ANTHONY (_in a low voice_). "What do they desire?"
HILARION. "The Lord said: 'I have yet many things to say to you.... '[2] They possess the knowledge of those things."
(_And he pushes Anthony forward to a golden throne approached by five steps, whereon--surrounded by ninety-five disciples, all very thin and pale, and anointed with oil--sits the prophet Manes. He is beautiful as an archangel, immobile as a statue; he is clad in an Indian robe; carbuncles gleam in his plaited hair; at his left hand lies a book of painted images; his right reposes upon a globe. The images represent the creatures that erst slumbered in Chaos. Anthony bends forward to look upon them. Then----_)
(_makes his globe revolve; and regulating the tone of his words by a lyre which gives forth crystalline sounds, exclaims_:--)
"The celestial earth is at the superior extremity; the terrestrial earth at the inferior extremity. It is sustained by two angels--the Angel Splenditeneus, and Omophorus, whose faces are six.
"At the summit of the highest heaven reigns the impassible Divinity; below, face to face, are the Son of God and the Prince of Darkness.
"When the darkness had advanced even to his kingdom, God evolved from his own essence a virtue which produced the first man; and he environed him with the five elements. But the demons of darkness stole from him a part; and that part is the soul.
"There is but one soul, universally diffused, even as the waters of a river divided into many branches. It is this universal soul that sighs in the wind--that shrieks in the marble under the teeth of the saw--that roars in the voice of the sea--that weeps tears of milk when the leaves of the fig tree are torn off.
"The souls that leave this world emigrate to the stars, which are themselves animated beings."
ANTHONY (_bursts into a laugh_). "Ah! ah! what an absurd imagination!"
A MAN (_having no beard, and of a most austere aspect_). "Wherefore absurd?"
(_Anthony is about to reply when Hilarion tells him in a low voice that the questioner is none other than the tremendous Origen himself; and_:--)
MANES (_continues_). "But first they remain awhile in the Moon, where they are purified. Then they rise into the sun."
ANTHONY (_slowly_). "I do not know of anything ... which prevents us ... from believing it."