had already been done to Isis and her temple might soon be done to
Serapis and to his house.

She could not bear the thought, for she had been accustomed to regard
the Serapeum as the very heart of the universe--the centre and fulcrum
on which the balance of the earth depended; to her, Serapis himself was
inseparable from his temple and its atmosphere of magical and mystical
power. Every prophecy, every Sibylline text, 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