The Golden Verses of Pythagoras: Examinations of the Golden Verses: 27. Know the Principle and End of All

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27. Instructed by them, naught shall then deceive thee;
Of diverse beings thou shalt sound the essence;
And thou shalt know the principle and end of All.

That is to say, that the true disciple of Pythagoras, placed en rapport with the gods through contemplation, arrived at the highest degree of perfection, called in the mysteries, autopsy; saw fall before him the false veil which until then had hidden Truth, and contemplated Nature in its remotest sources. It is necessary, in order to attain to this sublime degree, that the intelligence, penetrated by the divine ray of inspiration, should fill the understanding

a These philosophers and their numerous disciples put no limit to the advantages of autopsy, or theophany, as they sometimes named this highest degree of the telestic science. They believed that the contemplation of God could be carried so far during this same life, that the soul became not only united to this Being of beings, but that it was mingled and blended with it. Plotinus boasted having experienced the joy of this beatific vision four times, according to Porphyry, who himself claimed to have been honoured with it at the age of sixty-eight b. The great aim of the mysteries was to teach the initiates the possibility of this union of man with God, and to indicate to them the means. All initiations, all mythological doctrines, tended only to alleviate the soul of the weight of material things, to purify it, so that, desirous of spiritual welfare, and being projected beyond the circle of generations, it could rise to the source of its existence. c If one examines carefully the different cults which still dominate upon earth, one will see that they have not been animated by any other spirit. The knowledge of the Being of beings has been offered everywhere as the aim of wisdom; its similitude, as the crown of perfection; and its enjoyment, as the object of all desires and the goal of all efforts. The enumeration of its infinite faculties has varied; but when one has dared fix one’s attention upon the unity of its essence, one has always defined it as has Pythagoras: the principle and the end of all things.

The Spirit whence proceed the created beings [say the Brahmans], by which they live after being emanated from it,

toward which they aspire, and in which they are finally absorbed, this Spirit is that, to the knowledge of which thou shouldst aspire, the Great Being. a—The Universe is one of its forms. b —It is the Being of beings: without form, without quality, without passion; immense, incomprehensible, infinite, indivisible, incorporeal, irresistible: no intelligence can conceive of its operations and its will suffices to move all intelligences. c—It is the Truth and the Science which never perish. d—Its wisdom, its power, and its plan, are as an immense and limitless sea which no being is in condition either to traverse or to fathom. There is no other God than it. The Universe is filled with its immensity. It is the principle of all things without having principles. e God is one, f eternal, like unto a perfect sphere which has neither beginning nor end. He rules and governs all that exists by a general providence, resultant of fixed and determined principles. Man ought not to seek to penetrate the nature or the essence of this Ineffable Being: such a research is vain and criminal.—

Thus do the Hindu sages express themselves in sundry places. They commend aspiring to the knowledge of the Being of beings, making oneself worthy to be absorbed in its bosom; and forbid, at the same time, seeking to penetrate its nature. I have already said that such was the doctrine of the mysteries. I am about to add an important reflection in order to cast some light upon a doctrine which, at first glance, appears contradictory.

Man, who aspires by the inner movement of his will, to attain to the highest degree of human perfection, and who, by the purification of his understanding, and the acquisition of celestial virtues, puts himself in a state to receive the truth, must observe that the higher he rises in the intelligible sphere, the nearer he approaches to the unfathomable Being

a And in truth he fell so rapidly that he did not perceive, either the terrible disparity between his ideas and his expressions, nor the manifest contradictions into which his prejudices had drawn him.

These grave disadvantages, which do not strike the vulgar, were perfectly understood and appreciated by the sages. The institutors of the mysteries were not ignorant of them and it is for this that they had imposed the most absolute silence upon the initiates and particularly upon the epopts, to whom they gave their highest teachings. They made them feel readily that intelligible things can only become sentient by being transformed, and that this transformation requires a talent and an authority even, which cannot be the appanage of all men.

I am now at the close of my reflection. The diverse cults established upon earth are but the transformations of ideas; that is to say, particular forms of religion, by means of which a theocratic legislator or theosophic sage renders sentient that which is intelligible, and puts within reach of all men what, without these forms, would have been only within reach of a very small number; now, these transformations can only be effected in three ways, according to the three faculties of the human Ternary; the fourth, which concerns its Quaternary or its relative unity, being impossible. I beg the reader to recall what I have said, touching the intimate composition and movement of this Quaternary, and grant me a little attention.

The aim of all the cults being to conduct to the knowledge of the Divinity, they differ only by the route that they travel in its attainment, and this route depends always upon the manner in which the Divinity has been considered by the

a in Greece and in Italy, b three principal modifications in the same God, as in China, c in Japan, in Tibet and among the considerable followers of Fo-Hi or Buddha. d This cult, which has been called that

a Its abuse leads to atheism; but it offers great means, when one knows how to make good use of it, to penetrate the essence of things and succeed to the explanation of natural phenomena.

