Not only the gods of the temples would manifest themselves of their grace. Every man had a guardian spirit, a "genius"; and by proper means he could be "compelled" to show himself visibly. The pupils of Plotinus conjured up his "genius", and it came--not a daemon, but a god. The right formula ("mantram") and the right stone in the hand--and a man had a wonderful power over the gods themselves. This was called "theurgy". But the great strength of this old religion was its infinite adaptability. It made peace with every god and goddess that it met. It adopted them all. As a French scholar has said, where there is polytheism there are no false gods. All the religions were fused and the gods were blended. The Roman went to Greece and identified Jupiter with Zeus; he went to Egypt and found him in Amun (Ammon); he went to Syria and found him in Baal. If the Jew had not been so foolish and awkward, there might have been a Jupiter Jehovah as well. It was a catholic faith, embracing everything--cult and creed and philosophy--strong in all the ways we have surveyed and in many more, above all because it was unchallenged. And yet, where is that religion to-day? That, to me, is one of the most significant questions in history--more so, the longer I stay in India. Men knew that that religion of Greece and Rome was eternal; yet it is utterly gone. Why? How _could_ it go? What conceivable power was there, I do not say, to bring it down, but to abolish it so thoroughly, that not a soul in Egypt worships Isis--how many even know her name?--not a soul in Italy thinks of Jove but as a fancy, and Pallas Athene in Athens itself is a mere memory? That is the problem, the historical problem, with which we have now to deal. First of all, let us look again, and more closely, at that old religion--we shall find in it at least four cardinal weaknesses.