76 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



knowledge, will, and fate, expounding also some 

 of the dialogues of Plato and other philosophical 

 writings. 



But the matter of one course of lectures is 

 preserved to us. It is a commentary on a docu- 

 ment in hexameter verse belonging to the Pythago- 

 rean scriptures, dating apparently from the third 

 century b. c. These lines were called by Jam- 

 blichus the "Golden Verses;" but Gregory of 

 Nazianzum did them the honor to say they were 

 rather made of lead. They are not elegant as 

 poetry; the form of verse seems to have been 

 adopted as an aid to the memory. More than 

 half of them consist of a sort of versified " duty 

 to God and my neighbor," except that it is not 

 designed by the rich to be obeyed by the poor, 

 that it lays stress on the laws of health, and that 

 it is just such sensible counsel for the good and 

 right conduct of life as an English gentleman might 

 nowadays give to his son. We need not be as- 

 tonished that the step from the Mediterranean to 

 Great Britain, over two thousand years of time, 

 should make no great difference in the validity 

 of maxims like these. We might go back four 

 thousand years farther, and find the same pre- 

 cepts handed down at Memphis as the wisdom of 

 a hoar antiquity. "There's some things as I've 

 never felt i' the dark about," says Mrs. Winthrop, 

 "and they're mostly what comes i' the day's 

 work." 



There are curious indications that the point of 

 view of the commentator is not that of the verses 

 themselves. "Before all things honor the im- 

 mortal gods, as they are ordained by law," begin 

 the verses, with the frank Erastianism of the 

 Greeks, who held that every man should worship 

 the gods in the manner belonging to his city and 

 country ; that matter being settled for themselves 

 by the oracle of the Delphian Apollo. But this 

 did not suit the Neoplatonist of the fifth century, 

 whom the " law " of his country required to wor- 

 ship images of Mary and her son (to be sure, they 

 might be adapted figures of Isis and Horns) and 

 the miraculous toe-nails of some filthy and igno- 

 rant monk. The law named in the verses could 

 not be that which had scourged and banished a 

 philosopher ; so it is explained to mean the demi- 

 urgic law, which assigns to the gods their several 

 orders, the law of the divine nature. We are to 

 honor the immortal gods, says the commentator, 

 in the order which is assigned to them by the 

 law of their being. For Hierokles there is one 

 supreme deity and three orders of angels — the 

 immortal gods, the illustrious heroes, and the ter- 

 restrial demons or partially deified souls of men. 



The bishops, as we all know, multiplied these 

 numbers by three. 



As to the kind of worship, our commentator 

 quotes some old Pythagorean maxims : " You shall 

 honor the god best, by becoming godlike in your 

 thoughts. Whoso giveth God honor as to one that 

 ncedcth it, that man in his folly hath made himself 

 greater than God. The wise man only is a priest, 

 is a lover of God, is skilled to pray." "For," 

 he says, " that man only knows how to worship 

 who does not confound the relative dignity of 

 worshipful things, who begins by offering himself 

 as the victim, fashions his own soul into a divine 

 image, and furnishes his mind as a temple for the 

 reception of the divine light." " The whole force 

 of worship," he says in another place, "lies in 

 knowledge of the nature of that which is wor- 

 shiped." 



[It is interesting to compare this last maxim 

 with the proposition of Spinoza: ' "lie who clear- 

 ly and distinctly understands himself and what 

 affects him, loves God, and that the more, the 

 more he understands himself and what affects 

 him." For to understand clearly and distinctly 

 is to contemplate in relation to God, to the cos- 

 mic idea. When the mind contemplates itself 

 in relation to God, it necessarily rises from a 

 lower to a higher grade of perfection. Now joy 

 is the passage from a lower to a higher grade 

 of perfection, and love is joy associated with the 

 idea of an external cause. He, then, that rises 

 to higher perfection in the presence of the idea 

 of God, loves God.] 



But it is in the latter portion of the "Golden 

 Verses" that we find a general view of life and 

 of Nature assigned as the ground of the precepts 

 which have gone before. There are in all seventy- 

 one lines ; of the last thirty-two I venture to sub- 

 join a translation as nearly literal as is consistent 

 with intelligibility : 2 



"Let not soft sleep come upon thine eyelids, 

 till thou hast pondered thy deeds of the day: 



" Wherein have I sinned? What work have I 

 done ? What left undone that I was bound to do ? 



" Beginning at the first, go through even unto 

 the last ; and then let thy heart smite thee for the 

 evil deed, but rejoice in the good work. 



" Work at these commandments, and think upon 

 them ; these commandments shalt thou love. 



1 "Qui se suoeque affectus clareet distincte intelli- 

 git, Deum amat. et eo magis, quo ee suosque nftectus 

 magie intelligit."— FAh. v., prop. xv. Cf. Aflecluum 

 definitiones ad fin. part. iii. 



2 The text followed is that of Mullach, in the "Frag- 

 menta Philosopliornm Gracorum," Pari>. I860, from 

 the prolegomena to which my information is derived. 