Again I say, that the Divinity considered in the instinct is presented under the emblem of material infinity: hence, all cults where, by a contrary movement, the intelligible becomes sentient and the sentient intelligible; as when the attributes and faculties of the Divinity are particularized and personified, and as the agents of Nature, the parts of the Universe and the individual beings themselves, are deified. This cult, to which I have given the name of Polytheism, is everywhere, under different forms and under different names,

a The Druids acted in the same manner. b The former invoked the Principle of all things upon the summits of mountains; the latter, in the depths of the forests. Both deemed it unworthy of the divine Majesty to enclose it within precincts and to represent it by a material image. c It even appears that the early Romans shared this opinion. d But this cult, entirely intellectual and destitute of forms, could not subsist long. Perceptible objects were needed by the people, on which they might place their ideas. These objects, even in spite of the legislator who sought to proscribe them, insinuated themselves. e Images, statues, temples were multiplied notwithstanding the laws which prohibited them. At that time if the cult did not undergo a salutary reform, it was changed, either into a gross anthropomorphism, or into an absolute materialism: that is to say, that a man of the people being unable to rise to the divine Unity, drew it down to his level; and the savant, being unable to comprehend it and believing nevertheless to grasp it, confused it with Nature.

It was to evade this inevitable catastrophe that the sages and theosophists had, as I have said, made a mystery of the Unity of God, and had concealed it in the inmost recesses of the sanctuaries. It was only after many trials, and not until the initiate was judged worthy to be admitted to the sublime degree of autopsy, that the last veil was lifted

a

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Footnotes

242:a Origen., Contr. Cels., l. i., p. 19.

242:b Synés., De Insomn., p. 134 et seq.; Niceph. Greg., Schol. in Synes., p. 360 et seq.

242:c Voyez Naudé, Apolog. des grands Hommes accusés de Magie.

242:d Com. Cels., De Re Medic., l. i., Præf.

242:e Hiérocl., Aur. Carm., v. 48 et 49, et ibid., v. 46.

243:a Plat., In Georgiâ, In Phæd.; Ibid., De Rep., l. vii.; August., De Civit. Dei, l. iii., c. 1 et l. x., c. 29.

243:b Acad. des Inscript., t. xxxi., p. 319.

243:c Procl., In Tim., l. v., p. 330; Cicer., Somn. Scip., c. 2, 3, 4, et 6; Hierocl., In Aur. Carm., v. 70.

244:a Veda, cité par W. Jones, Asiat. Resear., t. iv., p. 173.

244:b Premier Pourâna, intitulé Matsya.

244:c Boushznda-Ramayan.

244:d Institut. of Menou, ch. 1, v. 1.

244:e Shanda-Pourdna.

244:f Ekhamesha.

246:a Aurore naissante (Morgens röte im Aufgang: durch Jacob Böhmen zu Amsterdam, 1682), ch. 14, § 41.

247:a Brahma, Vishnu, and Rudra.

247:b Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto.

247:c In the Tao-te-King of Lao-Tse, a work which has held a high reputation among the numerous followers of this theosophist, one finds that the absolute, universal Being which he declares can neither be named, nor defined, is triple. "The first," he said, "has engendered the second; the two have produced the third; and the three have made all things. That which the mind perceives and the eye cannot see is named Y, the absolute Unity, the central point; that which the heart understands and the ear cannot hear is named Hi, the universal Existence; that which the soul feels and the hand cannot touch is named Ouei, the individual Existence. Seek not to penetrate the depths of this Trinity; its incomprehensibility comes from its Unity." "This Unity," adds Lao-Tse, in another passage, "is named Tao, the Truth; Tao is Life; Tao is to itself both rule and model. It is so lofty that it cannot be attained; so profound that it cannot be fathomed; so great that it contains the Universe; when one looks on high one sees no beginning; when one follows it in its productions, one finds in it no end."

247:d One of the principal dogmas of Fo-Hi is the existence of one God in 248:a This is noticeable particularly in Bayle.

250:a Herod., In Clio, § 131; Strab., l. xv.; Boehm., Mores Gentium.

250:b Pelloutier, Hist. des Celtes, t. v., c. 3.

250:c Tacit., De Morib. Germ., c. 9; Lactant., Præm., p. 5.

250:d August., De Civit. Dei, l. iv., c. 31; Clem. Alex., l. i., p. 304; Strom.

250:e Plutar., In Vitâ Numa; ibid., In Mar.; Pelloutier, Hist. des Celt., l. iv., c. i.; Lucan., Phars., l. iii., v. 412; Clem. Alex., Cohort. ad Gent., p. 57.

251:a Euseb., Præp. Evang., l. xiii., c. 12; Henric. Steph., Poes. philosop., p. 78.