The Golden Verses of Pythagoras — with commentary (1917)

started from this axiom that nothing is made from nothing. " The former sought the how, and the latter the why of things; and all were united in saying that there is no effect without cause.

Their different systems, based upon the principles of reasoning which seemed incontestable, and supported by a series of imposing conclusions, had, at first, a prodigious success; but this ^c/o< paled considerably when soon the disciples of Pythagoras, and a little later those of Socrates and Plato, having received from their masters the theosophical tradition, stopped these sophistical physicists in the midst of their triumphs, and, asking them the cause of physical and of moral evil, proved to them that they knew nothing of it ; and that, in whatever fashion they might deduce it by their system, they could not avoid establishing an absolute fatality, destructive to the liberty of man, which by depriving it of morality of actions, by confounding vice and virtue, ignorance and wisdom, made of the Universe no more than a frightful chaos.

In vain these had thrust back the reproach and claimed that the inference was false; their adversaries pursuing them on their own grovmd cried out to them: If the principle that you admit is good, whence comes it that men are wicked and miserable? If this unique principle is bad, whence emerge goodness and virtue?

If nature is the expression of this sole principle, how is it not constant and why does its government sow goodness and evil?"* The materialists had recourse vainly to a certain deviation in atoms," and the spiritualists, to a certain adjuvant cause quite similar to efficacious grace ^; the theosophists would never have renounced them if they

"De Gdrando, Hist, des Syst. it PhU., t. iii., p. 283; Arist., Metaph.,\. i., c. 6; Diog. Laert., 1. ix., c. 19.

* Cicer., De Nat. Deor., 1. i., c. 9.

' Boet., De Consol., 1. i., prosa 4.

' Plutar., Adv. Stoic, p. 1075.

' Cicer., De Fato, c. 10; Lucret., 1. ii., v. 216, 251, 284.

/Cicer., De Fato, c. 9 et 17; Oiogenian., Apud.; Kuseb., Prap. Evan., 1. vi., c. 8.

Examinations of the Golden Verses 159

had not enclosed them in a syllogistic circle, by making them admit, sometimes that the unique and all-powerful Principle cannot think of everything, " sometimes that vice is useful and that without it there would be no virtue * ; paradoxes of which they had no trouble demonstrating the absurdity and the revolting inferences/

Take a survey of all the nations of the world, peruse all the books that you please, and you will find the liberty of man, the free will of his actions, the influence of his will over his passions, only in the theosophical tradition. Wherever you see physical or metaphysical systems, doctrines of whatever kind they may be, founded upon a sole principle of the material or spiritual Universe, you can conclude boldly that absolute fatality results from it and that their authors find themselves in need of making two things one : or of explaining the origin of good and evil, which is impossible; or of establishing the free will a priori, which is a manifest contradiction of their reasonings. If you care to penetrate into metaphysical depths, examine this decisive point upon this matter. Moses founded his cult upon the Unity of God and he explained the origin of evil; but he found himself forced by the very nature of this formidable mystery to envelop his explanation with such a veil, that it remained impenetrable for all those who had not received the traditional revelation; so that the liberty of man existed in his cult only by favour of theosophical tradition, and that it became weaker and disappeared entirely from it with this same tradition, the two opposed sects of the Pharisees and Sadducees which divided the cult prove this."* The o Cicer., De Natur. Dear., 1. iii., c. 38 et 39.

I> Aul. Gell., 1. vi., c. I. ' Plutar., Adv. Stoic.