stablished order of nature." 67

The reference in the last clause is to the decrees of the Senate
whereby apotheosis was conferred on various persons, placing them
among the gods. This ceremony has often been made to appear
unnecessarily ridiculous, through a perversion of its actual
meaning. When the ancients applied the term "god" to a human soul
departed from the body, it was not used as the moderns
prevailingly employ that word. It expressed a great deal less with
them than with us. It merely meant to affirm similarity of
essence, qualities, and residence, but by no means equal dignity
and power of attributes between the one and the others. It meant
that the soul had gone to the heavenly habitation of the gods and
was thenceforth a participant in the heavenly life.68 Heraclitus
was accustomed to say, "Men are mortal gods; gods are immortal
men." Macrobius says, "The soul is not only immortal, but a god."
69 And Cicero declares, "The soul of man is a Divine thing, as
Euripides dares to say, a god." 70 Milton uses language precisely
parallel, speaking of those who are "unmindful of the crown true
Virtue gives her servants, after their mortal change, among the
enthroned gods on sainted seats." Theophilus, Bishop of Antioch in
the second century, says that "to become a god means to ascend
into heaven." 71 The Roman Catholic ceremony of beatification and
canonization of saints, offering them incense and prayers
thereafter, means exactly what was meant by the ancient
apotheosis, namely, that while the multitudes of the dead abide
below, in the intermediate state, these favored souls have been
advanced into heaven. The papal functionaries borrowed this rite,
with most of its details, from their immediate pagan predecessors,
who themselves probably adopted it from the East, whence the
Mysteries came. It is well known that the Brahmans and Buddhists
believed, centuries before the Christian era, in the contrasted
fate of good men after death to enjoy the successive heavens above
the clouds, and of bad men to suffer the successive hells beneath
the earth. A knowledge of this attractive Oriental doctrine may
have united with the advance of their own speculations to win the
partial acceptance obtained among the Greeks and Romans for the
faith which broke the universal doom to Hades and opened heaven to
their hopeful aspirations. In a tragedy of Euripides the following
passage occurs, addressed to the bereaved Admetus: "Let not