Every prophecy, every Sibylline text, every oracle must be false if the overthrow of that image could remain unpunished--if the destruction of the universe failed to follow, as surely as a flood ensues from a breach in a dyke.

How indeed could it be otherwise, according to the explanation which her teacher had given her of the Neo-Platonic conception of the nature of the god?
It was not Serapis but the great and unapproachable One--supreme above comprehension and sublime beyond conception, for whose majesty every name was too mean, the fount and crown of Good and Beauty, in whole all that exists ever has been and ever shall be.

He it was who, like a brimful vessel, overflowed with the quintessence of what we call divine; and from this effluence emanated the divine Mind, the pure intelligence which is to the One what light is to the sun.

This Mind with its vitality--a life not of time but of eternity--could stir or remain passive as it listed; it included a Plurality, while the One was Unity, and forever indivisible.

The concept of each living creature proceeded from the second: The eternal Mind; and this vivifying and energizing intelligence comprehended the prototypes of every living being, hence, also, of the immortal gods--not themselves but their idea or image.