accustomed to worship in polytheism the Divine Infinity and not its Unity, did not find it strange to be guided, protected, and watched over on the one side, whereas they remained, on the other, free in their movements; and they did not trouble themselves to find the source of good and evil since they saw it in the objects of their cult, in these same gods, the greater part of whom being neither essentially good nor essentially bad were reputed to inspire in them the virtues or the vices which, gathered freely by them, rendered them worthy of recompense or chastisement.[1] But when Natural Philosophy appeared, the face of things was changed. The natural philosophers, substituting the observation of nature and experience for mental contemplation and the inspiration of theosophists, thought that they could make sentient what was intelligible, and promised to prove by fact and reasoning whatever up to that time had had only proofs of sentiment and analogy. They brought to light the great mystery of Universal Unity, and transforming this Intellectual Unity into corporal substance placed it in water,[2] in infinite space,[3] in the air,[4] in the fire,[5] whence they draw in turn the essential and formal existence of all things. The one, attached to the school of Ionia, established as fundamental maxim, that there is but one principle of all; and the other, attached to that of Elea,
- ↑ This, as I observed in my Second Examination, should be understood only by the vulgar. The savant and the intiate easily resolved to Unity this infinity of gods, and understood or sought the origin of evil, without the knowledge of which, divine Unity is inexplicable.
- ↑ Talès, cité par Platon, De Republ., l. x.; Aristot., Metaph., l. iii.; Cicer., Acad. Quæst., iv., c. 37.
- ↑ Anaximandre, cité par Aristot., Phys., l. i.; Sext. Empir., Pyrr., iii.
- ↑ Anaximène, cité par Arist., Metaph., l. i., c. 3; Plutar., De Placit. Phil., i., 3.
- ↑ Héraclite cité par Platon, Theætet.; Arist. Metaph. 1. i., c. 6; Sext. Empir. Adv. Math.,1. vii
can consult in the course of the Edda, the sublime discourse of Odin, entitled Havamâl. The basis of all these works is the same.
