rather throughtlessly reproached with being a fanatical and
superstitious man,[239] begins his teaching, nevertheless, by laying
down a principle of universal tolerance. He commands his disciples to
follow the cult established by the laws, whatever this cult may be,
and to adore the gods of their country, what ever these gods may be;
enjoining them only, to guard afterwards their faith――that is, to
remain inwardly faithful to his doctrine, and never to divulge the
mysteries. Lysis, in writing these opening lines, adroitly conceals
herein a double meaning. By the first he commended, as I have said,
tolerance and reserve for the Pythagorean, and, following the example
of the Egyptian priests, established two doctrines, the one apparent
and vulgar, conformable to the law; the other mysterious and secret,
analogous to the faith; by the second meaning, he reassures the
suspicious people of Greece, who, according to the slanders which were
in circulation might have feared that the new sect would attack the
sanctity of their gods. This tolerance on the one hand, and this
reserve on the other, were no more than what they would be today. The
Christian Religion, exclusive and severe, has changed all our ideas in
this respect: by admitting only one sole doctrine in one unique
church, this religion has necessarily confused tolerance with
indifference or coldness, and reserve with heresy or hypocrisy; but in
the spirit of polytheism these same things take on another colour. A
Christian philosopher could not, without perjuring himself and
committing a frightful impiety, bend the knee in China before
_Kong-Tse_, nor offer incense to _Chang-Ty_ nor to _Tien_; he could
neither render, in India, homage to _Krishna_, nor present himself at
Benares as a worshipper of _Vishnu_; he could not even, although
recognizing the same God as the Jews and Mussulmans, take part in
their ceremonies, or what is still more, worship this God with the
Arians, the Lutherans, or Calvinists, if he were a Catholic. This
belongs to the very essence of his cult. A Pythagorean philosopher did
not recognize in the least these formidable barriers, which hem in the
nations, as it were, isolate them, and make them worse than enemies.
The gods of the people were in his eyes the same gods, and his
cosmopolitan dogmas condemned no one to eternal damnation. From one
end of the earth to the other he could cause incense to rise from the
altar of the Divinity, under whatever name, under whatever form it
might be worshipped, and render to it the public cult established by
the law. And this is the reason. Polytheism was not in their opinion
what it has become in ours, an impious and gross idolatry, a cult
inspired by the infernal adversary to seduce men and to claim for
itself the honours which are due only to the Divinity; it was a
particularization of the Universal Being, a personification of its
attributes and its faculties. Before Moses, none of the theocratic
legislators had thought it well to present for the adoration of the
people, the Supreme God, unique and uncreated in His unfathomable
universality. The Indian Brahmans, who can be considered as the living
types of all the sages and of all the pontiffs of the world, never
permit themselves, even in this day when their great age has effaced
the traces of their ancient science, to utter the name of God,
principle of All.[240] They are content to meditate upon its essence
in silence and to offer sacrifices to its sublimest emanations. The
Chinese sages act the same with regard to the Primal Cause, that must
be neither named nor defined[241]; the followers of Zoroaster, who
believe that the two universal principles of good and evil, Ormuzd and
Ahriman, emanate from this ineffable Cause, are content to designate
it under the name of Eternity.[242] The Egyptians, so celebrated for
their wisdom, the extent of their learning, and the multitude of their
divine symbols, honoured with silence the God, principle and source of
all things[243]; they never spoke of it, regarding it as inaccessible
to all the researches of man; and Orpheus, their disciple, first
author of the brilliant mythology of the Greeks, Orpheus, who seemed
to announce the soul of the World as creator of this same God from
which it emanated, said plainly:
“I never see this Being surrounded with a cloud.”[244]
Moses, as I have said, was the first who made a public dogma of the
unity of God, and who divulged what, up to that time had been buried
in the seclusion of the sanctuaries; for the principal tenets of the
mysteries, those upon which reposed all others, were the Unity of God
and the homogeneity of Nature.[245] It is true that Moses, in making
this disclosure, permitted no definition, no reflection, either upon
the essence or upon the nature of this unique Being; this is very
remarkable. Before him, in all the known world, and after him (save in
Judea where more than one cloud still darkened the idea of divine
Unity, until the establishment of Christianity), the Divinity was
considered by the theosophists of all nations, under two relations:
primarily as unique, secondarily as infinite; as unique, preserved
under the seal of silence to the contemplation and meditation of the
sages; as infinite, delivered to the veneration and invocation of the
people. Now the unity of God resides in His essence so that the vulgar
can never in any way either conceive or understand. His infinity
consists in His perfections, His faculties, His attributes, of which
the vulgar can, according to the measure of their understanding, grasp
some feeble emanations, and draw nearer to Him by detaching them from
the universality――that is, by particularizing and personifying them.
