that the way in which evil is introduced under the rule of a sovereign
being, infinitely good, infinitely potential, infinitely holy, is not
only inexplicable but even incomprehensible.[643] Bayle is right on
this point; also I have always said, in the course of this work, that
the origin of evil, comprehensible or not, could never be divulged.
But the matter of the origin of evil is not the question here. Bayle
was too good a reasoner not to have felt it, not to have seen that the
argument of Epicurus, and all the elocution with which he furnished
it, did not bear upon the cause of evil itself, but upon its effects;
which is quite different. Epicurus did not demand that the origin of
evil be explained to him, but the local existence of its effects――that
is to say, one should state clearly to him, that if God was able and
willing to take away the evil from the world, or to prevent it from
penetrating there, why he did not do so. When any one’s house is the
prey of flames, one is not so insensate as to be concerned with
knowing what the essence of the fire is, and why it burns in general,
but why it burns in particular; and why, being able to extinguish it,
one has not done so. Bayle, I repeat, was too clever a logician not to
have perceived this. This distinction was too simple to have escaped
him; but seeing that its very simplicity had concealed it from the
doctors of the Christian church, he was content to affect an ignorance
of it to his adversaries, to have the pleasure, so precious to a
skeptic such as he, of seeing them one after another exhaust
themselves upon the argument of Epicurus:
God, whether he wills to take away evil, and can not;
whether he can and does not will to; whether he does not
will it nor can; whether he wills it and can. If he wills it
and can not, he is weak; which does not accord with God. If
he can and does not will it, he is wicked; which accords
with him no better. If he does not will it nor can, he is
wicked and weak, which could not be. If he can and wills it,
that which alone is worthy of his divinity, whence then come
the evils? Or why does he not take them away?[644]
Lactantius, to whom Bayle owed his argument, had thought to overthrow
it, by saying that God, being able to take away evil, did not will it;
so as to give to men, by its means, wisdom and virtue.[645] But the
skeptic philosopher had no trouble to prove that this answer was worth
nothing, and that the doctrine that it contained was monstrous; since
it was certain that God was able to give wisdom and virtue without the
means of evil; since he had even given them, following the belief of
Lactantius himself, and that it was because he had renounced them that
man had become subject to evil. Saint Basil was no more fortunate than
Lactantius. Vainly he asserted that the free will, whence results
evil, had been established by God himself in the design that this
All-powerful Being had for being loved and freely served. Bayle,
attacking him in his own faith, asked him, if God is loved and served
by force in Paradise, where the glorified souls do not enjoy the fatal
privilege of being able to sin.[646] And with the same blow with which
he struck him, he brought down Malebranche who had said the same
thing.[647] The downfall of Malebranche, and the desire to avenge him,
bestirred in vain a crowd of audacious metaphysicians. Bayle pierced
them one after another with the weapons of Epicurus, whose steel they
did not know, and died with the glory of their having said the
greatest piece of stupidity which could be said upon a like matter:
namely, that it was possible that God might prescribe another end, in
creating the world, than to make his creatures happy.[648]
The death of Bayle did not extinguish the ardour that his works had
excited. Leibnitz, justly displeased with all that had been said,
thought he could answer the skeptic philosopher better; and raising
himself with a great force of genius to that pristine moment when God
formed the decree of producing the world, he represented the Being of
beings choosing among an infinity of worlds, all possible, all present
at his thought, the actual world, as most conformable to his
attributes, the most worthy of him, the best finally, the most capable
of attaining to the greatest and most excellent end that this
all-perfect Being may have been able to purpose.[649] But what is this
magnificent and worthy end which the Divinity has chosen, this goal
which not alone constitutes the actual world such as it is, but which
also presents it to the mind, according to the system of Leibnitz, as
the best of possible worlds? This philosopher does not know.
