The Golden Verses of Pythagoras — with commentary (1917)
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o Cic^ron, Tuscul., 1. i.; Clem. Alex., Strom., 1. v., p. 501. * Justin., Cohort ad Gent., p. 6; Cyrill., Contr. Julien; Fabric, Bibl. grccc, t. i., p. 472. ' Plutar., De Procr. anim.
^ Plat., Epist., 2 et 7, t. iii., p. 312, 313, 341, etc.
Examinations of the Golden Verses 149
ridiculous that his enemies had drawn from certain equivocal phrases." What persuades me to make this observation, is because it has been proved that Manes had indeed admitted two opposed Principles of Good and Evil, eternal independents, and holding of themselves their proper and absolute existence, since it is easy to see that Zoroaster, whose doctrine he had principally imitated, had not admitted them as such, but as equally issued from a superior Cause, concerning the essence of which he was silent.* I am very much inclined to believe that the Christian doctors who have transmitted to us the ideas of this mighty heresiarch, blinded by their hatred or by their ignorance, have travestied them as I find that the Platonist philosophers, bewildered by their own opinions, have entirely disfigured those of the illustrious founder of the Academy. The errors of both have been, taking for absolute beings, what Zoroaster and Pythagoras, Plato or Manes, had put down as emanations, results, forces, or even the simple abstractions of the understanding. Thus Ormuzd and Ahriman, Power and Necessity, the Same and the Other, Light and Darkness, are, in reality, only the same things diversely expressed, diversely sensed, but always drawn from the same origin and subject to the same fundamental Cause of the Universe. It is not true therefore, as Chalcidius has stated, that Pythagoras may have demonstrated that evil exists necessarily,' because matter is evil in itself. Pythagoras
" Voyez I'excellent ouvrage de Beausobre k ce sujet, L'Histoire du Manicheisme.
b When Zoroaster spoke of this Cause, he gave it the name of Time without Limit, following the translation of Anquetil Duperron. This Cause does not still appear absolute in the doctrine of this theosophist; because in a passage of the Zend-Avesta, where in contemplation of the Supreme Being, producer of Ormuzd, he calls this Being, the Being absorbed in excellence. and says that Fire, acting from the beginning, is the principle of union between this Being and Ormuzd (36* hd du Vendidad Sade, p. 180, 196 fargard, p. 415), One finds in another book, called Sharistha, that when this Supreme Being organized the matter of the Universe, he projected his Will in the form of a resplendent light (Apud Hyde, c. 22, p. 298). ■- In Tim., not. 295.
150 The Golden Verses of Pythagoras never said that matter might be an absolute being whose essence might be composed of evil. Hierocles, who had studied the doctrine of this great man and that of Plato, has denied that either the one or the other had ever declared matter as a being existing by itself. He has proved, on the contrary, that Plato taught, following the steps of Pythagoras, that the World was produced from Nothing, and that his followers were mistaken when they thought that he admitted an uncreated matter." Power and Necessity (mentioned in the lines at the head of this Examination) are not, as has been believed, the absolute source of good and evil. Necessity is not more evil in itself than Power is not good ; it is from the usage that man is called to make of them, and from their employment which is indicated by wisdom or ignorance, virtue or vice, that results Good or Evil. This has been felt by Homer who has expressed it in an admirable allegory, by representing the god of gods himself, Jupiter, opening indifferently the sources of good and evil upon the universe.
Beside Jove's threshold stand two casks of gifts for man. One cask contains the evil, one the good, . . . '
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