The quality now manifested may be probably referred to the con- duct of a former life ; we may suppose that previous actions have made the Reason-Principle now governing within us inferior in radiance to
Iii. 3.5]
that which ruled before ; the Soul which later will shine out again is for the present at a feebler power.
And any Reason-Principle may be said to include within itself the Reason-Principle of Matter which therefore it is able to elaborate to its own purposes, either finding it consonant with itself or bestowing upon it the quality which makes it so. The Reason-Principle of an ox does not occur except in connection with the Matter appropriate to the ox-Kind. It must be by such a process that the transmigration, of which we read (in Plato) takes place ; the Soul must lose its nature, the Reason-Prin- ciple be transformed ; thus there comes the ox-soul which once was Man.
The degradation, then, is just.
StiU, how did the inferior Principle ever come into being, and how does the higher fall to it ?
Once more — not all things are Firsts ; there are Secondaries and Tertiaries, of a nature inferior to that of their Priors ; and a slight tilt is enough to determine the departure from the straight course. Further, the linking of any one being with any other amounts to a blending such as to produce a distinct entity, a compoimd of the two ; it is not that the greater and prior suffers any diminution of its own nature ; the lesser and secondary is such from its very beginning ; it is in its own nature the lesser thing it becomes, and if it suffers the consequences, such suffer- ing is merited : all our reasonings on these questions must take account of previous living as the source from which the present takes its rise.
There is, then, a Providence, which permeates the Kosmos from first to last, not everywhere equal, as in a numerical distribution, but pro- portioned, differing, according to the grades of place — just as in some one animal, linked from first to last, each member has its own function, the nobler organ the higher activity while others successively concern the lower degrees of the life, each part acting of itself, and experiencing what belongs to its own nature and what comes from its relation with every other. Strike, and what is designed for utterance gives forth the appropriate volume of sound while other parts take the blow in silence
but react in their own especial movement ; the total of all the utterance and action and receptivity constitutes what we may call the personal voice, life and history of the living form. The parts, distinct in Kind, have distinct functions : the feet have their work and the eyes theirs ; the understanding serves to one end, the Intellectual Principle to another.
But all sums to a unity, a comprehensive Providence. From the inferior grade downwards is Fate ; the upper is Providence alone : for in the Intellectual Kosmos all is Reason-Principle or its Priors — Divine Mind and unmingled Soul — and immediately upon these follows Provi- dence which rises from Divine Mind, is the content of the Unmingled Soul, and, through this Soul, is communicated to the Sphere of living things.
This Reason-Principle comes as a thing of unequal parts, and there- fore its creations are imequal, as, for example, the several members of one Living Being. But after this allotment of rank and function, all act consonant with the will of the gods keeps the sequence and is included under the providential government, for the Reason-Principle of provi- dence is god-serving.
All such right-doing, then, is linked to Providence ; but it is not therefore performed by it : men or other agents, living or hfeless, are causes of certain things happening, and any good that may result is taken up again by Providence. In the total, then, the right rules and what has happened amiss is transformed and corrected. Thus, to take an example from a single body, the Providence of a living organism implies its health ; let it be gashed or otherwise wounded, and that Reason-Principle which governs it sets to work to draw it together, knit it anew, heal it, and put the affected part to rights.
In sum, evil belongs to the sequence of things, but it comes (not from Providence but) from necessity. It originates in ourselves ; it has its causes no doubt, but we are not, therefore, forced to it by Providence : some of these causes we adapt to the operation of Providence and of its subordinates, but with others we fail to make the connection ; the act instead of being ranged under the will of Providence consults the desire of the agent alone or of some other element in the Universe, something
Iii. 3-6]
which is either itself at variance with Providence or has set up some such state of variance in ourselves.
The one circumstance does not produce the same result wherever it acts ; the normal operation will be modified from case to case : Helen’s beauty told very differently on Paris and on Idomeneus ; bring together two handsome people of loose character and two living honour- ably and the resulting conduct is very different ; a good man meeting a libertine exhibits a distinct phase of his nature and, similarly, the dissolute answer to the society of their betters.
The act of the libertine is not done by Providence or in accordance with Providence ; neither is the action of the good done by Providence — it is done by the man — but it is done in accordance with Providence, for it is an act consonant with the Reason-Principle. Thus a patient following his treatment is himself an agent and yet is acting in accordance with the doctor’s method inspired by the art concerned with the causes of health and sickness ; what one does against the laws of health is one’s act, but an act conflicting with the Providence of medicine.
