by all those who have preceded them or followed them in their divergent opinions, to see that the inferences drawn by their adversaries were just, and that they could not refute them without contradicting themselves.[1] Every time that one has claimed to found the Universe upon the existence of a sole material or spiritual nature, and to make proceed from this sole nature the explanation of all phenomena, one has become exposed and always will be, to insurmountable difficulties. It is always in asking what the origin of Good and Evil is, that all the systems of this sort have been irresistibly overthrown, from Moschus, Leucippus, and Epicurus, down to Spinoza and Leibnitz; from Parmenides, Zeno of Elea, and Chrysippus, down to Berkeley and Kant. For, let there be no misunderstanding, the solution of the problem concerning free will depends upon preliminary knowledge of the origin of evil, so that one cannot reply plainly to this question: Whence comes Evil? Neither can one reply to this one: Is man free? And that one be not still further deceived here, the knowledge of the origin of evil, if it has been acquired, has never been openly divulged: it has been profoundly buried with that of the Unity of God in the ancient mysteries and has never emerged except enveloped in a triple veil. The initiates imposed upon themselves a rigid silence concerning what they called the sufferings of God[2]: his death, his descent into the infernal regions, and his resurrection.[3] They knew that the serpent was, in general, the symbol of evil, and that it was under this form that the Python had fought with and been slain by Apollo.[4] The theosophists have not made a public dogma of the Unity of God, precisely on
- ↑ Cicer., De Nat. Deor., l. i., c. 9; Plutar., De repug. Stoïc.; Diogenian. Apud.; Euseb., Præp. Evang., l. vi., c. 8.
- ↑ Herodot., Euterp., § 171; Julian Firm., De Error, prof., p. 45.
- ↑ Meurs., Græc. Feriat., l. i.; Plutar., In Alcibiad.; Porphyr., De Abst., l. ii., § 36; Euseb., Præp. Evang., l. i., c. 1; Schol. Apoll., l. i., v. 917; Pausan., Corinth, p. 73.
- ↑ Porphyr., Vitâ Pythag., p. 10.
