provided for and managed by the Son of the Great Ruler, the consummation or perfection of his ^ evolution or creation. "Next, there arose a second Ruler from the The universal Seed, far inferior to the first, but

Spaces. greater than all below him, except the Sonship which still remained in the Seed." This was the Ruler of the sublunary spaces, from the moon to the earth. This Ruler is called effable, because men can speak of him with understanding, and the space over which he rules is named the forth a Son far greater than himself from the universal Seed, in like manner to the first," and the lower creation was ordered in the same manner as the higher. This lower creation is apparently still one of subtle matter. As to the earth, the conglomeration of the seedmixture is still in our own stage or space, and the things that come to pass in this state of existence, " come to pass according to nature, as having been primarily uttered by Him who hath planned the fitting time and form and manner of utterance of the things that were to be uttered. Of things here on the earth, then, there is no special chief or manager or creator, for sufficient for them is that plan which the God beyond being laid down when He deposited the universal Seed."

That is to say, that the earth-stage is the moment between the past and future, the turning-point of all choice, the field of new karman ; here all things verily are in the hand of God alone, in the highest sense. Thus does Basilides avoid the difficulties both of fate and free-will absolute. We next come to the soteriology of Basilides, the redemption and restoration of all things. " When, then, the supercosmic planes and the whole universe [setherial, sublunary, and terrestrial] Soteriology. were completed, and there was no deficiency," that is to say, when the evolutionary stream of creative energy began to return on itself, " there still re mained behind in the universal Seed the third Sonship, which bestows and receives benefits.

" But it needs must be that this Sonship also should be manifested, and restored to its place above, there beyond the highest Firmament, the Limitary Spirit of cosmos, with the most subtle Sonship, and the second which followed the example of its fellow, and the God beyond being, even as it was written, ' And the creation itself groaneth together and travaileth together, waiting for the manifestation of the Sons of God ' " — the third Sonship. The Sons of God are the divine sparks, the real spiritual men within, who have been left behind here in the seed-mixture, " to order and inform and correct and perfect our souls, which have a natural tendency downwards to remain in this state of existence."

Before the Gospel was preached, and the Gnosis came, the Great Ruler of the Ogdoad was considered even by the most spiritual among men to be the only God, nevertheless no name was given to him, because he was ineffable. The inspiration of Moses, however, came from the Hebdomad only, as may be seen from the words, " I arn the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but the name of God I did not make known unto them." This God to whom Moses and the Prophets gave names, was of the Hebdomad, which is effable, and their inspiration came from this source. But the Gospel was that Mystery which was ever unknown, not only to the nations, but also to them of the Hebdomad and the Ogdoad, and even to their Rulers.

" When, therefore, the time had come," says the Gnostic doctor, " for the revelation of the children of God (who are ourselves), for whom the whole The Mystic the Gospel [the Glad Tidings, the Gnosis] came into the universe, and passed through every princi pality, arid authority, and lordship, and every title that man can use. It ' came ' of very truth, not that anything 'came down' from above, or that the blessed Sonship * departed from ' that Blessed God beyond being, who transcends all thought. Nay, but just as the vapour of naphtha can catch fire from a flame a great way off from the naphtha, so do the powers of men's spirit pass from below from the formlessness of the conglomeration up to the Sonship.

"The Son of the Great Ruler of the Ogdoad, catching fire as it were, lays hold of and seizes on the ideas from the blessed Sonship beyond the Limitary Spirit. For the power of the Sonship which is in the midst of the Holy Spirit, in the Limit Space, shares the flowing and rushing thoughts of the [supreme] Sonship with the Son of the Great Ruler. " Thus the Gospel first came from the Sonship through the Son who sits by the Great Ruler, to that Ruler ; and the Ruler learned that he was not the God over all, but a generable deity, and that above him was set the Treasure of the ineffable and unnameable That beyond being and of the Sonship. And he repented and feared on understanding in what ignorance he had been. This is the meaning of the words, ' The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.' For he began to grow wise through the

instruction of the Christ sitting by him, learning what is That beyond being, what the Sonship, what the Holy Spirit, what the apparatus of the universe what the manner of its restoration. This is the ' wisdom, declared in a mystery,' concerning which Scripture uses the words, ' Not in words taught of human wisdom, but in those taught of the Spirit.' " The great Ruler, then, being instructed and taught and made afraid, confessed the sin which he had done in boasting himself. This is the saying, ' I have recognized my sin, and I know my trans gression, and I will confess it for the eternity.' " After the instruction of the Great Ruler, the whole space of the Ogdoad was instructed and taught, and the Mystery became known to the powers above the heavens.

" Then was it that the Gospel should come to the Hebdomad, that its Ruler might be instructed and evangelized in like manner. Thereupon the Son of the Great Ruler lit up in the Son of the Ruler of the lower space, the Light which he himself had had kindled in him from above from the Sonship ; and thus the Son of the Ruler of the Hebdomad was illumined, and preached the Gospel to the Ruler, who in his turn, like as the Great Ruler before him, feared and confessed [his sin]. And then all things in the sublunary spaces were enlightened and had the Gospel preached unto them. " Therefore the time was ripe for the illumination The Sons of the formlessness of our own world, and for

the Mystery to be revealed to the Sonship which had been left behind in the formlessness, as it were to one born out of due time (an abortion) — ' the mystery which was not known unto former generations/ as it is written, ' By revelation was the mystery made known unto me,' and ' I heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for man to utter.' " Thus, from the Hebdomad, the Light — which had already come down from above from the Ogdoad unto the Son of the Hebdomad — descended upon Jesus, son of Mary, and he was illumined, being caught on fire in harmony with the Light that streamed into him. This is the meaning of the saying, ' The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee' — that is to say, that which came from the Sonship through the Limitary Spirit to the Ogdoad and Hebdomad, down as far as Mary [the body] — and ' The Power of the Highest shall overshadow thee '- — that is to say, the divine creative power which cometh from the [setherial] heights above through the Demiurgos, which power belongeth to the Son."

The text of Hippolytus is here exceedingly involved, and he evidently did not seize the thought of Basilides. The " Son " apparently means the soul. The power belongs to the soul and not to Mary — the body ; the divine creative power making of man a god, whereas the body can only exercise the power of physical procreation. Moreover, Jesus seems to stand for a type of every member of the Sonship, every Son of God. " For the world shall hold together and not be dissolved until the whole Sonship — which has been left behind to benefit the souls in the state of formlessness, and to receive benefits, by evolving forms for them [the spirit requiring a psychic vehicle for conscious contact with this plane] — shall follow after and imitate Jesus, and hasten upward and come forth purified. [For by purifi cation] it becometh most subtle, so that it is able to speed aloft through its own power, even as the first Sonship; for it hath all its power naturally consubsistent with the Light which shone down from above.

" When, then, the whole Sonship shall have The Final ascended, and passed beyond the Great Limit, the matfon™" Spirit, then shall the whole creation become the object of the Great Mercy ; for it groan eth until now and suffereth pain and awaiteth the mani festation of the Sons of God, namely that all the men of the Sonship may ascend beyond it [the creation]. And when this shall be effected, God will bring upon the whole universe the Great Ignorance [Maha-pralaya], in order that all things may remain in their natural condition, and nothing long for anything which is contrary to its nature. "Thus all the souls of this state of existence, whose nature is to remain immortal in this state of existence alone, remain without knowledge of anything different from or better than this state; nor shall there be any rumour or knowledge of things superior in higher states, in order that the lower souls may riot suffer pain by striving after impossible objects, just as though it were fish longing to feed on the mountains with sheep,

for such a desire would end in their destruction. All things are indestructible if they remain in their proper condition, but subject to destruction if they desire to overleap and transgress their natural limits. "Thus the Ruler of the Hebdomad shall have no knowledge of the things above him, for the Great Ignorance shall take hold of him also, so that sorrow and pain and lamentation may go from him. He shall desire naught of things impossible for him to attain, and thus shall suffer no grief. " And in like manner the Great Ignorance shall seize upon the Great Ruler of the Ogdoad, and also upon all the [setherial] creations which are subject to him in similar fashion, so that nothing may long after anything contrary to nature and thus suffer pain.

" And thus shall be the restoration of all things, which have had their foundations laid down accord ing to nature in the Seed of the universe in the beginning, and which will all be restored [to their original nature] in their appointed cycles. " And that everything has its proper cycle and time, the Saviour is sufficient witness in the saying, ' My hour hath not yet come,' and also the Magi in their observation of His star. For He also was foreordained in the Seed to be subject to the nativity of the stars and the return of the timeperiods to their starting places." Now the Saviour, according to the Basilidian Gnosis, was the perfected spiritual "man," within

the psychic and animal man or soul. And when a man reaches this stage of perfection, the Sonship in him leaves the soul behind here, " the soul being no longer mortal but remaining in its natural state [that is to say, having become immortal], just as the first Sonship [left behind] the Holy Spirit, the Great Limit, in its proper space or region " ; for it is only then on reaching perfection, that the real " man " is " clothed with a proper [and really immortal] soul." Every part of the creation goes up a stage, and Jesus. the whole scheme of salvation is effected by the separating from their state of conglomeration the various principles into their proper states ; and Jesus was the first-fruits, or great exemplar, of this process.

