Page:The Golden verses of Pythagoras (IA cu31924026681076).pdf/157

 *tions a sacred book attributed to this philosopher, in which he called the divinity, the Number of numbers. Plato, who, some centuries later, regarded these same beings as ideas and types, sought to penetrate their nature and to subjugate them by dialectics and the force of thought. Synesius, who united the doctrine of Pythagoras to that of Plato, sometimes called God, the Number of numbers, and sometimes the Idea of ideas. The gnostics gave to the intermediary beings the name of Eons. This name, which signifies, in Egyptian, a principle of the will, being developed by an inherent, plastic faculty, is applied in Greek to a term of infinite duration. One finds in Hermes Trismegistus the origin of this change of meaning. This ancient sage remarks that the two faculties, the two virtues of God, are the understanding and the soul, and that the two virtues of the Eon are perpetuity and immortality. The essence of God, he said again, is the good and the beautiful, beatitude and wisdom; the essence of Eon, is being always the same.ə But, not content with assimilating beings of the celestial hierarchy to ideas, to numbers, or to the plastic principle of the will, there were philosophers who preferred to designate them by the name of Words. Plutarch said on one occasion that words, ideas, and divine emanations reside in heaven and in the stars. Philo gives in more than one instance the name of word to angels; and Clement of Alexandria relates that the Valentinians, is derived from the Egyptian or Phœnician [Phœn.: **] (aï), a principle of will, a central point of development, and [Phœn.: **] (ion), the generative faculty. This last word has signified, in a restricted sense, a dove, and has been the symbol of Venus. It is the famous Yoni of the Indians and even the Yn of the Chinese: that is to say, the plastic nature of the Universe. From there, the name of Ionia, given to Greece.]