The Golden Verses of Pythagoras — with commentary (1917)

Pythagoras, of whom a modern savant, otherwise most estimable, has rather throughtlessly reproached with being a fanatical and superstitious man," begins his teaching, ^ nevertheless, by lajdng down a principle of universal tolerance.

He commands his disciples to follow the cult established by the laws, whatever this cult may be, and to adore the gods of their country, what ever these gods may be; enjoining them only, to guard afterwards their faith — that is, to remain inwardly faithful to his doctrine, and never to divulge the mysteries. Lysis, in writing these opening lines, adroitly conceals herein a double meaning.

By the first he commended, as I have said, tolerance and, reserve for the Pythagorean, and, following the example of the Egyptian priests, established two doctrines, the one apparent and vulgar, conformable to the law; the other mysterious and secret, analogous to the faith; by the second meaning, he reassures the suspicious people of Greece, who, according to the slanders which were in circulation might have feared that the new sect would attack the sanctity of their gods.

This tolerance on the one hand, and this reserve on the other, were no more than what they would be today. The Christian Religion, exclusive and severe, has changed all our ideas in this respect: by admitting only one sole doctrine in one unique church, this religion has necessarily confused tolerance with indifference or coldness, and reserve with heresy or hypocrisy; but in the spirit of polytheism these same things take on another colour.

A Christian philosopher could not, without perjuring himself and committing a frightful impiety, bend the knee in China before Kong-Tse, nor offer incense to Chang-Ty nor to Tien; he could neither o Bacon, Novum Organum, Aph., 65 et 71.

render, in India, homage to Krishna, nor present himself at Benares as a worshipper of Vishnu; he could not even, although recognizing the same God as the Jews and Mussulmans, take part in their ceremonies, or what is still more, worship this God with the Arians, the Lutherans, or Calvinists, if he were a Catholic. This belongs to the veryessence of his cult.

A Pythagorean philosopher did not recognize in the least these formidable barriers, which hem in the nations, as it were, isolate them, and make them worse than enemies. The gods of the people were in his eyes the same gods, and his cosmopolitan dogmas condemned no one to eternal damnation.

From one end of the earth to the other he could cause incense to rise from the altar of the Divinity, under whatever name, under whatever form it might be worshipped, and render to it the public cult established by the law. And this is the reason.

Polytheism was not in their opinion what it has become in ours, an impious and gross idolatry, a cult inspired by the infernal adversary to seduce men and to claim for itself the honours which are due only to the Divinity ; it was a particularization of the Universal Being, a personification of its attributes and its faculties.

Before Moses, none of the theocratic legislators had thought it well to present for the adoration of the people, the Supreme God, unique and uncreated in His unfathomable universality.

The Indian Brahmans, who can be considered as the living types of all the sages and of all the pontiffs of the world, never permit themselves, even in this day when their great age has effaced the traces of their ancient science, to utter the name of God, principle of AH. They are content to meditate upon its essence in silence and to offer sacrifices to its sublimest emanations.

The Chinese sages act the same with regard to the Primal Cause, that must be neither named nor defined*; the followers of Zoroaster, who believe that the two universal

" Asiat. Res., t. iii., p. 371 a 374.

b Mem. concern, les Chin., t. ii., p. 26.

130 The Golden Verses of Pythagoras principles of good and evil, Ormuzd and Ahriman, emanate from this ineffable Cause, are content to designate it under the name of Eternity." The Egyptians, so celebrated for their wisdom, the extent of their learning, and the multitude of their divine symbols, honoured with silence the God, principle and source of all things* ; they never spoke of it, regarding it as inaccessible to all the researches of man ; and Orpheus, their disciple, first author of the brilliant mythology of the Greeks, Orpheus, who seemed to annotmce the soul of the World as creator of this same God from which it emanated, said plainly :