To this ineffable delight of a heart possessed of divine love there was added the highest revelation for the intelligence.[526] Must not the infallible “gnosis” be that which was the result of instruction received directly from the mouth of a celestial power which had come down to earth? The devotees who had obtained the signal favour of this resplendent vision, were thenceforth united to the deity who had manifested himself to them, and were certain to share his immortal life. The fugitive pleasure which they had felt on earth would become a bliss without end in the kingdom of the dead. There they would see face to face the god who protected them and learn from him all that had remained hidden from them in this life. These ideas, half religious, half magical, are very ancient, especially in Egypt, but they were transformed by astrolatry. Here the celestial powers had not to be summoned by prayer or invoked by incantations in order that they might come and converse with the faithful, but were perpetually visible and offered themselves, day and night, to the veneration of humanity. Henceforth the knowledge of divine things was no longer to be communicated by the words which the initiate believed that he heard in the silence of the sanctuary. It was revealed by a mysterious inspiration to him who had deserved it by a fervent observation of the heavens.[527] Thus by an illumination of the intelligence the astral powers unveiled their will and the secrets of their movements to their attentive servants. Here below this knowledge was always imperfect and fragmentary, but it would be completed in another world, when reason once more would rise aloft to the starry spaces whence it had descended. This eschatological doctrine, which made astronomy the source of virtue and of immortality, could only be developed by a clergy devoted to the study of that science. Its first authors were doubtless the “Chaldeans,” who transmitted it to Greece with their theories as to the divisions of the sky and the heavenly bodies. The most ancient writing in which this Oriental influence asserts itself clearly is the _Epinomis_, probably a work of the astronomer Philip of Opus, a disciple of Plato. Let us listen to his own words:[528] “When man perceives the harmony of the sky and the immovable order of its revolutions, he is first filled with joy and struck with admiration. Then the passion is born in him to learn about them all that it is possible for his mortal nature to know, for he is persuaded that he will thus lead the best and happiest existence and will go after his death to the places suited to virtue. Then being veritably and really initiate, pure reason taking part in the only wisdom, he will spend the rest of his time in contemplation of what is most beautiful among all visible things.”