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1point analogue à Ton Etre penfapt , afin de n’y lailTer entrer que des sucs vivifians &purs comme lui , & avec lesquels il puisse former cette union , cette harmonie , cette unité qui fait à la fois l’objet & le terme de toutes les a&ions & de tous les Etres de la Nature. Quant au feu en général , il apprend aux hommes ce que seroient leurs jouissances & leurs lumières , s’ils exerçoient avec persévérance les facultés qui sont en eux , & s’ils en portoient l'action jusqu’au point où leur essence leur permet d’atteindre. Le feu a le pouvoir de vitrifier tous les corps , c’est-à-dire , de tellement les purger de leurs feories & de leurs écorces, que leur principe radical parvienne en quelque forte à sa pureté & à sa (implicite naturelle. Par-là ces corps que leur opacité rendoit impénétrables à notre vue , & qui nous interceptoienr les autres objets; ces corps, dis- je, acquièrent une clarté vihble,une traniparence dont les effets ne la Isent plus de bornes à nos defits & à nos cou. oifiànces. Ils donnent à l’homme le moyen de jouir de la lumière des astres, sans ressentir les rigueurs de l’atmo'phere , & d’exister au milieu des intempéries de cette région terrestre , sans en recevoir les atteintes , comme si en effet elles n’avoient Naturel. içî
2pas lieu pour lui; image grossiere , mais instructive d’une autre espece de lumière & d’une autre espeee de sécurité , que l’homme peut également se procurer au milieu des tempêtes qui grondent dans cette orageuse demeure. Ces corps lui donnent le moyen de pénétrer , pour ainsi dire, dans les mysteres de la Nature; d’appercevoir d’une part , des merveilles que la petitesse des objets sembloit avoir exclues pour jamais de ses connoilTances ; & de l’autre , de diriger Tes yeux jusqu’àla région la plus élevée desastres. Ils le mettent à portée d’en mesurer les dimensions, d’en calculer tous lés mouvemens , & de lire , comme à découvert y les loix de ces grands mobiles , dont il est séparé par une distance si prodigieuse , que plusieurs échappant à la vue simple , il n’avcit pu même en soupçonner l’exiltence. Tous ces faits sont pour l’homme autant de signes qui lui démontrent que s’il avoit le courage d'amener sa volonté à son vrai point d’épurement , il rendroit à son Etre intellectuel 9 une clarté , une transparence analogue à sa classe ; il lui procureroit un degré de purification qui lui seroit non seulement découvrir la marche des Etres immatériels qui l’environnent y mais: même l’aideroit à s’élever jusqu’à l’ordre intellectuel le plus supérieur à lui , jusqu’à cet ordre K* 152, Tableau
3vivant dans lequel il a puissé son origine , mais dont il est aujourd’hui tellement éloigné , qu’il le regarde comme inaccessible à sa vue. Car dans le ienfible & dans l’intellectuel , il est certain qu’il n’y a que le grossier, que la souillure qui forment pour l’homme, les ténèbres, les éloignemens & les distances , & que tout est clair pour lui , tout est près de lui , quand tout effc pur en lui. Malgré toutes les beautés écrites dans la création temporelle , convenons que nous n’y voyons que des loix de rigueur & de violence , que des laits non libres , & qui ne démontrent pas même une intelligence dans les agens qui les opèrent , quoiqu’il y en ait nécessairement une hors de ces agens, qui les commande dans tous leurs a&es , puisque ces actes s’exécutent avec ordre & régularité. Ce seroit donc en vain que nous chercherions dans la matière , des images réelles & permanentes du Principe de la vie , duquel nous sommes malheureuse ment séparés ; & si i’homme n’eut pas eu d’autres signes que les objets matériels pour recoin er ia conno stan e de ce Principe , ia /office ciivine auroit peu de choses à lui redemander. Nous avons déjà remarqué, que dans l’homme. N A T U R E Z*
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
1analogous to his thinking Being, so as to let enter there only saps vivifying & pure like himself, & with which he may form that union, that harmony, that unity which makes at once the object & the term of all the actions & of all the Beings of Nature. As to fire in general, it teaches men what their enjoyments & their lights would be if they exercised with perseverance the faculties which are in them, & if they carried their action to the point which their essence permits them to attain. Fire has the power to vitrify all bodies, that is to say, so to purge them of their dross & of their rinds that their radical principle comes in some sort to its purity & to its natural simplicity. Thereby those bodies which their opacity rendered impenetrable to our sight, & which intercepted for us the other objects; those bodies, I say, acquire a visible clarity, a transparency whose effects leave no further bounds to our desires & to our knowledge. They give man the means of enjoying the light of the stars without feeling the rigours of the atmosphere, & of existing in the midst of the inclemencies of this terrestrial region without receiving their attacks, as if in effect these had Natural. içî
2no place for him; a gross but instructive image of another kind of light & of another kind of security which man may equally procure himself in the midst of the tempests which growl in this stormy dwelling. These bodies give him the means of penetrating, so to speak, into the mysteries of Nature; of perceiving on the one hand marvels which the smallness of the objects seemed to have excluded for ever from his knowledge; & on the other, of directing his eyes even to the most elevated region of the stars. They put him in a position to measure their dimensions, to calculate all their movements, & to read, as it were uncovered, the laws of those great springs from which he is separated by a distance so prodigious that, several escaping the naked eye, he could not even have suspected their existence. All these facts are for man so many signs which demonstrate to him that if he had the courage to bring his will to its true point of purification, he would render to his intellectual Being 9 a clarity, a transparency analogous to its class; he would procure it a degree of purification which would not only make him discover the course of the immaterial Beings which surround him, but would even help him to raise himself to the intellectual order most superior to him, to that order K* 152, Tableau
3living, in which he drew his origin, but from which he is today so far removed that he regards it as inaccessible to his sight. For in the sensible & in the intellectual, it is certain that it is only the gross, only the defilement, that forms for man the shadows, the removals & the distances, & that all is clear for him, all is near him, when all is pure in him. Despite all the beauties written in temporal creation, let us grant that we see there only laws of rigour & of violence, only facts not free, & which do not even demonstrate an intelligence in the agents which work them, although there is necessarily one outside those agents which commands them in all their acts, since those acts are executed with order & regularity. It would therefore be in vain that we should seek in matter real & permanent images of the Principle of life from which we are unhappily separated; & if man had had no other signs than material objects to recover the knowledge of that Principle, divine justice would have little to ask back of him. We have already remarked that in man, N A T U R E Z*
Our translation, period-faithful. Citable as our translation, never as the source.
PROVENANCE OF THE COPY SCANNED. The volume carries the bookplate of Sidney Edward Bouverie-Pusey, printed above the title page and here trimmed out of the reading text along with the scanner debris around it. It is recorded rather than discarded: it says whose copy of the 1782 Tableau naturel this archive is reading from, which is a fact about the artefact even though it is not a fact about the book.