The
mysterious affinity of minds is as much due to reflection as to the
continued and almost unconscious influence of confused aspirations that
produce faith. The obscure gestation of a new ideal is accomplished with
pangs of anguish. Violent struggles must have disturbed the souls of the
masses when they were torn away from their old ancestral religions, or more
often from indifference, by those exacting gods who demanded a surrender of
the entire person, a _devotion_ in the etymological meaning of the word.
The consecration to Isis of the hero of Apuleius was the result of a call,
of an appeal, by the goddess who wanted the neophyte to enlist in her
sacred militia.[7]

If it is true that every conversion involves a psychological crisis, a
transformation of the intimate personality of the individual, this is
especially true of the propagation of the Oriental religions. Born outside
of the narrow limits of the Roman city, they grew up frequently in
hostility to it, and were international, consequently individual. The bond
that formerly kept devotion centered upon the city or the tribe, upon the
_gens_ or the family, was broken. In place of the ancient social groups
communities of initiates came into existence, who considered themselves
brothers no matter where they came from.[8] A god, conceived of as being
universal, received every mortal as his child. Whenever these religions had
any relation to the state they were no longer called upon to support old
municipal or social institutions, but to lend their strength to the {28}
authority of a sovereign regarded as the eternal lord of the whole world
jointly with God himself. In the circles of the mystics, Asiatics mingled
with Romans, and slaves with high functionaries. The adoption of the same
faith made the poor freedman the equal and sometimes the superior, of the
decurion and the _clarissimus_. All submitted to the same rules and
participated in the same festivities, in which the distinctions of an
aristocratic society and the differences of blood and country were
obliterated. The distinctions of race and nationality, of magistrate and
father of a family, of patrician and plebeian, of citizen and foreigner,
were abolished; all were but men, and in order to recruit members, those
religions worked upon man and his character.

In order to gain the masses and the cream of Roman society (as they did for
a whole century) the barbarian mysteries had to possess a powerful cha