Pythagoras: His Life and Teaching, a Compendium of Classical Sources (43 page)

CHAPTER 5

T
HE
S
ENSIBLE
W
ORLD

W
e now come down to the sensible World.
⁹⁸⁶
Its exemplar is the world of the Deity; its example the intelligible world of Ideas, the
, subsistence of exemplars in itself. As One is the beginning of the intelligible world, so is Two of the corporeal. It would not be corporeal if it did not consist of these four: point, line, superfices, solidity—after the pattern of the Cube, made by one, two, three, four.

One, fixed by position, creates a point. A line, being protracted from one point to another, is made of the number two. A superfices arises from three lines. A solid contains four positions: before, behind, upwards, downwards. Two multiplied in itself produces four; retorted into itself (by saying twice two twice) makes the first Cube. Next five (the Tetragonical Pyramid, principle of the Intelligible World) is the cube of eight with six sides, architect of the Sensible World. Amongst principles, the Heptad has no place, being virgin, producing nothing, and therefore named Pallas.

This first cube is a fertile number, the ground of multitude and variety, constituted of two and of four. Zaratas termed two “the Mother”; we call the cube that proceedes from it “Matter,” the bottom and foundation of all natural beings, the seat of substantial forms. Timaeus says: from the Tetragon is generated the Cube, the most settled body, steadfast every way, having six sides, eight angles.
⁹⁸⁷
The form immersed in this solid receptacle is not received loosely, but fixedly and singly. It becomes individual and incommunicable, confined to time and place, losing its liberty in the servitude of Matter. Thus the two principles of temporal things: the Pyramid and Cube, Form and Matter, flow from one fountain, the Tetragon, whose Idea is the Tetractys, the divine exemplar.

Now there is requisite some third thing to unite these two, Matter and Form. For they flow not into one another spontaneously or casually; the matter of one thing does not contingently receive the form of another. When the soul departs out of man, the body becomes
not brass or iron, neither is wool made of a stone. There must then be a third thing to unite them. (Not privation: privation and power act nothing substantively. Nor motion: an accident cannot be the principle of a substance.) God is the uniter, as Socrates and Plato acknowledge.
⁹⁸⁸
They say there are three principles of things: God, Idea, and Matter—symbolized before by Pythagoras in these three secret marks: Infinite, One and Two. By Infinite, designing God; by Unity, Form; by Diversity, Matter. Infinite, in the Supreme world; One, or Identity, in the Intellectual; Two, or Diversity, in the Sensible, for Matter is the mother of Alteration.

The Tetragonal bases of these figures, joined together, make a Dodecahedron, the symbol of the Universe. Alcinous says God used the Dodecahedron in making the Universe this world.
⁹⁸⁹
If upon an octangle Cube we erect a Pyramid, by four equal-sided triangles, it makes a Dodecahedron, wherein the Cube is, as it were, mother, and the Pyramid, father. Thus Timaeus: Form has the nature of male and father; Matter of female and mother; the compositions are their offspring.
⁹⁹⁰

Of these are produced all things in this world by their seminal faculties; which things appear in a wonderful variety by reason of the various commensuration of forms to their matter, and the admixture of innumerable accidents—by excess and defect, discord and amity, motion and rest, impetuosity and tranquility, rarity and density. Hence arise the Spheres, the Stars, the four Elements: out of which come forth hot, moist, cold, dry, and all the objects of sense, the transmutation of forms, and variety of colors in several things.

The gods are natural, the gods of gods supernatural. Those inhabit the inferior world, these the superior. The gods of gods are most simple and pure, as being nowhere. They are supercelestial as being everywhere. They are with us here strangers, there natives; never in our world, but when sent: Angels, messengers from heaven, appearing in what form they please, kind and beneficial to us. The inferior spirits never ascend to the super celestial, but are sent sometimes on embassy to us, whence termed Angels as the others.

God himself inhabits the lowest, the highest, and the middlemost intimately; so that there is no being without God. Moreover,
the gods of this world are more excellent than the souls of men—though those assist, these inform bodies. Between them are placed Daemons and Heroes—Daemons next the gods, Heroes next souls—mentioned by Pythagoras in his Golden Verses, who assigns to each a peculiar worship.

Croesus (561-546
B.C.
), the Lydian king so rich that his name became proverbial for wealth, issued this gold stater which shows the confronted foreparts of a lion and a bull. The reverse bears the impressions of two square punches of unequal size.

Photo courtesy of Numismatica Ars Classica

CHAPTER 6

T
HE
S
TATE OF THE
S
OUL AFTER
D
EATH

R
ational man is more noble than other creatures.
⁹⁹¹
He is more divine. He is not content solely with one operation (as all other things drawn along by nature, which always act after the same manner), but imbued with various gifts, which he uses according to his free will. In respect of which liberty:

—Men are of heavenly race,
Taught by diviner Nature what t'embrace.
⁹⁹²

By “diviner Nature” is meant the Intellectual soul. As to intellect, man approaches nigh to God; as to inferior senses, he recedes from God. Reason teaching us what to embrace, when it converts itself to the mind, renders us blessed. When perverted by the senses, wretched. For men often straying from the rule of right reason precipitate themselves into misery,
, in Pythagoras's word, incurring ills voluntarily.†

Thus is man placed between Virtue and Vice, like the stalk between the two branches in the Pythagorean Y,† or young Hercules described by Prodicus. As therefore none can be called happy before his death (as Solon said to Croesus
⁹⁹³
), so none is to be esteemed unhappy while he is in this life. We must expect the last day of a man. If when he has put off his body, he remains burdened with vices, then begins he to be truly miserable. This misery after death Pythagoras divides into two kinds. The unhappy are either near Beatitude, which though at the present they enjoy not, yet are they not oppressed with extreme misery, being hereafter to be delivered from their punishment. Or wholly distant from Beatitude, in endless infinite pains. Thus there are two mansions in the
Inferi:
the Elysium, possesed by those that are to ascend into blessedness; and Tartarus, by those who endure infinite torments
-
. From these torments, Plato, imitating Pythagoras, says they never come out.† But when a man who has lived justly dies,
his soul ascends to the pure Aether and lives in the happy realm of Eternity with the blessed, as a god with the gods.

Man is the image of the world. He, in many things, metaphorically receives the names of the world.
⁹⁹⁴
The mind of man (as the Supreme mind) is termed God by participation. The rational soul, if directed by the mind it incline the will to virtue, is termed the good Daemon or Genius; if by phantasie and ill affections it draws the will to vices, the evil Daemon. Whence Pythagoras desires of God to keep us from ill, and to show everyone the Daemon he ought to use.
⁹⁹⁵
Leaving the body, the soul if defiled with vices becomes an evil Daemon. Its life,
, infelicity; but if having forsaken vice it retain a solicitous affection to the good exercises and virtues which it practiced in this life, it shall become a good Daemon. And in the amenity of that world live happily, reflecting with joy upon the good actions it has done, and retaining the same willingness to the right doing of them. This life is
, felicity, of which Virgil says:
⁹⁹⁶

—the same care
Which heretofore, breathing this vital air,
Of Chariots, Arms, and sleek-skin'd Steeds they
Pursues them now in earth's cold bosom laid.

These souls the Ancients termed
Lemures.
Of these, that which lives in and takes care of any particular house is
Lar familiaris.
That which, for its demerits in this life, wanders up and down in the air, a terror, vain to good men, but to the bad hurtful is
Larva.
Those which are not certainly known to be
Larvae
or
Lares
, are called
Dii manes: Dii
, out of reverence, who having performed the course of their lives prudently and justly, died holy.