Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry Part 61

The division of the First and Supreme Cause into two parts, one Active and the other Pa.s.sive, the Universe Agent and Patient, or the hermaphroditic G.o.d-World, is one of the most ancient and widespread dogmas of philosophy or natural theology. Almost every ancient people gave it a place in their wors.h.i.+p, their mysteries, and their ceremonies.

Ocellus Luca.n.u.s, who seems to have lived shortly after Pythagoras opened his School in Italy, five or six hundred years before our era, and in the time of Solon, Thales, and the other Sages who had studied in the Schools of Egypt, not only recognizes the eternity of the Universe, and its divine character as an unproduced and indestructible being, but also the distinction of Active and Pa.s.sive causes in what he terms the Grand Whole, or the single hermaphroditic Being that comprehends all existences, as well causes as effects; and which is a system regularly ordered, perfect and complete, of all Natures. He well apprehended the dividing-line that separates existence eternally the same, from that which eternally changes; the nature of celestial from that of terrestrial bodies, that of causes from that of effects, that which is from that which only BECOMES,--a distinction that naturally struck every thinking man.

We shall not quote his language at full length. The heavenly bodies, he thought, are first and most n.o.ble; they move of themselves, and ever revolve, without change of form or essence. Fire, water, earth, and air change incessantly and continually, not place, but form. Then, as in the Universe there are generation and cause of generation,--as generation is where there are change and displacement of parts, and cause where there is stability of nature, evidently it belongs to what is the cause of generation, to move and to act, and to the recipient, to be made and moved. In his view, everything above the Moon was the habitation of the G.o.ds; all below, that of Nature and discord; _this_ operates dissolution of things made; _that_, production of those that are being made. As the world is unproduced and indestructible, as it had no beginning, and will have no end, necessarily the principle that operates generation in another than itself, and that which operates it _in_ itself, have co-existed.

The former is all above the moon, and especially the sun: the latter is the sublunary world. Of these two parts, one active, the other pa.s.sive--one divine and always the same, the other mortal and ever changing, all that we call the "world" or "universe" is composed.

These accorded with the principles of the Egyptian philosophy, which held that man and the animals had always existed together with the world; that they were its effects, eternal like itself. The chief divisions of nature into active and pa.s.sive causes, its system of generation and destruction, and the concurrence of the two great principles, Heaven and earth, uniting to form all things, will, according to Ocellus, always continue to exist. "Enough," he concludes, "as to the Universe, the generations and destructions effected in it, the mode in which it now exists, the mode in which it will ever exist, by the eternal qualities of the two principles, one always moving, the other always moved; one always _governing_, the other always _governed_."

Such is a brief summary of the doctrine of this philosopher, whose work is one of the most ancient that has survived to us. The subject on which he treated occupied in his time all men's minds: the poets sang of cosmogonies and theogonies, and the philosophers wrote treatises on the birth of the world and the elements of its composition. The cosmogony of the Hebrews, attributed to Moses; that of the Phnicians, ascribed to Sanchoniathon; that of the Greeks, composed by Hesiod; that of the Egyptians, the Atlantes, and the Cretans, preserved by Diodorus Siculus; the fragments of the theology of Orpheus, divided among different writers; the books of the Persians, or their Boundehesh; those of the Hindus; the traditions of the Chinese and the people of Maca.s.sar; the cosmogonic chants which Virgil puts in the mouth of Iopas at Carthage; and those of the old Silenus, the first book of the Metamorphoses of Ovid; all testify to the antiquity and universality of these fictions as to the origin of the world and its causes.

At the head of the causes of nature, Heaven and earth were placed; and the most apparent parts of each, the sun, the moon, the fixed stars and planets, and, above all, the zodiac, among the _active_ causes of generation; and among the _pa.s.sive_, the several elements. These causes were not only cla.s.sed in the progressive order of their energy, Heaven and earth heading the respective lists, but distinct s.e.xes were in some sort a.s.signed to them, and characteristics a.n.a.logous to the mode in which they concur in universal generation.

The doctrine of Ocellus was the general doctrine everywhere, it naturally occurring to all to make the same distinction. The Egyptians did so, in selecting those animals in which they recognized these emblematic qualities, in order to symbolize the double s.e.x of the Universe. Their G.o.d KNEPH, out of whose mouth issued the Orphic egg, whence the author of the Clementine Recognitions makes a hermaphroditic figure to emerge, uniting in itself the two principles whereof Heaven and the earth are forms, and which enter into the organization of all beings which the heavens and the earth engender by their concourse, furnishes another emblem of the double power, active and pa.s.sive, which the ancients saw in the Universe, and which they symbolized by the egg.

Orpheus, who studied in Egypt, borrowed from the theologians of that country the mysterious forms under which the science of nature was veiled, and carried into Greece the symbolic egg, with its division into two parts or causes figured by the hermaphroditic being that issued from it, and whereof Heaven and earth are composed.

The Brahmins of India expressed the same cosmogonic idea by a statue, representative of the Universe, uniting in itself both s.e.xes. The male s.e.x offered an image of the sun, centre of the active principle, and the female s.e.x that of the moon, at the sphere whereof, proceeding downward, the pa.s.sive portion of nature begins. The Lingam, unto the present day revered in the Indian temples, being but the conjunction of the organs of generation of the two s.e.xes, was an emblem of the same. The Hindus have ever had the greatest veneration for this symbol of ever-reproductive nature. The Greeks consecrated the same symbols of universal fruitfulness in their Mysteries; and they were exhibited in the sanctuaries of Eleusis. They appear among the sculptured ornaments of all the Indian temples. Tertullian accuses the Valentinians of having adopted the custom of venerating them; a custom, he says, introduced by Melampus from Egypt into Greece. The Egyptians consecrated the Phallus in the Mysteries of Osiris and Isis, as we learn from Plutarch and Diodorus Siculus; and the latter a.s.sures us that these emblems were not consecrated by the Egyptians alone, but by every people. They certainly were so among the Persians and a.s.syrians; and they were regarded everywhere as symbolic of the generative and productive powers of all animated beings. In those early ages, the works of Nature and all her agents were sacred like herself.

For the union of Nature with herself is a chaste marriage, of which the union of man and woman was a natural image, and their organs were an expressive emblem of the double energy which manifests itself in Heaven, and Earth uniting together to produce all beings. "The Heavens," says Plutarch, "seemed to men to fulfill the functions of father, and the Earth of mother. The former impregnated the earth with its fertilizing rains, and the earth, receiving them, became fruitful and brought forth." Heaven, which covers and embraces the earth everywhere, is her potent spouse, uniting himself to her to make her fruitful, without which she would languish in everlasting sterility, buried in the shades of chaos and of night. Their union is their marriage; their productions or parts are their children. The skies are our Father, and Nature the great Mother of us all.

This idea was not the dogma of a single sect, but the general opinion of all the Sages. "Nature was divided," says Cicero, "into two parts, one active, and the other that submitted itself to this action, which it received, and which modified it. The former was deemed to be a Force, and the latter the material on which that Force exerted itself."

Macrobius repeated almost literally the doctrine of Ocellus. Aristotle termed the earth the fruitful mother, environed on all sides by the air.

Above it was Heaven, the dwelling-place of the G.o.ds and the divine stars, its substance ether, or a fire incessantly moving in circles, divine and incorruptible, and subject to no change. Below it, nature, and the elements, mutable and acted on, corruptible and mortal.