But, if all this be true, how can evil fall within the scope of seer- ship ? The predictions of the seers are based on observation of the Universal Circuit : how can this indicate the evil with the good ?
Clearly the reason is that all contraries coalesce. Take, for example. Shape and (its contrary) Matter : the living being (of the lower order) is a coalescence of these two ; so that to be aware of the Shape and the Reason-Principle is to be aware of the Matter on which the Shape has been imposed.
The living-being of the compound order is not present (as pure and simple Idea) like the living being of the Intellectual order : in the com- pound entity, we are aware, at once, of the Reason-Principle and of the inferior element brought under form. Now the Universe is such a com- pound living thing : to observe, therefore, its content is to be aware not less of its lower elements than of the Providence which operates within it.
This Providence reaches to all that comes into being ; its scope therefore includes living things with their actions and states, the total of their history at once overruled by the Reason- Principle and yet subject in some degree to Necessity.
These, then, are presented as mingled both by their initial nature and by the continuous process of their existence ; and the Seer is not able to make a perfect discrimination setting on the one side Providence with all that happens under Providence and on the other side what the substrate communicates to its product. Such discrimination is not for a man, not for a wise man or a divine man : one may say it is the pre- rogative of a god. Not causes but facts lie in the Seer’s province ; his art is the reading of the scriptures of Nature which tell of the ordered and never condescend to the disorderly ; the movement of the Universe utters its testimony to him and, before men and things reveal themselves, brings to light what severally and collectively they are.
Here conspires with There and There with Here, elaborating together the consistency and eternity of a Kosmos and by their correspondences revealing the sequence of things to the trained observer — for every form of divination turns upon correspondences. Universal interdependence, there could not be, but universal resemblance there must. This probably is the meaning of the saying that Correspondences maintain the Universe.
This is a correspondence of inferior with inferior, of superior with superior, eye with eye, foot with foot, everything with its fellow and, in another order, virtue with right action and vice with unrighteousness. Admit such correspondence in the All and we have the possibility of prediction. If the one order acts on the other, the relation is not that of maker to thing made — the two are coeval — it is the interplay of members of one living being ; each in its own place and way moves as its own nature demands ; to every organ its grade and task, and to every grade and task its effective organ.
And since the higher exists, there must be the lower as well. The Universe is a thing of variety, and how could there be an inferior
ni.3-7]
without a superior or a superior without an inferior ? We cannot com- plain about the lower in the higher ; rather, we must be grateful to the higher for giving something of itself to the lower.
In a word, those that would like evil driven out from the All would drive out Providence itself.
What would Providence have to provide for ? Certainly not for itself or for the Good : when we speak of a Providence above, we mean an act upon something below.
That which resumes all under a unity is a Principle in which all things exist together and the single thing is All. From this Principle, which remains internally unmoved, particular things push forth as from a single root which never itself emerges. They are a branching into part, into multiplicity, each single outgrowth bearing its trace of the common source. Thus, phase by phase, there is finally the production into this world ; some things close still to the root, others widely separate in the continuous progression until we have, in our metaphor, bough and crest, foliage and fruit. At the one side all is one point of unbroken rest, on the other is the ceaseless process, leaf and fruit, all the things of process carrying ever within themselves the Reason-Principles of the Upper Sphere, and striving to become trees in their own minor order and producing, if at all, only what is in strict gradation from themselves.
As for the abandoned spaces in what corresponds to the branches these too draw upon the root, from which, despite all their variance, they also derive ; and the branches again operate upon their own furthest extremities : operation is to be traced only from point to next point, but, in the fact, there has been both inflow and outgo (of creative or modifying force) at the very root which, itself again, has its priors.
The things that act upon each other are branchings from a far-off beginning and so stand distinct ; but they derive initially from the one source : all interaction is like that of brothers, resemblant as drawing life from the same parents.
Our Tutelary Spirit
Some Existents (Absolute Unity and Intellectual-Principle) remain at rest while their Hypostases, or Expressed- Idea, come into being ; but, in our view, the Soul generates by its motion, to which is due the sensitive faculty — that in any of its expression-forms — Nature and all forms of hfe down to the vegetable order. Even as it is present in human beings the Soul carries its Expression-form (H>’postasis) with it, but is not the dominant since it is not the whole man (humanity including the Intel- lectual Principle, as well) : in the vegetable order it is the highest since there is nothing to rival it ; but at this phase it is no longer reproductive, or, at least, what it produces is of quite another order ; here life ceases ; all later production is lifeless.