We are not able [he said] to penetrate it, for we are too
limited for this; we can only infer, by reasoning with the
insight that God has given us, that his bounty only has been
able to purpose, by creating the greatest possible number of
intelligent creatures, by endowing them with as much
knowledge, happiness, and beauty as the Universe might admit
without going away from the immutable order established by
his wisdom.[650]
Up to this point, the system of Leibnitz sustained itself, and was
able even to lead to a relative truth; but its work was not
accomplished. It was necessary to explain, following the demand of
Epicurus so much repeated by Bayle, how in this immutable order
established by the divine Wisdom in this best of worlds, that physical
and moral evil make felt such severe effects. The German philosopher,
instead of stopping at these effects, and stating the primordial
cause, inaccessible to his researches, still scorned it, as had all
the adversaries of Bayle, and asserted that physical and moral evils
were necessary to maintain this immutable order, and entered into the
plan of this best of worlds. Fatal assertion which overthrew his
system instantly: for, how dares one to say that evil is necessary,
and above all necessary not only in what is best, but in what is the
best possible!
Now, whatever may be the primordial cause of Evil, concerning which I
can not nor do I wish to explain myself, until the triple veil,
extended over this formidable mystery by Moses, may have been raised,
I will say, according to the doctrine of Pythagoras and Plato, that
its effects can be neither necessary, nor irresistible since they are
not immutable and I will reply to the much-lauded argument of
Epicurus, that by this very thing they are neither necessary nor
irresistible; God can and will remove them and he does remove them.
And if certain disciples of Bayle, astonished by a reply so bold and
so new, asked me when and how God works so great a benefit, of which
they have perceived no traces, I will say to them: by time and by
means of perfectibility. Time is the instrument of Providence;
perfectibility, the plan of its work; Nature, the object of its
labour; and Good, its result. You know, and Bayle himself agrees, that
there exists a mixture of good and evil: and I repeat to you here what
I have already said[651]; and I maintain that this good emanates from
Providence, and is its work, and replaces in the sphere where it has
been transported, an equivalent amount of evil which it has transmuted
into good; I maintain that this good continues augmenting itself
unceasingly and the evil which corresponds to it, diminishing in an
equal proportion; I maintain finally that, having left absolute evil
and having arrived at the point where you now are, you will arrive by
the same road and by the same means, that is, by favour of time and of
perfectibility, from the point where you are to absolute Good, the
crown of perfection. This is the answer to your question, When and how
does God take away evils? Still if you claim you cannot see any of
this, I will reply that it is not for you, arguing with the weakness
of your view, to deny the progress of Providence, you whose imperfect
senses mistake all the time even the subjects within your range, and
for whom the extremes are touching so forcibly, that it is impossible
for you to distinguish upon the same dial the movement of the needle
which traverses it in a cycle, from the movement of that which
traverses it in less than a second; one of these needles appearing to
you immobile and the other not existing for you.[652]
If you deny what I affirm, bring other proofs of your denial than your
weakness and cease, from the little corner where Nature has placed
you, presuming to judge its immensity. Still if you lack negative
proofs, wait a moment more, and you shall have from me affirmative
proofs. But if, going back, and wishing to sustain the argument of
Epicurus which is giving way, you believe that you will succeed by
saying that this philosopher had not asked, in the case where God was
able and willed to remove evils, how he removed them, but why he did
not remove them; I will reply to you that this question is a pure
sophism; that the how is implicitly contained in the why, to which I
have replied in affirming that God, being able and willing to remove
evils, removes them. And if you recall an objection that I have
already overthrown concerning the manner in which he removes them, and
that bringing you to judge of his ways, you would assume that he ought
to remove them, not in a lapse of time so long that you would be
unconscious of it, but in the twinkling of an eye; I would reply that
this way would be to you quite as imperceptible as the other; and that
furthermore, that which you demand exists, since the lapse of time of
which you complain, however long it may appear to you, is less than
the twinkling of an eye for the Being of beings who employs it, being
absolutely _nihil_ compared to Eternity. And from there I will take
occasion to tell you that evil, in the way in which it is manifest in
the world, being a sort of malady, God, who alone can cure it, knows
also the sole remedy which may be applicable to it and that this sole
remedy is time.
It seems to me that however little attention you may have given to
what I have just said, you ought to be tempted to pass on from the
knowledge of the remedy to that of the malady; but it is in vain that
you would demand of me an explanation concerning its nature. This
explanation is not necessary to overthrow the argument of Epicurus and
that is all that I have wished to do. The rest depends upon you and I
can only repeat with Lysis:
“God! Thou couldst save them by opening their eyes.”
34. _But no: ’tis for the humans of a race divine,
To discern Error, and to see the Truth._
Hierocles who, as I have said, has not concealed the difficulty which
is contained in these lines, has raised it, by making evident that it
depends upon the free will of man, and by putting a limit upon the
evils which he attracts to himself by his own choice. His reasoning
coinciding with mine can be reduced to these few words. The sole
remedy for evil, whatever may be the cause, is time. Providence,
minister of the Most High, employs this remedy; and by means of
perfectibility which results from it, brings back all to good. But the
aptitude of the maladies for receiving it acts in proportion to this
remedy. Time, always the same, and always _nihil_ for the Divinity is,
however, shortened or lengthened for men, according as their will
coincides with the providential action or differs therefrom. They have
only to desire good, and time which fatigues them will be lightened.
But what if they desire evil always, will time therefore not be
finished? Will the evils therefore have no limit? Is it that the will
of man is so inflexible that God may not turn it towards the good? The
will of man is free beyond doubt; and its essence, immutable as the
Divinity whence it emanates, knows not how to be changed, but nothing
is impossible for God. The change which is effected in it, without
which its immutability may in no wise be altered, is the miracle of
the All-Powerful. It is a result of its own liberty, and if I dare to
say it, takes place by the coincidence of two movements, whose impulse
is given by Providence; by the first, it shows to the will, goodness;
by the second, it puts it in a fitting position to meet this same
goodness.
35. _Nature serves them.…_
Lysis expresses it thus: Nature, by the homogeneity which, as I have
stated, constitutes its essence, teaches men to see beyond the range
of their senses, transports them by analogy from one region to another
and develops their ideas. The perfectibility which is manifested
through the grace of time is called perfection; for the more a thing
is perfected the more perfect it becomes. The man who perceives this
is struck by it, and if he reflect he finds truth, as I have openly
stated, and to which Lysis was content with making allusion, on
account of the secret of the mysteries that he was forced to respect.
It is this perfectibility manifested in Nature, which gives the
affirmative proofs that I have promised, touching the way in which
Providence removes with time the evils which afflict men. These are
the proofs _de facto_. They cannot be challenged without absurdity. I
know well that there have been men who, studying Nature within four
walls, and considering its operations through the extremely narrow
prism of their ideas, have denied that anything might be perfectible,
and have asserted that the Universe was immobile because they have not
seen it move; but there does not exist today a genuine observer, a
naturalist whose learning is founded upon Nature, who does not
invalidate the decision of these pretended savants, and who does not
put perfectibility in the rank of the most rigorously demonstrated
truths.
I shall not quote the ancients on a subject where their authority
would be challenged; I shall even limit myself, to evade prolixities,
to a small number of striking passages among the moderns. Leibnitz,
who ought less than any other to admit perfectibility, since he had
founded his system upon the existence of the best of worlds possible,
has, however, recognized it in Nature, in advancing that all the
changes which are operated there are the consequence of both; that
everything tends toward its improvement, and that therefore the
present is already teeming with the future.[653] Buffon, inclining
strongly toward the system of atoms, ought also to be much opposed,
and yet he has been unable to see that Nature, in general, tends far
more toward life than toward death, and that it seems to be seeking to
organize bodies as much as is possible.[654] The school of Kant has
pushed the system of perfectibility as far as it could go. Schelling,
the disciple of most consequence of this celebrated man, has followed
the development of Nature with a force of thought which has perhaps
passed the mark. The former, has ventured to say that Nature is a sort
of Divinity in germ, which tends to apotheosis, and is prepared for
existence with God, by the reign of Chaos, and by that of
Providence.[655] But those are only speculative opinions. Here are
opinions founded upon facts.