This is the particularization and the personification which
constitutes, as I have said, polytheism. The mass of gods which result
from it, is as infinite as the Divinity itself whence it had birth.
Each nation, each people, each city adopts at its liking, those of the
divine faculties which are best suited to its character and its
requirements. These faculties, represented by simulacra, become so
many particular gods whose variety of names augments the number still
further. Nothing can limit this immense theogony, since the Primal
Cause whence it emanates has not done so. The vulgar, lured by the
objects which strike the senses, can become idolatrous, and he does
ordinarily; he can even distinguish these objects of his adoration,
one from another, and believe that there really exist as many gods as
statues; but the sage, the philosopher, the most ordinary man of
letters does not fall into this error. He knows, with Plutarch, that
different places and names do not make different gods; that the Greeks
and Barbarians, the nations of the North and those of the South, adore
the same Divinity[246] he restores easily that infinity of attributes
to the unity of the essence, and as the honoured remnants of the
ancient Sramanas, the priests of the Burmans, still do today, he
worships God, whatever may be the altar, the temple, and the place
where he finds himself.[247]
This is what was done by the disciples of Pythagoras, according to the
commandment of their master; they saw in the gods of the nations, the
attributes of the Ineffable Being which were forbidden them to name;
they augmented ostensibly and without the slightest reluctance, the
number of these attributes of which they recognized the Infinite
Cause; they gave homage to the cult consecrated by the law and brought
them all back secretly to the Unity which was the object of their
faith.
3. … _Revere the memory
Of the Illustrious Heroes, of Spirits demi-Gods.…_
Pythagoras considered the Universe as an animated All, whose members
were the divine Intelligences, each ranked according to its
perfections, in its proper sphere.[248] He it was who first designated
this All, by the Greek word _Kosmos_, in order to express the beauty,
order, and regularity which reigned there[249]; the Latins translated
this word by _Mundus_, from which has come the French word _monde_. It
is from Unity considered as principle of the world, that the name
Universe which we give to it is derived. Pythagoras establishes Unity
as the principle of all things and said that from this Unity sprang an
infinite Duality.[250] The essence of this Unity, and the manner in
which the Duality that emanated from it was finally brought back
again, were the most profound mysteries of his doctrine; the subject
sacred to the faith of his disciples and the fundamental points which
were forbidden them to reveal. Their explanation was never made in
writing; those who appeared worthy of learning them were content to be
taught them by word of mouth.[251] When one was forced, by the
concatenation of ideas, to mention them in the books of the sect,
symbols and ciphers were used, and the language of Numbers employed;
and these books, all obscure as they were, were still concealed with
the greatest care; by all manner of means they were guarded against
falling into profane hands.[252] I cannot enter into the discussion of
the famous symbol of Pythagoras, _one_ and _two_, without exceeding
very much the limits that I have set down in these examinations[253];
let it suffice for me to say, that as he designated God by 1, and
Matter by 2, he expressed the Universe by the number 12, which results
in the union of the other two. This number is formed by the
multiplication of 3 by 4: that is to say, that this philosopher
conceived the Universal world as composed of three particular worlds,
which, being linked one with the other by means of the four elementary
modifications, were developed in twelve concentric spheres.[254] The
ineffable Being which filled these twelve spheres without being
understood by any one, was God. Pythagoras gave to It, truth for soul
and light for body.[255] The Intelligence which peopled the three
worlds were, firstly, the immortal gods properly so-called; secondly,
the glorified heroes; thirdly, the terrestial demons. The immortal
gods, direct emanations of the uncreated Being and manifestation of
Its infinite faculties, were thus named because they could not depart
from the divine life――that is, they could never fall away from their
Father into oblivion, wandering in the darkness of ignorance and of
impiety; whereas the souls of men, which produced, according to their
degree of purity, glorified heroes and terrestrial demons, were able
to depart sometimes from the divine life by voluntary drawing away
from God; because the death of the intellectual essence, according to
Pythagoras and imitated in this by Plato, was only ignorance and
impiety.[256] It must be observed that in my translation I have not
rendered the Greek word δαίμονες by the word _demons_, but by that of
_spirits_, on account of the evil meaning that Christianity has
