ART. XV. -- Buddhist Gnosticism, the System of Basilides

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ART. XV. -- Buddhist Gnosticism, the System of Basilides
By J. Kennedy

The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of

Great Britain and Ireland for 1902

p. 377-415

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p.377
"Up from Earth's centre through the seventh Gate
I rose, and on the Throne of Saturn ate;
And many a Knot unravel'd by the Road;
But not hte Master-knot of Human Fate."

Two questions, the early contact of Buddhism with
Christianity, and the origins and character of
Gnosticism, have attrracted much attention of late.
Although these questions are independent of each
other in the main, they happen to join hands in the
case of the great Gnostic Basilides. I propose to
show that the famous scheme of that arch-Gnostic was
an attempt at fusing Buddhism with Christianity, and
thus to throw some light upon the one question and
the other.(1)

The universal charity enjoined by the Buddha, and
the occasional parallelisms of doctrine or story in
the Buddhist writings and the Old and New Testaments,
(2) have awakened much curiosity regarding the
possible contact of the two religions. So much so,
indeed, that the Congres International d'histoire des
religions has called attention to the matter by a
special resolution.(3) Moreover, such speculations
are not devoid of a certain historical basis. Asoka
states in an inscription, four times repeated, that
between 260
-----------------------------
1. Basilides occupies a considerable place in all
works dealing with early Church history or the
Gnosties. For the special bibliography regarding
him see Bardenhewer's Patrologie, and the
admirable article on Basilides by Dr. Hort in
Smiths's Dict. of Christian Biography.
2. A useful collection of Parallel texts will be
found in "Chirstianity and Buddhism," by Dr. T.
Sterling Berry (S.P.C.K., London).
3. Upon the motion of M. Camerlynck, of Amiens, the
Congress agreed to the following resolution:
"That at the next Congress attention be drawn to
the relations which may have existed, at the
commencement, between Buddhism and Christianity."
p. 378
and 256 B.C. he despatched preachers of `the law' to
five Greek kings.(1) At the other end of the chain we
have the proselytizing efforts of Nestorian and
Buddhist monks in Central Asia between the fifth and
twelfth centuries A.D., which resulted in that
curious syncretism of religious ceremonies and
legends ascribed by the brhood Abbe Hue to the
machinations of the devil. The widespread story of
Barlaam and Josaphat is the earliest literary proof
of this syncretistic activity. But Barlaam and
Josaphat were unknown saints before the seventh
century A.D. Prior to that date we have nothing
certain, although much has been conjectured.2
Unfortunately these conjectures seldom conform to the
historical conditions of the problem. And three
reasons may be adduced to show that before the birth
of our Lord any considerable importation into the
West was an unlikely thing. Firstly, Indians and
Arabs kept up a lively exchange across the Indian
Sea, but Indian merchants and sailors were not to be
found beyond the shores of Arabia and the Persian
Gulf; while the trade by land was chiefly in the
hands or Bactrians, and the Bactrians were zealous
Zoroastrians until converted to Buddhism by the
Kushan kings in the first century A.D. In either case
direct intercourse with Alexandria and the Roman
Empire was practically nil. Secondly, the agents who
might be supposed to carry Buddhism to the West were
few. We have none of the soldiers, the officials, the
women and slaves who spread the rites of Isis and
Mithras, and for that matter Christianity itself,
throughout the
---------------------------
1. Epigraphia Indica, vol. ii. The latest
transliteration and translation of the test with
which I am acquainted is given in McCrindle's
"Invasion of India by Alexander the Great," pp.
372-374. I understand that it was supplied by the
late Dr. Buhler.
2. Some of the Celtic gods are occasionally
represented as sitting cross-legged an
attitude resembling that of Buddha. These rude
representations probably date from the first, or
the beginning of the second century A.D.; and are
in any case posterior to the time of Julius
Caesar. The resemblance is limited to the general
attitude; the figures themselves with their
symbolism are purely Gallic, and they cannot have
been borrowed from Buddhism, since figures of
Buddha are unknown in India until the first
century A.D. (v. pls. xxv and xxvii, "La Religion
des Gaulois," par M.A. Bertrand, pp. 314 and 318).
The swastika and the aureole were not peculiar to
Buddhism, and the swastika travelled to Gaul
before Buddha was born.
p. 379
Empire. Hindoo merchants and sailors alone visited
the West, and of these the merchants only were
Buddhist. Thirdly, down to the battle of Actium India
received much of its civilization and its impulse from
the West, from Persia first and foremost, and in a
lesser degree from the Bactrian Greeks. It was the
long peace with the Parthians inaugurated by
Augustus, and the destruction of Aden and of the Arab
monopoly of the Indian trade, in the time of
Tiberius or Claudius, which first opened up those
direct communications between India and the Empire
that lasted with such brilliancy for two centuries(1)
Therefore, although it would be unsafe to deny tile
possibility of an earlier contact between Buddhism
and Christianity, the probability of it is
exceedingly small. We must look to the two centuries
succeeding Tiberius for the earliest fruitful
contact between the two religions, and it is
precisely to this era that Basilides belongs.

If Buddhism was to influence Christianity,
Gnosticism might be supposed to furnish the most
likely channel. Gnosticism was anterior to
Christianity, and was open to Indian influence. In
the period immediately preceding and following the
commencement of the Christian era Syria, Mesopotamia,
and Babylonia became a breeding - ground of religious
ideas. The ferment was primarily due to Hellenism,
which had weakened or destroyed the national
religions and stimulated thought, but it stimulated
chiefly through the antagonism it evoked. And in this
fermentation, which affected Essenism and the later
developments of the Zoroastrian religion as well as
Mithraism, and the Syrian solar cults, and sowed the
germs of the future Kabbala, the Jewish and the
Syro-Babylonian religious were the strongest elements
and took the leading part. Their disintegration
---------------------
1. I have discussed the earliest communications
between India and the West in an article on "The
Early Commerce of Babylon with India, " in
J.R.A.S., 1898, p. 241 ff.; and I gave a sketch of
its subsequent history in a lecture delivered
before the Royal Asiatic Society in March, 1900. I
hope some day to deal with the whole subject in a
more extended form. For the opening up of the
Egyptian trade with India under Augustus, v.
Mommesen's masterly account in the " Provinces of
the Roman Empire," vol. ii, p. 298 ff., Eng.
trans.
p. 380
and their contact created a religious syncretism
which strove to unite Judaic monotheism and the
problems of the Fall and the origin of sin with
Babylonian ideas of the spirit world, of destiny, and
the future life. The process was a natural one, the
work of nameless men, and it took many forms and
created many schools,(1) Jewish and pagan, some of
which took the name, and all received the collective
designation, of Gnostic. Morally this syncretism was
apt to run into those extremes of asceticism and
libertinism so characteristic of the Syro-Babylonish
culls. Intellectually it followed two main
tendencies. It took from the ancient religions a
theory of the spirit world which was essentially
magical. The disembodied soul wandered by the dark
path or the bright, through many realms and among
many perils, from which the magic word alone could
save it. Magic is essentially cosmopolitan, and it
was this magic which in after days gave popular
Gnosticism its vitality, when it was transported to
the West, and its polypous faculty of assimilating
strange religions. The Syrians, Babylonians, and
Egyptians, the peoples who held the belief in a
future life with the greatest earnestness and
plenitude of knowledge, Were the peoples among whom
Gnosticism flourished longest. The second great
subject of Gnostic speculation was the Fall, the
origin of man, and the origin of sin -- questions
which reveal their full significance only from the
monotheistic standpoint. Hence the important part
which theories of the flesh, of cosmogony, of
emanation play in all these Gnostic systems.

In this fluid mass of primitive Gnosticism it is
possible to find many Indian analogies. We have
similar theories of emanation, the same threefold
division of souls, the same
---------------------
1. We must not conceive of the Gnostic schools either
now or afterwards as in any way akin to the Stoa
and the Porch or the other schools of Greek
philosophy. They are of the Oriental type, the
religious family, the Mohant and his Chelas, the
master and his disciples. The only Hellenic thing
about Gnosticism is the approximation, by certain
schools in later days, of the Gnostic mysteries to
the Greek. But the Greek mysteries had borrowed
most of their contents from the East; they were
mainly Oriental themselves, even the Eleusinian,
and they represent the most Oriental aspect of the
many-sided Greek intellect. Here, therefore, a
rapprochement was easy.
P. 381
belief in transmigration, and an almost identical
scale of ascent for the soul after death. Emanation
theories are not peculiar to India, the threefold
division of souls is natural, the belief in
transmigration may have been derived from India, but
has nothing specifically Indian, and was moreover
always subordinate to Chaldaean astrology and
planetary fate; but the resemblance between the
Indian and the Gnostic history of the soul is
striking. According to the Chandogya Upanishad the
soul of the ascetic-the initiated --travels upwards
by the way of the Gods through ever- increasing
spheres of light. From death it passes to the
sunlight, from the sunlight to the region of day,
from the day to the bright half of the month, and
thence to the summer, when the sun travels north;
further on it passes through the world of the Gods,
of the sun, of the lightning, to enter the world of
Brahma, from which it will return no more. Virtuous
souls that lack initiation travel by the darker
path-the way of the Fathers. Through the smoke of
the funeral pyre they ascend to the night--the dark
half of the month, the winter of the year, the world
of the Fathers, the aether and the moon, where the
Devas feed upon their spiritual substance; and they
descend again to earth by the way they had
trodden.(1) All this corresponds closely to the
ascent of the Gnostic soul, and the soul of the
simple, by the right-hand path or the left through
the Archon-guarded spheres of light. By the
right-hand path the Gnostic attains the eternal
silence-the divine pleroma-- and will never return.
The obscure path on the left-- the dishonourable
hand--leads the simple through the intermediate
worlds, where the Archons feed themselves by sucking
out his light, and he is presently returned, shorn
of his brightness, to the earth. Now whether these
coincidences be accidental or not, they have nothing
Buddhist. The ordinary Gnosticism may owe something
to India, with which it was in contact, but what it
owes
-----------------------------
1. v. Professor Rhys Davids' article on "The Soul in
the Upanishads," J.R.A.S., 1899, pp. 79-80.
p. 382
is due to popular mythology and to the Vedanta;
Buddhism contributed nothing to it.(1)

