The Golden Verses of Pythagoras — with commentary (1917)

o Kong-Tz^e, dans le Hiao-King qui contient sa doctrine.

i" Hi6rocl., Comment. Aurea. carmin., v. 5.

« Hi^roclfes, ibid., v. 7. 1* Porphyr., in VUd Pythag., p. 37.

Examinations of the Golden Verses 145

bodies."" The founder of the Lyceum, in giving such a definition of friendship, spoke rather by theory than by practice, he who reasoning one day upon friendship, cried ingenuously : "Oh, my friends ! there are no friends. "*

Yet Pythagoras did not conceive friendship as a simple individual affection, but as an universal benevolence which should be extended to all men in general, and to all good people.' At that time he gave to this virtue the name of philanthropy. It is the virtue which, under the name of charity, serves as foundation for the Christian religion. Jesus offers it to his disciples immediately after divine love, and as equal to piety.'' Zoroaster places it after sincerity'; he wished that man might be pure in thought, speech, and action; that he might speak the truth, and that he might do good to all men. Kong-Tse as well as Pythagoras commended' it after filial piety .•'^ "All morals," he said, "can be reduced to the observation of three fundamental laws, of the relations between sovereigns and subjects, between parents and children, between husbands and wives; and to the strict practice of the five capital virtues, of which the first is hurnanity, that is to say, that universal charity, that expansion of the soul which binds man to man without distinction."

6. If thou canst at least: for a most rigid law Binds Power to Necessity.

Here is the proof of what I said just now, that Pythagoras recognized two motives of human actions, the first, issuing from a constrained nature, called Necessity; the second emanating from a free nature, called Power, and both dependent upon an implied primordial law. This doctrine o Dacier, Vie de Pythag. * Diog. Laert., 1. v., § 21.

^ Hi6rod., Aurea. carm., v. 8. ^ Evang. de S. Math., ch. 22.

« Zend-Avesta, 30« hA, p. 164; ibid., 34.' hd, p. 174; ibid., 72' hd, p. 258. / Vie de Confucius, p. 139. 10

146 The Golden Verses of Pythagoras was that of the ancient Egyptians, among whom Pythagoras had imbibed it. "Man is mortal with reference to the body," they said, "but he is immortal with reference to the soul which constitutes essential man. As immortal he has authority over all things; but relative to the material and mortal part of himself, he is subject to destiny. ""

One can see by these few words that the ancient sages did not give to Destiny the universal influence that certain philosophers and particularly the Stoics gave to it later on ; but they considered it only as exercising its empire over matter. It is necessary to believe that since the followers of the Porch had defined it as a chain of causes, by virtue of which the past has taken place, the present exists, and the future is to be realized*; or still better, as the rule of the law by which the Universe is governed'; one must believe, I say, that these philosophers confounded Destiny with Providence, and did not distinguish the effect from its cause, since these definitions conform only with the fundamental law of which destiny is but an emanation. This confusion of words had to produce and in fact did produce, among the Stoics, an inversion of ideas which was the most unfortunate result "*; for, as they established, according to their system, a chain of good and evil that nothing could either alter or break, one easily inferred that the Universe being subject to the attraction of a blind fatality, all actions are here necessarily determined in advance, forced, and thereafter indifferent in themselves; so that good and evil, virtue and vice, are vain words, things whose existence is purely ideal and relative.

The Stoics would have evaded these calamitous results if, like Pythagoras, they had admitted the two motives of which I have spoken. Necessity and Power; and if, far from instituting Necessity alone as absolute master of the o Herm. Trismeg., In Pmmand. * Senac, De Sen,, vi., 2.

c Aul. Gell., 1. vi., c. 2. <* Plutar., De repugn. Stoic, de Fato.

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