former lives; and, in consequence of this, if they inflict a certain
punishment in obedience to the entreaties of those that invoke them,
they do not inflict it without justice, but looking at the offences
committed by souls in former lives: which men, not perceiving, think
that they unjustly fall into the calamities which they suffer."[183]

Proclus gave out the same teaching; he affirmed that he had been
incarnated in Nichomachus, the Pythagorean.

In his commentary on the _Golden Verses of Pythagoras_, Hierocles
expresses himself thus:

"The ways of the Lord can be justified only by metempsychosis."[184]

Damascius and Hermias, as also their masters, proclaimed their belief
in Rebirth.

Here a short explanation must be given of what has been said regarding
transmigration or metempsychosis, in order that all misunderstanding
may be removed.

Neither Pythagoras nor Plotinus nor any of the great Teachers of the
past believed in metempsychosis, as it has been described; all their
disciples have affirmed if, and these affirmations, set over against a
line of teaching which seems to contradict them, because it is
incomplete and intended for the less intelligent portion of society at
that time, ought to have reminded its opponents that there might be
hidden reasons capable of explaining the paradox.

We must first remember that a veil of strictest secrecy was flung over
the noblest and most sublime spiritual teachings of the day. According
to Bossuet, the teaching of the immortality of the soul seems not to
have been deemed suitable for the Hebrew race, and, indeed, it is easy
to understand that no double-edged truth should be taught except under
conditions that would safeguard it. Ptolemy Philadelphus exiled
Hegesias,[185] whose eloquent fanaticism had caused some of his
disciples to commit suicide, at Cyrene, after a lesson on immortality.
Ptolemy ordered those schools of philosophy to be closed which
continued teaching this doctrine, for in the case of a people
insufficiently developed, the instinct which binds to physical life,
and the dread of the torture that awaits guilty souls in the
Hereafter, are preferable to doctrines of immortality deprived of the
safeguards with which they should be surrounded.

The doctrine of Rebirths called for even stricter secrecy than that of
immortality, and this secrecy was accorded it in ancient times; after
the coming of the Christ, it grew less rigorous, and the
Neoplato