ersity of homage.[1] In paganism a cult does not die
violently, but after long decay. A new doctrine does not necessarily
displace an older one. They may co-exist for a long time as contrary
possibilities suggested by the intellect or faith, and all opinions, all
practices, seem respectable to paganism. It never has any radical or
revolutionary transformations. Undoubtedly, the pagan beliefs of the fourth
century or earlier did not {201} have the consistency of a metaphysical
system nor the rigor of canons formulated by a council. There is always a
considerable difference between the faith of the masses and that of
cultured minds, and this difference was bound to be great in an
aristocratic empire whose social classes were sharply separated. The
devotion of the masses was as unchanging as the depths of the sea; it was
not stirred up nor heated by the upper currents.[2] The peasants practised
their pious rites over anointed stones, sacred springs and blossoming
trees, as in the past, and continued celebrating their rustic holidays
during seed-time and harvest. They adhered with invincible tenacity to
their traditional usages. Degraded and lowered to the rank of
superstitions, these were destined to persist for centuries under the
Christian orthodoxy without exposing it to serious peril, and while they
were no longer marked in the liturgic calendars they were still mentioned
occasionally in the collections of folk-lore.

At the other extreme of society the philosophers delighted in veiling
religion with the frail and brilliant tissue of their speculations. Like
the emperor Julian they improvised bold and incongruous interpretations of
the myth of the Great Mother, and these interpretations were received and
relished by a restricted circle of scholars. But during the fourth century
these vagaries of the individual imagination were nothing but arbitrary
applications of uncontested principles. During that century there was much
less intellectual anarchy than when Lucian had exposed the sects "for sale
at public auction"; a comparative harmony arose among the pagans after they
joined the opposition. One single school, that of neo-Platonism, ruled all
{202} minds. This school not only respected positive religion, as ancient
stoicism had done, but venerated it, because it saw there the expression of
an old revelation handed down by past generations. It considered the sacred
books divinely inspired--the books of Hermes Trismegistu