Original Gnosticism had two great divisions, the
Jewish and the pagan, and the pagan schools were
either magical or ascetic, as the speculative element
or the moral tendency prevailed. Judaic Gnosticism
first came into contact with Christianity, but it was
the pagan Gnosticism which most materially affected
and was affected by it. In reality neither the
Judaic nor the pagan Gnosticism underwent any
fundamental change. The popular Gnostic schools,
however fluid, assimilative, indeterminate in details
they might be, always conformed to one or other of a
few main types, and these types essentially Eastern.
But in the commencement of the second century A.D. we
come upon a new phenomenon. Christianity had entered
the world as a mighty vivifying power, but it wanted
a philosophy. Basilides and Valentinus, then Marcion,
and later still Tatian and Bardaisan, supplied it
with one on a so-called Gnostic basis. These men were
endowed with fresh and vigorous minds, in no ways
inferior to their contemporaries, and if Tatian be
excepted, the intellectual equals of Plutarch,
Epictetus, and Dio. They were each the founder of a
philosophic school, their influence was far-
reaching, and some of them had illustrious
successors; but their philosophy was far above the
comprehension of the commonplace vulgar that took
their name, and it has come down to us only in
detached fragments preserved by Clement or Origen and
others, or in imperfect precis, which often represent
the average belief of the common Gnostic rather than
the teaching of the founder. Here, then, me have a
twofold task, to reconstruct the system and to
explain the phenomenon. are we to say that
Christianity had set out to conquer the Hellenic
world, and that the Hellenic
--------------------
1. Lassen's attempts (Ind. Alter., iii, ii. 379 ff.)
to connect Gnosticism with Buddhism have not met
with general acceptance; v. Gorbe, "Die Sankhya-
Philosophie," p. 96 ff. The resemblances are, some
unreal, some superficial, and others are more easily
accounted for otherrwise. The emanation theories of
the Gnostics are totally opposed to everything Buddhist.
p. 383
world required a philosophy? But these philosophies
were presented, not to outsiders, but to Christians.
Is this Gnosticism, then, an intrusion of Hellenic
philosophy into the Christian faith? These
arch-Gnostics mere men of learning and of culture,
they had the Hellenic spirit in so far as they were
philosophers, and the method, the form, the symmetry,
above all, the inward necessity they felt for a
philosophy, is Greek. But the substance? The
controversialist Fathers of the Church, men of
Hellenic education, and unacquainted with Oriental
theosophy, gave various answers. The majority
declared that the archheresiarchs had borrowed and
disguised ideas from every Greek school of thought,
as Plato and Aristotle in turn had stolen their ideas
from Moses and the Hebrew Prophets. Others stoutly
pot down everything to the religion of Zoroaster. The
opinions of the moderns are equally divided. It is
undeniable that Valentinus and Marcion largely
employed Oriental elements, but Basilides is usually
held to have been "steeped in Greek philosophy,"
although a few, on the strength of the "Acta
Archelai," have claimed a Zoroastrian origin for him.
It is the purpose of the present essay to prove that
the system of this supposed coryphaeus of the Greek
philosophy was Buddhist pure and simple--Buddhist in
its governing ideas, its psychology, its metaphysics;
and Christianity reduced to a semi-Buddhist ideal for
result. The moment we apply this key every fragment
takes its place, the system is complete, and we can
reconstruct the whole. If the form is Creek the
positive Greek element is altogether wanting.
Christianity was represented to the Hellenic world as
a "barbarian philosophy"; and the first attempts at
its intellectual comprehension, the first efforts of
dogma, were based on a philosophy profounder and more
venerable far than the juvenile wisdom of the Greeks,
a wisdom which the Greeks regarded with the
reverence of ignorance. Gnosticism is not pure
Hellenism, as some say; it is rather pure Orientalism
in a Hellenic mask. If the `true Gnostic' of Clement
is a Hellen, the genuine Gnostic of Basilides and
Valentinus is a thorough Oriental.
p. 384
Let me state at the outset what I consider it is
that I have to prove. I assert, then, and shall try
to show. that Basilides had opportunities of becoming
acquainted with Buddhism; next, that pessimism and
transmigration, the two basal doctrines of his
philosophy, are held by him in specifically Indian
forms, which cannot have been derived from any other
quarter; and lastly, that the system is developed on
Christian-Buddhist lines with many Buddhist
coincidences, great and small. And the correctness of
this view is proved by the fact that the master key
of Buddhism effects what no other key has done; it
resolves difficulties, reconciles conflicting
opinions,(1) assigns each fragment to its proper
place, and gives us a complete, symmetric, and
intelligible whole, a revivification and restoration
of one of the greatest of Gnostic philosophies.

Basilides flourished at Alexandria under Hadrian
(117- 138 A.D.), and is said to have been the
disciple of Glaucias-- the "interpreter of S.
Peter."(2) He belonged therefore to the second
generation after the Apostles, and to the great age
of the Gnostics (Clem. Strom., vii, 17. 106, p. 325).
Possibly he was somewhat senior to his contemporary,
Valentinus, and his death occurred before or soon
after the accession of the elder Antonine.(3) His
great work, the "Exegetica," in twenty-four books, is
said to have been "a commentary on the Gospel"; and
Origen says that he composed odes-probably like those
of the Gnostic Valentinus and of Bardaisan. The
doctrines of Basilides were to be found not only in
his own " Exegetica," but in the numerous writings of
his son and chief disciple, Isidore.
--------------------------
1. According to Baur, Basilides laid special stress
upon free-will, according to Neander upou fate;
Dr. Hort finds his psychology "curious"; some hold
Basilides for a Pantheist, others find dualism in
him. These and other hypotheses are all justified,
explained, and modified by the Buddhist theory.
2. Clement affects to doubt the tradition, but
apparently only from a general suspicion of such
claims. There are no chronological difficulties,
the tradition was accepted by the Basilidians in
Clement's time, and as they professed to base
their doctrines on the secret teachings of S.
Matthew and not of S. Peter, they had no reason to
invent a fable.
3. A comparison af Clem. Strom., vii, 17. 106, and
Justin Martyr, Ap. i, 26, makes this almost
certain.
p. 385
And when we have said this, we have said all that is
known with certainty regarding him.

But we may advance a little further by
conjecture.(1) Epiphanius will have it that he was a
Syrian, but Epiphanius wished to connect him with
Menander, and made other wrong guesses about him. And
as Basilides named his son Isidore after the great
tutelary goddess of Alexandria,(2) we are probably
correct in considering him a Hellenized Egyptian.
Basilides had a perfect command of the ordinary
Alexandrian Greek and wrote it with vigour, but his
predilections, if not his training, were mainly
Oriental. Eusebius and Theodoret tell us, on the
authority of Agrippa Castor, that Basilides had a
special regard for the prophecies of Barcabbas and
Barcoph and other barbarous apocryphal writers.(3)
His son Isidore wrote a commentary on the Prophet
Parchor, and quotes the prophecies of Ham, and
although Isidore knew something of Aristotle, he
studied by preference the poems of Pherecydes, the
singer of the wars of the Titans and the teacher of
Oriental metempsychosis to the Greeks (Clem. Strom.,
vi, 6. 53, p. 272). It is clear that father and son
took their stand on the wisdom of the East, and that
the sources of their knowledge were unfamiliar to the
Christian writers and historians.

Alexandria, the home of Basilides and Valentinus,
was the second city of the Empire in the age of
Hadrian. It was famous for its situation and its sky,
a marble-fronted city rising from the sands that
fringe the shallow Egyptian sea. It was a city of
harbours and dockyards, of broad streets and echoing
arcades, of palaces and shady gardens.
--------------------
1. A very ingenious penson might conjecture that
Basilides is merely a translation of Rajput. The
conjecture would be on a par with a good many
others that have been hazarded. But unfortunately
the Rajputs are not heard of in India for five
centuries after this.
2. Egyptians usually retained their heathen names after
their conversion to Christianity, even although the
name was taken from a god. Ammonius, Serapion,
Pachomius, are instances in point. But I am not
sure that they gave heathen names to children born
after the conversion of the parent. Isidore must
have been born when his father was ons a comparatively
young man, and probably before Basilides joined
the Christian Church.
3. Euseb. H.E., iv, 7, and Theodoret, Haer. Fab., i,
4. p. 386
The architectural magnificence and the variegated
splendours of the royal halls and piazzas which lined
the shore and overlooked the moving waters at their
feet, fell not short of the subsequent glories of
Venice; the Pharos and the Serapeum were accounted
among the wonders of the world; and the town could
boast of the tomb of Alexander and the mausolea of
the Ptolemies. A city of commerce, of philosophy, of
bustle, and of pleasure. Greeks, Jews, and Egyptians
streamed noisily from their separate quarters to view
the horseraces and the pantomimes; and charioteers,
harpers, and flute-players, male and female, like the
jockeys and the divas of a modern capital, were the
idols of a witty and turbulent populace. Filthy
cynics lay outside the temples or in the streets,
exchanging coarse repartees with the jesting crowd.
Dignified philosophers discoursed in private
lecture-halls or wrote books (which have rarely
survived) in cool libraries. But the chief
occupation, although not the chief passion of the
city, was trade. Dio Chrysostom calls it the world's
agora, and Hadrian, or the pseudo-Hadrian, says that
among the innumerable sects and cults which
congregated there, one only was supreme--the worship
of 'hard cash.' The great corn ships for Rome were
laden at the quays, and the piers moro crowded with
merchant craft from the AEgean and Syrian seas, and
from the distant Euxine. The bazars were filled with
motley crowds, rough mariners, inquisitive Greeks,
bearded Jews, and tattered Bedouin. Blear-eyed
Egyption boatmen and peasants thronged the canals.
But being above all the great emporium of the trade
with the East, Alexandria was the chief resort of
Oriental merchants, and Dio Chrysostom, in an oration
which he delivered to the Alexandrians in the reign
of Trajan, when Basilides was a youth, gives us the
following enumeration of them: "I see among you not
only Hellenes and Italians, and men who are your
neighbours, Syrians, Libyans, and Cilicians, and men
who dwell more remotely, Ethiopians and Arabs, but
also Bactrians, Scythians, Persians, and some of the
Indians 'Ivsws,Tvas', who are among the spectators,
p. 387
and always residing here."(1) This colony of resident
Indians must have been a colony of merchants from
the west coast of India--probably from Ceylon or
Barygaza, the chief depots of the Alexandrian trade.
Colonies of this sort have been dotted along the
shores of the Arabian Sea and Persian Gulf from the
earliest days of intercourse with India, and we have
literary evidence of the existence of similar
colonies in Socotra, and Armenia in the first and
second centuries A.D. We can therefore form a fair
estimate of the character of this Alexandrian colony.
Now Indian merchants, as a rule, have always been
Buddhists or Jains. Buddhism was a merchant religion
par excellence; there are few parables or
birth-stories in which a Buddhist merchant does not
figure,(2) and Ceylon and Barygaza were head-centres
of the Buddhist faith. If we find that Basilides was
a Buddhist philosopher it is easy to discover the
source from which he learned his philosophy.

