its principal seat is in the soul, according to Plato.[515] There is a
physical reason acting in the instinct, a moral reason acting in the
soul, and an intellectual reason acting in the mind. When a hungry dog
brings to his master a piece of game without touching it, he obeys an
instinctive reason which makes him sacrifice the pleasure of
gratifying his appetite, to the pain of receiving the blow of a stick.
When a man dies at his post instead of abandoning it, he follows a
moral reason which makes him prefer the glory of dying to the shame of
living. When a philosopher admits the immortality of the soul, he
listens to an intellectual reason which shows him the impossibility of
its annihilation. All this, nevertheless, takes place only so far as
the dog, the man, and the philosopher admit the real principles; for
if they admitted false principles, their reasons, although equally
well deduced, would conduct them to opposed results; and the piece of
game would be eaten, the post would be abandoned, and the immortality
of the soul would be denied.
One ought to feel now the mistake of Kant in all its extent. This
philosopher having confounded one of the principal modifications of
man, his intelligence,[516] whose seat is in the soul, with one of his
secondary faculties, his reason, finds himself, in raising this reason
outside of its place and giving it a dominance that it has not,
ousting entirely the spiritual part; so that meditating constantly in
the median part of his being, which he believed to be the superior,
and descending, he found matter, understood it perfectly, and missed
absolutely the spirit. What he assumed was, it was nothing else than
the understanding, a neuter faculty placed between sense perception
which is purely passive, and the intelligence which is wholly active.
He had the weakness to fix his thought here and thenceforth was lost.
Reason which he invoked to teach him to distinguish, in his ideas, the
part which is furnished by the spirit, from that which is given by
objects, was only able to show him the straight line that it described
in his understanding. This line being buried in matter instead of
rising in intelligible regions, taught him that everything that did
not correspond to a possible experience could not furnish him the
subject of a positive knowledge, and thus all the great questions upon
the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, the origin of the
Universe; all that pertains to theosophy, to cosmology; in short, all
that which is intelligible, cannot take place in the order of his
understanding.[517] This catastrophe, quite inevitable as it was, was
none the less poignant. It was odd to see a man who seemed to promise
to establish the possibility and the principles of all knowledge upon
an incontestable basis, announce coldly that God, the Universe, and
the Soul could not be subjects there, and soon discover, pushed by the
force of his reasoning, that even the reality of physical subjects by
which the senses are affected is only phenomenal, that one can in no
way know what they are, but only what they appear to be[518]; and that
even one’s own Self, considered as a subject, is also for one only a
phenomenon, an appearance, concerning the intimate essence of which
one can learn nothing.[519] Kant felt indeed the terrible
contradiction into which he had fallen; but instead of retracing
courageously his steps, and seeking above reason for the principles of
knowledge that it did not possess, he continued his descending
movement which he called transcendental, and finally discovered
beneath this _pure Reason_, a certain _practical Reason_, to which he
confided the destinies of the greatest subjects with which man can be
occupied: God, nature, and himself. This practical reason, which is no
other than _common sense_, ought, according to him, to bring man to
believe what is not given him to know,[520] and to engage him, through
the need of his own felicity, to follow the paths of virtue, and to
admit the system of recompense which proceeds from the existence of
God and the immortality of the soul. Thus, this common sense, already
invoked to aid the existence of the physical subjects which Berkeley
reduced to nothingness, was called, under another name, to sustain
that of the spiritual beings which Kant admitted baffling the action
of his pure reason; but this faculty, vainly proposed by
Shaftesbury,[521] by Hutcheson,[522] by Reid,[523] by Oswald,[524] by
the celebrated Pascal himself,[525] to give a support to the first
truths, and to furnish the principles of our moral and physical
knowledge; this faculty, I say, whose seat is in the instinct, has
been easily challenged as incompetent to pronounce upon the subjects
which are outside the jurisdiction of its judgments; for it has been
keenly felt that it was abandoning these subjects to the prejudices of
the vulgar, to their erroneous opinions, to their blind passions; and
that practical philosophy or common sense, acting in each man
according to the extent of his views, would only embarrass relative
truths and would create as many principles as individuals. Furthermore
was it not to run counter to common sense itself, to submit
intelligence and reason to it? Was it not subverting Nature, and, as
it were, causing light to spring upward from below, seeking in the
particular, the law which rules the Universal?
The skeptics who saw all these things triumphed, but their triumph
only proved their weakness; for Reason, by which they demonstrated
nothingness, is the sole weapon of which they can make use. This
faculty overthrown in Kant, leaves them powerless, and delivers them
defenceless to the irresistible axioms that the intelligence places _a
priori_ upon the primordial truths and the fundamental principles of
the Universe, even as the sequel of these Examinations will
demonstrate.
