The golden verses of Pythagoras

Lysis expresses it thus: Nature, by the homogeneity which, as I have stated, constitutes its essence, teaches men to see beyond the range of their senses, transports them by analogy from one region to another and develops their ideas. The perfectibility which is manifested through the grace of time is called perfection; for the more a thing is perfected the more perfect it becomes. The man who perceives this is struck by it, and if he reflect he finds truth, as I have openly stated, and to which Lysis was content with making allusion, on account of the secret of the mysteries that he was forced to respect.

It is this perfectibility manifested in Nature, which gives the affirmative proofs that I have promised, touching the way in which Providence removes with time the evils which afflict men. These are the proofs de facto. They cannot be challenged without absurdity. I know well that there have been men who, studying Nature within four walls, and considering its operations through the extremely narrow prism of their ideas, have denied that anything might be perfectible, and have asserted that the Universe was immobile because they have not seen it move; but there does not exist today a genuine observer, a naturalist whose learning is founded upon Nature, who does not invalidate the decision of these pretended savants, and who does not put perfectibility in the rank of the most rigorously demonstrated truths.

I shall not quote the ancients on a subject where their authority would be challenged; I shall even limit myself, to evade prolixities, to a small number of striking passages among the moderns. Leibnitz, who ought less than any other to admit perfectibility, since he had founded his system upon the existence of the best of worlds possible, has, however, recognized it in Nature, in advancing that all the changes which are operated there are the consequence of both; that everything tends toward its improvement, and that therefore the present is already teeming with the future.[653] Buffon, inclining strongly toward the system of atoms, ought also to be much opposed, and yet he has been unable to see that Nature, in general, tends far more toward life than toward death, and that it seems to be seeking to organize bodies as much as is possible.[654] The school of Kant has pushed the system of perfectibility as far as it could go. Schelling, the disciple of most consequence of this celebrated man, has followed the development of Nature with a force of thought which has perhaps passed the mark. The former, has ventured to say that Nature is a sort of Divinity in germ, which tends to apotheosis, and is prepared for existence with God, by the reign of Chaos, and by that of Providence.[655] But those are only speculative opinions. Here are opinions founded upon facts.

The continents have not always been what they are today, the waters of the globe have not always been distributed in the same manner. The ocean changes insensibly its bed, undermines the lands, divides them, rushes over some, and leaves others dry. The islands have not always been islands. The continents have been peopled, with living and vegetating beings, before the present disposition of the waters upon the globe.[657]

Besides [these same naturalists continue], the greater part of the fossil bones that have been assembled and compared are those of animals different from any of the species actually known; has the kingdom of life therefore changed? This one cannot refuse to believe.[659] As Nature proceeds unceasingly from the simple to the composite, it is probable that the most imperfect animals should have been created before the tribes, higher in the scale of life. It even seems that each of the animal classes indicates a sort of suspension in the creative power, an intermission, an era of repose, during which Nature prepared in silence the germs of life which should come to light in the course of the cycles. One might thus enumerate the epochs of living Nature, epochs remote in the night of ages and which have been obliged to precede the formation of mankind. A time may have been when the insect, the shell, the unclean reptile, did not recognize the master in the Universe and were placed at the head of the organized bodies.[660]

It is certain that most perfect beings come from less perfect, and that they are obliged to be perfected in the sequence of generations. All animals tend towards man; all vegetables aspire to animality; minerals seek to draw nearer to the vegetable.… It is evident that Nature, having created a series of plants and animals, and having stopped at man who forms the superior extremity, has assembled in him all the vital faculties that it had distributed among the inferior races.[661]

These are the ideas of Leibnitz. This celebrated man had said: “Men hold to animals; these to plants, and those to fossils. It is necessary that all the natural orders form only one sole chain, in which the different classes hold strictly as if they were its links.”[662] Several philosophers have adopted them,[663] but none have expressed them with more order and energy than the author of the article Nature, in Le Nouveau Dictionnaire d’Histoire naturelle.

All animals, all plants are only the modifications of an animal, of a vegetable origin.… Man is the knot which unites the Divinity to matter, which links heaven and earth. This ray of wisdom and intelligence which shines in his thoughts is reflected upon all Nature. It is the chain of communication between all beings. All the series of animals [he adds in another place] present only a long degradation from the proper nature of man. The monkey, considered either in his exterior form or in his interior organization, resembles only a degraded man; and the same suggestion of degradation is observed in passing from monkeys to quadrupeds; so that the primitive trend of the organization is recognized in all, and the principal viscera, the principal members are identical there.[664]

