ith their mysteries, perils, threats, and promises, could be
either more natural or more impressive than that of a vessel
launched on the deep. The dying Socrates said "that he should
trust his soul on the hope of a future life as upon a raft, and
launch away into the unknown." Thus the imagination broods over
and explores the shows and secrets, presageful warnings and
alluring

38 Golden Ass, Taylor's trans., p. 283.

39 Herodotus, lib. il. cap. cxxii.

40 Divine Legation of Moses, book ii. sect. iv.

41 Faber, Mysteries of the Cabiri, ch. v.: On the Connection of
the Fabulous Hades with the Mysteries.

invitations, storms and calms, island homes and unknown havens, of
the dim seas of nature and of man, of time and of eternity.42

Thirdly, the defenders of the Arkite theory are driven into gross
inconsistencies with themselves by the falsity of their views. The
dilaceration of Zagreus into fragments, the mangling of Osiris and
scattering of his limbs abroad, they say, refer to the throwing
open of the ark and the going forth of the inmates to populate the
earth. They usually make Osiris, Zagreus, Adonis, and the other
heroes of the legends enacted in the Mysteries, representatives of
the diluvian patriarch himself; but here, with no reason whatever
save the exigencies of their theory, they make these mythic
personages representatives of the ark, a view which is utterly
unfounded and glaringly wanting in analogy. When Zagreus is torn
in pieces, his heart is preserved alive by Zeus and born again
into the world within a human form. After the body of Osiris had
been strewn piecemeal, the fragments were fondly gathered by Isis,
and he was restored to life. There is no plausible correspondence
between these cases and the sending out from the ark of the
patriarchal family to repeople the world. Their real purpose would
seem plainly to be to symbolize the thought that, however the body
of man crumbles in pieces, there is life for him still, he does
not hopelessly die. They likewise say that the egg which was
consecrated in the Mysteries, at the beginning of the rites, was
intended as an emblem of the ark resting on the abyss of waters,
and that its latent hatching was meant to suggest the opening of
the ark to let the imprisoned patriarch forth. This hypothesis has
no proof, and is needless. It is much more plausible to suppose
that the egg was meant as a symbol of a new life about to burst
upon the candidate, a sy