The Golden Verses of Pythagoras — with commentary (1917)
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In Greek t4 'KoytKdr, that which pertains to reasonable nature, that which is logical, the thing which proves that another thing is. Voyes Platon, in Tim., at conferez avec Beausobre, Hist, du Manich., t. ii., p. 174.
d Plutar., de Facie in Orb. lun., p. 943.
Examinations of the Golden Verses 219
three great modifications which form the human Quaternarymanifest 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 aUusion when he said: that not aU 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 modem 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 distinc220 The Golden Verses of Pythagoras tion that he makes between these two kinds of virtues has been made by Plato, Aristotle, Galen, and many others of the philosophers of antiquity.
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.* 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."^ 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.'' 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 ' ; showed him nature unveiled, ^ and admitted him to the contemplation of divine knowledge.* It was for the Epopt alone that the last veil fell, and the sacred vestment which covered the statue of the
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