Page:The Golden verses of Pythagoras (IA cu31924026681076).pdf/270

 *nounce all enclosures, to annihilate finally all sentient objects or to be exposed to give false ideas of the absolute essence of a Being that neither time nor space can contain. Many have dared the undertaking. One knows, in delving into ages long since past, that the ancient Magians of Persia erected no temple and set up no statue. The Druids acted in the same manner. The former invoked the Principle of all things upon the summits of mountains; the latter, in the depths of the forests. Both deemed it unworthy of the divine Majesty to enclose it within precincts and to represent it by a material image. It even appears that the early Romans shared this opinion. But this cult, entirely intellectual and destitute of forms, could not subsist long. Perceptible objects were needed by the people, on which they might place their ideas. These objects, even in spite of the legislator who sought to proscribe them, insinuated themselves.ə Images, statues, temples were multiplied notwithstanding the laws which prohibited them. At that time if the cult did not undergo a salutary reform, it was changed, either into a gross anthropomorphism, or into an absolute materialism: that is to say, that a man of the people being unable to rise to the divine Unity, drew it down to his level; and the savant, being unable to comprehend it and believing nevertheless to grasp it, confused it with Nature.

It was to evade this inevitable catastrophe that the sages and theosophists had, as I have said, made a mystery of the Unity of God, and had concealed it in the inmost recesses of the sanctuaries. It was only after many trials, and not until the initiate was judged worthy to be admitted to the sublime degree of autopsy, that the last veil was lifted, p. 5.]