Before proceeding with my exposition of Basilides
teaching, it is necessary that I should advert to,
although I need not discuss, a question which has
evoked much literary criticism. It is universally
admitted that the accounts given us by Clement and
Hippolytus are irreconcilable with those given by
Irenaeus and Epiphanius; and it is very generally,
but not universally, admitted that while the former
state the doctrines of Basilides himself, the latter
are reporting the opinions of the later Basilidians.
Personally I have no doubt of the correctness of this
view, and I might shelter myself behind the authority
of the greatest names.(3) But it will be found that
the question solves itself. If I discover Buddhist
pessimism and transmigration in Clement, Buddhist
metaphysics in Hippolytus,
------------------------
1. Dio Chrysos., Orat. xxxii, ad Alexandrinos
(Teubner ed., vol. i, p. 413). I have said
something of these Indian merchant colonies in
"The Early Commerce of Babylon with India"
(J.R.A.S., 1898, p. 269 f.).
2. Mrs. Rhys Davids gives a number of examples in her
essay "Economic Conditions in Northern India"
(J.R.A.S., 1901, p. 859 ff.), and it would be easy
to extend the list.
3. Baur, Mansel, Hort, and others.
p. 388
and Buddhist psychology in both, it is evident that
both are describing a single system--the system of
the master.(1)

It must also be borne in mind that Basilides was
a sincere Christian, utterly ignoring Buddha and all
Indian mythology. If me forget this, we shall utterly
misunderstand him. He adopts the Buddhist philosophy,
but not the Buddhist religion; the Buddhist faith is
nothing to him. And it is as a metaphysic, not as a
religion, that Buddhism first penetrated to the West.

I now proceed with the main subject of this
essay--the exposition -of Basilides' teaching. I
shall first consider the general presuppositions
which lie at the root of all his doctrines. I shall
then consider his Psychology, next his Metaphysic,
and lastly his Theology.

I. PRESUPPOSITIONS.

The Basilidian system is based upon certain
fundamental conceptions of the nature of sin, of
suffering, and rebirth.

1. The universality of suffering is for Basilides
the cardinal fact of the world. "Pain and Fear are as
inherent in human affairs as rust in iron."(2)
-------------------
1. The literary question is fully discussed in Dr.
Hort's article. Clement wrote his "Stromata" at
Alexandria some sixty years after the death of
Basilides, and had excellent opportunities for
knowing the facts. He gives extracts from the
"Exegetica'' and from Isidore's works; he
repeatedly refers to or summarizes the opinions of
Basilides and the Basilidians, using the terms
usually as synonymous, and sometimes
interchanging them. In one passage he pointedly
contrasts the degenerate teachings of the later
Basilidians with the doctrines of their master.
Clement's object was ethical and practical, while
Hippolytus dealt with the speculative part of the
Basilidian philosophy. The two therefore seldom
deal with the same subject, but where they do they
agree. They also agree in undesigned ways, as, for
instance, in the use of terms which had a
technical significance in the Basilidian teaching.
The extracts given by Hippolytus are evidently
from the "Exegetica," although Hippolytus does not
give the name of the work. Moreover, Hippolytus
expressly distinguishes in one passage a work
circulating among the later Basilidians from the
works of Basilides and Isidore. The only serious
objection to the general opinion is the Greek
character (so-called) of the Hippolytian extracts,
but if they turn out to be not Greek at all, but
Buddhist, this objection vanishes.
2. Clem. Alex. Strom., iv, 12.90, p. 218. Clement
denies the doctrine (i.e. the Basilidians).
p. 389
Buddha laid the same foundation--"Birth is suffering,
old age is suffering, sickness is suffering, death is
suffering, to be united with the unloved is
suffering, to be separated from the loved is
suffering, not to obtain what one desires is
suffering. In brief, the conditions of individuality
and their cause, the clinging to material form,
sensations, abstract ideas, mental tendencies, and
mental powers involve suffering."(1) The universality
of suffering is the fundamental fact, the extinction
of suffering the goal, of the Basilidian theology.

2. But Basilides' pessimism takes a distinctively
Christian cast. If suffering accompanies all action,
it is especially the concomitant of sin. This theory
lies at the bottom of Basilides' famous paradox--"the
Martyrs suffer for their sins"--a paradox which
shocked the conscience of the Church, and was utterly
perverted by Basilides' followers.(2) Basilides
thought no scorn of martyrdom; it had its
consolations and was a good. But still the martyrs
suffered for their sins, although they might be
unconscious of them, or like the new-born babe might
be innocent of actual trasgresions. But why must the
infant suffer? Why must the martyr have committed
sin? Because,
----------------------
1. From the Buddha's First Sermon, translated in
"Buddhist Suttas." Compare Dhammapada, 186 ff.
2. Basilides' views on martyrdom were grossly
misrepresented. The extracts given by Clement
(Strom., iv, 12. 83-85, p. 217) from the 23rd book
of the "Exegetica" show this clearly. "For I say
that all those who undergo the aforesaid
tribulations have undoubtedly sinned, though they
be ignorant of it , in other ways; but are led to
this particular good by the goodness of Him who
directs (them); being really accused of other
faults (than those they have committed); so that
they suffer not as malefactors for confessed
iniquities, nor as the murderer and adulterer
reproached by all, but as Christians--a fact so
consoling that they appear not to suffer at all.
And even granting that the sufferer is entirely
innocent of actual sin (which rarely happens), yet
not even will this man suffer by the design of any
(evil) power, (the orthodox held that persecutions
were the work of the devil), but he will suffer as
suffers the infant apparently innocent of sin."
Further on Basilides says that as the infant,
although obviously incapable of sinning "and gains
the benefit of suffering",so the perfect man, innocent
of actual sin, because he has a sinful nature,
suffers for his evil propensities. According to
Clement, Basilides admitted that his argument
applied even to the Lord Himself, althought in
the extract Clement gives us Basilides will not
mention Him by name taking refuge in the text
"none is free from stain." Dr. Hort has some excellent
remarks on the whole subject.
p. 390
so Basilides says, suffering is the consequence and
the proof of sin, if not of actual sin committed in
this life, yet of an inherited tendency to sin;
otherwise we accuse the Divine Constitution of the
world. "And I will admit anything," he cries, "rather
than admit that the Divine Constitution of the world
is evil" (Strom., iv, 12. 84, p. 217).(1)

3. And this leads us to the keystone of the
Basilidian as of the Buddhist system--the fatal law
of transmigration which governs all things in heaven
and earth. Every act produces fruit, so every life
bears the burden of its fruitage in the following
rebirth. "Basilides lays down that the soul has
previously sinned in another life, and endures its
punishment here, the elect with honour by martyrdom,
and the rest purified by appropriate punishment"
(Clem. Strom., iv, 12. 85, p 217). And again, "If
any, then, of the Basilidians, by way of apology,
should say that the martyr is punished for the sins
committed before this present embodiment and that he
will hereafter reap the fruit of his doing during the
present life, for thus has the constitution (of the
world) been ordained, then we would ask him," etc.
(Clem. Strom., iv, 12. 90, p. 218). Origen says that
Basilides interpreted Romans vii, 9 as an apostolic
reference to transmigration,(2) and he complains in
his Commentary on S. Matthew iii that Basilides
"deprived men of a salutary fear by teaching that
transmigrations are the only punishments after
death."(3) The Basilidians interpreted the phrase
"unto the third and fourth generation of them that
hate Me" of this series of rebirths (Clem.
----------------
1. The Divine Providence plays a great part in the
Stoic and rhctoricai literature of the second
ccutury A.D., but it always applies to the
universe, and not to the individual. With
Basilides, Providence in the ordinary sense is an
impossibility; he means by it the constitution of
the world "involuntarily willed" by "not-being
God."
2. Origen expressly mentions transmigration into
beasts and birds. "Dixit enim, inquit, Apostolus,
quia ego vivebam sine lege aliquando, hoc esset,
antequam in istud corpus venirem, in ea specie
corporis vixi quae sub lege non esset, pecudis
scilicet vel avis."
3. Dr. Hort.
p. 391
Alex. Frag., 28, p. 338); and Basilides was logical
when he said that the only sins which can be forgiven
re involuntary sins and sins of ignorance (Clem.
Strom., iv, p. 229). Every act is fruitful, and every
sin of commission bears its fruit in a future life.