attached to it, as I explained in a preceding note.[257]
This application of the number 12 to the Universe is not at all an
arbitrary invention of Pythagoras; it was common to the Chaldeans, to
the Egyptians from whom he had received it, and to the principal
peoples of the earth[258]: it gave rise to the institution of the
zodiac, whose division into twelve asterisms has been found everywhere
existent from time immemorial.[259] The distinction of the three
worlds and their development into a number, more or less great, of
concentric spheres inhabited by intelligences of different degrees of
purity, were also known before Pythagoras, who in this only spread the
doctrine which he had received at Tyre, at Memphis, and at
Babylon.[260] This doctrine was that of the Indians. One finds still
today among the Burmans, the division of all the created beings
established in three classes, each of which contains a certain number
of species, from the material beings to the spiritual, from the
sentient to the intelligible.[261] The Brahmans, who count fifteen
spheres in the universe,[262] appear to unite the three primordial
worlds with the twelve concentric spheres which result from their
development. Zoroaster, who admitted the dogma of the three worlds,
limited the inferior world to the vortex of the moon. There, according
to him, the empire of evil and of matter comes to an end.[263] This
idea thus conceived has been general; it was that of all the ancient
philosophers[264]; and what is very remarkable, is that it has been
adopted by the Christian theosophists who certainly were not
sufficiently learned to act through imitation.[265] The followers of
Basil, those of Valentine, and all the gnostics have imbibed from this
source the system of emanations which has enjoyed such a great renown
in the school of Alexandria. According to this system, the Absolute
Unity, or God, was conceived as the spiritual Soul of the Universe,
the Principle of existence, the Light of lights; it was believed that
this creative Unity, inaccessible to the understanding even, produced
by emanation a diffusion of light which, proceeding from the centre to
the circumference, losing insensibly its splendour and its purity in
proportion as it receded from its source, ended by being absorbed in
the confines of darkness; so that its divergent rays, becoming less
and less spiritual and, moreover, repulsed by the darkness, were
condensed in commingling with it, and, taking a material shape, formed
all the kinds of beings that the world contains. Thus was admitted,
between the Supreme Being and man, an incalculable chain of
intermediary beings whose perfections decreased proportionably with
their alienation from the Creative Principle. All the philosophers and
all the sectarians who admired this spiritual hierarchy considered,
under the relations peculiar to them, the different beings of which it
was composed. The Persian magians who saw there genii, more or less
perfect, gave them names relative to their perfections, and later made
use of these same names to evoke them: from this came the Persian
magic, which the Jews, having received by tradition during their
captivity in Babylon, called _Kabbala_.[266] This magic became mixed
with astrology among the Chaldeans, who regarded the stars as animated
beings belonging to the universal chain of divine emanations; in
Egypt, it became linked with the mysteries of Nature, and was enclosed
in the sanctuaries, where it was taught by the priests under the
safeguard of symbols and hieroglyphics. Pythagoras, in conceiving this
spiritual hierarchy as a geometrical progression, considered the
beings which compose it under harmonious relations, and based, by
analogy, the laws of the universe upon those of music. He called the
movement of the celestial spheres, harmony, and made use of numbers to
express the faculties of different beings, their relations and their
influences. Hierocles mentions a sacred book attributed to this
philosopher, in which he called the divinity, the Number of
numbers.[267] Plato, who, some centuries later, regarded these same
beings as ideas and types, sought to penetrate their nature and to
subjugate them by dialectics and the force of thought. Synesius, who
united the doctrine of Pythagoras to that of Plato, sometimes called
God, the Number of numbers, and sometimes the Idea of ideas.[268] The
gnostics gave to the intermediary beings the name of Eons.[269] This
name, which signifies, in Egyptian, a principle of the will, being
developed by an inherent, plastic faculty, is applied in Greek to a
term of infinite duration.[270] One finds in Hermes Trismegistus the
origin of this change of meaning. This ancient sage remarks that the
two faculties, the two virtues of God, are the understanding and the
soul, and that the two virtues of the Eon are perpetuity and
immortality. The essence of God, he said again, is the good and the
beautiful, beatitude and wisdom; the essence of Eon, is being always
the same.[271] But, not content with assimilating beings of the
celestial hierarchy to ideas, to numbers, or to the plastic principle
of the will, there were philosophers who preferred to designate them
by the name of Words. Plutarch said on one occasion that words, ideas,
and divine emanations reside in heaven and in the stars.[272] Philo
gives in more than one instance the name of word to angels; and
Clement of Alexandria relates that the Valentinians often called their
Eons thus.[273] According to Beausobre, the philosophers and
theologians, seeking for terms in which to express incorporal
substances, designated them by some one of their attributes or by some
one of their operations, naming them _Spirits_, on account of the
subtlety of their substance; _Intelligences_, on account of the
thought; _Words_, on account of the reason; _Angels_, on account of
their services; _Eons_, on account of their manner of subsisting,
always equal, without change and without alteration.[274] Pythagoras
called them Gods, Heroes, Demons,[275] relative to their respective
elevation and the harmonious position of the three worlds which they
inhabit. This cosmogonic ternary joined with Creative Unity,
constitutes the famous Quaternary, or Sacred Tetrad, the subject of
which will be taken up further on.
PURIFICATION
4. _Be a good son, just brother, spouse tender, and good father._
The aim of the doctrine of Pythagoras was to enlighten men, to purify
them of their vices, to deliver them from their errors, and to restore
them to virtue and to truth; and after having caused them to pass
through all the degrees of the understanding and intelligence, to
render them like unto the immortal gods.
This philosopher had for this purpose divided his doctrine into two
parts: the purgative part and the unitive part. Through the first, man
became purified of his uncleanness, emerged from the darkness of
ignorance, and attained to virtue: through the second, he used his
acquired virtue to become united to the Divinity through whose means
he arrived at perfection. These two parts are found quite distinct in
the Golden Verses. Hierocles, who has clearly grasped them, speaks of
it in the beginning of his _Commentaries_ and designates them by two
words which contain, he said, all the doctrine of Pythagoras,
_Purification_ and _Perfection_.[276] The Magians and the Chaldeans,
all of whose principles Pythagoras had adopted, were agreed on this
point, and in order to express their idea, made use of a parabolical
phrase very celebrated among them. “We consume,” they said, “the
refuse of matter by the fire of divine love.”[277] An anonymous author
who has written an history of Pythagoras, preserved by Photius, said
that the disciples of this great man taught that one perfects oneself
in three ways: in communing with the gods, in doing good in imitation
of the gods, and in departing from this life to rejoin the gods.[278]
The first of these ways is contained in the first three lines of the
Golden Verses which concern the cult rendered, according to the law
and according to the faith, to the Gods, to the glorified Heroes, and
to the Spirits. The second, that is, the Purification, begins at the
fourth line which makes the subject of this Examination. The third,
that is, the union with the Divinity, or Perfection, begins at the
fortieth line of my translation:
Let not sleep e’er close thy tired eyes.
Thus the division that I have believed ought to be made of this short
poem is not at all arbitrary, as one sees the judicious Bayle had
remarked it before me.[279]
It is worthy of observation, that Pythagoras begins the purgative part
of his doctrine by commending the observance of natural duties, and
that he places in the rank of primary virtues, filial piety, paternal
and conjugal love. Thus this admirable philosopher made it his first
care to strengthen the ties of blood and make them cherished and
sacred; he exhorts respect to children, tenderness to parents, and
union to all the members of the family; he follows thus the profound
sentiment which Nature inspires in all sentient beings, very different
in this from certain legislators, blinded by false politics, who, in
order to conduct men to I know not what power and what imaginary
welfare, have wished, on the contrary, to break those ties, annihilate
those relationships of father, son, and brother, to concentrate, they
said, upon a being of reason called Country the affection that the
soul divides among those objects of its first love.[280] If the
legislators had cared to reflect a moment, they would have seen that
there existed no country for the one who had no father, and that the
respect and love that a man in his virile age feels for the place of
his birth, holds its principle and receives its force from those same
sentiments that he felt in his infancy for his mother. Every effect
proclaims a cause; every edifice rests upon a foundation: the real
cause of love of country is maternal love; the sole foundations of the
social edifice are paternal power and filial respect. From this sole
power issues that of the prince, who, in every well-organized state,
being considered as father of the people, has right to the obedience
and respect of his children.
