of nature, that cannot die. And thus
the lotus-flower must still retain its meaning, as long as its species
exists on earth.'

'Idolatry!' answered she, with a smile. 'My pupil must not repeat to me
that worn-out Christian calumny. Into whatsoever low superstitions the
pious vulgar may have fallen, it is the Christians now, and not the
heathens, who are idolaters. They who ascribe miraculous power to dead
men's bones, who make temples of charnel-houses, and bow before the
images of the meanest of mankind, have surely no right to accuse of
idolatry the Greek or the Egyptian, who embodies in a form of symbolic
beauty ideas beyond the reach of words!

'Idolatry? Do I worship the Pharos when I gaze at it, as I do for hours,
with loving awe, as the token to me of the all-conquering might of
Hellas? Do I worship the roll on which Homer's words are written, when
I welcome with delight the celestial truths which it unfolds to me, and
even prize and love the material book for the sake of the message
which it brings? Do you fancy that any but the vulgar worship the image
itself, or dream that it can help or hear them? Does the lover mistake
his mistress's picture for the living, speaking reality? We worship the
idea of which the image is a symbol. Will you blame us because we use
that symbol to represent the idea to our own affections and emotions
instead of leaving it a barren notion, a vague imagination of our own
intellect?'

'Then,' asked Philammon, with a faltering voice, yet unable to restrain
his curiosity, 'then you do reverence the heathen gods?'

Why Hypatia should have felt this question a sore one, puzzled
Philammon; but she evidently did feel it as such, for she answered
haughtily enough--

'If Cyril had asked me that question, I should have disdained to answer.
To you I will tell, that before I can answer your question you must
learn what those whom you call heathen gods are. The vulgar, or rather
those who find it their interest to calumniate the vulgar for the sake
of confounding philosophers with them, may fancy them mere human beings,
subject like man to the sufferings of pain and love, to the limitations
of personality. We, on the other hand, have been taught by the primeval
philosophers of Greece, by the priests of ancient Egypt, and the sages
of Babylon, to recognise in them the universal powers of nature, those
children of the all-quickening spirit, which are but various emanations
of the one primeval