4. We shall presently see that the Basilidian
soul is not a simple, but a compound composed of
various entities. These warring entities influence
the actions of the man; and as some of them have the
character of animals and others of plants (Clem.
Strom., ii, 20. 112, p. 176) they explain how rebirth
in another than a human form is philosophically
conceivable. I notice more especially the
transmigration into plants, because this is a
specifically Indian doctrine, although found
occasionally among savage tribes of the Eastern
seas.(1)

5. Man is enthralled in the fatal bondage of
rebirth, but during the present life his will is
free. This is stated in the clearest manner. "If I
persuade anyone that the soul is not a single entity,
and that the sufferings of bad men are occasioned by
the violence of the 'appendages' (a technical word of
which more hereafter), then the wicked will have no
small excuse to say I was compelled, carried away,
involuntarily acted, nor did I will my deed, although
the man was led by his lust for evil, and did not
struggle against the compulsion of the 'appendages.'
It behoves us to rise superior by virtue of our
rationality, and to appear triumphant over the baser
creature within us" (Clem. Strom., ii, 20. 113, 114,
p. 176). And again, "Only let a man will to achieve
the good, and he will obtain it" (Clem. Strom., iii,
1. 2, p. 183). Man's will is free to act, but the
consequence of his action is inevitable: that is the
sum and substance of the doctrine.

6. With the freedom of the will comes the
possibility of salvation, but the elect alone are
saved, and the mass of mankind will remain bound
everlastingly in the endless cycle
-------------------------
1. Tylor ("Primitive Culture," 2nd.ed., ii, p. 6)
says that they may possibly have been influenced
by Indian ideas. Ovid mentions transmigration into
plants, but this is the only instance I can
remember among Western writers.
p. 392
of causation and rebirth--n subject which I shall
discuss at length in connection with the Basilidian
theology.

These are the fundamental tenets of Basilides,
and they are also the foundations which the Buddha
laid. The inherency of suffering in existence, its
cause rebirth, the freedom of the will, the salvation
of the few, and, (if I may anticipate,) nirvana form
an essential and the most important part of both
their systems. There is, however, a divergence from
the outset in one point, and in one point only. The
Buddha had a practical end in view; he wished to
discover and to preach the mode of liberation. For
Basilides the way of salvation had been found in
Christianity, and his purpose is purely
philosophical. The burden of existence weighs upon
him; how shall he harmonize the constitution of the
world and the universality of suffering, how "justify
the mays of God to men."

But granting the identity of Buddha's and
Basilides' ideas of suffering and transmigration, it
may be urged that the coincidence is natural and
accidental, that the origin of sin formed the
starting-point of every form of gnosis, and that
transmigration was a theory known to Hellenes and
Egyptians. I reply that pessimism, the inherency of
evil in all action, was alien to Greek modes of
thought, and was never the basis of any Greek
philosophy; while it has always been a marked
peculiarity of Indian speculations. And I next
proceed to show that the Basilidian theory of
transmigration is exclusively Indian. I have already
pointed out that Basilides adopted that rare form of
metempsychosis, transmigration into plants, universal
in India, but sporadic elsewhere. But let that pass.
It is with the various stages in the transmigration
theory that I wish to deal.

It is usual to confound two very different sets
of ideas, a series of rebirths and the temporary or
permanent lodgment of a spirit in a foreign body.
Most nature- religions assume that the gods can take
the form of men or beasts at pleasure, and that
certain men can change their shape into that of the
inferior animals. Apollo and Athene,
p. 393
changed for the nonce into birds upon a tree,
overlook the windy plains of Troy; or the
transformations of Procris, of Narcissus, and of
Daphne may serve for Greek examples. The
much-imperilled soul of the ancient Egyptian had to
put on many an animal shape and many a disguise to
escape its ghostly enemies on the road to the blessed
fields of Aru. Men everywhere believe in lycanthropy,
the wandering of the soul in sleep, the power of
witches to assume the shape of animals. In magic the
process is reversed. Spirits no longer assume
inferior shapes alone: they have the power of putting
on the higher forms of gods and demons; but with this
we are not here concerned. Suffice it to say that
such temporary embodiments of the spirit in foreign
forms refer to a totally different line of thought
from a series of rebirths. They belong to
animism--to the savage philosophy which distinguishes
only between animate and inanimate, and which
accounts for the travels of the soul in trance and
dreams. They have nothing to do with the belief in a
future life.

Metempsychosis properly so called is of three
kinds. Men have at all times and everywhere believed
in the rebirth of a departed spirit. The soul of the
deceased returns to earth in the person of a new-born
infant of the family, whose looks and ways recall a
thousand times a beloved memory. Or the soul may come
to earth again in some stranger, the double of the
dead. But this return of the soul is occasional and
sporadic; it has not been systematized into a theory
of the future life. It is a floating semi-conscious
belief. Among the great nations of antiquity only two
advanced further on this path-the Indians and the
Ganls. Both held the doctrine of a future life with
firmness, they knew it in detail, and with both of
them transmigration is the universal law of
humanity.(1) It is no part of the common Aryan
tradition (if such tradition or stock there ever
was), nor does it occur in the earlier Vedas. The
Greeks first
------------------------------
1. For Gallie and Celtic beliefs v. "La Religion des
Gaulois." par A.Bertran, p. 270 ff., and Rhys
Davids, Hibbert Lectures, 1881.

p. 394
learned the doctrine from Pherecydes and Pythagoras;
and these great doctors doubtless learned it from the
Cymri or Cimmerians of Asia Minor, who taught them
other Gallic lore. But there is a third stage in the
history of the doctrine. From the universal belief
of India the Brahmans.(1) evolved a profoundly
philosophical theory peculiar to themselves. In the
popular belief each successive transmigration is
occasioned by, but is not the result of, the previous
life. The Indian philosophers introduced the law of
causality; causes are equalled by their effects; and
each rebirth is the exact resultant of the preceding
life. Transmigration is for them the reign of causal
law in tile spiritual world; it has the rigour, the
universality, the invariability of Fate; it is the
self-made destiny which overshasows man from the
cradle to the grave: and it is this law which enabled
Buddha, and Basilides after him, to explain the
origin of evil, and the method of salvation.(2)

II. PSYCHOLOGY.

From this digression, necessary to avert any
suspicion of a non-Indian origin, I proceed to
consider the Basilidian psychology. The Buddhist
doctrine of personality has mightily puzzled modern
scholars, and the Basilidian theory of the soul was
equally puzzling to Clement. He compares it to the
Trojan horse which was full of warriors, and a little
further on he says that the Basilidians, like the
Pythagoreans, believed in two souls (Strom., ii, 20.
113, 114, p. 171;). Three passages contain all that
we know of Basilides' psychology. The first consists
of Clement's summary. The Basilidians "are
accustomed," Clement says, "to call the
-----------------------
1. Or more probably the Khshatriyas.
2. On the Indian ideas of transmigration v. chap. xiv
of Dr. P. Deussen's excellent work "Die
Philosophie der Upanishad's (Allgemeine Geschichte
der Philosophie, vol. i, pt. 2), and Garbe, "Die
Samkhya-Philosophie,' p.174 ff.
p. 395
passions Appendages, (1) stating that these are
certain spirits which have a substantial existence,
having been `appended' to the rational soul in a.
certain primitive turmoil and confusion, and that
again other bastard and alien natures of spirits grow
upon these, as of a wolf, an ape, a lion, a goat,
whose characteristics (say they) create illusions in
the region of the soul, mid assimilate tie desires of
the soul to the animals: for they imitate the actions
of those whose characteristics they wear, and not
only are they familiar with the impulses and
impressions of the irrational animals, but they even
ape the movements and beauties of plants, because
they likewise wear the characteristics of plants
appended to them. Moreover [these Appendages] have
properties of a particular state like the hardness of
a diamond."(2) (Strom., ii, 20. 112, 113, p. 176.)
According to Clement, then, there is a rational soul.
There are also certain appendages adhering to it.
These parasitic appendages are the various affections
which have a substantial entity of their own. They
are intermixed with the rational soul by a primaeval
confusion, intermixed, be it noted, and not
intermingled, since the whole process of evolution is
to disentangle them. These entities, as well as the
rational soul, remain always separate and distinct.

The second passage is the extract (Strom., ii,
20. 113, 114, p. 176) from the work of Isidore "On
the Attached (or Parasitic) Soul", already quoted in
connection with free-will. From it we learn that the
soul is not a simple entity, that it suffers from the
violence of the parasitic appendages, and that it can
rise superior to them by virtue of its rationality.

These extracts find their explanation and
complement in tile statements of Hippolytus (Haer.,
vii, c. 15, cf. vii, c. 12).
---------------------------
1. a technical word employed by Basilides and by
Isidore. Tertulian translates it as `appendices'
("ceteris appendicihus sensibus et affectibus,"
Adv. Mare., i, 25); and Dr. Hort also refers to M.
Aurelius, xii, 3, with Gataker's note. might be
translated as parasites which attach themselves
externally.
2. I have adopted Dr. Hort's translation with a few
alterations.
p. 396
Basilides held that there were five separate entities
in Jesus (and therefore in all the elect who are the
sons of God). At His death the Sonship ascended into
what, by anticipation, I shall call Nirvana; another
part ascended to the Firmament, a third to the
Aether, a fourth to the Air, and the corporeal part
which suffered and died reverted to Formlessment,
i.e. to matter. It would seem, therefore, that
Basilides conceived of' the elect, if not the natural
man, as a compound of five entities--the highest
being the rational part (also called the subtle part
and the Sonship), the lowest the material body. The
resemblance of this conception to the Buddhist theory
of the Skandhas is remarkable. Man is a compound, say
the BUddhists, of five Skandhas--or `aggregates' as
Professor Rhys Davids translates the word. The
highest is reason, the lowest the material body. The
other three, in an ascending scale, are the
Sensations, Abstract Ideas, and Potential Tendencies.
So far as one can judge, the Basilidian analysis of
man is identical with the Buddhist.