Synesius said that generations were effected in the portions of the Universe which we inhabit; while the cause of generations resided in the portions above us, whence descend to us the germs of the effects produced here below. Proclus and Simplicius deemed Heaven the Active Cause and Father, relatively to the earth. The former says that the World or the Whole is a single Animal; what is done _in_ it, is done _by_ it; the same World _acts_, and _acts upon itself_. He divides it into "Heaven" and "Generation." In the former, he says, are placed and arranged the conservative causes of generation, superintended by the Genii and G.o.ds. The Earth, or Rhea, a.s.sociated ever with Saturn in production, is mother of the effects of which Heaven is Father; the womb or bosom that receives the fertilizing energy of the G.o.d that engenders ages. The great work of generation is operated, he says, primarily by the action of the Sun, and secondarily by that of the Moon, so that the Sun is the primitive source of this energy, as father and chief of the male G.o.ds that form his court. He follows the action of the male and female principles through all the portions and divisions of nature, attributing to the former the origin of stability and ident.i.ty, to the latter, that of diversity and mobility. Heaven is to the earth, he says, as the male to the female. It is the movement of the heavens that, by their revolutions, furnished the seminal incitements and forces, whose emanations received by the earth, make it fruitful, and cause it to produce animals and plants of every kind.

Philo says that Moses recognized this doctrine of two causes, active and pa.s.sive; but made the former to reside in the Mind or Intelligence external to matter.

The ancient astrologers divided the twelve signs of the Zodiac into six male and six female, and a.s.signed them to six male and six female Great G.o.ds. Heaven and Earth, or Ouranos and Ghe, were among most ancient nations, the first and most ancient Divinities. We find them in the Phenician history of Sanchoniathon, and in the Grecian Genealogy of the G.o.ds given by Hesiod. Everywhere they marry, and by their union produce the later G.o.ds. "In the beginning," says Apollodorus, "Ouranos or the Heavens was Lord of all the Universe: he took to wife Ghe or the earth, and had by her many children." They were the first G.o.ds of the Cretans, and under other names, of the Armenians, as we learn from Berosus, and of Panchaia, an island South of Arabia, as we learn from Euhemerus.

Orpheus made the Divinity, or the "Great Whole," male and female, because, he said, it could produce nothing, unless it united in itself the productive force of both s.e.xes. He called Heaven PANGENETOR, the Father of all things, most ancient of Beings, beginning and end of all, containing in Himself the incorruptible and unwearying force of Necessity.

The same idea obtained in the rude North of Europe. The Scythians made the earth to be the wife of Jupiter; and the Germans adored her under the name of HERTA. The Celts wors.h.i.+pped the Heavens and the Earth, and said that without the former the latter would be sterile, and that their marriage produced all things. The Scandinavians acknowledged BoR or the Heavens, and gave FURTUR, his son, the Earth as his wife. Olaus Rudbeck adds, that their ancestors were persuaded that Heaven intermarried with the Earth, and thus uniting his forces with hers, produced animals and plants. This marriage of Heaven and Earth produced the AZES, Genii famous in the theology of the North. In the theology of the Phrygians and Lydians, the ASII were born of the marriage of the Supreme G.o.d with the Earth, and Firmicus informs us that the Phrygians attributed to the Earth supremacy over the other elements, and considered her the Great Mother of all things.

Virgil sings the impregnation of the joyous earth, by the Ether, its spouse, that descends upon its bosom, fertilizing it with rains.

Columella sings the loves of Nature and her marriage with Heaven annually consummated at the sweet Spring-time. He describes the Spirit of Life, the soul that animates the world, fired with the pa.s.sion of Love, uniting with Nature and itself, itself a part of Nature, and filling its own bosom with new productions. This union of the Universe with itself, this mutual action of two s.e.xes, he terms "the great Secrets of Nature," "the Mysteries of the Union of Heaven with Earth, imaged in the Sacred Mysteries of Atys and Bacchus."

Varro tells us that the great Divinities adored at Samothrace were the Heavens and the Earth, considered as First Causes or Primal G.o.ds, and as male and female agents, one bearing to the other the relations that the Soul and Principle of Movement bear to the body or the matter that receives them. These were the G.o.ds revered in the Mysteries of that Island, as they were in the orgies of Phnicia.

