About 312 political scholars of the Callimachus 40 type in Alexandria invented the Serapis-cult and provided it with an elaborate legend. The Chaldean astrology was in those days a fashion , very far removed from the genuine Classical belief in oracles and from the Magian faith in the might of the hour. And, over and above this, there were the numberless charlatans and fake prophets who toured the towns and sought with their pretentious rites to persuade the half-educated into a renewed interest in religion. Everywhere it is just a toying with myths that no one really believes, a tasting of cults that it is hoped might fill the inner void. The real belief is always the belief in atoms and numbers, but it requires this highbrow hocus-pocus to make it bearable in the long run.
Materialism is shallow and honest, mock-religion shallow and dishonest.
But the fact that the latter is possible at all foreshadows a new and genuine spirit of seeking that declares itself, first quietly, but soon emphatically and openly, in the civilized waking-consciousness. This next phase I call the Second Religiousness . In both phenomena the creative young strength of the Early Culture is lacking. But both have their greatness nevertheless. But neither in the creations of this piety nor in the form of the Roman Imperium is there anything primary and spontaneous.