The Golden Verses of Pythagoras — with commentary (1917)
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^ Semel jussit, semper paret, Seneca has said. "The laws which God has prescribed for Himself," he adds, "He will never revoke, because they have been dictated by His own perfections; and that the same plan, the same design having pleased Him once, pleases Him eternally" (Senec, Praf. ad Qucest. nat.).
' Cicer., De Fato, cap. 17. / Cicer., ibid., c. 9. s Aul. Gell., 1. vi., c. 2.
Examinations of the Golden Verses 155
by all those who have preceded them or followed them in their divergent opinions, to see that the inferences drawn by their adversaries were just, and that they could not refute them without contradicting themselves.
Every time that one has claimed to found the Universe upon the existence of a sole material or spiritual nature, and to make proceed from this sole nature the explanation of all phenomena, one has become exposed and always will be, to insurmountable difficulties.
It is always in asking what the origin of Good and Evil is, that all the systems of this sort have been irresistibly overthrown, from Moschus, Leucippus, and Epicurus, down to Spinoza and Leibnitz; from Parmenides, Zeno of Elea, and Chrysippus, down to Berkeley and Kant.
For, let there be no misunderstanding, the solution of the problem concerning free will depends upon preliminary knowledge of the origin of evil, so that one cannot reply plainly to this question: Whence comes Evil? Neither can one reply to this one: Is man free?
And that one be not still further deceived here, the knowledge of the origin of evil, if it has been acquired, has never been-openly divulged: it has been profoundly buried with that of the Unity of God in the ancient mysteries and has never emerged except enveloped in a triple veil.
The initiates imposed upon themselves a rigid silence concerning what they called the sufferings of God'': his death, his descent into the infernal regions, and his resurrection. They knew that the serpent was, in general, the symbol of evil, and that it was under this form that the Python had fought with and been slain by Apollo.'' The theosophists have not made a public dogma of the Unity of God, precisely on o Cicer., De Nat. Dear., 1. i., c. 9; Plutar., De repug. Stoic; Diogenian. Apud.; Euseb., Prap. Evang., 1. vi., c. 8.
* Herodot., Euterp., §171 ; Julian Firm., De Error, prof., p. 45.
'Meurs., Griec. Feriat., 1. i.; Plutar., In Alcibiad.; Porphyr., De Abst., 1. ii., §36; Euseh., Prap. Evang., 1. i., c. i; Schol. ApoU., 1. i.,v. 917; Pausan., Corinth, p. 73.
d Porphyr., Vitd Pythag., p. 10.
156 The Golden Verses of Pythagoras account of the explanation that it would be necessary to give to the origin of good and evil ; for without this explanation, the dogma in itself would have been incomprehensible. Moses realized it perfectly, and in the plan which he had conceived of striking the people whose legislator he was, with a character as extraordinary as indelible, by founding his cult upon the publicity of a dogma hidden, until that time in the depths of the sanctuaries and reserved for the initiates alone, he did not hesitate to divulge what he knew pertaining to the creation of the world and the origin of evil. It is true that the manner in which he gave it, under a simplicity and apparent clarity, concealed a profimdity and obscurity almost unfathomable ; but the form which he gave to this formidable mystery sufficed to support, in the opinion of the vulgar, the Unity of God and this was all that he wished to do.
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