As soon as one considers the Earth observingly, the naturalists say,
one perceives striking traces of the revolutions that it has sustained
in anterior times.[656]
The continents have not always been what they are today, the
waters of the globe have not always been distributed in the
same manner. The ocean changes insensibly its bed,
undermines the lands, divides them, rushes over some, and
leaves others dry. The islands have not always been islands.
The continents have been peopled, with living and vegetating
beings, before the present disposition of the waters upon
the globe.[657]
These observations confirm what Pythagoras and the ancient sages
have taught upon this subject[658]:
Besides [these same naturalists continue], the greater part
of the fossil bones that have been assembled and compared
are those of animals different from any of the species
actually known; has the kingdom of life therefore changed?
This one cannot refuse to believe.[659] As Nature proceeds
unceasingly from the simple to the composite, it is probable
that the most imperfect animals should have been created
before the tribes, higher in the scale of life. It even
seems that each of the animal classes indicates a sort of
suspension in the creative power, an intermission, an era of
repose, during which Nature prepared in silence the germs of
life which should come to light in the course of the cycles.
One might thus enumerate the epochs of living Nature, epochs
remote in the night of ages and which have been obliged to
precede the formation of mankind. A time may have been when
the insect, the shell, the unclean reptile, did not
recognize the master in the Universe and were placed at the
head of the organized bodies.[660]
These observers add:
It is certain that most perfect beings come from less
perfect, and that they are obliged to be perfected in the
sequence of generations. All animals tend towards man; all
vegetables aspire to animality; minerals seek to draw nearer
to the vegetable.… It is evident that Nature, having created
a series of plants and animals, and having stopped at man
who forms the superior extremity, has assembled in him all
the vital faculties that it had distributed among the
inferior races.[661]
These are the ideas of Leibnitz. This celebrated man had said: “Men
hold to animals; these to plants, and those to fossils. It is
necessary that all the natural orders form only one sole chain, in
which the different classes hold strictly as if they were its
links.”[662] Several philosophers have adopted them,[663] but none
have expressed them with more order and energy than the author of the
article _Nature_, in _Le Nouveau Dictionnaire d’Histoire naturelle_.
All animals, all plants are only the modifications of an
animal, of a vegetable origin.… Man is the knot which unites
the Divinity to matter, which links heaven and earth. This
ray of wisdom and intelligence which shines in his thoughts
is reflected upon all Nature. It is the chain of
communication between all beings. All the series of animals
[he adds in another place] present only a long degradation
from the proper nature of man. The monkey, considered either
in his exterior form or in his interior organization,
resembles only a degraded man; and the same suggestion of
degradation is observed in passing from monkeys to
quadrupeds; so that the primitive trend of the organization
is recognized in all, and the principal viscera, the
principal members are identical there.[664]
Who knows [observes elsewhere the same writer] who knows if
in the eternal night of time the sceptre of the world will
not pass from the hands of man into those of a being more
worthy of bearing it and more perfect? Perhaps the race of
negroes, today secondary in the human specie, has already
been queen of the earth before the white race was created.…
If Nature has successively accorded the empire to the
species that it creates more and more perfect, why should
she cease today.… The negro, already king of animals, has
fallen beneath the yoke of the European; will the latter bow
the head in his turn before a race more powerful and more
intelligent when it enters into the plans of Nature to
ordain his existence? Where will his creation stop? Who will
place the limits of his power? God alone raises it and it is
His all-powerful hand which governs.[665]
These striking passages full of forceful ideas, which appear new, and
which would merit being better known, contain only a small part of the
things taught in the ancient mysteries, as I shall perhaps demonstrate
later.
36. … _Thou who fathomed it.
O wise and happy man, rest in its haven.
