If this view of the case be correct, it is at least significant that pagan teachers of the second century (the Gnostics) should have been so ready to adopt Christian elements and so anxious to give their systems a Christian appearance. Why should a similar procedure be denied in the case, for example, of Hermes Trismegistus? If second-century paganism, without at all modifying its essential character, could sometimes actually adopt the name of Christ, why should it be thought incredible that the compiler of the Hermetic literature, who did not go quite so far, should yet have permitted Christian elements to creep into his syncretistic work? Why should similarity of language between Hermes and Paul, supposing that it exists, be regarded as proving dependence of Paul upon a type of paganism like that of Hermes, rather than dependence of Hermes upon Paul? But the use of Gnosticism as a witness to pre-Christian paganism is faced with obvious difficulties. Gnosticism has admittedly been influenced by Christianity. Who can say, then, exactly how far the Christian influence extends? Who can say that any element in Gnosticism, found also in the New Testament, but not clearly contained in pagan sources, is derived from paganism rather than from Christianity? Yet it is just exactly such procedure which is advocated by Reitzenstein and others. The dangers of the procedure may be exhibited by an example. In Hermes Trismegistus the spirit is regarded as the garment of the soul.[177] This doctrine is the exact reverse of Pauline teaching, since it makes the soul appear higher than the spirit, whereas in Paul the Spirit, in the believer, is exalted far above the soul. In Hermes the spirit appears as a material substratum of the soul; in Paul the Spirit represents the divine power. There could be no sharper contradiction. And the matter is absolutely central in Reitzenstein's hypothesis, for it is just the Pauline doctrine of the Spirit which he is seeking to derive from pagan religion. The difficulty for Reitzenstein, then, is that in Hermes the spirit appears as the garment of the soul, whereas in the interests of his theory the soul ought to appear rather as the garment of the spirit. But Reitzenstein avoids the difficulty by appealing to Gnosticism. The Hermetic doctrine, he says, is nothing but the necessary philosophic reversal of the Gnostic doctrine that the soul is the garment of the spirit.[178] Thus Gnosticism is here made to be a witness to pre-Christian pagan belief, in direct defiance of pagan sources. Is it not more probable that the difference between Gnosticism on the one hand and pagan gnosis as represented by Hermes on the other, is due to the influence upon the former of the Christian doctrine? It is interesting to observe that J. Kroll, from whom the above illustration is obtained, insists against Reitzenstein that the Gnostic doctrine, as over against the doctrine of Hermes, is here clearly secondary.[179] At any rate, then, the