24. _Meditate upon my counsels, love them; follow them:
To the divine virtues will they know how to lead thee._
I have spoken at considerable length of the skeptics; but I have
believed it necessary in explaining a dogmatic work, whose _esprit_ is
wholly opposed to that of skepticism. When Lysis wrote in Greece,
there had been no one as yet who doubted either the existence of the
gods, or that of the Universe, or made the distinction between good
and evil, virtue and vice. Arcesilaus and Pyrrho were not born, and
the clouds that they raised afterwards concerning these great subjects
of the meditation of the sages were not even suspected. The minds had
inclined rather toward credulity than toward doubt; toward
superstition than toward atheism; it was more necessary to limit their
curiosity than to excite their indifference. At that epoch, the
philosophers enveloped the truth with veils, and rendered the avenues
of science difficult, so that the vulgar might not profane them. They
knew what had been too long forgotten: that all kinds of wood are not
fitting to make a Mercury. Also their writers were obscure and
sententious: in order to dishearten, not those who might be able to
doubt, but those who were not in a condition to comprehend.
Today, as the minds are changed, it is of more importance to attract
those who are able to receive the truth, than to keep at a distance
those who are unable to receive it; the latter, separating themselves,
are persuaded that they either possess it or have no need of it. I
have given the history of skepticism; I have shown its origin and the
sorry effects of its absolute and disordered influence; not in order
to bring back the skeptics of the profession, but to endeavour to
prevent the men who are still drifting in uncertainty from becoming
so. I have essayed to show them by the example of one of the greatest
reasoners of Germany, by the example of Kant, that reason alone, with
whatever talents it may be accompanied, cannot fail to lead them to
nothingness. I have made them see that this faculty so lauded is
nothing of itself. I am content with the example of the Koenigsberg
professor; but had I not feared prolixities, I would have added the
example of Berkeley and that of Spinoza. The varied catastrophes of
these three savants form a striking contrast. Kant, following step by
step his pure Reason, comes to see that the knowledge of intelligible
things is impossible and finds matter; Berkeley, led by the same
reason, proves that the existence of matter is illusory, and that all
is spirit; Spinoza, drawing irresistible arguments from this same
faculty, shows that there exists and can exist only one sole substance
and that therefore spirit and matter are but one. And do not think
that, armed with reason alone, you can combat separately Spinoza,
Berkeley, or Kant: their contradictory systems will clash in vain;
they will triumph over you and will push you into the dark and
bottomless abyss of skepticism.
Now, how can this be done? I have told you: it is because man is not a
simple being. Fix this truth firmly. Man is triple; and it is
according as his volitive unity operates in one or the other of his
modifications that he is led on to see, in such or such a way. Plato
has said it, following Pythagoras, and I say it to you not only
following Pythagoras and Plato, but following all the sages and all
the theosophists of the world. Plato places in the superior and
spiritual modification, composed of the _same_, that is to say of the
indivisible substance of the universe, the _hegemonicon_,[526] or the
intellectual assent; in the inferior and material modification,
composed of the _other_ or the _diverse_, that is to say, of the
divisible substance, the _physicon_,[527] or the physical sense
perception; in the median modification or the soul, properly speaking,
composed of essence, that is to say, of the most subtle parts of
matter elaborated by the spirit, the _logicon_,[528] or the moral,
logical, or reasonable sentiment. One finds in Plutarch the _résumé_
of the doctrine of a philosopher named Sylla, who, admitting, as did
Plato, that man is composed of spirit, soul, and body, said that the
body drew its origin from the earth, the soul from the moon, and the
spirit from the sun.[529] But without disturbing ourselves for the
present, with the origin of these three parts, since assuredly the
earth, the moon, and the sun, which this philosopher has assigned them
for principles, are things very difficult to understand in themselves,
let us be content with knowing, as I have already said, that these
three great modifications which form the human Quaternary manifest
themselves by sensation, sentiment, and assent, and develop the
principal faculties of the instinct, the understanding, and the
intelligence. The instinct is the seat of common sense; the
understanding is that of reason; and the intelligence, that of
sagacity or wisdom. Men can never acquire any science, any real
knowledge, if the assent is not determined by favour of the
intelligence which elects the principle and places it with sagacity;
for one can really know or understand only that to which the
intelligence has given consent. All the results that the
understanding, deprived of intelligence, can procure by means of
reason are only opinions, those of these results which are rigorously
demonstrated in the manner of the geometricians are identities; common
sense transported even into the understanding can give only notions,
the certainty of which, however founded it may be upon experience, can
never surpass that of physical sensation, whose transient and limited
authority is of no weight in the assent of intelligible truths.
