Philosophers were therefore the priests of the world. Their functions were parallel to those of the actual priests but higher. They tended more and more to form a sacerdotal order which was separated from the rest of human society by its customs and its way of life. Like the mysteries they taught that piety, temperance and continence were the indispensable conditions of obtaining true knowledge. This “gnosis” was no longer a traditional theology revealed in the shadow of the sanctuary, but a scientific truth perceived by a grace-illumined reason. The philosopher took no part in the ceremonies of a complicated ritual, but his prayer was the silent supplication of his intelligence seeking to understand creation. He did not become absorbed in the contemplation of idols but in the sight of the divine world and in particular of the starry heavens. The end which this lonely cult strove to attain was analogous to that sought by others in the conventicles of the initiate—a divine revelation which would give to the perfect wise man superhuman power, which would make him a prophet, sometimes a wonder-worker; and after death, already a god on earth, he went to live in the company of the gods on high. The lifting of the reason to heaven, source of all intelligence, was thus the pledge of astral immortality, as the liturgical banquet was of the celestial feast. As physical drunkenness, being divine possession, was a prelude to the joy of the eternal repast, so spiritual ecstasy was the sign of future deification.[293] The ancients found impassioned words to depict this communion of man with the starry heavens, and to express the divine love which transported the soul into radiant space.[294] In the splendour of night the spirit was intoxicated with the glow shed on it by the fires above. Like the possessed and the Corybantes in the delirium of their orgies, it abandoned itself to ecstasy, which set it free from its fleshly wrappings and lifted it up to the region of the everlasting stars. Borne on the wings of enthusiasm it sprang to the midst of this sacred chorus and followed its harmonious movements. Reason, illumined by the divine fires which surrounded it, understood the laws of nature and the secrets of destiny. It then partook of the life of the light-flashing beings which from the earth it saw glittering in the radiance of the ether; before the fated term of death it had part in their wisdom and received their revelations in a stream of light which dazzled even the eye of reason. This sublime rapture was an ephemeral foretaste of the endless felicity reserved for the sage when, after his death, rising to the celestial spheres, he penetrated all their mysteries.[295] V UNTIMELY DEATH