To the well-being of an animal, it is requisite that the body have the virtues competent to it: Health, perfect Sense, Strength, and Beauty. The principles of Beauty are a symmetry of the parts amongst themselves and with the soul; for nature made the body as an instrument, obedient and accommodate to all the businesses of life. In like manner, the soul must be ordered to virtues answerable to those: to Temperance, as the body to Health; to Wisdom, as the body to perfect sense; to Fortitude, as the body to strength; to Justice, as the body to beauty.
The principles of these are from Nature; their means and ends from industry. Those of the body are attained by exercise and Medicine; those of the Soul by Institution and Philosophy. For these faculties nourish and strengthen both the soul and body by labor, exercise and pureness of diet—these by medicaments; those instituting the soul by chastisements and reprehensions. For they strengthen it, by exhortation, by exciting the inclination, and enjoining those things which are expedient for action.
The gymnastic art, and its nearest ally Medicine, are designed for the cure of bodies—reducing the faculties to the best harmony. They purify the blood and make the spirits flow freely, so that if anything unwholesome settle, the vigors of the blood and spirits being thus confirmed, overmaster it. Music, and its director Philosophy—ordained by the gods and by the laws for reformation of the soul—inure, compel and persuade the irrational part to obey the rational, and in the irrational mollify anger, and quiet desire; so they neither move nor rest without reason, the mind summoning them either to action or fruition.
The bound of temperance is obedience and fortitude. Now science and venerable philosophy, purifying the mind from false opinions, bring her to knowledge. And reducing her from great ignorance, raise her to contemplation of Divine things; wherein if a man be conversant with contentedness as to human things, and endeavor in a moderate way of living, he is happy. For he to whom God has allotted this estate is undoubtedly guided to a most happy life.
But if a man be stiff and refractory, he shall be pursued by punishment according to the laws and those discourses which declare things Celestial and Infernal. For irremissible punishments are prepared for the unhappy dead and many other things; for which I commend the Ionic poet, who makes men religious by ancient fabulous Traditions. For as we cure bodies with things unwholesome when the wholesome agree not with them, so we restrain souls with fabulous relations when they will not be led by the true. Let them then—since there is a necessity for it—talk of these strange punishments: as if souls did transmigrate: those of the effeminate into the bodies of women given up to ignominy; of murderers into those of beasts for punishment; of the lascivious into the forms of swine; of the light and temerarious into birds; of the slothful, and idle, unlearned, and ignorant into several kinds of fishes. All these in the second period Nemesis decrees, together with the vindictive and Terrestrial Daemons, the overseers of human affairs to whom God, the disposer of all things, has committed the administration of the World—replenished with gods, men, and all other living creatures. All of which are formed after the best image of the ungenerate and eternal Idea.
An Explication of the Pythagorean Doctrine By John Reuchlin964
CHAPTER 1
OF PYTHAGORAS: HIS WAY OF TEACHING, BY SILENCE AND SYMBOLS
The incommunicable and abstruse tradition of Mysteries and Symbols is not to be investigated by acuteness of human wit (which rather affects us with a doubtful fear than an adherent firmness). It requires ample strength of thinking and believing, and above all things, faith and taciturnity.965 Whence Pythagoras taught nothing (as Apuleius says) to his disciples before silence; it being the first rudiment of contemplative wisdom to learn to meditate, and to unlearn to talk.966 As if the Pythagorean sublimity were of greater worth than to be comprehended by the talk of boys. This kind of learning (as other things) Pythagoras brought into Greece from the Hebrews. That the disciple intending to ask some sublime question, should hold his peace; and being questioned, should only answer , “He said.”† Thus the Cabalists answer , “The wise said”; and Christians, pioteuoov, “Believe.”†
Moreover, all the Pythagorean philosophy (especially that which concerns divine things) is mystical, expressed by Riddles and Symbols.967 The reasons are these: First, the Ancients used to deliver wisdom by Allegories. All their Philosophers and Poets are full of Riddles, avoiding by obscurity contempt of the vulgar. For the most apt interpreter of things not perceptible by human infirmity is Fable. That befits Philosophers which is declared under the pious veil of fictions, hidden in honest things, and attired in honest words. For what is easily found is but too negligently pursued. Secondly, it sometimes happens that we cannot express abstruse things without much circumlocution, unless by some short Parable. Thirdly, as generals use watch-words to distinguish their own soldiers from others, so it is not improper to communicate to friends some peculiar Symbols as distinctive marks of a Society. These, among the Pythagoreans, were a chain of indissoluble love. Pythagoras was studious of friendship; and if he heard of any that used his Symbols, he presently admitted him into his Society.968 Hereupon all became desirous of them—as well thereby to be acceptable to their Master as to be known as Pythagoreans. Lastly, symbols may serve as memorial notes. For in treating of all things divine and human, the vastness of the subject requires short Symbols as conducing much to memory.
CHAPTER 2
THE TRIPLE WORLD
The Pythagoreans reduce all Beings, subsistent or substantive, immediately to Ideas which truly are; and those to the Idea of Ideas.969 Hereupon they asserted three Worlds—whereof the third is infinite, or rather not-finite—and that all things consist of Three. The Pythagoreans (says Aristole) affirm that the whole and all things are terminated by three. Some are bodies and magnitudes, others keep and inhabit bodies and magnitude, others are the rulers and origins of the inhabitants. This we understand of the three Worlds: the Inferior, the Superior, and the Supreme.
The Inferior contains bodies, and magnitudes, and their appropriate Intelligences, movers of the Spheres, overseers, and guardians of things generable and corruptible, who are said to take care of bodies, each according to the particular task assigned him. By the Ancients, they are named sometimes Angels, sometimes gods, and (in respect of the anxious solicitude of things whereto they are confined) Daemons.
Next over it immediately shines the Superior World. This contains the superior Powers, incorporeal essences, divine exemplars, the seals of the inferior World, after whose likeness the faces of all inferior things are formed. These Pythagoras calls “Immortal Gods,”970 as being the principles of things produced out of the Divine Mind, essential . They are the causes of those forms which dwell in bodies, and inform the compounded substances of the lower World. There are also other gods, incorporeal beings, individual, differing not by material, but by formal number. These are spirits, void of matter, simple, unmixed, seated beyond the sensible Heaven, confined neither to time nor place, neither suffering age nor transmutation much less any alteration. In a word, not being affected with any passion, they lead a self-sufficient excellent life, and inhabit Eternity, which is , always being, because it always was, is, and shall be intemporally in the Divine Mind. Yet by the energy of God it was created and placed beyond the convex of the visible Heaven, as being the lucid mansion of the blessed spirits (whom the Pythagoreans believe gods), placed in the highest region of Aether, of everlasting duration, invested in the immortal Eternity.
The third World, Supreme, containing all other Worlds, is that of the Deity, consisting of one divine Essence, existent before Eternity. For it is the Age of Ages, the preexistent entity and unity of existence, substance, essence, nature.
These three Worlds are called “Receptacles” in different respects: the first, of Quantity; the second, of Intelligences; the third, of Principles. The first, circumscriptively; the second, definitively; the third is not received, but receives, because it is everywhere, and is called a replenishing receptacle
.
Through the Superior World is communicated—from the Tetractys to the inferior—life, and the being (not accidental, but substantial) of every species; to some, clearly; to others, obscurely. This the Pythagoreans collect from those words of their Master:
—The Tetractys to our Souls did send,
The Fountain of Eternal Nature—971
The Tetractys is the Divine Mind communicating. The Fountain is the exemplar Idea communicated. And eternal Nature is the essential Idea of things received. Idea, considered as to God (say they), is his knowledge; as to the sensible World, exemplar; as to itself, Essence.
Now as in the Sensible World the Superior sphere has an influence on all the Spheres beneath it, so in the Intelligible World. Not only every superior Chorus of Angels has an influence upon all the inferior, but the whole superior World has an influence upon the whole inferior. Whereby all things are reduced according to their capacities as far as possible: momentary to Eternal, inferior to superior. But to the third World, nothing that is merely a creature can be reduced, incapable in its own nature of that sublimity which is proper only to God.
