erhaps strange
to our ideas of medicine. One records how the god came to man
dreadfully afflicted with dropsy, cut off his head, turned him
upside down and let the fluid run out, and then replaced his head
with a neat join. Some modern readers may doubt this story; but that
the god did heal people, men firmly believed. We, too, may believe
that people were healed, perhaps by living a healthy life in a quiet
place, a life of regimen and diet; and perhaps faith-healing or
suggestion played as strong a part as anything else. Even the
Christians believed that these gods had a certain power; they were
evil spirits.

Not only the gods of the temples would manifest themselves of their
grace. Every man had a guardian spirit, a "genius"; and by proper
means he could be "compelled" to show himself visibly. The pupils of
Plotinus conjured up his "genius", and it came--not a daemon, but a
god. The right formula ("mantram") and the right stone in the
hand--and a man had a wonderful power over the gods themselves. This
was called "theurgy".

But the great strength of this old religion was its infinite
adaptability. It made peace with every god and goddess that it met.
It adopted them all. As a French scholar has said, where there is
polytheism there are no false gods. All the religions were fused and
the gods were blended. The Roman went to Greece and identified
Jupiter with Zeus; he went to Egypt and found him in Amun (Ammon);
he went to Syria and found him in Baal. If the Jew had not been so
foolish and awkward, there might have been a Jupiter Jehovah as
well. It was a catholic faith, embracing everything--cult and creed
and philosophy--strong in all the ways we have surveyed and in many
more, above all because it was unchallenged.

And yet, where is that religion to-day? That, to me, is one of the
most significant questions in history--more so, the longer I stay in
India. Men knew that that religion of Greece and Rome was eternal;
yet it is utterly gone. Why? How _could_ it go? What conceivable
power was there, I do not say, to bring it down, but to abolish it
so thoroughly, that not a soul in Egypt worships Isis--how many even
know her name?--not a soul in Italy thinks of Jove but as a fancy,
and Pallas Athene in Athens itself is a mere memory? That is the
problem, the historical problem, with which we have now to deal.

First of all, let us look again, and more closely, at that old
religion--we shall find in it at least fo