hological analyses of the Stoic casuists. In this
range of ideas also, the maintenance of the most striking contrasts
characterizes Egyptian mentality, which was never shocked by the cruelties
and obscenities that sullied the mythology and the ritual. Like Epicurus at
Athens, some of the sacred texts actually invited the believers to enjoy
life before the sadness of death.[47]

Isis was not a very austere goddess at the time she entered Italy.
Identified with Venus, as Harpocrates was with Eros, she was honored
especially by the women with whom love was a profession. In Alexandria, the
city of pleasure, she had lost all severity, and at Rome this good goddess
remained very indulgent to human weaknesses. Juvenal harshly refers to {91}
her as a procuress,[48] and her temples had a more than doubtful
reputation, for they were frequented by young men in quest of gallant
adventures. Apuleius himself chose a lewd tale in which to display his
fervor as an initiate.

But we have said that Egypt was full of contradictions, and when a more
exacting morality demanded that the gods should make man virtuous, the
Alexandrian mysteries offered to satisfy that demand.

At all times the Egyptian ritual attributed considerable importance to
purity, or, to use a more adequate term, to cleanliness. Before every
ceremony the officiating priest had to submit to ablutions, sometimes to
fumigations or anointing, and to abstain from certain foods and from
incontinence for a certain time. Originally no moral idea was connected
with this purification. It was considered a means of exorcising malevolent
demons or of putting the priest into a state in which the sacrifice
performed by him could have the expected effect. It was similar to the
diet, shower-baths and massage prescribed by physicians for physical
health. The internal status of the officiating person was a matter of as
much indifference to the celestial spirits as the actual worth of the
deceased was to Osiris, the judge of the underworld. All that was necessary
to have him open the fields of Aalu to the soul was to pronounce the
liturgic formulas, and if the soul declared its innocence in the prescribed
terms its word was readily accepted.

But in the Egyptian religion, as in all the religions of antiquity,[49] the
original conception was gradually transformed and a new idea slowly took
its place. The sacramental acts of purification were now {92} expected to
wipe out moral stains, an