Did Basilides go further? Did he, like the
Buddhist, deny the existence of' the soul? We cannot
say. Clement certainly talks of 'the rational soul,'
as he naturally would; but Isidore neither mentions
nor implies it, and he employs when we should have
expected We learn from Hippolytus that the proper
region of the was the air; and in Basilides' fivefold
division of man there is no room for a soul in the
ordinary sense.

I may here note the employment of two technical
expressions, Ignorance and Formlessness. The Great
Ignorance which (as we shall see) makes the world
content to exist without a thought of Nirvana is a
translation of the Buddhist Avijja (Avidya). Avijja
has a double aspect.(1) It is at the root of all
desire for a sensuous existence, and is therefore the
origin of all evil. On the other hand, take
consciousness away and there is
---------------------------
1. For the double aspect of Avidya, v. Deussen, "Die
Philosophie der Upanishad's, p. 217 (Allgemeine
Geschichte der Philosophie).
p. 397
left neither knowledge of Nirvana nor feeling of
suffering. It is with this latter connotation that
Basilides talks of 'the great ignorance.'

The second word is Formlessness, used six times
in Hippol. Haer., vii, c. 14, 15, as an equivalent
for the blind material world. Now the words Rupam and
Arupam, Form and Formlessness, play a greet part in
Buddhist psychology, but with a different
signification. Natural objects when present to
perception have form; ideas presented to the reason
are formless.(1) The Basilidian is different, it
corresponds more closely to the conception of
Prakriti--nature unperceived in consciousness.

III. METAPHYSICS.
Whether Basilides postulates a soul or not, he
certainly postulates a God. But his God is the most
abstract, the most remote that ever was imagined.
Like Philo and the Alexandrian Jews, the Gnostics,
and the later Kabbalists, he declares the Absolute
God to be unknowable and unutterable, unpredicable,
inconceivable. But no one has equalled Basilides in
the energy of his expression. He strains negations to
the utmost. `Not-being God' is Basilides' name for
Him. He will not use the article, although Hippolytus
does so. To assert that God exists is to affirm a
predicate, and He who is unknowable is above all
predicates. But there is an earlier stage than
`not-being God.' "Was when was nothing," nor was that
nothing any kind of entity, but in plain, unreserved,
unequivocal language, there was altogether nothing.
And when I say `was,' I do not assert that `there
was,' but I merely indicate myy meaning when I affirm
that there was
---------------------------
1. v. "A Buddhist Manual of Psychological Ethichs"
(translation of the Dhanuna. Sangani), Or. Trans.
Fund, vol. xii, by Mrs. Rhys Davids: Introd., p.
xli ff.
p. 398
altogether nothing." Absolute existence is absolute
nothing, said Basilides, anticipating Hegel.

From nothing one passes to the germ of something.
Beside `not-being God' there exists the world
conceived as a seed-mass, posterior to Rim in
thought, but co-eternal with Him in reality. This
seed-mass is conceived both as an ideal cosmic germ
and as a mass of individual seeds, the world of
actuality, precisely as Prakriti bears the same
double signification in the Sankhya philosophy.(l)
The relation of not-being God to the cosmic germ is
described as followss:--"When there was nothing,
neither matter, nor substance, nor entity, nor
simple, nor compound, nor incomprehensible, nor
imperceptible, nor man, nor angel, nor a God, nor
anything that has a name, or can be perceived by
sense, or conceived by mind, or what is of more
subtle still, when every [predicate] has been
removed, not-being God without or act of mind or
sense, without plan, without purpose, withouut
affection, without desire, willed to make the world.
And when I say willed, I mean [an act] involuntary,
irrational, insensible; and by the `world' I mean,
not the world of' length and breadth [thte ehe world
of space], and which existed subsequently, and has a
separate existence, but the germ of a world And the
seed of the world held all things in itself, just as
a grain of mustard-seed contains within the smallest
body all things at once [in embryo], the roots, the
trunk, the branches, and the leaves, the numberless
seeds of other plants born of that one plant, each
seed in its turn the parent of innumerable other
seeds, a process many times repeated. Thus not-being
God made a not-being world out of things that are
not, casting down and depositing a certain single
seed containing in itself the whole germ of the
universe (Hippol. Haer., vii, 9). This cosmic seed,
----------------------
1. "Hinter der als Lingam individualisierten Prakriti
steht die allgemeine, Kosmische Prakriti, ohne
dass von ihr weiter die Rede ware" (Deussen, "Die
Philosophie der Upanishad's," p. 217).
p. 399
this not-being world, is purely ideal, like not-being
God; it is beyond all predicate; "the not-being seed
of the world which had been deposited by not-being
God" (Haer., vii, c. 9).

From the transcendental cosmic seed we pass to
the individual seeds which in their aggregate form
the actual world. "The non-existent seed of the world
constitutes the same time the germ of a multitude of
forms and a multitude of substances" (Haer., vii, c.
9). "It had all seeds treasured up and reposing in
itself just as not-being entities, and designed to
come into being by 'not-being God'" (Haer., vii, c.
10) . But how existence evolves itself from
non-existence Basilides cannot say. "Whatsoever I
affirm to have been made after these, ask no questioe
as to whence" (Haer., vii, c. 10). The Buddhists also
asserted that from the non-existent the existent is
evolved.(1) But "Buddhism does not attempt to solve
the problem of the primary origin of all things.
`When Malunka asked the Buddha whether the existence
of the world is eternal or not eternal, he made him
no reply.'"(2)

The actual world, then, according to Basilides,
is preceded by an ideal world deposited by an ideal
God. But this is evidently a mere accommodation to
the infirmity of human thought. We shall see
hereafter that the world of actuality has no end. We
may conclude that it had no beginning, and that
creation is a mere fiction of the mind. But neither
Basilides nor the Buddha definitely say so.

From cloudland we pass to reality. This spawn of
the world, this chaotic and conglomerated seed-mass,
has all entities, all realities stored up, entangled,
and confounded in itself. It evolves these entities
by a process of discrimination and differentiation,
and it has three fundamental qualities which
correspond with the three Gunas. This last
---------------------------
1. "Nach der Ansicht der Buddhisten geth das Seiende
aus dem Nichtseicnden hervor," says Garbe, quoting
Vacaspatimicra ("Die Samkhya Philosophie,"
2. "Buddhism," by Professor T. W. Rhys Davids, p.87
Compare onrparr his "Dialogues of th Buddha," pp.
187, 188.
p. 400
is evident from the description of the triple
Souship. We have the light or subtle and the dense
(1) = Sattvam and Tamas. Between these two is the
second Sonship in the region of Rajas.(2) This
seed-mass proceeds to evolve itself in obedience to a
double law. First: each individual seed, eternal in
itself, eternally acts in accordance with its
original nature, and without exterior government or
aid. "The things which are generated are produced
according to nature, as has been declared already by
Him who calculates things future, when they ought [to
be], and what sort they ought [to be], and how they
ought [to be]. And of these no one is superintendent,
or thought-taker, or demiurge; for sufficeth to them
that calculation which the not-being One calculated
when He made them" (Haer, vii, c. 12). The second law
is that everything ascends, and nothing descended.
The whole scheme of salvation, according to
Basilides, is founded upon this. "Nothing descended
from above," he says, speaking of the Gospel (Haer,
vii, c. 13). And again, "All things press from below
upwards, from the worse to the better. Nor among
things superior is any so senseless as to descend
below" (Haer, vii, c.10).

