Mr. James Christie, in his work on _Greek Vases,_ contends that the phantasmal scenes in the Mysteries were shown by transparencies, such as are yet used by the Chinese, Javanese, and Hindus. V THEIR MYSTICAL SIGNIFICANCE Life, as we know it, was looked upon by the ancient philosophers as death. Plato considered the body as the sepulchre of the soul, and in the _Cratylus_ acquiesces in the doctrine of Orpheus that the soul is punished through its union with the body. Empedocles, lamenting his connection with this corporeal world, pathetically exclaimed:-- For this I weep, for this indulge my woe, That e'er my soul such novel realms should know. He also calls this material abode, or the realms of generation, a joyless region, Where slaughter, rage, and countless ills reside. Philolaus, the celebrated Pythagorean, wrote: "The ancient theologists and priests testify that the soul is united with the body for the sake of suffering punishment, and that it is buried in the body as in a sepulchre"; while Pythagoras himself said: "Whatever we see when awake is death, and when asleep a dream." This is the truth intended to be expressed in the Mysteries. Sallustius, the neo-Platonic philosopher, in his treatise _Peri Theon kai Kosmou_, "Concerning the gods and the existing state of things," explains the rape of Persephone as signifying the descent of the soul. Other writers have explained the real element of the Mysteries as consisting in the relations of the universe to the soul, more especially after death, or as intimating obscurely by splendid visions the felicity of the soul here and hereafter when purified from the defilements of a material nature. The intention of all mystic ceremonies, according to Sallustius, was to conjoin the world and the gods. Plotinus says that to be plunged into matter is to descend and then fall asleep. The initiate had to withstand the dæmons and spectres, which, in later times, illustrated the difficulties besetting the soul in its approach to the gods, so also the Uasarian had to repel or satisfy the mystic crocodiles, vipers, avenging assessors, dæmons of the gate, and other dread beings whom he encountered in his trying passage through the valley of the shadow of death. Pindar, speaking of the Eleusinian Mysteries, says: "Blessed is he who, on seeing those common concerns under the earth, knows both the end of life and the given end of Jupiter."