" Thus his physical part down here — which belongs to formless matter — alone suffered, and was restored to the formless state. His psychic vesture or vehicle — which belongs to the Hebdomad — arose and was restored to the Hebdomad. That vehicle in him which was of the nature of the height of the Great Ruler he raised aloft, and it remained with the Great Ruler. Moreover he raised still higher that which was of the nature of the Great Limit, and it remained in the Limitary Spirit. And it was thus through him that the third Sonship was purified, the Sonship left behind in the state of mixture [or impurity] for the purpose of helping and being helped, and it passed upwards through all of these purified principles unto the blessed Sonship above."

The main idea at the back of this system is the separating forth, classification or restoration of the various elements or principles confused in the original world-seed, or universal plasm, into their proper natures, by a process of purification which brought unto men the Gnosis or perfection of con sciousness. Man was the crown of the world-process, and the perfected man, the Christ, the Saviour, was the crown of manhood, and therefore the manifesta tion of Deity, the Sonship. So far Hippolytus, who in all probability gives us the outline of the true Basilidian system. It was only in 1851 that The Philosophumena were published to the world, after the discovery of the MS. in one of the libraries on Mount Athos in 1842 ; prior to this nothing but the short and garbled sketches of Ireneeus and the Epitomators was known of this great Gnostic's sublime speculations. The Philosophumena account has revolutionized all prior views, and changed the whole enquiry, so that the misrepresentations of Irenaeus, or those of his prior authority, are now referred to as "the spurious Basilidian system." To this we shall refer later on. Meantime let us turn to Clement of Alexandria, who deals purely with the ethical side of the Basilidian Gnosis, and there fore does not touch the " metaphysical " part — using the term " metaphysical " in the Aristotelian sense, namely, of things beyond the Hebdomad, the things of the Hebdomad or sublunary space being called " physics " or in the domain of physis or nature.

As to marriage, Basilides and his son Isidorus T taught that it was natural but not necessary, and seem to have taken a moderate ground between the compulsory asceticism of some schools and the glorification of procreation by the Jews, who taught that " he who is without a wife is no man." As to the apparently undeserved sufferings of martyrs, Basilides, basing himself on the doctrines of reincarnation and karman, writes as follows in Book xxiii. of his Exegetica : "I say that all those who fall into these so-called Karman tribulations, are people who, only after transgressing Reincarnain other matters without being discovered, are brought to this good end [martyrdom] by the kindness of Providence, so that, the offences they are charged with being quite different from those they have committed without discovery, they do not suffer as criminals for proved offences, reviled as adulterers or murderers, but suffer merely for being Christians ; which fact is so consoling to them that they do not even appear to suffer. And even though it should happen that one comes to suffer without previously committing any out ward transgression — a very rare case — he will not suffer at all through any plot of any [evil] power, but in exactly the same way as the babe who apparently has done no ill.

" For just as the babe, although it has done no wrong previously, or practically committed any sin, and yet has the capacity of sin in it [from its former lives], when it suffers, is advantaged and reaps many benefits which otherwise are difficult to gain ; in just the selfsame way is it with the perfectly virtuous man also who has never sinned in deed, for he has still the tendency to sin in him; he has not committed actual sin [in this life], because he has not as yet been placed in the necessary cir cumstances. In the case even of such a man we should not be right in supposing entire freedom from sin. For just as it is the will to commit adultery which constitutes the adulterer, even though he does riot find the opportunity of actually committing adultery, and the will to commit murder constitutes the murderer, although he may not be actually able to effect his purpose; for just this reason if I see such a ' sinless ' man suffering [the pains of martyr dom], even if he has actually done no sin, I shall say that he is evil in so far as he has still the will to transgress. For I will say anything rather than that Providence is evil."

Moreover, even if the example of Jesus were to be flung in his face by those who preferred miracle to law, the sturdy defender of the Gnosis says that he should answer : " If you permit, I will say, He has not sinned; but was like a babe suffering." And if he were pressed even more closely, he would say : " The man you name is man, but God [alone] is righteous ; for ' no one is pure from pollution,' " as Job said. Men suffer, says Basilides, from their deeds in former lives ; the " elect " soul suffers " honourably " through martyrdom, but souls of another nature by other appropriate punishments. The " elect " soul is evidently one that will suffer for an ideal; in other

words it is possessed of faith, which is the "assent of the soul to any of the things which do not excite sensation " ; such a soul, then, " discovers doctrines without demonstration by an intellective apprehension." The vulgar superstition of transmigration, the passing of a human soul into the body of an animal — so often confused by the uninstructed with the doctrine of reincarnation, which denies such a possibility — received a rational explanation at the hand of the Basilidian school. It arose from a con sideration of the animal nature in man, the animal soul, or body of desire, the ground in which the passions inhere ; the doctrine being thus summarized by Clement : " The Basilidians are accustomed to give the name The of appendages [or accretions] to the passions. These

«Appen°- essences, they say, have a certain substantial existence, and are attached to the rational soul, owing to a certain turmoil and primitive confusion." The word translated essences is literally "spirits"; curiously enough the whole animal soul is called the " counterfeit spirit " in the Pistis Sophia treatise, and in The Timceus of Plato the same idea is called " turmoil," as may be seen from the commentary of Proclus. The primitive confusion is of course the chaotic conglomeration of the universal seed-mixture, and the differentiation of the " elemental essence " of some modern writers on theosophy. " On to this nucleus other bastard and alien natures of the essence grow, such as those of the wolf, ape, lion, goat, etc. And when the peculiar qualities of

such natures appear round the soul, they cause the desires of the soul to become like to the special natures of these animals, for they imitate the actions of those whose characteristics they bear. And not only do human souls thus intimately associate them selves with the impulses and impressions of irrational animals, but they even imitate the movements and beauties of plants, because they likewise bear the characteristics of plants appended to them. Nay, there are also certain characteristics [of minerals] shown by habits, such as the hardness of adamant." But we are not to suppose that man is composed of several souls, and that it is proper for man to yield to his animal nature, and seek excuse for his misdeeds by saying that the foreign elements attached to him have compelled him to sin ; far from it, the choice is his, the responsibility is his, the rational soul's. Thus in his book, On an Appended Soul, Isidorus, son of Basilides, writes :

" Were I to persuade anyone that the real soul is not a unit, but that the passions of the wicked Moral are occasioned by the compulsion of the appended bility. natures, no common excuse then would the worthless of mankind have for saying, ' I was compelled, I was carried away, I did it without wishing to do so, I acted unwillingly ' ; whereas it was the man himself who led his desire towards evil, and refused to battle with the constraints of the appendages. Our duty is to show ourselves rulers over the inferior creation within us, gaining the mastery by means of our rational principle." In other words, the man is the same man, no matter in what body or vesture he may be ; the vestures are not the man.

One of the greatest festivals of the school was the celebration of the Baptism of Jesus on the fifteenth day of the Egyptian month Tobe or Tybi. " They of Basilides," says Clement, " celebrate His Baptism by a preliminary night-service of readings; and they say that 'the fifteenth year of Tiberius Csesar ' means the fifteenth day of the month Tybi." It was then that the Father "in the likeness of a dove" — which they explained as meaning the Minister or Holy Spirit — came upon Him. In "the fifteenth [year] of Tib[erius]" we have, then, perhaps an interesting glimpse into the workshop of the " historicizers." It is evident, therefore, that the Basilidians did not accept the accounts of the canonical gospels literally, as Hippolytus claims; on the contrary, they explained such incidents as historicized legends of initiation, the process of which is magnificently worked out in the Pistis Sophia treatise, to which I must refer the reader for further information.

We learn from Agrippa Castor, as preserved by A Trace Eusebius, that Basilides imposed a silence of five astrianism. years on his disciples, as was the custom in the Pythagorean school, and that he and his school set great store by the writings of a certain Barcabbas and Barcoph, and by other books of Orientals. Scholars are of opinion that Barcabbas and Barcoph, and their variants, point to the cycle of Zoroastrian literature which is now lost, but which was in great favour among many Gnostic communities. It must have been that among the learned Jews and Essenes, after the return from Babylonia, and also among the theosophically minded of the time, .the traditions of the Magi and of the great Iranian faith were an important part of eclectic and syncretistic religion. The Avesta-literature that has come down to us is said to be a recovery from memory of a very small portion of the great library of Persepolis, destroyed by the " accursed Alexander," as Pars! tradition has it. And it seems exceedingly probable, as Cumont has shown in his just -published monu mental work on the subject, that the Mithriac mystery-tradition contains as authentic a tradition as the Pars! line of descent, and throws a brilliant light on the Zoroastrianism with which Gnosticism was in contact.