Basilides classifies all existences as either
mundane or supra-mundane. The supra-mundane
corresponds to Lokuttara, which is the same as the
region of Nirvana; the mundane includes everything
below it. This is Basilides' primary
classification,(3) and it is also the chief division
of the Buddhists. But we find another and
---------------------------
1. Basilides (or rather Hippolytus) does not give us
the exact Greek equivalents for the second and
third Gunas. The second Sonship is called (Haer.,
vii, c.10). The third Sonship is the Sonship "left
behind in Formlessness" (Haer., vii, c. 14). The
second Sonship is less deeply embedded in the
material world, and resides in the Aether, the
region of the Great Arehon (Haer, vii, c. 10 and
11).
2. Prakriti, says Deussen, "besteht aus den drei
Guna's (am besten als Faktoren zu ubersetzen..)
Sattvam (das Leichte, Helle, Intellektuelle) ,
Rajas (das Rewegliche, Treibende,
Leidenschaftliche) und Tamas (das Schwere, Dunkle,
Hemmende), und auf der verschiedenen Mischung der
drei Guna's beruht die ursprungliche
Vershiedenheit der Linga's." ("Die Philosophie der
Upanishad's," pp. 218-219.)
3. Basilides divides (Haer, vii, c. 11).
p. 401
subsidiary division, peculiar to Basilides, which
carries us much father. According to this there are
five spheres. The highest is the region of `not-being
God,' of the supra-mundane, of the Lokuttara, that is
NIrvana. It is separated from the mundane world by
the second sphere, which is the Firmament -- the
abode of the Holy or Limitary Spirit. The Aether
forms the third sphere, the region called the Ogdoad,
extending from the Firmament to the Moon. This is the
sphere of the Great Archon, "more potent than things
potent, wiser than things wise," the unutterable. The
fourth sphere embraces the region of the Air -- the
Bebdomad and habitation of the Lesser Archon, whose
name is speakable and who inspired the Prophets.
Lastly, we have the Earth, the place of Formlessness
and Matter, "where men sit and hear each other
groan."(1) Each of these regions, has its Treasury,
and is filled with innumerable beings whose nature
--------------------------
1. The not-being God and the first Sonship abide in
the (Haer., vii, c. 10). The Firmament is between
the and the Kosmos. It is the abode of the Holy
Spirit, also called the Limitary Spirit For the
division of the universe below the Firmament into
Ogdoad, Hebdomad, and Formlessness, v. vii, c. 15.
The highest of these regions is the Ogdoad, the
region of the Aether and the seat of the Great
Archon. This region extends to the moon. The
greatness of the Great Archon is frequently
extolled: "He is more ineffable than things
ineffable, more potent than things potent, wiser
than things wise, and his beauty surpassingly
beautiful" (vii, c. 11). He surpasses every entity
except the Sonship left behind (vii, c.11). He
believes the Kosmos to be His creation, and that
there is nothing higher than Himself(vii, c.11).
He is called demiurge and God. The region below
the Ogdoad is the Hebdomad, the region of the Air
which extends from the moon to the earth The
second Archon, like the first, is administrator
and demiurge (in appearance) of all subject to
him. He is the God of Abraham and inspired the
Prophets (vii, c. 13). The distinction between the
two Archons, in Basilides' opinion, probably
corresponded to the Gnostic distinction between
Yahve and Adonai. The Formlessness is the lowest
sphere. The Gospel comes first to Ogdoad, then to
the Hebdomad, and lastly to us (vii, c. 14). The
body of Jesus reverts to Formlessness, and His
psychical part to the Hebdomad (vii, c.15).
p. 402
fits them for it. Some are destined to a further
process of refinement and ascent; others have reached
the final stage of which their nature is capable, and
ascend no further. All this is partly Gnostic, partly
the popular physics of the time, and Basilides uses
Gnostic terms throughout-Archon, Ogdoad, Hebdomad,
Principalities and Powers, (1) But this fivefold
division, combined with the law that nothing descends
from the stage in which it is, enables him to present
the world-process with a sharpness of outline and
firmness or detail impossible to the Buddhists, whose
spirits wander aimlessly through multitudinous worlds
from heaven to earth, from earth to hell.

If now we return to Basilides' scheme of
Metaphysics as a whole, with the exception of
'not-being God' and the fivefold division of the
spheres, everything in that scheme is evidently
Buddhist. It is impossible to mistake the general identity.
Barth Sums up the groundwork of the Sankhya and Buddhist
metaphysics thus:--"Instead of organising itself
under the direction of a conscious, intelligent, divine
being, the primary substance of things is represented
as manifesting itself directly without the interposition
of any personal agent, by the development of the material world and contingent
existences. It is then simply, and by whatever name
it may be called, the asat, the non-existent, the
indeterminate, the indistinct, passing into
existence-chaos, in other words, extricating itself
from disorder by its own energies. When systematised,
this solution will on one side have its counterpart
in the metaphysics of Buddhism, while on the other it
will issue in the Sankhya philosophy."(2) "The whole
theory of the Basilidians consists of the confusion
of a seed-mass, and the sorting and restoration into
their proper places of things so confused." 3 The
cosmic germ, the derivation of existence
---------------------
1. Even the region (Haer., vii, c. 10) of the
ineffable `not-being God' had its treasury
2. "The Religions of India," by A. Barth, translated
by the Rev. J. Wood (Trubner's Oriental Series),
p. 69.
p. 403
from non-entity, the evolution of the chaotic
seed-mass by differentiation and selection, the
absence of all government, the only law the law
imposed on each unit by its nature, these are
fundamental ideas common to Basilides and the
Buddhists. But can we go further? Can we, for
instance, identify 'Formlessness' with Prakriti, and
the conscious spirits in earth, air, and aether with
Purusha?(1) Like Prakriti `Formlessness' is always
single, while the spirits and entities of the Ogdoad,
the Hebdomad, and the Earth are innumerable like
Purusha; in the Indian and the Basilidian scheme the
Purusha and the Prakriti are closely entangled and
intertwined: in both they are capable of ultimate
separation. But how far the identity of the two
systems went, we cannot say; our evidence is very
fragmentary, and we have no right to go beyond it.

So far I have followed Basilides upon purely
Indian ground.(2) I now turn to him as a Christian
theologian.
----------------
1. For Prakriti and Purusha v. Deussen, "Die
Philosophie der Upanishad's," pp. 216-219, and
Garbe, "Die Samkhya-Philosophie," p.204 ff.
2. Basilides' repute for Hellenism is mainly founded
on his Metaphysics, but it does not amount to
much. The attempt of Hippolytus to affiliate the
architectonic ideas of the system upon Aristotle
has long been abandoned; and modern critics are
divided between Plato and the Stoa. `Not-being
God' and the 'not-being world' are expressions
which go back through Philo to Plato, but there is
little Platonism in Basilides' use of them.
According to Plato that which is is the ideal
good; but the of Basilides is the first stage of
evolution from the Absolute; it is only in his
Theology that `not-being God' becomes the ideal
good. Nor has the 'not-being world' any connection
with the invisible world of the Platonic ideas;
it is the embryonic germ, the cosmic Prakriti.
The corrective power of suffering is a Platonic
idea, but it is applied for the explanation of
the value of martyrdom, and not to the suffering
of the world. These ideas are common to Philo,
Celsus, and Clement, and were part of the mental
equipment of the time; they do not necessarily
imply any knowledge at first-hand of the master.
The word is used by Plato (Timaeus, 73, c.) and by
Aristotle with reference to Anaxagoras, but in
neither case in the Basilidian sense. Baur has
pointed out the analogies between Basilides and
Anaxagoras. Anaxagoras starts his physical theory
of the universe with an infinite number of seeds,
but apart from this there is no resemblance
between the two systems. The seeds of Anaxagoras
are all specifically different from each other;
they are moved little by little at a time by mind,
which orders and arranges them. Order arises from
their commixture, corruption from their
separation. There is an express denial of fate and
chance (Ritter, Hist. Anc. Phil., i, p. 284 ff.,
Eng. trans.). The alleged resemblances to Stoicism
are based on the supposed Pantheism of Basilides,
and are general. But `not-being God' is not
consubstantial with the world, and has no further
connection with it after it is started. The
Buddhist hypothesis alone meets all the
requirements of the case.
p. 404
IV. THEOLOGY.

For Basilides was a sincere Christian in his own
belief. He was probably not conscious of any
sensible difference from the ordinary Christians
around him, at least not of any difference greater
than that which might reasonably separate a
philosopher from a simple believer, except in one
point only. He pointedly refused to accept the belief
in our Lord's impeccability. Be admitted that our
Lord did not sin, but he Would not say that IIis
material body was not sinful; he would not say "non
potuit peccare." But in everything else he appears at
first sight orthodox. He frankly accepted
Christianity as a historical fact and as a rule of
life. There is nothing docetic in his philosophy.
"Jesus was born,"' and "all the events in our Lord's
life occurred in the same manner as they have been
described in the Gospels." Basilides was acquainted
with a considerable portion of the New Testament. He
quotes S. Luke and S. John, and the whole scheme of
his theology is in reality little more than the
Basilidian expansion of the Prologue to the Fourth
Gospel. His great work the "Exegetica" is said to
have been a. Gospel commentary. He delights to
interpret some of the Pauline Epistles, especially
the Epistle to the Romans, and he appears to have
known the Acts of the Apostles, 1st Peter, and the
Epistle to the Hebrews. Moreover, he treats the Old
Testament with a respect somewhat unusual among the
Gnostics. His reverence for our Lord and his
admiration of the moral law are marked
characteristics of the man.

Nor is his exegesis, startling though it be,
anything extraordinary in the age of Hadrian. Unlike
Marcion curd Valentinus, he did not violetly alter
or mutilate the text of
---------------------------
1. It is always necessary to distinguish between
Jesus and Chrestos in dealing with the Gnostics.
Hippolytus uses the word `Christ' in speaking of
the Son of the Great Archon (vii, c. 14), but
whether Basilides gave it this limited
signification is not clear. The Son of Mary is
always Jesus in tile summary of Hippolytus.
p.405
Scripture, so far at least us we can judge. His canon
of interpretation is that of most philosophers of his
time, the same canon which Dio Chrysostom and
Aristides apply to the Homeric poems, an arbitrary
adaptation of the meaning to a preconceived
philosophy. Nay, we might go a step further and say
that, granting him his own interpretation, he might
have accepted considerable portions of the Nicene
Creed, had it then been formulated. At first sight
he is the most orthodox of all the Gnostics; a Bible
Christian one might almost call him.

But granting that Christianity was historically
true, and an absolute rule of conduct, it wanted a
philosophy. The age of Hadrian was enamoured of
philosophy: it had just awakened to a general sense of
human suffering, and as a rule it accepted in popular
form the Stoic idea of a Divine Providence which
governed the world. Christianity presented for the
first time the problems of Humanity in a new and
universal form. What is the origin of sin? what the
method of salvation? The Basilidian scheme is an
answer to these questions.

Basilides bases his theology on the baptismal
formula, the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. The
"Inconceivable and Blessed not-being God" (Haer.,
vii, c. 13) is the Father. The Sonship is
consubstantial with Him The Holy Spirit is
inseparable from, but, not consubstantial with the
Sonship (Haer., vii, c. 10). With this Basilides
starts, and develops his philosophy by the aid of two
ideas, the Sonship and the Evangel.