I am going to make here a singular comparison which I beg the reader
to observe. Moses, instructed in the same school as Pythagoras, after
having announced the Unity of God in the famous Decalogue which
contains the summary of his law, and having commanded its adoration to
his people, announces for the first virtue, filial piety[281];
“Honour,” he said, “thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be
multiplied in this country of Adam, that Jhôah, thy Gods, has given
thee.”[282]
The theocratic legislator of the Hebrews in making this commandment
places recompense by the side of precept: he declares formally that
the exercise of filial piety draws with it a long existence. Now, it
must be remarked that Moses being content with enclosing in his
doctrine the sole purgative part, doubtless judging his people not in
a condition to support the unitive part, spoke to them nowhere of the
immortality which is its consequence; contenting himself with
promising the joys of temporal blessings, among which he carefully
placed in the first rank a long life. Experience has proved, relative
to people in general, that Moses spoke with a profound understanding
of the causes which prolong the duration of empires. Filial piety is
the national virtue of the Chinese, the sacred foundation upon which
reposes the social edifice of the greatest and the most ancient people
of the world.[283] This virtue has been to China, for more than four
thousand years, what love of country was to Sparta or to Rome. Sparta
and Rome have fallen notwithstanding the sort of fanaticism with which
their children were animated, and the Chinese Empire which existed two
thousand years before their foundation, still exists two thousand
years after their downfall. If China has been able to preserve herself
in the midst of the flux and reflux of a thousand revolutions, to save
herself from her own wrecks, to triumph over her own defects, and to
subjugate even her conquerors, she owes it to this virtue which,
raising itself from the humblest citizen to the Son of heaven seated
upon the imperial throne, animates all the hearts with a sacred fire,
of which Nature herself provides the nourishment and eternalizes the
duration. The Emperor is the father of the state; two hundred million
men, who regard themselves as his children, compose his immense
family; what human effort could overthrow this colossus?[284]
5. _Choose for thy friend, the friend of virtue;
Yield to his gentle counsels, profit by his life,
And for a trifling grievance never leave him_;
After the duties which have their source directly in Nature,
Pythagoras commends to his disciples those which proceed from the
social state; friendship follows immediately filial piety, paternal
and fraternal love; but this philosopher makes a distinction full of
meaning: he ordains to honour one’s relations; he says to choose one’s
friends. This is why: it is Nature that presides at our birth, that
gives us a father, a mother, brothers, sisters, relations of kinship,
a position upon the earth, and a place in society; all this depends
not upon us: all this, according to the vulgar, is the work of hazard;
but according to the Pythagorean philosopher these are the
consequences of an anterior order, severe and irresistible, called
Fortune or Necessity. Pythagoras opposed to this restrained nature, a
free Nature, which, acting upon forced things as upon brute matter,
modifies them and draws as it wills, good or bad results. This second
nature was called Power or Will: it is this which rules the life of
man, and which directs his conduct according to the elements furnished
him by the first. Necessity and Power are, according to Pythagoras,
the two opposed motives of the sublunary world where man is relegated.
These two motives draw their force from a superior cause that the
ancients named _Nemesis_, the fundamental decree,[285] that we name
_Providence_. Thus then, Pythagoras recognized, relative to man,
things constrained and things free, according as they depend upon
Necessity or the Will: he ranked filial piety in the first and
friendship in the second. Man not being free to give himself parents
of his choice, must honour them such as they are, and fulfil in regard
to them all the duties of nature, whatever wrong they might do towards
him; but as nothing constrains him from giving his friendship, he need
give it only to the one who shows himself worthy of it by his
attachment to virtue.