ed _Hyle_, or _Demon_. The ruler of the
light is supremely happy, good, and benevolent, while the ruler over
darkness is unhappy, evil, and malignant.

Pythagoras also maintained this doctrine of two antagonistic principles.
He called the one, unity, _light_, the right hand, equality, stability,
and a straight line; the other he named binary, _darkness_, the left hand,
inequality, instability, and a curved line. Of the colors, he attributed
white to the good principle, and black to the evil one.

The Cabalists gave a prominent place to light in their system of
cosmogony. They taught that, before the creation of the world, all space
was filled with what they called _Aur en soph_, or the _Eternal Light,_
and that when the Divine Mind determined or willed the production of
Nature, the Eternal Light withdrew to a central point, leaving around it
an empty space, in which the process of creation went on by means of
emanations from the central mass of light. It is unnecessary to enter into
the Cabalistic account of creation; it is sufficient here to remark that
all was done through the mediate influence of the _Aur en soph_, or
eternal light, which produces coarse matter, but one degree above
nonentity, only when it becomes so attenuated as to be lost in darkness.

The Brahminical doctrine was, that "light and darkness are esteemed the
world's eternal ways; he who walketh in the former returneth not; that is
to say, he goeth to eternal bliss; whilst he who walketh in the latter
cometh back again upon earth," and is thus destined to pass through
further transmigrations, until his soul is perfectly purified by
light.[103]

In all the ancient systems of initiation the candidate was shrouded in
darkness, as a preparation for the reception of light. The duration varied
in the different rites. In the Celtic Mysteries of Druidism, the period in
which the aspirant was immersed in darkness was nine days and nights;
among the Greeks, at Eleusis, it was three times as long; and in the still
severer rites of Mithras, in Persia, fifty days of darkness, solitude, and
fasting were imposed upon the adventurous neophyte, who, by these
excessive trials, was at length entitled to the full communication of the
light of knowledge.

Thus it will be perceived that the religious sentiment of a good and an
evil principle gave to darkness, in the ancient symbolism, a place equally
as prominent as that of light.

The same religious sentiment of th