Apollonius had never reason to regret his Indian travels. He became deeply imbued with the metaphysical ideas of the Brahmins, and was in the habit ever after of extolling their spiritual philosophy as the fountain-head of all the profounder truths of Western religion. As to Damis’s record of Apollonius’s sojourn with the Indian Philosophers, we have only Philostratus’s garbled account to guide us, and the quotation of Apollonius’s cryptic observation, “I saw men dwelling on the earth and yet not on it; defended on all sides, without any defence; and yet possessed of nothing but what all possessed.” It may be well to quote the interpretation of this saying given by Mr Mead. “They were on the earth but not of the earth, for their minds were set on things above. They were protected by their innate spiritual power, of which we have so many instances in Indian literature. And yet they possessed nothing but what all men possess if they would but develop the spiritual part of their being.” There are a good many references in the conversations with Apollonius to the belief in Reincarnation, which was of course an essential tenet of Pythagorean philosophy, and he himself averred that in his previous life he was a man of no consequence, to wit, a ship’s pilot. A letter ascribed to him, whether rightly or wrongly, has some interesting observations on this subject. “Why has this false notion,” he asks, “of birth and death” (_i.e._, that they are real and not illusory in character)—“why has this false notion remained so long without being refuted? Some think that what has happened through them they have themselves brought about. They are ignorant that the individual is brought to birth _through_ parents, not _by_ parents. Just as a thing produced through the earth is not produced from it. The change which comes to the individual is nothing that is caused by his visible surroundings, but rather a change in the one thing which is in every man.” The portrait of Apollonius which has been handed down through many generations has become blurred and disfigured beyond recognition, and it seemed therefore well to give, even if in but a brief outline, such a sketch as might convey a juster idea of the philosopher whose friendship the greatest men of his day considered it their highest honour to enjoy, the man who chose the path of sanctity at a time of life when others choose “the primrose path of dalliance,” who chose Wisdom for her own sake and Truth for the sake of Truth. The world holds no record of a long life lived more nobly, of a more undaunted courage in confronting the tyrant, of a more unflinching tenacity of purpose, of a more single-minded devotion to a high ideal. His boyhood’s choice, the inspiration of his manhood, the beacon-light of his latest years—to follow in the footsteps of that Form, so austere in the simplicity of her loveliness, “whose ways are ways of pleasantness and all whose paths are peace.”[3]