This philosophy did not draw its power of persuasion only from its logical consistency, which satisfied reason, but it also made a strong appeal to feeling. Posidonius caused a broad stream of mystical ideas, undoubtedly derived from the beliefs developed by the astral religions of the East, to flow into the arid bed of a Stoicism which had become scholastic. For him, reason was not enclosed in the body, even when it sojourned here below; it escaped from it to pass with marvellous swiftness from the depths of the sea to the ends of the earth and the top of the heavens; it flew through all nature, learning to know physical laws and to admire the divine order ever more and more. Above all it could never weary of the sight of the glowing constellations and their harmonious movements. It felt with emotion, as it gave itself up to contemplating them, its kinship with the celestial fires; it entered into communion with the higher gods. In enthusiastic terms, echoed by his imitators, Posidonius described the ecstasy which seized him who left the earth, who felt himself transported to the midst of the sacred chorus of the stars and who followed their rhythmic evolutions. In these transports, the soul did not only win to infinite power, but also received from heaven the revelation of the nature and cause of the celestial revolutions. Thus even in this life it had a foretaste of the beatitude which would belong to it after death when reason, rid of the weak organs of the senses, would directly perceive all the splendours of the divine world and would know its mysteries completely.[83] This theology attributed to man a power such as to satisfy his proudest feelings. It did not regard him as a tiny animalcule who had appeared on a small planet lost in immensity, nor did it, when he scrutinised the heavens, crush him with a sense of his own pettiness as compared with bodies whose greatness surpassed the limits of his imagination. It made man king of creation, placed him in the centre of a still limited world of which the proportions were not so vast that he could not travel all over his domain. If he could tear himself from the domination of his body, he became capable of communicating with the visible gods who were almost within his reach and whom he might hope to equal after his passage here below. He knew himself to be united to them by an identity of nature which alone explained how he understood them. “Quis caelum possit, nisi caeli munere, nosse Et reperire deum, nisi qui pars ipse Dei est?”[84] “Who could know heaven save by heavenly grace, or find God if he were not himself a part of God?”—words of the Roman poet who echoes Posidonius’ teaching. * * * * *