The Fatter is inconceivable, and above all
created things or human predicates. The Sonship, on
the contrary, is deposited in the cosmic germ, but
being consubstantial with the Father, cannot stay
there; it must be restored to communion with Him, and
its evolution is the history of the world-process
(Haer., vii, c. 10). But this Sonship is not single;
it is a collective germ, containning the seeds of
many Sone within itself, and according to the
Basilidian metaphysic it ought to have a twofold
division, the
p. 406
supra-mundane and the mundane. But Basilides insists
that it is threefold: (Haer., vii, c. 10). The
refined or subtle Sonship, free from all cosmic
stain, ascends at once with the deposition of the
seed in pre-cosmic time to the region of the Father
(Haer., vii, c. 10); or in other words, seeing that
the deposition of the cosmic seed is a mere figment
of human thought, the primal Sonship was with the
Father from eternity. The grosser Sonship is more or
less entangled in the seed-mass and remains behind.
But the more aetherial part of it, less heavily
clogged, ascends (also in pre-cosmic time) to the
region of the Great Archon, whom it illuminates and
instructs. This is the second Sonship (Haer., vii, c.
10). With this second Sonship, however, must be
classed the Son dwelling in the Hebdomad with the
Archon of the aerial and psychic world (Haer., vii,
c. 12). The third Sonship is deeply submerged in the
material world of Formlessness, and first
disentangles itself in the Son of Mary, the prototype
of all the Sons of God on earth (Haer., vii, c. 14).

Before we go further we must pause a moment. It
is clear that, under the Basilidian scheme, each
region of Being (except the region of the Holy
Spirit) , required a Sonship for itself, whose
business it was to illuminate and benefit that
region; and this corresponds with the actual
enumeration. Why, then, does Basilides insist on a
threefold division? The logical division would have
been twofold, the actual one is fourfold. Basilides
was doubtless influenced by the doctrine of the three
Gunas, but there was probably a Christian element at
work. The first Sonship corresponds with the Son who
"is in the bosom of the Father from eternity "; the
second corresponds, in position at any rate, with the
Son " by whom all things were made," since this is
called the Son of the Great Archon, who imagines
Himself to be the Creator;while the third is the
historical Christ.

Since the Holy Spirit is inseparable from the
Sonship
p. 407
There must have been a tripartite division of the Holy
Spirit also. Hippolytus mentions only one, the
(Haer., vii, c. 11); Clement mentions a, second,
(Strom., ii, 8. 36, p. 162, and Frag., p. 337). The
Limitary Spirit accompanies the first Sonship on His
upward flight, but not being consubstantial with Him
is left behind in the adjacent firmament.' He has a
distinct entity, although scarcely a distinct
personality, and the Sonship is related to the Holy
Spirit as a bird to its wing, or a pot of myrrh to
the fragrance it exhales (Haer., vii, c. 10). The
second and third Sonships are accompanied by the
`ministering' Spirit, but as the Spirit cannot
descend from a higher to a lower sphere the
`ministering Spirit' of each must be regarded as
distinct; and it is evident that when each Sonship
finally ascends to the region of `not being God' the
accompanying Spirit must be left behind in the region
of the Firmament.

The second factor is the advent of the Gospel,
for "although nothing descended from above, yet from
above the Gospel really came" (Haer., vii, c. 13). It
came as naphtha, catches fire from a spark, and each
sphere in turn caught the glory from the sphere above
it. The Ogdoad, the region of the Great Archon, was
illuminated first; his ignorance was enlightened, he
confessed his sin, and his awe-struck mind learned
that " fear of the Lord which is the beginning of
wisdom" (Haer., vii, c. 14; cf. Strom., ii, 8. 36, p.
162). From the world of the Ogdoad the Gospel
descended to the Hebdomad, and from thence to the
earth. Each world has been illuminated and
evangelized in turn.

What, then, is this Evangel? It is the knowledge
of supra-mundane and celestial things, to know what
is the Father, the `not-being God,' what the Sell,
and what the
---------------------
1. Hippolytus (c. 10) attaches this Limitary Spirit
to the secoud Sonship But there is evidently some
confusion, since he explains why this Limitary
Spirit could not enter into the communion of
not-being God. Moreovor, nothing could have
checked the upmard flight of the second Sonship,
had there been Do limit. In c. 14 the Holy Spirit
is also represented apparently as Light.
p. 408
Holy Spirit. To know this, and to know what is the
constitution of the universe, the differentiation,
the perfecting, the restoration of all things, that
is the fourfold wisdom (Haer., vii, c. 14).(1)

The advent of the Gospel is a world event. And
here we come upon a striking application of an Indian
belief. The novelty of Christianity profoundly
impressed the Church of the first two centuries; it
was a characteristic note of early Christianity. But
none seized on it more powerfully than the Gnostics;
it is a keystone in that theories of Marcion and
Valentinus as well as of Basilides. With Basilides
the time of Jesus' birth was determined by the
conjunction of the stars, for although the stars, he
holds, do not determine the destiny of man, they
control the hour of his birth. And so, when Jesus was
born, a new Kalpa or Yug began,(2) a world period
which will end when all the Sonship has been gathered
in and the consummation of all things takes place.
For the third Sonship is not exhausted by Jesus any
more than the second Sonship is exhausted by Christ.
It embraces all the Sons of God left behind in the
material mass.(3) Jesus lived the life narrated in
the Gospels; he is "the first-fruits of the
discrimination of the things confused" (Haer., vii,
c. 15), and all the Sons of God must follow in His
steps (Haer., vii, c. 14, 15). They are the elect,
and their very nature ensures their ultimate
salvation, although the time may be postponed by
voluntary sin. It is neither the Valentinian gnosis
nor the contemplative absorption of the Buddhist
which enables them to apprehend the Gospel, but it is
Faith. Faith, according to the Basilidian
----------------------------
1. (Haer., vii, c. 14); cf. Clem. Strom., ii, 8. 36,
p. 162; (of the Great Archon) These words recall
the `fourfold path' of the Buddha, but while the
latter is moral the fourfold wisdom of Basilides
is intellectual. Each of the four adjectives
employed by Clement bears a technical meaning in
the Basilidian philosophy.
2. Haer., vii, c.15.
3. haer., vii, c.13.
p. 409
definition is the intellectual apprehension of' and
belief in undemonstrable truths, an intuitive grasp
of the teaching of the Gospel when presented to a
kindred soul (Clem. Strom., ii, 3. 10, p. 156, and
ii, 6. 27, p. 160). By this faith the elect,(1) the
believer by nature, arrives at a stage of serene
blessedness, fulfilling tile divinely constituted law
which requires him to be in a state of charity with
all things, neither desiring nor hating anything
(Clem. Strom., iv, 12. 88, p. 217).(2) All passion,
all desire is past: surely the elect has attained to
the dignity of an Arahat.

If the Pauline terms Faith and Election are
essential terms of Basilides' teaching, perfection
and restoration are so equally. Jesus suffered and
died, and His material part was restored to the
Formlessness to which it belonged. The psyche
ascended to the Hebdomad, and the regions of the
Great Archon and of the Holy Spirit received such
elements of His personality as were peculiar to them,
while the third Sonship ascended through all these
regions to t.he `Blessed Sonship,' which had been
from the beginning with the Father--the `not-being
God.' And in like manner as Jesus ascended, so must
all the elect ascend (Haer., vii, c. 15). Now this
region at which they arrive, and this communion with
`not-being God,' `the Inconceivable and Blessed,' is
none other than Nirvana. And, like Nirvana, it is a
state to be passionately desired. "For every nature
desires that [not-being God] on account of a
superabundance of [its] beauty and [its] bloom," and
"that blessed region which words connot express nor
reason grasp" (Haer., vii, c. 10).(3)
---------------------
1. The and the are convertible terms; (Strom., v, 1.
3, p. 233).
2. It is one part the declared will of God " " to be
in a state of charity with all things, because all
[individual] things bear a relation to the whole,
i.e. the general scheme of the Kosmos." This
"declared will of God" is the constitution of the
universe "involuntarily willed by not-being God."
"Deus nec amat nec odit" is a fundamental maxim of
all Indian philosophy as well as of Spinoza, and
to attribute a state of charity to `not-being
God,' as some commentators do, is to furnish wit
morality a being above all predicates.
3. Professor Rhys Davids has pointed out to me that
Nirvana is, properly speaking, a state and not a
region. Now Basilides certainly conceived that
p. 410
From this state the Sons of God can never more
descend, for them rebirth is over, all things are at
an end. When the last seed of the Sonship has been
gathered in, the world-period is over, the `Kalpa' is
completed, and the restoration of all things will
take place. At present "the whole creation groaneth
and travaileth in pain together,"(1) waiting for the
manifestation of the Sons of God; it is disturbed by
the birth pangs of the spiritual Sonship, and
desires heights to which it can never attain. But
when the Divine Light is for ever withdrawn it will
cease from unavailing trouble, sorrow and sighing
will flee away, and `the great Ignorance' will
envelop everything (Haer., vii, c. 15).

"Thy hand, Greet Anarch, lets the curtain fall,
End universal darkness covers all."