Such, then, is all that can be deduced of the real Basilidian system from the writings of Hippolytus and Clemens Alexandrinus, who respectively selected only such points as they thought themselves capable of refuting; that is to say, such features of the system as they considered most erroneous. To the student of comparative religion it is evident that both Church Fathers misunderstood the tenets they quoted, seeing that even such hostilely selected passages easily fall into the general scheme of universal theosophy, once they are taken out of the setting of Patristic refutation, and allowed to stand on their own merits. It is therefore a matter of deep regret that the writings of the school have been lost or destroyed ; they would doubtless have thrown

much light not only on Christian theosophy but also on the obscure history of the origins. It now remains for us to refer briefly to the "sPuri°us" Basilidian system. The following points are taken from Irenseus and the epitomators, and are another proof of the unreliability of Irenseus, the sheet-anchor of orthodox hseresiology. The series of writers and copyists to which we refer, had evidently no first-hand information of the teaching of Basilides, and merely retailed whatever fantastic notions popular rumour and hearsay attributed to the school. The main features of the confection thus brewed are as follows. The God of the Basilidians, they said, was a certain Abraxas or Abrasax, who was the ruler of their first heaven, of which heavens there were no less than 365. This power was so denominated because the sum of the numerical values of the Greek letters in the name Abrasax came to 365, the number of days in the year.

We learn, however, from Hippolytus (II.) that this part of the system had to do with a far lower stage of creation than the God beyond all. It is not, however, clear whether the Abrasax idea is to be identified with the Great Ruler of the Ogdoad, or the Ruler of the Hebdomad and the region of the "proasteioi up to the aether." In any case the 365 " heavens " pertained to the astrological and genetical considerations of Egyptian and Chaldsean occult science, and represented from one point of view the 365 " aspects " of the heavenly bodies (during the year), as reflected on the surface of the earth's " atmosphere " or envelope, which entended as far as the moon.

Now it is curious to notice that in the Pistis Sophia treatise the mysteries of embryology are consummated by a hierarchy of elemental powers, or builders, 365 in number, who follow the dictates of the karmic law, and fashion the new body in accord ance with past deeds. The whole is set forth in great detail, and also the astrological scheme of the one ruler of the four, which in their turn each rule over ninety, making in all 365 powers. Not till Schwartze translated this treatise from the Coptic, in 1853, was any certain light thrown on the Abrasax idea, and this just two years after Miller in 1851 published his edition of The Philosophumena, and thus supplied the material for proving that the hitherto universal opinion that the "Abrasax" was the Basilidian name for the God over all, was a gross error based on ignorance or misrepresentation. It is also to be noticed that the ancient anonymous treatise which fills the superior MS. of the Codex Brucianus, makes great use of the number 365 among its endless hierarchies, but nowhere mentions the name Abrasax.

The elemental forces which fashion the body are the lowest servants of the karmic law. It was presumably these lowest powers that made up the Abrasax of the populace. The God over all is the supreme ruler of an endless galaxy of rulers, gods, archangels, authorities, and powers, all of them superior to the 365. In fact the mysteries of the unseen world were so intricate in detail, that even those who devoted their lives to them with unwearied constancy could scarcely understand some of the lower processes, although the general idea was simple enough ; and thus Basilides imposed a silence of five years on his disciples, and declared that " only one out of 1,000, and two out of 10,000," could really receive the Gnosis, which was the consummation of many lives of effort. Curiously enough this very phrase is also found in the Pistis Sophia treatise.

The term Abrasax is well known to students of Gnosticism, because of the number of gems on which it is found, and which are attributed to the followers of Basilides ; in addition to the great Continental scholars who have treated the matter, in this country King has devoted much of his treatise to the subject. The best and latest authorities, however, are of opinion " that there is no tangible evidence for attributing any known gems to Basilidianism or any other form of Gnosticism." In fact, in the Abrasax matter, as in all other Abrasax. things, Gnosticism followed its natural tendency of going " one better," to use a colloquialism, on every form of belief, or even superstition. Doubtless the ignorant populace had long before believed in Abrasax as the great power which governed birth and everyday affairs, according to astrological notions ; talismans, invocations, and the rest of the apparatus which the vulgar mind ever clamours for in some form or other, were all inscribed with this potent " name of power." Behind the superstition, however, there lay certain occult facts,

of the real nature of which, of course, the vulgar astrologers and talisman-makers were naturally ignorant. There facts, however, seem to have been known to the doctors of the Gnosis, and they accordingly found the proper place for them in their universal systems. Thus Abrasax, the Great God of the ignorant, was placed among the lower hier archies of the Gnosis, and the popular idea of him was assigned to the lowest building powers of the physical body. As to the rest of the " spurious system" there is nothing of interest to record; we cannot, however, omit the silliest tale told against the Basilidians, which was as follows. They are said to have believed that at the crucifixion Jesus changed bodies with Simon of Cyrene, and then, when his substitute hung in agony, stood and mocked at those he had tricked ! — with which cock-and-bull story we may come out of the Irenseic " store-house of Gnosticism " for a breathing space.

Of the history of the school we know nothing beyond the fact that Epiphanius, at the end of the fourth century, still met with students of the Basilidian Gnosis in the nomes west of the Delta, from Memphis to the sea. It seems more probable, however, that the school continued in the main stream of Gnosticism of the latter half of the second century, and was at the back of the great Valentinian movement of which we have next to treat. Indeed it is very probable that the followers of this, the main stream of the Gnosis, would have warmly resented being classed as "them of Basilides" or "them of Valentinus " ; they doubtless regarded these teachers as handers-on of a living tradition, each in his own way, and not as severally inspired revealers of new doctrines.

BEHIND the whole Valentinian movement stands The " Great the commanding and mysterious fio-ure of Valen- Gnosticism. tinus himself, universally acknowledged to have been the greatest of the Gnostics. His learning and eloquence are admitted, even by his bitterest opponents, to have been of a most extraordinary nature, and no word has ever been breathed against his moral character. And yet, when we come to analyze the chaos of " information " which Patristic writers have left us on the subject of so-called Valentinianism, we find the mysterious character of the great master of the Gnosis ever receding before our respectful curiosity; he who has been made to give his name to the remodelling of the whole structure, still remains the "great unknown " of Gnosticism. We know nothing certain of him as a man, nothing definite of him as a writer, except the few mutilated scraps which hseresiological polemics have vouchsafed to us.

(I am of course leaving aside entirely the vexed question of, I will not say the authorship, but the compilation, of the treatises in the Askew and Bruce Codices. My own opinion is that we owe a great part of these elaborations to Valentinus; not that I think this can be proved in any satisfactory fashion with the present scanty sources of information open to us. On the contrary, however, I do not see how it is to be disproved. It is very strange that, in spite of the universally admitted transcendency of Valentinus, no one of his works has been preserved to us. They are said to have been exceedingly intricate and difficult; they are further said to have been syntheses and symphonies as it were of prior formulations of the Gnosis. Now distinctly this is not the case with the outline of the best known system ascribed to " them of Valentinus " by the Church Fathers. \Ynereas it is patently the case with the treatises in Coptic translations ; they could have been elaborated by no one but the stoutestheaded among the Gnostics— and the best head-piece of them all is said to have been on the shoulders of Valentinus.)

In spite of this appalling ignorance of the man and his teachings, the so-called Valentinian Gnosis is the piece de resistance of nearly every hgeresiological treatise. We shall, therefore, have to trespass on the patience of the reader for a short space, while we set up a few finger-posts in the maze of Valentinianism, as seen through the eyes of its Patristic opponents. We should moreover always remember that " Valentinianism," so far from being a single separate formulation of the Gnosis, was the main stream of Gnosticism simply rechristened by the name of its greatest leader. With the exception of the few fragments to which we have referred, all that has been written "Them of by the Fathers refers to the teachings of " them

of Valentinus," and even then it is but very rarely that we have an unmutilated quotation from any written work of theirs; for the most part it all consists of fragments torn from their contexts, or mere hearsay. Now the followers of Valentinus were no slavish disciples who could do nothing else but repeat parrot-like the " words of the master"; the ipse dixit spirit was far from their independent genius. Each of them thought out the details of the scheme of universal philosophy in his own fashion. True that by this time the presentation of the Gnosis, from being of a most diverse nature, had become more settled in its main features, and perhaps Valentinus may have initiated this syntheticizing tendency, though it is far more probable that he developed and perfected it ; neverthless it was still enormously free and independent in innumerable details of a very far-reaching character, and its adherents were imbued with that spirit of research, discovery, and adaptation which ever marks a period of spiritual and intellectual life.

Thus we understand the complaint of Irenseus, who laments that he never could find two Valentinians who agreed together. And if this be so, what good is there in any longer talking of the " Valentinian system "? We know next to nothing from the Church Fathers of the "system" of Valentinus himself ; as to his followers, each introduced new modifications, which we can no longer follow in the confused representations of the Church Fathers, who make them flatly contradict not only one another, but also themselves. From The Philosophumena, published in 1851, we first heard of an Eastern and Western (Anatolic The so-called and Italic) division of the school of Valentinus, Western thus explaining the title superscribed to the Extracts from Theodotus appended, in the only M.S. of them we possess, to The Miscellanies of Clement of Alexandria. A great deal has been made of this ; the meagre differences of doctrine of the Anatolic and Italic schools of Valentinianism indicated by Hippolytus (II.) have been seized upon by criticism, and had their backs broken by the weight of argument which has been piled upon them. But when Lipsius demonstrates that the Extracts from Theodoius, which claim in their superscription to belong to the Eastern school, are, following the indications of Hippolytus, half Eastern and half Western, the ordinary student has to hold his head tightly on to his shoulders, and abandon all hope of light from the division of Valentinianism into Anatolic and Italic schools, in the present state of our ignorance ; — unless indeed we simply assume that they were originally purely geographical designations, to which in later times a doctrinal signification was unsuccessfully attempted to be given.

Although we have no sure indication of the date of Valentinus himself, it may be conjectured to extend from about A.D. 100 to A.D. 180, as will be seen later on. Of the other leaders of the movement, the earliest with whose names we are acquainted, are Secundus The Leaders and Marcus. Now Marcus himself had a large Movement. following as early as 150 ; his followers were not called Valentinians but Marcosians, or Marcians, and what we know of his system differs enormously from those of the rest of "them of Valentinus." Marcus is sometimes supposed to have been a contemporary of Irenaaus, but this is only on the supposition that Irengeus, in using the second person in his hortatory and admonitory passages, is addressing a living person, arid not employing the " thou " as a mere rhetorical effect, as Tertullian with Marcion.

Next, years later, we come to Ptolernseus, who again is supposed to have been a contemporary of Irenaeus somewhere about A.D. 180. Ireneeus had certainly no personal knowledge of Ptolemaeus, and dealt for the most part with his followers, who are said to have differed greatly from their teacher. Later still is Heracleon, whom Clement (c. 193) calls the most distinguished of the disciples of Valentinus. Both Heracleon and Ptolemseus, how ever, are known not so much for the exposition of a system as for the exegetical treatment of scripture from the standpoint of the Gnosis of their time. Still later, and as late as, say, about 220, Axionicus and Baidesanes flourished, the former of whom taught at Antioch, and the latter still farther

east. They are therefore called, by some, heads of the Anatolic or Oriental school. Theodotus, from whom the Excerpts appended to Clement's Miscellanies were taken, was of course far earlier in date, but of him we know nothing We also hear of a certain Theotimus and Alexander, who are earlier than 220. In brief, the influence of Valentinus spread far and wide, from Egypt eastwards to Syria, Asia Minor and Mesopotamia, and westwards to Rome, Gaul, and even Spain. A short review of the teachings ascribed to these doctors of the Gnosis will bring our task to a close, TAe Syntheti- as far as the indirect sources of Gnosticism for the Gnosis. first two centuries are concerned. But the fact we would again insist upon is, that we are face to face with a great movement and not a single system. On the one hand, such older forms of the Gnosis as had been exceedingly antagonistic to Judaism found a logical outcome in the great Marcionite movement, which cut Christianity entirely apart from Judaism ; on the other, a basis of reconciliation was sought by the more moderate and mystical views of the movement now headed by Valentinus, which found room for every view in its allembracing universality, and explained away con tradictions by means of that inner secret teaching which was claimed to have come from the Saviour Himself.

The main outline of the movement of conciliation, which presumably had always been the attitude of the innermost circles, is perhaps to be most clearly seen to-day in the system of Basilides, but those infinite spaces, which either Basilides himself left unfilled, or Hippolytus (II.) has omitted to mention in his quotations, were also peopled with an infinitude of creations and creatures by the genius of the Gnostics, who could brook no deficiency in the exposition of their universal science. Into this general outline, or one closely resembling it, they fitted the various aspects of the ancient Gnosis and the postulates of the old religions and philosophies, adopting these world-old ideas, and adapting them by the light of the new revelation, retaining some times the old names, more frequently inventing new ones.

This syntheticizing of the Gnosis was mainly due to the initiative of the genius of Valentinus. His technical works, as we have observed above, are said to have been most abstruse and difficult of comprehension, as well they might be from the nature of the task he attempted. What has become of these writings ? No Church Father seems to have been acquainted with a single one of his technical treatises; at best we have only a few ethical frag ments from letters and homilies. But what of his own followers, whom Church Fathers and critics make responsible for a certain Valentinian system of a most chaotic nature ? Were they in possession of MSS. of Valentinus ; or did they depend on general notions derived from his lectures ? Did Valentinus work out a consistent scheme of the Gnosis ; or did he set forth several alternatives, owing to the difficulty of the matter, and the innumerable points of view from which it could be envisaged ? If the Pistis Sophia document and the other two Codices can be made to throw any light on the matter, it will be a precious acquisition to our knowledge of this most important epoch; if not, we must be

content to remain in the dark until some fresh document is discovered. Meantime we must confine our attention to the certain traces of Valentinus and the general Sources of movement; but before doing so, we must briefly review our authorities among the Fathers. In this review I shall mostly follow Lipsius, who is not only one of the best authorities on the subject (Art. in S. and W.'s Diet of Christ. Biog., 1887), but who long ago inaugurated the admirable critical investigations into our Gnostic sources of information, by his analysis of The Panarion of Epiphanius. Tertullian informs us that prior to himself no fewer than four orthodox champions had under taken the refutation of the Valentinians : namely, Justin Martyr, Miltiades, Irenseus and the Montanist Proculus. With the exception of the five books of Irenseus, the rest of these controversial writings are lost.

Irenseus wrote his treatise somewhere about A.D. 185-195. He devotes most of his first book to the Valentinians exclusively, and isolated notices are found in the remaining four books. Irenaeus claims to have come across certain Memoranda of the Valentinians and had conversa tions with some of their number. But these Notes belonged only to the followers of Ptolemgeus, and only one short fragment is ascribed to a writing of Ptolemseus himself. The personal conversations were also held with followers of the same teacher, presumably in the Rhone district — not exactly a fertile soil in which to implant the abstruse tenets of the Gnosis, we should think, in spite of the " martyrs of Lyons." In dealing with Marcus, Irenseus derived his information for the most part from the same un reliable oral communications, but he seems also to have been in possession of a Memoir of a Marcosian ; Marcus himself living and working far away in Asia Minor years before.

In chapter xi. Irenaeus professes to give the teaching of Valentinus himself; but here he is simply copying from the work of a prior refutator. Lipsius also points out that Irenseus drew some of his opening statements from the same source as Clement in The Excerpts from Theodotus. From all of which it follows that we are face to face with a most provoking patch-work, and that the system of Valentinus himself is not to be found in The Refutation by the Bishop of Lyons. Our next source of information is to be found in the Excerpts from the otherwise unknown Theodotus, which are supposed by Lipsius to have probably formed part of the first book of Clement's lost work, The Outlines. These excerpts "have been dislocated and their original coherence broken up" in so violent a manner, and so interspersed with " counter-observations and independent dis cussions" by Clement hinself, that it is exceedingly difficult to form a judgment upon them. When, moreover, Lipsius assigns part of these extracts to the Oriental and part to the Occidental school, he practically bids us erase the superscription which

has always been associated with them— namely, Extracts from the (Books) of Theodotus and the so-called Anatolic School. In any case, we are again face to face with another patch-work. Hippolytus (I.), in his lost Syntagma, recoverable from the epitomators Pseudo-Tertullian and Philaster, and Epiphanius, seems to have combined the first seven chapters of Irenaeus with some other account, and the chaos is still further confused. Hippolytus (II.), in that most precious of all haeresiological documents, The Philosophumena, gives an entirely independent account, in fact the most uniform and synoptical representation of any phase of the Gnosis of the Valentinian cycle that has reached us through the Fathers. Tertullian simply copies from Irenseus, and so also for the most part does Epiphanius. The latter, however, has preserved the famous Letter of Ptolemceus to Flora, and also a list of " barbarous names " of the seons not found elsewhere. Theodoret of course simply copies Irenseus and Epiphanius.

So many, and of such a nature, then, are our indirect sources of information for an understanding of the Valentinian movement; — a sorry troop of blind guides, it must be confessed, where everything requires the greatest care and discrimination. Let us now return to Valentinus himself, and endeavour to patch together from the fragments that remain, some dim silhouette of a character that was universally acknowledged to have been the greatest among the Gnostics.

As to his biography, we know next to nothing. Valentinus was an Egyptian, educated at Alexandria in all that Egypt and Greece had to teach him. The mysterious lore of ancient Khem, the " mathesis " of Pythagoras, the wisdom of Plato, all helped to fashion his character. But the greatest inspiration of all he found in the last outpouring from the same source from which the wisdom of every true philosopher comes — the stream of Christianity that was swirling along at full tide. But what kind of Christianity did Valentinus encounter at Alexandria ? There was no Cate chetical School when he was a boy. Pantaenus and Clement were not as yet. There were the Logoi, the Sayings of the Lord, and many contradictory traditions ; a Pauline community also, doubtless founded by some missionary from Asia Minor ; and numerous legends of the mysterious Gnosis which Jesus had secretly taught to those who could com prehend. But, above all things, at the back were the inner schools and communities of the wisdomtraditions and the Gnosis. Valentinus must have been in closest intimacy with Basilides, though he is said to have stated that a certain Theodas, an " apostolic man," was his witness to the direct tradition of the Gnosis. Nothing is known of this Theodas or Theudas, and Ussher has even assumed that it was a contraction for Theodotus, a conjecture in which he has been followed by Zahn. This theory

would thus make the Theodotus of the Excerpts in Clement an older authority than Valentinus himself, which would still further complicate the Eastern and Western school question, and, in fact, change the whole problem of Valentinian origins. All we can say here is that the view is not entirely improbable, and would clear the ground on certain important points. did Rome excommunicate Valentinus after his death, a favourite way with her in after times of finishing a controversy ? Or is not Tertullian romancing here as is not infrequently the case ? Epiphanius dis tinctly states that Valentinus was regarded as orthodox so long as he was at Rome, and Tertullian himself also, in another place, adds fifteen years of orthodoxy on to the date of his leaving Rome.

