The Golden Verses of Pythagoras — with commentary (1917)

The continents have not always been what they are today, the waters of the globe have not always been distributed in the same manner. The ocean changes insensibly its bed, undermines the lands, divides them, rushes over some, and leaves others dry. The islands have not always been islands. The continents have been peopled, with living and vegetating beings, before the present disposition of the waters upon the globe. <^

These observations confirm what Pythagoras and the ancient sages have taught upon this subject ^ :

Besides [these same naturalists continue], the greater part of the fossil bones that have been assembled and compared are those of animals different from any of the species actually known; has the kingdom of life therefore changed? This one cannot refuse to believe." As Nature proceeds unceasingly from the simple to the composite, it is probable that the most imperfect animals should have been created before the tribes, higher in the scale of life. It even seems that each of the animal classes

" System des transcendental Idalimus, p. 441 ; Zeitschrift fiir die speculative Physick.

i Bufion, TMorie de la Terre; Liim6, De Telluris habitah. Increment; Burnet, Archasolog., etc.

« Nouv. Diet. d'Hist. nat., art. QuADRUPiiDE.

"J Ovid., Metamorph., 1. xv.

« Nouv. Diet. d'Hist. nat., art. Quadrup^de.

Examinations of the Golden Verses 273

indicates a sort of suspension in the creative power, an inter-' mission, an era of repose, during which Nature prepared in silence the germs of life which should come to light in the course of the cycles. One might thus enumerate the epochs of living Nature, epochs remote in the night of ages and which have been obliged to precede the formation of mankind. A time may have been when the insect, the shelj, the unclean reptile, did not recognize the master in the Universe and were placed at the head of the organized bodies."

These observers add :

It is certain that most perfect beings come from less perfect, and that they are obliged to be perfected in the sequence of generations. All animals tend towards man; all vegetables aspire to animality; minerals seek to draw nearer to the vegetable. ... It is evident that Nature, having created a series of plants and animals, and having stopped at man who forms the superior extremity, has assembled in him all the vital faculties that it had distributed among the inferior races.*

These are the ideas of Leibnitz. This celebrated man had said: "Men hold to animals; these to plants, and those to fossils. It is necessary that all the natural orders form only one sole chain, in which the different classes hold strictly as if they were its links. ""^ Several philosophers have adopted them,'' but none have expressed them with more order and energy than the author of the article Nature, in Le Nouveau DicHonnaire d'Histoire naturelle.

All animals, all plants are only the modifications of an animal, of a vegetable origin. . . . Man is the knot which unites the Divinity to matter, which links heaven and earth. This ray of wisdom and intelligence which shines in his thoughts is

« Nouv. Diet, d 'Hist nat., art. Animal. * Nouv. Diet., art. Nature.

i^Lettre k Hermann.

<i Charles Bonnet, Contempt, de la Nat., p. i6; Lecat., Traite du Mouvement musculaire, p. 54, art. iii.; Robinet, De la Nature, t. iv., p. 17, etc.

274 The Golden Verses of Pythagoras reflected upon all Nature. It is the chain of communication between all beings. All the series of animals [he adds in another place] present only a long degradation from the proper nature of man. The monkey, considered either in his exterior form or in his interior organization, resembles only a degraded man; and the same suggestion of degradation is observed in passing from monkeys to quadrupeds; so that thp primitive trend of the organization is recognized in all, and the principal viscera, the principal members are identical there."

Who knows [observes elsewhere tTie same writer] who knows if in the eternal night of time the sceptre of the world will not pass from the hands of man into those of a feeing more worthy of bearing it and more perfect? Perhaps tft^ race of negroes, today secondary in the human specie,* feas already been queen of the earth before the white race was created.' . If Nature has successively accorded the empire to the species that it creates more and more perfect, why should she cease today. . . . The negro, already king of animals, has fallen beneath the yoke of the European; will the latter bow the head in his turn before a race more powerful and more intelligent when it enters into the plans of Nature to ordain his existence? Where will his creation stop? Who will place the limits of his power? God alone raises it and it is His all-powerful hand which governs.*