departed immediately enter Paradise,[808] and that
souls not yet purified pass into a state of punishment, a penal fire,
which, however, like the whole world, is to be conceived as a place of
purification.[809] In this way also Origen contrived to reconcile his
position with the Church doctrines of the judgment and the punishments
in hell; but, like Clement, he viewed the purifying fire as a temporary
and figurative one; it consists in the torments of conscience.[810] In
the end all the spirits in heaven and earth, nay, even the demons, are
purified and brought back to God by the Logos-Christ,[811] after they
have ascended from stage to stage through seven heavens.[812] Hence
Origen treated this doctrine as an esoteric one: "for the common man it
is sufficient to know that the sinner is punished."[813]

This system overthrew those of the Gnostics, attracted Greek
philosophers, and justified ecclesiastical Christianity. If one
undertook to subject it to a new process of sublimation from the
standpoint given in the "contemplative life", little else would be left
than the unchangeable spirit, the created spirit, and the ethic. But no
one is justified in subjecting it to this process.[814] The method
according to which Origen preserved whatever appeared valuable in the
content of tradition is no less significant than his system of ethics
and the great principle of viewing everything created in a relative
sense. Supposing minds of a radical cast, to have existed at the close
of the history of ancient civilisation, what would have been left to us?
The fact of a strong and undivided religious interest attaching itself
to the traditions of the philosophers and of the two Testaments was the
condition--to use Origen's own language--that enabled a new world of
spirits to arise after the old one had finished its course.

During the following century Origen's theology at first acted in its
entirety. But it likewise attained this position of influence, because
some important propositions could be detached from their original
connection and fitted into a new one. It is one of the peculiarities of
this ecclesiastical philosophy of religion that the most of its formulae
could be interpreted and employed _in utramque partem_. The several
propositions could be made to serve very different purposes not only by
being halved, but also by being grouped. With this the relative unity
that distinguishes the system no doubt vanished; but how many