Everywhere the sacred body of Nature was covered with the veil of allegory, which concealed it from the profane, and allowed it to be seen only by the sage who thought it worthy to be the object of his study and investigation. She showed herself to those only who loved her in spirit and in truth, and she abandoned the indifferent and careless to error and to ignorance. "The Sages of Greece," says Pausanias, "never wrote otherwise than in an enigmatical manner, never naturally and directly."

"Nature," says Sall.u.s.t the Philosopher, "should be sung only in a language that imitates the secrecy of her processes and operations. She is herself an enigma. We see only bodies in movement; the forces and springs that move them are hidden from us." The poets inspired by the Divinity, the wisest philosophers, all the theologians, the chiefs of the initiations and Mysteries, even the G.o.ds uttering their oracles, have borrowed the figurative language of allegory. "The Egyptians," says Proclus, "preferred that mode of teaching, and spoke of the great secrets of Nature, only in mythological enigmas." The Gymnosophists of India and the Druids of Gaul lent to science the same enigmatic language, and in the same style wrote the Hierophants of Phnicia.

The division of things into the active and the pa.s.sive cause leads to that of the two Principles of Light and Darkness, connected with and corresponding with it. For Light comes from the ethereal substance that composes the active cause, and darkness from earth or the gross matter which composes the pa.s.sive cause. In Hesiod, the Earth, by its union with Tartarus, engenders Typhon, Chief of the Powers or Genii of Darkness. But it unites itself with the Ether or Ouranos, when it engenders the G.o.ds of Olympus, or the Stars, children of Starry Ouranos.

Light was the first Divinity wors.h.i.+pped by men. To it they owed the brilliant spectacle of Nature. It seems an emanation from the Creator of all things, making known to our senses the Universe which darkness hides from our eyes, and, as it were, giving it existence. Darkness, as it were, reduces all nature again to nothingness, and almost entirely annihilates man.

Naturally, therefore, two substances of opposite natures were imagined, to each of which the world was in turn subjected, one contributing to its felicity and the other to its misfortune. Light multiplied its enjoyments; Darkness despoiled it of them: the former was its friend, the latter its enemy. To one all good was attributed; to the other all evil; and thus the words "Light" and "Good" became synonymous, and the words "Darkness" and "Evil." It seeming that Good and Evil could not flow from one and the same source, any more than could Light and Darkness, men naturally imagined two Causes or Principles, of different natures and opposite in their effects, one of which shed Light and Good, and the other Darkness and Evil, on the Universe.

This distinction of the two Principles was admitted in all the Theologies, and formed one of the princ.i.p.al bases of all religions. It entered as a primary element into the sacred fables, the cosmogonies and the Mysteries of antiquity. "We are not to suppose," says Plutarch, "that the Principles of the Universe are inanimate bodies, as Democritus and Epicurus thought; nor that a matter devoid of qualities is organized and arranged by a single Reason or Providence, Sovereign over all things, as the Stoics held; for it is not possible that a single Being, good or evil, is the cause of all, inasmuch as G.o.d can in nowise be the cause of any evil. The harmony of the Universe is a combination of contraries, like the strings of a lyre, or that of a bow, which alternately is stretched and relaxed." "The good," says Euripides, "is never separated from the Evil. The two must mingle, that all may go well." And this opinion as to the two principles, continues Plutarch, "is that of all antiquity. From the Theologians and Legislators it pa.s.sed to the Poets and Philosophers. Its author is unknown; but the opinion itself is established by the traditions of the whole human race, and consecrated in the mysteries and sacrifices both of the Greeks and Barbarians, wherein was recognized the dogma of opposing principles in nature, which, by their contrariety, produce the mixture of good and evil. We must admit two contrary causes, two opposing powers, which lead, one to the right and the other to the left, and thus control our life, as they do the sublunary world, which is therefore subject to so many changes and irregularities of every kind. For if there can be no effect without a cause, and if the Good cannot be the cause of the Evil, it is absolutely necessary that there should be a cause for the Evil, as there is one for the Good." This doctrine, he adds, has been generally received among most nations, and especially by those who have had the greatest reputation for wisdom. All have admitted two G.o.ds, with different occupations, one making the good and the other the evil found in nature. The former has been styled "G.o.d," the latter "Demon." The Persians, or Zoroaster, named the former Ormuzd and the latter Ahriman; of whom they said one was of the nature of Light, the other of that of Darkness. The Egyptians called the former Osiris, and the latter Typhon, his eternal enemy.

The Hebrews, at least after their return from the Persian captivity, had their good Deity, and the Devil, a bad and malicious Spirit, ever opposing G.o.d, and Chief of the Angels of Darkness, as G.o.d was of those of Light. The word "Satan" means, in Hebrew, simply, "The Adversary."

The Chaldeans, Plutarch says, had their good and evil stars. The Greeks had their Jupiter and Pluto, and their Giants and t.i.tans, to whom were a.s.signed the attributes of the Serpent with which Pluto or Serapis was encircled, and the shape whereof was a.s.sumed by Typhon, Ahriman, and the Satan of the Hebrews. Every people had something equivalent to this.

The People of Pegu believe in two Principles, one author of Good and the other of Evil, and strive to propitiate the latter, while they think it needless to wors.h.i.+p the former, as he is incapable of doing evil. The people of Java, of the Moluccas, of the Gold Coast, the Hottentots, the people of Teneriffe and Madagascar, and the Savage Tribes of America, all wors.h.i.+p and strive to avert the anger and propitiate the good-will of the Evil Spirit.

But among the Greeks, Egyptians, Chaldeans, Persians, and a.s.syrians, the doctrine of the two Principles formed a complete and regularly arranged theological system. It was the basis of the religion of the Magi and of Egypt. The author of an ancient work, attributed to Origen, says that Pythagoras learned from Zarastha, a Magus at Babylon (the same, perhaps, as Zerdusht or Zoroaster), that there are two principles of all things, whereof one is the _father_ and the other the _mother_; the former, Light, and the latter, Darkness. Pythagoras thought that the Dependencies on Light were warmth, dryness, lightness, swiftness; and those of Darkness, cold, wet, weight, and slowness; and that the world derived its existence from these two principles, as from the male and the female. According to Porphyry, he conceived two opposing powers, one good, which he termed Unity, the Light, Right, the Equal, the Stable, the Straight; the other evil, which he termed Binary, Darkness, the Left, the Unequal, the Unstable, the Crooked. These ideas he received from the Orientals, for he dwelt twelve years at Babylon, studying with the Magi. Varro says he recognized two Principles of all things,--the Finite and the Infinite, Good and Evil, Life and Death, Day and Night.

White he thought was of the nature of the Good Principle, and Black of that of the Evil; that Light and Darkness, Heat and Cold, the Dry and the Wet, mingled in equal proportions; that Summer was the triumph of heat, and Winter of cold; that their equal combination produced Spring and Autumn, the former producing verdure and favorable to health, and the latter, deteriorating everything, giving birth to maladies. He applied the same idea to the rising and setting of the sun; and, like the Magi, held that G.o.d or Ormuzd in the body resembled light, and in the soul, truth.

Aristotle, like Plato, admitted a principle of Evil, resident in matter and in its eternal imperfection.

The Persians said that Ormuzd, born of the pure Light, and Ahriman, born of darkness, were ever at war. Ormuzd produced six G.o.ds, Beneficence, Truth, Good Order, Wisdom, Riches, and Virtuous Joy. These were so many emanations from the Good Principle, so many blessings bestowed by it on men. Ahriman, in his turn, produced six Devs, opponents of the six emanations from Ormuzd. Then Ormuzd made himself three times as great as before, ascended as far above the sun as the sun is above the earth, and adorned the heavens with stars, of which he made Sirius the sentinel or advance-guard: that he then created twenty-four other Deities, and placed them in an egg, where Ahriman also placed twenty-four others, created by him, who broke the egg; and so intermingled Good and Evil.