Valentinus seems to have passed the greater part Date. of his life in Egypt; he was, however, if we can at Rome, somewhere between 138 and 160. One authority also says that he was at Cyprus. The date of his death is absolutely unknown ; critics mostly reckon it about 161, but in order to arrive at this conclusion, they reject the distinct statement of Tertullian that Valentinus was still an orthodox member of the Church up to the time of Eleutherus (c. 175); and the equally distinct statement of Origen, that he was personally acquainted with Valentinus. This would set back Origen's own date of birth and advance the date of Valentinus' death; but as both are problematical, we have nothing to fear from the putting back of the one and the putting forward of the other ten years or so.

On the whole I am inclined to assign the date of Valentinus to the first eighty years of the second century. In further support of this length of days, I would invite the reader to reflect on the extra ordinary fact that, though the name of Valentinus is in the mouth of everyone of the time, and though his fame entirely eclipses that of every other name of this most important Gnostic cycle, the words and deeds of the great coryphaeus of Gnosticism are almost entirely without record, and, stranger than all, he is regarded, at any rate for the major part of his life, as orthodox. This strange fact requires explanation, and I would venture to suggest that the explanation is to be found to a great extent in the extraordinary reserve and secrecy of the man. He was an enigma not only to the generality, but even to those who regarded him as a teacher.

The Gnosis in his hands is trying to forestall " orthodoxy," to embrace everything, even the most dogmatic formulation of the traditions of the Master. The great popular movement and its incomprehensi bilities were recognized by Valentinus as an integral part of the mighty out-pouring; he laboured to weave all together, external and internal, into one piece, devoted his life to the task, and doubtless only at his death perceived that for that age he was attempting the impossible. None but the very few could ever appreciate the ideal of the man, much less understand it. None of his technical treatises were ever pub lished; his letters and homilies alone were circulated. After leaving Rome he is practically lost to the sight of the Western hseresiologists. Where Writings, he went, what he did, and how long he lived after that, is almost entirely conjectural. But if it be ever shown to be true that such documents as the Pistis Sophia are specimens of the workshop to which he belonged, we can at least conjecturally answer that he went back to Alexandria, where he

finished his life in the retirement that such abstruse literary labours required. Of his writings, besides the fact that they were numerous and his technical treatises exceedingly difficult and abstruse, we know very little. He composed numerous Letters and Homilies and Psalms. We are also told that he composed a Gospel, but this is supposed to be a false assumption — false, that is to say, if by Gospel is meant a Gospel containing the Sayings of the Lord. But may not Gospel here be used in the Basilidian sense of an exposition of the Gnosis, or knowledge of the things beyond the phenomenal world ? Tertullian also tells us that Valentinus composed a treatise entitled Sophia, or Wisdom, Some critics have asserted that the words of Tertullian do not refer to a book but to the Wisdom which Valentinus claimed to teach ; but if this were so, the antithesis which Tertullian makes between the Wisdom of Valentinus and the Wisdom of Solomon would lose all its point. The Wisdom of Solomon is a book, the Wisdom of Valentinus should also be a book; if it were intended to mean simply the Gnosis which Valentinus taught, then its proper antithesis would have been the Wisdom of God and not of Solomon.

We have now to treat of the few fragments of The Fragthe works of this prolific writer which have come remain. down to us in the writings 01 the Church Fathers. The latest collection of them is by Hilgenfeld (1884), whose "emendations," however, we shall not always follow. The fragments consist of a few scraps of letters and homilies preserved by Clement of Alexandria, and two pieces in The Philosophumena — the narrative of a vision and the scrap of a psalm. " And just as terror of that creature [lit, plasm] seized hold of the angels [the fabricative powers], when it gave voice to things greater than had of the First been used in its fashioning, owing to the presence Mankind. in it of Him [the Logos] who, unseen to them [the powers], had bestowed on it the seed of the supernal essence [the ego], and who spake of realities face to face ; in like manner also among the races of humanity, the works of men become a terror to them who make them — such as statues and images, and all things which [men's] hands fashion to bear the name of God. For Adam beingfashioned to bear the name of the [Heavenly] Man [the Logos], spread abroad the terror of that pre-existing Man, for in very truth he had His being in him. And they [the powers] were struck with terror, and [in their terror] speedily marred the work [of their hands]."

Here we have the Gnostic myth of the genesis of man, which is already familiar to us in the general tradition of the Gnosis. The plasm, or primitive form of man, which could neither stand nor walk — the embryonic sphere of Plato's Timceus — is evolved by the powers of nature, as the outcome of evolution ; into it Deity breathes the mind, and man is immediately raised above the rest of the creation and its powers. Nevertheless his body is still feeble, and the naturepowers, in fear of the mind within — the " name " of the Heavenly Man — war on him, and only by slow degrees does the mind of man learn to overcome them.

The Heavenly Man is the perfect type of all Humanities, and the " name " is no name, but that mysterious something which decides the nature and class and being of every creature. Man alone down here has the divine " name " or nature alive within him. The " prehistoric " world, with which Egypt was in direct traditional contact, made much of this " name " ; statues and talismans and amulets, if made in a certain manner, were supposed to be a nearer approach to the perfect type either of manhood or of nature-organism, and on these fabrications of men's hands the " name " of this or that supernal power was thought to be bestowed by " Him who speaks face to face." Here we have a hint of the explanation given of "idol-worship" by the initiated priests of antiquity, which idea was thus woven into the scheme of universal Gnosis by Valentinus.

" One [alone] is Good, whose free utterance is His On the Pure manifestation through his Son ; it is by Him alone that the heart can become pure, [and that too only] when every evil essence has been expelled out of it. Now its purity is prevented by the many essences which take up their abode in it, for each of them accomplishes its own deeds, outraging it in divers fashions with unseemly lusts. As far as I can see, the heart seems to receive somewhat the same treatment as an inn [or caravanserai], which has holes and gaps made in its walls, and is frequently filled with dung, men living filthily in it and taking no care of the place as being someone else's property. Thus it is with the heart so long as it has no care taken of it, ever unclean and the abode of many daemons [elemental essences]. But when the Alone Good Father hath regard unto it, it is sanctified and shineth with light ; and he who possesseth such a heart, is so blessed that ' he shall see God.' "

Here we have the very same doctrine as that enunciated by Basilides and Isidorus with regard to the " appendages " of the soul, as indeed is pointed out by Clement. The doctrine was an exceedingly ancient one in Egypt. In the so-called Book of the Dead we read, that the " heart " is a distinct personality within the man (the "purusha [or man] in the aether of the heart" of the Upanishads); and not only this, but the formula referred to and its explanatory texts teach us that " it is not the heart that sins but only its fleshly envelope." (Cf. Wiedemann's Relig. of the Ancient Egyptians, p. 287 ; 1897.) Isidorus, as we have already seen, guarded against making the " appendages " the scapegoat, and fixed the responsibility on the "heart" proper, the "ancestral heart" — "guardian of my fleshes" — the reincarnating entity. It is, how ever, quite true that the passions are connected with the blood, arid so with the " fleshly envelope,"

or physical heart, in which the real "heart" is said to be enshrined. The " free utterance," or perfect expression, of Concerning the Alone Good can only be manifested by the Powers of the maii made perfect. Such a man was Jesus. Thus we find Valentinus writing to Agathopus as follows : " It was by his unremitting self-denial in all things that Jesus attained to [lit, gained by working] godship ; he ate and drank in a peculiar manner, without any waste. The power of con tinence was so great in him, that his food did not decay in him, for he himself was without decay." It is said that the physical body can be gradually accustomed to less and less nutriment, and innumerable cases are on record in the East of holy ascetics who have been able to support life on incredibly small quantities of food. The "power" described above by Valentinus is one of the siddhis mentioned in every treatise on yoga in India, and in the Upanishads we read that " very little waste " is one of the first signs of " success in yoga" We are also told that in the highest stages, after the particles of the body have been entirely refined and made to obey the higherwill of the ascetic, a body of a still higher grade of matter can be gradually substituted ; and apparently some such ideas as these (together with other notions) lay behind the doctrine of docetism which was an integral part of the Gnosis-

Clement himself also shared like views, and so did some other Fathers. " From the very beginning have ye been immortal and children of life — such life as the aeons eniov ; Ye are th» yet would ye have death shared up among you, to spend and lavish it, so that death might die in you and by your hands; for inasmuch as ye dissolve the world and are not dissolved yourselves, ye are lords of all creation and destruction." Here we have the burden of the teaching in one of the treatises of the Codex Brucianus — to crucify the world and not let the world crucify us — and of the Pistis Sophia treatise, "Know ye not that ye are all gods and lords ? " The Self within the heart, the seed of the divine, the pneumatic light-spark, the dweller in light, the inner man, was the eternal pilgrim incarnated in matter; those who had this alive and conscious within them were the spiritual or pneumatic. To such Valentinus is speaking.

v. A few Sentences preserved in the Controversial Matter of Clement following the above Quota tion, and probably taken from a Writing of Valentinus. The "elect race," the third Sonship of Basilides, has incarnated here for the abolition of " death," The Fac« the domain of the Ruler of the phenomenal world, ° the samsara of the Buddhist and Indian philo sophers, the realm of the "ever-becoming" of Plato. This Ruler is the God of the Old Testament. "No man shall see the face of God and live." This is the face of death, but there is also a face of life, concerning which Valentinus writes : " As far removed as is the [dead image] from the living face, so far is the [phenomenal] world removed from the living aeon [the nournenal]. What then is the cause of the image ? The majesty of the [living] face, [or person,] which exhibits the type [of the universe] to the painter, and in order that it [the universe] may be honoured by its name [ — the name or real being of the majesty of the godhead]. For it is not the authentic [or absolute] nature which is found in the form ; it is the name which completes the deficiency in the confection. The invisible nature of deity co-operates so as to induce faith in that which has been fashioned."