CHAPTER 3
THE SUPREME WORLD
The Supreme World, being (as we said) that of the Deity, is one, divine, continual, constant Essence of Sempiternity, poised (as it were) with immoveable weight. It is termed , the all-governing Throne.972 Not confined to genus, place, time, nor reason, it is the free unlimited president over all these; infinitely supreme in place, power, possession, excellence, above all Essence, Nature, Eternity, Age.
This Divine Mind, the receptacle of principles, Pythagoras symbolically terms Number; saying Number is the Principle of all things. (For none can believe so meanly of so wise a person, as that he should conceive the ordinary numbers by which we cast account, to be the Principles of all things—which are far from being antecedent to things, for they are consequential accidents.) So Plutarch: by Number Pythagoras understands the Mind, a Symbol not improper; in Incorporeals nothing more divine than the Mind; in Abstractions nothing more simple than Number.973
The divine Essence therefore—existent before Eternity and Age (for it is the Age of Ages), the preexistent entity and unity of existence, substance, essence, nature—was by Pythagoras called , ONE; by Parmenides , BEING, both upon a like ground. Because it is the super-essential Unit and Being, from which, by which, through which, in which, and to which all things are; and are ordered, and persist, and are contained, and are filled, and are converted.
Of this first one, and first Ens, Aristotle says thus: Plato and the Pythagoreans hold no other concerning Ens or One. But that this is their nature, their essence is the same, to be One and a Being. Xenophanes declared this One to be God, herein agreeing with Pythagoras, who asserted infinite, and one, and number, to be the first Principles of things. By “infinite” is signified the power, for nothing can be imagined before power, which in God is infinite, or rather it is infinite God. In him Esse and Posse are not distinct. He contains the essences, virtues, and operations of all producibles.974
With Pythagoras agrees Anaxagoras, for all things were together.975 Democritus says all thing were in power. This also is the mixing of things mentioned by Empedocles and Anaximander. Not confusedly in Chaos, Erebus, or Night; but distinctly and orderly in full light, in the most perfect splendor of the divine light, intuitive knowledge. That is the IDEA (from [“seeing, meaning understanding”]†), whose power is being. It includes all, whether mental, rational, intelligible, sensible, vital, substantial, or adhesive; and is not only all things that are, but those that are not.
This is no other than the divine Essence—within which (before all things) one produced two. Two is the first number; one is the principle of Number; One is God. And the production of two is within the divine Essence (for number is constituted of itself, and next one is naturally only the number two). This two must necessarily be God also, for within God is nothing but God. Thus these three (One and Two) being the Principle and first, and not exceeding the Essence of God, are indeed one God. For his Essence is not divided by the production of two out of one. In like manner it often happens in corporeals, that one being moved to two, proceeds to three, the substance of things continuing. For example, as in a tree, of boughs and branches; in man, the body arms and fingers. Of one therefore in the Divinity producing, and two produced, arises a Trinity to which, if there be added an essence formally distinct from them, there will be a formal Quaternity. This is the infinite one and two, the Substance, Perfection, and end of all Number. One, two, three, four by a collective progression make Ten; beyond ten there is not anything. This Pythagoras meant, when he asserted that the Principle of all things is the Tetractys. He understood God by it; for he swore by it, and seems to have transferred the Hebrew Tetragammaton into Greek Symbol.
Thus the most apt symbol of the Principles of things is one and two. For when we make enquiry into the causes and origin of all things, what sooner occurs than one and two?976 That which we first behold with our eyes is the same and not another; that which we first conceive in our mind is Identity and Diversity, One and Two. Alcmaeon (contemporary with Pythagoras) affirmed two to be many—which he said were contrarieties (perhaps the same with Empedocles [“strife”]†), yet unconfined and indefinite, such as white and black, sweet and bitter, good and evil, great and small.
These multiplex diversities the Pythagoreans designated by the number Ten: as finite and infinite, even and odd, one and many, right and left, male and female, steadfast and moved, straight and crooked, light and darkness, good and ill, square and oblong. These pairs are two, and therefore contrary; they are reduced all into ten, that being the most perfect number, as containing more kinds of numeration than the rest: even and odd, square and cube, long and short, the first uncompounded and first compounded. Nothing is more absolute than the number Ten, since in ten proportions, four cubic numbers are consummated, of which (according to the Pythagoreans) all things consist. By this all nations reckon (not exceeding it) as by the natural account of ten fingers. Heaven itself consists of ten Spheres. Architas includes all that is in the number ten. In imitation of whom Aristotle names ten kinds of Ens, categories, reducible to two, Substance and Accident, both springing from one Essence. For ten so loves two that from one it proceeds to two, and by two it reverts into one.