Theopompus adds that, according to the Magi, for two terms of three thousand years, each of the two Principles is to be by turns victor and the other vanquished; then for three thousand more for each they are to contend with each other, each destroying reciprocally the works of the other; after which Ahriman is to perish, and men, wearing transparent bodies, to enjoy unutterable happiness.

The twelve great Deities of the Persians, the six Amshaspands and six Devs, marshalled, the former under the banner of Light, and the latter under that of Darkness, are the twelve Zodiacal Signs or Months; the six supreme signs, or those of Light, or of Spring and Summer, commencing with Aries, and the six inferior, of Darkness, or of Autumn and Winter, commencing with Libra. Limited Time, as contradistinguished from Time without limits, or Eternity, is Time created and measured by the celestial revolutions. It is comprehended in a period divided into twelve parts, each subdivided into a thousand parts, which the Persians termed years. Thus the circle annually traversed by the Sun was divided into 12,000 parts, or each sign into 3,000: and thus, each year, the Principle of Light and Good triumphed for 3,000 years, that of Evil and Darkness for 3,000, and they mutually destroyed each other's labors for 6,000, or 3,000 for each: so that the Zodiac was equally divided between them. And accordingly Ocellus Luca.n.u.s, the Disciple of Pythagoras, held that the princ.i.p.al cause of all sublunary effects resided in the Zodiac, and that from it flowed the good or bad influences of the planets that revolved therein.

The twenty-four good and twenty-four evil Deities, enclosed in the Egg, are the forty-eight constellations of the ancient sphere, equally divided between the realms of Light and Darkness, on the concavity of the celestial sphere which was apportioned among them; and which, enclosing the world and planets, was the mystic and sacred egg of the Magi, the Indians, and the Egyptians,--the egg that issued from the mouth of the G.o.d Kneph, that figured as the Orphic Egg in the Mysteries of Greece, that issued from the G.o.d Chumong of the Coresians, and from the Egyptian Osiris and the G.o.d Phanes of the Modern Orphics, Principle of Light,--the egg crushed by the Sacred Bull of the j.a.panese, and from which the world emerged; that placed by the Greeks at the feet of Bacchus the bull-horned G.o.d, and from which Aristophanes makes Love emerge, who with Night organizes Chaos.

Thus the Balance, the Scorpion, the Serpent of Ophiucus, and the Dragon of the Hesperides became malevolent Signs and Evil Genii; and entire nature was divided between the two principles, and between the agents or partial causes subordinate to them. Hence Michael and his Archangels, and Satan and his fallen compeers. Hence the wars of Jupiter and the Giants, in which the G.o.ds of Olympus fought on the side of the Light-G.o.d, against the dark progeny of earth and Chaos; a war which Proclus regarded as symbolizing the resistance opposed by dark and chaotic matter to the active and beneficent force which gives it organization; an idea which in part appears in the old theory of two Principles, one innate in the active and luminous substance of Heaven, and the other in the inert and dark substance of matter that resists the order and the good that Heaven communicates to it.

Osiris conquers Typhon, and Ormuzd, Ahriman, when, at the Vernal Equinox, the creative action of Heaven and its demiourgic energy is most strongly manifested. Then the principle of Light and Good overcomes that of Darkness and Evil, and the world rejoices, redeemed from cold and wintry darkness by the beneficent Sign into which the Sun then enters triumphant and rejoicing, after his resurrection.

From the doctrine of the two Principles, Active and Pa.s.sive, grew that of the Universe, animated by a Principle of Eternal Life, and by a Universal Soul, from which every isolated and temporary being received at its birth an emanation, which, at the death of such being, returned to its source. The life of matter as much belonged to nature as did matter itself; and as life is manifested by movement, the sources of life must needs seem to be placed in those luminous and eternal bodies, and above all in the Heaven in which they revolve, and which whirls them along with itself in that rapid course that is swifter than all other movement. And fire and heat have so great an a.n.a.logy with life, that cold, like absence of movement, seemed the distinctive characteristic of death. Accordingly, the vital fire that blazes in the Sun and produces the heat that vivifies everything, was regarded as the principle of organization and life of all sublunary beings.

