In philosophy his training must have been much the same, but here he had a more living interest. Philosophy touched him more nearly, for it bore upon the two great problems of the human soul--conduct and God. Like Seneca and Plutarch he was not interested in Philosophy apart from these issues--epistemology, psychology, physics and so forth were not practical matters. The philosophers he judged by their theology. With religious men of his day he leant to the Stoics and "truth-loving Plato"--especially Plato, whom he {269} seems to have read for himself--but he avows that Philosophy for him means not the system of any school or thinker, but the sum of the unquestionable dogmata of all the schools, "all that in every school has been well said, to teach righteousness with pious knowledge--this eclectic whole I call Philosophy."[26] To this Philosophy all other studies contribute--they are "the handmaidens, and she the mistress"[27]--and she herself owns the sway of Theology. [Sidenote: Clement and the mysteries] At some time of his life Clement acquired a close acquaintance with pagan mythology and its cults. It may be that he was initiated into mysteries; in his _Protrepticus_ he gives an account of many of them, which is of great value to the modern student. It is probable enough that an earnest man in search of God would explore the obvious avenues to the knowledge he sought--avenues much travelled and loudly vaunted in his day. Having explored them, it is again not unlikely that a spirit so pure and gentle should be repelled by rituals and legends full of obscenity and cruelty. It is of course possible that much of his knowledge came from books, perhaps after his conversion, for one great part of Christian polemic was the simple exposure of the secret rites of paganism. Yet it remains that his language is permanently charged with technical terms proper to the mysteries, and that he loves to put Christian knowledge and experience in the old language--"Oh! mysteries truly holy! Oh! stainless light! The daduchs lead me on to be the epopt of the heavens and of God; I am initiated and become holy; the Lord is the hierophant and seals the mystes for himself, himself the photagogue."[28] It is again a little surprising to hear of "the Saviour "being" our mystagogue as in the tragedy-- He sees, we see, he gives the holy things (_orgia_); and if thou wilt inquire {270} These holy things--what form have they for thee? thou wilt hear in reply Save Bacchus' own initiate, none may know."[29] It is inconceivable that a Hebrew, or anyone but a Greek, could have written such a passage with its double series of allusions to Greek mysteries and to Euripides' _Bacchae_. Clement is the only man who writes in this way, with an allusiveness beyond Plutarch's, and a fancy as comprehensive as his charity and his experience of literature and religion.