t imagine
Gnosticism had something to do with it; and that Gnosticism was
a graft on the parent stem of Christianity set there by some real
Teacher who came later than Jesus. If we knew more of the
realities about Simon Magus on the one hand, and Paul of Tarsus
on the other, we might have clearer light on the whole problem;
at present must be content with saying this much:--that Gnosticism,
with its deep mystical truths, emerges into the light of
well-founded history about neck and neck with orthodox Christianity;
was considered a branch of the same movement, equally Christian;
but was at least tinged with esoteric truth, and deeply Hellenized,
and perhaps Persianized;--whereas the orthodox branch was
the legitimate heir of exoteric Judaism. How much of real
vision there may have been in Gnosticism; how much of mere
speculation, which is but a step towards vision,--I am not
prepared to guess; but have little doubt that Gnostic activities
made ready the ground for Neo-Platonism; so that when the
latter's Manasaputric light incarnated, it found fit rupas
to inhabit.

This was the Lodge's most important effort to sow truth in Europe
since Pythagoras. Says even the _Enyclopaedia Britannica_
(without help from Esotericism):

"Neo-Platonism is in one aspect ... the consummation of ancient
philosophy. Never before in Greek or Roman speculation had the
consciousness of man's dignity and superiority to Nature received
such adequate expression.... From the religious and moral point
of view, it must be admitted that the ethical 'mood' which
Neo-Platonisni endeavored to create and maintain is the highest
and purest ever reached by antiquity.... It is a proof of the
strength of the moral instincts of mankind that the only phase of
culture which we can survey in all its stages from beginning to
end culminated not in materialism but in the highest idealism."

It asserted the Gods, the great stars and luminaries of the Inner
World; it asserted the Divinity of Man,--superior, truly, as the
_Encyclopaedia_ says to (the lower) Nature, but of the Higher,
one part or factor in the whole. It came into Europe trailing
clouds of splendor and opening the heavens of Vision. The huge
menace and perils of the age, the multiplying disasters,
were driving men to seek spiritual refuge of some kind; and
there were, in the main, two camps that offered it:--this of
Neo-Platonism, proclaiming Human Divinity and strong effort
upward in the