According to this doctrine, the Universe is not to be regarded, in its creative and eternal action, merely as an immense machine, moved by powerful springs and forced into a continual movement, which, emanating from the circ.u.mference, extends to the centre, acts and re-acts in every possible direction, and re-produces in succession all the varied forms which matter receives. So to regard it would be to recognize a cold and purely mechanical action, the energy of which could never produce life.

On the contrary, it was thought, the Universe should be deemed an immense Being, always living, always moved and always moving in an eternal activity inherent in itself, and which, subordinate to no foreign cause, is communicated to all its parts, connects them together, and makes of the world of things a complete and perfect whole. The order and harmony which reign therein seem to belong to and be a part of it, and the design of the various plans of construction of organized beings would seem to be graven in its Supreme Intelligence, source of all the other Intelligences which it communicates together with life to man.

Nothing existing out of it, it must be regarded as the principle and term of all things.

Chaeremon had no reason for saying that the Ancient Egyptians, inventors of the sacred fables, and adorers of the Sun and the other luminaries, saw in the Universe only a machine, without life and without intelligence, either in its whole or in its parts; and that their cosmogony was a pure Epicureanism, which required only matter and movement to organize its world and govern it. Such an opinion would necessarily exclude all religious wors.h.i.+p. Wherever we suppose a wors.h.i.+p, there we must suppose intelligent Deities who receive it, and are sensible to the homage of their adorers; and no other people were so religious as the Egyptians.

On the contrary, with them the immense, immutable, and Eternal Being, termed "G.o.d" or "the Universe," had eminently, and in all their plenitude, that life and intelligence which sublunary beings, each an infinitely small and temporary portion of itself, possess in a far inferior degree and infinitely less quant.i.ty. It was to them, in some sort, like the Ocean, whence the springs, brooks, and rivers have risen by evaporation, and to the bosom whereof they return by a larger or shorter course, and after a longer or shorter separation from the immense ma.s.s of its waters. The machine of the Universe was, in their view, like that of man, moved by a Principle of Life which kept it in eternal activity, and circulated in all its parts. The Universe was a living and animated being, like man and the other animals; or rather they were so only because the Universe was essentially so, and for a few moments communicated to each an infinitely minute portion of its eternal life, breathed by it into the inert and gross matter of sublunary bodies. That withdrawn, man or the animal died; and the Universe alone, living and circulating around the wrecks of their bodies, by its eternal movement, organized and animated new bodies, returning to them the eternal fire and subtle substance which vivifies itself, and which, incorporated in its immense ma.s.s, was its universal soul.

These were the ancient ideas as to this Great G.o.d, Father of all the G.o.ds, or of the World; of this BEING, Principle of all things, and of which nothing other than itself is Principle,--the Universal cause that was termed G.o.d. Soul of the Universe, eternal like it, immense like it, supremely active and potent in its varied operations, penetrating all parts of this vast body, impressing a regular and symmetrical movement on the spheres, making the elements instinct with activity and order, mingling with everything, organizing everything, vivifying and preserving everything,--this was the UNIVERSE-G.o.d which the ancients adored as Supreme Cause and G.o.d of G.o.ds.

Anchises, in the aeneid, taught aeneas this doctrine of Pythagoras, learned by him from his Masters, the Egyptians, in regard to the Soul and Intelligence of the Universe, from which _our_ souls and intelligences, as well as our life and that of the animals, emanate, Heaven, Earth, the Sea, the Moon and the Stars, he said, are moved by a principle of internal life which perpetuates their existence; a great intelligent soul, that penetrates every part of the vast body of the Universe, and, mingling with everything, agitates it by an eternal movement. It is the source of life in all living things. The force which animates all, emanates from the eternal fire that burns in Heaven. In the Georgics, Virgil repeats the same doctrine; and that, at the death of every animal, the life that animated it, part of the universal life, returns to its Principle and to the source of life that circulates in the sphere of the Stars.

