Yet in the same breath, that very Soul which was the occasion of descent to the others is declared not to have descended. “ It knew no decline,” but merely illuminated the darkness in such a way that an image of it was formed upon the Matter. Then, they shape an image of that image somewhere below — through the medium of Matter or of Materiality or whatever else of many names they choose to give it in their frequent change of terms, invented to darken their doctrine — and so they bring into being what they call the Creator or Demiurge, then this lower is severed from his Mother (Sophia) and becomes the author of the Kosmos down to the latest of the succession of images constituting it.
Such is the blasphemy of one of their writers.
Now, in the first place, if the Soul has not actually come down but has illuminated the darkness, how can it truly be said to have declined ? The outflow from it of something in the nature of light does not justify the assertion of its decline ; for that, it must make an actual movement towards the object lying in the lower realm and illuminate it by contact.
If, on the other hand, the Soul keeps to its own place and illuminates the lower without directing any act towards that end, why shoifld it
n.9. 12] “AGAINST THE GNOSTICS” 231
alone be the illuminant ? Why should not the Kosmos draw light also from the yet greater powers contained in the total of existence ?
Again, if the Soul possesses the plan of a Universe, and by virtue of this plan illuminates it, why do not that illumination and the creating of the world take place simultaneously ? Why must the Soul wait till the representations of the plan be made actual ?
Then again this Plan — the “Far Country ” of their terminology — brought into being, as they hold, by the greater powers, could not have been the occasion of decline to the creators.
Further, how explain that under this illumination the Matter of the Kosmos produces images of the order of Soul instead of mere bodily- nature ? An image of Soul could not demand darkness or Matter, but wherever formed it would exhibit the character of the producing element and remain in close union with it.
Next, is this image a real-being, or, as they say, an Intellection ?
If it is a reality, in what way does it differ from its original ? By being a distinct form of the Soul ? But then, since the original is the reasoning Soul, this secondary form must be the vegetative and genera- tive Soul ; and then, what becomes of the theory that it is produced for glory’s sake, what becomes of the creation in arrogance and self- assertion ? The theory puts an end also to creation by representation and, still more decidedly, to any thinking in the act ; and what need is left for a creator creating by way of Matter and Image ?
If it is an Intellection, then we ask first What justifies the name ? and next. How does anything come into being unless the Soul give this Intellection creative power and how, after all, can creative power reside in a created thing ? Are we to be told that it is a question (not so much of creation as) of a first Image followed by a second ?
But this is quite arbitrary.
And why is fire the first creation ?
And how does this image set to its task immediately after it comes into being ?
By memory of what it has seen ?
But it was utterly non-existent, it could have no vision, either it or the Mother they bestow upon it.
Another difficulty : These people (tell us that they) come upon earth not as Soul-Images but as veritable Souls ; yet, by great stress and strain, one or two of them are able to stir beyond the limits of the world, and when they do attain Reminiscence barely carry with them some slight recollection of the Sphere they once knew : on the other hand, this Image, a new-comer into being, is able, they teU us — as also is its Mother — to form at least some dim representation of the celestial world. It is an Image, stamped in Matter, yet it not merely has the conception of the Supreme and adopts from that world the plan of this, but knows what elements serve the purpose. How, for instance, did it come to make fire before anything else ? What made it judge fire a better first than some other object ?
Again, if it created the fire of the Universe by thinking of fire, why did it not make the Universe at a stroke by thinking of the Universe ? It must have conceived the product complete from the first ; the con- stituent elements would be embraced in that general conception.
The creation must have been in all respects more according to the way of Nature than to that of the arts — for the arts are of later origin than Nature and the Universe, and even at the present stage the partial things brought into being by the natural Kinds do not follow any such order — first fire, then the several other elements, then the various blends of these — on the contrary the living organism entire is encompassed and rounded off within the uterine germ. Why should not the material of the Universe be similarly embraced in a Kosmic Type in which earth, fire and the rest would be included ? We can only suppose that these people themselves, acting by their more authentic Soul, would have produced the world by such a process, but that the Creator had not wit to do so.
And yet to conceive the vast span of the Heavens — to be great in that degree — to devise the obliquity of the Zodiac and the circling path of all the celestial bodies beneath it, and this earth of ours — and all in
Ii. 9- 13]
such a way that reason can be given for the plan — this could never be the work of an Image ; it tells of that Power (the All-Soul) next to the very Highest Beings.
Against their will, they themselves admit this : their " outshining upon the darkness,” if the doctrine is sifted, makes it impossible to deny the true origins of the Kosmos.
Why should this down-shining take place imless such a process belonged to a universal law ?