The first Ternary is of one and two, not compounded, but consistent. One having no position makes no composition; a unit while a unit has no position, nor a point while a point. There being nothing before One, we rightly say one is first. Two is not compounded of numbers but a co-ordination of units only. It is therefore the first number, being the first multitude. It is not commensurable by any number, only by unit, the common measure of all number. For one two is nothing but two. So that the multitude which is called “Triad,” Arithmeticians term the first number uncompounded, the Duad being not an uncompounded number, but rather not-compounded.
Now the Triad, through its propensity to multiply and communicate its goodness to all creatures, proceeds from power to operation.977 The Triad, beholding with a perpetual intuition that fecundity of multitude which is in it—productive (as it were) of number from number—and that essentiality which is one in it—the fountain of all production, the beginning of all progression, the permanence of all immutable substance—it reverts itself into itself, multiplying itself (as it were) by unity and duality, saying, “Once twice two, are four.” This is the Tetractys, the Idea of all created things; for all progression is perfected in four.978
Hence arises the Decad, the ten most general kinds of all things. One, two, three, four, going out of Omnipotency to Energy (out of power to act) produce ten, the half whereof is five. Now in the midst put five, on the right hand the next superior number six, on the left hand, the next inferior four; these added together, make ten. Again, the next superior seven, and the next inferior three make ten. Again, the next superior eight, and the next inferior two make ten. Lastly, one and nine make ten
.
This ten being carried up to twenty, comes again to one; and so on, in all the cardinal numbers to a hundred. For as twice one makes two, thrice one three, four times one four, and so forward; so twice ten makes twenty, thrice ten thirty, four times ten forty, and so on. The like in a hundred, a thousand, and forward. And because the Decad arises out of and ends in a Monad, the Greeks express ten by [iota]. The Hebrews express it by a Point, which mark (as well amongst the Barbarians, as in Latin) denotes One.979 Hitherto allude the Pythagorean symbols One and Two. Zaratas (the Master of Pythagoras) used these as the names of propagation—one the father; two the mother. One and two (in the divine essence) producing four, the Tetractys, the idea of all things, which are consummated in the number Ten. This Pythagoras styles:
Eternal Nature's fountain—
This is the knowledge of things in the Divine Mind operating intellectually. From this fountain of Eternal Nature, flows down the Pythagorean numbers One and Two—which from Eternity, in the fountain of the immense Ocean, was, shall be, or rather always is, abundantly streaming. This One was by the Ancients termed [“Zeus”], Jupiter; Two, [“Hera”], Juno, wife and sister to Jupiter, of whom writes Homer:
Golden-thron'd Juno, with eyes full of love
Beheld her spouse and brother, sacred Jove,
Sitting on th' top of fount abounding Ide.980
In Ide, , from “prescience”) Jupiter and Juno sat as one and two—in the streaming idea of the Tetractys, whence flow the principles of all things, Form and Matter.
CHAPTER 4
THE INTELLIGIBLE WORLD
The Intelligible World proceeds out of the Divine Mind after this manner.981 The Tetractys, reflecting upon its own essence as the first unit, productive of all things, and on its own beginning as the first product, says thus. Once one, twice two, immediately arises a Tetrad, having on its top the highest unit. It is a pyramid whose base is a plain Tetrad, answerable to a superficies, upon which the radiant light of the divine unity produces the form of incorporeal fire, by reason of the descent of Juno (Matter) to inferior things. Hence arises essential light, not burning but illuminating. This is the creation of the middle world, which the Hebrews call the Supreme, the world of the Deity, admitting no comparison. It is termed Olympus, , wholly lucid and replete with separate forms—where is the seat of the Immortal gods, whose top is Unity, wall Trinity, superficies Quaternity:
Pythagoras: His Life and Teaching, a Compendium of Classical Sources Page 27