But observe my laws, abstaining from the things
Which thy soul must fear, distinguishing them well;
Letting intelligence o’er thy body reign._
Lysis, speaking always in the name of Pythagoras, addressed himself to
those of the disciples of this theosophist, who had reached the
highest degree of perfection, or autopsy, and the felicity of their
welfare. I have said often enough in the course of these Examinations,
what should be understood by this last degree, so that I need not
refer to it here. I shall not even pause upon what has reference to
the symbolic teachings of Pythagoras, the formularies and dietetics
that he gave to his disciples, and the abstinences that he prescribed
for them, my design being to give incidentally a particular
explanation of it, for the purpose of not further prolonging this
volume. It is well known that all of the eminent men, as many among
the ancients as among the moderns, all the savants commendable for
their labours or their learning, are agreed in regarding the precepts
of Pythagoras as symbolical, that is, as containing figuratively, a
very different meaning from that which they would seem to offer
literally.[666] It was the custom of the Egyptian priests from whom he
had imbibed them,[667] to conceal their doctrine beneath an outer
covering of parables and allegories.[668] The world was, in their
eyes, a vast enigma, whose mysteries, clothed in a style equally
enigmatical, ought never to be openly divulged.[669] These priests had
three kinds of characters, and three ways of expressing and depicting
their thoughts. The first manner of writing and of speaking was clear
and simple; the second, figurative; and the third, symbolic. In the
first, they employed characters used by all peoples and took the words
in their literal meaning; in the second, they used hieroglyphic
characters, and took the words in an indirect and metaphorical
meaning; finally in the third, they made use of phrases with double
meaning of historic and astronomical fables, or of simple
allegories.[670] The _chef-d’œuvre_ of the sacerdotal art was uniting
these three ways, and enclosing under the appearance of a clear and
simple style, the vulgar, figurative, and symbolic meaning. Pythagoras
has sought this kind of perfection in his precepts and often he has
succeeded; but the one of all the theosophists instructed in the
sanctuaries of Thebes or of Memphis, who has pushed farthest, this
marvellous art, is beyond doubt Moses. The first part of his Sepher,
vulgarly called _Genesis_, and that should be called by its original
name of _Bereshith_, is in this style, the most admirable work, the
most astounding feat of strength that is possible for a man to
conceive and execute. This book, which contains all the science of the
ancient Egyptians, is still to be translated and will only be
translated when one will put oneself in a condition to understand the
language in which it has primitively been composed.
37. _So that, ascending into radiant Ether,
Midst the Immortals, thou shalt be thyself a God._
Here, said Hierocles, in terminating his commentaries, is the blissful
end of all efforts: here, according to Plato, is the hope which
enkindles, which sustains the ardour of him who fights in the career
of virtue: here, the inestimable prize which awaits him.[671] It was
the great object of the mysteries, and so to speak, the great work of
initiation.[672] The initiate, said Sophocles, is not only happy
during his life, but even after his death he can promise himself an
eternal felicity.[673] His soul purified by virtue, said Pindar,
unfolds in those blessed regions where reigns an eternal
springtime.[674] It goes on, said Socrates, attracted by the celestial
element which has the greatest affinity with its nature, to become
united with the immortal Gods and to share their glory and their
immortality.[675] This deification was, according to Pythagoras, the
work of divine love; it was reserved for him who had acquired truth
through his intellectual faculties, virtue through his animistic
faculties, and purity through his instinctive faculties. This purity,
after the end of his material body, shone forth and made itself known
in the form of a luminous body, that the soul had been given during
its confinement in its gloomy body; for as I finish these
Examinations, I am seizing the only occasion which may still be
presented of saying that, this philosopher taught that the soul has a
body which is given according to his good or bad nature, by the inner
labour of his faculties. He called this body the subtle chariot of the
soul, and said that the mortal body is only the gross exterior. He
adds, “The care of the soul and its luminous body is, in practicing
virtue, in embracing truth and abstaining from all impure
things.”[676]
This is the veritable aim of the symbolic abstinences that he
prescribes, even as Lysis insinuates moreover quite clearly in the
lines which make the subject of my preceding Examination, when he said
that it is necessary to abstain from the things which are injurious to
the development of the soul and to distinguish clearly these things.