Here we have the same idea as in Fragment i., and presumably it was taken from the same Letter. The "painter" is of course the user of the creative forces of the phenomenal world, who copies from the types or ideas in the noumenal world of reality. He whom the Jews called God and Father, was said by Valentinus to be the " image and prophet of the true God," the word prophet meaning one who speaks for and interprets. The " image " is the work of Sophia or Wisdom, who is the " painter " who transfers the types from the noumenal spaces on to the canvas of the phenomenal world, and the " true God " or the " God of truth " is the creator of the noumenal world, which contains the types of all things. He is the god of life; the "image" is the god of death.

" All things that come forth from a pair [or syzygy] are fullnesses (pleromata), but all which proceed from a single [a3on] are images." This will be explained later on; it refers to the "fall" of Sophia from the aeonworld, whereby the phenomenal universe came into existence. The remarks of Clement which immediately follow are almost unintelligible ; they deal with the coming of the " excellent " spirit, the infusion of the light-spark into man. " Many of these things which are written in the public volumes, are found written in the Church Concerning Clement assumes that Valentinus means by "public volumes" the Jewish writings and the books of the philosophers. The " public volumes," however, for Valentinus included not only the works of the philosophers and the scriptures of the Jews, but also the scriptures of all other religions, and also the Christian documents in general circulation. He merely asserts that the only " common " or general truths are those pertaining to the Community of Friends, or Saints, who form the Church of God, the People of the Beloved. These truths come from the heart ; he protests against the narrow view that can find truth in only one set of

scriptures; and declares it is in all scriptures and philosophies, if one looks to the spirit and not the letter. vii. A very doubtful Fragment from Eulogius of Alexandria writing at the end of the Sixth Century. If this fragment can be accepted as genuine, we The learn that the early Christians, whom Valentinus calls "the Galileans of the time of Christ," believed in the doctrine of two natures, whereas the Valentinians asserted that there was but one. This is quite credible, following on the lines of argument of Isidorus concerning the unit consciousness of the soul and its responsibility, and the teaching of Valentinus that Jesus " worked out " his own divinity. Hippolytus (II.) inserts the following scrap of information in the midst of the lengthy description of the system of Marcus, which he copied from Irenseus :

Valentinus says that he once saw a child that The Wisdom had only just been born, and that he proceeded to "Little One." question it bo find out who it was. And the babe replied and said it was the Logos." To this, says which formed the basis of his teaching. Have we here an incident from the prologue to one of Valentinus' treatises ; and is the " tragic myth " Valentinus' the deus ex machind of part of his cosmogony ? Finally from the same source, The Philosophumena, we recover the following lines ; it is The Chain probable that Hippolytus took them from the same treatise from which he derived the above informa tion, and that the Psalm endeavoured to explain why the new-born babe was the Logos, why " this " is " That," as the Upanishads have it, and all is one.

" All things depending in spirit I see ; All things supported in spirit I view ; Flesh from soul depending ; Soul by air supported; Air from aether hanging — Fruits borne of the deep — Babe borne of the womb." Whether or not this exceedingly mystical Psalm was taken in the sense we have suggested above is merely problematical. Such mystic utterances could of course be interpreted from both the microcosmic and macrocosmic standpoints ; and Hippolytus gives us what he asserts to be a Valentinian interpretation from the latter point of view. The "flesh" is the Hyle (the Hebdomad of Basilides); the "soul" is that of the Demiurge (the " material " force of the aetheric spaces, the Ogdoad of Basilides) ; the Demiurge hangs from the Spirit, which from one point of view is the Great Limit or Boundary, separating the Pleroma, or world of reality, from the Kenoma or phenomenal universe,

and from another is Sophia or Wisdom, in the Kingdom of the Midst. Thus the Demiurge hangs from Sophia ; Sophia from the Great Boundary or Horos (a further differentiation of the Basilidian simple idea of the Great Firmament) ; Horos from the Pleroma, the Blessed Treasure of the aeons ; and this world of ideas, or Living ^Eon, from the Abyss or Great Depth, the Father, the God beyond being. This is the Valentinian chain of being, the subordinate details of which are so abstruse and so complicated, that no one has hitherto been able to make any consistent scheme out of their chaotic and contradictory representations in the writings of the Fathers. In the MS. of The Philosophumena the above fragment is prefixed by the disconnected word " Harvest." Hilgenfeld accordingly speaks of Valentinus " hymning the Great Harvest," which is a very grandiose conception, but an idea difficult to connect with the lines quoted.

Such is the poor sum total of our information as to what Valentinus actually taught himself — nine, or rather eight, shreds of fragments in all. Yet what strong, joyous words, bursting with life, in the midst of the dullness of the refutators' rhetoric. To these fragments it might seem proper to append the account which Irenseus (cap, 11) copied from a former haeresiological writer. It is generally assumed that this more ancient authority was Justin Martyr ; but whoever he may have been, he was a mere summarizer, and even at that early date in haeresiology (dr. 150), was struggling with the contra- dictory accounts he had heard of the " Valentinian " Gnosis. I, therefore, consider this source as no more worthy of special notice than the other summaries of general so-called Valentinian doctrine found in the writings of the Fathers. We have nothing certain to learn in it of the teaching of Valentinus himself, and that is the only search on which we are at present engaged.

Thus we take our farewell of the "great un known " of Gnosticism, whose name was nevertheless The Ariadne's the best known of all, whose influence was the of the Maze, most far-reaching, and whose doctrines, instead of being a cut-and-dried system of dead vocables, were so animate with life that the kaleidoscopic repre sentations of them by his followers in the first place, and the puzzled and puzzling summaries by the Fathers of these protean representations in the second, have proved the despair of scholarship. The reason of this for the most part is that, in endea voring to bring order into this chaos, words and terms have been followed as clues instead of ideas. Not only in the case of the Valentinian cycle of ideas, but also in every other phase of the Gnosis, these delusive guides have been generally followed as leaders out of the labyrinth. But the Adriadne's thread which takes us out of the maze is spun out of ideas, not of names. The Gnostics were ever changing their nomenclature ; the god of one system might even be the devil of another ! He who makes a concordance of names merely, in Gnosticism, may think himself lucky to escape a lunatic asylum; he, on the contrary, who seeks the idea behind the

name, will often find himself in a realm of great beauty and harmony of thought. Men like the Gnostics have ever had intuitions of a real state of being, of definite and precise realms of consciousness ; yet each has caught but a glimpse of the reality, as all men must so long as they are imprisoned in a body. If the Gnostics exhausted the philosophy and religion of their time in striving to find a decent vestment for the naked truth, as they thought they saw it, who shall blame them ? Though they contradict one another, in the view of the word-hunter, they do not contradict themselves for the follower of ideas. The idea is the key which opens the mysteries of the Gnosis, and those who refuse to use this living key must be content to have the treasury closed against them.

We shall now, before dealing with the followers of Valentinus, attempt, from the chaos of summaries, to sift out some of the leading ideas of the Valentinian cycle of the Gnosis. If we were to bring all these contradictory accounts together and treat them to a critical analysis, it is to be feared that the general reader, for whom these sketches are written, would either close our pages in despair ; or, if he attempted to follow the details and the weighing of probabilities, be reduced to such a state of mental perturbation that he would forget all that has gone before, and be rendered totally unfit to comprehend what is to follow. Such technical work must be reserved for treatment elsewhere, meantime we will attempt, not to give an exposition of the system of " them of

Valentinus " — if indeed they ever had a single definite system —but merely to sketch some outlines of their ideas on seonology. IN order to elevate our thought to a contemplation of the transcendent problems towards which the Towards the mind of these Gnostics was carried, we should refresh our memory with the sketch of the Basilidian system which has been given above. From the world of men, our earth, we must pass in thought through the sublunary spaces, visible and invisible; thence we must pass beyond the moon-firmament, the heaven, into the sethereal spaces — the star-worlds, and their infinite inhabitants, spaces and regions, orders and hierarchies — bounded at the utmost limits of space and time, by the Great Firmament, the Ring " Pass Not," which marks off the phenomenal universe from the universe of reality out of space and time. It is a Boundary everywhere and — no " where."