Either the process is in the order of Nature or against that order. If it is in the nature of things, it must have taken place from eternity ; if it is against the nature of things, then the breach of natural right exists in the Supreme also ; evil antedates this world ; the cause of evil is not the world ; on the contrary the Supreme is the evil to us ; instead of the Soul’s harm coming from this sphere, we have this Sphere harmed by the Soul.
In fine, the theory amounts to making the world one of the Primals, and with it the Matter from which it emerges.
The Soul that declined, they tell us, saw and illuminated the already existent Darkness. Now whence came that Darkness ?
If they tell us that the Soul created the Darkness by its Decline, then, obviously, there was nowhere for the Soul to decline to ; the cause of the decline was not the Darkness but the very nature of the Soul. The theory, therefore, refers the entire process to pre-existing compul- sions : the guilt inlieres in the Primal Beings.
Those, then, that censure the constitution of the Kosmos do not understand what they are doing or where this audacity leads them. They do not tmderstcmd that there is a successive order of Primals, Secondaries, Tertiaries and so on continuously to the Ultimates ; that nothing is to be blamed for being inferior to the First ; that we can but accept, meekly, the constitution of the total, and make our best way towards the Primals, withdrawing from the tragic spectacle, as they see it, of the Kosmic spheres — which in reality are all suave graciousness.
And what, after all, is there so terrible in these Spheres with which it is sought to frighten people unaccustomed to thinking, never trained in an instructive and coherent gnosis ?
Even the fact that their material frame is of fire does not make them dreadful ; their Movements are in keeping with the All and with the Earth : but what we must consider in them is the Soul, that on which these people base their own title to honour.
And, yet, again, their material frames are pre-eminent in vastness and beauty, as they co-operate in act and in influence with the entire order of Nature, and can never cease to exist as long as the Primals stand ; they enter into the completion of the All of which they are major parts.
If men rank highly among other living Beings, much more do these, whose office in the AU is not to play the tyrant but to serve towards beauty and order. The action attributed to them must be understood as a foretelling of coming events, while the causing of all the variety is due, in part to diverse destinies — for there cannot be one lot for the entire body of men— in part to the birth moment, in part to wide divergencies of place, in part to states of the Souls.
Once more, we have no right to ask that all men shall be good, or to rush into censure because such universal virtue is not possible : this would be repeating the error of confusing our sphere with the Supreme and treating evil as a nearly negligeable failure in wisdom — as good lessened and dwindling continuously, a continuous fading out ; it would be like calling the Nature-Principle evil because it is not Sense- Perception and the thing of sense evil for not being a Reason-Principle. If evil is no more than that, we will be obliged to admit evil in the Supreme also, for there, too. Soul is less exalted than the Intellectual- Principle, and That too has its Superior.
In yet another way they infringe still more gravely upon the in- violability of the Supreme.
In the sacred formulas they inscribe, purporting to address the
Ii. 9. 14]
f f
Supernal Beings — not merely the Soul but even the Transcendents — they are simply uttering spells and appeasements and evocations in the idea that these Powers will obey a call and be led about by a word from any of us who is in some degree trained to use the appropriate forms in the appropriate way — certain melodies, certain sounds, specially directed breathings, sibilant cries, and all else to which is ascribed magic potency upon the Supreme. Perhaps they would repudiate any such intention : still they must explain how these things act upon the unembodied : they do not see that the power they attribute to their own words is so much taken away from the majesty of the divine.
They tell us they can free themselves of diseases.
If they meant, by temperate living and an appropriate regime, they would be right and in accordance with all sound knowledge. But they assert diseases to be Spirit-Beings and boast of being able to expel them by formula : this pretension may enhance their importance with the crowd, gaping upon the powers of magicians ; but they can never per- suade the intelligent that disease arises otherwise than from such causes as overstrain, excess, deficiency, putrid decay, in a word some variation whether from within or from without.
The nature of illness is indicated by its very cure. A motion, a medi- cine, the letting of blood, and the diseeise shifts down and away ; some- times scantiness of nourishment restores the system ; presumably the Spiritual power gets hungry or is debilitated by the purge. Either this Spirit makes a hasty exit or it remains within. If it stays, how does the disease disappear, with the cause still present ? If it quits the place, what has driven it out ? Has anything happened to it ? Are we to sup- pose it throve on the disease ? In that case the disease existed as some- thing distinct from the Spirit-Power. Then again, if it steps in where no cause of sickness exists, why should there be anything else but illness ? If there must be such a cause, the Spirit is unnecessary : that cause is sufficient to produce that fever. As for the notion, that just when the cause presents itself, the watchful Spirit leaps to incorporate itself with it, this is simply amusing.