Why this design has not been carried out by the same methods throughout; why it has sometimes seemed sufficient to give a bald summary of the essential points, while at other times certain topics are pursued into their most distant ramifications (sometimes with apparently irrelevant prolixity), will be obvious enough to those who are familiar with the subject. Where a more careful examination of the overflowing mass of detail was to be attempted advantage has been taken of the Appendix to achieve a greater, though still only a relative degree of completeness. This was made possible by the lengthy period which elapsed between the publication of the two parts of the book. The first half [to the end of chapter vii] appeared as long ago as the spring of 1890. Unpropitious circumstances have delayed the completion of the remainder till the present moment. The two parts could easily be kept separate (as they have been): in the main they fall apart and correspond to the two sides of the question indicated in the title of the book--Cult of Souls and Belief in Immortality. The Cult of Souls and the faith in immortality may eventually come together at some points, but they have a different origin and travel most of the way on separate paths. The conception of immortality in particular arises from a spiritual intuition which reveals the souls of men as standing in close relationship, and indeed as being of like substance, with the everlasting gods. And simultaneously the gods are regarded as being in their nature like the soul of man, i.e. as free spirits needing no material or visible body. (It is this spiritualized view of the gods--not the belief in gods itself as Aristotle supposes in the remarkable statement quoted by Sextus Empiricus Adv. Mathematicos, iii, 20 ff.--which arises from the vision of its own divine nature achieved by the soul ~kath' heautê/n~ relieved of the body, in ~enthousiasmoi/~ and ~mantei=ai~.) And this conception leads far away from the ideas on which the Cult of Souls was based. The publication of the book in two parts has brought with it a regrettable circumstance for which I must ask the indulgence of well-disposed readers (that the first half found so many of them is a fact which I must gratefully acknowledge). As the dimensions of the whole work grew beyond expectation and almost overstepped the ~me/tron au/tarkes~, the sixteen excursuses which were promised in {x} the first volume have had to be dropped: the book would otherwise have been overloaded. So far as they possess independent interest they will find a place elsewhere. They are real excursuses and were intended as such, and the proper understanding of the book will not be affected by their absence. ERWIN ROHDE. HEIDELBERG. _November 1st, 1893._ {{xi}} PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION