The golden verses of Pythagoras

Let us venture now to divulge a secret of the mysteries to which Pythagoras made allusion when he said: that not all kinds of wood are fitting to make a Mercury; and notwithstanding the vulgar prejudice which is opposed to this truth, let us affirm that animistic equality among men is a chimera. I feel that here I am about to clash greatly with theological ideas and to put myself in opposition to many brilliant paradoxes that modern philosophers, more virtuous than wise, have raised and sustained with more talent and reason than sagacity; but the force of my subject draws me on and since I am explaining the doctrine of Pythagoras, it is indeed necessary that I should say why Lysis, after having examined and commended in detail all the human virtues in the purgative part of his teachings, begins again a new instruction in the unitive part and promises to lead one to divine virtues. This important distinction that he makes between these two kinds of virtues has been made by Plato, Aristotle, Galen, and many others of the philosophers of antiquity.[530] One of them, Macrobius, to whom we owe the knowledge and explanation of many of the mystic secrets, which, notwithstanding the extreme care exercised to conceal them, were rumoured outside of the sanctuaries, has made a comparison between the degrees of the initiation and those that one admits in the exercise of the virtues; and he enumerates four.[531] This number, which is related to the universal Quaternary, has been the most constantly followed, although it may have varied, however, from three to seven.

The number three was regarded by the ancients as the principle of nature, and the number seven as its end.[532] The principal degrees of initiation were, to the number of three, as the grades of the apprentice, companion, and master are in Free Masonry today. From this comes the epithet of Triple, given to the mysterious Hecate, and even to Mithra, considered as the emblem of mystic knowledge.[533] Sometimes three secondary degrees were added to the three principal ones and were terminated by an extraordinary revelation, which raising the initiate to the rank of Epopt, or seer (par excellence), gave him the true signification of the degrees through which he had already passed[534]; showed him nature unveiled,[535] and admitted him to the contemplation of divine knowledge.[536] It was for the Epopt alone that the last veil fell, and the sacred vestment which covered the statue of the Goddess was removed. This manifestation, called Epiphany, shed the most brilliant light upon the darkness which until then had surrounded the initiate. It was prepared, said the historians, by frightful tableaux with alternatives of both terror and hope.[537] The grade of Elect has replaced that of Epopt among the Free Masons, without in any sense offering the same results. The forms are indeed nearly preserved; but the substance has disappeared.

The Epopt of Eleusis, Samothrace, or Hierapolis was regarded as the foremost of men, the favourite of the gods, and the possessor of celestial treasures; the sun shone, in his sight, with a purer brightness; and the sublime virtue that he had acquired in the tests, more and more difficult, and the lessons more and more lofty, gave him the faculty of discerning good and evil, truth and error, and of making a free choice between them.[538]

But if the various grades of initiation expressed symbolically the different degrees of virtue to which men in general can attain, the tests that one was made to pass through at each new grade, made known in particular, whether the man who presented himself to obtain it, was worthy or unworthy. These tests were at first sufficiently easy; but they became increasingly difficult to such an extent that the life of the new member was frequently in danger. One would know in that way to what sort of man this life belonged, and verify by the crucible of terror and of suffering, the temper of the soul and the claim of his right to the truth. It is known that Pythagoras owed to his extreme patience and to the courage with which he surmounted all the obstacles, his initiation into the Egyptian mysteries.[539] Those who attained as he did the last degree of initiation were very rare; the greater number went no further than the second grade and very few attained the third. Lessons proportionate to their strength and to those of the faculties that had been recognized as dominating in them were given; for this is the essential point in this Examination, one learned in the sanctuaries to divide the mass of humanity into three great classes, dominated by a fourth more elevated, according to the relations that were established between the faculties of men and the parts of the Universe to which they corresponded. In the first were ranged the material or instinctive men; in the second, the animistic, and in the third, the intellectual men.

Thus all men were by no means considered as equal among them. The pretended equality which was made on the exterior was mere compliance to the errors of the vulgar, who, having seized the authority in most of the cities of Greece and Italy, forced the truth to conceal an exposure which would have injured it. The Christian cult, raised upon the extinction of all enlightenment, nourished in the hearts of slaves and lowly citizens, sanctified in the course of time a precedent favourable to its growth. Those, however, among the Christians who were called gnostics,[540] on account of the particular knowledge that they possessed, and especially the Valentinians who boasted that they had preserved the knowledge of the initiation, wished to make a public dogma of the secret of the mysteries in this respect, pretending that the corruption of men being only the effect of their ignorance and of their earthly attachment, it was only necessary in order to save them, to enlighten them regarding their condition and their original destination[541]; but the orthodox ones, who felt the danger into which this doctrine was drawing them, condemned the authors as heretics.

This condemnation, which satisfied the pride of the vulgar, did not prevent the small number of sages remaining silent, faithful to the truth. It is only necessary to open one’s eyes, and detaching them a moment from Judea, to see that the dogma of inequality among men had served as basis for the civil and religious laws of all the peoples of the earth, from the orient of Asia to the occidental limits of Africa and Europe. Everywhere, four great established divisions under the name of Castes, recalled the four principal degrees of initiation and retraced upon humanity (en masse), the Universal Quaternary. Egypt had, in this respect, in very ancient times, given example to Greece[542]; for this Greece, so proud of her liberty, or rather of her turbulent anarchy, had been at first subjected to the common division, even as it is seen in Aristotle and Strabo.[543] The Chaldeans were, relative to the peoples of Assyria,[544] only what the Magi were among the Persians,[545] the Druids among the Gauls,[546] and the Brahmans among the Indians. It is quite well known that this last people, the Brahmans, constitute the foremost and highest of the four castes of which the whole nation is composed. The allegorical origin that religion gives to these castes proves clearly the analogy of which I have spoken. The following is what is found relative to this in one of the Shastras. “At the first creation by Brahma, the Brahmans sprang from his mouth; the Kshatrys issued from his arms; the Vaisyas from his thighs, and the Soudras from his feet.”

It is said in another of these books containing the cosmogony of the Banians, that the first man, called Pourou, having had four sons named Brahma, Kshetri, Vaisa, and Souderi, God designated them to be chiefs of the four tribes which he himself instituted.[547] The sacred books of the Burmans, which appear anterior to those of the other Indian nations, establish the same division. The Rahans, who fill the sacerdotal offices among these peoples, teach a doctrine conformable to that of the mysteries. They say that inequality among men is a necessary consequence of their past virtues or past vices, and that they are born in a nation more or less enlightened, in a caste, in a family, more or less illustrious, according to their previous conduct.[548] This is very close to the thought of Pythagoras; but no one has expressed it with greater force and clearness than Kong-Tse. I think I have no need to say that these two sages did not copy each other. The assent that they gave to the same idea had its source elsewhere than in sterile imitation.

The Chinese people, from time immemorial, have been divided into four great classes, relative to the rank that men occupy in society, following the functions that they execute therein,[549] very nearly as do the Indians: but this division, that long custom has rendered purely political, is looked upon very differently by the philosophers. Man, according to them, constitutes one of the three productive powers which compose the median trinity of the Universe; for they consider the Universe, or the great All, as the expression of a triple Trinity enveloped and dominated by the primordial Unity: which constitutes for them a decade instead of a Quaternary. This third power called Yin, that is to say, mankind, is subdivided into three principal classes, which by means of the intermediary classes admitted by Kong-Tse, produces the five classes spoken of by this sage.

The first class, the most numerous, comprises [he said] that multitude of men who act only by a sort of imitative instinct, doing today what they did yesterday, in order to recommence tomorrow what they have done today; and who, incapable of discerning in the distance the real and substantial advantages, the interest of highest importance, extract easily a little profit, a base interest in the pettiest things, and have enough adroitness to procure them. These men have an understanding as the others but this understanding goes no further than the senses; they see and hear only through the eyes and the ears of their bodies. Such are the people.

The second class is composed [according to the same sage] of men instructed in the sciences, in letters and in the liberal arts. These men have an object in view in whatever they undertake, and know the different means by which the end can be accomplished; they have not penetrated into the essence of things, but they know them well enough to speak of them with ease and to give lessons to others; whether they speak or whether they act, they can give reason for what they say or what they do, comparing subjects among them and drawing just inferences concerning what is harmful or profitable: these are the artists, the literati, who are occupied with things wherein reasoning must enter. This class can have an influence on customs and even on the government.

The third class [continues Kong-Tse] comprises those who in their speech, in their actions, and in the whole of their conduct, never deviate from what is prescribed by right reason; who do good without any pretension whatsoever; but only because it is good; who never vary, and show themselves the same in adversity as in fortune. These men speak when it is necessary to speak, and are silent when it is necessary to be silent. They are not satisfied with drawing the sciences from the diverse channels destined to transmit them, but go back to the source. These are the philosophers.

Those who never digress from the fixed and immutable rule which they have traced out for themselves, who, with utmost exactness and a constancy always the same, fulfill to the very least, their obligations, who fight their passions, observe themselves unceasingly, and prevent vices from developing; those finally, who speak no word which is not measured and that may not be useful for instruction, and who fear neither trouble nor labour in order to make virtue prosper in themselves and in others, constitute the fourth class, which is that of virtuous men.

The fifth class, finally [adds Kong-Tse], which is the loftiest and sublimest, comprises the extraordinary men, who unite in their persons the qualities of the spirit and heart, perfected by the blessed habit of fulfilling voluntarily and joyfully, what nature and morals impose jointly upon reasonable beings living in society. Imperturbable in their mode of life, like unto the sun and the moon, the heavens and the earth, they never cease their beneficent operations; they act by intelligence and as spirits see without being seen. This class, very few in number, can be called that of the Perfect ones, the Saints.[550]

I have transcribed what has just been read without changing a single word. If the reader has given to this extract the attention that it merits, he will have seen the doctrine of Pythagoras such as I have revealed and the important distinction between Instinct, Reason, and Intelligence such as I have established; he will have seen the dogma of the mysteries concerning the animistic inequality of men, of which I have spoken, and will have easily recognized, in the right reason which constitutes the third class according to the Chinese theosophist, the pure reason which has directed the German philosopher in the establishment of critical philosophy. This right reason, being quite near to human virtues, is still very far from Wisdom which alone leads to Truth. Nevertheless it can reach there, for nothing is impossible for the Will of man, even as I have quite forcibly stated[551]; but it would be necessary for that, to make acquisition of the divine virtues, and in the same manner that one is raised from instinct to understanding by purification, to pass from understanding to intelligence by perfection. Lysis offers the means: it is by knowledge of oneself that he promises to lead one to this desired end; he assures it, he invokes the name of Pythagoras himself:

Drawn on by my subject, I have forgotten to say that, according to Porphyry, there is lacking in the Golden Verses as given by Hierocles, two lines which ought to be placed immediately before those which open the unitive part of the doctrine of Pythagoras called perfection; these are[552]:

These lines, which express the general outline of this last part, are remarkable, and one cannot conceive how Hierocles could have overlooked or neglected them. Although, it is true, they add nothing in the literal sense, they say much, however, in the figurative sense; they serve as proof of the division of this poem, which Hierocles himself has adopted without explanation. Lysis indicates quite strongly that he is about to pass on to a new teaching: he calls the attention of the disciple of Pythagoras to the new career which is opened before him, and to the means of traversing it and of attaining to the divine virtues which must crown it. This means is the knowledge of oneself, as I have said. This knowledge, so commended by the ancient sages, so exalted by them, which must open the avenues of all the others and deliver to them the key of the mysteries of nature and the doors of the Universe; this knowledge, I say, could not be exposed unveiled at the epoch when Pythagoras lived, on account of the secrets that it would of necessity betray. Likewise this philosopher had the habit of proclaiming it under the emblem of the sacred Tetrad or of the Quaternary. This is why Lysis, in invoking the name of his master, designates it on this occasion with the most striking characteristic of his doctrine. “I swear,” he said, “by the one who has revealed to our soul the knowledge of the Tetrad, that source of eternal Nature”: that is to say, I swear by the one who, teaching our soul to know itself, has put it in condition to know all nature of which it is the abridged image.

In many of my preceding Examinations I have already explained what should be understood by this celebrated Tetrad, and here would perhaps be the time to reveal its constitutive principles; but this revelation would lead me too far. It would be necessary in order to do this, to enter into details of the arithmological doctrine of Pythagoras which, lacking preliminary data, would become fatiguing and unintelligible. The language of Numbers of which this philosopher made use, following the example of the ancient sages, seems today entirely lost. The fragments which have come down to us serve rather to prove its existence than to give any light upon its elements; for those who have composed these fragments wrote in a language that they supposed understood, in the same manner as our modern writers when they employ algebraic terms. It would be ridiculous if one wished before having acquired any notion concerning the value and use of the algebraic signs, to explain a problem contained in these signs. This is, however, what has often been done relative to the language of Numbers. One has pretended, not only to explain it before having learned it, but even to write of it, and has by so doing rendered it the most lamentable thing in the world. The savants seeing it thus travestied have justly scorned it; as their contempt was not unreasonable they have made it reflect, by the same language upon the ancients who have employed it. They have acted in this as in many other things; they themselves creating the stupidity of ancient sciences and saying afterwards: antiquity was stupid.

One day I shall try, if I find the time and the necessary facilities, to give the true elements of the arithmological science of Pythagoras and I will show that this science was for intelligible things what algebra has become among us for physical things; but I shall only do so after having revealed what the true principles of music are; for otherwise I should run the risk of not being understood.

Without perplexing ourselves, therefore, with the constitutive principles of the Pythagorean Quaternary, let us content ourselves with knowing that it was the general emblem of anything moving by itself and manifesting by its facultative modifications; for according to Pythagoras, 1 and 2 represent the hidden principles of things; 3, their faculties, and 4, their proper essence. These four numbers which, united by addition produce the number 10, constituted the Being, as much universal as particular; so that the Quaternary, which is as its virtue, could become the emblem of all beings, since there is none which may not recognize the principles, and which does not manifest itself by faculties more or less perfect, and which may not enjoy an existence universal or relative; but the being to which Pythagoras applied it most commonly was Man. Man, as I have said, manifests himself as does the Universe, under the three principal modifications of body, soul, and spirit. The unknown principles of this first Ternary are what Plato calls the same, and the other, the indivisible and the divisible. The indivisible principle gives the spirit; the divisible the body; and the soul has birth from this last principle elaborated by the first.[553] Such was the doctrine of Pythagoras which was borrowed by Plato. It had been that of the Egyptians, as can be seen in the works which remain to us under the name of Hermes.

Synesius, who had been initiated into their mysteries, said particularly, that human souls emanated from two sources: the one luminous, which flows from heaven on high; the other tenebrous, which springs from the earth in the abysmal depths of which it finds its origin.[554] The early Christians, faithful to theosophical tradition, followed the same teaching; they established a great difference between the spirit and the soul. They considered the soul as an issue of the material principle, and in consequence being neither enlightened nor virtuous in itself. The spirit, said Basil, is a gift of God: it is the soul of the soul, as it were; it is united to the soul; it enlightens it, it rescues it from earth and raises it to heaven.[555] Beausobre, who relates these words, observes that this sentiment was common to several Fathers of the primitive church, particularly to Tatian.[556]

I have spoken often of this first Ternary, and even of the triple faculties which are attached to each of its modifications; but as I have done many times, I believe it useful to present here the (ensemble), so as to have the opportunity of uniting, under the same viewpoint, the volitive unity, from which results the human Quaternary, in general, and in the particular being, which is man.

The three faculties which, as I have said, distinguish each of the three human modifications are: sense perception for the body, sentiment for the soul, and assent for the spirit. These three faculties develop instinct, understanding, and intelligence, which produce by a common reaction, common sense, reason, and sagacity.

Instinct, placed at the lowest degree of the ontological hierarchy, is absolutely passive; intelligence, raised to the summit, is entirely active, and understanding placed in the centre, is neuter. Sense perception perceives the sensations, sentiment conceives the ideas, assent elects the thoughts; perception, conception, election are modes of acting, of the instinct, the understanding, and the intelligence. The understanding is the seat of all the passions that the instinct feeds continually, excites, and tends to make unruly; and that the intelligence purifies, tempers, and seeks always to put in harmony. The instinct, reacted upon by the understanding, becomes common sense: it perceives notions more or less clearly, following more or less, the influence that it accords to the understanding. The understanding, reacted upon by the intelligence, becomes reason: it conceives of opinions so much the more just, as its passions are the more calm. Reason cannot by its own movement attain to wisdom and find truth, because being placed in the middle of a sphere and forced from there, it describes, from the centre to the circumference, a ray always straight and subordinate to the point of departure; it has against it infinity, that is to say, that truth being one, and residing in a single point of the circumference, it cannot be the subject of reason, only as far as it is known beforehand, and as reason is placed in the direction convenient for its encounter.

Intelligence, which can only put reason in this direction by the assent that it gives at the point of departure, would never know this point only by wisdom which is the fruit of inspiration: now, inspiration is the mode of acting of the will, which joining itself to the triple Ternary, as I have just described, constitutes the human ontological Quaternary. It is the will which envelops the primordial Ternary in its unity, and which determines the action of each of its faculties according to its own mode without the will it would have no existence. The three faculties by which the volitive unity is manifested in the triple Ternary, are memory, judgment, and imagination. These three faculties, acting in a homogeneous unity, have neither height nor depth and do not affect one of the modifications of the being, any more than another; they are all wherever the will is, and the will operates freely in the intelligence or in the understanding; in the understanding or in the instinct: where it wills to be there it is; its faculties follow it everywhere. I say that it is wherever it wills to be when the being is wholly developed; for following the course of Nature, it is first in the instinct and only passes into the understanding and into the intelligence successively and in proportion as the animistic and spiritual faculties are developed. But in order that this development may take place, the will must determine it; for without the will there is no movement. Be assured of this. Without the operation of the will, the soul is inert and the spirit sterile.

This is the origin of that inequality among men of which I have spoken. When the will does not disengage itself from matter, it constitutes instinctive men; when it is concentrated in the understanding, it produces animistic men; when it acts in the spirit, it creates intellectual men. Its perfect harmony in the primordial Ternary, and its action more or less energetic in the uniformity of their faculties, equally developed, constitute the extraordinary men endowed with sublime genius; but the men of this fourth class which represents the autopsy of the mysteries,[557] are extremely rare. Often it suffices for a powerful will, acting either in the understanding or in the intelligence and concentrating wholly there, to astonish men by the strength of reasoning and outbursts of wisdom, which draws the name of genius without being wholly merited. Recently there has been seen in Germany the most extraordinary reasoning, in Kant, failing in its aim through lack of intelligence; one has seen in the same country the most exalted intelligence, in Boehme, giving way for want of reason. There have been in all times and among all nations men similar to Boehme and to Kant. These men have erred through not knowing themselves; they have erred, through a lack of harmony that they might have been able to acquire, if they had taken the time to perfect themselves; they have erred, but their very error attests the force of their will. A weak will, operating either in the understanding or in the intelligence, makes only sensible men and men of intellect.

This same will acting in the instinct produces artful men; and if it is strong and violently concentrated through its original attraction in this corporal faculty, it constitutes men dangerous to society, miscreants, and treacherous brigands.

After having applied the Pythagorean Quaternary to Man, and having shown the intimate composition of this Being, image of the Universe, according to the doctrine of the ancients, I ought perhaps to use all the means in my power, in order to demonstrate with what facility the physical and metaphysical phenomena which result from their combined action can be deduced; but such an undertaking would necessarily draw me into details foreign to these examinations. I must again put off this point as I have put off many others; I will take them up in another work, if the savants and the thinkers to whom I address myself approve the motive which has put the pen in my hand.

All the cults established upon the face of the earth have made a religious duty of prayer. This alone would prove, if it were necessary, what I have advanced concerning the theosophical dogma of the volitive liberty of man; for if man were not free in his actions, and if an irresistible fatality led him on to misfortune and to crime, what use would be invoking the gods, imploring their assistance, begging them to turn aside from him the evils which must inevitably overwhelm him? If, as Epicurus taught, an impenetrable barrier separated gods and men; if these gods, absorbed in their beatitude and their impassive immortality, were such strangers to the evils of humanity that they neither troubled to alleviate them nor to prevent them, for what purpose then the incense burning at the foot of their altars?[558]

It was, he said, on account of the excellence of their nature that he honoured them thus, and not from any motive of hope or fear, not expecting any good from them and not dreading any evil.[559] What miserable sophism! How could Epicurus say such a thing before having explained clearly and without amphibology, what the origin of good and evil is, so as to prove that the gods indeed do not cooperate either for the augmentation of the one, or the diminution of the other? But Epicurus had never dreamed of giving this explanation. However little he might have considered it, he would have seen that in whatever fashion he had given it, it would have overthrown the doctrine of atoms; for a sole principle, whatever it may be, cannot produce at the same time good and evil. Nevertheless, if he has not explained this origin, and if he has not shown in a peremptory way that we are in a sphere where absolute evil reigns, and that consequently we can have no sort of communication with that wherein good resides, it will remain always evident that if we are not in such a sphere, and if we possess a portion of good, this good must come to us from the sphere wherein absolute good has its source. Now, this sphere is precisely that in which Epicurus places the gods.[560] But, perhaps, a defender of Epicurus will say, the good that we possess comes to us only once from the divine sphere and thenceforth it comes to us no more.

This is contrary to the most intimate and most general notion that we have of the Divinity, to that of its immutability upon which Epicurus himself leans most, and from which it results that the gods could never be what they have been, nor do what they have done.

In one word, just as well as in a thousand, any maker of a system is obliged to do one of two things, either to declare himself what the origin is of good and evil, or to admit a priori the theosophical dogma of the liberty of man. Epicurus knew this, and although this dogma might ruin his system completely, he preferred to admit it than expose himself to give an explanation beyond his capability and beyond that of all men. But if man is free, he can be counselled; if he can be counselled, it is evident that he can, even that he must, demand counsel. This is the rational principle of prayer. Now, common sense is the asking for counsel wiser than its own, and sagacity shows in the Gods the source of wisdom.

Epicurus, nevertheless, denied the intervention of divine Providence and pretended that the Gods, absorbed in their supreme felicity, do not mingle in any affair.[561] A single question, simple and naïve, would overthrow this assertion destitute of proofs, and besides, inconsistent with the conduct of Greek philosophy; but I prefer to leave this question to Bayle, who has expended much logic in sustaining this point. This French philosopher, under pretext of making Epicurus dispute with a polytheistic priest, advances against Providence an argument which he believes irresistible, and which is, indeed, one of the most subtle that one could possibly advance. “Are the gods satisfied with their administration or are they dissatisfied? Be mindful,” he says, “of my dilemma: if they are satisfied with what comes to pass under their providence, they are pleased with evil; if they are dissatisfied, they are unhappy.”[562] The manner in which Bayle throws himself into the midst of the question, without examining the principles of it, denounces him as a skeptic; it is necessary therefore to use against him the weapons that I have given against skepticism; that is, to bring him back abruptly to the principles, by interrogating him before replying to him. It is necessary to ask him, if he admits a difference between that which is and that which is not?

He is forced to admit it, as I have said; for in whatever region of himself his will takes refuge, whether it exercises its judgment in the instinct, in the understanding or in the intelligence, you will pursue it in him opposing, in the first case, the axiom of common sense: nothing is made from nothing; in the second, that of reason: that which is, is; in the last, that of sagacity: everything has its opposite and can have only one. Nothing is made from nothing therefore that which is not, can never produce that which is. That which is, is; therefore, that which is not, is not that which is. Everything has its opposite and can have only one; therefore the absolute opposite of that which is, is that which is not. If the skeptic refuses himself the evidence of common sense, of reason and of sagacity united, he lies to his conscience, or he is mad and then one must leave him.

The difference admitted between that which is and that which is not, proceeds therefore against Bayle, or against those who resemble him; ask them if man is a prey to absolute evil, whether physical or moral? They will reply to you, no; for they will feel that if they should respond otherwise, you would prove to them that not having the faculty of making a difference between good and evil, nor of comparing them together, they could never draw from this comparison their strongest argument against Providence. They will, therefore, reply that man is not a prey to absolute evil, but to a very great relative evil; as great as they wish. You, nevertheless continue thus: if man is not a prey to absolute evil, he might be, since it would suffice for this to take away the sum of good which mitigates the evil, and which the difference, previously established between that which is and that which is not, teaches to distinguish. Now, this sum of good, whence comes it? Who dispenses it? Who? If the skeptics are silent, affirm for them that it emanates from the gods themselves and that Providence is the dispenser.