The Golden Verses of Pythagoras — with commentary (1917)
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" De G^rando, Hist, des Systhmes de Philos., t. ii., p. 193.
* Krit. der Rein. Vernunft, s. 24.
'In the Oriental languages n {rou) indicates the visual ray, and Ti (rod), all movement which is deteimined upon a straight Une. This root, accompanied by a guttural inflection, is called recht, in German, and right in English and Saxon. The Latins made of it rectum, that which is straight. In French rature and rateau. The Teutons, taking right in a figurative sense, have drawn from this same root, rath, a council, and richter, a judge.
Examinations of the Golden Verses 213
inference. Its nature is to go straight; its perfection is nothing else. One goes straight in every way, in every direction, high, low, to right, to left; one reasons correctly in truth as in error, in vice as in virtue: all depends upon the principle from which one sets out, and upon the manner in which one looks at things. Reason does not give this principle; it is no more master of the end which it goes to attain, than the straight line drawn upon the ground is master of the point toward which it tends. This end and this point are determined beforehand, by the position of the reasoner or by geometry.
Reason exists alike in the three great human modifications, although its principal seat is in the soul, according to Plato." 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 Hving. When a philosopher admits the immortality of the soul, he listens to an intellectual reason which shows him the impossibility of its annihilation. AU 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,* whose
" In Tim., cit6 par Beausobre, Hist, du Manich., t. ii., p. 174.
* The word intelligence, in Latin intelligentia, is formed of two words.
214 The Golden Verses of Pythagoras 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; aU that pertains to theosophy, to cosmology; in short, all that which is intelligible, cannot take place in the order of his understanding.
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, annotmce 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
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