xt, every oracle must be
false if the overthrow of that image could remain unpunished--if the
destruction of the universe failed to follow, as surely as a flood
ensues from a breach in a dyke. How indeed could it be otherwise,
according to the explanation which her teacher had given her of the
Neo-Platonic conception of the nature of the god?

It was not Serapis but the great and unapproachable One--supreme above
comprehension and sublime beyond conception, for whose majesty every
name was too mean, the fount and crown of Good and Beauty, in whole
all that exists ever has been and ever shall be. He it was who, like a
brimful vessel, overflowed with the quintessence of what we call divine;
and from this effluence emanated the divine Mind, the pure intelligence
which is to the One what light is to the sun. This Mind with its
vitality--a life not of time but of eternity--could stir or remain
passive as it listed; it included a Plurality, while the One was Unity,
and forever indivisible. The concept of each living creature proceeded
from the second: The eternal Mind; and this vivifying and energizing
intelligence comprehended the prototypes of every living being, hence,
also, of the immortal gods--not themselves but their idea or image. And
just as the eternal Mind proceeded from the One, so, in the third place,
did the Soul of the universe proceed from the second; that Soul whose
twofold nature on one side touched the supreme Mind, and, on the other,
the baser world of matter. This was the immortal Aphrodite, cradled in
bliss in the pure radiance of the ideal world and yet unable to free
herself from the gross clay of matter fouled by sensuality and the
vehicle of sin.

The head of Serapis was the eternal Mind; in his broad breast slept
the Soul of the Universe, and the prototypes of all created things; the
world of matter was the footstool under his feet. All the subordinate
forces obeyed him, the mighty first Cause, whose head towered up to
the realm of the incomprehensible and inconceivable One. He was the sum
total of the universe, the epitome of things created; and at the
same time he was the power which gave them life and intelligence and
preserved them from perishing by perpetual procreation. It was his might
that kept the multiform structure of the material and psychical world
in perennial harmony. All that lived--Nature and its Soul as much as Man
and his Soul--were inseparably dependent on him. If he--if Serapis