Servius makes G.o.d the active Cause that organizes the elements into bodies, the vivifying breath or spirit, that, spreading through matter or the elements, produces and engenders all things. The elements compose the substance of our bodies: G.o.d composes the souls that vivify these bodies. From it come the instincts of animals, from it their life, he says: and when they die, that life returns to and re-enters into the Universal Soul, and their bodies into Universal Matter.

Timaeus of Locria and Plato his Commentator wrote of the Soul of the World, developing the doctrine of Pythagoras, who thought, says Cicero, that G.o.d is the Universal Soul, resident everywhere in nature, and of which our Souls are but emanations. "_G.o.d is one_," says Pythagoras, as cited by Justin Martyr: "He is not, as some think, _without_ the world, but within it, and entire in its entirety. He sees all that _becomes_, forms all immortal beings, is the author of their powers and performances, the origin of all things, the Light of Heaven, the _Father_, the _Intelligence_, the _Soul_ of all beings, the Mover of all spheres."

G.o.d, in the view of Pythagoras, was ONE, a single substance, whose continuous parts extended through all the Universe, without separation, difference, or inequality, like the soul in the human body. He denied the doctrine of the spiritualists, who had severed the Divinity from the Universe, making Him exist apart from the Universe, which thus became no more than a material work, on which acted the Abstract Cause, a G.o.d, isolated from it. The Ancient Theology did not so separate G.o.d from the Universe. This Eusebius attests, in saying that but a small number of wise men, like Moses, had sought for G.o.d or the Cause of all, outside of that ALL; while the Philosophers of Egypt and Phnicia, real authors of all the old Cosmogonies, had placed the Supreme Cause _in_ the Universe itself, and in its parts, so that, in their view, the world and all its parts are _in_ G.o.d.

The World or Universe was thus compared to man: the Principle of Life that moves it, to that which moves man; the Soul of the World to that of man. Therefore Pythagoras called man a _microcosm_, or little world, as possessing in miniature all the qualities found on a great scale in the Universe; by his reason and intelligence partaking of the Divine Nature: and by his faculty of changing aliments into other substances, of growing, and reproducing himself, partaking of elementary Nature. Thus he made the Universe a great intelligent Being, like man--an immense Deity, having in itself, what man has in himself, movement, life, and intelligence, and besides, a perpetuity of existence, which man has not; and, as having in itself perpetuity of movement and life, therefore the Supreme Cause of all.

Everywhere extended, this Universal Soul does not, in the view of Pythagoras, act everywhere equally nor in the same manner. The highest portion of the Universe, being as it were its head, seemed to him its princ.i.p.al seat, and there was the guiding power of the rest of the world. In the seven concentric spheres is resident an eternal order, fruit of the intelligence, the Universal Soul that moves, by a constant and regular progression, the immortal bodies that form the harmonious system of the heavens.

Manilius says: "I sing the invisible and potent Soul of Nature; that Divine Substance which, everywhere inherent in Heaven, Earth, and the Waters of the Ocean, forms the bond that holds together and makes one all the parts of the vast body of the Universe. It, balancing all Forces, and harmoniously arranging the varied relations of the many members of the world, maintains in it the life and regular movement that agitate it, as a result of the action of the living breath or single spirit that dwells in all its parts, circulates in all the channels of universal nature, flashes with rapidity to all its points, and gives to animated bodies the configurations appropriate to the organization of each.... This eternal Law, this Divine Force, that maintains the harmony of the world, makes use of the Celestial Signs to organize and guide the animated creatures that breathe upon the earth; and gives to each of them the character and habits most appropriate. By the action of this Force Heaven rules the condition of the Earth and of its fields cultivated by the husbandman: it gives us or takes from us vegetation and harvests: it makes the great ocean overpa.s.s its limits at the flow, and retire within them again at the ebbing, of the tide."