Here we bid farewell to time and space, and reach the region of paradox, for mortal man has still to speak of it in terms of phenomenal things — calling it a region, although it is not a region; speaking of it as the Living ^Eon, though it transcends all life; hymning it as the Light-world, though its light is darkness to mortal eyes, because of the superabundance of its brilliancy. This is the Pleroma, the world of perfection, of perfect types and perfect harmony. The mind falls back from it, unable to comprehend, and yet the spirit within cries unto man with a voice that can brook no denial : " Onward still ; beyond still, and beyond ! " Then is there Silence ; no words, no symbols, no thoughts can further avail. The mind is mute, the spirit is at peace, at rest in the Supreme Silence of contemplation, of union with the Divine, the Great Deep — Profundity, the within of things, that which permeates all, goes through all.

Our Gnostics are said to have " begun " with The Depth this conception of Bythus, or the Abyss of Profundity; but this is a mistake. Basilides had already shown how impossible it was to name the God beyond all; are we to think that the Valentinians fell short of so obvious a truth ? By no means; some of them taught of the Beyond the Deep, a hierarchy of Deeps ; and curiously enough in the Codex Brucianus we meet with such hierarchies, and also find them assumed in the Pistis Sophia treatise. What absurdity, then, to seek a "beginning" in infinitude ! Such a conception as a beginning was low down in the scale of being ; we can speak of the " beginning " of some special phenomenal universe, but there is an infinitude of such universes, and infinitude has no beginning.

Beyond the Pleroma, or ideal type of all universes, there was — what ? Silences more unspeakable than Silence, and Depths deeper than the Deep ! How the Valentinians would have laughed at the notion of ascribing a monistic or dualistic theory to their intuition of what lay beyond Being, and of making this the basis of dividing them into an Eastern and Western school ! Yet that is what Hippolytus (II.) and many modern critics have done. Let us then leave the mystery in the Silence of that Depth beyond Being — a Silence which, as it were, shut off the Pleroma from the Depth beyond Being by a still higher Boundary than the Great Firmament. This highest Boundary was within the innermost depths of the Pleroma itself, the inward world, just as the Great Boundary was beyond the depths of the phenomenal external world. The idea connoted by the term "depth" takes thought away from all ideas of three dimensional matter, as we know it, and introduces it to the notion of " through " in every direction at the same time, inside and out as well.

We next have to treat of the "being" of the Pleroma of the aeons. Every "being" in this T " Fullness of Being " (Pleroma) was also, in its turn, a "fullness" or perfection, and the nature of the life of these " beings " was shown forth in their names. They were called aeons, or " eternities," for they were out of time and space. Everything outside the Pleroma, that is to say, everything in the phenomenal universe, on the contrary, was an " image " or deficiency. The phenomenal world was therefore called by such names as the Kenoma or " Emptiness," the Image, etc. It is, however, evident that until we reach the phenomenal world, no possible human language can serve us to express modes of being which transcend cosmogonic operations. And yet the hardihood of the

Gnostic genius had to find some method whereby it could adumbrate the manner of being of the aeons, which were ex hypothesi out of time and space. Let us then turn our attention to one of the methods whereby this was attempted. Not that the Gnostics worked from below upwards, they received from above and brought it down into matter; in brief, their expositions were attempts to describe a living symbol, which is said to have been shown them in vision. Now Pythagoras and Plato, and the instructors in the Mysteries, declared that physical matter was ultimately of a geometrical nature; that in all things "God geometrizes." Thus the five regular solids formed the summit of the geometrical know ledge of the Platonic school. It was because of the attention bestowed on these solids by this school, that posterity has called the five the Platonic Solids. The whole of the Elements of Euclid, says Proclus, were but an introduction to this science of the perfect solids. These polyhedra were believed to lie at the back not only of earth-formation, but of every genus, species, and individual in the material universe. It is strange that no subject in mathe matics has been so neglected as that of the regular solids; but so it is, and the moderns laugh at such " puerilities " of the ancients.

For the re-discovery and elaboration of a part of this science within the last six years I must refer the " doulx lecteur " to the works of a young Spanish scientist, Senor Soria y Mata. No one of course who is entirely ignorant of the subject, will be able to comprehend fully the follow ing general indications ; but the nature of finger-posts is to point in certain directions, not to accompany the traveller along the road ; and the " gentle reader " who requires such personal conducting must seek it in Senor Soria's admirable essays. For the present our work is simply to set up sign-posts ; and so we return to our task. But even supposing, some one may say, that the five solids (which are all variations of one in various combinations with itself) have some connection with the typical elements which build up the invisible molecular structure of physical matter, what has that to do with the Valentinian Gnostics ? A great deal, we may answer. Marcus, one of the earliest followers of Valentinus, has some system of a kabalistic numbering assigned to him, and in connection with this Hippolytus (II.) declares that the whole of Valentinianism was based on the numbers and geometry of Pythagoras and Plato.

No further proof, however, is brought forward of this sweeping generality, and no scholar has so far supplied the missing link. It is, nevertheless, entirely credible that the seonology of the Valentinian School was based partly on such considerations. Let us then attempt to make a few suggestions on the subject, not from the numbering ascribed to Marcus, but from the living side of Pythagorean and Platonic mathematics, the " mathesis " which was the same as the " gnosis" and which is said to have been called even by Pythagoras himself, " the gnosis of things that are." It was then perhaps along this line of thought that some of the Gnostic thinkers sought for a living symbolism, which should adumbrate in some fashion the manner of being of the aeons. From the region of definite polyhedrical matter, the order ing of which, though invisible to the eye, could yet be imagined in the mind, the symbolism could be pushed back a further stage — from the molecular to the atomic as we should say now-a-days. The regular solids were thus the eventuation in physical matter of certain systems of perfect equilibrium of "points" in space. These points were not pure mathematical abstractions, but actual centres of force, bearing certain relations to one another, equili brated by a law of polarity or syzygy. This was the region of the atom. The atom was thought of as a living thing of force, a sphere, said by some to be a spherical (" conical ") swirl, the most perfect figure, ever contracting and expanding, generative of all motions, while it is itself self -motive, and yet from another point of view " immovable," as pertaining to the "foundations of earth." It is smaller than the small as matter, yet greater than the great as energy. It was the atom and its combinations, then, as we should riow-a-days say, which the Valentinian Gnosis envisaged in its seonology. I do not, how ever, for a moment suggest that any Gnostic philo sopher thought of the atom in the same way as a modern physicist does ; I believe, on the contrary, that the most advanced of the Gnostics were shown this living symbol of world-formation in vision, and the various systems were efforts to explain such visions. Of course, any symbol is immensities

removed from the reality, but the endeavour to imagine, or the privilege of being shown, the living type lying beyond the simplest types - of physical matter-formation, is at any rate nearer the reality than any dead physical shape. Thus the atom and its simplest modes of differentiated being, may be taken as symbols of the aeon-world, the Pleroma, the world of life and light, beyond time and space, the undecaying heart of the eternities. The following view may then be of interest to students of symbolism, who as a rule confine their attention solely to plane figures, and thus deal as it were with the " shadows of the dead." For a plane figure is, so to speak, only a shadow of a dead solid ; it is the living system of force behind or within the latter which is the first spark of life in the series. In order to see this more clearly, let us take a familiar symbol, the interlaced triangles or " Solomon's Seal." In solids this symbol is represented by two mutually interpenetrated tetrahedra ; from this union come the cube and octahedron. The dodecahedron and icosahedron come from the mutual congress of five tetrahedra, a quintuplication. Thus we have our five regular solids. The fundamental type is the tetrahedron, and the force-system behind it consists of two pairs of atoms, or a double syzygy or couple in perfect equilibrium. The nature of the relationship of these atoms or spheres to each other, and of the interplay of their motions, is the mode of life or being of the symbol ; and when this is learned' then the symbol becomes alive and thus the forces

which the "shadow" of the "dead" solid symbolizes, are in the hand of the solver of the " mystery." One form of ancient magic, especially practised in Egypt, consisted of a most complicated extension of this idea, which wandered far beyond the limits of the geometrical symbols. Needless to say that the vast majority who practised the art, had not the slightest idea of the " reasons " for their performances. Magic for the general was never a rational thing. It consisted of an infinite number of " rules of thumb," and this side of it is consequently, and quite rightly, regarded by the present age of intelligent enquiry as a superstition. The intelligent student of symbolism will thus The " Fourth endeavour to free his mind from the limitations of

three-dimensional space, and think within into the state of the so-called "fourth dimension." For it is only along this line of thought that there is any hope of the faintest conception of seonic being. As the matter is of the first importance for a student of Gnosticism, and at the same time one of great difficulty, the following line of thought may be suggested as a preliminary exercise. Think of an atom, or monad, as a sphere which generates itself, or swells out, from a point and refunds itself again into that point. This gives the simple idea of position. Take two of such spheres at the same moment of expansion, that is to say two equal spheres, and place them in mutual contact. This can be done in an infinite number of ways, so that they may be in any direction the one with the other. Reduce these spheres in thought to mathematical

points, and we have the simplest idea of extension — one dimension. The two points are the extremities or boundaries of a line. Next, take three similar spheres and bring them into mutual contact. They can be placed in any direction the one to the other. Reduce them in thought to points, and we have three points not in a straight line, lying in a plane surface, or superfices of two dimensions. Then take four such spheres and bring them into mutual contact. Reduce them in their turn to points, and their positions require space of three dimensions. Finally, take five such spheres and try to imagine how they can be brought into mutual contact, that is to say, how each one can touch all the rest. This cannot be imagined in three dimensions, and requires the conception of another " dimension " — something to do with the content of the spheres — the idea of " through." This does not seem to be so much a " fourth dimension " as an involution of perception, retracing the path we have so far followed.

