Therefore, in reading the Life of Apollonius let us remember that we have to look at it through the eyes of a Greek, and not through those of a Jew or a Protestant. The Many in their proper sphere must be for us as authentic a manifestation of the Divine as the One or the All, for indeed the “Gods” exist in spite of commandment and creed. The Saints and Martyrs and Angels have seemingly taken the places of the Heroes and Dæmons and Gods, but the change of name and change of view-point among men affect but little the unchangeable facts. To sense the facts of universal religion under the ever-changing names which men bestow upon them, and then to enter with full sympathy and comprehension into the hopes and fears of every phase of the religious mind--to read, as it were, the past lives of our own souls--is a most difficult task. But until we can put ourselves understandingly in the places of others, we can never see more than one side of the Infinite Life of God. A student of comparative religion must not be afraid of terms; he must not shudder when he meets with “polytheism,” or draw back in horror when he encounters “dualism,” or feel an increased satisfaction when he falls in with “monotheism”; he must not feel awe when he pronounces the name of Yahweh and contempt when he utters the name of Zeus; he must not picture a satyr when he reads the word “dæmon,” and imagine a winged dream of beauty when he pronounces the word “angel.” For him heresy and orthodoxy must not exist; he sees only his own soul slowly working out its own experience, looking at life from every possible view-point, so that haply at last he may see the whole, and having seen the whole, may become at one with God. To Apollonius the mere fashion of a man’s faith was unessential; he was at home in all lands, among all cults. He had a helpful word for all, an intimate knowledge of the particular way of each of them, which enabled him to restore them to health. Such men are rare; the records of such men are precious, and require the embellishments of no rhetorician. Let us then, first of all, try to recover the outline of the early external life and of the travels of Apollonius shorn of Philostratus’ embellishments, and then endeavour to consider the nature of his mission, the manner of the philosophy which he so dearly loved and which was to him his religion, and last, if possible, the way of his inner life. SECTION VII. EARLY LIFE.