Let us venture now to divulge a secret of the mysteries to which
Pythagoras made allusion when he said: that not all kinds of wood are
fitting to make a Mercury; and notwithstanding the vulgar prejudice
which is opposed to this truth, let us affirm that animistic equality
among men is a chimera. I feel that here I am about to clash greatly
with theological ideas and to put myself in opposition to many
brilliant paradoxes that modern philosophers, more virtuous than wise,
have raised and sustained with more talent and reason than sagacity;
but the force of my subject draws me on and since I am explaining the
doctrine of Pythagoras, it is indeed necessary that I should say why
Lysis, after having examined and commended in detail all the human
virtues in the purgative part of his teachings, begins again a new
instruction in the unitive part and promises to lead one to divine
virtues. This important distinction that he makes between these two
kinds of virtues has been made by Plato, Aristotle, Galen, and many
others of the philosophers of antiquity.[530] One of them, Macrobius,
to whom we owe the knowledge and explanation of many of the mystic
secrets, which, notwithstanding the extreme care exercised to conceal
them, were rumoured outside of the sanctuaries, has made a comparison
between the degrees of the initiation and those that one admits in the
exercise of the virtues; and he enumerates four.[531] This number,
which is related to the universal Quaternary, has been the most
constantly followed, although it may have varied, however, from three
to seven. The number _three_ was regarded by the ancients as the
principle of nature, and the number _seven_ as its end.[532] The
principal degrees of initiation were, to the number of three, as the
grades of the apprentice, companion, and master are in Free Masonry
today. From this comes the epithet of Triple, given to the mysterious
Hecate, and even to Mithra, considered as the emblem of mystic
knowledge.[533] Sometimes three secondary degrees were added to the
three principal ones and were terminated by an extraordinary
revelation, which raising the initiate to the rank of _Epopt_, or seer
_par excellence_, gave him the true signification of the degrees
through which he had already passed[534]; showed him nature
unveiled,[535] and admitted him to the contemplation of divine
knowledge.[536] It was for the Epopt alone that the last veil fell,
and the sacred vestment which covered the statue of the Goddess was
removed. This manifestation, called Epiphany, shed the most brilliant
light upon the darkness which until then had surrounded the initiate.
It was prepared, said the historians, by frightful tableaux with
alternatives of both terror and hope.[537] The grade of Elect has
replaced that of Epopt among the Free Masons, without in any sense
offering the same results. The forms are indeed nearly preserved; but
the substance has disappeared. The Epopt of Eleusis, Samothrace, or
Hierapolis was regarded as the foremost of men, the favourite of the
gods, and the possessor of celestial treasures; the sun shone, in his
sight, with a purer brightness; and the sublime virtue that he had
acquired in the tests, more and more difficult, and the lessons more
and more lofty, gave him the faculty of discerning good and evil,
truth and error, and of making a free choice between them.[538]
But if the various grades of initiation expressed symbolically the
different degrees of virtue to which men in general can attain, the
tests that one was made to pass through at each new grade, made known
in particular, whether the man who presented himself to obtain it, was
worthy or unworthy. These tests were at first sufficiently easy; but
they became increasingly difficult to such an extent that the life of
the new member was frequently in danger. One would know in that way to
what sort of man this life belonged, and verify by the crucible of
terror and of suffering, the temper of the soul and the claim of his
right to the truth. It is known that Pythagoras owed to his extreme
patience and to the courage with which he surmounted all the
obstacles, his initiation into the Egyptian mysteries.[5539] Those who
attained as he did the last degree of initiation were very rare; the
greater number went no further than the second grade and very few
attained the third. Lessons proportionate to their strength and to
those of the faculties that had been recognized as dominating in them
were given; for this is the essential point in this Examination, one
learned in the sanctuaries to divide the mass of humanity into three
great classes, dominated by a fourth more elevated, according to the
relations that were established between the faculties of men and the
parts of the Universe to which they corresponded. In the first were
ranged the material or instinctive men; in the second, the animistic,
and in the third, the intellectual men. Thus all men were by no means
considered as equal among them. The pretended equality which was made
on the exterior was mere compliance to the errors of the vulgar, who,
having seized the authority in most of the cities of Greece and Italy,
forced the truth to conceal an exposure which would have injured it.
The Christian cult, raised upon the extinction of all enlightenment,
nourished in the hearts of slaves and lowly citizens, sanctified in
the course of time a precedent favourable to its growth. Those,
however, among the Christians who were called gnostics,[540] on
account of the particular knowledge that they possessed, and
especially the Valentinians who boasted that they had preserved the
knowledge of the initiation, wished to make a public dogma of the
secret of the mysteries in this respect, pretending that the
corruption of men being only the effect of their ignorance and of
their earthly attachment, it was only necessary in order to save them,
to enlighten them regarding their condition and their original
destination[541]; but the orthodox ones, who felt the danger into
which this doctrine was drawing them, condemned the authors as
heretics.
This condemnation, which satisfied the pride of the vulgar, did not
prevent the small number of sages remaining silent, faithful to the
truth. It is only necessary to open one’s eyes, and detaching them a
moment from Judea, to see that the dogma of inequality among men had
served as basis for the civil and religious laws of all the peoples of
the earth, from the orient of Asia to the occidental limits of Africa
and Europe. Everywhere, four great established divisions under the
name of Castes, recalled the four principal degrees of initiation and
retraced upon humanity _en masse_, the Universal Quaternary. Egypt
had, in this respect, in very ancient times, given example to
Greece[542]; for this Greece, so proud of her liberty, or rather of
her turbulent anarchy, had been at first subjected to the common
division, even as it is seen in Aristotle and Strabo.[543] The
Chaldeans were, relative to the peoples of Assyria,[544] only what the
Magi were among the Persians,[545] the Druids among the Gauls,[546]
and the Brahmans among the Indians. It is quite well known that this
last people, the Brahmans, constitute the foremost and highest of the
four castes of which the whole nation is composed. The allegorical
origin that religion gives to these castes proves clearly the analogy
of which I have spoken. The following is what is found relative to
this in one of the Shastras. “At the first creation by Brahma, the
Brahmans sprang from his mouth; the Kshatrys issued from his arms; the
Vaisyas from his thighs, and the Soudras from his feet.” It is said in
another of these books containing the cosmogony of the Banians, that
the first man, called Pourou, having had four sons named Brahma,
Kshetri, Vaisa, and Souderi, God designated them to be chiefs of the
four tribes which he himself instituted.[547] The sacred books of the
Burmans, which appear anterior to those of the other Indian nations,
establish the same division. The Rahans, who fill the sacerdotal
offices among these peoples, teach a doctrine conformable to that of
the mysteries. They say that inequality among men is a necessary
consequence of their past virtues or past vices, and that they are
born in a nation more or less enlightened, in a caste, in a family,
more or less illustrious, according to their previous conduct.[548]
This is very close to the thought of Pythagoras; but no one has
expressed it with greater force and clearness than Kong-Tse. I think I
have no need to say that these two sages did not copy each other. The
assent that they gave to the same idea had its source elsewhere than
in sterile imitation.
The Chinese people, from time immemorial, have been divided into four
great classes, relative to the rank that men occupy in society,
following the functions that they execute therein,[549] very nearly as
do the Indians: but this division, that long custom has rendered
purely political, is looked upon very differently by the philosophers.
Man, according to them, constitutes one of the three productive powers
which compose the median trinity of the Universe; for they consider
the Universe, or the great All, as the expression of a triple Trinity
enveloped and dominated by the primordial Unity: which constitutes for
them a decade instead of a Quaternary. This third power called _Yin_,
that is to say, mankind, is subdivided into three principal classes,
which by means of the intermediary classes admitted by Kong-Tse,
produces the five classes spoken of by this sage.
The first class, the most numerous, comprises [he said] that
multitude of men who act only by a sort of imitative
_instinct_, doing today what they did yesterday, in order to
recommence tomorrow what they have done today; and who,
incapable of discerning in the distance the real and
substantial advantages, the interest of highest importance,
extract easily a little profit, a base interest in the
pettiest things, and have enough adroitness to procure them.
These men have an _understanding_ as the others but this
understanding goes no further than the _senses_; they see
and hear only through the eyes and the ears of their bodies.
Such are the people.
The second class is composed [according to the same sage] of
men instructed in the sciences, in letters and in the
liberal arts. These men have an object in view in whatever
they undertake, and know the different means by which the
end can be accomplished; they have not penetrated into the
essence of things, but they know them well enough to speak
of them with ease and to give lessons to others; whether
they speak or whether they act, they can give _reason_ for
what they say or what they do, comparing subjects among them
and drawing just inferences concerning what is harmful or
profitable: these are the artists, the _literati_, who are
occupied with things wherein _reasoning_ must enter. This
class can have an influence on customs and even on the
government.
The third class [continues Kong-Tse] comprises those who in
their speech, in their actions, and in the whole of their
conduct, never deviate from what is prescribed by _right
reason_; who do good without any pretension whatsoever; but
only because it is good; who never vary, and show themselves
the same in adversity as in fortune. These men speak when it
is necessary to speak, and are silent when it is necessary
to be silent. They are not satisfied with drawing the
sciences from the diverse channels destined to transmit
them, but go back to the source. These are the philosophers.
Those who never digress from the fixed and immutable rule
which they have traced out for themselves, who, with utmost
exactness and a constancy always the same, fulfill to the
very least, their obligations, who fight their passions,
observe themselves unceasingly, and prevent vices from
developing; those finally, who speak no word which is not
measured and that may not be useful for instruction, and who
fear neither trouble nor labour in order to make _virtue_
prosper in themselves and in others, constitute the fourth
class, which is that of virtuous men.