For instance, three-dimensional space is for normal sight bounded by surfaces ; those who have inner vision ( " four-dimensional " sight) say that the con tents of an object — e.g., a watch — appear, in some incomprehensible way, spread out before them as on a surface. If this is so, then three-dimensional space, the fourth link in our chain, is the turning point, and hence consciousness turns itself inwards once more towards the point, which when reached will become the illimitable circumference, or pleroma of conscious ness — the nirvanic " atom," so to say. Let us now try to imagine how the Gnosis symbolized the ideal universe, the type of all universes — the primal atom or monad, its motions, and modes of self -differencing and self -emanation within itself. The object of their contemplation was identical with the world of ideas, or noetic world, of Plato ; the lightworld of ancient Iran ; the " eternal egg," or type, from which all universes come forth, of ancient Khem ; the " resplendent germ," or hiranya-garbha, of the Upanishads — all of which has been intuitively set forth in philosophical terms by Leibnitz in his Monadology.

First, then, we have the conception of an infinite The Eternal sphere of Light, Light which transcends the glory of the most brilliant sun, as that sun's glory tran scends the flame of a rush-light ; Light beyond thought. As yet there is naught but infinite Light ; yet through it there is ever a something going, as it were from and to its centre, which is everywhere and nowhere, a breath ever outbreathing and in breathing, an endless energy which nothing human can perceive or know. It is the Life-breath of the universe at the zero-point of being, to use terms familiar to some theosophical students. We next proceed to what we must call a change of state ; but we should remember that all the states we are attempting thus to symbolize, in reality exist simultaneously ; and though in thought we are to follow out a kind of emanation or evolution, it is in reality an ever-existing infinite state of consciousness out of time and space.

arises slightly less brilliant than the transcendent The Law of Light, another mode of motion as it were, which we may symbolize as an oval or egg-like swirling, ever swelling-out and in-drawing. Within this two " foci " are gradually developed, as it pulsates and swells. The inner periphery of the egg-envelope contracts in the midst through the action of the two foci, the symbols of equilibrium, of positive and negative, the law of syzygy or pairing. The two part asunder. Bythus and Ennoea, Prof oundity and Thought, are the first syzygy of asons, now symbolized as two spheres. Being separate, in some mysterious fashion they are differently affected by the great out-breath and inbreath, yet each manifests the qualities of the other. One is positive, the other is negative, as it were, and these qualities are at once communicated to the whole of the great Light-sphere, for they are every where and nowhere at once. Polarity is thus stated to be a mode of being of the Pleroma; the law of syzygy is affirmed.

But duality arising, multiplicity must follow ; and not only multiplicity but universality. For the Pleroma must be simultaneously the type of the One, Many and All, and monotheism, polytheism and pan theism must each find its source therein. In following out our symbolic imagery, however, we cannot think the whole at once. We try to conceive that whatever process we gain an intuition of by means of our symbols, takes place everywhere, always, and simultaneously with every other process and manner of being; but of this we can get no mental image. We can only pass from one process to another by following out the behaviour of a single pair of our living symbols. To proceed then. Thus we have spheres evolving, each positivenegative in itself, but positive or negative in its relationship to the other. In thought we will treat one as positive, the other as negative, and thus try to imagine the changes of mode. As the twin spheres in their turn expand and contract, when they touch, from the negative a " veil " or " mist " is shed forth and as it were " lines " the great Light-sphere.

The law of densification and perpetual differentia- ^on *s declared. At each contract the negative sphere tion. becomes less light and more passive as it were, though in reality the " lowest " aeon far transcends the most brilliant radiance in the universe. The negative light-sphere developes into progeny, differentiates its substance, impregnated by the positive lightsphere. That is to say, the Light-world is differentiated into "planes" of being; there are " veils " and " firmaments." But how many and of what kind ? I must refer the reader again to Sefior Soria's essays on the polyhedric origin of species for the only possible series of physical systems of perfect equilibrium of spheres of equal diameter, from two upwards, if he would follow out this most interesting problem in greater detail and work out the matter for himself. For the moment it is sufficient to state that the first seonic hierarchy of the Valentinian Pleroma is said to have been an ogdoad, or group of eight, which was sometimes considered as a dual

tetrad — in living symbols, the system of equilibrium behind two equally interpenetrated tetrahedra. A point of interest which should not be over looked, however, is to be noticed as following from the consideration of the ogdoadic mode of the Pleroma. The Bythus and Emicea are no longer regarded as a single pair ; Enncea, the negative sphere, has produced offspring. She is now the type of " seven-robed " Nature, Isis ; while Bythus is the Great Deep or " Waterwhirl," Osiris, the aether. The negative sphere is now seven spheres (herself, and six like unto herself and the positive sphere) — that is, three pairs of aeons. Here we have the type of the one sphere of sameness, and the seven spheres of difference, of the Pythagorean and Platonic Worldsoul. The Ogdoad and Hebdomad of Basilides have also here their types.

Thus having declared the law of duality, or syzygy, we next find the law of triplicity asserted in the triad of syzygies into which the negative sphere is differentiated. These are the three great stages or spaces of the Pleroma, and the syzygies, or modes of polarity, of these phases were called Mind-Truth, Word-Life, and Man-Church, for reasons which are somewhat obscure, and to which we shall return later on. We are next told of a dodecad and decad of aeons which owe their existence to one or other of the syzygies °f the ogdoad. The accounts of their genesis are entirely contradictory ; sometimes also the decad is placed before the dodecad, and, seeing of course that ten naturally comes before twelve, the critics

have without exception preferred this order. The matter is at best purely conjectural in such a chaos, but experience leads us to choose the less likely as being the more correct account. What on earth should have induced some of the Valentinians to put the twelve before the ten if their symbolism had not necessitated such an order ? We shall therefore take the main phases of the Pleroma to be those symbolized by the ogdoad, the dodecad and the decad in turn ; not that one came from the other in reality (they all existed together eternally), but because the living symbols are described in a dramatic myth, one of the variants of which we shall shortly present to the reader.

The ogdoad is a term connoting the operations of the living processes behind the symbol of two inter penetrated tetrahedra, and therefore includes all the permutations of their complementary progeny (the cube and octahedron). Thus the ogdoad was divided into a higher and lower tetrad, and in various other ways, including the one and the seven as described above ; the one and the seven can be represented by the curious geometrical fact that if seven equal circles be taken, and six be grouped round the central one, each circumference respectively will be found to exactly touch two adjacent circles and the one in the middle, while the greater circle can be described round all seven. This is of course but the shadow of a symbol, and is only intended to serve as a mnemonic ; but the fact is curious, and such natural facts were not so lightly regarded by the Platonists as they are by the moderns, especially when they had to do with the

most perfect figures — circles and spheres, the natural symbols of perfections or pleromata. We have now come to a stage where the differen tiation of the primal simplicity is to be represented by groups of twelve; the mode of being of the Pleroma is now the dodecad. It is a curious fact that if we were to imagine space filled with spheres all of equal diameter and in mutual contact, we should find that each sphere was surrounded with exactly twelve other spheres ; moreover, if we should imagine the spheres to be elastic, and that pressure be brought to bear on one of such systems of twelve, on every side at once, the central or thirteenth sphere would assume a dodecagonal form — in fact, a rhombic dodecahedron.

If we further remember that there is frequent mention of a " thirteenth aeon," which has hitherto puzzled all the commentators ; that the Pythagoreans and Platonists and Indian philosophers asserted that the dodecahedron was the symbol of the material universe ; that we are assured by some who have psychic or clairvoyant vision to-day that the field of activity of the atom is contained by a rhombic dodecahedron ; and that the " twelve " signs of the zodiac have hitherto remained a mere irrational hypothesis — then we may be inclined to think that there was good reason for insisting on the dodecad as an important phase of seonian being. Moreover, each phase of the Pleroma is supposed to be positive to the succeeding phase. Thus the Pleroma as a whole is positive to the dyadic stage ; in the dyadic stage, Bythus is positive to Ennoea, who

becomes various and sevenfold. The sevenfold is positive to the dodecad stage, which consists of thirteen spheres. If we think of the dodecad as the dodecahedron we shall be dealing with the phenomenal universe, and thus be without the Pleroma ; here we are dealing with the living type behind, in the aeon-world, that is to say the system of thirteen spheres which eventuate the dodecahedron in the physical world. Each of these thirteen contains in itself the seven modes of being of the preceding phase, and thus, in every system of thirteen, there is in reality a multitudinous progeny. These are the children of that phase of being which we may call the multi plicity of sameness, i.e., the atomic ocean of like contiguous spheres ; and they in their turn undergo a change which will eventuate in a harmonious arrangement or perfection, to be finally denoted by the perfect number ten, the decad.