been capable of perceiving the inferences in it have denied this predestination, and have wished, either by allegorizing the dogma of original sin, as Origen, or rejecting it wholly, as Pelagius, to establish the free will and the power of the will; but it is easy to see, in reading the history of the church, that the most rigid Christians, such as Saint Augustine and the ecclesiastical authority itself, have always upheld predestination as proceeding necessarily from the divine Prescience and from the All-Powerful, without which there is no Unity. The length of this examination forces me to suspend the proofs that I was going to give regarding this last assertion; but further on I will return to it.
In public or in secret ne'er permit thou
Any evil; and above all else respect thyself.
Pythagoras considered man under three principal modifications, like the Universe; and this is why he gave to man the name of the microcosm or the small world.[1] Nothing was more common among the ancient nations than to compare the Universe to a grand man, and man, to a small Universe.[2] The Universe, considered as a grand and animated All, composed of intelligence, soul and body, was called Pan or Phanes.[3][4] Man, or microcosm, was com-*
- , signifies the All, and Phanes is derived from the
Phœnician word [Hebrew] (ânesh), man, preceded by the emphatic article [Hebrew] (ph). It must be observed that these two names spring from the same root [Hebrew] (ân), which, figuratively, expresses the sphere of activity, and literally, the limitation of the being, its body, its capacity. Hence [Hebrew] (âni), me, and [Hebrew] (aniha), a vessel.]
- ↑ Vitâ Pythag.; Photius, Bibl. Cod., 259.
- ↑ Kircher, Œdip., t. i., p. 411; Edda Island Fabl.; Macrob., Saturn., l. i., c. 20.
- ↑ Plotin, Ennead., iii., 1. 2; Euseb., Prœp. Evan., l. iii., c. 9; Macrob., Somn. Schip., l. ii., c. 12; Marc. Aurell., l. iv., c. 34.
- ↑ The nations know not how to retard or to hasten the moment of their downfall" (Koran, ch. 6 and 23).
