This passage shows clearly the manner in which astrolatry modified ancient ideas as to the sight of a god, the reverential wonder felt in his presence by the faithful, the truth communicated to them and the immortality which completed their initiation. The doctrine of an intellectual reward for the Blessed was to attract scholars who in this world gave themselves up to study. Spiritual activity, which emancipates from material care and gives man nobility and virtue, seemed to them to be the only occupation worthy of the elect. If the theory that the Blessed would after death find this activity in the midst of the divine stars, is probably of “Chaldean” origin, it was developed by the Greek philosophers and in particular by Posidonius. It was also admitted into the Roman mysteries, which, being penetrated by the spirit of Oriental theologies, claimed to supply their adepts with a complete explanation of the universe. We have already alluded to this system in speaking of astral mysticism.[529] Nature herself has destined man to gaze upon the skies. Other animals are bent to the earth; he proudly lifts his head to the stars. His eye, a tiny mirror in which immensity is reflected, the soul’s door, open to the infinite, follows the evolutions of the heavenly bodies from here below. By their splendour they make men marvel and by their majesty compel them to veneration. Their complicated movements, ruled by an immovable rhythm, are inconceivable unless they are endowed with infallible reason. The observation of the sky is not only an inexhaustible source of aesthetic emotion. It also causes the soul, a detached parcel of the fires of the ether, to enter into communion with the gods which shine in the firmament. Possessed with the desire to know them, this soul receives their revelations. They instruct it as to their nature; thanks to them, it understands the phenomena produced in the cosmic organism. Thus scientific curiosity is also conceived as a yearning for God. The love of truth leads to holiness more surely than initiations and priests.