17. “The Persians call those who have the divine faculty (or are god-like) Magi. A Magus, then, is one who is a minister of the Gods, or one who has by nature the god-like faculty. You are no Magus but reject the Gods (i.e., are an atheist).” Again, in a letter addressed to Criton, we read: 23. “Pythagoras said that the most divine art was that of healing. And if the healing art is most divine, it must occupy itself with the soul as well as with the body; for no creature can be sound so long as the higher part in it is sickly.” Writing to the priests of Delphi against the practice of blood-sacrifice, he says: 27. “Heraclitus was a sage, but even he[123] never advised the people of Ephesus to wash out mud with mud.”[124] Again, to some who claimed to be his followers, those “who think themselves wise,” he writes the reproof: 43. “If any say he is my disciple, then let him add he keeps himself apart out of the Baths, he slays no living thing, eats of no flesh, is free from envy, malice, hatred, calumny, and hostile feelings, but has his name inscribed among the race of those who’ve won their freedom.” Among these letters is found one of some length addressed to Valerius, probably P. Valerius Asiaticus, consul in A.D. 70. It is a wise letter of philosophic consolation to enable Valerius to bear the loss of his son, and runs as follows:[125] “There is no death of anyone, but only in appearance, even as there is no birth of any, save only in seeming. The change from being to becoming seems to be birth, and the change from becoming to being seems to be death, but in reality no one is ever born, nor does one ever die. It is simply a being visible and then invisible; the former through the density of matter, and the latter because of the subtlety of being--being which is ever the same, its only change being motion and rest. For being has this necessary peculiarity, that its change is brought about by nothing external to itself; but whole becomes parts and parts become whole in the oneness of the all. And if it be asked: What is this which sometimes is seen and sometimes not seen, now in the same, now in the different?--it might be answered: It is the way of everything here in the world below that when it is filled out with matter it is visible, owing to the resistance of its density, but is invisible, owing to its subtlety, when it is rid of matter, though matter still surround it and flow through it in that immensity of space which hems it in but knows no birth or death.