little thought he was then cursing the origination of all things, they
owing their rise to aversation and quarrel. He also saith, that the sun
will never exceed his proper bounds; and if he should, that
Tongues, aids of justice, soon will find him out.
Empedocles also calls the benefic principle love and friendship, and
very often sweet-looked harmony; and the evil principle
Pernicious enmity and bloody hate.
The Pythagoreans use a great number of terms as attributes of these
two principles; of the good, they use the unit, the terminate, the
permanent, the straight, the odd, the square, the equal, the dexter,
and the lucid; and again of the bad, the two, the interminate, the
fluent, the crooked, the even, the oblong, the unequal, the sinister,
and the dark; insomuch that all these are looked upon as principles
of generation. But Anaxagoras made but two, the intelligence and the
interminate; and Aristotle called the first of these form, and the
latter privation. But Plato in many places, as it were shading and
veiling over his opinion, names the first of these opposite principles
the Same, and the second the Other. But in his book of Laws, when
he was now grown old, he affirmed, not in riddles and emblems but
in plain and proper words, that the world is not moved by one soul,
but perhaps by a great many, but not by fewer than two; the one of
which is beneficent, and the other contrary to it and the author of
things contrary. He also leaves a certain third nature in the midst
between, which is neither without soul nor without reason, nor void
of a self-moving power (as some suppose), but rests upon both of the
preceding principles, but yet so as still to affect, desire, and pursue
the better of them; as I shall make out in the ensuing part of this
discourse, in which I design to reconcile the theology of the Egyptians
principally with this sort of philosophy.
49. For the frame and constitution of this world is made up of contrary
powers, but yet such as are not of such equal strength but that the
better is still predominant. But it is impossible for the ill one to be
quite extinguished, because much of it is interwoven with the body and
much with the soul of the universe, and it always maintains a fierce
combat with the better part. And therefore in the soul, intellect and
reason, which is the prince and master of all the best things, is
Osiris; and in the earth, in the winds, in the waters, in the heaven,
and in the stars, what is ranged, fixed, and in a sound constitution
(as orderly seasons, due temperament of air, and the revolutions
of the stars) is the efflux and appearing image of Osiris. Again,
the passionate, Titanic, irrational, and brutal part of the soul is
Typhon; and what in the corporeal nature is adventitious, morbid, and
tumultuous (as irregular seasons, distemperatures of air, eclipses of
the sun, and disappearings of the moon) is, as it were, the incursions
and devastations of Typhon. And the name of Seth, by which they call
Typhon, declares as much; for it denotes a domineering and compelling
power, and also very often an overturning, and again a leaping over.
There are also some that say that Bebon was one of Typhon’s companions;
but Manetho saith, Typhon himself was called Bebon. Now that name
signifies restraining and hindering; as who should say, “while all
things march along in a regular course and move steadily toward their
natural end, the power of Typhon stands in their way and stops them.”
50. For which reason they assign him the ass, the most brutal and
sottish of all the tame beasts, and the crocodile and river-horse,
the most savage and fierce of all the wild beasts. Of the ass we have
spoken already. They show us at Hermopolis the statue of Typhon, which
is a river-horse with a hawk on his back fighting with a serpent;
where they set out Typhon by the river-horse, and by the hawk that
power and principle which Typhon possesses himself of by violence, and
thereupon ceases not to disturb others and to be disturbed himself by
his malice. For which reason also, when they are to offer sacrifice
upon the seventh day of the month Tybi, at the festival which they call
the Arrival of Isis out of Phoenicia, they print the river-horse bound
upon their sacred cakes. Besides this, there is a constant custom at
the town of Apollo, for every one to eat some part of a crocodile; and
having upon a certain set day hunted down as many of them as they are
able, they kill them, and throw down their carcasses before the temple.
And they tell us that Typhon made his escape from Horus in the form of
a crocodile; for they make all bad and noxious things—whether animals,
plants or passions—to be the works, the members, and the motions of
Typhon.
51. On the other hand, they represent Osiris by an eye and a sceptre,
the one whereof expresses forecast, and the other power. In like manner
Homer, when he called the governor and monarch of all the world