Who knows [observes elsewhere the same writer] who knows if in the eternal night of time the sceptre of the world will not pass from the hands of man into those of a being more worthy of bearing it and more perfect? Perhaps the race of negroes, today secondary in the human specie, has already been queen of the earth before the white race was created.… If Nature has successively accorded the empire to the species that it creates more and more perfect, why should she cease today.… The negro, already king of animals, has fallen beneath the yoke of the European; will the latter bow the head in his turn before a race more powerful and more intelligent when it enters into the plans of Nature to ordain his existence? Where will his creation stop? Who will place the limits of his power? God alone raises it and it is His all-powerful hand which governs.[665]

Lysis, speaking always in the name of Pythagoras, addressed himself to those of the disciples of this theosophist, who had reached the highest degree of perfection, or autopsy, and the felicity of their welfare. I have said often enough in the course of these Examinations, what should be understood by this last degree, so that I need not refer to it here. I shall not even pause upon what has reference to the symbolic teachings of Pythagoras, the formularies and dietetics that he gave to his disciples, and the abstinences that he prescribed for them, my design being to give incidentally a particular explanation of it, for the purpose of not further prolonging this volume. It is well known that all of the eminent men, as many among the ancients as among the moderns, all the savants commendable for their labours or their learning, are agreed in regarding the precepts of Pythagoras as symbolical, that is, as containing figuratively, a very different meaning from that which they would seem to offer literally.[666] It was the custom of the Egyptian priests from whom he had imbibed them,[667] to conceal their doctrine beneath an outer covering of parables and allegories.[668] The world was, in their eyes, a vast enigma, whose mysteries, clothed in a style equally enigmatical, ought never to be openly divulged.[669] These priests had three kinds of characters, and three ways of expressing and depicting their thoughts. The first manner of writing and of speaking was clear and simple; the second, figurative; and the third, symbolic.

In the first, they employed characters used by all peoples and took the words in their literal meaning; in the second, they used hieroglyphic characters, and took the words in an indirect and metaphorical meaning; finally in the third, they made use of phrases with double meaning of historic and astronomical fables, or of simple allegories.[670] The (chef-d’œuvre) of the sacerdotal art was uniting these three ways, and enclosing under the appearance of a clear and simple style, the vulgar, figurative, and symbolic meaning. Pythagoras has sought this kind of perfection in his precepts and often he has succeeded; but the one of all the theosophists instructed in the sanctuaries of Thebes or of Memphis, who has pushed farthest, this marvellous art, is beyond doubt Moses. The first part of his Sepher, vulgarly called Genesis, and that should be called by its original name of Bereshith, is in this style, the most admirable work, the most astounding feat of strength that is possible for a man to conceive and execute. This book, which contains all the science of the ancient Egyptians, is still to be translated and will only be translated when one will put oneself in a condition to understand the language in which it has primitively been composed.

Here, said Hierocles, in terminating his commentaries, is the blissful end of all efforts: here, according to Plato, is the hope which enkindles, which sustains the ardour of him who fights in the career of virtue: here, the inestimable prize which awaits him.[671] It was the great object of the mysteries, and so to speak, the great work of initiation.[672] The initiate, said Sophocles, is not only happy during his life, but even after his death he can promise himself an eternal felicity.[673] His soul purified by virtue, said Pindar, unfolds in those blessed regions where reigns an eternal springtime.[674] It goes on, said Socrates, attracted by the celestial element which has the greatest affinity with its nature, to become united with the immortal Gods and to share their glory and their immortality.[675] This deification was, according to Pythagoras, the work of divine love; it was reserved for him who had acquired truth through his intellectual faculties, virtue through his animistic faculties, and purity through his instinctive faculties. This purity, after the end of his material body, shone forth and made itself known in the form of a luminous body, that the soul had been given during its confinement in its gloomy body; for as I finish these Examinations, I am seizing the only occasion which may still be presented of saying that, this philosopher taught that the soul has a body which is given according to his good or bad nature, by the inner labour of his faculties.

He called this body the subtle chariot of the soul, and said that the mortal body is only the gross exterior. He adds, “The care of the soul and its luminous body is, in practicing virtue, in embracing truth and abstaining from all impure things.”[676]

This is the veritable aim of the symbolic abstinences that he prescribes, even as Lysis insinuates moreover quite clearly in the lines which make the subject of my preceding Examination, when he said that it is necessary to abstain from the things which are injurious to the development of the soul and to distinguish clearly these things.

Furthermore, Pythagoras believed that there existed celestial goodness proportionate to each degree of virtue, and that there is for the souls, different ranks according to the luminous body with which they are clothed. The supreme happiness, according to him, belongs only to the soul which has learned how to recover itself, by its intimate union with the intelligence, whose essence, changing its nature, has become entirely spiritual. It is necessary that this soul be raised to the knowledge of universal truths, and that it should have found, as far as it is possible for it, the Principle and the end of all things. Then having attained to this high degree of perfection, being drawn into this immutable region whose ethereal element is no more subjected to the descending movement of generation, it can be united by its knowledge to the Universal All, and reflect in all its being the ineffable light with which the Being of beings, God Himself, fills unceasingly the Immensity.