started from this axiom that nothing is made from nothing.[1] The former sought the how, and the latter the why of things; and all were united in saying that there is no effect without cause. Their different systems, based upon the principles of reasoning which seemed incontestable, and supported by a series of imposing conclusions, had, at first, a prodigious success; but this éclat paled considerably when soon the disciples of Pythagoras, and a little later those of Socrates and Plato, having received from their masters the theosophical tradition, stopped these sophistical physicists in the midst of their triumphs, and, asking them the cause of physical and of moral evil, proved to them that they knew nothing of it; and that, in whatever fashion they might deduce it by their system, they could not avoid establishing an absolute fatality, destructive to the liberty of man, which by depriving it of morality of actions, by confounding vice and virtue, ignorance and wisdom, made of the Universe no more than a frightful chaos. In vain these had thrust back the reproach and claimed that the inference was false; their adversaries pursuing them on their own ground cried out to them: If the principle that you admit is good, whence comes it that men are wicked and miserable?[2] If this unique principle is bad, whence emerge goodness and virtue?[3] If nature is the expression of this sole principle, how is it not constant and why does its government sow goodness and evil?[4] The materialists had recourse vainly to a certain deviation in atoms,ə and the spiritualists, to a certain adjuvant cause quite similar to efficacious grace[5]; the theosophists would never have renounced them if they
- ↑ De Gérando, Hist. des Syst. de Phil., t. iii., p. 283; Arist., Metaph., l. i., c. 6; Diog. Laërt., l. ix., c. 19.
- ↑ Cicer., De Nat. Deor., l. i., c. 9.
- ↑ Boët., De Consol., l. i., prosa 4.
- ↑ Plutar., Adv. Stoïc., p. 1075.
- ↑ Cicer., De Fato, c. 9 et 17; Diogenian., Apud.; Euseb., Præp. Evan., l. vi., c. 8.
