The Golden Verses of Pythagoras — with commentary (1917)

Pythagoras considered man as holding the mean between things intellectual and sentient, the lowest of the superior beings and the highest of the inferior, free to move either toward the heights or the depths, by means of his passions, which bring into action the ascending or descending movement that his will possesses with potentiality; sometimes being united with the immortals and, through his return to virtue, recovering the lot which is his own, and other times plunging again into mortal kind and through transgression of the divine laws finding himself fallen from his dignity.* This opinion, which had been that of all the sages who had preceded Pythagoras, has been that of all the sages who have followed him, even of those among the Christian theosophists whose religious prejudices have removed them farthest from his doctrine. I shall not stop to give the proofs of its antiquity; they are to be found everywhere, and would be superfluous. Thomas Burnet, having vainly sought for the origin without being able to discover it, decided that it was necessary that it should descend from heaven."^ It is o Ut supri, V. 22 et 24. * Ut supri, v. 54 et 55.

' Burnet, Archceolog., 1. i., c. 14.

262 , The Golden Verses of Pythagoras certain that one can only with difficulty explain how a man without erudition, like Boehme, never having received this opinion from anyone, has been able to explain it so clearly. "When one sees man existing," says this theosophist, "one can say: Here all Eternity is manifested in one image.""

The abode of this being is an intermediate point between heaven and hell, love and anger; that, of the things to which he is attached, becomes his kind. ... If he inclines toward the celestial nature, he assumes a celestial form, and the human form becomes infernal if he inclines toward hell; for as the mind is, so is the body. In whatever way the mind projects itself, it shadows forth its body with a similar form and a similar source.*

It is upon this principle, which one finds still everywhere diversely expressed, that the dogma of the transmigration of souls is founded. This dogma, explained in the ancient mysteries,"^ and received by all peoples,'' has been to such an extent disfigured in what the modems have called Metempsychosis, that it would be necessary to exceed considerably the limits of these Examinations in order to give an explanation which could be understood. Later I will endeavour to expose my sentiment upon this mystery, when I treat of Theurgy and other occult sciences to which it. is aUied.

33. God! Thou couldst save them by opening their eyes.

Lysis here approaches openly one of the greatest difficulties of nature, that which in all time has furnished to the skeptics and to the atheists the weapons that they have believed most formidable. Hierocles has not concealed it in a De la Triple Vie de I'Homme, ch. vi., § 53. * Ibid., ch. v., § 56.

" Prod., In Tim., 1. v., p. 330; Plethon, Schol. ad. Oracl. magic. Zoroast. i March., Chron. Can., p. 258; Beausob., Hist, du Manich., t. ii., p. 495; Huet. Origenian, 1. ii., q. 6.

Examinations of the Golden Verses 263

his Commentaries, and he expresses it in these terms: "If God is able to bring back all men to virtue and to happiness, and if he does not will to do so, is God therefore unjust and wicked? Or if he wills to bring them back and if he is unable, is God therefore weak and impotent?" " Long before Hierocles, Epicurus seized upon this argument to support his system, and had extended it without augmenting its force. His design had been to prove by its means that, according as he had advanced it, God does not interfere with the things of this world, and that there is, consequently, no Providence.* Lactantius, thinking that he was answering this, has quoted from Epicurus and has afforded Bayle, the most learned and the most formidable oL modem skeptics, the occasion for demonstrating that, untU Aow, this terrible argument had remained unrefuted notwithstanding aU the efforts made for its overthrow. This indefatigable reasoner said :

The evil exists; man is wicked and unhappy: everything proves this sad truth. History is, properly speaking, only a miscellany of the crimes and adversities of mankind. However, at intervals, there have been seen shining some examples of virtue and happiness. There is, therefore, a mixture of evils and of moral and physical goodness. . . . Now, if man is the work of a sole principle, sovereignly good, sovereignly holy, sovereignly potential, how is he exposed to the maladies of cold, heat, hunger, thirst, pain, and sorrow? How has he so many wicked inclinations? How does he commit so many crimes? Can the sovereign sanctity piroduce a criminal creature? Can the sovereign bounty produce an unfortunate creature ? '

Bayle, content with his anti-providential declaration, believes that he has triumphed over aU the dogmatists of o Aur. Carm., v. 62-77.