The individual Gnostics played round this idea. Cerinthus (educated here) taught that Jesus was a man, and Christ a spirit who left him at death. Basilides (a Syrian visitor) that there were three dispensations, pre-Jewish, Jewish, and Christian, each of whose rulers had a son, which son comprehended more of God than did his father. The Ophites worshipped snakes because the serpent in Eden was really a messenger from God, who induced Eve to disobey the Demiurge Jehovah. Consequently if we wish to be good we must be bad—a conclusion that was also reached, though by a different route, by Carpocrates, who organised an Abode of Love on one of the Greek islands. These are unsavoury charlatans. But one of the Gnostics—Valentinus—was a man of another stamp, and his system has a tragic quality most rare in Alexandria. Valentinus (probably an Egyptian; educated here; taught mainly at Rome) held the usual Gnostic doctrine that creation is a mistake. But he tried to explain how the mistake came about. He imagines a primal God, the centre of a divine harmony, who sent out manifestations of himself in pairs of male and female. Each pair was inferior to its predecessor, and Sophia (“wisdom”) the female of the thirtieth pair, least perfect of all. She showed her imperfection not, like Lucifer, by rebelling from God, but by desiring too ardently to be united to him. She fell through love. Hurled from the divine harmony, she fell into matter, and the universe is formed out of her agony and remorse. She herself was rescued by the first Christ but not before she had born a son, the Demiurge, who rules this world of sadness and confusion, and is incapable of realising anything beyond it. In this world there are three classes of men, all outwardly the same, men of the Body, the Spirit, and the Soul. The first two belong to the Demiurge and ought to obey him. The third are really the elect of his mother Sophia. He rules them but cannot make them obey. It was for their salvation that the Christ whom we call Jesus descended straight from the primal God and left with his twelve disciples the secret tradition of the Gnosis. With Valentinus the Gnosticism of Alexandria reaches its height. Further east it took other forms. It had spread by 150 A.D. all round the Mediterranean, and threatened to defeat orthodox Christianity. But it was pessimistic, imaginative, esoteric—three great obstacles to success. It was not a creed any society could adopt, being anti-social, and by the time of Constantine its vogue was over. GNOSTIC AMULETS: Museum, Room 17. (II). ORTHODOXY. (Early). CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA—about 200. ORIGEN—185-253.