The great ordeals of Memphis and Eleusis were designed to form kings and priests by entrusting science to strong and valiant men. The price of admission to such tests was the surrender of body, soul and life into the hands of the priesthood. The candidate descended thereafter through dark subterranean regions, wherein he traversed successively among flaming pyres, passed through deep and rapid floods, over bridges thrown across abysses, holding in his hand a lamp which must not be extinguished. He who trembled, he whom fear overcame never returned to the light; but he who surmounted every obstacle intrepidly was received among the _mystæ_, which meant initiation into the Lesser Mysteries. He had yet to vindicate his fidelity and silence; it was only at the end of several years that he became an epopt, being a title equivalent to that of adept.[97] Philosophy, in competition with the priesthood, imitated these practices, and put its disciples to the proof. Pythagoras exacted silence and abstinence for five years. Plato opened his schools to none but geometricians and those skilled in music; furthermore, he reserved part of his instruction to initiates, so that his philosophy had its mysteries.[98] He attributed the creation of the world to demons and represented man as the progenitor of all animals. But the demons of Plato signify the Elohim of Moses, being those powers by the combination and harmony of which the Supreme Principle created. When he represents beasts as begotten by humanity he means that they are the analysis of that living form, the synthesis of which is man. It was Plato who first proclaimed the divinity of the Word, and he appeared to foresee the approaching incarnation of this creative Word on earth; he proclaimed the sufferings and execution of the perfect just man, condemned by the iniquity of the world. This sublime philosophy of the Word is part of the pure Kabalah, whence Plato was in no wise its inventor.[99] He makes no secret of this and he proclaims that in any science only that must be received which is in harmony with eternal truths and with the oracles of God. Dacier, from whom this quotation comes, adds that “by these eternal truths Plato signified an ancient tradition which he supposes primeval humanity to have received from God and transmitted to later generations.” It would be impossible to speak more clearly without actually naming the Kabalah: it is definition instead of name; in a sense, it is something more precise than the name itself.