"called ideas; when these things, I say, MIND and "the SUPREME GOD, are the subject, then all fable "and falsehood is banished from the discourse. "But still let us observe, that if, on these subjects, "their discourse leads them to inculcate doc"trines, which not only exceed the power of "speech, but even human ideas and cogitations,

they then fly to allusions, similitudes, and figures. "But then again, on the other hand, when the "discourse is of the first kind, that is, concerning "the GODS and the HUMAN SOUL, where fable " and falsehood are employed, the philosophers "have had recourse to this method, not out of an "idle or fantastic humour, or to please their au"dience by an agreeable amusement; but because

they know that a naked and open exposition of $6 NATURE * is injurious to her; who, as she hides "the knowledge of herself from gross and vulgar "conceptions, by the various covering and dis

guise of Forms, so it is her pleasure, that her "priests, the Philosophers, should treat her secrets "in fable and allegory, And thus it is even in the "sacred Mysteries, where the secret is hid, even

* quia sciunt inimicam esse naturæ apertam nudamque expositionemque sui. He alludes here to the danger of explaining openly the physical nature of the heavenly bodies, because it would unsettle one half of vulgar polytheism. So Anaxagoras was accused, and some say convicted, of a capital crime, for holding the sun to be a mere material mass of fire,

$ from

"from the initiated, under figurative and scenical "representations*. And while princes and magis

trates only, with Wisdom † for their guide, are "admitted to the naked truth; the rest may be "well content with outside ornaments, which, at "the same time that they excite the beholder's

46

reverence and veneration §, are contrived to secure the dignity of the secret, by hiding it under that cover from the knowledge of the "Vulgar." The first observation I shall make on

this

figurarum cuniculis operiuntur, i. e. cuniculis figurarum ad representationem aptis. It alludes to the allegorical shows of the mysteries represented in subterraneous places.

+-Sapientia interprete; Wisdom is here put into the office of hierophant of the mysteries, who instructed the initiated in the secret.

‡ -summatibus tantum viris veri arcani consciis. By these Macrobius means, heroes, princes, and legislators: alluding to their old practice of seeking initiation into the greater mysteries.

§ Contenti sint reliqui ad venerationem figuris, &c. is equivalent to Contenti sint reliqui aptis venerationį figuris.

Sciendum est tamen non in omnem disputationem philosophos admittere fabulosa vel licita, sed his uti solent, vel cum de ANIMA, vel de aëriis ætheriisve potestatibus, vel de ceteris Dis, loquuntur. Ceterum cum ad summum et principem omnium Deum, qui apud Græcos τἀγαθὸν, qui πρῶτον αἴτιον nuncupatur, tractatus se audet attollere; vel ad mentem quam Græci v appellant,

originales

this long passage is, that the SAME SUBJECT, namely, the nature of superior beings, was handled in a TWOFOLD manner; exoterically; and then the discourse was of the national Gods: esoterically; and then it was of the first Cause of all things. 2. That the exoteric teaching admitted fable and falsehood, fabulosa vel licita: the esoteric only what the teacher believed to be true, nihil fabulosum penitus. 3. That what was taught the Vulgar concerning the HUMAN SOUL was of the exoteric kind. 4. That the teaching of fables was one thing; and the teaching in fables, or by figurative expressions, quite another: the first being the cover of error; the second the vehicle of truth: that

the

originales rerum species, quæ idéal dicta sunt, continentem, ex summo natam et profectam Deo: cum de his, inquam, loquuntur, summo Deo et mente nihil fabulosum penitus attingunt. Sed si quid de his assignare conantur, quæ non sermonem tantummodo, sed cogitationem quoque humanam superant, ad similitudines et exempla confugiunt-De Diis autem, ut dixi, ceteris, et de anima non frustra se, nec, ut obiectent, ad fabulosa convertunt; sed quia sciunt inimicam esse naturæ apertam nudamque expositionem suí: quæ sicut vulgaribus hominum sensibus intellectum sui vario rerum tegmine operimentoque subtraxit; ita a prudentibus arcana sua voluit per fabulosa tractari. Sic ipsa mysteria figurarum cuniculis operiuntur, ne. vel hæc adeptis nuda rerum talium se natura præbeat: sed summatibus tantum viris, Sapientia interprete, veri arcani consciis; contenti sint reliqui ad venerationem figuris defendentibus a vilitate secretum. In Somn. Scip. lib. i. c. 2,

the passions and prejudices of men made the first necessary; that the latter became unavoidable, through the weakness of human conception. This distinction was useful and seasonable, as the not attending to it, in those late times, in which Macrobius wrote, was the occasion of men's confounding these two ways of teaching with one another.

From all this it appears, that a right conception of the nature of the DOUBLE DOCTRINE was deemed the TRUE KEY to the ancient Greek Philosophy.

On which account several writers of the lower ages composed discourses ON THE HIDDEN DOCTRINES OF THE PHILOSOPHERS *. But as these, which would have given much light to the subject, are not come down to us, we must be content to feel out our way to the original and end of the double doctrine as well as we are able. For it is not enough, that this method of teaching was general amongst the Greek philosophers: to bring it to our point, we must prove it was invented for the good of Society.

The original is little understood. It hath been generally supposed owing either to a barbarous love of mystery; or a base disposition to deceive. Toland, who made it the study of a wretched life, to shed his venom on every thing that was great and

* Zacynthus scripsit τὰ ἀπόῤῥηλα τῆς φιλοσοφίας, refe rente Laertio, Porphyrius τῶν φιλοσόφων τὰ ἀπόῤῥηλα, teste Eunapio in ejus vita.

respectable,

respectable, sometimes supposes this double doctrine the issue of craft and roguery; at other times, a grave and wise provision against the bigotry and superstition of the vulgar. And a different sort of man, the celebrated Fontenelle, when he calls mystery, which is the consequence of the double doctrine, the apanage of barbarity, does as little justice to Antiquity.

I shall shew first, that those, from whom the Greeks borrowed this method of philosophising, invented it for the service of Society. And secondly, that those who borrowed it, employed it for that purpose; however it might at length degenerate into craft and folly t

First, then, it is confessed by the Greeks themselves, that all their learning and wisdom came from Egypt; fetched from thence either immediately by their own Philosophers, or brought round to them by the Eastern Sages, by the way of Asia. In this, the Greeks are unanimous. Now Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, Plutarch, all testify that the Egyptian priests, with whom the learning of the place resided, had a TWOFOLD PHILOSOPHY, the one hidden and sacred, the other open and vulgar.

See his Tetradymus, in what he calls, Of the Exoteric and Esoteric Philosophy.

See note [G] at the end of this Book.

* Οἱ ἱερεῖς ΔΥΟ ΛΟΓΟΥΣ ἔχοντες, ὧν τὸν μὲν ἱερὸν τ περιτὴν ὁ δὲ ἐμφανὴς καὶ πρόχειρα. Περὶ Ἰσιδο και Όσιρι

Το