Basilides and the "Dunciad" arrive at the same
happy conclusion.(2)

This, then, is the far-famed Basilidian theology,
a scheme immensely ingenious, boldly conceived,
powerfully reasoned, sincerely believed. It is
composed in unequal parts of Gnosticism,
Christianity, and Buddhism. With the main stream of
Syrian Gnosticism, which attained to Hellenic
symmetry and form in the hands of Valentinus,
Basilides was well acquainted. But he borrows little
from it except the general problem. All the Gnostics
agreed in placing the Absolute God beyond all human
ken, they all assigned an inferior place to the Old
Testament dispensation, they entertained somewhat
similar notions of the demiurge, and
--------------------
"being with not-being God" implied not only a state
but a place, supramundane region with its
`treasury.' We must remember that Basilides
acquired his knowledge, not from learned Sramanas,
but from the popular beliefs of Buddhist
merchants, and that at this very time the
doctrines of the older Buddhism mere falling into
abeyance, and Buddha himself was widely
worshipped. Even Clement was aware of that. But if
Buddha were worshipped, he must be somewhere; he
must have some shadowy existence in some
supra-mundane region.
1. Apparently a favourite test with Basilides.
Hippolytus twice quotes it in his summary.
2. "As a mere system of metaphysics the theory of
Basilid contains the nearest approach to the
conception of a logical philosophy of the absolute
which the history of ancient thought can furnish,
almost rivalling that of Hegel in modern times."
(Mansel, "Gnostic Heresies," p. 165.) God" implied
not only a state but a place, a supra-
p. 411
they all set themselves to solve the problem of the
origin of evil and the ascent of man. But beyond this
Basilides has not much in common with the Gnostici.
He borrows the terms Ogdoad and Hebdomad, and the
division of' the Spheres. He may have borrowed from
his contemporary and fellow-townsman Valentinus the
term `Limitary Spirit,' although the term is so
essential to the Basilidian theology that, if
borrowing there was at all, I suspect the borrowing
was the other way. But in everything else Basilides
and the Gnostici are opposed. For them the great fact
of human life is the fatalism of the stars, and
metempsychosis takes a secondary place. The fatal
nexus of rebirth determines Basilides' philosophy,
and astrology is scarcely of account. They proceed by
emanations, and clothe their ideas in the garb of
Babylonian or Egyptian mythology. Basilides is
comparatively free from mythology, (1) and argues
vigorously against all emanation theories (Haer.,
vii, c. 10). They start with a fall from the Infinite
to the Finite; he knows nothing on it.

Basilides doubtless believed Christianity to he
the maim factor of Iris system. He frankly accepted
tile Gospel narrative, the evangelical morality, the
doctrine of the Trinity, the Pauline terminology. His
whole scheme is intended to show the advent of the
Gospel, how the Divine Sonship came into the world
and grave the power to become sons of God to as many
as are born of God. And his theology throws a
suggestive light upon the doctrinal teaching, anil
the authority of the Gospels and Pauline Epistles in
the Church of' Alexandria when Hadrian reigned.
---------------------
1. The one, directly mythological expression I find
in Basilides is the remark that Righteousness and
her daughter Peace dwelt in the Ogdoad (Strom.,
iv, p. 231). The Ogdoad was doubtless inhabited by
a number of abstract entities- Nous, Phronesis,
Logos, and the rest mentioned by Irenaeus--but not
emanations as Irenaeus and the later Basilidians
held. All these were probably treated, like the
Sonship, as collective germs, anti characteristic
of the sphere. But these are merely abstractions
hypostatized airer the Oriental fashion. They do
not necessarily wear a mythological or even an
anthropomorphic dress. At the same time the
spheres of the first and second Archon were
inhabited by innumerable hosts of, the Gnostic
counterpart of Greek demons, Jewish angels, and
Buddhist devas, who were ready to supply the Inter
Basilidians at once with a full-blown mythology.
p. 412
But this Christianity apparent to the eye is
profoundly Buddhist at the core. All things have
their law of being in themselves: suffering is the
concomitant of existence, rebirth is the result of
former nets, and metempsychosis governs men with
inflexible justice anti with iron severity. The
office of Jesus is the office of the Buddha;(1) the
elect alone are saved, and tile mass of mankind
remains content to be born again. All things have
their consummation in immense ignorance. But the
Basilidian scheme is mole grandiose than its
prototype: in the place of unending turmoil it
substitutes a world process of diferentiation, for
the release of the individual Arahat the cessation of
the sorrows of the world; and it is carried out with
a historical character, a clearnessof definition, and
a rigour of logic which Buddhism never knew.

Thus Basilides lived and taught, accounted all
arch-heretic in after times, but ill his own clay all
eminent doctor of the Church at Alexandria. He had
constructed, so he thought, a vast theodicee, he had
solved the problems of Free-will and Fate, he had
explained the evolution of the Spheres, and of the
innumerable spirits which dwell above and below the
motions of the Moon, us well as of the Sons of God on
earth, consubstantial with not-being God and desirous
to return to Him. "Vain wisdom all, and false
philosophy." Buddhist metaphysics found little
acceptance in Alexandria; they were too foreign to
Hellenic modes of thought, and it was many centuries
Inter when the legend of Barlaam and Josaphat first
attracted the mind of the West. The doctrines of
Basilides were misunderstood by his critics, and
misinterpreted by his followers. Clement and
Hippolytus prove their agreement and good faith by
enabling us to reconstruct the main outlines of the
system, but they mere frequently much puzzled. The
followers of Basilides were confined for the most
part to Alexandria and
--------------------
1. "You yourselves must make the effort: the Buddhas
are only preachers" (Rhys Davids, " Buddhism," p.
107). Compare the striking elaboration of the
theme, " Be ye lamps unto yourselves," in the Maha
Parinnabbana, translated by Rhys Davids, "Buddhist
Suttas," pp. 36-39.
p. 413
the Delta of the Nile; they mere men of little note,
probably Egyptianized Hellenes, and Hellenized
Egyptians and Jews. They turned tile Basilidian
teaching into a wild farrago and an immoral cult. The
doctrine of election lent itself to Antinomian
licentiousness, and the moderate Clement reproaches
them with their views of marriage; they scorned the
sufferings of the Martyrs, anil counted it wisdom to
deny Christ. They delighted in emanations and
astrology, divided the spheres into 365 heavens,' and
placed the solar Abrasax(2) at its head, and they
were famed above all other sects for their belief in
the hidden virtues of stones, in talismans and
spells, and all the products of Judaeo - Egyptian
Magic. These beliefs, the offspring of superstitious
hearts and stuffed-up brains, bear as little
resemblance to the teaching of Basilides as the
confused medley called the religion of tile Mandaites
bears to the teaching of
-------------------
1. It is clear from Hippolytus, vii, c. 14, that that
"tedious treatise" on the 365 heavens had nothing
to do with Basilides or Isidore. These 365 heavens
correspond with the 365 days of the Egyptian
`common' year, and are connected with Abrasax and
the solar cult of the later Basilidians.
2. The Abraxoid gems are numerous, especially in the
Delta of the Nile, and they are the only ones
which are certainly Gnostic. Hippolytus tells us
(vii, c. 14) that Abraxas, or more properly
Abrasax, was supreme lord of the 365 heavens,
which represent the 365 days of the year. He bears
therefore a solar character, and the Greek letters
of his name have 365 for their numerical value
(a=1, b=2, p=100, a=1, e= 60, x=l, s=200 =365).
Neilos and Meithras give the same arithmetical
result. The iconic representations of Abrasax on
the gems represent him in the main as an Egvptian
solar deity. He has the head of tile solar hawk,
the bird of Horus, or rather Horus himself, and
the addition of a rude cock's comb on some gems
may represent, as in other cases, not a cock's
head, but flames or rays. With his left hand
Abrasax advances a shield, his right haud holds a
scourge upraised strike. The scourge I identify
with the khu of the Egyptian gods, and the
attitude recalls the attitude of Min Amen at
Thebes. The Abrasax legs are snakes, the symbols
of the underworld. The bark of Ra is drawn by
serpents in its passage through the twelve hours
of the night, and on the sarcophagus of Seti I
serpents represent the hidden fires of germination
in the realms of Osiris (v. "The Alabaster
Sarcophagus of Oimenepthah I," by J. Bonomi & S.
Sharpe, 1864, pl. vii) . Abrasax is often
identified with Iao, and Iao is occasionally
represented by an immense python for ever
travelling-- a python such as we find on the walls
of the same Seti's tomb in the Valley of the
Kings. These Abraxoid gems are magical talismans
for the protection of the wearer. But Abrasax is
much more than; more than Amen-Ra; he is the
invention of Egyptian Jews and Gnostics, and has
Jewish and even Syrian elements in his
composition. For Abrasax, v. King, "The Gnastics
and their Remains," p. 226 ff. Also Dr. Hort s.v.
Abrasax in Smith' s "Dictionary of Christian
Biography."
p. 414
the Baptist. The Basilidians and Basilides have
little in common except the name.

It is a fascinating spectacle, that inward
struggle of the early Church in the generations that
extend from the persecutions of Nero to the golden
age of the elder Antonine. On one side was ranged the
Christian consciousness, the organization, the simple
faith, and solid virtues of obscure men; on the other
side were learning and philosophy, poetry and genius.
The Church was still largely Oriental in character,
and Christian experience had not had time to
formulate itself in universally accepted dogma. If
the churches of Rome, of Antioch, and Asia Minor
reeked with blood, these persecutions which made men
shudder had not extended to the banks of the
Euphrates or the Nile. While Rome and Asia Minor were
engaged in building up the social and ecclesiastical
organism, and in evolving the rudiments of the
liturgy, the Oriental mind was busy in adapting
Christianity to preconceived philosophies. Orthodox
and Gnostics were sincere believers alike; alike they
acknowledged the divinity of Christ, the novelty and
the superiority of the Christian dispensation; they
listened with curiosity and respect to the stories of
those who had knowm the Apostles. But the Gnostic
philosophics were pagan, no other, indeed, being then
available, and for the early Christians Paganism was
an instinctive barrier. Had the Gnostics prevailed
Christianity would have been at an end; happily it
was the Church of the simple that triumphed. And yet,
perhaps, something has been lost with the
disappearance of the traces of the struggle. The
historian may regret the loss of traditions which
threatened to occupy a place similar to that they
hold in Mahommedan theology. Some great truths held
alike by Orthodox and Gnostics were allowed to fall
into the background. The Church resolutely set its
face against all inquiries into the origin of evil.
But whenever Christian poets and divines have dared
to overleap the limits of our ignorance they have
always begun with that first supposition of the
Gnostics-- the pre-existence of the soul.
p. 415
"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar.
Hence, in a season of calm weather,
Though inland far we be,
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither;
Can in a moment travel hither--
And see the children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore."