The care taken by the ancients over the burial of the dead protested strongly against necromancy, and those who disturbed the sleep of the grave were always regarded as impious. To call back the dead would condemn them to a second death, and the dread of earnest people, belonging to old religions, lest they should remain without burial after death, was in view of the possibility that the corpse might be profaned by stryges and used in witchcraft. After death the soul belongs to God and the body to the common mother, which is earth. Woe to those who dare to invade these asylums. When the sanctuary of the tomb was disturbed, the ancients offered sacrifices to the angry _manes_ and a holy thought lay at the root of this practice. As a fact, were it permitted anyone to attract, by means of conjurations, the souls floating in darkness but aspiring towards the light, such a person would be begetting retrograde and posthumous children, whom he must nourish with his own blood and with his own soul. Necromancers are makers of vampires, and they deserve no pity if they die devoured by the dead. CHAPTER IV THE MAGIC OF PUBLIC WORSHIP Forms are the product of ideas, and they in their turn reflect and reproduce ideas. So far as sentiments are concerned, these are multiplied by association in the union of those who share them, so that all are charged with the enthusiasm common to all. It comes about in this manner that if one or another individual be deceived easily on questions of the just and the beautiful, the people at large will, this notwithstanding, continue to exalt in their minds whatsoever things are sublime, and they will do it with a longing which is itself sublime. These two great laws of Nature were known to the ancient Magi and led them to see the necessity of a public worship which should be one in its nature, imposed on all, hierarchic and symbolic in character, like all religion, splendid as truth, rich and varied as Nature, starry as heaven, odoriferous as earth—a worship in fact of the kind established afterwards by Moses, realised in all its glory by Solomon, and, once again transfigured, centralised to-day in the great metropolis of St. Peter at Rome. Humanity as a fact has never known more than one religion and one worship. This universal light has had its uncertain reflections and its shadows, but ever after the dark night of error we behold it emerge, one and pure like the sun.