The Golden Verses of Pythagoras — with commentary (1917)

or upon the future; the necessity of Destiny, upon the things done, or upon the past: and the one nourished the other unceasingly, by working upon the materials which they reciprocally furnished each other ; for according to this admirable philosopher, it is of the past that the future is bom, of the future that the past is formed, and of the union of both that is engendered the always existing present, from which they draw alike their origin: a most profound idea that the Stoics had adopted.

Thus, following this doctrine, liberty rules in the future, necessity in the past, and Providence over the present. Nothing that exists happens by chance but by the union of the fundamental and providential law with the human will which follows or transgresses it, by operating upon necessity.* The harmony of the Will and Providence constitutes Good; Evil is born of their opposition.

Man has received three forces adapted to each of the three modifications of his being, to be guided in the course that he should pursue on earth and all three enchained to his Will. The first, attached to the body, is instinct; the second, devoted to the soul, is virtue; the third, appertaining to intelligence, is science or wisdom.

These three forces, indifferent in themselves, take this name only through the good usage that the Will makes of it ; for, through bad usage they degenerate into brutishness, vice, and ignorance. Instinct perceives the physical good or evil resulting from sensation; virtue recognizes the moral good or evil existing in sentiment; science judges the intelligible good or evil which springs from assent.

In sensation, good or evil is called pleasure or pain; in sentiment, love or hate; in assent, truth or error. Sensation, sentiment, and assent, dwelling in the body, in the soul, and in the spirit, form a ternary, which becoming developed under favour of a relative unity constitutes the human quaternary, or Man considered abstractly. The three affections which compose this ternary act and react upon one another, and become mutually 2o Senec, De Sen., 1. vi., c. 2. * Hi6rocl., Aur. carmin., v. 18.

enlightened or obscured; and the unity which binds them, that is to say, Man, is perfected or depraved, according as it tends to become blended with the Universal Unity or to become distinguished from it. The means that this ternary has of becoming blended with it, or of becoming distinguished from it, of approaching near or of drawing away from it, resides wholly in its Will, which, through the use that it makes of the instruments furnished it by the body, soul, and mind, becomes instinctive or stupefied; is made virtuous or vicious, wise or ignorant, and places itself in condition to perceive with more or less energy, to understand and to judge with more or less rectitude what there is of goodness, excellence, and justice in sensation, sentiment, or assent; to distinguish, with more or less force and knowledge, good and evil; and not to be deceived at last in what is really pleasure or pain, love or hatred, truth or error.

Indeed one feels that the metaphysical doctrine that I have just briefly set forth is nowhere found so clearly expressed, and therefore I do not need to support it with any direct authority. It is only by adopting the principles set down in the Golden Verses and by meditating a long time upon what has been written by Pythagoras that one is able to conceive the ensemble. The disciples of this philosopher having been extremely discreet and often obscure, one can only well appreciate the opinions of their master by throwing light upon them with those of the Platonists and Stoics, who have adopted and spread them without any reserve."

Man, such as I have just depicted him, according to the idea that Pythagoras had conceived, placed under the 3o Jamblic, De Vitd Pythag.; Porphyr., ibid., et de AbsHn.; VM Pythag. apud; Phot., Cod., 259; Diog. Laert., In Pythag., 1. viii.; Hierocl., Comment, in Aw. Carm.; ibid., De Provident.; Philost., In Vitd Apollon; Plutar., De Placit. philos.; ibid., De Procreat. anim.; Apul., In Florid.; Macrob., In Saturn, et Somn. Scip.; Fabric, Bibl. grcec. in Pythag.; Clem. Alex., Strom., passim., etc.

170 The Golden Verses of Pythagoras dominion of Providence between the past and the future, endowed with a free will by his essence, and being carried along toward virtue or vice with its own movement, Man, i say, should understand the source of the evils that he necessarily experiences; and far from accusing this same Providence which dispenses good and evil to each accordingto his merit and his anterior actions, can blame only himself if he suffers, through an inevitable consequence of his past mistakes.o For Pythagoras admitted many successive existences,* and maintained that the present, which strikes us, and the future, which menaces us, are only the expression of the past which has been our work in anterior times. He said that the greater part of men lose, in returning to Hfe, the remembrance of these past existences ; but that, concerning himself, he had, by a particular favour of the gods, preserved the memory of them/ Thus according to his doctrine, this fatal Necessity, of which man unceasingly complains, has been created by himself through the use of his will; he traverses, in proportion as he advances in time, the road that he has already traced for himself; and according as he has modified it by good or evil, as he sows so to speak, his virtues or his vices, he will find it again more smooth or laborious, when the time will come to traverse it anew.