Page:The religion of Plutarch, a pagan creed of apostolic times; an essay (IA religionofplutar00oakeiala).pdf/122

 really exists but that which is endowed with the same absolute existence as he—neither anything that has come into existence, nor shall come into existence, nor anything which had a beginning, or shall have an end. In worshipping him, therefore, we ought assuredly to salute and address him in a manner corresponding to this view of him; as, e.g., in the phrase already used by some ancient philosophers, the phrase, 'Thou art one.' For the Divine principle is not many, as we are, each of us compacted of countless different passions, a mingled and varying conglomerate of assembled atoms. But Being must necessarily be Unity, and Unity must be Being. It is Diversity—that is, the principle of discrepancy from Unity—which issues to the production of non-Being, whence the three names of the God are one and all appropriate. He is Apollo ([Greek: a polys]), because he repudiates and excludes the many (Greek: ta polla]); Ieius ([Greek: hios = heis]) because he is Unity and Solitude; and Phœbus, of course, was the name given by the ancients to anything that was pure and unsullied Now Unity is pure and unsullied; defilement comes by being mixed with other elements, as Homer says that ivory dipped in purple dye 'is defiled,' and dyers say that colours mixed are colours 'corrupted,' the process being called 'corruption.' A pure and incorruptible substance must therefore be one and whole." —"The Inscription [Greek: ei] seems to me to be, as it were, at once the antithesis and the completion of the inscription, 'Know thyself.' The one is addressed in reverence